The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation

[MasterChief096]

I feel this poll needs to be made and the concerns of the community made known.

The vote is simple. Is a veteran having a potential 20% power advantage over a new player simply not fair? Does it not have a place in a PlanetSide game?

Or is the reverse true. Is this necessary for the next installment as it will appeal to a wider audience?

How will this effect gameplay years down the road in PlanetSide 2?

The community's voice must be heard, and I will be honest with my own opinion.

I do not want even the slightest % difference between veterans and new players. The sound of, "your Reaver might be more maneuverable, durable, and powerful as a result of specializing your outfit in it and your character in it" just sounds like a terrible idea to me.

If I'm using a Gauss rifle with a 20% advantage in damage against a new player, that means that I need to do only 4/5 the damage to him that he needs to do to me. Essentially I'm fighting new players with 100 health but its like I'm fighting them at 80 health versus my 100, constantly.

I know that having power advancement for your characters appeals to gamers from the MMORPG realm, but why should we have to appeal to them? MMORPGs don't try to appeal to FPS gamers. I believe that we should not sacrifice the fairness of PlanetSide's "new player vs. old player" combat system for one that gives old players an advantage, even if it is only a 1% advantage.

If you are going to modify your weapons, take your Gauss rifle for example, then you are going to need to sacrifice in one area for a gain in the next. NEVER should you be able to upgrade your ROF, damage, or accuracy without sacrificing a little bit in another category.

The game would remain fair to me if I could choose to upgrade my Guass rifle's ROF at the expense of damage, or accuracy at the expense of ROF, or damage at the expense of either accuracy or ROF, but never would I want to just upgrade one of these categories without having to lose something in one of the other two. Its just not right to me.

The same goes for vehicles. Lets bring up a big point here. SOE wants to reward outfits that specialize in certain playstyles. This makes complete sense. The way they want to do this is by having an outfit progression similar to character progression that allows you to modify your vehicles/weapons/abilities as your outfit and characters progress. Higby mentioned your Reaver being more "durable, maneuverable, and powerful" as a result of your outfit specializing in Reaver combat. When you COUPLE this with your character progressing down the Reaver path, you get one unfair advantage between a Reaver outfit and a guy just flying his Reaver...

"Well isn't that the point?" you might ask. "An outfit that specializes in Reavers should have an advantage over random reaver pilots should they not?"

Of course, but why does it have to be in the form of power? Why can't an outfits advantage be the EXPERIENCE (non-game experience) that they get from flying Reavers all the time, working together with coordination, and developing tactics. A full time Reaver outfit is going to be better than 10 random pilots because the Reaver outfit's players are constantly in Reavers, so they are going to be better than those 10 random pilots. The outfit is going to have developed its on tactics for fighting, and gained its own personal experience from the months and eventually years of being a reaver oriented outfit.

In this MMOFPS, it is enough reward to outfits and individuals who specialize in something and spend a lot of time in certain playstyles to simply become BETTER in terms of their own SKILL within that playstyle over new players or someone who is just trying it out or whatever.

My point is that outfits and players will develop SKILL and become good at their specializations through time and patience, and learning their role and developing tactics. If I am a new player, I want to get raped by a veteran because he is better than be as a result of playing PlanetSide 2 for five years, not because we are equally matched or perhaps I'm actually better but his gun has a 5% bonus to ROF, accuracy, and damage.

POWER advancement is unnecessary and is simply a way of appeasing MMORPG players. I play MMORPGs as well as single player RPGs. I have a lot of fun in those games. I thoroughly enjoy them, but I feel that when I step into the world of PlanetSide, there is no room for MMORPG elements in the form of power advancement.

Naturally PlanetSide is an MMOFPS, so its going to need MMO game mechanics, systems, and features. This does not mean that it needs MMORPG game mechanics, systems and features.

The main thing that needs to be discussed is how can we have extreme specialization and rewards for dedicated outfits/players that aren't in the form of power? Well, like I said, let the upgrades that are unlockable etc sacrifice either armor, ROF, accuracy, speed, damage, etc. Never just have a pure upgrade to any one category of stats in PlanetSide 2 without a drawback to one of the vehicle's/weapon's/ability's other stats.

This still allows for massive customization and specialization. Your Reaver outfit can become known as either being the fastest hitting group of flyers or the slow, lumbering, but hard hitting gunship group based on specialization. Just don't allow it to become known as the "Fastest hitting, powerful punching, heavily armored, extremely maneuverable" reaver outfit.

Thoughts, discussion? I am open to any opinions that power advancement is necessary and try to look at it through the point of view of other people and either try to argue points or see why it might be a good thing.

[CutterJohn]

I disapprove of any rpg elements, limitations, unlocks, etc in fps games. A vet deserves extra power as much as he deserves extra tools, i.e not at all. FPSs don't need these things because they take skill to master. Having fake progression is pointless when it already provides the real thing.

But its just a disapproval. I'm not going to cry about it.

Also, its generally good to add an ambivalent option to polls.

[MasterChief096]

I disapprove of any rpg elements, limitations, unlocks, etc in fps games. A vet deserves extra power as much as he deserves extra tools, i.e not at all. FPSs don't need these things because they take skill to master. Having fake progression is pointless when it already provides the real thing.

But its just a disapproval. I'm not going to cry about it.

Also, its generally good to add an ambivalent option to polls.

Oops I forgot to do this, can you edit polls? Meh.

I wouldn't say I'm crying about it... I'm voicing a legitimate concern for both myself and many members within the community. There are many reasons power advancement is not needed including alternatives that I did not list above. I also stated that I am open to discussing opposite opinions towards mine and if I am truly swayed by what is said in favor of the other side of the argument then I will admit it. No bullshit.

[Ender]

Adding a 20% or so increase in lethality for veterans, to me, seems like it would completely discourage new players from entering the game. I would not want to go into a game knowing that I have to spend X months/years in order to complete fairly with other players.

To me, this game is more of a thinking game rather than a "who's got the better gun" type game. I believe they are altering the fundamental concept of the game by trying to appeal to a broader audience.

If I die to another player, I want it to be due to that player's skill or tactics instead of their time spent leveling their character.

In PS1, you progress by learning the game, learning better tactics/positioning, and by mastering your weapons. I would like it to stay that way in PS2.

[exLupo]

I can only relate this all to EVE. I have no doubt that it was the genesis of this new design. The core argument of power inflation is pretty personal and I dislike it in shooters but am willing to accede to its application as long as the relative power variances aren't huge. It's a skinner box reward. People like watching numbers go up and they like feeling special. "I've got Lv5 MA. Respect me."

But lets also break it down. I'm guessing it'll go something like this...
1 category, 5 skills w/ 5 ranks.
- Small Arms -
MA - Unlocks customizations and other skills as you rank up.
Damage - small arms damage 1% per level
RoF - small arms rate of fire 1% per level
Accuracy - small arms accuracy (cof tightness or recoil reduction) 1% per level
Clip - small arms magazine size 1% per level (less realistic but I'm going somewhere)

Leveling curves in EVE are steep. A 1x skill is something like 30m 1hr 10hr 1.5d 6d. A rank newbie, fresh out of the tubes with 0 ranks will have 0 bonuses and can probably use their ESMA. Anyone will, iirc, be able to just to have basic weapons to switch to even if you decide to never cert it. However, if someone cares about small arms combat, they'll put points in. 2 hours they'll be at +4%. 6 hours at +8% and then they put in 20 hours worth of skills when they go to bed and for the next work/school day. Next time they play they'll be at +10% to all of their small arms.

On the other end you have a guy who loves the life of the boot. He's got his MA up to 4 and unlocked HA and uses that in its own situations but he's crossing a field so he's whipped out his Gauss and is taking targets at med-long range. He's put a lot of time in and this is where EVE's lessons kick in. That last 1%. The one that takes 6 days per. There are 2 times that those ever get certed. 1) when it unlocks something else. 2) when you've unlocked everything else you want and have serious amounts of time to kill. Realistically, a dedicated MA user will still likely only have 4 in each skill. Roughly 8 days time to get those first 4 skills to 4. That makes the other 6 days for a tiny 1% and no unlocks seem really painful. Players naturally move on to 4 in HA and AV, points in vehicles and medical, engi and hacking. Whatever they want. They use those 6 days for things that will increase their personal power far beyond 1%. So where does that leave the experienced MA user? +16%.

110% after one day vs 116% for the regular user. That's about 5.5% more aggregate power. Not even raw damage but overall effectiveness and that's all because the new guy dedicated 1 day to his MA skill, most of that asleep or out in meatspace. The system's gotta be viewed realistically. Not perfect vs rank newb.

And then there's the question of skill. 5% is next to nothing when it comes to simply being a better player. Take EVE again. If you pit a well trained first time character versus a partially trained character that's secretly the alt of a long time vet and, through knowledge of game mechanics (engagement ranges, capacitor use, transversal, etc.) the vet will likely win handily.

The real gap will be enough to reward specialization but not so much that new players or widely specced players won't be able to compete. And, frankly, if it were me, even with all 5s, I'd lose. I can't shoot my way out of a damn bag.

In a mythical world of perfect skill, taking a realistic view of skilling, yes, the trained user would win 1 in 20 more fights. As long as PS2 isn't ever billed as an e-sport, I'm ok with that kind of outcome.

[Sirisian]

yeah this needs an indifference option in the poll.

I just don't care if a veteran is better. Players can specialize in different things and be better at it. Is it unfair if someone beats you in a dogfight in the air because you specialized in using a tank? To me no.

I've never really cared about minor imbalances to Planetside. There's always that group of people that call for nerfs and buffs. I was never part of that group. I just played the game and had fun. (lol I didn't care when BFRs were overpowered. I just took it as part of the game and had fun killing/dying to them).

I guess this is in the same respect to things like black-ops. Those players had a huge advantage. Did I get mad? Nah I was like "ooh a challenge". I guess if you're obsessed about keeping a perfect k/d or something it could be a problem.

Taking this a step further I'd love to see massive differences in power between specialized players. Like a Reaver launching a barrage of MIRV rockets or a tank with upgraded AA rockets on the top and such. Seriously these kinds of things don't bother me in the slightest.

[Tatwi]

Thank you for making this poll. I voted "Power advancement is not necessary in PlanetSide 2", because the level playing field of the damage numbers in FPS combat is the foundation upon which the success of the combat style rests.

Matt said that they heard people like to feel more powerful. What I hope SOE understands though is that people like to be more powerful than everyone else and that when others are more powerful than them, they don't like that much at all. In fact, people hate it when others are more powerful than them. Hence, the solution provided in Planetside: Make em equal (in principle).

On this concept, I think it would be a mistake to re-invent the wheel for Planetside 2, because Planetside got it right the first time.

[MasterChief096]

yeah this needs an indifference option in the poll.

I just don't care if a veteran is better. Players can specialize in different things and be better at it. Is it unfair if someone beats you in a dogfight in the air because you specialized in using a tank? To me no.

I've never really cared about minor imbalances to Planetside. There's always that group of people that call for nerfs and buffs. I was never part of that group. I just played the game and had fun. (lol I didn't care when BFRs were overpowered. I just took it as part of the game and had fun killing/dying to them).

I guess this is in the same respect to things like black-ops. Those players had a huge advantage. Did I get mad? Nah I was like "ooh a challenge". I guess if you're obsessed about keeping a perfect k/d or something it could be a problem.

Taking this a step further I'd love to see massive differences in power between specialized players. Like a Reaver launching a barrage of MIRV rockets or a tank with upgraded AA rockets on the top and such. Seriously these kinds of things don't bother me in the slightest.

Is it possible for a moderator to add this option? I don't think I can do it.

Well, there are a few things I can see in your post where you might be misunderstanding what I tried to express in my OP.

I'm not calling for nerfs or buffs yet as we have not even play tested any of the games features.

I completely agree that I have no problem with veterans being better than new players, but for the right reasons. A veteran should be better because he's a veteran, he has play time experience, he's developed skill and tactics with his weapons, vehicles, and outfit. He knows the game better and thus has a personal advantage over a new player, not an advantage as a result of game mechanics that assist him because he's a veteran.

I am also all for specialization, but you can have specialization and character advancement without the use of raw power advancement. You can have specialization and progression that is both cosmetic and effects vehicles and weapons etc but does not simply add more power with no drawbacks.

What I'm referring to is modifications for weapons. Lets use a standard MA rifle for example. As you gain experience and unlock things, you can add modifications that effect damage, rate of fire, accuracy, clip size, noise the weapon makes, etc. However, the game should not have modifications that just add an increase to one of these and that's it. If you are going to add a higher caliber bullet modification that increases damage, it should either reduce clip size, accuracy, or rate of fire. For example say this bullet type provides a 20% damage increase. This means that 20% must be taken from the other categories. To add more specialization for the player, allow them to choose which category or categories its taken from. The player can take that entire 20% from rate of fire, or he can take 5% from ROF, 5% from accuracy, and 10% from clip size. Maybe he even wants something odd like 17% from ROF, and 3% from accuracy or something. It would add to the uniqueness of each player's weapon and add to personalization, without giving veterans raw upgrades to power with no drawbacks.

This same concept can be applied to vehicles in terms of weapon damage, speed of the vehicle, armor that the vehicle has, and any other stat that can be applied to vehicles.

Scopes for weapons I don't really see as being a power advancement as long as they don't effect the actual stats. Scopes are more of a tactical decision that a player makes. He must choose the right scope for the current battle that is taking place. This adds to player skill and how smart he is playing.

Also you say you have no problem with a veteran beating a tank specialist in the air because he specialized in a tank. Naturally a vet thats been using a reaver for 2 years versus a new player who has been playing tank and is trying out a reaver should have a significant chance of losing just because the veteran is better in terms of how long he's played.

But I don't want that veteran to beat that new player in the air because his reaver has +20% damage.

Maybe that veteran has customized his reaver to sacrifice damage and armor for extreme speed and maneuverability, whereas the tank driver who is trying out the vanilla reaver has more general stats, more armor, less maneuverability and speed, and more damage. This means that the veteran might win because he is more maneuverable and faster in the air than the vanilla reaver, but he is not winning because his reaver does more damage and thats it. He's winning because he's customized his reaver to fit what he wants to see in terms of his aircraft, and he's gotten good using that type of customized aircraft.

If the new player was replaced by a player using a heavily armored, slower reaver that does more damage, then he still has a chance of winning, but he's going to have to figure out how to fight reavers that are weak but fast and maneuverable.

See what I'm saying? I'm all for multitudes of customization that come with battle rank and unlocks, I just am not in favor of these unlocks simply adding benefits with no drawbacks in other areas.

[MasterChief096]

I can only relate this all to EVE. I have no doubt that it was the genesis of this new design. The core argument of power inflation is pretty personal and I dislike it in shooters but am willing to accede to its application as long as the relative power variances aren't huge. It's a skinner box reward. People like watching numbers go up and they like feeling special. "I've got Lv5 MA. Respect me."

But lets also break it down. I'm guessing it'll go something like this...
1 category, 5 skills w/ 5 ranks.
- Small Arms -
MA - Unlocks customizations and other skills as you rank up.
Damage - small arms damage 1% per level
RoF - small arms rate of fire 1% per level
Accuracy - small arms accuracy (cof tightness or recoil reduction) 1% per level
Clip - small arms magazine size 1% per level (less realistic but I'm going somewhere)

Leveling curves in EVE are steep. A 1x skill is something like 30m 1hr 10hr 1.5d 6d. A rank newbie, fresh out of the tubes with 0 ranks will have 0 bonuses and can probably use their ESMA. Anyone will, iirc, be able to just to have basic weapons to switch to even if you decide to never cert it. However, if someone cares about small arms combat, they'll put points in. 2 hours they'll be at +4%. 6 hours at +8% and then they put in 20 hours worth of skills when they go to bed and for the next work/school day. Next time they play they'll be at +10% to all of their small arms.

On the other end you have a guy who loves the life of the boot. He's got his MA up to 4 and unlocked HA and uses that in its own situations but he's crossing a field so he's whipped out his Gauss and is taking targets at med-long range. He's put a lot of time in and this is where EVE's lessons kick in. That last 1%. The one that takes 6 days per. There are 2 times that those ever get certed. 1) when it unlocks something else. 2) when you've unlocked everything else you want and have serious amounts of time to kill. Realistically, a dedicated MA user will still likely only have 4 in each skill. Roughly 8 days time to get those first 4 skills to 4. That makes the other 6 days for a tiny 1% and no unlocks seem really painful. Players naturally move on to 4 in HA and AV, points in vehicles and medical, engi and hacking. Whatever they want. They use those 6 days for things that will increase their personal power far beyond 1%. So where does that leave the experienced MA user? +16%.

110% after one day vs 116% for the regular user. That's about 5.5% more aggregate power. Not even raw damage but overall effectiveness and that's all because the new guy dedicated 1 day to his MA skill, most of that asleep or out in meatspace. The system's gotta be viewed realistically. Not perfect vs rank newb.

And then there's the question of skill. 5% is next to nothing when it comes to simply being a better player. Take EVE again. If you pit a well trained first time character versus a partially trained character that's secretly the alt of a long time vet and, through knowledge of game mechanics (engagement ranges, capacitor use, transversal, etc.) the vet will likely win handily.

The real gap will be enough to reward specialization but not so much that new players or widely specced players won't be able to compete. And, frankly, if it were me, even with all 5s, I'd lose. I can't shoot my way out of a damn bag.

In a mythical world of perfect skill, taking a realistic view of skilling, yes, the trained user would win 1 in 20 more fights. As long as PS2 isn't ever billed as an e-sport, I'm ok with that kind of outcome.

Very constructive post! Thank you!
However I do have to touch on one thing.

I do agree that 5% power advantage is next to nothing when it comes down to player skill.

That would essentially mean a veteran with a 5% increase in damage against the new player would be the equivalent of fighting a new player as if he had 95 health, even though he's at 100.

But we have to take into considering that if the power advancement becomes available to players after a considerable amount of playing time and achieving "veteran" status, then the veterans are going to have naturally become better at the game over this time period. Meaning that they might become REALLY REALLY good players, and in addition, have the 5% increase.

So a new player who is REALLY REALLY good going against a veteran who is REALLY REALLY good + his 5% power increase is still going to be at a slight disadvantage. Naturally a new player who is REALLY REALLY good going against a veteran with 5-20% power increase that is REALLY REALLY bad might still have good chances of winning, but why take the chance of giving REALLY REALLY good veterans additional power? Speaking as a PS veteran of eight years, I can honestly say that I never once felt the need to feel more powerful in that game. If I wanted to become more powerful, I either dueled good players until I got better, or I ran training with my outfit until we showed signs of improvement. We never once thought that game mechanics were needed to increase our "power" because we were entitled to it as a result of being veterans.

[akiadan]

I've seen a similar sort of thing presented in mag, but in a different way. You could upgrade your gun and make it more accurate or more clip size without negatively effecting any other stat. The way it was setup though made it fairly balanced. you were given a certain number of "Credits" in which you can use for each loadout. so you have 30 "credits" and 20 of those are used in other equipment. your weapons costs 6 "credits" so you have 4 to work with. A grip would cost 2 and a sight would cost 1. now of course you cant have more than one sight or grip on your gun that would be rediculous. All these upgrades were givin access to at a fairly early point in the game. The difference they make is minimal but in reality its mostly cosmetic and may save your life in an extreme case or help you make a longer shot better while making it a little harder to hit closer targets because of the zoom.

The point is it can be done in a balanced way, or it can be done it a way that makes the game completely horrible and grueling experience for new players. I would like to see this in the game if done correctly. But alas I dont think that it is possible to do such a thing so easily so I dont really want to see an attempt in Ps2

[MasterChief096]

Its interesting that the poll is nearly 50/50 but none of the people who have voted in favor of power advancement have come out and voiced exactly why they voted in favor of it.

I'm not trying to be biased. I have an opinion on the issue and I'm defending it, but I do actually want to hear the other side of the argument, and see if I'm just missing something.

SOE needs player feedback. That doesn't just mean what I'm trying to express, but also what the other side of the argument has to express as well. Come on guys, come discuss!

If I start to come across as flaming ideas or what not please let me know, I'm trying to make every effort to defend my opinion in a "non-troll flame dude" way.

[Sirisian]

No I understood exactly what you meant. It's the same argument others have made for balancing the upgrades. They want upgrades that do nothing in the long run. It's a tactic many people on these forums use to justify their reasoning. You might not even realize you're doing it. "Lets upgrades damage, but decrease accuracy" making it only good for close combat. I disagree with that strategy and I'm going to tell you why.

When someone upgrades something it should have a direct effect on the weapon with no weaknesses. I say this because if all weapons and vehicles in the game are like this then it specializes people immensely. Someone that upgrades the cannon on their tank to be say 50% better would have a very powerful tank. Someone that upgrades their armor by 50% would have a very strong tank. Upgrading flight maneuverability instead of weapons on a plane has the same effect. Someone might want to upgrade their Reaver rockets with awesome new rockets that are good against the ground units, but find themselves open to air attacks by more agile planes.

Now you're thinking "oh well players get farmed" when in fact they don't. You just need to use your imagination. For instance, I've never played Halo past the first one, but in the new ones they have a deployable shield that a player can use in as a quick defense against vehicles. BF2142 has a wall shield for this very reason to protect against attack when moving along open terrain. So players could specialize as infantry just as easily to protect themselves from vehicles. They could get smoke grenades to hide themselves, turrets, mines, to defend an area, and upgrade them all as specialized defenses.

However, this community is surprisingly stubborn to keeping the game 100% balanced for everyone and destroying what the skill tree specialization could allow. You're assuming new players would be scared away before being able to specialize I'm assuming? I agree that is scary proposition, but in the long term anyone sticking around would realize they'd be on par with anyone else after a while with the same opportunities.

(Note, I'm not a big fan of the delay in the skill-tree which I believe will cause the lag from beginner to BR20 do whatever player).

[CutterJohn]

Honest question. Whats the point of a 1v1 comparison? These are quite rare in PS. By the time you are in a 20v20, the differences between the sides average out.

[exLupo]

If I wanted to become more powerful, I either dueled good players until I got better, or I ran training with my outfit until we showed signs of improvement. We never once thought that game mechanics were needed to increase our "power" because we were entitled to it as a result of being veterans.

And that's why this will always be divisive. SOE is probably doing this to both attract the traditional "mmo" fan who is accustomed to direct stat progression and to separate their product from the BF3s of the world.

The question of "Why do people with more practice need more power?" will always be asked. As it stands, that's how the game is going to end up. As players, it's up to us providing feedback to help dev temper the numbers along the way.

I think if lv40 had suddenly unlocked 5% better weapons players would have wept/raged, Auraxis would have exploded, and the servers would have cracked in two. BFR 9000. However, since the gap is in from the start, I think it'l work out ok in PS2. The community, new players at least, will grow up knowing nothing better and, hopefully, the returning PS1 vets will accept it as well.

There will always be a segment that want it banished but not so much that they stop killing each for that next yard of land.

[MasterChief096]

No I understood exactly what you meant. It's the same argument others have made for balancing the upgrades. They want upgrades that do nothing in the long run. It's a tactic many people on these forums use to justify their reasoning. You might not even realize you're doing it. "Lets upgrades damage, but decrease accuracy" making it only good for close combat. I disagree with that strategy and I'm going to tell you why.

When someone upgrades something it should have a direct effect on the weapon with no weaknesses. I say this because if all weapons and vehicles in the game are like this then it specializes people immensely. Someone that upgrades the cannon on their tank to be say 50% better would have a very powerful tank. Someone that upgrades their armor by 50% would have a very strong tank. Upgrading flight maneuverability instead of weapons on a plane has the same effect. Someone might want to upgrade their Reaver rockets with awesome new rockets that are good against the ground units, but find themselves open to air attacks by more agile planes.

Now you're thinking "oh well players get farmed" when in fact they don't. You just need to use your imagination. For instance, I've never played Halo past the first one, but in the new ones they have a deployable shield that a player can use in as a quick defense against vehicles. BF2142 has a wall shield for this very reason to protect against attack when moving along open terrain. So players could specialize as infantry just as easily to protect themselves from vehicles. They could get smoke grenades to hide themselves, turrets, mines, to defend an area, and upgrade them all as specialized defenses.

However, this community is surprisingly stubborn to keeping the game 100% balanced for everyone and destroying what the skill tree specialization could allow. You're assuming new players would be scared away before being able to specialize I'm assuming? I agree that is scary proposition, but in the long term anyone sticking around would realize they'd be on par with anyone else after a while with the same opportunities.

(Note, I'm not a big fan of the delay in the skill-tree which I believe will cause the lag from beginner to BR20 do whatever player).

So basically what I gathered from this is that you are in favor of power advancement for veterans via unlocks, simply because you are in favor of it? You're not for it for any particular reason other than you don't think its a bad idea?

Basically the argument you are making is that if a veteran unlocks more powerful rockets for his reaver, as well as something that increases his reavers speed or maneuverability, he has to choose which one to take with no penalty for either. If he chooses the more powerful rockets he is NOT choosing the increased maneuverability thus his reaver will be vulnerable to the guys who did choose the maneuverability?

This makes complete sense and is a good point, I agree. I can see where you are coming from here. But this method of power progression only works when veterans are fighting other veterans who have been given the same options. A new player who is flying a reaver will not have unlocked the more powerful rockets or the increased speed/maneuverability, and thus will be at a huge disadvantage to a veteran who has. This is where the problem is with me. I would rather, as a veteran, take the more powerful rockets and choose to lose a little speed/maneuverability or perhaps armor, but have the benefit of being able to dish out more damage.

Why is 100% balance such a bad thing to aim for? Obviously no game has ever achieved 100% balance, nor is it likely for any game to ever achieve this. Opinions vary too much and someone will always be displeased with how something works.

Your post says that infantry can specialize in protecting themselves from vehicles, but its the same flaw, only veteran infantry players will have access to all things that keep them protected from being farmed by vehicles. New players would still be running around out in the open getting farmed by veteran infantry players with raw power upgrades that they didn't have to sacrifice anything for.

With the method I've mentioned, a veteran can still have an advantage over a new player in close combat, if he's upgraded his gun to do less damage but have more bullets in a clip and have a higher ROF. Its all up to the player and how he feels the need to play the game.

I don't see what I proposed as destroying what the specialization tree can create, I see it as adding to it immensely.

[Higby]

We're going to have hundreds if not thousands of certs at launch. These will vary from certs that unlock new weapons, implants, vehicles, weapon/vehicle attachments and class skills to ones that allow for faster reloading, less cone of fire, larger ammo capacity, and yes, additional damage. When we say overall 20% increase in power we're talking holistically, not necessarily "each of your bullets do 20% more damage! a winner is you!".

The spirit of the PS2 cert system is very much based around the PS1 paradigm of advancement by addition of situational flexibility and overall breadth of gameplay options. A good fps player playing light assault with minimal certs will always kick the shit out of a bad fps player playing light assault with a lot of certs.

Edit: MasterChief096 - I'm definitely not trying to bust up your thread by stating any of this, it's a great poll and I appreciate seeing everyone's point of view. I just want everyone to understand what our goals with the cert tree and power growth actually are. Carry on!

[krnasaur]

honestly, 20% over years is so little, is it really worth the arguement?

IE: a level 80 WOW player is only 20% better than a level 2.

[Crazyduckling]

Although I have not read through this thread, I don't see a problem. I would like some advancement for my character, and I don't think that 20% is a big deal. Fighting in a persistent world is cool, but I would like to see personal benefits as well.

In the end, the game still comes down to skill.

[MasterChief096]

And that's why this will always be divisive. SOE is probably doing this to both attract the traditional "mmo" fan who is accustomed to direct stat progression and to separate their product from the BF3s of the world.

The question of "Why do people with more practice need more power?" will always be asked. As it stands, that's how the game is going to end up. As players, it's up to us providing feedback to help dev temper the numbers along the way.

I think if lv40 had suddenly unlocked 5% better weapons players would have wept/raged, Auraxis would have exploded, and the servers would have cracked in two. BFR 9000. However, since the gap is in from the start, I think it'l work out ok in PS2. The community, new players at least, will grow up knowing nothing better and, hopefully, the returning PS1 vets will accept it as well.

There will always be a segment that want it banished but not so much that they stop killing each for that next yard of land.

Traditional MMO fans that are used to stat increases are traditional MMORPG fans. MMO can take any suffix, RPG, FPS, RTS, etc. It is not a traditional part of MMOFPSes to have stat increases. This is in large due to the fact there aren't really any MMOFPS games out there. So in my opinion, its up to SOE to decide now with this game how the standards of the MMOFPS genre are going to be set, and I believe that they should be set by not offering raw stat increases.

[CutterJohn]

honestly, 20% over years is so little, is it really worth the arguement?

IE: a level 80 WOW player is only 20% better than a level 2.

I'd say a level 80 wow player is about 200,000% better than a level 2. :D

[Snow]

honestly, 20% over years is so little, is it really worth the arguement?

IE: a level 80 WOW player is only 20% better than a level 2.

What would be a more suitable percentage increase in your opinion?

40%?
80%?
100%?
Instagib?

How can a new player expect to compete and advance in a pure PvP game where veterans are so powerful?

[MasterChief096]

We're going to have hundreds if not thousands of certs at launch. These will vary from certs that unlock new weapons, implants, vehicles, weapon/vehicle attachments and class skills to ones that allow for faster reloading, less cone of fire, larger ammo capacity, and yes, additional damage. When we say overall 20% increase in power we're talking holistically, not necessarily "each of your bullets do 20% more damage! a winner is you!".

The spirit of the PS2 cert system is very much based around the PS1 paradigm of advancement by addition of situational flexibility and overall breadth of gameplay options. A good fps player playing light assault with minimal certs will always kick the shit out of a bad fps player playing light assault with a lot of certs.

Well I must admit I'm pretty impressed at how fast an official response to thread actually arrived.

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by it being holistic? From what I understand you mean that the potential 20% increase is going to be spread out between the various stats? Players won't be able to solely increase damage by 20%, but rather keep unlocking certs (in the form of modifications/implants/whatever) that upgrade a weapon or vehicle base stats by slight amounts. So an example would be a veteran with maxed out MA certifications might have a 20% advantage over a new player, but its going to be something like 3% damage difference, maybe 6% ROF difference, 4% accuracy difference, 7% clip size difference?

[Sirisian]

So basically what I gathered from this is that you are in favor of power advancement for veterans via unlocks, simply because you are in favor of it? You're not for it for any particular reason other than you don't think its a bad idea?

Basically the argument you are making is that if a veteran unlocks more powerful rockets for his reaver, as well as something that increases his reavers speed or maneuverability, he has to choose which one to take with no penalty for either. If he chooses the more powerful rockets he is NOT choosing the increased maneuverability thus his reaver will be vulnerable to the guys who did choose the maneuverability?

This makes complete sense and is a good point, I agree. I can see where you are coming from here. But this method of power progression only works when veterans are fighting other veterans who have been given the same options. A new player who is flying a reaver will not have unlocked the more powerful rockets or the increased speed/maneuverability, and thus will be at a huge disadvantage to a veteran who has. This is where the problem is with me. I would rather, as a veteran, take the more powerful rockets and choose to lose a little speed/maneuverability or perhaps armor, but have the benefit of being able to dish out more damage.

Why is 100% balance such a bad thing to aim for? Obviously no game has ever achieved 100% balance, nor is it likely for any game to ever achieve this. Opinions vary too much and someone will always be displeased with how something works.

Your post says that infantry can specialize in protecting themselves from vehicles, but its the same flaw, only veteran infantry players will have access to all things that keep them protected from being farmed by vehicles. New players would still be running around out in the open getting farmed by veteran infantry players with raw power upgrades that they didn't have to sacrifice anything for.

With the method I've mentioned, a veteran can still have an advantage over a new player in close combat, if he's upgraded his gun to do less damage but have more bullets in a clip and have a higher ROF. Its all up to the player and how he feels the need to play the game.

I don't see what I proposed as destroying what the specialization tree can create, I see it as adding to it immensely.

You're assuming new players would be scared away before being able to specialize I'm assuming? I agree that is scary proposition, but in the long term anyone sticking around would realize they'd be on par with anyone else after a while with the same opportunities.

I basically said that's a very real thing that could happen where a new player that just logs in for the first time might find their character unspecialized. It's kind of something they'd expect that would go away as the begin playing.

I'm seeing the cert system as a huge trade-off between many epic choices. So an infantry could just as easily be awesome at destroying tanks as anything else in the game could specialize to kill something else. The idea being though that I hope there are so many choices that there is no best. Like I said in IRC a few days ago I want someone to do something and go "oh sweet. Good thing I have X." then die another time and go "oh man I wish I had Y I could have used it".

[MasterChief096]

Although I have not read through this thread, I don't see a problem. I would like some advancement for my character, and I don't think that 20% is a big deal. Fighting in a persistent world is cool, but I would like to see personal benefits as well.

In the end, the game still comes down to skill.

Yeah man I never once stated that we should remove player advancement. Merely suggested that it should not be in the form of raw power.

I basically said that's a very real thing that could happen where a new player that just logs in for the first time might find their character unspecialized. It's kind of something they'd expect that would go away as the begin playing.

I'm seeing the cert system as a huge trade-off between many epic choices. So an infantry could just as easily be awesome at destroying tanks as anything else in the game could specialize to kill something else. The idea being though that I hope there are so many choices that there is no best. Like I said in IRC a few days ago I want someone to do something and go "oh sweet. Good thing I have X." then die another time and go "oh man I wish I had Y I could have used it".

I feel ya, I just happen to think that those scenarios at the end of your post can still happen even without power upgrades.

I mean a guy can sacrifice reaver armor/damage for speed/maneuverability, and end up killing a high damage dealing/armored reaver due to this, and be like "woot, I'm glad I have this agile reaver!" Then that same guy can go and try and kill a heavily armored tank with its weak rockets. The tank might either drive back to where its close to its empire's AA or just escape altogether and the guy might say, "Geez I wish my reaver had more damage/armor so I could've followed that tank a bit longer and got the kill".

[CutterJohn]

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by it being holistic?

Holistic: relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts


I.e. 20% total improvement, after adding everything up.

[Higby]

From what I understand you mean that the potential 20% increase is going to be spread out between the various stats? Players won't be able to solely increase damage by 20%, but rather keep unlocking certs (in the form of modifications/implants/whatever) that upgrade a weapon or vehicle base stats by slight amounts. So an example would be a veteran with maxed out MA certifications might have a 20% advantage over a new player, but its going to be something like 3% damage difference, maybe 6% ROF difference, 4% accuracy difference, 7% clip size difference?

Correct. We definitely are relying on tradeoffs more than anything else. Most of our weapons for a class are "sidegrades" rather than upgrades, but there are upgrades here and there that essentially follow the model you suggest. We also unlock things like weapon attachments such as a scope or flash suppressor would be part of what we use to calculate that 20% advantage, although exactly how some of those are calculated gets a bit tricky.

[Higby]

Holistic: relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts


Also, medical certs will be replaced with using various roots, meditation and acupuncture to cure combat wounds.

[MasterChief096]

Correct. We definitely are relying on tradeoffs more than anything else. Most of our weapons for a class are "sidegrades" rather than upgrades, but there are upgrades here and there that essentially follow the model you suggest. We also unlock things like weapon attachments such as a scope or flash suppressor would be part of what we use to calculate that 20% advantage, although exactly how some of those are calculated gets a bit tricky.

Well in this sense I'm not as against it as I once was, but altogether the true PlanetSide player in me will never support even a 0.5% power advantage. Obviously I will be playing PlanetSide 2 even with power upgrades, so long as they don't become game-breaking. I guess I'll calm down a bit until you guys release more detailed information or we find out in beta and how it all works out in actual gameplay.

Also, Higby, another huge concern is if a player can achieve 20% advantage at sometime, how much MORE of a percentage will be added to that if that player is in an outfit that also specializes in that individual's playstyle and unlocks even MORE certs and what not for that players weapon's/vehicle's? Or is the 20% calculation made from both player advancement as an individual as well as outfit advancement combined?

[Tatwi]

Is this necessary for the next installment as it will appeal to a wider audience?

If anyone believes that making some player's NUMBERS more powerful than other player's NUMBERS in a point and shoot combat game is going to appeal to MMORPG gamers than their freakin' nuts, because "combat balance" in MMORPG PvP is like the holy grail of game development.

What's more likely is what Ender said, "it would completely discourage new players from entering the game", while also alienating those who do try it out, for the simple fact that MasterChief096 shared with us, "A veteran should be better because he's a veteran, he has play time experience, he's developed skill and tactics with his weapons, vehicles, and outfit. He knows the game better and thus has a personal advantage over a new player". Adding player power in the form of bigger numbers will end up making Planetside 2 appeal to even fewer people than Planetside did, because folks just aren't going to pay a monthly subscription fee to allow others to mop the floor with them - especially MMORPG players.

I am absolutely all for character customization, community building gameplay (customizable shared "housing", economic PvP, and other things that are just there for the fun of it), and guild level specialization, but I think it makes sense to follow the Planetside approach of having those customizations effect things the player can do, rather than increase the player's damage dealing numbers.

Really, when you consider the logic that MasterChief096 imparted upon us, if anyone should be getting a boost in their numbers it should be the new players, not the vets! That's what they do in golf (to my understanding), because all those old golfers by rights should be way better than the new guy any way, so why not give the new guy a "handicap"?

When it comes to "realism" aspects, like the handling of the PhysX enabled vehicles, I don't see a problem adjusting those numbers, but again it feels illogical that the more experienced "veteran players" should even *need* to get bonuses to handling. I mean, wouldn't they have already been flying with some degree of success, despite the piss poor handling numbers they had when they started out? If not, are those people really going to get much better even with a "handicap"? So again, it seems more sensible to give the new players a "handicap" until they get used to the mechanics than it does to make something that vets learned how to master even easier for them to... continue to already master... ;)

That said, adding bonuses to vehicle numbers like booster burn time, turn radius, and other things that pilots actually have available to them as modifications on real life aircraft would make sense for a game like Planetside, because knowing WHEN to use those modifications would always trump simply having speced for them in your cert tree.

This issue is going to be the biggest balancing act of the game, so there's definitely a lot to talk about here. I've enjoyed reading people's post!

[Higby]

Also, Higby, another huge concern is if a player can achieve 20% advantage at sometime, how much MORE of a percentage will be added to that if that player is in an outfit that also specializes in that individual's playstyle and unlocks even MORE certs and what not for that players weapon's/vehicle's? Or is the 20% calculation made from both player advancement as an individual as well as outfit advancement combined?

The goal is for the 20% to encompass everything. By everything I mean: "everything" everything. We're really paper-rock-scissors too, even if you had a 20% damage boost, hell a 100% damage boost, your assault rifle isn't going to kill a base totally un-certed tank, and if you had a 100% health increase that tank would still kill you pretty damn fast.

As for new players, Planetside 1 despite being "balanced" and "fair" to new players still is next to impossible for people to succeed at day 1. Theres way more than just veteran power growth that makes a game difficult for new players, knowing maps, battle flows, knowing how and when to fight, learning what different enemy types are capable of, etc. is by far a bigger barrier in a game like planetside than weapon damage for new players. I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

[Tatwi]

I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

Yeah, but that's a given man; People generally accept that they're not going to be masters at something the first time they try it, or even right away. What pisses new people off though is when they don't actually have time to play the game between deaths, because others are able to insta-gib them (nothing is worse than waiting 30 seconds to spawn and then walking out a door only to get an artillery shell in the face). What's the point of playing when you really have no chance at all of winning, no matter how hard you try?

Most of the my time in WoW has been on PvP servers and the biggest complaint about "world pvp" has always been that the low level character don't have any chance at all against the high level ones. And I mean none - there's a miss chance that grows exponentially when attacking enemies higher level than you. People never cared so much when they were killed multiple times by someone around their own level, because it was a fair fight.

"Options are awesome", I always say. With that in mind, it's good to know that your 20% did not mean "we'll give players up to a 20% damage bonus", because that would overpower any other options out there.

[Dr White Glint]

I personally disagree with power advancement in games like Planetside.

I personally would rather see that specialising lets you have more options when you're loading up. For example:
A player chooses to specialise in a career of sniping and long range combat.
They progress over time in this long range tree and each section of the tree they unlock they get an additional item (Think Battlefield 2142's weapon unlock system). Also since they're in an outfit that is also specialised in long range combat they also get access to extra equipment, that they wouldn't have if they were solo or were in an outfit that were specialised for say aircraft.

I personally don't mind too much if they add stat differences but as long as they remain small enough that the difference isn't too big and large enough that a player feels like they have progressed each time they get to their next Battle Rank I will be fine with it.

I just hope that no matter which way SOE decides to go that it remains fun for both old players and new players alike.

[Raymac]

C'mon people. Balance issues will be worked out. For me, the devs have certainly earned enough respect to not worry about that. Plus does anyone honestly think the game will be perfectly balanced Day 1 of Beta? Of course not. It will be part of the process, but the devs arn't going to just stab their eyeballs out and ignore balance. I can understand being cynical, but c'mon.

[Soothsayer]

I want to specialization to mean something, the time I've put in to the game should translate to a meaningful increase in whatever abilities I choose to develop.

To the people who are saying that having vets who are specc'ed into whatever will be a deterrent to new players, I've heard the same argument from people who haven't tried EVE. Its the first two weeks that really matter, once you're in and you have a good time you don't leave for a while... then you come back for more later. The main reason you don't have a good time is when you try to play it like a single player game. If PS2 has engaging gameplay for all levels of player, people will like what they see and stick around longer.

Due to the transient nature of achievement in PS, the PS2 skill system offers something that lasts longer than capping a continent. A record of achievement or advancement that can't (and wouldn't) be wiped out with a "reset all" cert button.

Sorry to keep going on about EVE Online, but we're talking time base skill training and that's the current model we have to base this on.

Best way to shut down a person arguing that a 6 year vet in EVE Online always having an advantage is this... that 6 year veteran can only fly one ship at a time. You could be on an equal playing field with that vet within a couple of months. So it comes down to skill. That 6 year veteran may have been mining asteroids for the last six years, the guy playing for six months may have just spent all that time flying cheap ships, getting blown up and learning how to pvp effectively.

In PS2 you'll only be able to fire one weapon at a time, may not even have that many more weapons than that (we don't know what the inventory system is like). The difference is that the skilled up vet will have different options.

The skill system offers versatility within a specialization, how can you say that a BR1 player has the same level of power as a BR20? PShield, med apps, BANKs, Rexo w/extra medkits and ammo... The BR20 has significantly more resources at his disposal than a BR1. They are equally matched in terms of damage per shot, but survivability is nowhere near equal.

I have no issue with the skill tree because power differentiation is not solely about having a more powerful weapon, but the ability to customize that weapon to suit your playstyle/situational needs.

[Raymac]

Due to the transient nature of achievement in PS, the PS2 skill system offers something that lasts longer than capping a continent. A record of achievement or advancement that can't (and wouldn't) be wiped out with a "reset all" cert button.

That may be one of the most eloquent arguements for it yet. Very well said.

[MasterChief096]

I want to specialization to mean something, the time I've put in to the game should translate to a meaningful increase in whatever abilities I choose to develop.

To the people who are saying that having vets who are specc'ed into whatever will be a deterrent to new players, I've heard the same argument from people who haven't tried EVE. Its the first two weeks that really matter, once you're in and you have a good time you don't leave for a while... then you come back for more later. The main reason you don't have a good time is when you try to play it like a single player game. If PS2 has engaging gameplay for all levels of player, people will like what they see and stick around longer.

Due to the transient nature of achievement in PS, the PS2 skill system offers something that lasts longer than capping a continent. A record of achievement or advancement that can't (and wouldn't) be wiped out with a "reset all" cert button.

Sorry to keep going on about EVE Online, but we're talking time base skill training and that's the current model we have to base this on.

Best way to shut down a person arguing that a 6 year vet in EVE Online always having an advantage is this... that 6 year veteran can only fly one ship at a time. You could be on an equal playing field with that vet within a couple of months. So it comes down to skill. That 6 year veteran may have been mining asteroids for the last six years, the guy playing for six months may have just spent all that time flying cheap ships, getting blown up and learning how to pvp effectively.

In PS2 you'll only be able to fire one weapon at a time, may not even have that many more weapons than that (we don't know what the inventory system is like). The difference is that the skilled up vet will have different options.

The skill system offers versatility within a specialization, how can you say that a BR1 player has the same level of power as a BR20? PShield, med apps, BANKs, Rexo w/extra medkits and ammo... The BR20 has significantly more resources at his disposal than a BR1. They are equally matched in terms of damage per shot, but survivability is nowhere near equal.

I have no issue with the skill tree because power differentiation is not solely about having a more powerful weapon, but the ability to customize that weapon to suit your playstyle/situational needs.

But no one explains why "a record of achievement or advancement" absolutely no questions asked has to be in the form of power. Merits, battle rank, etc, all contribute to character achievement do they not? Also, I fail to see how a forget all button wipes out any achievement you've gained, in fact it does the exact opposite. If you are BR25 and you use a forget all, you can respec to an ENTIRELY different play style, whereas if a BR1 did a forget all it would be pointless... this does nothing to "wipe out character achievement".

Plenty of FPS games have character achievement via cosmetics, ranks, stats (like how many kills stats, not stats for weapons etc), and stuff of that nature.

There are already plenty of MMO aspects to PS2 without adding power advancement into the fray. Besides the focus of FPS games usually is never around character advancement, its around the battles, and how you prefer to play. Character advancement in PS served to allow you to more closely follow your play style by giving you more options without increasing power, I see no reason why PS2 should be any different. It was one of the few things PS actually did completely right that was different from other games.

[Raymac]

Character advancement in PS served to allow you to more closely follow your play style by giving you more options without increasing power, I see no reason why PS2 should be any different. It was one of the few things PS actually did completely right that was different from other games.

You know, when the Creative Director who is making the game says nearly verbatum the same exact thing as you just did, I have no idea why you are so worried.

[CutterJohn]

Also, medical certs will be replaced with using various roots, meditation and acupuncture to cure combat wounds.

Can we also solve mysteries by studying the interconnectedness of all things? :D


Character advancement in PS served to allow you to more closely follow your play style by giving you more options without increasing power, I see no reason why PS2 should be any different. It was one of the few things PS actually did completely right that was different from other games.

Options are power. You suck less frequently. You spend less time running around with the wrong equipment being ineffectual and getting killed because you have fewer hitpoints and can't drop back every time you take damage for a quick heal or whatever.

And PS gave straight up power with levels. Pshield, second wind, melee booster, surge, etc. These are not available to newbs. How is 100 extra hitpoints that a newb cannot possibly get in any way until they level not increasing power with levels?

And it had command ranks. Gave you an emp, radar scan, and OS. What are these if not increased power?

[Senyu]

Theres some long paragraphs in this thread. Guess thats good.


Sorry I didn't read everypost in this thread but my understand of the 20% power increase took EVERYTHING into consideration. Its not 20% stronger for your rifle. But is actually the 1% or less adding to the total 20% a long term player would have over the new player

[DviddLeff]

I am perfectly happy to see players modify their equipment to make it better in certain ways, as long as their is some trade off. For example, having a silencer would decrease the range of the projectile, having a under-slung grenade launcher would make the primary weapon more difficult to aim, etc

Also any alterations should cost more resources to acquire each time.

Now the 20% increase I am fine with, as long as there are trade off's. For example if you have the Reaver focused outfit as has been suggested, lets say they decide to specialise in particular on speed over anything else; a 20% speed increase would require the outfit and the individual to sacrifice armour or ammo space to get that 20% in that area.

[altminus]

Actually it remember me the time I was frustrated by being systematically killed in 1on1 battle until I discovered implants !

[Coreldan]

I don't really want this. APB had a ~20% power upgrade for vets in comparison to new players and it was totally unnecessary for few reasons:

1) Vet against vet and the netgain was 0 cos both had the same upgrades.
2) vet against noob, you had a huge benefit you didn't even need cos you will just about always beat the new guy with map knowledge (maybe not in PS2, but in APB yes) and gameplay experience

It was extremely bad design for an online shooter and I never wish to see it come back.

Given, PS is a little bit less personal game when it comes to 1v1s and the likes cos of the huge amount of players, but still.

Then again, if we take away all direct upgrades, I'm not too sure what that leaves for people who will fe. cert something very deeply. If the veteran who spent a year learning Vanguard skills still isn't any better than the new player with 2 cert points in the Vanguard, what's the point? There's a limited amount of "different stuff" you can have and do (like say, a skilled gal pilot would be able to hot drop players or spawn people in to the galaxy, while low-certed player could only pilot it to transport people)

EDIT: Reading Higby's replies (it's great that you guys actually join in on this kinda things!) makes me less worried, as it doesnt seem to go the APB way where every vet had their weapon do 15% more damage, 10% faster while taking 10% less damage themselves out of everything.

[Trolltaxi]

That total 20% benefit on a weapon that you focus is no more than a bait for players coming from other MMO-genres.

The benefits will equal in a vet vs vet situation. A vet will overcome a noob 99% of the time without even the benefits. And the noob won't even understand how he dies so fast. So they don't really matter. And think about implants, they do give you significant advantage (Pshield or audio amp for ex.).

That 20% top benefit is just an illusion so players have a false illusion of improvement (by weapon stats). In other words, "The cake is a lie.".

And if you really are a PS1 vet, you know that 1 vs 1 won't matter that much. It is always about the group you are playing with. And no matter how good you are at shooting, you will be beaten when a stronger group arrives.

Your squad's, outfit's, empire's progress will depend on supporters, tactical and strategical leaders - if you focus on shooting things with a badass weapon, you will probably lack skills in leading, so no matter how good you shoot, you still won't be able to issue orders, and you will be the one whom THEY tell where to go.

Killwhores win firefights, but AMS-s win the war.

[Coreldan]

The benefits will equal in a vet vs vet situation. A vet will overcome a noob 99% of the time without even the benefits. And the noob won't even understand how he dies so fast. So they don't really matter. And think about implants, they do give you significant advantage (Pshield or audio amp for ex.).


While true, it will most likely be a thing a lot of new players (and reviewers) will complain about, without realizing they would've been owned just as much even without the extra power.

People need scapegoats. That's a good one.

[Crator]

Just something that popped into my head, what if there was a newb suite that protects new players from being affected by things such as power ups for higher level players? It would last so many levels based on % differences in damage so you will never have the 20% maxed vet issue againsts newbs. More like 10%.

Also, didn't they say there was a company wide initiative to have in-game cash markets? Couldn't they offer the power-ups to new players on the in-game market to ease this problem? They could then offer free-to-play with a cap on level advancement, or leave the level cap out and give folks the option to stay with a F2P account with the ability to purchase the power-ups induvidually. Those power-ups won't be permenant like it is for a subscribed player so they would have to continue to purchase the power-ups from the in-game market.

[Lartnev]

I initially voted that advancement was necessary and reading this thread almost made me change my mind... but then I realised something.

I think it is "necessary" because that's the overall design goal of PlanetSide 2 (and PlanetSide too, just with less depth). Could someone make an MMOFPS that was entirely skill based: A Halo, Battlefield, or Team Fortress 2 with a thousand players in a map? Sure. But that's not SOE's philosophy and isn't what they're aiming for with PS2. It's not a question of putting players off but of attracting players who want the experience PlanetSide 2 will provide.

The game isn't out yet but apparently has a "community" which wants to see one of its fundamental apects changed. If you want an entirely skill based MMOFPS then you should wait for the next train, perhaps playing PS2 in the meantime. You're trying to fit a square peg into a square hole with rounded edges by wanting PlanetSide 2 to change to fulfil all of your gaming desires when you've come here because it fills more of them than the others.

Remember that the 20% difference is the maximum difference (out of a range of maximum differences) resulting from a combination of character skills, outfit skills, squad skills, and any empire bonuses in a given situation. The situation doesn't need to change by much to see that advantage dissipate (and if it doesn't then it should be in line for some balance management). From what Higby has said the number of skill combinations which would yield such a difference is very limited and that most options are about flexibility rather than direct improvements. That means that someone who has 100 certs is no better off in a particular situation than someone else who only has the same 10 certs which are relevant to that situation.

[Bags]

If everyone gets 20% more power, nobody has 20% more power.

All this does is make vets 20% stronger than noobs, which is completely unnecessary.

[CutterJohn]

All this does is make vets 20% stronger than noobs, which is completely unnecessary.

Its also unnecessary for vets to have more access to stuff than newbs.

[Valdae]

Come on guys, online FPS's are littered with unlocks and perks that reward players of greater skill/dedication, and so long as it's reasonably well balanced I've never known it cause a problem. Some of the replies and suggestions in this thread are little preemptive.

[NewSith]

I voted that it is "necessary", but under certain conditions. This difference shall be gradual and balanced.

One thing that bothers me though is the Headshots. Increased damage + HShot is:

X*120%+Y*120%

Where:
X - Primary DMG
Y - HS DMG

Not very good.

[altminus]

I never thought that weapon attachments can make a player more powerfull.
It is so true, and I'm glad that it counts in insane calculation to be part of the famous 20% Power Differentiation

I really do think that PS2 devs know what they are doing ! That's awesome.
Thanks Matt for the explanation. Always great to see devs so close from the public.

[Peacemaker]

I think you guys are miss understanding something here. Its not like every vet in the game is going to do 20% more damage.

The cert system is going to be gone, replaced by skills. Skills take time to develop. Skills do different things for your character. Example 20% damage buff (with an atachment I guess) to the cycler. Example 2 NO DAMAGE BUFF but you can spawn troops in a galaxy. It is unknown how much time it will take to get the uber buffs, but I imagine it won't be short.

Basicly you'll beable to specialise in something by devoting skill time to it for a long period of time. There won't be jack of all trade characters.

[Bags]

Its also unnecessary for vets to have more access to stuff than newbs.

True, but at least the stuff they can access is as good as our stuff.

There's no need to add even more advantage to leveling than there already is.

[NUBLERT]

It's fine. It's all speculation until we can physically test this "20%" difference. Even then, in ps1 it was easy (for me) to do well on a new character after having years experience, however first time playing on a new character was cumbersome simply because of the depth of the strategies involved. There are many variables. Simply too many variables to speculate about right now with testing the new engine.

[Bags]

It's fine. It's all speculation until we can physically test this "20%" difference. Even then, in ps1 it was easy (for me) to do well on a new character after having years experience, however first time playing on a new character was cumbersome simply because of the depth of the strategies involved. There are many variables. Simply too many variables to speculate about right now with testing the new engine.

There's no need for powergrowth because simply by being a veteran you should be able to shit on new players.

[Goku]

Did Higby go any further into what he said about 20% difference? With how he was talking I thought it more along the lines of being more versatile in how your weapon is customized perhaps in trade offs for side grades. Never did I think it was adding +2 damage per shot to your rifle per each BR gain.

[Bags]

Did Higby go any further into what he said about 20% difference? With how he was talking I thought it more along the lines of being more versatile in how your weapon is customized perhaps in trade offs for side grades. Never did I think it was adding +2 damage per shot to your rifle per each BR gain.

It's been a while but as far as I could tell he meant pure power growth.

"Players like to see themselves become more powerful" or something to that extent.

[Baneblade]

Also, medical certs will be replaced with using various roots, meditation and acupuncture to cure combat wounds.

Are you saying PS2 will have RPG style crowd control? You do realize that is a guaranteed kill for an FPS... right?

[DreaM]

Seems premature to be worrying about this right now. Considering how everyone is merely speculating on the tiny, tiny amount of information we've been given so far. Perhaps wait to see how it looks in game before you start making crazy polls about game mechanics we know almost nothing about.

[Vancha]

Are you saying PS2 will have RPG style crowd control? You do realize that is a guaranteed kill for an FPS... right?
Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

[Sovereign]

Meh, if they have to take this route it shouldn't give too much edge to any particular sect of players.

Make it a 5% differential if need be.

[Manitou]

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.
:lol:

[CutterJohn]

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

Try :bang :

:bang:

[Bags]

Correct me if I'm reading this incorrectly...

Theres way more than just veteran power growth that makes a game difficult for new players, knowing maps, battle flows, knowing how and when to fight, learning what different enemy types are capable of, etc. is by far a bigger barrier in a game like planetside than weapon damage for new players. I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

Higby: We think it's impossible to achieve any balance between noobs and vets so we said bleh and just decided to make it even easier for vets to own noobs.

We already have experience over noobs... why do I need an MCG of + 20% damage too?

[Baneblade]

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

What kind of roots then? Because as far as gaming is concerned there is only one kind.

[Vancha]

What kind of roots then? Because as far as gaming is concerned there is only one kind.

http://tinyurl.com/3bufpls (http://tinyurl.com/3bufpls)

[CutterJohn]

What kind of roots then? Because as far as gaming is concerned there is only one kind.

psst.. higgles was making a funny with regards to the term 'holistic'.. holistic medicine.. advanced medic.. healing.. roots..

[Manitou]

Correct me if I'm reading this incorrectly...

Higby: We think it's impossible to achieve any balance between noobs and vets so we said fuck it and just decided to make it even easier for vets to fuck over noobs.

We already have experience over noobs... why do I need an MCG of + 20% damage too?
You are reading it wrong. The nature of gaming cannot be altered by throwing in some nebulous balancing feature. People will learn, so let them, don't enable them.

[Bags]

You are reading it wrong. The nature of gaming cannot be altered by throwing in some nebulous balancing feature. People will learn, so let them, don't enable them.

Don't enable them to learn? What? Just because it's already not balanced for new vs old doesn't justify further skewing it in the vet's favor.

[Goku]

Don't enable them to learn? What? Just because it's already not balanced for new vs old doesn't justify further skewing it in the vet's favor.

Thats the direct quote from Higby? If that is the case I don't like it one bit. I love being able to customize weapons and all that really only make the weapon a side grade, not a upgrade. Yet, I do not want players who have been at the game for a few years having more damage then new players. For example a new player having a shotgun while a vet having the same weapon with the exact mechanics only having the damage +20%. That will only drive new players away if it takes months up months to get close to a player who has it been at this game for years.

[Bags]

Thats the direct quote from Higby? If that is the case I don't like it one bit. I love being able to customize weapons and all that really only make the weapon a side grade, not a upgrade. Yet, I do not want players who have been at the game for a few years having more damage then new players. For example a new player having a shotgun while a vet having the same weapon with the exact mechanics only having the damage +20%. That will only drive new players away if it takes months up months to get close to a player who has it been at this game for years.

Yes, what I'm getting from Higby is he's justifying power growth because vets already stop noobs.

I am slightly reassured that it will come from 7% reload, 5% more ammo, 3% more damage instead of a straight 20% more damage, but still.

[Manitou]

Don't enable them to learn? What? Just because it's already not balanced for new vs old doesn't justify further skewing it in the vet's favor.
Learn to play the game, Bags. Why should SOE be responsible for whether a new player is equal to a veteran player? They aren't and won't be. Everyone started as a noob. Why penalize the veteran for knowing how to play by enabling someone who needs to learn with some weapon/armor/ability they didn't earn.

Make them learn to play well; don't give hand-outs or they will never learn to play well, they will just rely on the game company to equalize it for them.

[Bags]

I don't want it to be perfectly even. Just because it's already not balanced for new vs old doesn't justify further skewing it in the vet's favor.

[Manitou]

Oh strawman, how I love you.
How so? Clarify please. I believe you are applying the same strategy to Higby.

[Hamma]

edit nm

Don't post then.. :p

Actually if you aren't actually editing the post.. why post that :lol:

[Vancha]

Bags you're saying the same stuff I addressed in IRC...

I don't think you could deny that most of the speculated "criticism" of the 20% thing is toward upsetting some balance between a new player and a fully levelled-up veteran. I'm pretty sure the point of using map knowledge and such was to put into perspective just how little a difference skills will make in that regard, not that because veterans already have an advantage that they don't care about making a level playing field (do you honestly expect any developer to say such a thing?)

[Bags]

I'm slightly reassured that it's not a plain +20% MCG damage, but still. I don't think that because it's already not fair (and I have no problem when the "unfairness" comes from player skill increase over time) is justification for further skewage.

[kinkaito]

I'm Going to vote "Power advancement is necessary in PlanetSide 2"
My reason behind this is as follows:
They want the game to be a MMO-FPS game, in which case they want people to get the end-game perks, which everyone can get, it's not like it's going to be hard to "level up" in the game, you get points for killing/taking points ect,
For example: look at Battlefield, Call of Duty ect,
You advantace though the ranks, and get given stronger addons to your weapons, do they make a huge differance to the game? no.
to me, there an incentive to level/play, to get the unlocks that i want, that my team want, 10% - 20% power damage doesn't seem that high sure it will make a differance, but its not like your going to be running around aimlessly, getting 1 shot because someone has an extra 10%-20% damage, as long as i have the option to spec into getting armor/head gear that neglects that end game damage, i dont see a problem,
Most of the time your given the option "Light armor" "heavy armor" anyway. and it only seems logical if they have a way to increase your damage, you have a way to increase your defenses too.
just my opinion.

[CutterJohn]

Make them learn to play well; don't give hand-outs or they will never learn to play well, they will just rely on the game company to equalize it for them.

You could level to max never touching anything but an AA max. It wouldn't make you a good player. Probably a good AA max, but all those extra certs, not earned. Just ground out.

RPG aspects are hooks to keep you playing so they can earn more $. They serve no other purpose in an fps. Which I don't care for, but also don't care much about so long as its reasonable. But the proper foundation for an fps is everyone is always on an equal footing, and skill is all that differs. The fact that you have to earn something means the developers took something away from you so you could 'earn' it back.

[Goku]

Learn to play the game, Bags. Why should SOE be responsible for whether a new player is equal to a veteran player? They aren't and won't be. Everyone started as a noob. Why penalize the veteran for knowing how to play by enabling someone who needs to learn with some weapon/armor/ability they didn't earn.

Make them learn to play well; don't give hand-outs or they will never learn to play well, they will just rely on the game company to equalize it for them.

Manitou I do not see any logic in your reasoning at all. Its rather obvious a new player will have disadvantages at the game by not knowing anything at all. Why should a veteran player be able to do far more damage then a new player? There is no reason for it. I don't care if you play the game for 5 years. There is no reason anyone should have far more better damage due to playing the game for longer. This is a FPS first not a RPG were you become far more powerful then you were at the beginning of the game and one shot level ones.

[EASyEightyEight]

Why do people insist on taking every little thing and imagining the worst case scenario? How many here really believe the world would end next year?

The 20% difference encompasses the whole of everything that contributes to the "power gain." Individual advancement + outfit advancement + squad leader skills = 20% difference. An individual may only bring a mere 8% on their own, and the first 4% could be gained over the course of a the first 3 months month of dedicated training if that long, and the remaining 4% the rest of the year. And that full 8% will likely not be mere stat increases.

Most of the statistic will likely be attachments, such as:
-grips for accuracy/kick-up,
-front prongs for immobile but extreme accuracy control
-under-slung shotgun/launcher, etc.
-scopes for ranged precision
-Longer barrels for CoF control
-extended mags for extended firing sessions
-taped mags for faster reloads
-High caliber ammunition magazines.

By the end of the year, a player could take their cycler we see in the released images and it could effectively be an LMG with prongs, longer barrel, and a drum mag, but they can't attach a grenade launcher, scope, or high caliber mags to it at the same time. He's basically a stationary target while using his weapon the most efficiently. The other guy is good for long range assaults and denying the use of cover.

Then you take into consideration outfit/squad lead skills that may improve a factor(s) of the troops under their command. A rifleman outfit with squad-leads focused around rifleman combat would be required to push any individual player to the 20% increase, and as MasterChief guesstimated, it will mostly boil down to various stats slightly increasing to overall reach that 20%. Nothing is stopping a newb from joining an outfit and then a squad (in proximity of their leader preferably) in that outfit and gaining that 12% extra power as a result.

Right now in PS1, the difference between a BR1 and a BR20+ is beyond 20% easy. SOE knows what they're doing with PS2. With specialization, for it to feel like specialization, there will need to be some increase in effectiveness. To some degree there will be customization for personal play style preferences, but it can't be "okay, I increase my accuracy, but now my bullets do less damage." That's bad, because it doesn't mix all too well with outfit and squad lead skills. What's good is "Okay, I increased my accuracy, but the guy shooting at me obviously chose to increase his damage. Ow."

A player is still making a choice, but the penalization comes from the other guy making another choice which could be preferable depending on the situation. It won't be a simple matter of picking damage but now you can't hit anything outside of CQC, or picking accuracy and while very round fires in a laser thin stream behind the last one, but your shooting BB's.

I'm talking maybe 5-10% differences in firepower/accuracy here (like one extra round before bloom, or 1 more point of damage, if that,) which would contribute a smaller percentage to the overall "20%" we're all exploding over.

[IceyCold]

Why do people insist on taking every little thing and imagining the worst case scenario? How many here really believe the world would end next year?

The 20% difference encompasses the whole of everything that contributes to the "power gain." Individual advancement + outfit advancement + squad leader skills = 20% difference. An individual may only bring a mere 8% on their own, and the first 4% could be gained over the course of a the first 3 months month of dedicated training if that long, and the remaining 4% the rest of the year. And that full 8% will likely not be mere stat increases.

Most of the statistic will likely be attachments, such as:
-grips for accuracy/kick-up,
-front prongs for immobile but extreme accuracy control
-under-slung shotgun/launcher, etc.
-scopes for ranged precision
-Longer barrels for CoF control
-extended mags for extended firing sessions
-taped mags for faster reloads
-High caliber ammunition magazines.

By the end of the year, a player could take their cycler we see in the released images and it could effectively be an LMG with prongs, longer barrel, and a drum mag, but they can't attach a grenade launcher, scope, or high caliber mags to it at the same time. He's basically a stationary target while using his weapon the most efficiently. The other guy is good for long range assaults and denying the use of cover.

Then you take into consideration outfit/squad lead skills that may improve a factor(s) of the troops under their command. A rifleman outfit with squad-leads focused around rifleman combat would be required to push any individual player to the 20% increase, and as MasterChief guesstimated, it will mostly boil down to various stats slightly increasing to overall reach that 20%. Nothing is stopping a newb from joining an outfit and then a squad (in proximity of their leader preferably) in that outfit and gaining that 12% extra power as a result.

Right now in PS1, the difference between a BR1 and a BR20+ is beyond 20% easy. SOE knows what they're doing with PS2. With specialization, for it to feel like specialization, there will need to be some increase in effectiveness. To some degree there will be customization for personal play style preferences, but it can't be "okay, I increase my accuracy, but now my bullets do less damage." That's bad, because it doesn't mix all too well with outfit and squad lead skills. What's good is "Okay, I increased my accuracy, but the guy shooting at me obviously chose to increase his damage. Ow."

A player is still making a choice, but the penalization comes from the other guy making another choice which could be preferable depending on the situation. It won't be a simple matter of picking damage but now you can't hit anything outside of CQC, or picking accuracy and while very round fires in a laser thin stream behind the last one, but your shooting BB's.

I'm talking maybe 5-10% differences in firepower/accuracy here (like one extra round before bloom, or 1 more point of damage, if that,) which would contribute a smaller percentage to the overall "20%" we're all exploding over.

This^.

A very well thought out post mate. This is exactly what I think when I hear Higby explain the power scale in the game; and to me this is completely acceptable.

[MasterChief096]

I wouldn't exactly call it a crazy poll, its just discussion and its a very important aspect of PlanetSide 2 (one of the most important) that I feel the community hasn't really discussed en masse yet.

@Manitou - I think you misunderstood what Bags was saying. He wasn't advocating for veterans to be penalized or for bonuses to be given to new players, he was saying that veterans shouldn't have any additional benefits over new players other than the fact they have unlocked more options and know the maps/tactics/game better than the noobs.

@EASy - You're right, the difference in PS1 if we were to somehow calculate it from a BR1 to a BR20 or hell even a BR40 (nowadays) is probably more than 20%. The issue though, is what if a BR20, in addition to having more than 20% advantage due to options and versatility, now had ANOTHER 20% due to weapon upgrades for the SAME weapons that newbs can cert?

If PS2 followed PS1s model (as they stated they want to do), then a BR20 in PS2 would have a natural 20% advantage over a newb just because the BR20 can have more options and versatility, increasing his survivability without having to increase the stats of the options he does have.

The point that Bags is trying to make that since this is already skewing things in favor of veterans, why do we have to add the additional 20% from outfit specializations, weapon attachments, etc into that and skew it even further? I agree. Why?

PlanetSide doesn't need RPG elements to succeed. It needs to deliver what no other game has ever delivered: huge, massive-scale battles that completely blow the minds of FPS gamers across the world. PlanetSide 1 did this for the select few who played it but sadly it didn't work out. As I previously stated PlanetSide is an MMOFPS not an MMORPG, so why do we have to add unnecessary RPG elements to it? Sure, add as many MMO elements as you want, such as player interaction, etc, but MMO elements/game mechanics/features are far different than MMORPG game mechanics/elements/features.

[Soothsayer]

I think that the conversation has gotten off track by the focus on vets vs new players.

I recognize that from the standpoint of a person who is considering buying the game that coming into an environment where there is the perception of being behind the people who have been playing is a valid concern.

I also believe that any person should have a reasonable chance at defeating any other person in the game based on having the correct weapon for the situation and the player skill to use it well.

However, advocating a system where the game is set up entirely for total balance between vets and new players seems shortsighted when you take into consideration that those new players will become vets at some point, and then what?

If you've put the time in, you should see a moderate or significant amount of character growth, given the dev comments, that growth won't be entirely vertical, as in direct damage output. Higby has said that the increase will be more of a widening of options that allow the player to customize the characteristics of their weapons/vehicles, with the occasional skill that can add to power directly.

Richard Garriot (though I feel as though he talked a lot more than he actually performed) mentioned the concept of a "level fence" that he was trying to overcome in Tabula Rasa. Not that I'm saying that was good game or that I believe him to be as much of an MMO pioneer as his PR said he was, but this concept is what I believe that most of the detractors of the skill system are fighting against.

Level Fence (MMORPG) - where a player does not have a remote possibility of defeating a player of higher level than himself, due to being unable to even make a dent in the opponent's HP either by nature of resists or extreme power difference.

While Mr. Garriot was way off on a lot of things, he correctly identified the problem with putting MMORPG concepts into a MMO shooter. I fully agree that a level fence has to be avoided at all costs, but I don't think that this 20% number that is coming out constitutes a level fence that is prohibitive of a lower level player being competitive against a high level player.

[EASyEightyEight]

You still don't get it. It's ALL part of that 20%. At it's very base, Planetside 2 will essentially be a matter of everyone has every cert currently found in PS1 right from the start. They'll be restricted to classes, and they may not have the customization options right away, but everyone may have access to every basic tool from day 1.

And on that note, since they're going to be balancing classes, now we're talking cross-tool balancing as well. A year of rifle training may in fact be a mere 4% of the players power increase, and a year's worth of med-tool attachments make up the other 4% of my previous 8% example. Maybe the outfit specializes in foot zerging, making weaponry overall better, but the squad leader prefers supportive play so med-apps get a slight buff in proximity to him. This combination may only take the individual up to a theoretical 17-18% power difference over a day 1 newb, with 10% going towards rifles and the remaining percentile towards the use of the medical application device.

Really... the biggest concern should be over day 1 newbs that prefer to fly solo vs. veterans that prefer to stay within outfit spawned squads. Frankly, those newbs should learn quick to find the proper outfit and squad to make up for the differences.

Keep in mind as well... the guy in the squad handing out the bonuses needs to focus on training those skills. One could be in a squad, but that doesn't mean anyone in the squad has leadership (in-game)skills/certs. I'm also willing to wager leadership skills won't be too horribly specific, like in my example above. I fully expect them to be more general, but we'll have to wait and see.

[Higby]

This is a FPS first not a RPG were you become far more powerful then you were at the beginning of the game and one shot level ones.

The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

[IceyCold]

The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

=Higby= uses [LOGIC] against =Rage Thread=
[LOGIC] crits for 99999999999999
It's super effective!

[Sifer2]

The bigger concern to me in regards to progression is I heard examples given that it could take over a year to max out a class. Now it might be premature to have a fit over this not knowing what the class trees look like. An what weapons/mods will be available to the new guy versus the 1 year veteran. But it does strike me as something that could very easily be screwed up.

If 1 year vets get an uber weapon mod or something that everyone knows is just way better. I don't see people sticking around for a year at a disadvantage to try to earn that. Games like Battlefield/CoD may have stuff like this but it certainly doesn't take a year to level up.

Of course I do understand what they are trying to do. They recognize that PS1 was weak on the progression side of the things an that a lot of people left once they hit BR 20 an got tired of fighting over the same bases. Some MMO players seem to only play for progression an nothing else. So they are trying to give them that. But it could cause a lot of problems I think. Especially do to inevitable inflation where eventually some one maxes his class an wants even more toys to break the game balance.

[Sirisian]

If everyone gets 20% more power, nobody has 20% more power.

All this does is make vets 20% stronger than noobs, which is completely unnecessary.
It's actually specialization. Someone could be specialized 20% into one thing and another person could specialize 20% into something totally different. Meaning two veterans would not necessarily be on equal footing. It would depend on what they specialized in.

In fact that's why I'd prefer more than 20%. I already did the math Higby showed for a few cases and came to the same conclusion that 20% isn't really anything for specialization. My current fear is that specialization doesn't mean anything other than visual upgrades. :(

[Valdae]

Another thread on this forum that has been blown completely out of proportion..

[Sifer2]

It's actually specialization. Someone could be specialized 20% into one thing and another person could specialize 20% into something totally different. Meaning two veterans would not necessarily be on equal footing. It would depend on what they specialized in.

In fact that's why I'd prefer more than 20%. I already did the math Higby showed for a few cases and came to the same conclusion that 20% isn't really anything for specialization. My current fear is that specialization doesn't mean anything other than visual upgrades. :(


It could mean something. Depends on the weapon were talking about. What if a Sniper Rifle by default can't one shot you but with 20% more it can? All depends on the Rifle damage an armor/health values.

[Bags]

Another thread on this forum that has been blown completely out of proportion..

But it got us a dev response, yay.

[Goku]

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

Thank you for the clear up. I understand the point on weapons that have have smaller damage points like you mentioned, but it could potentially help higher damage weapons like the Jackhammer. Whats was the 20% remark towards concerning the difference between a vet and noob?

@ The people who say gets blown out of proportion. What else do you expect to happen based on the info we have attained, since its release a few weeks ago? Please do not say there is no point in discussing due to the limited info, if that was the case we should not have have a dedicated PS2 forum.

EDIT: Nevermind you already responded to that. I could of sworn I hit the VIP tracker this morning, guess not lol.

[Soothsayer]

@ The people who say gets blown out of proportion. What else do you expect to happen based on the info we have attained, since its release a few weeks ago? Please do not say there is no point in discussing due to the limited info, if that was the case we should not have have a dedicated PS2 forum.

Yeah, this is pretty contentious and central to all aspects of gameplay. People are gonna really come out and voice their opinions on something as big as this.

And I assume that its early enough that a difference can be made (or, from my biased point of view... not made). :)

[IceyCold]

Thank you for the clear up. I understand the point on weapons that have have smaller damage points like you mentioned, but it could potentially help higher damage weapons like the Jackhammer. Whats was the 20% remark towards concerning the difference between a vet and noob?

Even then it would still not be a big difference because of the scale of health to dmg.

For instance:

Say the Jackhammer does 40 Dmg a hit, thus against a target with 100 hp: 3 shots to kill. (40 + 40 + 40 = 120)

Now with a 20% modifier to dmg the JH now does 48 dmg per shot.

Math again with new mod:

Shot # // Dmg // Health remaining
0 - 0 - 100
1 - 48 - 52
2 - 96 - 4
3 - 134 - -44


So even with this dmg modifier of 20% you still require 3 shots to kill someone at full health.

[Raymac]

The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

CAN WE PLEASE NOW, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, REALIZE THAT THE DEVS ARN'T COMPLETE TARDS AND HAVE BALANCE IN MIND???

[Bags]

You can't have both a brain and Higby's hair though.

[Goku]

Even then it would still not be a big difference because of the scale of health to dmg.

For instance:

Say the Jackhammer does 40 Dmg a hit, thus against a target with 100 hp: 3 shots to kill. (40 + 40 + 40 = 120)

Now with a 20% modifier to dmg the JH now does 48 dmg per shot.

Math again with new mod:

Shot # // Dmg // Health remaining
0 - 0 - 100
1 - 48 - 52
2 - 96 - 4
3 - 134 - -44


So even with this dmg modifier of 20% you still require 3 shots to kill someone at full health.

Doesn't matter anymore. So w/e now lol. Was stating the reason why I was concerned. That can make a big difference though depending on certain areas of the game. Base fights from all the extra shooting leaves people at lower health, so that would make it even more effective at killing then.

[Chufty]

To be fair to all the sane people out there, I think it's only a vocal minority who are getting their knickers in a twist about precisely nothing.

Absolutely nothing that SOE have announced so far has me concerned. I just want more PlanetSide, and I want it ASAP.

[Bags]

>implying planetside has a big enough group of people for there to be a "minority"

:p

Thanks for the insult though!

[IceyCold]

To be fair to all the sane people out there, I think it's only a vocal minority who are getting their knickers in a twist about precisely nothing.

Absolutely nothing that SOE have announced so far has me concerned. I just want more PlanetSide, and I want it ASAP.

Even if I personally think it is all going to work fine as the Devs have described, everyone has a right to an opinion and the devs need to be willing to listen to all of the feedback from the community. I can understand why they are worried and it is precisely BECAUSE of this "vocal minority" that Higby came onto this forum to give his input on the subject and thus giving the community as a whole more information to base our own judgments off of.

Dismissing the opinions of even a small percentage of the community simply because you do not agree is a foolish act at best; and a practice I would prefer the Development team working on Planetside 2 never adapt.

[Shady]

Doesn't matter anymore. So w/e now lol. Was stating the reason why I was concerned. That can make a big difference though depending on certain areas of the game. Base fights from all the extra shooting leaves people at lower health, so that would make it even more effective at killing then.

So what you're saying is you want them to balance the game around the fact that people with less than full health will sometimes be fighting people with full health and the people at full health shouldn't have a higher chance of killing people at low health?

I could kinda understand what you're saying if it were a one on one situation where if player 1 had lower health than player 2, and player 2's gun did more damage it's more likely that player 2 would kill player 1, but player 1 is already at a disadvantage because whether player 2's gun does more damage or not he still has more health and is more likely to win.

But what you're talking about isn't even close to that, what you're saying is that you're concerned with the fact that in big base battles a guy with a higher damage weapon is going to do (in the case of the example given earlier on this page) 8 more damage to a guy who isn't at full health and might kill said guy in 2 shots instead of 3. In that case it sounds like the guy with less health should try to find a medic instead of trying to fight people who are at full health with slightly more powerful guns.

I'm sorry but I just don't see how this is a big enough concern to worry about.

[LostSoul]

To be honest I like his Maths and his hair now!

Damn him.

[Straws]

Another thread on this forum that has been blown completely out of proportion..

Sadly, it's a side-effect when people (passionate ones, mind) try to discuss specifics of game design when they lack the details needed.

It would be nice if some people in this thread would show a bit of restraint and wait until they have the finer details before "condemning" design decisions, but we're currently working with a perpetual IRC minded internet community where everything is a reaction rather than contemplation.

Some people in this thread have given hyopothetical scenarios to show how minor 20% can actually be, others have pointed out that's it's "20% more useful, not 20% more powerful", but that's semantics and it is over the heads of a lot of people, even those with a solid grasp of game design.

Now that Higby has said what a few others already said, maybe some of us will calm down a bit, think outside the box a little, and maybe realise that the theoretical is not the same as the practical application of design.

[FIREk]

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

<3

Matt, now that you've become an Internets Hero over here and pretty much made a /thread ;), can I take advantage of your attention and direct it here (http://www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36914)? :)

All of you worrying about straight power advancement, in fast TTK games it's all down to skill anyway. Even if your opponent can drop you 0,2s quicker, if he got the drop on you you, those 0,2s won't help you much. They won't help him much if you got the drop on him, and if he's got more armor and can take one hit more.

In APB Reloaded you've got weapon upgrades that translate into sheer power, up to 7% more RoF and roughly 20% reduced Cone of Fire bloom. Regardless, you don't really feel the difference, unless your opponent is using an item shop weapon that does offer a true, significant advantage (like tighter spread that you couldn't ever achieve through upgrades).

Now let's take BFBC2 for example. Many unlockable weapons give you an advantage with no real tradeoff. There's so much happening and TTK is so short that it doesn't really matter. There aren't that many 1v1 fights, and there will probably be even less in PS2. The most important thing is situational awareness - getting the drop on an enemy before he gets a drop on you.

In my opinion the 20% is just something to keep the more simplistic players playing the game. Some people just need progression in order to give some meaning to the time they spend in the game. ;)

[headcrab13]

I think some people forget that with a shorter TTK in PS2, a 20% bonus really won't have a big impact on gameplay.

I am personally in favor of the idea, but when it comes down to the actual difference in battle, that only means a new player has to put one extra bullet into a vet to drop him. No biggie.

-HC13

[NewSith]

As long as a sniper rifle does less than 92 damage with non-lethal hit, 20% extra damage is o.k. for me too...

[FIREk]

As long as a sniper rifle does less than 92 damage with non-lethal hit, 20% extra damage is o.k. for me too...

Keep in mind that there won't be 20% more damage. The 20% is an aggregate total of benefits your character might have. Think of a 5% bigger clip size, 8% less cone of fire bloom, 3% more health, 3% more damage reduction, 5% more run speed, 20% faster passive health regeneration (if it's there), a reflex sight attachment for more convenient aiming etc, which all boils down to that magical 20%. :)

Also, think of EVE Online. For some of the higher rank skills you need to spend months to get from level 4 to 5 (5 being the max level). So to get the full 20% you might as well need to dedicate a year of cert training. Getting 15% might as well require a few months. And everyone might have access to the first 10% within a month, anyway.

Instead of spending that (hypothetical) year on gaining the full 20% advantage, you would most likely spend it on lower levels of more versatility-oriented certs (vehicle and leadership stuff, for instance).

[Goku]

snip

Higby already explained it so it doesn't matter anymore. I thought originally it was going to be along the lines what Higby originally said possibility. Though I didn't see any of that and got caught up in the current discussion. With how everyone was talking it looked like Higby didn't even mention anything prior to those posts.

[MasterChief096]

First of all, I would not call myself part of the vocal minority. Quite frankly I'm insulted you'd put me in that category. Over the course of eight years in PlanetSide I never once made a post on either these or the official forums regarding any of the changes made to the game. Sure I had solid opinions about some of them, and wished some hadn't happened, or happened differently, but whatever.

Secondly I didn't attempt to bias the poll in any way. I could have easily have named the poll something like, "vets should be able to kill new players easier, vets shouldn't have an unfair advantage". That would have been a lot more biased. Instead the poll is straightforward and to the point. Granted I did forget to add the Indifferent option but Hamma sorted that out :D.

Thirdly, I stated two or three times I was open to discussing power and if it swayed my way of thinking I would mention that.

The only thing that seems to be changing my mind right now is that SOE figured out a way to say, "ok there's power advancement, but not really". It seems they made the 20% aggregate power advantage a vet might have at maxed out skills spread out so much that a vet really isn't gaining anything that useful. In a sense they have it just so they can say they have it to appease the 'real' minority in the MMOFPS genre while not actually giving them something too OP. I can live with this. It took an official response but I can see what they did there. Its a bit sneaky, but its clever lol.

[NapalmEnima]

The more I hear, the more I like, the more I WANT.

Home wreckers. SOE is a bunch of home wreckers. Think of the children!

Side-grades:
The sweeper could be viewed as a sidegrade of the punisher. Much more effective in some situations, much less in others. DPS comparisons don't really apply at that point... And that's okay.

[Sirisian]

First of all, I would not call myself part of the vocal minority. Quite frankly I'm insulted you'd put me in that category. Over the course of eight years in PlanetSide I never once made a post on either these or the official forums regarding any of the changes made to the game. Sure I had solid opinions about some of them, and wished some hadn't happened, or happened differently, but whatever.
hmm? No by posting on a forum systems you are part of the vocal minority. It's not as offensive as it is descriptive. You see out of the 100% of players that play any one game only around 1-2% of the community actively involves themselves with the game via the forums or other means. That 2% is an active minority. It's the same reason you don't see 11 million people posting on the WoW forums. :) Welcome the vocal minority.

[Checowsky]

Not gunna lie, haven't read most of this thread. Anyone brought up Cave locked 120hp boosts in PS? Thats a 20% gain, doesn't really effect the game massively though it is a noticeable difference. I don't mind it too much as long as vets don't just insta gib but if they're getting a 'power' boost then it suggests guns don't just instagib and TTKs will be as long, hopefully, as they are now.

With that in mind I'm ok with it tbh as the current 120hp cave lock benefit doesn't give an overwhelming change to gameplay. Its a bit of a pain but I've never raged over it.


Plus new players to a game are going to die a lot. Its how it works, PS shows this off a lot as new players get horrendously out played by the tactics of the old so I'm not sure a power boost of 10-20% would really change anything for them and older players will have that boost as well so unlike my cave-lock comparison it won't be a change that all players feel.

[Death2All]

Not gunna lie, haven't read most of this thread. Anyone brought up Cave locked 120hp boosts in PS? Thats a 20% gain, doesn't really effect the game massively though it is a noticeable difference. I don't mind it too much as long as vets don't just insta gib but if they're getting a 'power' boost then it suggests guns don't just instagib and TTKs will be as long, hopefully, as they are now.

With that in mind I'm ok with it tbh as the current 120hp cave lock benefit doesn't give an overwhelming change to gameplay. Its a bit of a pain but I've never raged over it.


Plus new players to a game are going to die a lot. Its how it works, PS shows this off a lot as new players get horrendously out played by the tactics of the old so I'm not sure a power boost of 10-20% would really change anything for them and older players will have that boost as well so unlike my cave-lock comparison it won't be a change that all players feel.


The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.


There ya go.

[nathanebht]

I'm indifferent on this topic. Sounds like certs are already well on their way to being implemented. At this point, doubt the devs are going to make major changes to their "certs" design.

[Evilmp]

The goal is for the 20% to encompass everything. By everything I mean: "everything" everything. We're really paper-rock-scissors too, even if you had a 20% damage boost, hell a 100% damage boost, your assault rifle isn't going to kill a base totally un-certed tank, and if you had a 100% health increase that tank would still kill you pretty damn fast.

As for new players, Planetside 1 despite being "balanced" and "fair" to new players still is next to impossible for people to succeed at day 1. Theres way more than just veteran power growth that makes a game difficult for new players, knowing maps, battle flows, knowing how and when to fight, learning what different enemy types are capable of, etc. is by far a bigger barrier in a game like planetside than weapon damage for new players. I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

The most annoying thing for me on day 1 was learning how to throw the grenades.

How will those work in PS2? Are you going to do that quicktoss crap or allow the user to pull it out and run around until he feels the time is right?

[Baneblade]

http://tinyurl.com/3bufpls (http://tinyurl.com/3bufpls)

psst.. higgles was making a funny with regards to the term 'holistic'.. holistic medicine.. advanced medic.. healing.. roots..

So PS2 will have Alchemy.

Fanfuckingtastic.

[Crator]

Plus new players to a game are going to die a lot. Its how it works, PS shows this off a lot as new players get horrendously out played by the tactics of the old so I'm not sure a power boost of 10-20% would really change anything for them and older players will have that boost as well so unlike my cave-lock comparison it won't be a change that all players feel.

This is very true. It does take some time to understand exactly what PS1 is about when you 1st get into it. I'm sure a lot of people are actually turned off by all the confusion and just quit. Some sort of automated guide (not the stupid waypoints to training areas) should lead you along when you login with the first few battle ranks. Or perhaps they'll just make the game flow more obvious and new players will be able to pick it up pretty quickly.

[DreaM]

Mindless speculation and applying potential PS2 gameplay features to PS1 and assuming they don't work is getting annoying.

[Quovatis]

Only problem I see is that the NC will benefit more from upgrades. If you can get enough damage boost to kill in 2 JH shots instead of 3, you just decreased the TTK by 33%, not 10% as in your example.

[Canaris]

Having these type of upgrades in a FPS is the worst idea, it ruins having a level playing field which is the foundation of a good game.

I'm telling you This is the new BFR/CC of Planetside

[FIREk]

Having these type of upgrades in a FPS is the worst idea, it ruins having a level playing field which is the foundation of a good game.

I'm telling you This is the new BFR/CC of Planetside

Do read the thread, or at least the last 2 pages, or at least the posts by Higby, please.

[Canaris]

Do read the thread, or at least the last 2 pages, or at least the posts by Higby, please.

I have and I'm still worried

[Gwartham]

Maybe it would be a better concept to think the vet will have more utility and control then a noob instead of thinking purely damage?

Like open sights versus say red dot versus holo?

[Vancha]

Only problem I see is that the NC will benefit more from upgrades. If you can get enough damage boost to kill in 2 JH shots instead of 3, you just decreased the TTK by 33%, not 10% as in your example.
Well then they'd simply lower the damage bonus, wouldn't they?

[Entertain Me]

Let's start complaining once we've played the game. Until then, let the devs do their job...

[Kran De Loy]

Hmm I saw Higby comment on the 20% by including "..., less cone of fire, ..." and got more than a bit worried.

I hope what he really meant was how the weapon sway is effected by movement, weapon type, cert or not cert, recoil, etc.. as I am a firm believer that a bullet goes where the weapon is pointing. I really hate it when ironsights on a weapon lie.

I don't mean hit detection or lag, I mean the bullet should always go literally where the weapon points.

[Raymac]

Let's start complaining once we've played the game. Until then, let the devs do their job...

Exactly, sometimes I wish the devs wouldn't even know this forum existed. Thankfully I have faith in them to be able to separate the legitimte from the drivel.

[Sirisian]

Hmm I saw Higby comment on the 20% by including "..., less cone of fire, ..." and got more than a bit worried.

I hope what he really meant was how the weapon sway is effected by movement, weapon type, cert or not cert, recoil, etc.. as I am a firm believer that a bullet goes where the weapon is pointing. I really hate it when ironsights on a weapon lie.

I don't mean hit detection or lag, I mean the bullet should always go literally where the weapon points.
Wait so you want 100% accurate weapons that fire with sniper rifle accuracy? That seems a bit cheap. If you fire a few rounds from a gun your accuracy is going to be affected. The only legitimate way to do that is with a COF and random sampling inside of that cone. Either that or kick back that randomly offsets your cursor's position. I'm not a fan of the latter.

Controlling COF bloom is pretty important to me and really makes controlling the weapon take skill.

[Goku]

Let's start complaining once we've played the game. Until then, let the devs do their job...

You do understand the point of a forum is to discuss? People are going to discuss what their opinion is on the matter be it positive or negative. Everyones' opinion is going to widely vary from agreeing with you on one area to being the total opposite on the other. I would find forums boring to be honest if everyone thought the same on every idea. People can only infer so much about a feature of the game the devs tell us, so its bound to happen people think it will be the worse case scenario.

[DreaM]

Only problem I see is that the NC will benefit more from upgrades. If you can get enough damage boost to kill in 2 JH shots instead of 3, you just decreased the TTK by 33%, not 10% as in your example.

Applying supposed PS2 mechanics to PS1?

[Checowsky]

There ya go.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmpdixbFDm1qdt7kvo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId =AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1312247864&Signature=7dRHbMEifF9vvdiief62CHsEU%2Bg%3D

[CutterJohn]

Wait so you want 100% accurate weapons that fire with sniper rifle accuracy? That seems a bit cheap. If you fire a few rounds from a gun your accuracy is going to be affected. The only legitimate way to do that is with a COF and random sampling inside of that cone. Either that or kick back that randomly offsets your cursor's position. I'm not a fan of the latter.

Controlling COF bloom is pretty important to me and really makes controlling the weapon take skill.

I think he's saying he'd prefer zero cof and instead have to deal with recoil.

Which would work, so long as there was weapon sway while moving.


I tend to agree. I like being able to single shot accurately.

[Quovatis]

Applying supposed PS2 mechanics to PS1?

Well, assuming the NC still have the lower rate of fire but high damage theme, they will either not see any benefit at all, or see more than a 20% improvement. That's just how the math works out when it only takes 2 or 3 shots to kill something. If every weapon in the game required the same number of hits to kill something, then there wouldn't be an issue. Of course the game would be pretty boring that way too.

Of course it can balance out of you can get health/armor bonuses. In that case, the NC will see their TTKs against opponents rise faster than the VS/TR So there is a chance for balance there, again assuming the old PS1 themes still hold.

[Kran De Loy]

Wait so you want 100% accurate weapons that fire with sniper rifle accuracy? That seems a bit cheap. If you fire a few rounds from a gun your accuracy is going to be affected. The only legitimate way to do that is with a COF and random sampling inside of that cone. Either that or kick back that randomly offsets your cursor's position. I'm not a fan of the latter.

Controlling COF bloom is pretty important to me and really makes controlling the weapon take skill.

This.

I think he's saying he'd prefer zero cof and instead have to deal with recoil.

Which would work, so long as there was weapon sway while moving.


I tend to agree. I like being able to single shot accurately.

Cone of Fire almost always uses random bullet spread to simulate inaccuracy due to a host of more specific problems such as weapon mishandling, inexperience and fatigue as well as the cone is directly influenced by the some of the same factors that you could still implement into a game without a the use of a Cone of Fire mechanic such as player movement and recoil.SilverText=Edited

Examples of something that would replace the general Cone of Fire mechanics would be Weapon Sway during and shortly after any movement, Recoil and Recoil Recovery, Muzzle Drooping with heavier weapons...

I can not think of much else. There is probably only a few other bits that could be included in replacing CoF, just so long as the bullet goes where the iron sights on your screen say it will go when you click that fire button.

I'd very much appreciate an official response on this by Higby or Smed...
If I remember correctly someone stated that CoF was out the window already, but I'm not 100% sure and I cant seem to find it..

--- Below is just me rambling, thought I'd include it anyway though. ---

Thinking about it as I type this (which is usually not a good thing since I end up rambling), they could still implement Cone of Fire randomization if they really needed to. Though basic certs early in a weapon's tree should negate that randomization effect. Most likely by bringing the cone down to a nearly non existent level. If they did that they could use the remaining tiny tiny CoF randomization effect as a method to explain various issues in bullet stray due to heat, humidity and wind factors that would normally be left out because they'd add waaaaaaay too much code and you'd normally only notice the bullet stray at long or extreme ranges anyway.

That is if they didn't just make it so the bullet just stopped at a certain static distance. (That distance could also be affected by weapon type and a host of Certs.)

A seriously major downside about all this would be that implementing it would add a ton more code for them to monkey through so I'd much rather they didn't use Cone of Fire mechanics at all.

[Raymac]

Well, assuming the NC still have the lower rate of fire but high damage theme, they will either not see any benefit at all, or see more than a 20% improvement. That's just how the math works out when it only takes 2 or 3 shots to kill something. If every weapon in the game required the same number of hits to kill something, then there wouldn't be an issue. Of course the game would be pretty boring that way too.

Of course it can balance out of you can get health/armor bonuses. In that case, the NC will see their TTKs against opponents rise faster than the VS/TR So there is a chance for balance there, again assuming the old PS1 themes still hold.

1) How freaking stupid do you think the devs are? You think they'll let the skills get that unbalanced?

2) What kind of fantasy world are you living in where you are worried about "stats" you just made up out of the blue?

Don't panic. It's premature to freak about balance.

[Kran De Loy]

1) How freaking stupid do you think the devs are? You think they'll let the skills get that unbalanced?

2) What kind of fantasy world are you living in where you are worried about "stats" you just made up out of the blue?

Don't panic. It's premature to freak about balance.
Oh, no doubt the imbalance will be there. Also no doubt that no one, not even the Developers, can or will know how those imbalances will form.

But the entire idea of cutting down on those imbalances is to brainstorm them and speculate about them.

In the end tho, I do agree with you. Too soon and too detailed.

[Raymac]

Sorry, after re-reading my post, I really come off as an ass. I'd edit what I said, but that would be a chicken move by me. Not sure why I was so pissy. Sorry Quovatis and everyone else.

[Princess Frosty]

I voted not necessary.

I believe power on the battlefield comes primarily from versatility, if I can heal myself and shoot heavy weapons for example then I'm more combat effective than some newb who doesn't have enough certs for that combo.

My only worry now is with the class system you're locked out of that diversity unless you die and select another loadout.

I have to say I'm not really sold on the new class and cert system overall, I think things like inventory management was really part of the skill of Planetside, you could pack an inventory many different ways and be combat effective in a number of different ways on the battlefield.

[opticalshadow]

like is ps1, ther poiwer of a vet should be the ability to apply any needed role to a battle field. their guns fire no stronger, but they have versitility.

thats what i want in ps2, versitility as the reward, not power. the whole core of ps1 was that all soldires were equal, and that i could join a server for the first time and compete on a slugfest with a vet with no problems of who had the higer tier gear.

[Malorn]

The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

[Raymac]

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

My guess is that it will make a difference, just a very slight difference, and anybody who is competative will likely want to have any advantage they can, no matter how slight that advantage is. (i.e. like using implants, or cave benefits in PS1)

[Kran De Loy]

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

..
I guess I could answer that like you were being a sarcastic ass and that your choice of phrasing was just accidental.

Three reasons I can think of off the top of my head.
1) To give the player base an idea that their time is not put to waste, that there is character advancement and to reward players that play a lot while not leaving the casual gamer in the dust.
2) This is an MMO, there will be more than just 2 people shooting at each other and not all of them will have only 100hp.
3) That information was purposefully designed to show a specific point and should not be taken as concrete data.

[Duddy]

If it doesn't make a significant difference, why are you doing it at all?

He certainly didn't that it was an insignificant difference, besides that is a closed scenario for an example and not representative of the actual effect on normal gameplay.

To illustrate my point, say in the example the target had started with less health, this would make the benefit much more significant.

Oh and again, it is an example. Or more specifically:
a hugely simplified example

[NapalmEnima]

Weapons in PS (and presumably PS2) lose damage over distance.

A 2% damage increase may not change the "bullets needed to kill at point blank", but it just might add a meter or two to the distance that "point blank" works out to be. So now you know you can start hosing at 5m instead of 3. Not a big deal for an assault class (who will start shooting regardless), but that cloaker now knows she doesn't need to take a couple steps before she opens up with her AMP (or whatever the PS2 equivalent works out to be).

And when you've got N different kinds of weapons in a squad all blazing away, 1% might make a difference between "my squaddy's bullet makes you run away" and "my squaddy's bullet kills you". Not often, but it'll happen. And when it does, you'll be grateful... if you actually notice (probably not, lets be honest).

That reminds me... user-devised UIs. Off to the Idea Section

[Chaff]

I don't care - until I see how it affects game play. A vocal crybaby minority should not influnce the games structure.

Players that stick with the game a long time or are skilled enough to max their certs, BEP,.....deserve something extra. Nothing huge. Maybe nothing big, but something. A 10% boost sounds reasonable. If they're BETTER players they'll pwn newbs (and experienced players with avg or marginal skills) anyway. What's the big deal ?

I don't care - yet. Players that qualify for whatever boost SOE chooses to grant should provide more XP/BEP to whoever kills them.

Seeing some super-dedicated Tank Outfit roll out in a bunch of boosted and mild-to-medium modified tanks should make newbs (or anyone else for that matter) WANT to acquire advanced skills/certs/rewards/perks.

Goals should mean something tangible when you reach them. SOE has to GIVE advancing players something.

I'm not worried about it at all. I am curious to see how they structure it - and how it actualluy ends up working. Until the game launches - it's much ado about nothing - mindless speculation leads to mindlessness.

[Stanis]

Looks like MMORPG mechanics to provide an ongoing carrot.

What concerns me about skill tree or 'power advancements' leading to a hypothetical 20% maximum bonus:

It was the comment that they devs are still in the air over weather you'll need to work along the Heavy Assault tree to unlock MAX armour.

See, that's the part of the skill trees that worry me.
Either we play a game where every player soon discovers you need to go HA3, MAX1, MOSSIE1, HACK2 to get a basic level of self sufficiency. (metagame)

And if you can achieve that in say 10 days of auto-skilling. What is the point. Just give it to us at the start.


It also leads to my worry that in the mid or late game you realise thanks to metagame there is no recert. You can not unlearn a cert a day and change from being a spec'd out reaver pilot to a spec'd out MBT/support role.

That makes me sad. That was a beauty of the PS1 cert system. Everything could be changed. Because it was an FPS not an RPG with character development.

If it takes about a month to unlock level 10 skills, and about a week to get BR10 through game play .. Will that just mean we play a finely balanced game of alt characters with enough BR to keep offline-skilling.

If we can all just pickup and use every piece of kit from the very beginning then it looks like the skill tree is a never ending carrot. A gilded carrot.

[Bags]

Players that stick with the game a long time or are skilled enough to max their certs, BEP,.....deserve something extra. Nothing huge. Maybe nothing big, but something. A 10% boost sounds reasonable. If they're BETTER players they'll pwn newbs (and experienced players with avg or marginal skills) anyway. What's the big deal ?


If they'll own the noobs already why do they need 10% more damage? (I know we won't get that much, just an example).

I already own new players in PS, I don't need more damage to do it lol.

[millo]

Doesn't Battlefield: Bad Company 2 do something similar with Magnum ammo increasing bullet damage by 25%? It gave an edge but you could still kill people without it (and it was flat 25% straight to damage bonus). Of course the silly thing was that in the end everyone would use it above any other perk, but still it was a big deal just on some kind of weapon/server combination (M95+HC server----->oneshot kill to the chest). Also, if it's a rough figure of every bonus added (RoF, accuracy, magazine size, damage, dropoff, all combined), it would probably mean even less, especially if they set up the skill progression so you can close 80-90% of the gap in a couple weeks (a la EvE).

[Malorn]

..
I guess I could answer that like you were being a sarcastic ass and that your choice of phrasing was just accidental.
I asked a simple yet terse question. There was no sarcasm in it.

Three reasons I can think of off the top of my head.
1) To give the player base an idea that their time is not put to waste, that there is character advancement and to reward players that play a lot while not leaving the casual gamer in the dust.
Why is this necessary?


2) This is an MMO, there will be more than just 2 people shooting at each other and not all of them will have only 100hp.
Planetside is an MMO also yet it does not have this. Again, why is this necessary?


3) That information was purposefully designed to show a specific point and should not be taken as concrete data.
The example is irrelevant, I can give numbers where a 10% difference makes a 2-shot kill a 1-shot kill.

The numbers are not interesting, the reasons for having it in the game at all are far more relevant and are the root of the issue.

[Tatwi]

If they'll own the noobs already why do they need 10% more damage? (I know we won't get that much, just an example).

I already own new players in PS, I don't need more damage to do it lol.

That's it in a nut shell.

If the vets "need something", then give them stuff like a bonus to their faction's influence/ownership of a zone while they are logged in and fighting. So the more vets in a battle, the less time is required to capture an area.

That bonus wouldn't put new people off from trying the game and sticking it out for the couple months it might take to get the hang of things, but it would absolutely play into the dynamic of the game in a positive way. Leaders on all sides would actively want to place their vets in the battles where their presence would be most beneficial.

That's just one character development concept that would be fun, but is more than simply making the best players able to pwn the worse ones even more efficiently. It is possible to create such systems.

[Soothsayer]

The power isn't the issue here as to why the system is in.

Its the customization. Skilling up a weapon to modify via upgrades to suit your playstyle. That's why its in.

Right now in PS1 there are a couple cookie cutter loadouts. With this system there may be cookie cutter setups, but it will only be due to the self imposed limitation of copying someone else.

More options, more ability to try stuff that's outside of what everybody else is doing.

Customization.

[Bags]

The power isn't the issue here as to why the system is in.

Its the customization. Skilling up a weapon to modify via upgrades to suit your playstyle. That's why its in.

Right now in PS1 there are a couple cookie cutter loadouts. With this system there may be cookie cutter setups, but it will only be due to the self imposed limitation of copying someone else.

More options, more ability to try stuff that's outside of what everybody else is doing.

Customization.

I'm fine with trade-offs, but these have pure power increases.

[Baron]

While I agree that there needs to be some sort of holistic balance, what is the problem with having a little unbalance in certain areas?

I mean, I've always thought that NC heavy assault was better at close range, TR heavy assault the best at range and VS better in tight spaces. This is not balanced, in some respect...and it's better that way.

I like some aspects of specialization for empire specific things...maybe I missed the entire point of this thread

*shrug*

[Soothsayer]

I'm fine with trade-offs, but these have pure power increases.

Yes, there is a bit of that. I'm still not sold that its a bad thing. As long as its reasonable.

My comment was more reflecting the shift around pg 9 where people were wondering why the system was in place at all if they accepted the explanation that power increase was negligible.

[Malorn]

Yes, there is a bit of that. I'm still not sold that its a bad thing. As long as its reasonable.

My comment was more reflecting the shift around pg 9 where people were wondering why the system was in place at all if they accepted the explanation that power increase was negligible.

Why have non-tradeoffs at all?

[Bags]

Yes, there is a bit of that. I'm still not sold that its a bad thing. As long as its reasonable.

My comment was more reflecting the shift around pg 9 where people were wondering why the system was in place at all if they accepted the explanation that power increase was negligible.

It's not necessarily a bad thing it's just unnecessary.

Will slight power growth ruin the game? Not likely. Is it needed? Not likely.

[Soothsayer]

Why have non-tradeoffs at all?

I never indicated that I felt that power differentiation was a problem. I definitely have stated that tradeoffs are great because it encourages greater diversity in how people set themselves up.

For example, in most modern shooters, I prefer semi-auto rifles that hit hard, have decent accuracy for the first two or three shots and a red dot sight.

Would be awesome if I could take the base cycler, remove the option for full auto and take it down to semi auto, while at the same time receiving a bonus to how it operates in one of my preferred rifle styles be it accuracy or range.

That is what I envision, that's what I'm arguing for.

[kaffis]

To start out on topic, I answered that I'm indifferent. I won't say that I would have advocated for straight-up power increases (holistic or otherwise) based on knowlege of Planetside's cert system. I didn't find the old system broken, per se, until they started handing out too many battle ranks and consolidating the certs because the populations couldn't support all the vehicle diversity.

On the other hand, I can recognize the reasons to put power increases in, and, given that, believe that Mr. Higby and his team have chosen a good approach (lots of small bonuses that lead up to a holistic maximum to consciously balance around), and have identified what I would estimate to be a reasonable starting ground for that holistic limit. Given that perceived wisdom, I have some faith that they'll be actively analyzing and tuning these things, particularly in beta, to find the most balanced thresholds.

We're going to have hundreds if not thousands of certs at launch. These will vary from certs that unlock new weapons, implants, vehicles, weapon/vehicle attachments and class skills to ones that allow for faster reloading, less cone of fire
To stray and stay off topic with you briefly, you just said three words that make me very, very happy. I was seriously worried that CoF and bloom management were pretty much dead and buried when I heard you guys talking about iron sights and the like.

Traditional MMO fans that are used to stat increases are traditional MMORPG fans. MMO can take any suffix, RPG, FPS, RTS, etc. It is not a traditional part of MMOFPSes to have stat increases. This is in large due to the fact there aren't really any MMOFPS games out there. So in my opinion, its up to SOE to decide now with this game how the standards of the MMOFPS genre are going to be set, and I believe that they should be set by not offering raw stat increases.
You know the reason there aren't really any MMOFPS games out there?

It's because SOE, then the industry giant of the MMO genre, tried it with Planetside 1, and the game couldn't keep a large enough subscription base for other companies to say "wow, that's really profitable, and there's room in the market for us to attack it and steal a slice of that pie -- and still be profitable!"

Now, the reasons for this are, I believe, two-fold. MMO was still a pretty small market, all told. As a percentage of gamers, the number of MMORPGers was probably something like 5%. So not a lot of people were used to the idea of paying a subscription fee to play a game. *Especially* not a lot of FPS players. They might've bought the game, tried it for the free month, and then said "okay, that's great, and all, but I can play Counter-Strike for free."

The second reason is that Planetside, with its very flat advancement system that promoted diversifying your options rather than becoming more powerful in any one thing, doesn't appeal to role playing gamers. So Planetside didn't draw in the audience that *was* amenable to the notion of paying a subscription fee. Really, what PS did was to appeal to the subset of MMO gamers who were also FPS fans, rather than conquer the FPS market the way they thought they would.

As such, I have no problem with offering modest, overcomable power gains if the development team believes that will help to expand the market PS2 appeals to, and ensure that the game has a thriving population to provide a fun and exciting community and play experience for years to come.

Could they take the approach that the MMO market is much, much bigger today, and that thus the subset of MMO players who also enjoy FPS is large enough to sustain the game by itself? Probably; except, I suspect, that here in 2011, that's largely irrelevant, because the subscription model of MMO is dying off in favor of microtransaction supported F2P models in various incarnations. If they had tried that 3 or 4 years ago, it probably would have succeeded on its own merits.

Most of the my time in WoW has been on PvP servers and the biggest complaint about "world pvp" has always been that the low level character don't have any chance at all against the high level ones. And I mean none - there's a miss chance that grows exponentially when attacking enemies higher level than you. People never cared so much when they were killed multiple times by someone around their own level, because it was a fair fight.
This is very much the case. And this should prove heartening -- there are some out there who will dive into a mature world PvP environment as newbies in WoW, regardless, despite the fact that the power level differential is many, many orders of magnitude greater than 20%. We should look at that for perspective to realize how manageable 20% is, especially if it's on a sliding scale where the rate of power increase starts fast and slows.

Furthermore, this can honestly be seen as limiting power growth, if you think about it.

As we've already established, newbies start out without a lot of game knowledge, and with varying degrees of hand-eye coordination, and with no familiarity with the characteristics (fire rate, bloom characteristics, bullet drop/fire arc) of the diverse range of weapons with which they can choose to equip themselves. As shorthand, I'll choose to equate these three factors, as an aggregate, to the simple term, "skill."

So we already know that the newbie has a vast "skill" difference compared to a veteran. Whether they have some skill that carries over from outside the game (be it studying wikis to glean maps and statistics for different weapons, having friends recount basic tenets of strategy such as what does and does not represent a favorable engagement based on a given weapon on hand, or carrying over hand-eye coordination from other FPS games), the gulf is likely formidable, and will heavily favor the veteran.

Now, two of those three skill factors will carry over regardless of specialization, as the newbie plays the game and slowly becomes a veteran. So he can get a new cert, and, suddenly, is considered significantly more veteran than another newbie who just started the game, despite having similar time devoted to a particular specialization, role, or cert!

With a system that builds in power advancement, that veteran does NOT get the full benefit of his play in other areas of specialization, merely by being a veteran of the GAME. Thus, it slows his power advancement down, because he has to earn his veteran status in each SPECIALIZATION he wants to tackle.

In other words, a newbie who earns his 20% in a specialization over 6 months (or whatever), can go up against a 3-year veteran who has only been focusing on this specialization for a month, and will be at an advantage! Despite facing somebody with 6 times the game time as himself. That's because the more veteran player's advancement has been, effectively, *slowed* by the system.

I want to specialization to mean something, the time I've put in to the game should translate to a meaningful increase in whatever abilities I choose to develop.

To the people who are saying that having vets who are specc'ed into whatever will be a deterrent to new players, I've heard the same argument from people who haven't tried EVE. Its the first two weeks that really matter, once you're in and you have a good time you don't leave for a while... then you come back for more later. The main reason you don't have a good time is when you try to play it like a single player game. If PS2 has engaging gameplay for all levels of player, people will like what they see and stick around longer.
I basically agree with all this. Except, I haven't played EVE specifically. People are forgetting that the 20% for veterans is in a specialty, not character-wide. Sure, given infinite time, that 20% could be character-wide, but every impression I've gotten from Matt talking has indicated that it will take a considerable amount of time to reach that 20% in a single specialty. If we're talking attaining 20% over the course of a year, or even 6 months, you're still going to have to either be a day-1 newbie in some areas of the game, or spread your attention so you're not that 20% in anything. So it's not accurate to say that if everybody has 20%, then vet on vet is the same as 0% bonus. That's only the case if both vets are singularly specialized in the same thing. It's far more likely that you'll see two equal time vets in a 20% on 15%, or a 15% on 5% power differential, and challenge them to make their skill overcome being "out of their element" (or, conversely, reward them for the specialization they chose to engage in when they're in their element). I'm heartily behind this.

If everyone gets 20% more power, nobody has 20% more power.

All this does is make vets 20% stronger than noobs, which is completely unnecessary.
As I just said above, it makes specialized vets 20% stronger than vets who specialized elsewhere, which is, if not strictly necessary, very rewarding and makes the specialization meaningful.

RPG aspects are hooks to keep you playing so they can earn more $. They serve no other purpose in an fps. Which I don't care for, but also don't care much about so long as its reasonable. But the proper foundation for an fps is everyone is always on an equal footing, and skill is all that differs. The fact that you have to earn something means the developers took something away from you so you could 'earn' it back.
I agree on all points. It should be noted, however, that competing FPS franchises have adopted power advancement, too. And they seem to have no problems with complaints that "good" weapons are locked away, and need to be earned, or attracting new players who have to overcome the fact that they're more poorly equipped than some of their opponents.

[Noyjitatps]

The fact that anyone at all voted to have that 20% power difference really does sadden me.

[Raymac]

The fact that anyone at all voted to have that 20% power difference really does sadden me.

The fact that there's an 11 page thread debating a theoretical balance issue of "hundreds if not thousands" of skills we know nothing about is probably sadder.

[Sirisian]

The fact that anyone at all voted to have that 20% power difference really does sadden me.
I know what you mean. Like I said pages ago I'd like specialization to mean something. 100-200% bonuses is a meaningful upgrade system. If I spend certs into something I want the values to signify something. I don't want to spend a cert to upgrade armor for my liberator and realize "oh cool it can take 2 more bullets!". I want someone to see the upgraded armor plates and go "woah he specialized in the heavy armor. This could take a while!"

There's so many examples I could list where someone's specialization would actually be beneficial instead of this 20% nothingness.

[kaffis]

Cone of Fire almost always uses random bullet spread to simulate inaccuracy due to a host of more specific problems such as weapon mishandling, inexperience and fatigue as well as the cone is directly influenced by the some of the same factors that you could still implement into a game without a the use of a Cone of Fire mechanic such as player movement and recoil.SilverText=Edited

Examples of something that would replace the general Cone of Fire mechanics would be Weapon Sway during and shortly after any movement, Recoil and Recoil Recovery, Muzzle Drooping with heavier weapons...
See, I'd rather a bullet not go where the weapon's pointed (and, let's be honest, cones of fire are small enough that it's not like you have that perfect an idea of where the weapon's pointed for it to be *that* jarring, anyways) than have my camera view taken out of my control or have my crosshairs walking randomly around the screen.

You want to put sights over something and then try to jerk your mouse around to keep it over the head, I'd rather put something in the center of my screen and be conscious of how much of the bloom indicator it's filling and how well I'm controlling my bursts.

In addition, I should point out that the placement of a shot within the cone of fire wasn't strictly random. It was weighted to land more often near the center of the crosshairs than near the edge of the cone. And that made for a good system with a lot of character to each of the weapons, as some would start more heavily weighted but "flatten" the probability curve as you fired, which provides a very different feel from a weapon which blooms almost immediately but retains a relatively heavy center-weighting as it does.

I believe power on the battlefield comes primarily from versatility, if I can heal myself and shoot heavy weapons for example then I'm more combat effective than some newb who doesn't have enough certs for that combo.

My only worry now is with the class system you're locked out of that diversity unless you die and select another loadout.
and
like is ps1, ther poiwer of a vet should be the ability to apply any needed role to a battle field. their guns fire no stronger, but they have versitility.
Roles mean that everybody will have "low level" access to all that versatility, though.

I'd rather take a system like that with a little bit of power progression to replace the versatility progression, than one where you have to tell the newbie "Oh, I'm sorry, you chose basilisk, you can't get a tank yet" or "Oh, you wanted to drive a tank, so you've got nothing to fight with now that the fight's moved indoors" or "Oh, well, see, he's got heavy assault AND medic, so despite the good job you did of getting him to 10 hp, you're still screwed because he ducked around the corner and is healing up."

[NapalmEnima]

Roles mean that everybody will have "low level" access to all that versatility, though.

I get the feeling that not all roles will be available to everyone out of the gate. Anyone might be able to pull a mossy pilot, but not anyone could pull a bomber pilot, for example. You might need some progression down an "assault" skill tree in order to unlock the different MAX armors.

I know what you mean. Like I said pages ago I'd like specialization to mean something. 100-200% bonuses is a meaningful upgrade system. If I spend certs into something I want the values to signify something. I don't want to spend a cert to upgrade armor for my liberator and realize "oh cool it can take 2 more bullets!". I want someone to see the upgraded armor plates and go "woah he specialized in the heavy armor. This could take a while!"

There's so many examples I could list where someone's specialization would actually be beneficial instead of this 20% nothingness.

Nothingness? No. A Big Deal, no, but certainly not nothing.

And a heavy-bomber unlock on the regular bomber might have 80% more health, but be 50% slower, for example. Significant side-grades, relatively small up-grades. Or maybe some ship gear would have the same effect. Shifting stats around significantly, but not a flat-out Mega Buff

100/200% bonus There, with no balancing penalty? Hell no. People who want that should head back to WoW.

This here is PLANETSIDE.

Player skill matters the most. Not cert-based stat bonuses. There have been numerous comments from the devs about "speeding up gameplay" and increased lethality and so forth. If someone with remotely appropriate gear gets the drop on you, you're probably going to die. Period.

HOWEVER, if two squads are slugging it out, and their player-skill-levels are about the same, character-skill-levels will matter.

"Tactical versatility" can matter A Lot if you can create the right situation, but a couple % one way or the other can make a difference when you're otherwise on an even footing. A 5% smaller cone of fire, 1% more damage, and medics that can heal/revive you a tad faster Can Make A Difference.

The stat/skill mods in Global Agenda bugged the hell out of me (what's the point?!) until that concept seeped into my head.

I get it now. SMALL power progression has some benefits:

1) It lets people feel they're getting something (psychologically addictive games have that sort of thing designed into them). I get the feeling I'm gonna be Hooked Bad on PS2. Needs me another fix.
2) In Competitive Play, a couple % one way or the other can Actually Matter.
3) Yes, it matters a little more against folks who are untrained, but frankly I think the unlocks (air timed grenades vs impact grenades fer instance) will matter more in those cases.
4) Leave the majority of the importance in the player's hands, not the character's.

Addiction & Competitive Play. Probably in that order.

You don't want to make the buffs utterly irrelevant, or they'll be seen as utterly irrelevant. No bueno. But you also don't want to have an RPG-grade power boost based on character training/level. The victory is in the hands of the player, not the character.

It's a tough line to walk. Pretty damn narrow. Kudos to them if they can manage that particular tight-rope. And being that they Do This For A Living, and have a whole shit-ton of data to mine (from the current version), I think they'll be okay.

[Malorn]

This thread boils down to

...about a third of the participants saying they don't get why there's power progression at all in the game (and not getting answers).

...about a third of the participants arguing that the difference is no big deal and therefore it is OK (and bypassing the whole "why?" question entirely)

...and about a third of the participants saying some combination of dont' care, too soon, etc.


I'd really like some concrete rationale as to why this is even being discussed and at least what context under which this power gain is leveraged.


The key question boils down to...

How is the power progression activated?

A) Is it an always-on thing once you train it? As in, once I train assault rifle damage whatever I forever have like 1% more assault rifle damage no matter what I am doing?

OR

B) do you have a limited set that you custom configure to use at any one time and training the cert unlocks more options? This would be more like the Warhammer Tactics system or the BFBC2 Gadget slots.


A is a terrible design. B is absolutely awesome.

[Malorn]

Doesn't Battlefield: Bad Company 2 do something similar with Magnum ammo increasing bullet damage by 25%? It gave an edge but you could still kill people without it (and it was flat 25% straight to damage bonus). Of course the silly thing was that in the end everyone would use it above any other perk, but still it was a big deal just on some kind of weapon/server combination (M95+HC server----->oneshot kill to the chest). Also, if it's a rough figure of every bonus added (RoF, accuracy, magazine size, damage, dropoff, all combined), it would probably mean even less, especially if they set up the skill progression so you can close 80-90% of the gap in a couple weeks (a la EvE).

(see my previous post for activation question) Your comment here is dead-on to the activation question. If it works like BFBC2 there's not too much of an issue since no player can have everything at once - they have to pick and choose what they want to run with at any given moment. That captures specialization and customizing a character.

There's two ways they can do it. They can either give you all of the bonuses you unlock all the time (imagine having all of the BFBC2 gadgets at all times, so 25% damage, 25% armor, faster runspeed, better weapon handling, etc), OR they can do it the BFBC2 way where you have to make a choice about which bonuses you want and ranking up just opens up more possibilities.

The 25% damage one specifically was a good example of a poorly designed benefit. It was highly popular because it was one of the most useful bonuses. It helps you anytime you shoot, while the others tended to help you in a more limited capacity. Balancing the benefits themselves is a different mechanic discussion best saved for beta, but the overall design of how a player unlocks it and uses it is very much relevant at this time.

[millo]

Maybe they could go for a "mixed blessing" design type:

-Increased caliber (more damage, weapon kicks like a mule and is harder to control)
-Extended magazine (more ammo, heavier and harder to aim)
-Ammunition feed overdrive (faster RoF, weapon prone to random jams)
-Longer barrel (increased range, even heavier weapon)
and so on. You could use if you wanted all the mods at once, so you got a high damage, rapid firing, long distance firing weapon, but it would be horrible to fire even in short bursts, would jam randomly, slow you down while using it and so on...

Works with armor mods too (want more absorb? Sure, but you walk like a snail. Need increased protection from shrapnels? Lose some bullet resistance, and so on).

[Sirisian]

Maybe they could go for a "mixed blessing" design type:

-Increased caliber (more damage, weapon kicks like a mule and is harder to control)
-Extended magazine (more ammo, heavier and harder to aim)
-Ammunition feed overdrive (faster RoF, weapon prone to random jams)
-Longer barrel (increased range, even heavier weapon)
and so on. You could use if you wanted all the mods at once, so you got a high damage, rapid firing, long distance firing weapon, but it would be horrible to fire even in short bursts, would jam randomly, slow you down while using it and so on...

Works with armor mods too (want more absorb? Sure, but you walk like a snail. Need increased protection from shrapnels? Lose some bullet resistance, and so on).
I mentioned this before, but I prefer positive only upgrades with choices. So you still have the drawback, but in the sense that you didn't choose it. That is there are limitations for weapons and vehicles on the upgrades with some that can't be used in combination with one another. So you could have say a shotgun or a grenade launcher (launches distance activated grenades) attachment, but not both. This was mentioned by the previous poster.

Complex rules for what is allowed in combination is fine with me honestly especially if the unlockables are complicated like my previous two examples.

Then again for a lot of things I don't want limits. Don't you still have limited certifications. If you want armor you might not have enough for upgraded speed on a vehicle and vice a verse. Or you could choose to get both and sacrifice using those certs for anything else. Basically ultra specialized players would end up most of their certs on one thing.

[TerminatorUK]

I really like the idea of trade-off bonuses with a slight penalty in another area...that's a system that has worked well in the past before. Otherwise there has to be a limitation to how many of these upgrades can be fielded at once.

[MasterChief096]

What people are not understanding is that you can have just as much specialization if not more specialization by having trade-offs instead of just raw power upgrades (no matter how small they might be).

I'll explain it again for the people who don't want to read all 12 pages of this thread.

If there are trade-offs, you could do things like:

1. Take your Guass Rifle and increase its damage by 20%. You could then decide what stats you want to minus 20% from. This could be -20% from one stat, or allocated amongst the stats you choose. For example you could take 10% from clip size, 10% from RoF. Or you could take 5% from clip size, 7% from RoF, and 8% from CoF. This would make your gun very unique to your character, as the different stat allocations you choose to put into it once you've unlocked the ability to do so would be extremely varied.

2. Same goes with vehicles. I'll use my Reaver example again. Lets say you want a Reaver with a primary purpose of swooping in and firing shit loads of missiles and then getting the hell out as fast as possible. To do this you would need speed, maneuverability, and a shit load of missiles. You could customize your Reaver to lose 25% damage in its rockets and 25% from its armor. You could then take that 50% and spread it out amongst speed, maneuverability, and possibly the amount of afterburner you have. You could increase your rocket-firing speed by 15%, your speed by 15%, your maneuverability by 15%, and the amount of afterburner you have by 5% (or however else you wish to configure it). Once again, your Reaver would be unique to you based on how you allocate your stats. It would be really awesome if there was an appearance change as well, such as your Reaver having smaller missiles and/or less armor.

I'm willing to make a compromise on things like attachments (such as scopes, fixed grenade launchers, flashlights etc). To me, those are like certs. Imagine if you could spend 1-2 cert points in PlanetSide to attach a grenade launcher to your Cycler for instance. Things like grenade launchers, scopes, flashlights, etc are the equivalent to versatility for a veteran, at least to me. So I don't mind if there are zero trade-offs for attaching a different scope/grenade launcher/flashlight to your gun, other than the fact that if you have a flashlight you won't be able to have a grenade launcher.

If you used a trade-off system you could do what one player in this thread mentioned earlier. He said he liked fast, hard hitting machine guns that have a crazy CoF bloom after the first 4-5 shots. Essentially you could add damage and RoF to your Cycler and sacrifice CoF bloom to get it.

IMO this system works better because you can create the weapons/vehicles YOU WANT and the changes are SIGNIFICANT, yet balanced. Instead of a 20% advantage at end-game that is so spread out you hardly notice it, you actually have weapons/vehicles that are vastly different from the weapons/vehicles of others. Your stat changes would actually have a large, noticeable difference on what you are using, but the trade-offs would make it so that its not super OP and can't be beaten.

Oh but a sense of character advancement is not there you say? How about actually gaining BR and unlocking the ability to customize your weapons in such extreme ways as character advancement? I'm sure new players would be like, "damn I wish I could have a super accurate MA rifle because that's my playstyle." With a trade-off system they could have that rifle, it would just wouldn't perform as well in extreme CQC. In an FPS character advancement relies less on the power of your character increasing and more on the options your character has (feel like we're beating a dead horse here), as it was in PlanetSide. Besides, a BR20 is going to have a 20% advantage over a BR1 based solely on the options he has anyways.

I still have yet to see someone argue the point that without power gains there would be zero sense of character advancement... To me that's just plain wrong. When I first started PlanetSide, every BR I felt like I was getting somewhere. I would just ITCH with anticipation when I knew that my next BR was going to give me enough cert points to get something that I had been wanting. Players in PlanetSide 2 would have the same anticipation, without power gains.

But alas, the system Higby described would be 'acceptable', as it doesn't effect the gameplay much, but I would much rather see a system as I have described above because it would:

1) not offer veterans a % power gain other than the 'natural' % power gain from being a higher BR/vet regardless.

2) Allow for customization that actually makes a difference in terms of how your weapon performs and what situations its good for.

3) Keep the anticipation for wanting to advance your character to achieve more customization options

[Kran De Loy]

See, I'd rather a bullet not go where the weapon's pointed (and, let's be honest, cones of fire are small enough that it's not like you have that perfect an idea of where the weapon's pointed for it to be *that* jarring, anyways) than have my camera view taken out of my control or have my crosshairs walking randomly around the screen.

...


Ah, I didn't mention that. I was thinking that the camera wouldn't be statically locked to the weapon. The camera would be influenced by the weapon sway more than the recoil, but still not overly much in either case. It would give much more of a impression of holding a weapon in front of you rather than being attached to a weapon that just zooms around.

Though honestly? I just want to stay the hell away from PS1 style CoF.

This thread boils down to

...about a third of the participants saying they don't get why there's power progression at all in the game (and not getting answers).

...about a third of the participants arguing that the difference is no big deal and therefore it is OK (and bypassing the whole "why?" question entirely)

...and about a third of the participants saying some combination of dont' care, too soon, etc.


I'd really like some concrete rationale as to why this is even being discussed and at least what context under which this power gain is leveraged.


The key question boils down to...

How is the power progression activated?

A) Is it an always-on thing once you train it? As in, once I train assault rifle damage whatever I forever have like 1% more assault rifle damage no matter what I am doing?

OR

B) do you have a limited set that you custom configure to use at any one time and training the cert unlocks more options? This would be more like the Warhammer Tactics system or the BFBC2 Gadget slots.


A is a terrible design. B is absolutely awesome.



A is a terrible design. B is absolutely awesome.

300% agreed. That is forcibly agreeing for two other people as well as myself.

[kaffis]

Ah, I didn't mention that. I was thinking that the camera wouldn't be statically locked to the weapon. The camera would be influenced by the weapon sway more than the recoil, but still not overly much in either case. It would give much more of a impression of holding a weapon in front of you rather than being attached to a weapon that just zooms around.

Though honestly? I just want to stay the hell away from PS1 style CoF.
Ugh. So, let me get this straight -- you want your crosshairs drifting around your screen at random?

No thanks. I'd like them to stay in the middle. Having to look 5 degrees to the left of what I'm trying to aim at would be utterly maddening.

[Malorn]

Please don't derail the discussion. Topic is power differentiation, not weapon sway.

[SilverLord]

This matter is simple:

Planetside was marketed and boasted that any new player, will be just as powerful since they have the same weapons.

We WANT to attract new players to our game, and this will just turn new players off, because they will get bitch slapped everytime they see anyone that has a 20% difference in damage.

[Raymac]

This matter is simple:

Planetside was marketed and boasted that any new player, will be just as powerful since they have the same weapons.

We WANT to attract new players to our game, and this will just turn new players off, because they will get bitch slapped everytime they see anyone that has a 20% difference in damage.

1) Do your homework. Nobody is getting a 20% difference in damage.
2) I think there is enough room for the devs to have progression without letting it get overpowered.

[Logit]

1) Do your homework. Nobody is getting a 20% difference in damage.
2) I think there is enough room for the devs to have progression without letting it get overpowered.

Which we won't know until Beta. All we know is there are classes with a shit ton of skills, and advancements in character effectiveness.

Whether it will effect game play enough to make people complain it's OP and ruin the game we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm highly skeptical of the idea though, and sincerely hope they have considered all the angles.

[Raymac]

Which we won't know until Beta. All we know is there are classes with a shit ton of skills, and advancements in character effectiveness.

Whether it will effect game play enough to make people complain it's OP and ruin the game we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm highly skeptical of the idea though, and sincerely hope they have considered all the angles.

Well, we do know that nobody is getting a 20% damage buff because Higby has explicitly stated that.

Also, I think it is safe to assume that there will be some number at which the progression and power will be balanced. What that point is will almost certainly have to be determined during beta and then fine tuned after launch, just like you said. We'll just have to wait and see. I'm actually extremely excited to see how deep this customization is.

[Soothsayer]

I keep having this nagging question through these debates... Do you want to have a system that caters to people who will only play for their first month, or do you want to have a system that caters to the people who play for five years?

Benefiting long term players is my preferred route, but doing so in a way that does not discourage new players from becoming long term players.

The undisclosed f2p aspect may have bearing on this as well, but we don't know anything about that aside from there being some sort of f2p aspect to PS2.

The EVE online model has rabidly loyal long term customers. If you can get over the initial complexity of the UI and the harshness of the environment (and if you make friends and have positive, meaningful experiences) CCP has gained a customer that will keep coming back, acknowledging that some burnout factor applies.

Though I have no experience with it, WoW has loyal customers in the same sense, they release a new expansion and people feel compelled to go back to it. I've seen it, you've seen it... However it exists on the extreme other end of the spectrum.

I don't know where the middle ground lies, can't name another MMO that has carved out a niche like those two. This leads me to believe that the middle ground is not as successful over the long term.

[Chaff]

Instead of a 20% overalll improvement, I'd like the option to choose a sidekick
- like a pet monkey (trained and certed as a GUNNER) named "Bingo" - that's my vote.

....and the option to cert my monkey as a "gunner" - so I can fill the small gun on a Prowler......so I have a better chance of filling a tank if I pull one with a small pop. Or, "Bingo" could gun for me on someting else - like a Marauder or Skyguard.

....and he could do tricks for the troops while we wait for a hack to go thru.....

.

[Peacemaker]

Planetside was marketed and boasted that any new player, will be just as powerful since they have the same weapons.


This isn't Planetside. Its Planetside TWO. Different market idea. No one wants Planetside with new maps and new graphics. The game is going to be fundamentally different. Upgrades, skills, certs.... whatever you wanna call them are there for the explicit reason to not have the "End Game". You cant max out. There is a meta game here. Result? People don't become bored as easily.

[Lunarchild]

Instead of a 20% overalll improvement, I'd like the option to choose a sidekick
- like a pet monkey named "Bingo" - that's my vote.

....and the option to cert my monkey as a "gunner" - so I can fill the small gun on a Prowler......so I have a better chance of filling a tank if I pull one with a small pop. Or, "Bingo" could gun for me on someting else - like a Marauder or Skyguard.

....and he could do tricks for the troops while we wait for a hack to go thru.....

.

Unfortunately monkeys have no clue what an "enemy" is and just fires even if there's nothing to shoot at. Heck, it doesn't know the word aim and just randomly shoots around wasting your ammo ^_^

[Malorn]

I think it is safe to assume that there will be some number at which the progression and power will be balanced.

No power progression at all with cert training is guaranteed balance. No assumption or faith necessary.

[Sirisian]

What exactly are you guys trying to balance here? Soldier vs Soldier? Vehicle vs Vehicle? Soldier vs Vehicle? All of them at the same time?

I made my previous comments with the thought in mind that balancing can be done through rock paper scissors balancing. Meaning things can be unbalanced one way without destroying the game. I guess that's now what other's want though.

[EASyEightyEight]

Every forum I visit for an unfinished game, you have people taking what info is available, filling in the blanks, and treating it as gospel while they rant and rave about it.

Higby pretty much confirmed the plan is that the sum of the parts brings us to the 20% conclusion. That includes outfit specialization. That includes squad lead influence. That definitely includes what the player can do on their own. I know I've mentioned this somewhere, probably this very thread.

We also have no clear cut definition of how the upgrades apply. I'm having a hard time imagining something as simple as WoW's talent system where I dump 5 points into something and get 15% more damage out of it just like that. That will have to do for squad leads and maybe outfits, but for personal training, I think everything should be a physical attachment of some kind. I'll be consuming a slot on my piece of equipment, so I can't have bigger rounds in a longer barrel for both damage and accuracy. I can't have two extended mags taped together.

Remember, the idea is up to 20%, not exactly 20% no matter what you do, and through more factors than just what ever you have on hand that shoots bullets. SOE may have considered each classes possible kit as a whole, not just the individual items.

A list of ideas just thinking of the MA (note little thought was put into the numbers, they're just examples) and I'll be using Brink's customization points as a reference.

Barrel/Ammo mods (primarily effect weapon accuracy/damage/rof)
Larger Barrel: Increased damage (+1 dmg)
Enhanced Stock: Increased accuracy (+5-10%)
Dual-Barrel: Increased firing rate (+.5 rps)
High-Caliber Barrel: Increased damage (+2 dmg) Decreased RoF (-.5 rps)
Long Barrel: Increased Accuracy (+10-20%) Decreased dmg (-1 dmg)
Cyclic Tri-Barrel: Increased RoF (+1 rps) Decreased accuracy (-5-10%)

Magazine mod (primarily effect ammunitions handling)
Extended Mag: Extra rounds (+25-50%, depending on weapon?)
Taped Mag: Faster reload, every other reload (-1 second reload time)
Tap-switch: Allows for instant switch of AP and AV ammo. Lower mag capacity for each.
Drum Mag: Even more rounds (+50-100%) Slower reloads (+1-2 seconds)
Belt-feed: No reload, maximum ammo capacity reduced (25-50%) no ammo type exchange.

No classic inventory, I'm assuming then that we don't have much control over ammunition capacities if any at all. Also notice: trade-offs aren't so straight forward.

I'm sure SOE has many more ideas too.

Admittedly, I could be wrong, and most cert training really does amount to points ala talents, but the gains would be rather meager individually I imagine.

__________
TL;DR

Stop filling in the blanks, you're just fooling yourselves and blowing $#!% way out of proportion. You don't know if certs act like WoW talents, or are all straight up attachments, limiting themselves anyway. The 20% encompasses outfit perks, squad lead perks, and individual training, and SOE should be balancing the individual part based on a class as a whole, not the individual items as part of that 20%.

Sorry Malorne, but part of what keeps people playing is progression. If you really think any amount of power difference will chase away newbs, then I can't even fathom how MW2 gets the numbers online it currently does and still sees newbs sticking it out through seasoned vets and their multitude of perks, huge weapon selection, and little tricks for noobtubing or knowing where that secret hidey sniping spot no one can sneak up on. Really, it's quite the mind-**** :rolleyes:

[Malorn]

Sorry Malorne, but part of what keeps people playing is progression. If you really think any amount of power difference will chase away newbs, then I can't even fathom how MW2 gets the numbers online it currently does and still sees newbs sticking it out through seasoned vets and their multitude of perks, huge weapon selection, and little tricks for noobtubing or knowing where that secret hidey sniping spot no one can sneak up on. Really, it's quite the mind-**** :rolleyes:

Progression is not what keeps people playing. You don't need to give people handouts of power for playing their game. Gamers aren't a bunch of panhandlers waiting to see what minor carrots a game will give them and flock to it.

Most of us played planetside for years and we didn't need that crap. The reason we stopped playing is typically because the game got stale, not because they didn't give us "progression". It's unnecessary if the game itself offers good compelling gameplay with variety and freshness.

If a game is fun to play, provides meaningful challenges and enough variety in the gameplay to keep you interested then people will keep playing.

This idea that you need to give people stuff to keep them interested is a bunch of horse poop.

[Sirisian]

Progression is not what keeps people playing. You don't need to give people handouts of power for playing their game. Gamers aren't a bunch of panhandlers waiting to see what minor carrots a game will give them and flock to it.
World of Warcraft has actually used this reward model to sustain itself for years while lacking in any real forms of gameplay. There are a lot of people (one of my coworkers included) that enjoy the player progression reward model. It's also helped to keep many TF2 people playing the TF2 game.

Most of us played planetside for years and we didn't need that crap. The reason we stopped playing is typically because the game got stale, not because they didn't give us "progression". It's unnecessary if the game itself offers good compelling gameplay with variety and freshness.

If a game is fun to play, provides meaningful challenges and enough variety in the gameplay to keep you interested then people will keep playing.
I agree. However, you really need to step back and look at it from a business perspective to see the reward model in action. If you give someone all the upgrades and certification choices when they first start playing then things will become "stale" much quicker. If you unlock those over time and keep adding more then it's going to keep people playing much longer. In theory at least. I'm hoping some of these certification changes have gameplay changing effects also thus they'll add more gameplay over time. So something you didn't see happening at the beginning of the game evolves into someone's specialized strategy.

[EASyEightyEight]

Progression is not what keeps people playing. You don't need to give people handouts of power for playing their game. Gamers aren't a bunch of panhandlers waiting to see what minor carrots a game will give them and flock to it.

Most of us played planetside for years and we didn't need that crap. The reason we stopped playing is typically because the game got stale, not because they didn't give us "progression". It's unnecessary if the game itself offers good compelling gameplay with variety and freshness.

If a game is fun to play, provides meaningful challenges and enough variety in the gameplay to keep you interested then people will keep playing.

This idea that you need to give people stuff to keep them interested is a bunch of horse poop.

You really don't see the flaw in your own reasoning, do you? It's not really that it's flawed, per-se, more like your impression of what people/sheep in general want.

Yeah... they DO need that carrot. That next goal is what drives a lot of players. Simply shooting someone for the sake of shooting someone and taking land for the glory of our empire only works for so many people (like us.)

An actual, felt form of progression gives people a sense of accomplishment. As a fresh face, the mere concept of Planetside is eye popping. Yeah, they'll take their licks, and some may quit, more often than not because they expected to dominate and can't stand to get dominated, not because I'm putting out an extra point of damage per round, but the ones that stick around will be keepers as they see all sorts of customization open up for them as they play the game. That in itself is a form of reward for effort.

There are very few popular FPS' on the market that I can think of, that don't involve some form of "powering up." Obviously, it's a popular, working and acceptable model. Applying it to PS2 should be a no brainer. MAG, a PS3 game with up 256 players on one map, has all sorts of skills that increase weapon accuracy, reload times, even maximum health pools. Newbs don't exactly shy away from it for that reason, it just never sees updates or advertisements... ever. The influx is far outweighed by the bored outflux that have vetted between the 3 factions 70 times by now.

Face it, PS2 is going to see some slight power differentiation, but nothing the masses would be discouraged by as a whole. Some maybe, but we'll see more than we'll lose, otherwise again, how is MW2 so popular still? It only supports 6v6!

[Malorn]

Correlation is not causation. Just because WoW did something does not mean that a specific feature in WoW was the reason for that success. If it did not have that feature it may have been more successful. We can only speculate.

What I do know is that Planetside had players for many years without progression. Many shooters also lack it and remain popular. Thus, I can confidently conclude that progression is not required for a game to be successful and good game.

[Malorn]

Yeah... they DO need that carrot. That next goal is what drives a lot of players. Simply shooting someone for the sake of shooting someone and taking land for the glory of our empire only works for so many people (like us.)

"Conan, what is good in life?"

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

Lamentations aside, crushing enemies and driving them out is accomplishment. It served us in PS for many years quite successfully. What was even better was that the act of crushing and the act of driving was fun as hell.


An actual, felt form of progression gives people a sense of accomplishment.

Ahh, no - Actually accomplishing something gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Taking a base. Triumphing over a rival outfit. Prying Amerish from the cold dead hands of the Vanu. Turning the world blue. Inventing new tactics. Successfully leading the conquest of a continent.

All of these things are accomplishments. Next to these things getting handouts for playing the game are garbage. What good is that? Why have that? It is unnecessary, and I did nothing to earn it. You want to give me rewards? Give me rewards for taking a base or a continent or resources. That's why I wrote up some in-depth ideas on that in the PS2 idea vault. You should go check them out. Good stuff in those threads.

[EASyEightyEight]

"Conan, what is good in life?"

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

Lamentations aside, crushing enemies and driving them out is accomplishment. It served us in PS for many years quite successfully. What was even better was that the act of crushing and the act of driving was fun as hell.




Ahh, no - Actually accomplishing something gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Taking a base. Triumphing over a rival outfit. Prying Amerish from the cold dead hands of the Vanu. Turning the world blue. Inventing new tactics. Successfully leading the conquest of a continent.

All of these things are accomplishments. Next to these things getting handouts for playing the game are garbage. What good is that? Why have that? It is unnecessary, and I did nothing to earn it. You want to give me rewards? Give me rewards for taking a base or a continent or resources. That's why I wrote up some in-depth ideas on that in the PS2 idea vault. You should go check them out. Good stuff in those threads.

And with this post, you've pretty much just admitted the only people your argument really concerns is... you.

Sorry, but I have to break it to you and your inner frat boy:

Your way of play isn't good enough for a lot of other people. SOE seems set on putting in that character progression and achievements you don't care for. I advise not partaking in that progression and those achievements if you're not interested. Problem solved.

EDIT: And I did read it. You even responded to my post (or did you make a new thread?)
EDIT#2: Oh pshhhh, I'm thinking of your other, similar topic on PS2 general. EDIT#3. Wrong place to be putting my opinions on those threads.

[Sirisian]

Your way of play isn't good enough for a lot of other people. SOE seems set on putting in that character progression and achievements you don't care for. I advise not partaking in that progression and those achievements if you're not interested. Problem solved.

I will point out if you look at people with multiple accounts you'll quickly understand this to be true. People do like to progress and when they stop progressing they make an alt just so they can progress even if it's the same thing. There are some veterans here that have pretty much tried to max out all their characters. :lol: Keeping the game interesting when you only have 1 character per server will be interesting.

[Vancha]

I will point out if you look at people with multiple accounts you'll quickly understand this to be true. People do like to progress and when they stop progressing they make an alt just so they can progress even if it's the same thing. There are some veterans here that have pretty much tried to max out all their characters. :lol: Keeping the game interesting when you only have 1 character per server will be interesting.
Did they say we'll only have one character per server? I was under the impression it was one empire per server.

[FastAndFree]

Did they say we'll only have one character per server? I was under the impression it was one empire per server.


The character selection screen slowed down the pace of the game too much

[exLupo]

Did they say we'll only have one character per server? I was under the impression it was one empire per server.

With a time-unlock skill system and one empire per server, there's no reason to have multiple characters per server unless you could train them in tandem. Assuming they would be copying EVE's only one character can train at a time thing, they would just skip that, limit the game to 1 toon per server and save any associated dev time. There'd be no reason for alts other than avoiding a reputation (bad or celeb).

They could have multiple toons per server and let them train at the same time but I dunno. I'm not feeling it.

[Malorn]

And with this post, you've pretty much just admitted the only people your argument really concerns is... you.
Is that not true for every person who posts here? Are you claiming to represent the silent majority?

Your way of play isn't good enough for a lot of other people.

Oh so you are trying to invoke the silent majority.


SOE seems set on putting in that character progression and achievements you don't care for.
Are they set on it? They talked about it. I don't see how any of us can claim to know their level of commitment to any one thing.

They haven't exactly been forthcoming in their reasons behind why they chose to do that. The only thing I saw on the subject was the idea of rewarding players for investing in one thing. Power progression need not be a reward, especially for a specialist who is by-definition is already good and experienced at what they're doing.

There are other ways to 'reward' players for devotion to specific things that don't involve power advancement.

Also power advancement purely or playing the game is dumb. We didn't earn it. Its a meaningless reward and it is rewarding us for clicking a button, not for actually achieving something. The resource system and territory control is a far better 'reward' - reward us with resources to go get cooler stuff. There's a great reward for actually accomplishing something.

I advise not partaking in that progression and those achievements if you're not interested. Problem solved.
Doesn't seem like it's an optional system. And if it were, not partaking gimps oneself. Sort of forced to partake, which is one reason why progression systems are poor ideas. The only games that need them are the ones that don't have good gameplay to keep players interested. It's what we call a "crutch."

Planetside was not one of those games, as evidenced by longterm play in spite of not having progression. Why should PS2 have it?

Yeah I'm going to say that again. Planetside is the counter-example to your claims that progression is necessary. It isn't. I don't need to invoke a silent majority to say that. The example is right there. You have no evidence to claim otherwise.

[Malorn]

The character selection screen slowed down the pace of the game too much

It had no effect on pacing. The only thing it slowed down was time to login and start playing. That isn't pacing.

Such things can be easily shortcut without removing the character selection screen. They also did shortcut it in PS so you didn't always need to see it.

That said I like the idea of a single character. If they do any sort of server merges however they will end up with multiples.

[Hamma]

If I recall correctly you will be restricted to one empire per server there were no notes about chars per server.

[Chaff]

It's actually specialization. Someone could be specialized 20% into one thing and another person could specialize 20% into something totally different. Meaning two veterans would not necessarily be on equal footing. It would depend on what they specialized in.

In fact that's why I'd prefer more than 20%. I already did the math Higby showed for a few cases and came to the same conclusion that 20% isn't really anything for specialization. My current fear is that specialization doesn't mean anything other than visual upgrades. :(

Agree :groovy:

I has to MEAN someting - for it to MEAN something.

:confused:

[EASyEightyEight]

Stuff

Planetside would only be the counter-example if it weren't on life support.

Yeah, I'm speaking as though for the silent majority, just like you are, on wanting what I personally want in game. You caught me being a hypocrit. Congrats. What you've seemed to miss is that they're not speaking like they're planning to add "hundreds maybe thousands" of skills to game, but that they are adding a number of skills that could number that high. They're further along than what the teaser would lead us to believe. We're looking at beta's soon even. A little late to be telling them to scrap the whole skill system.

The game will not survive on just shooting people and taking land. Accept that PS2 is NOT PS1. Personal measurable progression is the driving force behind gaming anymore, even if it shouldn't be. Territory comes and goes, but my MA skill rank being 4 is forever until I decide to untrain it.

[Chaff]

Unfortunately monkeys have no clue what an "enemy" is and just fires even if there's nothing to shoot at. Heck, it doesn't know the word aim and just randomly shoots around wasting your ammo ^_^


My monkey ("BINGO") will know who the EVIL empires are - afterall - it's going to be a TRAINED monkey - maybe I have to spend 3 or 4 hours in VR with my simian sidekick - letting it kill bad guys until it "gets it" ...... then it can be my backup gunner.
:lol:

[Malorn]

Yeah, I'm speaking as though for the silent majority, just like you are, on wanting what I personally want in game. You caught me being a hypocrit. Congrats. What you've seemed to miss is that they're not speaking like they're planning to add "hundreds maybe thousands" of skills to game, but that they are adding a number of skills that could number that high. They're further along than what the teaser would lead us to believe. We're looking at beta's soon even. A little late to be telling them to scrap the whole skill system.
Who's saying to scrap the whole skill system? Just don't include power in it. Implants upgrade options, vehicle qualifications, equipment qualifications...all still valid. The mechanics of the skill system don't need to change at all. We're only talking values here.


The game will not survive on just shooting people and taking land. Accept that PS2 is NOT PS1. Personal measurable progression is the driving force behind gaming anymore, even if it shouldn't be. Territory comes and goes, but my MA skill rank being 4 is forever until I decide to untrain it.

So say you - what evidence do you have to back up your claim? I have examples of real games to back up mine. Want another? Counter-strike. Still highly popular on the top 20 on steam. Another? Team Fortress 2. No progression, still being played and highly popular.

[kaffis]

The reason we stopped playing is typically because the game got stale
Progression is a way to inject variety and freshness. It's hard for the chance to use an ability or gizmo you just earned to get stale.

[Malorn]

Progression is a way to inject variety and freshness. It's hard for the chance to use an ability or gizmo you just earned to get stale.

I doesn't add variety - it adds grind. Its something you need to do or you don't stay competitive.

[kaffis]

I doesn't add variety - it adds grind. Its something you need to do or you don't stay competitive.
I'll concede this. However, with time-based cert trees, the thing you need to "do" is log in periodically to designate what you want to train in.

I don't have a problem with that, especially if they offer mobile apps that allow you to interface with this. If "staying competitive" means I need to take 2 minutes out of my day while I'm waiting in line at the cafeteria to pull out my phone and think about the game, more power to 'em.

I'd also support, for the record, extending the amount of time you can queue up skills to train, too. I think anything up to 120 hours (5 days) would be more than adequate to promote the intent of requiring periodic monitoring (keeping the game fresh in your mind, enticing you to play it and getting you excited about it) without becoming too much of a chore or busy-work.

[Baneblade]

VVZ - I'm 20% better than you!

[Sirisian]

VVZ - I'm 20% better than you!
That's kind of vague. 20% better at what? Aiming? 20% more armor? It would be more important to say stuff like "I'm 20% better at air to air combat" in which case I'd be like "that makes you better than others at killing my liberator. Okay". I'd respond "my liberator is 20% better than normal liberators at killing tanks" :lol:

[Raymac]

I doesn't add variety - it adds grind. Its something you need to do or you don't stay competitive.

You can absolutely have power progression while still keeping things competitive for everyone. Simply because this is a shooter. It's not an RPG, or space spreadsheet sim. It's a shooter. It doesn't take very much imagination at all to see how it will work.

And on top of that, I think it's something that PS1 was lacking. If I've been playing for 6 months, I want to earn the right to be able to reload a little faster. Will something like that destroy the competition? Of course not.

Of all the complaints about COD, you don't hear people bitching about "Oh you unlocked extended mags, that's no fair, I quit" Now, if they do something stupid and give your bullets twice as much damage, yeah, that obviously would create a huge rift between new and veteran players, but thats not happening now, or 10 years from now.

Progression in mmo's is not new. Power progression in an fps is not new. You always have to keep in mind Planetside 2 is a shooter, not an rpg.

[Malorn]

Power progression that requires choices, as in you must choose which among a set of bonuses is active, is not bad and can work just fine.

Power progression that is always-on and based on time is just dumb and pointless.

[Bags]

I don't like any increase of power. I don't deserve to reload faster simply because I've been paying longer.

[Raymac]

Power progression that requires choices, as in you must choose which among a set of bonuses is active, is not bad and can work just fine.

Power progression that is always-on and based on time is just dumb and pointless.

I don't see how that is different than how they describe skill progression? You want to drive tanks, you put your skill points into that while somebody else who likes reavers will put their skill points in that. Now, my Reaver skills are always on, but they only matter when I'm actually in a Reaver.

From what I've heard, it doesn't sound like they are going to give us a million skill points in the first couple weeks so we can max out everything. We are going to have to make decisions on where to put our limited skill points in a vast skill system. You want to be a jack of all trades? Well you can spread the skill points around, but you can't go very deep. If you want to specialize in something, you can go deep, but be gimped in other aspects of the game.

Even though the skills are always on, you still have to make choices.

[Raymac]

I don't like any increase of power. I don't deserve to reload faster simply because I've been paying longer.

Semantics. I know you arn't argueing against any progression at all, even the PS1 cert system where you get more certs the more you level. Progression, leveling, unlocking, whatever you want to call it, is a popular feature in mmo's, hell in any video game. Trying to argue against any sort of progression at all is like trying to argue that pagers should be used. That ship sailed a long time ago.

So, you don't like the hypothetical "faster reload" skill because it gives someone too much power, but that very same arguement could be made for ANY progression. In PS1, even the BR20 days, you could cert in alot more things which made you more versatile i.e. more powerful in more situations.

Progression in it of itself is neccessary in a game like PS2.

[Bags]

My BR20 medapp was not stronger than a BR 1's medapp, so it's not really semantics.

[exLupo]

Trying to argue against any sort of progression at all is like trying to argue that pagers should be used. That ship sailed a long time ago.

Not just in your video games either. There are a number of good TED talks on the subject of gamification in meatspace. Get started with Jesse Schell (http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html).

If you don't like leveling up, get ready to /wrist or move to Amish country.

My BR20 medapp was not stronger than a BR 1's medapp, so it's not really semantics.

That's the point in specialization. To be better at something than the guy next to you who didn't put in the time. Dev has stated that the overall difference won't spike in any area but manifest as an overall increase in competence so it won't be game destroying. That and null sum +1/-1 type play feel customization but that doesn't apply as it's null sum.

[Raymac]

My BR20 medapp was not stronger than a BR 1's medapp, so it's not really semantics.

It is semantics, because you are able to get a med app AND have other things where I don't have that same ability, hence you are more powerful. Just because the med apps do the same thing is completely moot when I don't even have one. Power is power no matter how you slice it. Capisce?

[exLupo]

It's granularity and accessibility.
PS1 BR1: HA
PS1 BR20: HA/Med/Engi

Leveling advantage means the shooter can heal and repair themselves. Clear power gap that is eliminated by grinding BR to 20 and allocating certs to matching specs.

PS2 BR1 0hrs: Basic MA
PS2 BR20 100hrs: MA w/ all the bells and whistles and a basic med tool
PS2 BR20 100hrs: Basic MA and a med tool with all the bells and whistles.
PS2 BR20 200hrs: MA and Med tool both maxxed out.

Clear power gap that is eliminated by allocating skill time to matching skills.

[Tikuto]

Remember, everyone. Simplified PlanetSide. Let's see that happen.

[kaffis]

Power progression that requires choices, as in you must choose which among a set of bonuses is active, is not bad and can work just fine.

Power progression that is always-on and based on time is just dumb and pointless.
Why does "always-on" have to be mutually exclusive with "requiring choices"?

Can't I have a limited number of opportunities (limited by progressively increasing time increments) to make choices between always-on bonuses?

[MasterChief096]

It's granularity and accessibility.
PS1 BR1: HA
PS1 BR20: HA/Med/Engi

Leveling advantage means the shooter can heal and repair themselves. Clear power gap that is eliminated by grinding BR to 20 and allocating certs to matching specs.

PS2 BR1 0hrs: Basic MA
PS2 BR20 100hrs: MA w/ all the bells and whistles and a basic med tool
PS2 BR20 100hrs: Basic MA and a med tool with all the bells and whistles.
PS2 BR20 200hrs: MA and Med tool both maxxed out.

Clear power gap that is eliminated by allocating skill time to matching skills.

What you just basically said is that there is an evident power gap between a BR20 and a BR1 due to choices and variety.

You then went on to say that in PlanetSide 2 a BR20 versus a BR1 has the same power gap, due to variety, except you added in the fact that the BR20's MA and med app were both maxed out. Once again, maxing them out is pointless. He already has a power differentiation due to having both MA and the med app. No need to tack on an extra 20% to various stats.

[MasterChief096]

What you just basically said is that there is an evident power gap between a BR20 and a BR1 due to choices and variety.

You then went on to say that in PlanetSide 2 a BR20 versus a BR1 has the same power gap, due to variety, except you added in the fact that the BR20's MA and med app were both maxed out. Once again, maxing them out is pointless. He already has a power differentiation due to having both MA and the med app. No need to tack on an extra 20% to various stats.

In this entire thread I have failed to see someone negate battle rank and cert points as a form of character progression.

No one has come out with a clean argument as to why progressing in BR and gaining cert points to unlock more choices is NOT considered progression. As far as I'm concerned it is. I stated a long time ago in this thread that during PlanetSide BR is what drove me. Power differentiation in terms of stats is not needed for motivation to advance in BR and unlock more options. But whatever. Not one person has addressed this.

[Malorn]

Why does "always-on" have to be mutually exclusive with "requiring choices"?

Can't I have a limited number of opportunities (limited by progressively increasing time increments) to make choices between always-on bonuses?

They are mutually exclusive by definition. By "requiring choices" is a tradeoff decision. That requires choosing to have one thing over another.

There is no tradeoff with always-on bonuses; there is only the order in which you acquire them. Choosing the order is not a tradeoff. Increasing the time to train only makes a larger gap for new players to acquire the same power.

[Avirau]

In this entire thread I have failed to see someone negate battle rank and cert points as a form of character progression.

No one has come out with a clean argument as to why progressing in BR and gaining cert points to unlock more choices is NOT considered progression. As far as I'm concerned it is. I stated a long time ago in this thread that during PlanetSide BR is what drove me. Power differentiation in terms of stats is not needed for motivation to advance in BR and unlock more options. But whatever. Not one person has addressed this.

This. No matter how you spin it, a BR20 will have an advantage over a BR1 in Planetside 1 even if both players have identical skill level.

A BR1 player has a total of 7 cert points. While it is true you could do a variety of things with these 7 points, I would probably put 3 into REXO, 2 into MA, and then have a whopping 2 certs left to spend. Can't even get HA.

The BR20 will have access to HA and a variety of other superior weapons, support skills like med/engi which allow him to repair, heal, and deploy support devices like mines and turrets. And, of course, he'll have access to aircraft and tanks, some of which can one-shot a BR1 player. BR20 has mathematical advantage in every way.

I dont see how someone can say that a 20% power advancement DOESN'T exist in PS1. Hell, I would guess that there is a 20% damage difference between MA and HA alone.

[EASyEightyEight]

But that's PS1. PS2 battlerank seems to only hinder the amount of skill you can train within trees, basically ensuring you're at least playing a little.

And reading Malorn's last few comments: our bickering was a misunderstanding? :huh:

That's mostly what I've been arguing for this whole time. No straight up personal increases. No dump 5 points here, get 15% more damage back. I've always supported "you can have this active, but you can't have this active as well." I mean, that's what I mean by weapon and armor mods!

I'm not for simply gain this, lose that though. Everyone starts at 0. Within a week, they should be able to get to 1 easy, and everything should be balanced around that. A player could upgrade to 2 or 3, but those too would be balanced around 1, they just would offer more extreme benefits at the cost of drawbacks:

0= Nothing.
1= +1 damage.
2= +2 damage -1 accuracy.
3= +3 damage -1 accuracy -1 RoF.

Just random ass-pull examples.

4 and 5 should be squad lead and outfit influenced, and are balanced around 1 as well, but together with personal benefits, up it to 2. Get in a squad and find a like minded outfit to match up.

But I prefer soloing :(

[Timmy]

I think this thread has honed the most important aspects to consider in terms of what direction the Devs want to take the game in the long run. So overall this thread is a success as long as the developers consider the consequences in implementation of bonuses and the effects on gameplay 5 years from now. Considering the only information out is being expressed as Percents % with no real values its clear why some people are being pessimistic about what the developers have in mind. We are asking the right questions NOW to keep them from building an "Escalation of Arms" system so to speak that as time progresses and tactics evolve to maximize the customizable buffs that balance is maintained for all play styles, for all battle ranks, and between each faction. Once the escalation starts it's hard to make big changes without severely upsetting your player base. Hopefully the discussion in this thread will keep the developers from making a Fundamental and Fatally flawed design so they won't have to chase down balance issues for the next 5 years.

One quick example about percentages... Everyone knows that the statistical Bell Curve exists. Yes a professor can add a % curve to raise those that didn't earn an "A" based on knowledge and performance, which doesn't necessarily affect the people that DID earn it. But what if the professor instead curved everyone that the middle 50% got an "A" and the top 25% instead got a "B"? What if that curve was based 100% on class attendance on non test days? This would be an example of a fundamental and fatal flaw, and that's exactly what's at risk here if the Devs get it wrong.

[Kouza]

I am all for it..... Technically speaking if you have a health MOD, in PS1 that`s a 20% advantage for an entire empire.

[kaffis]

There is no tradeoff with always-on bonuses; there is only the order in which you acquire them. Choosing the order is not a tradeoff. Increasing the time to train only makes a larger gap for new players to acquire the same power.
The only time there is no tradeoff, and it's only "the order in which you acquire them," is when you're able to acquire them all.

With time-based unlocks, and the intention to expand skill trees out as the game progresses, this is a silly assumption.

Here, let me work this out for you.

The 3-year plan says "major updates every 12 months."

The initial release includes 12 root skill tree branches. Each branch, let's say, corresponds loosely to a role, for simplicity's sake. The developer intent is to make it possible to "max out" a role before they add stuff. The developer intent is also to allow you to max out more than one role, but not all of them, before they add stuff.

Thus, the design choice dictates that each role takes 5 months to max out.

"But wait, Kaffis!" you say, "That means I can max out my character in 60 months, and so there's no tradeoffs involved. The only choice I make is in what order I take these always on bonuses!"

"Ah," I respond. "Except, when you've maxxed out two root branches and worked 2 months into a third, the first update comes out, adding 2 more root branches, and adding an additional 3 months of skills onto each of the others, so now each branch takes 8 months to max out. The 3 months of skills are a very small relative power increase over the first 5, since each skill takes longer and longer to accumulate as you go deeper into the skill tree. Now, 12 months in, we've extended the time to max to 112 months! Now, the "order" you got them in matters, because the first 12 months are still all you have, and you're even further from maxxing out your character than you started, because there are even more options."

[MasterChief096]

The only time there is no tradeoff, and it's only "the order in which you acquire them," is when you're able to acquire them all.

With time-based unlocks, and the intention to expand skill trees out as the game progresses, this is a silly assumption.

Here, let me work this out for you.

The 3-year plan says "major updates every 12 months."

The initial release includes 12 root skill tree branches. Each branch, let's say, corresponds loosely to a role, for simplicity's sake. The developer intent is to make it possible to "max out" a role before they add stuff. The developer intent is also to allow you to max out more than one role, but not all of them, before they add stuff.

Thus, the design choice dictates that each role takes 5 months to max out.

"But wait, Kaffis!" you say, "That means I can max out my character in 60 months, and so there's no tradeoffs involved. The only choice I make is in what order I take these always on bonuses!"

"Ah," I respond. "Except, when you've maxxed out two root branches and worked 2 months into a third, the first update comes out, adding 2 more root branches, and adding an additional 3 months of skills onto each of the others, so now each branch takes 8 months to max out. The 3 months of skills are a very small relative power increase over the first 5, since each skill takes longer and longer to accumulate as you go deeper into the skill tree. Now, 12 months in, we've extended the time to max to 112 months! Now, the "order" you got them in matters, because the first 12 months are still all you have, and you're even further from maxxing out your character than you started, because there are even more options."

I'm not sure this is the type of system I'd like to see in an MMOFPS. Its an MMOFPS, not a grind. I shouldn't have to wait 112 months to be able to max out my character. The game should not be about maxing characters out, and honestly if their idea of additional content is adding more skills that take even longer to unlock then thats just a really bad design. The focus should be on gameplay, freshness of the battles, and the overall way the mechanics of the game work, not on time-grinding indefinitely without ever having a hope of maxing out, for small power advantages that mean next to nothing.

[Senyu]

Well hopefully included with the content are more armor/vehicle/weapon/base choices as well as changing enviorments to keep it a little fresh

[legendary]

Power perks are a bad idea purely due to the fact they cheapen the taste of victory. Side note, any minor power boost would be an experience and personal kill count stat buff. A vets round shouldn’t be worth any more in a hail of bullets than an n00bs.

[Raymac]

The focus should be on gameplay, freshness of the battles, and the overall way the mechanics of the game work, not on time-grinding indefinitely without ever having a hope of maxing out, for small power advantages that mean next to nothing.

Or perhaps, instead of in PS1 where you have "time-grinding indefinitely without ever having a hope of maxing out" for merits that do nothing at all, now that "grinding" will give you minor skill bonuses that at least do a little something.

People seem to think this is a totally new idea, when in fact it is just fleshing out principles already established in PS1. (more BR = more power; minor skills instead of merits) Plus, this game is still going to be a shooter so any minor adjustments of stats will always be second to the skill of the player.

[Malorn]

Or perhaps, instead of in PS1 where you have "time-grinding indefinitely without ever having a hope of maxing out" for merits that do nothing at all, now that "grinding" will give you minor skill bonuses that at least do a little something.
This is incorrect. There was no indefinite grinding in Planetside.

Giving out bonus to those who play the game longer is pretty lame, and as a poster said above it cheapens battles. But if such a system goes in veterans will have no choice but to do it because not doing it means you're at a disadvantage. Its not cool for someone to have an artificial edge on you just because they played the game longer - they will already have the edge of experience and familiarity. There is no need to compound that.

People seem to think this is a totally new idea, when in fact it is just fleshing out principles already established in PS1. (more BR = more power; minor skills instead of merits) Plus, this game is still going to be a shooter so any minor adjustments of stats will always be second to the skill of the player.

This is incorrect. More BR = More options in PS1. You can argue that options is a form of power but it is one thing to give you access to equipment and quite another to improve its performance. This is a very significant difference.

You also had built-in tradeoffs in PS1. Your cert points were limited so you coudln't have everything simultaneously. BR allowed you to have more, but it didn't make the things you had any more effective. There was no artificial differential between say a gauss in the hands of a BR 1 vs a gauss in the hands of a BR 20. That was an important and very awesome part of planetside and judging from this thread and the poll more than a few people are concerned that adding in power advancement is the wrong direction for that system.

[Raymac]

This is incorrect. There was no indefinite grinding in Planetside.

This is incorrect. More BR = More options in PS1. You can argue that options is a form of power but it is one thing to give you access to equipment and quite another to improve its performance. This is a very significant difference.


Actually both statements I made were correct and accurate.

1) Maybe you were one of the very few people who got maxed out on all the merits, but for the rest of the world, it is an infinite grind. Now instead of grinding for merits, you'll be grinding for minor skill bonuses that arn't game-changing but help sharpen your edge.

2) More BR = more versatile = more powerful. For example, if you are able to have HA, Engie, Med, and fly a Mosq ALL at the very same time, I don't see how you can even begin to argue that doesn't make you more powerful than a BR5 player.

In both cases, a rose by any other name is still a rose.

[NewSith]

I wonder why this thread keeps on living.

[MasterChief096]

Actually both statements I made were correct and accurate.

1) Maybe you were one of the very few people who got maxed out on all the merits, but for the rest of the world, it is an infinite grind. Now instead of grinding for merits, you'll be grinding for minor skill bonuses that arn't game-changing but help sharpen your edge.

2) More BR = more versatile = more powerful. For example, if you are able to have HA, Engie, Med, and fly a Mosq ALL at the very same time, I don't see how you can even begin to argue that doesn't make you more powerful than a BR5 player.

In both cases, a rose by any other name is still a rose.

1) Comparing merits to time based skill unlocks is not an accurate comparison by any means. Merits are cosmetic unlocks that you get for achieving certain benchmarks via certain play styles. You don't "grind" merits. I have never spoken to a PlanetSide player that felt like merits were a "grind". Instead you usually are surprised to see a qualification for one come up.

Merits and skills are completely separate concepts. I imagine PlanetSide 2 will have merits in much the same way as PlanetSide 1.

2) Exactly. A BR20 player is more powerful and versatile than a BR1. He doesn't need an extra 20% to widen the gap. So therefore I don't even see how you can begin to argue you still need a 20% power advancement for vets.

[Raymac]

2) Exactly. A BR20 player is more powerful and versatile than a BR1.

Jack Sparrow: "Ah-ha! So, we've established my proposal as sound in principle. Now, we're just haggling over price." :cool:

[NewSith]

2) Exactly. A BR20 player is more powerful and versatile than a BR1. He doesn't need an extra 20% to widen the gap. So therefore I don't even see how you can begin to argue you still need a 20% power advancement for vets.

Well, I suppose, there's just one perspective everyone's missing...

How about while you're a newbie, you don't just DO EVERYTHING. You decide what suits you best, and at what you can do better, you improve.

And while you're a vet, you've chosen your style. And you want it to pay off.

Don't forget that their ultimate purpose is to create a game, based MORE on teamwork, than on uber-soldiering.
That means that they somehow have to "benefit" a player's choice. To some degree even force it. That's when "power difference" comes handy. You can give this difference, but on certain conditions. Like: "If you want to be cool with ****, you have to train a skill for it. But with a skill for ****, you'll have to temporarily forget about learning *** and ***** skills."
So you can gradually increase your overall strength, or drag yourself into learning something separate, in shorter period of time.

That's the way see it.

[Malorn]

Actually both statements I made were correct and accurate.

1) Maybe you were one of the very few people who got maxed out on all the merits, but for the rest of the world, it is an infinite grind. Now instead of grinding for merits, you'll be grinding for minor skill bonuses that arn't game-changing but help sharpen your edge.

2) More BR = more versatile = more powerful. For example, if you are able to have HA, Engie, Med, and fly a Mosq ALL at the very same time, I don't see how you can even begin to argue that doesn't make you more powerful than a BR5 player.

In both cases, a rose by any other name is still a rose.

Since you failed to read it the first time...

You can argue that options is a form of power but it is one thing to give you access to equipment and quite another to improve its performance.

[Furret]

Malorn, are you using a different font than everyone else? I cant seem to read what you're writing, it may be too small.

So has anyone thought about using certification points for these weapon upgrades?

Lets say I'm a jackhammer whore, through and through, and all I do is drive on my ATV to the fight and unload on the enemy.

ATV + REXO + Med Assault + Heavy Assault is only 10 certs, I have that many at BR5.

What if this player were to spend a cert point on an extra barrel for his jackhammer, and then perhaps two for an enhanced chamber system for higher bullet penetration.

If you meet him in a tower, you'll be in trouble, but that's the limit of his power.

Power Differentiation could be determined by how many certs you dump into that role, or whatever this class system bullshit is about (For the record, I'm against it and I much prefer the PS1 certification system).

This way a veteran would have potentially more weapon upgrades, but a new soldier could still cert a couple of upgrades.

And if anyone complains that it might take too long to get enough certs to be effective, you can get to BR 5 practically just doing the training missions, driving all the vehicles, and picking up all the guns.

These cert costs could be balanced out, but it could work.

[Raymac]

Since you failed to read it the first time...

Well, I don't know how to read, so I'd appreciate a little more compassion. OK, I'm kidding, but I did read that sentence, even in the normal font size, I just disagree with your conclusion, and I explained why I disagree. It wasn't because I ignored what you said.

[MasterChief096]

Malorn, are you using a different font than everyone else? I cant seem to read what you're writing, it may be too small.

So has anyone thought about using certification points for these weapon upgrades?

Lets say I'm a jackhammer whore, through and through, and all I do is drive on my ATV to the fight and unload on the enemy.

ATV + REXO + Med Assault + Heavy Assault is only 10 certs, I have that many at BR5.

What if this player were to spend a cert point on an extra barrel for his jackhammer, and then perhaps two for an enhanced chamber system for higher bullet penetration.

If you meet him in a tower, you'll be in trouble, but that's the limit of his power.

Power Differentiation could be determined by how many certs you dump into that role, or whatever this class system bullshit is about (For the record, I'm against it and I much prefer the PS1 certification system).

This way a veteran would have potentially more weapon upgrades, but a new soldier could still cert a couple of upgrades.

And if anyone complains that it might take too long to get enough certs to be effective, you can get to BR 5 practically just doing the training missions, driving all the vehicles, and picking up all the guns.

These cert costs could be balanced out, but it could work.

@Raymac - I've been spouting that for awhile now. I didn't argue that a BR20 was not more "naturally" powerful than a BR1. We haven't established your "proposal".

@NewSith If I specialize in something, my reward for specializing in it should be that I know what I'm doing and I'm better than a noob at it because I've actually played the game longer, not because I specialized and unlocked some skill that makes me more powerful.

@Furret This would work except the issue is that the barrel for the jackhammer (as you mentioned) would only be available to a BR20 vet since its unlocked further down the skill tree that required BR20 to start training. So a newb would not be able to cert the same barrel. I'm all with you, PS1 cert system ftw.

[NewSith]

@NewSith If I specialize in something, my reward for specializing in it should be that I know what I'm doing and I'm better than a noob at it because I've actually played the game longer, not because I specialized and unlocked some skill that makes me more powerful.


That's the trick. Any modern FPS work like that. And PS is aimed to be modern.

Try to get it right - I'm all for br25, and cert system, and stuff... But... That's not going to happen, and that's already written in stone. Sadly class system, as in "Pre-defined Equipment", does NOT work with our cert system.

[Malorn]

Well, I don't know how to read, so I'd appreciate a little more compassion. OK, I'm kidding, but I did read that sentence, even in the normal font size, I just disagree with your conclusion, and I explained why I disagree. It wasn't because I ignored what you said.

Options are a form power but it is not direct; while a br20 can do more than a br1, they are on equal footing in the things they have both certed. Having medical makes a player more versatile, but in a firefight it isn't going to help you (a medkit would, which is why good players still carried them and they were available to all players regardless of BR). Having access to mosquito doesn't matter when you are indoors. Having access to MAX doesn't matter when you aren't in one. Same for infiltration and all the other support certs. In most cases in PS1 having more options didn't give you power - it just limited what you could do in your play session.

However if you got bonuses in addition to access means the BR 1 and the BR 20 would not be on equal footing.

Thus, the two concepts are significantly different.

Another way to put it is that in PS1 if you had the same equipment on two different players then skill and circumstance will determine the victor. If you have bonuses applied over time to longtime vets, then that statement is no longer true.

Bonuses over time is a fundamental change from PS1 - it isn't a continuance of a trend.

[MasterChief096]

That's the trick. Any modern FPS work like that. And PS is aimed to be modern.

Try to get it right - I'm all for br25, and cert system, and stuff... But... That's not going to happen, and that's already written in stone. Sadly class system, as in "Pre-defined Equipment", does NOT work with our cert system.

I'm sick of this "modern FPS" nonsense. What exactly makes these FPSes out there modern? They've all been the same since the beginning. If you ask me PS was a "modern FPS" in that it tried to change the set way things worked.

PS2 has another chance to be "modern". Using the old cert system or not having power differentiation isn't "old style". I don't know why people think it is.

[NewSith]

I'm sick of this "modern FPS" nonsense. What exactly makes these FPSes out there modern? They've all been the same since the beginning. If you ask me PS was a "modern FPS" in that it tried to change the set way things worked.

PS2 has another chance to be "modern". Using the old cert system or not having power differentiation isn't "old style". I don't know why people think it is.

You can't tell it to me I'm not the one making the game...

[Malorn]

Power progression over time is an RPG element, not an FPS element. I think it crept in there from the EVE online inspiration, certainly not from modern shooters. BFBC2 has implant-style bonses that can be unlocked but those are tradeoffs between different bonuses and you don't permanently have them affixed to your character and can change them based on the style you are going for.

[Soothsayer]

Options are a form power but it is not direct; while a br20 can do more than a br1, they are on equal footing in the things they have both certed. Having medical makes a player more versatile, but in a firefight it isn't going to help you (a medkit would, which is why good players still carried them and they were available to all players regardless of BR). Having access to mosquito doesn't matter when you are indoors. Having access to MAX doesn't matter when you aren't in one. Same for infiltration and all the other support certs. In most cases in PS1 having more options didn't give you power - it just limited what you could do in your play session.

However if you got bonuses in addition to access means the BR 1 and the BR 20 would not be on equal footing.

Thus, the two concepts are significantly different.

Another way to put it is that in PS1 if you had the same equipment on two different players then skill and circumstance will determine the victor. If you have bonuses applied over time to longtime vets, then that statement is no longer true.

Bonuses over time is a fundamental change from PS1 - it isn't a continuance of a trend.

The BR20 can go on to fight another after a couple of seconds in cover. BR1 has to retreat or rely on someone else to get him back up to health if he wins.

The BR20 has access to rexo and secondary weapons that will put the BR1 at a disadvantage as he approaches.

[EDIT: The BR1 won't always be a BR1, I don't see the point in setting up the foundation of the system to cater to them alone.]

[Malorn]

And no one is arguing that options do not convey some form of advantage. Nobody is disagreeing with that, but options and power progression over time are not the same thing.

In PS1 if you had the same equipment on two different players then skill and circumstance will determine the victor. If you have bonuses applied over time to vets, then that statement is no longer true.

[Soothsayer]

There's the chance to do something really cool here with the skill progression system.

While there may be some perceived barrier to entry for a new player, the benefits to longterm players will be significant. That is, the benefit of retaining new players as longterm players when the depth of the system is realized.

People keep saying that the EVE skill system scares people off... If it does, its just because they haven't tried it. So CCP started all sorts of programs to get people to try it and realize that its not as big of a deal as the person originally thought.

In PS2, the dev team should not sacrifice core game system depth for the very minimal benefit of catering to non-longterm players. When a new player sees the depth of the system available they have a goal that is farther out than BR25. The goal is their soldier, customized the way they want it with personal investment in the process.

[Sirisian]

In PS1 if you had the same equipment on two different players then skill and circumstance will determine the victor. If you have bonuses applied over time to vets, then that statement is no longer true.
Upgraded equipment wouldn't be the same equipment really. It would just be more specialized equipment. Skill could just be having the right tools for the job. Since you're focusing on two users using the same weapons then it depends how both players choose to specialize. Specializing special assault assault for range over accuracy in my mind would make the weapons good for different things.

I imagine you're thinking of a medium assault weapon though and assuming a person is going into battle with no specialization because they just started the game. I agree it sucks to be them. However unless SOE just gives everyone the full skill tree and just lets everyone start at BR20 and cert how they want we're going to see an obvious delay for beginners. However once they do specialize they'll be specialized and that's the point. Each player will be unique ideally in their playstyle. Or at the very worst all players will choose the same skill trees and become identical. :lol: Like I said before though I don't see the point of putting a beginner on the same playing field as a veteran. Being good at one thing and specialized in it shouldn't take that long. For veterans they'll probably just have more choices open to them which is really how players will see their progression and keep them playing.

[Raymac]

And no one is arguing that options do not convey some form of advantage. Nobody is disagreeing with that, but options and power progression over time are not the same thing.

In PS1 if you had the same equipment on two different players then skill and circumstance will determine the victor. If you have bonuses applied over time to vets, then that statement is no longer true.

First, it's not just "options" it's simply having more. Quick scenario to illustrate my point: BR20 v BR3 in a fire fight, the BR20 takes damage then ducks behind cover to repair and heal, then pops back out to finish of the BR3. The BR 20 didn't have more options, he had more power because of the time he put in, call it whatever you want, but the BR3 that just died will likely describe it as power progression. Sure, you have the "option" to unlock whichever power, err I mean cert you want, but it's the same idea.

By pointing that out, all I'm saying is that in PS1 we already have a power progression system, and I deduce and I hope that PS2 is merely a slight nudge along that spectrum and not a huge leap, because such a leap would trigger all sorts of problems that you have so eloquently pointed out.

As to your subtle yellow statement (along with being illiterate, I'm also color blind) I don't believe it is an "all or nothing" situation. I think even with minor skill bonuses, the victor will still be decided by skill and circumstance, however there will be occasions where having a slight edge in something like reload time will make that razor's edge difference. Frankly, in the chaos of epic Planetside battles, even the best veterans might not even notice it happen.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree because this dead horse has been kicked around for a long time. Hell, we don't even know what any of the skills actually are. Devs need to release some info so I have something new to complain about.

[Malorn]

The example people keep giving of supreme power advantage is ducking behind a pillar and healing? Really? That's the argument? Two common certs? Any other certs? How does unimax help? How does driving a vanguard help when you're indoors? Or air support? Two support certs are all you got to go on and it's sketchy at best considering one could be substituted with medkits and the other was so common every infantryman carried one.

Clearly the PS1 system was supporting power gain over time because Engineering and Medical existed.