PC Gamer Article The anatomy of a Battle

[DayOne]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/02/23/planetside-2-war-story/

yaaay! informations! :bouncy:

[DviddLeff]

Beat me to it!

Got to read the thing now, may take some time; its huge!

[dpranker]

Awesome article! Not really any new information that I noticed, but these previews are really getting me pumped to play this thing

[Boogster]

It all sounds ace.

I just wish I didn't feel a bit screwed over as a European. I still don't think we'll actually get access to beta. :/

[DayOne]

Not really any information on things but a bit of a reveal on the mechanics of capturing and defending bases.

The whole Pro7 thing has really soured the game but I want it to succeed soooo much. If they do it well, and I'm pretty sure they are, then I will be playing this game for years to come!

[General M]

If only I could play it this year.....

[EZShot]

Good read. I really like the development teams ethics.

"Less is more", "Let's innovate". :drools:

[Oryon22]

It all sounds ace.

I just wish I didn't feel a bit screwed over as a European. I still don't think we'll actually get access to beta. :/

It's still way too early to tell if this is even going to be a problem

[Hmr85]

Really good read, I really enjoyed. I can't wait to get in the beta and give it a go.

[Tigersmith]

This is a great read everyone. Game is really sounding solid. woo hoo

[DayOne]

Yay, news page :D

Glad admins can rename topics, I kinda screwed up the copy paste in my excitement!

Also, I HIGHLY doubt Europeans will be left out of beta. Perhaps not really early beta but they will have to test the servers.

[MgFalcon]

Wait did I read that correctly? 50 person MAX crash, 5 Galaxies... Ohhhhhh I'm so happy to know my baby can carry 10 MAX'es now! :)

[Brokinarrow]

Have they said how many continents there are going to be? Because more and more I get the feeling there aren't going to be that many at launch... but then some of the stuff they said in this article makes it seem like the continents are going to be HUGE, which I would be perfectly fine with.

[GTGD]

Interesting that when a base is hacked, the spawn tubes go offline. Has that been stated before or is this the first we're hearing?

NO MORE INTERFARMS!!!

[Mirror]

Interesting that when a base is hacked, the spawn tubes go offline. Has that been stated before or is this the first we're hearing?

NO MORE INTERFARMS!!!

I think that is one of the objectives you can choose to do before or after you hack the base just like what is mentioned with the vehicle spawn points and how they can be destroyed and repaired.

[polywomple]

lots of stuff to read wooohoooo

[ringring]

Sounds good and highly reminicient of ps1. Sure a few differences in detail but the spirit is there without a doubt.

Edit and I really liked this "Players are the thing that is keeping you from winning, not game mechanics."

Yep, the players are the thing!

[Snowfake]

Interesting! Looking forward to see how it works.

[polywomple]

I love how they want to be away from the "automated" gameplay that you get from generishooters like COD and even PS1, things like automated turrets and the always A -> B gameplay. Sounds exciting and involving many covert missions

[DayOne]

I love how they want to be away from the "automated" gameplay that you get from generishooters like COD and even PS1, things like automated turrets and the always A -> B gameplay. Sounds exciting and involving many covert missions

With the new territory capturing so it's not just bases we are going to see more diverse battles. :D

[Raymac]

Sounds good and highly reminicient of ps1. Sure a few differences in detail but the spirit is there without a doubt.

Edit and I really liked this "Players are the thing that is keeping you from winning, not game mechanics."

Yep, the players are the thing!

I had the same thought. It more or less sounded like somebody describing a PS1 battle. And that makes alot of sense considering the testing they've been able to do so far hasn't been on a large scale. It also means that the true heart and soul of Planetside will be alive and well in PS2.

The only concern I have about this is the repetative nature of capturing bases in Planetside. After 8 years of doing it, it can get a bit routine, so I'm really excited about the terrain capture system to liven things up.

Also, this article had some beautiful images. That one of the Scythe on top is out of this world.

[Vash02]

Interesting that when a base is hacked, the spawn tubes go offline. Has that been stated before or is this the first we're hearing?

NO MORE INTERFARMS!!!
People are spawning in in full armour now and not in PJs anymore so it kinda makes sense.

I'll miss the pajama parties *sob*.

[DayOne]

People are spawning in in full armour now and not in PJs anymore so it kinda makes sense.

I'll miss the pajama parties *sob*.

On noes! Now I can't be shot in the face by someone camping the tubes with a shotgun! D:

[Malorn]

I'm glad they cycled back to having players as the primary defense mechanic of a base.

A base needs objectives of course, and I like shield generators and vehicle pads as objectives that can be disabled. Looks like spawn room is still an option, and that we still "hack" the base to capture it. Hope base generator is still there as well.

Wonder if hacking/capture speed will be naturally tied to classes, particularly with the infiltrator class having faster speed than others. Or maybe it's a general cert. I like it class-based better.

All in all, some goodness here. PS1 had a great model for base capture, nice to see the aren't throwing it out the window.

[Vash02]

On noes! Now I can't be shot in the face by someone camping the tubes with a shotgun! D:

I've always favoured a lethal electical shock to the keyboard/mouse of anyone spawn camping. That or insta-death when entering the spawns. Simply have a power module that they can destroy instead of the tubes themselves.

[DayOne]

I've always favoured a lethal electical shock to the keyboard/mouse of anyone spawn camping. That or insta-death when entering the spawns. Simply have a power module that they can destroy instead of the tubes themselves.

:lol:

Shouldn't be a problem in PS2 now as the bases, or the tubes at least, go neutral so no one can spawn there during the hack. Annoying for defenders but more of an incentive to not allow them to get into the base anyway.

[TerminatorUK]

This is a great article...for me at least it's confirmed a bunch of things I personally haven't seen confirmed before (in no particular order)

- There is still a "Hack and Hold" mechanic for capturing bases and it can be reversed by the defending team
- The hack disables the defenders spawn tubes (rather like Planetside at release used to)
- Terminals, Vehicle "Spawners" (working title?), Shields can still be destroyed / disabled
- Base facility items (Turrets, Shields, Terminals) still need repairing post-battle
- Galaxies can hold 10 MAXs (Higby's example of 50 MAXs over 5 galaxies = capacity of 10 MAXs each)
- The gameplay seems to have been tailored so it isn't an always an inevitable loss for the defenders once the CY is taken
- Courtyard shields have been done away with (or certainly aren't invulnerable without taking out the gen or removing the lattice benefit etc..)
- Ethic of not competing against the "game mechanics" where there is no human opposition (hopefully the end of destroying unmanned turrets, dropping tubes and gen for the sake of it in an unmanned base etc...)

[SniperSteve]

And you get to those solutions, the ability for players to actually be geniuses at your game, to be experts at your game, by taking things away from game mechanics are preventing stuff and allowing it to be players that are preventing stuff.

Anyway. That’s something that we stumbled across, I think, as a “Why isn’t this fun yet?” kind of thing. “You know what, I think there’s too many barriers to it being fun.” I told the world designers when we were talking about this stuff, I said, “I feel like we’re trying to outsmart ourselves, and that we’ve succeeded.” That’s just…what’s the reasoning behind that? Okay, cool, we’ve made some really intelligent, cool game designs for these mechanics, these are really compelling, awesome designs. And they’re unnecessary and they’re preventing us from having fun. So let’s just get rid of them. And that’s what we did.

Higby is brilliant. The depth in PlanetSide was one of the really awesome things about it. Glad they are shooting for this. Keep it up!

And also the willingness to remove 'cool' things because they don't add to the enjoyment is a hard, but good, call. +1 for Higgles!

And as far as base mechanics go, I think my personal opinion is that base objectives (tubes, gen, shields, etc..) serve to make the the base easier to capture by completing them, not as prerequisites for capturing the base.

[Sifer2]

Wait did I read that correctly? 50 person MAX crash, 5 Galaxies... Ohhhhhh I'm so happy to know my baby can carry 10 MAX'es now! :)


Yeah I read that part and raised an eyebrow. Either MAX's are WAY weaker in PS2 compared to 1 or this is going to be pretty broken. Since from what I have ready currently MAX needs no resources like Vehicles. And now it doesn't need its own slots in transports either. So what is going to keep MAX spam from just dominating? Unless they really took all the power out of them. Which would suck since I want to see strong MAX's again just with proper limitations like last time.


Also I found Matt's revelation with removing artificial barriers so players could have fun to be kind of ironic. Considering it sort of spits in the face of their continental footholds concept.

[SurgeonX]

So the essence of PlanetSide is alive and well :D
Despite the ProSiebenSat fiasco, the stuff that matters, ie, the game, still keeps sounding better and better.

[NewSith]

Yeah I read that part and raised an eyebrow. Either MAX's are WAY weaker in PS2 compared to 1 or this is going to be pretty broken. Since from what I have ready currently MAX needs no resources like Vehicles. And now it doesn't need its own slots in transports either. So what is going to keep MAX spam from just dominating? Unless they really took all the power out of them. Which would suck since I want to see strong MAX's again just with proper limitations like last time.

As long as MAX turning speed is bound by physics and not mouse sensivity - it's fine. Besides I'm getting a feeling that MAXes will also be vulnerable to headshots.

Sidenote: The way I see it, maxes are going to have engineer-repaired armor on contra to shields. So to be effficient they'll need 2 guys supporting them instead of 1. Plus no more REK, juice & medkits carried in max's inventory.

[dsi]

The amount of change they made gives me hope for them fixing tanks etc

[Sifer2]

As long as MAX turning speed is bound by physics and not mouse sensivity - it's fine. Besides I'm getting a feeling that MAXes will also be vulnerable to headshots.

Sidenote: The way I see it, maxes are going to have engineer-repaired armor on contra to shields. So to be effficient they'll need 2 guys supporting them instead of 1. Plus no more REK, juice & medkits carried in max's inventory.


Slow turning speed isn't going to help you in the kind of situation they mentioned. Which is dropping 50 MAX's on top of a base to just bum rush it and clean out all the defenders. Then again if MAX's are so easy to pull all the defenders will probably be MAX's too lol.

[That one noob]

I wonder how Gal drops are gonna work now, since there is a shield surrounding the base. Will our para's go splat on the shield or take shield damage after passing through the shield?

And it looks like gen holds are coming back. I can just hear the frustration of 40 people being mowed down by MAXes now. Or burnt to a crisp.

[Vash02]

” Or we can bring in five Galaxies and drop 50 MAXes into the courtyards and say, “Screw it, we’re gonna MAX rush it.” *shudder* You are really going to have to convince me on this one Higby. It sounds terrible.

[BorisBlade]

Seems very cool. However it seems like we will do a ton of "base swapping" as in you move around as your enemy takes back stuff you got earlier. No more continent caps to win. But a ton of more stagnant style fights and a ton more "annoying bs" i know they like to keep it complicated but they should take out things like that. Just constant pointless hacks all over the cont is nothing but annoying, its not fun nor good gameplay. They need systems to keep those down to meaningful back hacks. PS1 did that just fine. Then you keep the depth and strategy but without the constant pointless frustration.

And without really capturing the continent, i forsee big issues as far as win conditions. People complained about that in PS1 but that game technically had the wins with the cont caps, now we wont even have that. Resource count is not even remotely meaningful, so letting that be the win condition will not cut it. It will be interesting to see how they deal with this win condition and the merry go round of capping that feels hollow since you just lose your stuff not long after capping since you rarely ever cap large parts of a cont, let alone the entire cont.

[Sifer2]

Seems very cool. However it seems like we will do a ton of "base swapping" as in you move around as your enemy takes back stuff you got earlier. No more continent caps to win. But a ton of more stagnant style fights and a ton more "annoying bs" i know they like to keep it complicated but they should take out things like that. Just constant pointless hacks all over the cont is nothing but annoying, its not fun nor good gameplay. They need systems to keep those down to meaningful back hacks. PS1 did that just fine. Then you keep the depth and strategy but without the constant pointless frustration.

And without really capturing the continent, i forsee big issues as far as win conditions. People complained about that in PS1 but that game technically had the wins with the cont caps, now we wont even have that. Resource count is not even remotely meaningful, so letting that be the win condition will not cut it. It will be interesting to see how they deal with this win condition and the merry go round of capping that feels hollow since you just lose your stuff not long after capping since you rarely ever cap large parts of a cont, let alone the entire cont.




I agree that was the biggest flaw of PS1 before the BFR's were ever introduced IMO. And while i'm sure PS2 will be fun for at least a few months from newness I don't see where they have really improved in this area. In fact they made it worse with the uncapturable footholds.

I know there are some kinds of people that have a high tolerance for repetition. The kinds of people that still play the same map in Battlefield 2 for over a decade, and enjoy themselves. But other people don't want to fight the same fights every night forever.

Maybe this will get better down the line if they introduce more planets, and EVE style elements.

[Raymac]

*shudder* You are really going to have to convince me on this one Higby. It sounds terrible.

Max crashes, multi-gal hot drops, giant tank columns. These large coordinated efforts are part of what made Planetside so special to me.

[Rbstr]

Resource count is not even remotely meaningful, so letting that be the win condition will not cut it.

How do you know that? They may be very important.

[Xaine]

I hate MAX crashes. I just think its the dumbest tactic ever.

No hate towards the people that use them though, i mean its there, its effective, so people are going to use it. I get that.

I just think the whole thought train of 'Oh the defence is too strong, lets just all pile into MAXs and run in the front door and rape everything' is just so off.

[DayOne]

if they gave MAX's a high resource cost then you would not get so many crashes. Easy fix IMO.

[basti]

Yeah I read that part and raised an eyebrow. Either MAX's are WAY weaker in PS2 compared to 1 or this is going to be pretty broken. Since from what I have ready currently MAX needs no resources like Vehicles. And now it doesn't need its own slots in transports either. So what is going to keep MAX spam from just dominating? Unless they really took all the power out of them. Which would suck since I want to see strong MAX's again just with proper limitations like last time.


Also I found Matt's revelation with removing artificial barriers so players could have fun to be kind of ironic. Considering it sort of spits in the face of their continental footholds concept.

Maxes are indeed strong. But also weak. They never were the super killing machine people seem to remember them. They where powerful, but a lone max didnt do much good against a smart player.
Now, Maxcrashes were only powerful because you rushed the base with a lot of them, means run mode through the enemy. You divide the damage between the maxes, if you hit a unprepared defense. But if the enemy spots your attempt soon enough, and gets the AV out, hell breaks loose. Ive seen Entire Platoons doing a max crash that didnt even got into the door. Kill the guys around the door = door closed. OS the Maxes = loads of them dead. Have AV prepared and ready to fire = a whole bunch of those maxes dies.


But more importantly: Ignore the number 50, it doesnt tell u anything. A 50 person maxcrash in planetside would be devestating, propably impossible to stop. But in Planetside 2? Well, you got potentially 666, yes SIX HUNDRED SIXTY SIX people defending against said maxcrash. It wont get far. ;)

[Mirror]

Maxes are indeed strong. But also weak. They never were the super killing machine people seem to remember them. They where powerful, but a lone max didnt do much good against a smart player.
Now, Maxcrashes were only powerful because you rushed the base with a lot of them, means run mode through the enemy. You divide the damage between the maxes, if you hit a unprepared defense. But if the enemy spots your attempt soon enough, and gets the AV out, hell breaks loose. Ive seen Entire Platoons doing a max crash that didnt even got into the door. Kill the guys around the door = door closed. OS the Maxes = loads of them dead. Have AV prepared and ready to fire = a whole bunch of those maxes dies.


But more importantly: Ignore the number 50, it doesnt tell u anything. A 50 person maxcrash in planetside would be devestating, propably impossible to stop. But in Planetside 2? Well, you got potentially 666, yes SIX HUNDRED SIXTY SIX people defending against said maxcrash. It wont get far. ;)

I just hope this time round maxes cant auto run in doors.

[Vash02]

Max crashes, multi-gal hot drops, giant tank columns. These large coordinated efforts are part of what made Planetside so special to me.

You have to be very quick on your feet to stop a max crash. If they dont have run mode a max crash would be fine for me. But if its just run mode straight to the generator, base won. no thanks thats a terrible tactic and terrible gameplay.

If PS1 had classes that people have been slavering over there would have been no defence against max crashes other than killing the cloaker/OS. Since its an indoor fight why would the majority break out the AV class?

[Geist]

Wow, that article was great. Really love it when they talk about gameplay that way.

In regards to the 50 MAX Crash in 5 Galaxies, you only need 1 simple thing to fix that: Collision Damage. I'd like to see 50 MAXES running at top speed through a base when each wall(or other MAX) collision takes off half their health. ;)

[Warborn]

I'd be really surprised if MAXs required anti-vehicle weapons to kill this time around. No spawn timer and taking up a generic passenger seat says to me they'll just be durable but very killable with even light arms like SMGs.

[texico]

I thought it was a neat move that surrounding territory is now useful - an example they mentioned was being able to reduce cap times on a facility.

One thing I liked about Higby's points was that it shows that he understood that battles are organic player-driven systems. All you need to do is set down some variables, and the playerbase will react to their environment to produce the battle. They'll figure out ways to use the variables in place to gain an advantage over the enemy and take control of the battle, and they don't need to be spoon-fed a system of events that need to occur to win.


However, it also leaves me banging my head, because why didn't they apply this same logic to the good'ol inventory system??



"Within the last few months we recognized that this was a mistake and said, “There shouldn’t be arbitrary rules that are getting in the way of me winning, there should be lots of ways to solve a load-out configuration.” A load-out configuration should be simple from a game mechanics perspective, it should be a very, very simple construct. And it becomes very complex, because people use it in ways that make it have multiple ways to solve. Multiple ways to solve using it for defense, multiple ways to solve using it for attack. And let players do that stuff. Players are the thing that is keeping you from winning, not game mechanics."


Hmmmmmm.

[dsi]

I thought it was a neat move that surrounding territory is now useful - an example they mentioned was being able to reduce cap times on a facility.

One thing I liked about Higby's points was that it shows that he understood that battles are organic player-driven systems. All you need to do is set down some variables, and the playerbase will react to their environment to produce the battle. They'll figure out ways to use the variables in place to gain an advantage over the enemy and take control of the battle, and they don't need to be spoon-fed a system of events that need to occur to win.


However, it also leaves me banging my head, because why didn't they apply this same logic to the good'ol inventory system??




Hmmmmmm.

Old inventory system was so simple (unless you don't know how size works I guess) & organic, why is the new one so clinical and restrictive?

[SniperSteve]

I think they are worried about specific builds being OP. (IE: Armor Repair, Heal, Heavy Assault, Advanced Hacker, Mossie)

[Sirisian]

The amount of change they made gives me hope for them fixing tanks etc
I know what you mean about fixing the Vanu fixed turret design. I guess we'll have to wait and see if they move it up, but they already showed off a few pictures of it so it might be more set in stone than we think.

[Trihenketops]

I think they are worried about specific builds being OP. (IE: Armor Repair, Heal, Heavy Assault, Advanced Hacker, Mossie)

Yep. By providing set classes they can balance more things better, and as a result can introduce a wider overall range of playstyles. I'm not going to say the class system doesn't restrict at all, because it does, but from what it sounds like is that these classes are all dynamic and customizable to fit a spectrum of playstyles.

That said, this has already been discussed a lot.

[Sifer2]

I'd be really surprised if MAXs required anti-vehicle weapons to kill this time around. No spawn timer and taking up a generic passenger seat says to me they'll just be durable but very killable with even light arms like SMGs.


Yeah that would suck though. We already have Heavy Assault guys. A MAX should be a damn MAX. More vehicle than man. I think they should take resources to pull, and should have limited slots in transports again. Should definitely need armor repairs too.

I wouldn't be against the idea of them being more vulnerable to small arms fire if it would help balance indoor combat. But in general if one dude turns a corner an meets a MAX and all he has is his Rifle he should be ****ed.

[cellinaire]

I agree that was the biggest flaw of PS1 before the BFR's were ever introduced IMO. And while i'm sure PS2 will be fun for at least a few months from newness I don't see where they have really improved in this area. In fact they made it worse with the uncapturable footholds.

I know there are some kinds of people that have a high tolerance for repetition. The kinds of people that still play the same map in Battlefield 2 for over a decade, and enjoy themselves. But other people don't want to fight the same fights every night forever.

Maybe this will get better down the line if they introduce more planets, and EVE style elements.

I don't know how many times these topics have already been brought on in this forum, but I'd wager these are worth a separate thread. :cool:

[TerminatorUK]

I think the MAXs this time around will act much more **** a 'Heavy' in Tribes - slow and lumbering but good armour and powerful weapons instead of a solider/vehicle hybrid.

They may have designed the class to act much more as a heavy infantry unit that can ride in most vehicles and doesn't have autorun or specifically high durability against small arms fire / vulnerability to AV.

[ringring]

Frankly if you can organise 5 gals and fill them with 50 maxes then good luck to you.

[Mirror]

Frankly if you can organise 5 gals and fill them with 50 maxes then good luck to you.

Azure Twilight, Sturmgrenadier (sp??), Dark Skyyes to name a few that could probably do it. I just hope we have many effective options to take maxes down quickly. Deci-hotswapping will hopefully make a return :groovy:

[Crator]

Frankly if you can organise 5 gals and fill them with 50 maxes then good luck to you.

Don't think it will be as difficult as it was in PS1. The main reason is because you now have spawning at a GAL and squad leader spawning. In PS1 you had to tell everyone where to go to meet up to load the GAL. Those folks had to know where you were talking about and also had to go to an equipment terminal to get the correct load-out before meeting up at the GAL.

Has it been confirmed if you can bind to a GAL for respawn purposes?

[Raymac]

Maybe it's just me, but I have been in a number of failed Max Crashes, and I've been on the successful defending side against a ton of them as well. I was always a fan of using them and fighting them off and they were never an "auto-win". However, anytime you brought large numbers to bear of any kind of unit in a coordinated effort, you tipped the scales in your favor.

This also brings up an exciting thing for me. We invented alot of tactics for PS1, and we get to modify those and create new ones for PS2. That will be fun to be a part of.

[Trolltaxi]

I had my maxbuster gold award at azeban, facing an NC maxcrash with 2 fellow pounders and some dedicated engies to keep us repaired (we were at the slope after the first junction in almost full cover). Pls send more maxcrashes! :)

[Graywolves]

This was a comforting read.