Offline leveling

[SKYeXile]

just stated in the live steam, now we dont know much about the details so its probably too soon to start freaking out, BUT IM FREAKING OUT.

its one of the reasons i never played EVE, its not welcoming to new players at all, its one of the amazing things about the current planetside, a new player can go toe-toe with a vet, and eventlly catch up with them in level and power, with offline leveling like eve and perpetuum, it never happens.

say no to offline leveling.

[LordReaver]

I don't really like the idea either. I can't think of any purpose it would serve.

[Raymac]

Wouldn't it help those players that have time commitments and can't put in as many game hours keep up with people that can play nearly 24/7?

[crunchBWZ]

Plus, one of the differences between PS and other MMO's is that players compete because the weapons are balanced, so even a level 1 player can get a weapon that can kill a maximum level character. You can't compare EVE with Planetside at all, unless they make an economy and you have to buy your bullets.

[Surge72]

I didn't like the sound of it at first, but on reflection it may be a good thing.

Also, time based leveling means that 'free to play' is very very unlikely, which is good news!

[Vancha]

Wouldn't it help those players that have time commitments and can't put in as many game hours keep up with people that can play nearly 24/7?

Yeah, if you're forced to use the system, but ideally...

its one of the reasons i never played EVE, its not welcoming to new players at all, its one of the amazing things about the current planetside, a new player can go toe-toe with a vet, and eventlly catch up with them in level and power

...that gulf never exists at all.

[SKYeXile]

Wouldn't it help those players that have time commitments and can't put in as many game hours keep up with people that can play nearly 24/7?

i can really only judge off PS1, but time commitment?

once a player is BR18, they're on a totally even footing with any other character, its just the versitity that higher level character has, but goodluck, carring your: jackhammer, decmater, thumper, a pack of boomers, while flying around in a reaver with a vanguard strapped underneath it, while repairing it with your loadstar.

even before level 18, they're practically on an even footing, there is really not a time commitment with PS1 to stay "competitive" with other players like in other mmos.

[Raymac]

i can really only judge off PS1, but time commitment?

once a player is BR18, they're on a totally even footing with any other character, its just the versitity that higher level character has, but goodluck, carring your: jackhammer, decmater, thumper, a pack of boomers, while flying around in a reaver with a vanguard strapped underneath it, while repairing it with your loadstar.

even before level 18, they're practically on an even footing, there is really not a time commitment with PS1 to stay "competitive" with other players like in other mmos.

I'm sorry, I meant keeping up with leveling skills, not in being competitive on the battlefield. One of the basic foundations of Planetside is that a brand new player could stand toe to toe with a long time veteran, the only difference is versatility like you said. I don't think they'd want to break that.

[Sirisian]

I don't think anyone's going to disagree with you here. The idea of offline training might be just to awkwardly push in micro-transactions into a subscription game?

Wouldn't it help those players that have time commitments and can't put in as many game hours keep up with people that can play nearly 24/7?
Yeah those same people can subscribe and not play the game to unlock things. That makes sense. Rewarding people for time subscribed is almost totally against the idea of Planetside. The veteran stuff wasn't really even necessary. The equal footing argument is what made the game sweet.

Then again we don't know what the "skills" are. They used the word skills and they used the word certifications I believe. Kind of odd. :confused:

[SKYeXile]

yea i only caught glipses of the steam, but i know they plnned to have weapon upgrades and shit all built from resources captured from controlling land, whole thing sounds really complicated with many layers. I think they established planetsides learning curve was high, eves was higher, and with planetside 2 they want the game to be so complex nobody knows WTF is going on including SOE, but thats nothing new.

[etheral]

yea i only caught glipses of the steam, but i know they plnned to have weapon upgrades and shit all built from resources captured from controlling land, whole thing sounds really complicated with many layers. I think they established planetsides learning curve was high, eves was higher, and with planetside 2 they want the game to be so complex nobody knows WTF is going on including SOE, but thats nothing new.

Planetside's learning curve was high? You better be trollin' there son.

[Goku]

Planetside's learning curve was high? You better be trollin' there son.

Compared to CoD and getting a gun in a death match it is. Took me a few months to get a handle on the game.

[SKYeXile]

Planetside's learning curve was high? You better be trollin' there son.

no, most people that say they tried planetside said they had no idea wtf is going on or how to get to a fight. Planetside is certainly harder to pickup and play than say BF or COD type shooter.

[CutterJohn]

If I'm listening to this right.. You unlock certs by playing(Battle ranks?). Then you train the certs while offline..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqzK9X_WAGU&feature=player_detailpage#t=534s

Here's where he discusses it. Please tell me I don't understand what he's talking about. I don't like the direction this is heading at all. This is 100x worse than the cert system in PS.. There at least I could forget something once a day. I really do not care about this advancement crap..

[etheral]

no, most people that say they tried planetside said they had no idea wtf is going on or how to get to a fight. Planetside is certainly harder to pickup and play than say BF or COD type shooter.

True, it does have a higher learning curve than BF or COD, but by the standards of MMOs it was absolutely piss easy to learn.

[Goku]

That I can agree to. FPS wise though it is higher compared to others as you mentioned. RPG are a whole other world to get used to.

[etheral]

If I'm listening to this right.. You unlock certs by playing(Battle ranks?). Then you train the certs while offline..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqzK9X_WAGU&feature=player_detailpage#t=534s

Here's where he discusses it. Please tell me I don't understand what he's talking about..

From the way I heard it, you will be able to GET certs with battlerank, but your passive training will further develop them in some way (cert gives you the weapon/ability, passive training lets you use advanced weapon mods maybe?)

What we really need is some clarification at the dev panel tomorrow

*Edit* Now that I watch it again, i think you could have been right the first time :S

[CutterJohn]

Thats possible. I can't say I approve of that, but.. Well, no point fuming at the moment. We'll see what they came up with. Like as not, well, this is SOE. They could ruin a grilled cheese sandwich. :D

[Redshift]

probably just works like wow's rested exp system, essentially you can rack up a lvl and a half worth of exp while off line, although you need to play a lvl to get it to go up again

[Tigersmith]

Im going to have to sleep on this one guys. Does not sound that good of a system. And im not very impressed and or happy with it. Hopefully Hamma will ask some questions tomorrow about this.

Ill make sure I ask him.

Believe.

[Tergeron]

Chances are it'll be a secondary character progression system outside of BR/Cert for non-essential unlocks or abilities. Also, I'm willing to bet that your income for this system will be based on the amount of territory as incentive for :Winning:.

[Tigersmith]

Chances are it'll be a secondary character progression system outside of BR/Cert for non-essential unlocks or abilities. Also, I'm willing to bet that your income for this system will be based on the amount of territory as incentive for :Winning:.

woah This^^ very good.

we will still have to see. i hate this waiting game. Wish all Questions could be answered :lol:

[SKYeXile]

Chances are it'll be a secondary character progression system outside of BR/Cert for non-essential unlocks or abilities. Also, I'm willing to bet that your income for this system will be based on the amount of territory as incentive for :Winning:.

omg you stole my speculation from the official forums, dam you, dam you to hell!

[Tergeron]

Just finished watching
YouTube - ***x202a;PlanetSide 2 - SOE Fan Faire Press Conference (July 2011) - New Details, Trailer and Concept Art***x202c;‏

Apparently offline training will be for Certifications, however certifications will not be coming back in the way we imagine them. The idea I saw was that certs will be the overarching form of character advancement, branching out from what weapons or vehicles you might use. Battle rank will probably effect the rate at which you gain certs or what certs you can train for.

Personally I have no issue with offline training SO LONG AS there are means to actively gain that experience or skill point so people can catch up. Offline training is an excellent appeal to a casual gamer as well as a hardcore gamer given appropriate methods to accommodate the hardcore.

[Princess Frosty]

I'm dead set against this if it's used to impede players progress, the great thing about Planetside was that newbs could be battle effective stepping out of the sanc for the first time and that helped balance a lot, BR+certs really just made your character more versatile.

It sounds to me a lot like it's going to be used to draw out leveling so that you can fly through the battleranks as fast as you like by playing the game a lot, however you're stuck waiting like 2 weeks for your certs to catch up.

if they can implement it so that it doesn't restrict player advancement then I'm happy for it, but to me it sounds like if you're a good player who plays often it's just going to hold you back by making you wait this arbitrary length of time. it also feels like a way of padding out sub length, like in eve you need to sub for years to get everything irrelevant of how good your skills are.

[Lunarchild]

I'm personally against the whole offline leveling thing. I'd much rather have a system where you get a certain resource over time, depending on the amount of certs and your total level, and the game has you spent it than a full off-line system. Even though this is basically the same, it does not feel the same.

Still, I don't see any reason of having to be able to keep up to your squad-mates. A level 1 should be able to kill a level 1000000 (or whatever the level cap it at the time).

We'll have to see, but I don't think off-line leveling is a good thing, ever, as it is rewarding the player for not playing...

[Brokinarrow]

I seriously doubt this will affect a new players ability to put a bullet through a CR5's skull. Sounds more like your certs will take x amount of hours to get trained instead of getting a certain amount of cert points with each level. Example:
Fresh new character gets, lets say, 2 cert points. You immediately start training those and once they are done, that's all the certs you can train for level 1.

Once you hit level 2, you get another couple certs (or maybe just 1 or whatever) to begin training, etc.
I think it could be pretty cool if done right.

In this way, your certs will keep training even though you may not be playing, BUT if you don't actively level, you're not going to gain any extra certs.

[razor851]

Shit.

[Lunarchild]

So, it looks like no skills take more than 24 hours to train, based on the Q&A... That's at least better than EVE with it's weeks of training for a single skill. And it will go faster being online... Hopefully they'll have something against perpetual AFKers. Still, I would rather see a different kind of system. I think I might make a thread to collect some proposals and feedback later ^_^

[Rbstr]

The skill system, as I understand it, seems kind of like a hybrid of Original PS, Star Wars Galaxy, and EVE.

You gain BR and/or resources to unlock things. You can then tell it to train certain skills for that thing over a period of time, helped along by resources.

Comparisons to EVE strait up don't make a ton of sense. EVE's skill tree is very broad and deep, no one character can do everything well, even with multiple years under your belt. I've got nearly 6 years on a character, I can't even fly all of the combat ships at max skills yet and that means I can only do the most rudimentary of industry. It's supposed to be like that. The levelling grind is simply replaced with an economic grind. There is little reason a few month old noob can't kill a 6-year player. If they've properly specialised or were a master at the market and had a good strategy.

There is no way PS2 is going to be like that.

The resource system seems like it's simply based on captured areas providing stuff, nothing crazy like EVE's mine-refine-react-blueprint-build-sell.

I think they established planetsides learning curve was high, eves was higher, and with planetside 2 they want the game to be so complex nobody knows WTF is going on including SOE, but thats nothing new.

You've got to be shitting me. The original PS barely qualifies as having any learning curve at all. Cert weapon you want, shoot people with it. Nothing in the game required much more than point and shoot.

[dachlatte]

edit: i take everything back.