What is the most important part of Planetside?

[Xyntech]

I think that the most important part of Planetside is the huge number of players all fighting together.

I tend to look at everything that the developers and other players say about PS2 from the angle of "Will this help Planetside 2 have more players or fewer?"

I want to have as many players as possible at launch and I want them to stick around for a long time as well.

I say bravo to the developers if they attract new players from more casual games. They will provide us with more targets to shoot at, plus a fair number of them may stick around for a while if their mind is opened to a deeper level of underlying game play that they never found in other shooters.

So do I WANT kill cams? Not really, but they could be fun. Do I want solo MBT's? Not even slightly, but I wouldn't mind them at all if they were well balanced. Do I want a Planetside 2 where pop lock is rare and it's hard to find a really big battle? NO. FUCK that.

A graphics and net code overhaul would not attract a lot of new players. I think Planetside 2 will be able to. This is where I am coming from any time I am arguing in favor of something that will be different from the first game.

Maybe with a little understanding we can figure out if we agree on any of the core principals that we think will make or break PS2.

So what do you think is most important?

[ThGlump]

I say teamplay. But sadly they are trying to get everyone from other shooters, so they are killing teamplay for easier killwhoring.

[Crator]

Speculation. You don't know that.

But yes, I agree, team play and massive scale combined with ground troops, and air/land vehicles that allowed that game-play to be dynamic, along with the persistent qualities and 3 empires with specific gear suited to each, was the most defining factors imo.

[Xyntech]

I say teamplay. But sadly they are trying to get everyone from other shooters, so they are killing teamplay for easier killwhoring.

Team play has gotta be up there on the list of importance, I'm with you on that. I'd like to point out the game Team Fortress 2. It's got the word Team in the title and it has a lot of classes that benefit greatly by team work, but what you end up with on public servers are a bunch of solo players zerging the objectives.

There is always a really good way to guarantee victory in TF2 though. Teamwork. Even just a couple of players working closely together can often turn the tide of a battle and if you are playing on a server where both teams are using teamwork, the experience is very intense and competitive.

I don't really support the idea of forcing mandatory team work, because that is going to narrow the appeal of Planetside 2 and contribute to lower populations. The zerg was always a part of PS1 and it sounds like there will be plenty of tools to help funnel the zerg and actually make them work for the team, even if they don't realize it.

In my mind, encouraging team work and making team work be synonymous with victory are how to approach it.

I'm excited to see how some of the new features play out in regards to rewarding teamwork.

[Bags]

Size and teamwork.

[Hamma]

That's what she said!
I say teamplay. But sadly they are trying to get everyone from other shooters, so they are killing teamplay for easier killwhoring.
And yea, you don't know this yet so it's total assumption. You can attempt to speculate at that based on what we have heard but that still doesn't tell the whole story.. we won't know for sure until beta hits.

Anyway - number of players FOR SURE is the biggest thing, and followed up by teamwork. In PlanetSide even small squad tactics could make a MASSIVE difference.

[basti]

I say teamplay. But sadly they are trying to get everyone from other shooters, so they are killing teamplay for easier killwhoring.

Err, no. They know as much as we do that a big killhwhoring game with thousands of players wont stand a chance against COD and the others.

[nomotog]

Ya team play or to put it another way massed team play. So long as they have that it works.

[Captain B]

Massed and COORDINATED teamplay (not just running in groups, but with purpose and goals and coordination to achieve tasks set by leaders and empire).

Massive combat scale (lots of infantry, ass and air).

Support roles outside of healing/reviving (all games have that). That was one of the coolest parts of PS was the upgraded turrets and how they actually saved the day more often than not.

[CutterJohn]

but what you end up with on public servers are a bunch of solo players zerging the objectives.

That sounds remarkably like another game I'm familiar with.. Names on the tip of my tongue.. I think it starts with a P.

Ah yes. Planetside. Thats it. Have you played that game? Its pretty interesting. You can roll with a team if you want, which can be fun and rewarding, but theres also always a ton of randoms just running around slamming their heads into each other, repeatedly. Apparently trying to direct them makes herding cats look easy.

[NapalmEnima]

1: SCALE. Hands down.

2/3 combined arms/teamwork. To acutally combine the "combine arms" requires teamwork, but you can have teamwork with just infantry (or just air), and you can have air/ground/infantry with not particular coordination.

PS gives the unique opportunity to have combined arms at a huge scale.


People can and do have a good time "soloing with the zerg", as infantry, air or ground. But I think they're missing out on what makes PS truely great.

As long as PS2 gives us an updated taste of that epic gameplay, I think they'll do just fine.

[BorisBlade]

My fave parts of PS, the gameplay aspects. I'll play 64 man PS over 1000 man battlefield anyday. Epic scale is nice, but if the gameplay is just the standard bf/cod stuff then i could care less about the game.

The vehicles were my fave part, and were a huge step over any other game. The awesome teamwork and the feel that its an actual vehicle, not just a buff like BF style veh's are, really added a entirely different feel. Much more of an epic and community/social based playstyle. Some great stories come from my zillion hours driving. Its sad to see that great idea PS1 pioneered scrapped and them taking a step back with the BF style stuff, hopefully thats changed.

The much more tactical TTK times were second on my list, aka you dont instantly die, you can take a few hits then react and have an interesting fight. Its much more tactical feeling than just runnin along, instantly dieing never seeing what hit you, and respawning, adnauseum. (yes the netcode and often exaggerated CoF made it too long in ps1, but it still needs to be much longer than BF.) This may work out ok tho, atleast im tellin myself that =D. Having played BF3 beta and its god awful MW ttk (lost interest in the game completely now), im very glad ps2 wasnt ruined by goin that route too.

The epic size fights were cool, but just as important was the terrain. Huge open areas with so much variety. No more boring coridor maps, no more repeating the same tired little bitty map in a deathmatch. Lots of new and interesting stuff all the time.

And finally the customization, i dont mean gettin too crazy with it like PS2 does which can actually limit variety in that you can customize one vehicle to do a bazillion roles so that you dont need but a very few of them. But i mean seeing all the differnt vehicles and various specs, yes it got outta hand with too many certs, anything past br20 just was too many certs. It was a good system that needed some tweaks and more options to focus down trees to keep people more specialized. The new system isnt too bad in that regard other than the aforementioned issue and the fact that with no cap on certs you can eventually get everything, so just a simple class change at spawn/terminal means you can do anything at all. Kinda half specialization and half br 40. The attactments and version choices and even weapon choices tho could help with customizing too. In other words, I cant really say yay or nay on this til i see it in action and get all the details.

[Azren]

"Rock-paper-scissors ballance"

[Sirisian]

The scale is pretty much the major thing for me even more than the teamwork.

The times when you'd be bombing a bridge or sniping and just seeing all the red dots on the map and green dots. That was impressive. That and the traded fire. You'd be on the ground and just so many rounds of ammo and tank shells would be passing around. It was also nice since all the bullets look different so you knew "hey there's snipers shooting at people".

[Xyntech]

The scale is pretty much the major thing for me even more than the teamwork.

The times when you'd be bombing a bridge or sniping and just seeing all the red dots on the map and green dots. That was impressive. That and the traded fire. You'd be on the ground and just so many rounds of ammo and tank shells would be passing around. It was also nice since all the bullets look different so you knew "hey there's snipers shooting at people".

I loved when you would have three or four bases and all of the land in between flooded with troops. So much to do in that kind of environment. It never felt like you were being forced into any roles because every weapon, vehicle and armor could find something useful to do at all times.

[Tikuto]

United with one goal.

[Raymac]

1: SCALE. Hands down.

2/3 combined arms/teamwork. To acutally combine the "combine arms" requires teamwork, but you can have teamwork with just infantry (or just air), and you can have air/ground/infantry with not particular coordination.

PS gives the unique opportunity to have combined arms at a huge scale.


People can and do have a good time "soloing with the zerg", as infantry, air or ground. But I think they're missing out on what makes PS truely great.

As long as PS2 gives us an updated taste of that epic gameplay, I think they'll do just fine.

^This IMHO is the most important.

[NapalmEnima]

United with one goal.

Errr... "Blow up the other two empires"?

[Graywolves]

The conquest is the most important part to me, as with the scale and persistent battlefield.


I love fighting to take bases/territory against/with other players.

[Rbstr]

Scale and persistence.

It's the only real differentiator from any other FPS title. You can find everything else to suit your tastes in the plethora of other sci-fi shooters.

[Xyntech]

Based on the responses in this thread, here's a simplified list of what seems to be most important to various players:

- Scale/Persistence

- Teamplay/Combined Arms

- Empire Diversity

- Extensive Support Roles

- Planetside 1 Style Game Mechanics

- Rock-Paper-Scissors Ballance

I'm not sure if I can add a poll to the thread after the fact. Maybe a mod could help me out. Also, is there any option on these forums to give multiple answers to a poll? That could be useful here.

[NapalmEnima]

- Planetside 1 Style Game Mechanics


You're going to have to be far more specific on that one. 1+1 = 3? grid inventories? No classes/just gear certs?

[Talek Krell]

You're going to have to be far more specific on that one. 1+1 = 3? grid inventories? No classes/just gear certs?
Don't forget "Greets!". ;)

[Xyntech]

You're going to have to be far more specific on that one. 1+1 = 3? grid inventories? No classes/just gear certs?

I'm open to suggestion for how to abbreviate it. Pretty much something like this, only in the form of a short poll length option:

My fave parts of PS, the gameplay aspects. I'll play 64 man PS over 1000 man battlefield anyday. Epic scale is nice, but if the gameplay is just the standard bf/cod stuff then i could care less about the game.

The vehicles were my fave part, and were a huge step over any other game. The awesome teamwork and the feel that its an actual vehicle, not just a buff like BF style veh's are, really added a entirely different feel. Much more of an epic and community/social based playstyle. Some great stories come from my zillion hours driving. Its sad to see that great idea PS1 pioneered scrapped and them taking a step back with the BF style stuff, hopefully thats changed.

The much more tactical TTK times were second on my list, aka you dont instantly die, you can take a few hits then react and have an interesting fight. Its much more tactical feeling than just runnin along, instantly dieing never seeing what hit you, and respawning, adnauseum. (yes the netcode and often exaggerated CoF made it too long in ps1, but it still needs to be much longer than BF.) This may work out ok tho, atleast im tellin myself that =D. Having played BF3 beta and its god awful MW ttk (lost interest in the game completely now), im very glad ps2 wasnt ruined by goin that route too.

The epic size fights were cool, but just as important was the terrain. Huge open areas with so much variety. No more boring coridor maps, no more repeating the same tired little bitty map in a deathmatch. Lots of new and interesting stuff all the time.

And finally the customization, i dont mean gettin too crazy with it like PS2 does which can actually limit variety in that you can customize one vehicle to do a bazillion roles so that you dont need but a very few of them. But i mean seeing all the differnt vehicles and various specs, yes it got outta hand with too many certs, anything past br20 just was too many certs. It was a good system that needed some tweaks and more options to focus down trees to keep people more specialized. The new system isnt too bad in that regard other than the aforementioned issue and the fact that with no cap on certs you can eventually get everything, so just a simple class change at spawn/terminal means you can do anything at all. Kinda half specialization and half br 40. The attactments and version choices and even weapon choices tho could help with customizing too. In other words, I cant really say yay or nay on this til i see it in action and get all the details.

In other words, people who like the gameplay mechanics themselves more than they like the gigantic scale combat. I wonder if there is any chance of PS1 being kept open for people like this? Because I am hoping Planetside 2 is pretty different than the first Planetside in quite a few gameplay aspects and it may even be different in a few ways that I don't want, but I could care less as long as it is still balanced, fun and most importantly has THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of players as the rule, not the exception.

how about summing it up this way:

- Gameplay that's exactly the same as the first Planetside

The "don't change anything but the graphics and the netcode" demographic.

[NapalmEnima]

The "don't change anything but the graphics and the netcode" demographic.

So PS1 is a shining gem of perfection? Anything deviating from that formula will only makes it worse?

Wow.

Okay, how about "A larger population"? Can we at least agree on that?

To attract them, it might help to tweak things here and there. And lets improve on this over here... but if we do that, then we should do this... and so on and so on.

And now you've gone from "Planetside Next" to "Planetside 2".

Imagine that.

I suspect that's pretty much a nutshell around the PS:N to PS:2 evolution.

[Xyntech]

So PS1 is a shining gem of perfection? Anything deviating from that formula will only makes it worse?

Wow.

Okay, how about "A larger population"? Can we at least agree on that?

To attract them, it might help to tweak things here and there. And lets improve on this over here... but if we do that, then we should do this... and so on and so on.

And now you've gone from "Planetside Next" to "Planetside 2".

Imagine that.

I suspect that's pretty much a nutshell around the PS:N to PS:2 evolution.

That's you and me. I just wanted to see what the numbers looked like.

I feel like if most of us can agree on certain core concepts being paramount, that a lot of the debates could be kept more civil and level headed.

So far, just from the written answers, it looks like scale is the most frequent answer with teamplay being an extremely close second.

This actually isn't very surprising, considering that many of the debates on things such as tanks has been centered around people who think things like soloable tanks will destroy teamwork and dumb down the game, versus people who think they will help attract new players and wont dumb down the game.

[Helwyr]

Large scale combined arms relying on player skill (FPS) in factional warfare set in a persistent future world.

Regarding team play since I didn't mention it. This too often means grouped play in peoples minds, which I do not agree that every player needs to participate in. The essential part is in the team work of all working towards the goals of your Empire/faction whether grouped with other players or not.

edit: just to clarify... before I get misunderstood. I do think certain vehicles should require multiple players, my comments on team play aren't advocating making everything possible solo.

[Xyntech]

edit: just to clarify... before I get misunderstood. I do think certain vehicles should require multiple players, my comments on team play aren't advocating making everything possible solo.

I hope nobody takes this thread to be suggesting that a huge population be the only thing that matters. I just noted that in some threads, the opinions seemed so diametrically opposed that I wanted to make sure that we all wanted some of the same things first and foremost.

Obviously some people will never be happy with PS2 and there is nothing that can be done about that. For the rest of us, hopefully we can vocally contribute to the development of the game to help make it the biggest, deepest, most bad ass team oriented FPS in history.

[Raymac]

I hope nobody takes this thread to be suggesting that a huge population be the only thing that matters.

True. I think PS1 is an excellent reminder that although the scale is what makes it unique, that alone will not make it a success.

[Malorn]

IMO it is the persistent world that is the most important. Every other shooter other than WWII online has instanced maps that repeat ad infinitum. Planetside has a persistent world and you can go anywhere, do anything, and the turf you fight for is yours until someone takes it back.

Teamplay is a close second, but good teamplay is not unique to Planetside, while the persistent world is. I would argue even the "massive" numbers of people are not as important as the persistent world, since 32v32 can seem quite "massive" in a fast paced shooter in a confined map area. When you factor in respawn time and re-acquring vehicles many PS engagements were about that size. But knowing that your conquests are permanent and not something that resets at the buzzer and that the world you are in is entirely conquerable and explorable is truly "massive" in my mind.

[Traak]

Involvement. This game, like a high-maintenance older Ferrari, demands, and rewards involvement. You think about it when away. Your pulse starts pounding as you get in situations that in the real world you pay taxes to get OTHER people to do, and you are in pain or pleasure, sometimes at the same time.

You are always looking for that better angle, you are budgeting to buy a better system to enjoy it more (the combat TV series that you star in) you just can't get enough.

The real world just gets the volume toned down a bit when you are a Planetside player. Yeah, boss is a (insert epithet here) and coworkers are too, but in PS, no one tries to jockey you out of your position of advanced medic, the enemy can't sue you for winning, and some ho at work sleeping with your squad leader isn't going to decrease your income.

Planetside. It's not a game you play, it's a world you play in.

[Gandhi]

V-V-B :D

[Tikuto]

Errr... "Blow up the other two empires"?

YEARGH BABY! :cool:

[NapalmEnima]

YEARGH BABY! :cool:

You need your meds adjusted. Might I suggest Vyvanse? Works great for me.

>twitch<

I haven't eaten a live puppy in years, plus I now have enough emotional control to hide all the bodies properly. Sure, I still nibble a bit, but at least I haven't been caught.

Err... uh... yeah! Nothing to see here. Move along.

[Graywolves]

You need your meds adjusted. Might I suggest Vyvanse? Works great for me.

>twitch<

I haven't eaten a live puppy in years, plus I now have enough emotional control to hide all the bodies properly. Sure, I still nibble a bit, but at least I haven't been caught.

Err... uh... yeah! Nothing to see here. Move along.

lmfao.

[SuperMorto]

Interaction with other people and surroundings, either in a big battle and team or a 1 on 1, taking as base or doing an ant run.

1 things about Planetside is no matter what you were doing you always knew you where a part of a bigger number and dong something for your side.

[DviddLeff]

Combined arms warfare on a massive scale.

Everything else can change as far as I'm concerned, but as long as I can fight with hundreds of other players who are using fire arms, tanks and aircraft, I'm happy.

[Traak]

LOL another thing about Planetside is belonging to something so huge that is this underground movement that no one knows about but a few.

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