TR Soldier Rocking Camo

[Hamma]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media/main/psnext/twitter/20111122_4ecc20fa03674.jpg

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media/viewer.php?img_id=1776

Pretty Sweet! :D

Edit: and spikes.. haha

[Crator]

Nice! Man, that almost look realistic!

[SuperMorto]

first sweet!

edit second :(

but it looks cool,

[SKYeXile]

thats not the same gun higby had is it?

looks boss.

[Raymac]

Me last week:

I just had a thought. If we have this much customization for camo on vehicles....how much will we have for camo on infantry?

Me now:

OMFG! Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!

[SgtMAD]

thats crazy looking

[SKYeXile]

i second thoughts...theres not alot of red on that.

[SuperMorto]

i second thoughts...theres not alot of red on that.

Swings and roundabouts m8, not alot of red, loads of camo, not alot of camo, loads of red.

But I would know he was TR from a good distance just by the shape of him.

[Trolltaxi]

I need to reconsider my opinion 'not buying visuals in cash-shop'...

[Mirror]

Not sure what to make of the camo stuff on infantry :S

[Raymac]

Not sure what to make of the camo stuff on infantry :S

imho, camo > gray

[Vash02]

Can we have a NC camo coloured guy? I'm a bit worried it will be difficult to tell the difference between the two if they have the same camo scheme.

[captainkapautz]

Is that the new Striker on his shoulder?

[Bags]

Camon on infantry?

What.
The.
Fuck.

There goes this game not being a bigger version of "lolbrown" shooters.

[Zulthus]

Still wondering myself how the hell I'm supposed to distinguish teammates and enemies... I can barely see any red at all on him, and from 25 meters I wouldn't be able to tell. I'm probably the only one completely against vehicle/soldier camo? There's no point to empire colors if everything looks like a desert/forest..

[Khellendros]

The tr and vs rexos look pretty different, and I don't see how you could mistake an agile for a rexo...

[Elude]

Still wondering myself how the hell I'm supposed to distinguish teammates and enemies... I can barely see any red at all on him, and from 25 meters I wouldn't be able to tell. I'm probably the only one completely against vehicle/soldier camo? There's no point to empire colors if everything looks like a desert/forest..

Same way you do in any battlefield game.

[Vash02]

Same way you do in any battlefield game.
Shoot them and then see if you get any rage tells?

[SKYeXile]

Shoot them and then see if you get any rage tells?

Im sure there willl be plenty, we'll see how many heros want to straife infront of lasher spam now that they will be killed alot faster by friendly fucking.

[Brusi]

Still wondering myself how the hell I'm supposed to distinguish teammates and enemies... I can barely see any red at all on him, and from 25 meters I wouldn't be able to tell. I'm probably the only one completely against vehicle/soldier camo? There's no point to empire colors if everything looks like a desert/forest..

Advanced Targeting?

Honestly i don't think it will be as hard as you are expecting it will be.

I would like to see some sort of enforced colours skill in the command tree maybe. Anyone who joins your squad has their scheme changed to match the leader or something.

[Bags]

Same way you do in any battlefield game.

Um, that's the thing, I shoot friendlies all the time in "lolbrown" shooters. I'm going to have a lot of grief it looks like.

Bad decision. Bad SOE.

/newspaper

[SgtMAD]

THIS IS GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN

[captainkapautz]

Um, that's the thing, I shoot friendlies all the time in "lolbrown" shooters. I'm going to have a lot of grief it looks like.

Bad decision. Bad SOE.

/newspaper

Well apparently they won't colorcode everything for your convenience anymore.

The tr and vs rexos look pretty different, and I don't see how you could mistake an agile for a rexo...

This, pretty much.


It isn't that hard to learn the difference in silhoutte for the different sides, I mean even in BF3 for example where russians and american pretty much wear the same kind of clothing, with only minor color differences here and there, you can easily tell them apart.

And in PS2, each side will have a distinct "design"/look.

Maybe not over a longer distance, but that's what "shoot it and see if you get points for it" is for. :D

[BorisBlade]

Will be interesting to see how waving your reticule over someone will make their name show up in red and when these names show up otherwise, on vehicles and infantry alike. In the case of PS1, camo was pointless, you just shoot the guy with the red name. Personally, if camo is goin to be of any use, i think you need to have a decent delay where your target wont have a magical red name pop up unless you hover over them for a decent time period. Helps stop scanning for targets in cover by cheating the red name issue on mouseover. The lame sniper marking crap in BF was god awful stupid, if that comes in im gonna driver over and personally smack Higby. The amount of lame and cheap i could do because of that was absurd. There's a reason i dont play those awful games, i dont want that crap in PS2.

[Sardus]

TR Rexo looks fucking awesome...... can't wait to permanently use it.. forever :O

[SKYeXile]

TR Rexo looks fucking awesome...... can't wait to permanently use it.. forever :O

Get yourself some gen room camo? :P

[Bags]

I hope we can get matyrdom too. And tactical nukes.

I can't wait to play Call of Planetside!!!

[Bravix]

I hope we can get matyrdom too. And tactical nukes.

I can't wait to play Call of Planetside!!!

Last motherf-ing stand! Hell ya XD

[Higby]

as usual the sky isn't falling... empires will have access to different camo patterns which will uniquely incorporate shades of their faction colors, we have spotting systems to enhance that, friendlies will always be on your minimap and have an overhead name / icon by default (dependent on distance) so you always know which guys not to shoot, and grief is being reevaluated and redesigned to fit with the gameplay that a F2P shooter.

[cellinaire]

A very tricky issue indeed, I think. :cool:

And even if pointing one's crosshair over enemy players with camouflage make their red-name appear on the screen, still they get vantage points, like preemptive attack chances and the ability to not be ambushed by enemy(well, not always).

[Vash02]

as usual the sky isn't falling... empires will have access to different camo patterns which will uniquely incorporate shades of their faction colors, we have spotting systems to enhance that, friendlies will always be on your minimap and have an overhead name / icon by default (dependent on distance) so you always know which guys not to shoot, and grief is being reevaluated and redesigned to fit with the gameplay that a F2P shooter.
Will there be a forgive option? Used to rack up hundreds in grief with outfit horseplay.

[Hamma]

as usual the sky isn't falling... empires will have access to different camo patterns which will uniquely incorporate shades of their faction colors, we have spotting systems to enhance that, friendlies will always be on your minimap and have an overhead name / icon by default (dependent on distance) so you always know which guys not to shoot, and grief is being reevaluated and redesigned to fit with the gameplay that a F2P shooter.

*gets crushed by a falling cloud*

Spotting system? I would assume something along the lines of what we see in BF3/BFBC.

[Firefly]

I hope we can get matyrdom too. And tactical nukes.

I can't wait to play Call of Planetside!!!
WAAAAAAH THE SAND IN MY VAGINA, WAAAAAH, GRANULAR VAGINITIS, WAAAAH!

[Vash02]

*gets crushed by a falling cloud*

Spotting system? I would assume something along the lines of what we see in BF3/BFBC.

I dont think the Q to report soldiers you spotted is a bad feature in BF3. Saves time rather than typing it out on /b

[Zulthus]

we have spotting systems to enhance that

Cue overreaction!

http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/images/GifGuide/michael_scott/The-Office-gifs-the-office-14948948-240-196.gif

I'd have to see it first though! Hope it isn't hit 'Q' and he lights up like a firework.

[Raka Maru]

Q and shows up on map would be fine.

Awesome work Devs!!!

[Zulthus]

Q and shows up on map would be fine.

Awesome work Devs!!!

As long as you can't mash Q and be rewarded with knowledge of every enemy position, then fine. Not like BF3 though.

[Vash02]

As long as you can't mash Q and be rewarded with knowledge of every enemy position, then fine. Not like BF3 though.
But in BF3 your cross hairs has to be over the target in order for Q to work. Even then you cant light up the guy behind the guy you've already spotted.

[Raka Maru]

I think targeting and marking on map (that's it) would be fine. But if he moves out of LOS of spotter then can disappear again.

[SKYeXile]

I want a mod on my scythe to auto spot everything, scout aircraft bros, just give me a 12mm.

[SKYeXile]

But in BF3 your cross hairs has to be over the target in order for Q to work. Even then you cant light up the guy behind the guy you've already spotted.

god BF3's shit me, crosshair right over a guy, mashing Q....nope...nope...nope...nope..

[Talek Krell]

I dont think the Q to report soldiers you spotted is a bad feature in BF3. Saves time rather than typing it out on /bI haven't played BF3 but if it's like the Bad Company 2 system then Do Not Want. Too easy to just spam it to put a big red mark over everything in the vicinity of your crosshair. Of course then I try to highlight something specific and the damn thing ignores me...

[Bing]

Even though I'll likely be shunned and ridiculed for being 'dumb', I fully intend on wearing purple. Why else would I play planetside?

[SKYeXile]

I haven't played BF3 but if it's like the Bad Company 2 system then Do Not Want. Too easy to just spam it to put a big red mark over everything in the vicinity of your crosshair. Of course then I try to highlight something specific and the damn thing ignores me...

yea its prettymuch the same as BFBC2, but its alot harder to spot people in BF3, like i say you can spam it on something and no spot.

especially annoying trying to spot sniper, all in the middle of your crosshair, scope shining in your face mashing q, no spot.

[Bags]

WAAAAAAH THE SAND IN MY VAGINA, WAAAAAH, GRANULAR VAGINITIS, WAAAAH!

Aren't you an adult?

And the easiest way to get a response out of Higby is to freak out about it on the forum.

[SKYeXile]

Aren't you an adult?

And the easiest way to get a response out of Higby is to freak out about it on the forum.

YOU ARE FREAKING OUT, MAN.

[SKYeXile]

as usual the sky isn't falling... empires will have access to different camo patterns which will uniquely incorporate shades of their faction colors, we have spotting systems to enhance that, friendlies will always be on your minimap and have an overhead name / icon by default (dependent on distance) so you always know which guys not to shoot, and grief is being reevaluated and redesigned to fit with the gameplay that a F2P shooter.

So what you're saying is if i pay i get less grief?

[xSquirtle]

Can't put my finger on it, but it seems that this TR suit, just seems out of place. As if it didn't have the same art style and nit and grit like the others we've seen now. I remember the first TR rexo picture we got, I thought it was a WIP and not the final :( .

[sylphaen]

The spotting system in Enemy Territory was nice. More specifically, it was great to mark minefields that would then need an engineer to defuse.

The spotting system in PS1 was fine as is: if your squad saw something, it would get on your radar as long as anyone in the squad was looking at it.

Maybe "spotting" is meant to give a static "blip" on the map for friendlies.
e.g. spotting a lodestar would mark its location where it is spotted and not track its movement

[Higby]

So what you're saying is if i pay i get less grief?

No way, just talking about ways to make grief relevant deterrent when someone can easily and freely create new accounts to do stuff like TK everyone defending a base to make it easier for their real team to capture, etc. more punishing for younger characters, forgiveness when actively killing enemies, opt-in for the attacked player to actually assign grief, grief reports in sprees cause faster repercussions, that sort of thing.

[SKYeXile]

No way, just talking about ways to make grief relevant deterrent when someone can easily and freely create new accounts to do stuff like TK everyone defending a base to make it easier for their real team to capture, etc. more punishing for younger characters, forgiveness when actively killing enemies, opt-in for the attacked player to actually assign grief, grief reports in sprees cause faster repercussions, that sort of thing.

I like your forward thinking on countering asshats.

one thing that annoyed me in PS1 was somebody could go jump on markov and emerald, go on a tking spree, then go back to werner, shit needs to be game wide.

[basti]

No way, just talking about ways to make grief relevant deterrent when someone can easily and freely create new accounts to do stuff like TK everyone defending a base to make it easier for their real team to capture, etc. more punishing for younger characters, forgiveness when actively killing enemies, opt-in for the attacked player to actually assign grief, grief reports in sprees cause faster repercussions, that sort of thing.

What about you post a thread with your current design ideas and potential issues that could occur, and we have a community wide brainstorming about that stuff.
Worst case: we learn that community wide brainstorming doesn't work. More likely: we get a awesome and working grief system. :)

[comrade]

I really hope we'll not see this helmet on TR HA in the game. It looks like "helmet is not in his place". Isnt it from light assault?

[xSlideShow]

I really hope we'll not see this helmet on TR HA in the game. It looks like "helmet is not in his place". Isnt it from light assault?

lol, at the amount of helmet complaint seen today.

It's already been said like 6 times now your gonna be able to customize your helm.

[Hamma]

I like your forward thinking on countering asshats.

Yes!

I hope it is called the "Asshat Removal Project" in house ;)

[captainkapautz]

as usual the sky isn't falling... empires will have access to different camo patterns which will uniquely incorporate shades of their faction colors, we have spotting systems to enhance that, friendlies will always be on your minimap and have an overhead name / icon by default (dependent on distance) so you always know which guys not to shoot, and grief is being reevaluated and redesigned to fit with the gameplay that a F2P shooter.

Imo the whole "Hardcore" system from BF works well, i.e. names over friendlies, nothing over enemies, and if you spot it shows the enemy on the map/minimap instead of painting him for all to see directly on the HUD.

[XPquant]

Looks so badass, excellent work on the camo!

[Geist]

Yes!

I hope it is called the "Asshat Removal Project" in house ;)

:thumbsup:

I'm really loving the camo, can we get a higher quality pic soon? I'd also like a comparison shot of all of the TR, NC, VS side-by-side, if possible.

One question: will camo going to be a free customization option or something bought from the SOE store? Seems like one of those cosmetic options that would be seen in a store.

[Shogun]

did highby just accidentally confirm, that the whole game will be a free download????

if assheads are able to just create a new account to cause mischief, that has to be the case!?!

if the game was sold boxed and only free to play after purchase, the grief should not be a problem because you can always punish the account associated with the key that was in the box of the game.

but if everybody can create free accounts without having to purchase a game-key these assheads will have to be adressed (along with the hackers of course, who cannot be banned without account-keys)

[basti]

did highby just accidentally confirm, that the whole game will be a free download????



Indeed he did. ;)

But i expected that anyway. Look at Free Realms and DCUO. Thats the way SOE goes from now on, and quite successfully it seems. Free Realms generates quite some cash, and DCUO just went crazy since its F2P :)

But yea, grief. I shall do a thread, brb. :)

[Xyntech]

No way, just talking about ways to make grief relevant deterrent when someone can easily and freely create new accounts to do stuff like TK everyone defending a base to make it easier for their real team to capture, etc. more punishing for younger characters, forgiveness when actively killing enemies, opt-in for the attacked player to actually assign grief, grief reports in sprees cause faster repercussions, that sort of thing.

Sounds like you guys have some great ideas. PS1 had a decent system that worked pretty well, but it wasn't perfect and it would struggle to keep up with F2P.

I'm sure Forgelight is affording you some new, more dynamic options for distributing grief points. I look forward to seeing it in action.

I'm glad that you are planning to include opt ins for players to assign grief. It's great having duels with team mates every now and then, and it's nice to not worry about getting weapon locked for it.

[basti]

Ah, screw it, lets leave the discussion here. :)

So, grief, how to fix it now that the game is F2P and you could easily be an asshat? Dunno about you, but its pretty simple: Use ways to identify the used Machine, and give it an ID. 2 accounts on the same machine ID = its the same guy. Guy gets himself grief locked one one account, logs out, and a new account with the same Machine ID gets created after that = its the same guy, transfer his grief, or better, flag him as a potential TK/cheater (can also use that to flag a cheaters Machine.) And if he starts TKing again, just grief lock him right away.

Could also add he guys IP for that stuff. Or create a uniquie key in several files of the game, to be able to identify a game installation on a certain machine.

If Key + IP + Machine are the same, its 100% the same guy
If key + Machine is the same, its still the same guy.
If Machine + IP is the same, and the new account was created rather quickly after he last fraud of the old one, its also still the same guy
If key or machine are the same, give him more room to screw up.
If only IP is the same, ignore.


And thats what i got out of my brain after about a few secs. I could most likley fill a few pages with ways to detect asshats. Im an expert there, im a asshat myself. ;) :D

[DviddLeff]

...we have spotting systems

Nice, really wanted to see this in game.

[Shogun]

the system highby mentioned with more restrictive grief handling for new accounts and more forgiving grief handling for veterans sounds good as well.

but it has to be based on actual playtime and not realtime age of the account, so that only the main char/account benefits from this.
otherwise i see a lot of idiots creating more than one account and using the other accounts only for griefing, but since the accounts were all created at the same time they will all have the same amount of penalty.

also, if there is some weaponlock timer, this timer has to be based on playtime as well!
just like in ps1, grieflocked players could still do supportive roles but not fire weapons. but they have to sit out the weaponlock timer ingame! so there is no logging to grief-account - achiving grieflock - logging back to main account and play until the grieftimer on the grief-account ran out to do it all again.

[Higby]

Words

Yeah, some form of hardware fingerprinting is something we've been discussing. There are always ways to reassign your MAC address, change that ID file we put on your PC, etc... someone would spend 10 minutes making a little visual basic app that let you switch between "installs" if we put something like that in. It's sadly all about finding the way that makes it as much of a waste of time for the hacker to get around and therefore not worth doing. We have a lot of plans to thwart this sort of stuff, but I'm not going to discuss them for obvious reasons.

[Bags]

Just write a gui interface in visual basic to track their IP address, drive to their house, and beat them up when they grief too much.

It's what CSI would do.

[Shogun]

I could most likley fill a few pages with ways to detect asshats. Im an expert there, im a asshat myself. ;) :D

that´s nothing new ;-) you play VS, that whole empire was only made for assheads :D
i tried to play vs on ps1 one time, but i had no fun being teamkilled all the time, so i went back to the real soldiers of the NC;):)

but back on the grief topic. there could never be enough ways implemented to detect assheads. because there will be a lot of them! and a few idiots can screw a perfect game for everyone!
and my faith in ps2 becoming a perfect game is growing with every bit of info or media we get!

[basti]

Yeah, some form of hardware fingerprinting is something we've been discussing. There are always ways to reassign your MAC address, change that ID file we put on your PC, etc... someone would spend 10 minutes making a little visual basic app that let you switch between "installs" if we put something like that in. It's sadly all about finding the way that makes it as much of a waste of time for the hacker to get around and therefore not worth doing. We have a lot of plans to thwart this sort of stuff, but I'm not going to discuss them for obvious reasons.

Obviously. ;)

Making it a waste of time is the way to go really. It spots the usual asshat and makes it quite troublesome for the hardcore asshat. And if you just change behaviour of your stuff every patch or two, its gonna be quite annoying to be a hardcore asshat. :>


Wonder what would happen if you read out the Windows CD-Key and just use that. Propably lawsuit. :D

[Crator]

Makes sense that they would keep the griefing systems and anti-hack systems a secret though...

[captainkapautz]

Just write a gui interface in visual basic to track their IP address, drive to their house, and beat them up when they grief too much.

It's what CSI would do.

I fully support this.

[CutterJohn]

For griefing, just make new players do no damage to friendlies for the first 12 hours or so of actual playtime(but of course still accrue grief). Then when some punk gets the idea to do some griefing for lulz, and makes his new character, he won't be able to unless he actually plays that character for 12 hours.

Plus it keeps the new blood from being annoying to everyone else by shooting them in the back.


For hacking I got nothing.

[Hamma]

Yeah, some form of hardware fingerprinting is something we've been discussing. There are always ways to reassign your MAC address, change that ID file we put on your PC, etc... someone would spend 10 minutes making a little visual basic app that let you switch between "installs" if we put something like that in. It's sadly all about finding the way that makes it as much of a waste of time for the hacker to get around and therefore not worth doing. We have a lot of plans to thwart this sort of stuff, but I'm not going to discuss them for obvious reasons.

Tie into the PSU Ban Database.. we will take care of the asshats. ;)

[ThGlump]

No way, just talking about ways to make grief relevant deterrent when someone can easily and freely create new accounts to do stuff like TK everyone defending a base to make it easier for their real team to capture, etc.

Thats why i hope there will be atleast one subscription only server. Buy to play would be good, but if its totally f2p i dont want to play it anymore. There will be 100x more cheater, hackers, trolls and bots (to fill enemy population faster and give you more easy targets) than normal players.



As for grief mechanics:

Some progressive grief damage would help. If you have zero/very low grief friendly fire would do much less damage (like 10%) but full grief (dont apply do situations where you dont get grief like FF on squad (if thats still there) so it wont be abused). As you grief increase you FF damage will increase too. It will prevent some accidental friendly kills, but if you are careless (or griefer) you will kill friendlies easily.

If you FF kill someone with (much) less grief than you have, they should have option to lock your weapons for short time (1 min) as punishment. (this is for preventing TK rampage to help other team). Long timer lock from ps1 for very high grief should be there too.

Someone with medium-high grief should be killable by anyone with less grief without grief penalty. (so you can stop griefers to kill whole squad without punishment).
Players with high grief could be visually marked so others are aware of potential threat from him (but that could be abusable with that grief free kills so rather not).

[Shogun]

i like the idea of no FF damage for new players/accounts.
like it was said some posts ago. keep the grief system in place, but make new players do no damage for the first few battleranks or for some hours of active gameplay.
i never thought of that but it sounds brilliant and will really help on 2 fronts because the nuubs will learn not to shoot their own people (for they get grief) but it will not annoy the veterans who take the backshots because they don´t get killed by them.

i would like more veterans to think about this system! what are your thoughts? any negative aspects i didn´t see?

[basti]

i like the idea of no FF damage for new players/accounts.
like it was said some posts ago. keep the grief system in place, but make new players do no damage for the first few battleranks or for some hours of active gameplay.
i never thought of that but it sounds brilliant and will really help on 2 fronts because the nuubs will learn not to shoot their own people (for they get grief) but it will not annoy the veterans who take the backshots because they don´t get killed by them.

i would like more veterans to think about this system! what are your thoughts? any negative aspects i didn´t see?


That would indeed be a simple and perfect solution. Makes it impossible to be a asshat.

What you could do is create a bunch of accounts, level them all up to be able to attack friendlys, and then jsut start being a asshat. But theres also a counter to that, simply track for such stuff, easily done. If a account just logs in to one or several chars to be a Teamkiller, ban that account. :>

[Crator]

Nice, I really like what you guys are saying here about no FF for new characters...

[NlightN]

Yeah, some form of hardware fingerprinting is something we've been discussing. There are always ways to reassign your MAC address, change that ID file we put on your PC, etc... someone would spend 10 minutes making a little visual basic app that let you switch between "installs" if we put something like that in. It's sadly all about finding the way that makes it as much of a waste of time for the hacker to get around and therefore not worth doing. We have a lot of plans to thwart this sort of stuff, but I'm not going to discuss them for obvious reasons.




I say just skip all the tapdancing and just go with a boxed copy, with an account key ftw. Or boxed + f2p option.....the ftp being very limited in abilities....capping out at BR10 or a quarter of what the max rank would be. F2p players would be able to play as a viable grunt or medic and be able to contribute to their side, but not able to do much else. Make it so they'd PREFER just buying a copy, but keep the ability to still label it as F2P.


Probably too late to go this route but imo would be the best combo for coupling high population + hightened security

[Coreldan]

I say just skip all the tapdancing and just go with a boxed copy, with an account key ftw. Or boxed + f2p option.....the ftp being very limited in abilities....capping out at BR10 or a quarter of what the max rank would be. F2p players would be able to play as a viable grunt or medic and be able to contribute to their side, but not able to do much else. Make it so they'd PREFER just buying a copy, but keep the ability to still label it as F2P.


Probably too late to go this route but imo would be the best combo for coupling high population + hightened security

Or even a 5€/$ account activation cost, much like EVE online has. That ain't much, so it shouldnt turn away many potential gamers, but still enough to get expensive to get constantly banned.

[Shogun]

it doesn´t make griefing totally impossible, but like matt said, the goal is to make it really hard to grief on purpose, rendering the effort unworthy.

funny funny assheads will just annoy themselfs by shooting peas and getting grief for it, and as a bonus this applys to noobs who just don´t know better and allows for them to learn how the game works without annoying veterans in the process.

the key to this system is that only active playtime is measured for the counters. no afk time and no realtime counters! griefcounters only move while the player is logged in and gives any kind of input! that makes grieflocks really annoying for the player and forces him to do some support to make up for the evil teamkillings ;-)
no purpose griefer would go through this more than one time!

[Shogun]

Or even a 5€/$ account activation cost, much like EVE online has. That ain't much, so it shouldnt turn away many potential gamers, but still enough to get expensive to get constantly banned.

that´s what i thought of as well.

maybe pair this with a trial version, to draw in the unsure masses and switch off the trial accounts FF, so there is no money barrier to check out the game, but there is also no way to abuse the trial for annoyance.

at least a small fee for full version activation would really be wise. if not for griefers, do it to make cheaters and hackers have to risk some real money with every ban! and to be able to identify them if they repeat this.

doesn´t need to be a full price boxed game, just some bugs will do the job for a great amount of wannabe hackers or trainer/cheat downloaders.
and there will be downloadable trainers and cheats... there have always been and always will be so if you cannot stop them, at least make them pay!

[Coreldan]

Trial still has the problem that the rage hackers who cheat just to annoy people will have free reign, thus the activation cost would be mostly useless and would only annoy those who try to do some subtle'ish long term cheating.

But yeah, I really think a 5-10€ cost should come in some way of making a new account, be it a "box" price or just an account activation cost. Will make it alot nastier for chronic cheaters while still keeping the bar to try the game out low. You could even give those 5€ worth of "station points" or whatever they are, so that people don't really "lose" anything if they are on a legit purpose, but cheaters still lose money for every new account they make.

[ThGlump]

That would indeed be a simple and perfect solution. Makes it impossible to be a asshat.

What you could do is create a bunch of accounts, level them all up to be able to attack friendlys, and then jsut start being a asshat. But theres also a counter to that, simply track for such stuff, easily done. If a account just logs in to one or several chars to be a Teamkiller, ban that account. :>

Well that cant be avoided unless you bound every account to credit card, and grief link all accounts with same card. But that would fend off many players so they wont do that. You could only annoy them so they wont bother creating multiple accounts - like needing to reinstall game if you want account not grief linked with your other accounts as every install wold be unique (not some additional file but hardcoded ID during compilation into some main files). Its possible as today installs are often streamed, but it would be hell on soe side to create and manage that many installs/recompiling for every install request.

Or accounts without card link, or those without any purchase would have rocket fast grief gain (with lowered FF damage). You will end grief locked before you can do much damage. And it has no impact on gameplay unless you shoot teammates so it wont hinder free players.

And first few BR of no damage/grief but with annoying warning that you should not shoot friendlies should be in place so new players learn.

[Shogun]

Trial still has the problem that the rage hackers who cheat just to annoy people will have free reign, thus the activation cost would be mostly useless and would only annoy those who try to do some subtle'ish long term cheating.

But yeah, I really think a 5-10€ cost should come in some way of making a new account, be it a "box" price or just an account activation cost. Will make it alot nastier for chronic cheaters while still keeping the bar to try the game out low. You could even give those 5€ worth of "station points" or whatever they are, so that people don't really "lose" anything if they are on a legit purpose, but cheaters still lose money for every new account they make.


great idea!

make a small activation fee and give this amount as credits for the shop!

this idea is brilliant and a win/win situation.

after all, SOE wants to make cash with that game and legit players will not be forced to throw the money away just to play, they can spend it in the shop. that will also force them to actually look at the shop and maybe fall in love with some stuff that goes beyond that first credit. like i said win/win situation

[Xyntech]

the key to this system is that only active playtime is measured for the counters. no afk time and no realtime counters! griefcounters only move while the player is logged in and gives any kind of input! that makes grieflocks really annoying for the player and forces him to do some support to make up for the evil teamkillings ;-)
no purpose griefer would go through this more than one time!

I hope that the anti-AFK detection is pretty robust.

It should have some pretty strict criteria for counting you as not being afk. Obviously you wouldn't have to meet all the criteria to keep playing, just for that playtime to count towards your anti-grief non-being counted as afk time.

Things like requiring at least one kill or, alternatively, one specific non combat task (such as healing someone) per hour, or else that hour doesn't count towards your time. You must move at least once every 5 minutes or it stops counting towards your time. Moving in the same direction for prolonged periods stops counting towards your time.

The timers would of course be separate, so that it wasn't subversively penalizing people who happened to go afk for a couple minutes quite often.

As long as you killed someone or did some support task at least once during that hour, at least 55 minutes would still be credited to you even if you went afk for 5 minutes.

[ThGlump]

Trial still has the problem that the rage hackers who cheat just to annoy people will have free reign, thus the activation cost would be mostly useless and would only annoy those who try to do some subtle'ish long term cheating.

But yeah, I really think a 5-10€ cost should come in some way of making a new account, be it a "box" price or just an account activation cost. Will make it alot nastier for chronic cheaters while still keeping the bar to try the game out low. You could even give those 5€ worth of "station points" or whatever they are, so that people don't really "lose" anything if they are on a legit purpose, but cheaters still lose money for every new account they make.

That could be solved someway as in Rift. Separate servers for free/trial players (regular/paying players can play there too to help/play with friends) and if you ever make any payment you can move your account to regular server. It just need easy automated character transfers (or character not lock to server but to account so it doesnt matter which one you play and you can play on different one anytime).

[Bags]

The dumbest thing you can do in F2P games is to segregate the payers and the freebies.

[Xyntech]

The dumbest thing you can do in F2P games is to segregate the payers and the freebies.

This.

F2P is to keep the game populated so that we can actually play Planetside as it is meant to be played. Keeping everyone together is not only a good idea, it is essential.

The trick is to keep F2P griefers from ruining the game for anyone, freebies or payers alike. Segregation is a terrible solution. Box price is a much better solution, but is also a bit of a simplistic solution.

I'm interested to see what the devs can pull off.

[ThGlump]

The dumbest thing you can do in F2P games is to segregate the payers and the freebies.

Not much dumber than to annoy paying players with endless hacking freebies so he stop play/spend money on it and you end with full servers with no money gain.

Yes when freebies see something cool on paying players they may desire to buy it too, but you must ensure that number is greater than pissed off players.

[Xyntech]

Not much dumber than to annoy paying players with endless hacking freebies so he stop play/spend money on it and you end with full servers with no money gain.

Yes when freebies see something cool on paying players they may desire to buy it too, but you must ensure that number is greater than pissed off players.

Planetside 1 is a pay to play game and it has hackers out the ass.

If you have hackers running rampant, you have already failed. Segregation won't help the matter much.

Addressing the issues head on while keeping all of the playerbase together is the way to go.

[ThGlump]

Planetside 1 is a pay to play game and it has hackers out the ass.

Well i somewhat expect that soe dont make same mistake as with ps1 - not caring about game and not baning hackers is what keep them there.
Problem is that with f2p banning wont help so we are screwed.

[FriendlyFire]

Hackers still equal $$$$ to SOE.


They have to find a system where they still make money off the hackers while not going over budget trying to prevent them.

[ThGlump]

Yea its called purchase cost. So you get money even from banned hackers. But without need to buy first i doubt they will buy anything from shop on accounts they plan hack with, so no money gain there.

[SKYeXile]

Yeah, some form of hardware fingerprinting is something we've been discussing. There are always ways to reassign your MAC address, change that ID file we put on your PC, etc... someone would spend 10 minutes making a little visual basic app that let you switch between "installs" if we put something like that in. It's sadly all about finding the way that makes it as much of a waste of time for the hacker to get around and therefore not worth doing. We have a lot of plans to thwart this sort of stuff, but I'm not going to discuss them for obvious reasons.

make them handover their credit card details, then ban them via credit card...may not work for people without credit cards.

It is hard to get a new credit cards all the time.

[Higby]

Hackers still equal $$$$ to SOE.


They have to find a system where they still make money off the hackers while not going over budget trying to prevent them.

False. hackers = banned to SOE.

[FIREk]

Hackers still equal $$$$ to SOE.


They have to find a system where they still make money off the hackers while not going over budget trying to prevent them.

How does that make sense? More money is likely to be lost because of the game's lowered appeal due to a hacker problem, than made off those hackers. APB is a fine example, both the original and Reloaded.

[Raka Maru]

Most of you are thinking about this wrong. Spoofs/hacks/proxies... That's all part of their game.

Leverage the strength of the established credit card system and PayPal or other financial orgs.

Player becomes asshat, then ban, punish, or whatever. After little Johnny used up all grandmas cards to make accounts, then he's done. Take it a step further and check home/billing addresses.

[Shogun]

good to know that matt is reading this thread. maybe we have come up with some fresh ideas for the devs to discuss ;-)

i hope SOE doesn´t underestimate the hackerproblem, but after all those major devestating hacks this year i don´t think so. now everybody in the industry should know that it´s near impossible to be totally safe and that hackers accept any challenge.
matt told us on several occasions that they are taking the hackerproblem very seriously. and that´s all we need to know about the cheatprotection for the obvious reasons, matt mentioned as well.

the sad thing is, that the anticheat team will have to stay on the game forever to keep up with the hackers new inventions. the day, the cheatprotection doesn´t change anymore, the hackers will win and ruin the game. happened on an awful lot of games before and especially ps1.

[Gwartham]

No hackers cost SOE money.

Not only reputation, but also consider that most hackers scammers and sellers all use stolen CC's, and chargebacks cost the company money having to deal with them.

[Traak]

Will be interesting to see how waving your reticule over someone will make their name show up in red and when these names show up otherwise, on vehicles and infantry alike. In the case of PS1, camo was pointless, you just shoot the guy with the red name. Personally, if camo is goin to be of any use, i think you need to have a decent delay where your target wont have a magical red name pop up unless you hover over them for a decent time period. Helps stop scanning for targets in cover by cheating the red name issue on mouseover. The lame sniper marking crap in BF was god awful stupid, if that comes in im gonna driver over and personally smack Higby. The amount of lame and cheap i could do because of that was absurd. There's a reason i dont play those awful games, i dont want that crap in PS2.

Simple. No HUD ID of anything or anybody.

You have to actually look, just like you do in the real world. If you can't see, then don't shoot.

No HUD-tag billboards for friendlies or enemies, not green ones, not purple, not yellow, not orange, not red.

Sound will be a big help, because no one is using another empire's weapons.

But I say NO to billboards floating over anything. ANYTHING. Having HUD tags on friendlies will make it easy to find enemies, still. I don't think, with the level of graphics in PS2, we need HUD tags on anything.

Ooh! That's a Magrider!

Wow. Good thing we had that HUD tag, because it is so hard to tell between a Mag and a Vannie? We don't need HUD tags. It makes spotting enemies easy and lazy.

Sharp eyes and a quick mind should be rewarded. Not a HUD-tag system that can be turned into exploits a week after PS2 comes out.

[Traak]

False. hackers = banned to SOE.

I believe we just saw the first indication of how much tolerance will be given to PS2 hackers by The Man himself.

[Coreldan]

Many will disagree. I think it sorta makes a game easier to play in longer periods when you have the name tags. But it's not that PS1 had nametags at all times, so some spotting was still necessary. In BF3 for example it gets quite tedious after several hours to having to stare at the screen with such a focus for some random pixel that shouldnt be there.

[SKYeXile]

Many will disagree. I think it sorta makes a game easier to play in longer periods when you have the name tags. But it's not that PS1 had nametags at all times, so some spotting was still necessary. In BF3 for example it gets quite tedious after several hours to having to stare at the screen with such a focus for some random pixel that shouldnt be there.

yea, gets sort of annoying, makes the game slower too, aka more boring.


BIG RED NAME ABOVE EVERYBODYS HEAD, SOLVED.

[Coreldan]

I don't think the red nametags should be there always, cos sniping would become quite hard when you could sort of never hide :D

I think the system PS had was OK.

[SKYeXile]

I don't think the red nametags should be there always, cos sniping would become quite hard when you could sort of never hide :D

I think the system PS had was OK.

i thought there was always names above peoples heads...hrm...never did long range much...and always played with adv targeting...so hrm.

[Coreldan]

I never had any implants but Surge and PShield I think, and I'm fairly sure that name tags weren't visible 24/7. I think you had to poke them with your crosshair first before it would come visible, so the "oirignal spotting" would've had to come without any red nametag aid.

It's been a while though, so don't quote me on this :D

[SKYeXile]

I never had any implants but Surge and PShield I think, and I'm fairly sure that name tags weren't visible 24/7. I think you had to poke them with your crosshair first before it would come visible, so the "oirignal spotting" would've had to come without any red nametag aid.

It's been a while though, so don't quote me on this :D

hrm no you;re right i watched some videos on youtube of some snipers, they dont get red name until the x hair is over the target, i think thats a fine system. obviously stuff much closer in HA range generally always has a red name.

[Traak]

There's no such thing as Advanced Targeting.

[Raka Maru]

No name tags, just map dot to comrades as if radioed in as enemy spotted.

[Raka Maru]

There's no such thing as Advanced Targeting.

Yes there is, they're bleeding heavy and walking slow. They must be wounded bad.

[Atuday]

False. hackers = banned to SOE.

Hackers = Applying to work for SOE locking the servers down so other hackers get put to shame.

[Saerain]

Just put nametags on friendlies. Makes friendly fire less likely, keeps you informed of the locations of your allies, doesn't give away enemy positions, and makes sense technologically. Pretty simple to broadcast an IFF and display it in a HUD overlay. We can do that today. I'd expect it to be taken for granted in 900 years, if not horribly obsolete.

[Shogun]

i was also wondering about nametags. i liked the system of ps1. it worked good. i always had advanced targeting implant so i could even see the health bars. without that implant, names would pop up if enemys come too near i think so it was no problem for long range snipers. and infils would only get nametags if they are detected by motion sensors or mossie radar.

any kind of camo would be more useful without enemy nametags, but for night time infantery battle it would be a pain to have no targeting systems and after all it´s the future so there should be some electronical friend or foe detection to minimize friendly fire.

maybe it would be a nice idea to get rid of nametags in general unless some targeting systems are used, like motion sensors or advanced targeting implants. this will keep the engineers busy, placing those detectors for the team.
but i´m not sure if this gives the defending team too much of an advantage if those sensors are still only deployable outside of enemy sphere of influence. AND we would have to get rid of that annoying brainmelting sound those sensors did when detecting enemys.

[Traak]

There are many, many files in a PS install. Tagging about 200 of them, or 2000 of them, with a random string of digits buried somewhere deep in the code would make it extremely tedious to go through and modify all of them.

Especially when the string of digits follows an algorithm, and unless they cross-match each other with an algorithm, the whole game is rejected.

But, let him log on, get to a battle, and then find out. So each iteration would require log on, wait, transport, etc. And then find out he can't fire weapons only when he is in a battle.

This would make the turnaround time for PS cheaters who get banned go from seconds to hours, days, weeks, or months.

As an example, if, in the various files there is an identifier that when the third digit is added up, makes a sum. Which will be a number found in 200 other files, then all that has to be re-done every time a ban occurs.

All of this is even more effective if you have to pay 150 dollars for a game to begin with. Once your game key is tainted, that's it, key is forever banned. Wanna spend another 150 just to be able to TRY to play?

I know the professionals that make money doing this will have sophisticated algorithms in place to compare installations and look for differences, but the data can also be dependent on the servers, too.

So, your computer sends a message on startup of the game "10394612349812341934709741342134073409173246101"
To which the server responds with a set of numbers, say, 200 of them, one of which is the correct number. Your computer responds with the correct one, suitably processed further by dividing by Pi, then the server okays the transaction. Without the server okaying your installation, you don't play.

It isn't that difficult, if they truly want to do this.

"You have failed authentication"

"But that guy who sold me the DVD said it was good!"

"Buy another DVD, please."

Put the onus for protecting their accounts on the players. Do you really want to let your retarded friends play your account? Is it worth losing it? Do you really want him to get on your account and start quoting bannable statements over the chat channels?

It's your account. Up to you to protect it.

To make it profitable for Sony, which will benefit the rest of us, ultimately, make the option to reactivate your account for 10,000 dollars.

[RodenyC]

So it's confirmed that all empires will have specific camp example:
Vanu gets Marpat,despat and digital urban camo
Terran gets Woodland ,3 color desert camo and all black camo
NC gets tiger stripe multi cam and digital camo.
Couldn't think of artic camo