Plasma

[DviddLeff]

Does it have a place in PS2?

I don't mind it, as I am very rarely actually killed by the stuff but it does slow down indoor combat.

My argument has always been that it is needed to flush out corner humpers, but a frag grenade should be able to do the job.

Vote!

[CutterJohn]

Toss it. The effect was annoying. Frags can be the AI round.

I'd like to see a new grenade, that is useful vs vehicles and MAXs. Something magnetic, that has to stick to do damage. Would be a good close range AV/AM weapon. I'd say do this with plasma, but then you'd get halo fanboys bitching. :)

[Canaris]

My brother would be very upset to loose the plasma, he loved his thumper loadout. Charging to the entrance of a base and laying down a barrage of green or firing over wall and hitting the defenders above.

I won't lie he sometimes was a bit of a grief machine but that's because he loved the weapon. Still can hear the crazed laughter as he was screaming, "What you got bitches! what you got" lol :lol:

[Aractain]

If we are talking about Planetside style Plasma - remove it.

I would rather see Plasma redesigned into basically what the radiator did. Make it a largeish (10-15m) arena denial weapon used on walkways etc to put pressure on the enemy. NOT a primary kill farming weapon.

Even better, medics could drop a deployable like a sensor tower to stop the burn in a small radius making tight defensive positions like back doors and corners not an obvious AOE spam location. (And that is Grade B gameplay or 'indrect' player A does something to limit player Bs effectiveness).

This is another situation where without the weapon's power, no one would use it. Thus here is a good example where 'damage to XP' fixes things.



(On a related note the rocklet should be okay direct fire AOE (2-3m) weapons - good assault weapon. The thumper style frag rounds would be used for longer distance AOE (5-8m) assault weapon but the arc should be good enough to hit defenders behind walls etc giving it a secondary use also.)

[I SandRock]

Keep it. Lasher sucks so I use Spec.

[Bags]

Remove it or remove it's initial damage and leave the dot.

[Hamma]

I've never much been a fan of Damage Over Time grenades. It doesn't make a huge difference to me but I'd rather see them removed and replaced with something else.

[Lartnev]

If we are talking about Planetside style Plasma - remove it.

I would rather see Plasma redesigned into basically what the radiator did. Make it a largeish (10-15m) arena denial weapon used on walkways etc to put pressure on the enemy. NOT a primary kill farming weapon.

Even better, medics could drop a deployable like a sensor tower to stop the burn in a small radius making tight defensive positions like back doors and corners not an obvious AOE spam location.

Me likey :thumbsup:

Frag grenades should be the grenades of choice. I like the idea of a medic/engineer countermeasure too, starts adding a bit of tactical loadout variation. Use it once or twice you'll get away with it. Spam a corridor constantly and the enemy's gonna bring the antidote.

[Tikuto]

First remove them from PS2.
Second, speculate their purpose and understand why they'd be so needed. Add them to PS2.


It'd be like post-development content.

[Raymac]

When I get tired of those T.O.D.'s it's nice to be able to pull a thumper, launch a bunch of green death down the stairs toward the spawn room and let my buddies clear out the upstairs to get the hack on.

[Bags]

I wouldn't mind plasma if they didn't cause COF bloom constantly, weren't so faceroll easy to use, and weren't so spammable.

[PsychoXR-20]

Figured I'd just through this in here instead of making a new thread, but how about a/the flame thrower? I don't know anything about the current flame thrower in PS, but I would imagine its just as bad if not worse than plasma grenades.

Should PS:N Have a flame thrower? If so how should it work?

[Bags]

Figured I'd just through this in here instead of making a new thread, but how about a/the flame thrower? I don't know anything about the current flame thrower in PS, but I would imagine its just as bad if not worse than plasma grenades.

Should PS:N Have a flame thrower? If so how should it work?

It's like 8x more annoying than plasma. Flamethrowers have no place in planetside. All you have to do is run into a crowd of people holding m1 and you're guaranteed a kill or two + a lot of annoyed, half hp enemies.

[Lonehunter]

I'd love to have CoD's Decoy Grenades. They makes sounds of gun fire and ping the mini map red dot like a person. Teaches those who stare at the revealing radar a lesson.

[Traak]

I'd love to have CoD's Decoy Grenades. They makes sounds of gun fire and ping the mini map red dot like a person. Teaches those who stare at the revealing radar a lesson.

Or, a much better option: eliminate Audio Amp, the implant of choice so lazy HA's can just sit and wait for people who actually move places in the game come to them.

[I SandRock]

Plasma adds variety and as Spec Assault is a suppression weapon against infantry. Frag grenades do much less damage and are more to kill spitfires or annoy vehicles / max units.

If you decide to stand still when you were hit full on by the first plasma round of spec assault and get hit by another two it's your own damn fault. It's REALLY easy NOT to get killed by these. It's more suppression then kill farming, the only farming you do is noobies.

All you have to do is run into a crowd of people holding m1 and you're guaranteed a kill or two + a lot of annoyed, half hp enemies.

So just like the MCG or even the JH? :P

[Aractain]

Well considering that 'noobies' are still kills that pretty much fits the description of kill farming. Plasma was the peak of skillless gameplay - I don't want that again please.

Pressure is the equivolent of suppresion in (multiplayer) games. It works with a health bar better than the out wright damage nessasary for being afarid to be hit. As your health bar goes down you get closer to death the cosntant feeling of 'my health is not optimal' puts pressure on the player to 1) use up medpacks and other resoruces they then might not be able to use in a fight, 2) repair/heal themselves which means they are not shooting at targets and they might be in a vunerable position if assaulted and 3) straight up not have as much health and are easier to kill.

The Planetside plasma was a real assualt weapon better than MA or even HA in some cases (corners).

Never Again!

[I SandRock]

Well considering that 'noobies' are still kills that pretty much fits the description of kill farming. Plasma was the peak of skillless gameplay - I don't want that again please.

Pressure is the equivolent of suppresion in (multiplayer) games. It works with a health bar better than the out wright damage nessasary for being afarid to be hit. As your health bar goes down you get closer to death the cosntant feeling of 'my health is not optimal' puts pressure on the player to 1) use up medpacks and other resoruces they then might not be able to use in a fight, 2) repair/heal themselves which means they are not shooting at targets and they might be in a vunerable position if assaulted and 3) straight up not have as much health and are easier to kill.

The Planetside plasma was a real assualt weapon better than MA or even HA in some cases (corners).

Never Again!


So what if it was better than MA or HA in SOME situations? You paid 3 points for it and it was very niche and you really didn't farm that many kills with it. Probably just as much as you farmed grief with it :P

And how many kills did you ever get with the radiator? There is no need to give somebody a gun that can't kill but only annoy. The whole idea of CERTs is that not everyone has exactly the same guns. This means that guns have to be self-sufficient. You probably think everyone has HA + Spec, maybe in that setup spec is pretty powerful. But if you run with just Spec and MA then you rely heavily on spec to do ANY damage, just becoming a pressure tool means you are forced to use MA/HA all the time for actually killing.

You're actually asking for variety to be removed from the game... Might as well get rid of the CERT system and let everyone do everything :p

[Aractain]

I used SA quite a lot since I didn't like the cookiecutter HA setups which ment MA, Rocklet and thumper when I wanted to actually get some kills.

And you are correct in that with the design of planetsides kill focused system EVERYTHING had to kill well. Why does this need to be the case? If a plasma thumper dude is doing his job and hes being rewarded for the risk then SOME people will use it. I probably would.

By rewarding people who are doing thier role you improve variety AND teamplay by allowing people to play the way they want rather than "this is the best gun so Ill take that".

Ultimately, and maybe this is pie in the sky thinking but other games have done it, I want to play planetside that was orginially intended where different roles supported each other. I.e. you need assault troops (HA), marksmen (MA), special (suppresion), MAXs and the odd cloaker to properly fight.

The dominance of AOE spam and close ranges of most indoor enviroments reduced that.

[I SandRock]

I used SA quite a lot since I didn't like the cookiecutter HA setups which ment MA, Rocklet and thumper when I wanted to actually get some kills.

And you are correct in that with the design of planetsides kill focused system EVERYTHING had to kill well. Why does this need to be the case? If a plasma thumper dude is doing his job and hes being rewarded for the risk then SOME people will use it. I probably would.

By rewarding people who are doing thier role you improve variety AND teamplay by allowing people to play the way they want rather than "this is the best gun so Ill take that".

Ultimately, and maybe this is pie in the sky thinking but other games have done it, I want to play planetside that was orginially intended where different roles supported each other. I.e. you need assault troops (HA), marksmen (MA), special (suppresion), MAXs and the odd cloaker to properly fight.

The dominance of AOE spam and close ranges of most indoor enviroments reduced that.

I don't think AOE is dominating at all. I think MAX dominate indoors. Especially when your team repairs you. I've had several base fights in the last few days and I never got bothered by Spec Assault to a point where I thought "This needs changing" (I dont use Spec assault myself but I have in the past).

Spec Assault needs to be viable to kill not because suppression isn't fine but because otherwise you force people to use MA/HA for the majority of the game. As Spec really serves a niche purpose already and would be even more so after your proposed change. Right now you can still use it outdoors for fighting due to it's damage potential.

I think we already have way too much MA/HA use in PS, I want some variety. Not everyone using either sweeper/empire specific machine gun or HA :/

[Bags]

So just like the MCG or even the JH? :P

Actually the lasher is the only HA that is comparable to the flamethrower's abilities.

[kaffis]

Perhaps plasma (or an equivalent third grenade type with a wide AE) shouldn't do outright damage, but should instead prevent healing or repairing for some duration?

This means it could be paired with frags to create a teamwork-oriented choke point deterrent, or paired with HA to suppress.

Honestly, though, I see no problem with just removing initial damage, and making sure it doesn't stack. Do 30 damage or whatever over 5 or 10 seconds, and it's not that lethal on its own. So long as you don't get hit repeatedly over 15 (or 30, depending on the duration you settle on) seconds, you wouldn't die from plasma. However, it's still providing a motivation to not stay huddled around the corner.

[etheral]

I had an idea of removing plasma and splitting the frag grenade into two types: High Explosive (Middling damage over a similar area to the plasma nade, but no DoT) and Anti Tank (very small AoE but high damage, particularly to vehicles/max). Possibly making the AT grenade handheld only so weapons like the rocklet arent made obsolete by the thumper. Thoughts?

[I SandRock]

Actually the lasher is the only HA that is comparable to the flamethrower's abilities.

Rofl.

[Raymac]

I guess I'm one of those guys alot of you like to hate because I use SA. I only use it on specific occasions though. I don't care about getting kills or farming. For me it's more about moving the empire forward.

We've all been in those stalemate fights where it's a Tower of Doom or some Interlink front door. You try to run in, but there are just too many people there shooting at the choke point to break through. Well, the plasma nades do a great job of softening up that bottleneck so you can actually break through instead of banging your head against a wall for an hour.

[Jamini]

First: I use SA.

Correction: I use Special Assault for the rocklet rifle. A nice well-rounded weapon that works in a wide variety of situations and can net you a lot of kills in short order if used WELL.

And even then: I still don't want plasma in PS2.

Remove plasma. Remove thirdperson for infantry. PS = a hell of a lot more fun indoors.

[Effective]

The only thing about plasma (and SA in general) is the explode on impact primary function. Remove it , reduce cert points, make SA 4 cert points, and it should be fine.