Taking elements from modern shooters != "Dumbing down" [Archive]

Eyeklops

2012-05-30, 03:14 AM

Seriously, the volume of bullshit being produced about "dumbing down" PS2 over the updated mechanics is so large we are going to need boats just to keep from drowning in recycled tacos. I mean really, it's starting to look like "Hanky the christmas poo" meets "Groundhog Day." The same shit over, and over, and over.

At least play the beta before you whine "somebody stole my cheese." You might find that the updated mechanics from a modern shooter combined with a large scale and persistent world is totally kick ass and not "dumbed down."

I get the feeling that some Planetside vets subconsciously blame COD/BF3 for "stealing" players away from PS1 and this internal blame has manifested into the "Anything COD/BF3 is evil" attitude. Please, please get over this. It's unhealthy.

Edit (added from a later post):

It's ok to see a piece of shit (some game mechanic), examine it (playtest), then determine that it really is a piece of shit for a good reason. It's ok to throw that piece of shit at the developer with a note about your logic on why it's a piece of shit with the hopes that they realize its shit.

It's not cool however, to see a piece of shit, and automatically throw it at the developer just because your not used to that shit with the only reason being "this is shit".

How do you even know what type of shit it really is until you fully examine it? There could be awesome berries in there that make the shit not as bad as you thought. Hell, maybe it's manure and what you see as shit will actually cultivate awesome fucking flowers (population) if you ever gave it a shot.

But no, you won't give it a shot because it's not "your" (PS1) shit. And we all know that "your" shit doesn't stink. Obviously "your" shit is the right way to go, just look at your flowers. PS1 was "the shit" back in the day, but now it's just old shit that needs

I wouldn't blame Higby if he made a "no beta for u" list of the people who have been needlessly dumping bucket after bucket of shit on him and PS2. I would probably fucking high-five him and his hair, then go examine his shit.

SKYeXile

2012-05-30, 03:29 AM

This is a pre release gaming forum, there's gonna be speculation and commenting along with people who don't always agree with others(on the internet you say? gasp!) probably a good idea to get used to it.

Just like those of us who want a game with more depth that's not just the same old dumbed down shooters we have played nothing else for the past few years tacked onto a persistent world are probably going to have to get used to the game been a dumbed down quasi "realistic" tactical shooter like everything else put out on PC for the last few years.

Bobby Shaftoe

2012-05-30, 03:35 AM

I get the feeling that some Planetside vets subconsciously blame COD/BF3 for "stealing" players away from PS1

Quite the opposite, I've lost count of how many people have gone off to play dozens of other games, yet they come back to PS. Infact, I've probably played 50 different games since the release of Planetside, not ONE of them has held my attention for a 1/10th the time PS has.

People 'whine' about mechanics and options being removed from the game and replaced by others that reduce their freedom to do whatever the hell they want to do in the game.

Just because things are done such and such a way in small 10v10 games doesn't mean they scale in any manageable or desirable way up to 600+ a side three way clusterf*cks.

To follow your thinking to its conclusion 'Why are the devs even 'engaging' with the PS1 community?'

Because these 'bittervet bastards' are the only relevent experience source they can take/sound ideas off and get a close 'feel' on how to progress.

How bout YOU wait for the beta and then submit your ideas/suggestions then, instead of shouting down those who played PS and have concerns as to how the 'modern' mechanics will actually work in an MMO setting compared to what was in PS1.

Shade Millith

2012-05-30, 03:37 AM

Seriously, the volume of bullshit being produced about "dumbing down" PS2 over the updated mechanics is so large we are going to need boats just to keep from drowning in recycled tacos. I mean really, it's starting to look like "Hanky the christmas poo" meets "Groundhog Day." The same shit over, and over, and over.

At least play the beta before you whine "somebody stole my cheese." You might find that the updated mechanics from a modern shooter combined with a large scale and persistent world is totally kick ass and not "dumbed down."

I get the feeling that some Planetside vets subconsciously blame COD/BF3 for "stealing" players away from PS1 and this internal blame has manifested into the "Anything COD/BF3 is evil" attitude. Please, please get over this. It's unhealthy.

I see many modern shooters as having dumbed down their game.

Battlefield for example.

BF1942, you had to work to keep your team mates alive, and work to keep yourself alive. You die, you're back to a cap point.
BF3, you can get yourself killed as much as you like, so long as an assault (The best class to use against infantry, the most common enemy in the game) is near by, you'll be resurrected from the dead without penalty, and with a minimum of fuss.

BF1942, ammo was something you took care to not run out of. Supply was from specific areas of the map, or from very specific vehicles. Reloading was done only when you needed to, as the game worked with clips/magazines remaining.
BF3, ammo is infinite to anyone near a Support class. Reloading was done every single time you had less than a full clip, and a spare second.

These are two things that are designed to making the game easier and simpler. Loss of death penalty, and ammo conservation. Instead of death being something to avoid, it's just a shrug of the shoulders and a shockpaddles.

Toppopia

2012-05-30, 03:37 AM

Gandhi

2012-05-30, 03:39 AM

I get the feeling that some Planetside vets subconsciously blame COD/BF3 for "stealing" players away from PS1 and this internal blame has manifested into the "Anything COD/BF3 is evil" attitude.
And I get the feeling you're desperately trying to come up with some excuse for why people don't agree with you.

I get the feeling you subconsciously want Planetside 2 to be CoD with bigger maps. See how easy that was?

Bags

2012-05-30, 03:43 AM

While I don't agree with people not being allowed to speculate, I will agree I am very annoyed of the phrase "dumbed down" being thrown around as an argument with no substance.

SKYeXile

2012-05-30, 03:44 AM

^Yea somebody gotta question the design choices, may aswell be us now while theylre still designing. I dont believe planetside is going to be or play exactly like BF or COD, but alot of the stuff is very similar or almost identical...eg squad spawning and dropping ammo box's along with the need to have a cockpit view and classes.

But there's hopefully some goo things that separate it from games like that like the light assault jump jets, rexo shield, heavy weapons, MAX's(if them and good can even go in the same sentence) and hopefully the expand on the engineer and make it something more unique, like constructing forward bases(like what happened in ps1 when you combined a AMS, loadstar, alot of CE and some stealth bubbles)

SKYeXile

2012-05-30, 03:47 AM

Isn't normally customary to have a poll with this thread? To see what people think.

And i agree, we need to wait till closed beta before commenting on the big issues of *insert issues here*.

Needs a standard PSU like poll:

You agree that taking modern elements doesn't make it dumber
You believe Planetside 2 is dumbed down enough.
You feel dumb for voting in the poll.

Coreldan

2012-05-30, 03:49 AM

4) You feel dumb for writing "pole" instead of "poll" :D

Just kidding, I LOVE YOU MAN!

SKYeXile

2012-05-30, 03:53 AM

4) You feel dumb for writing "pole" instead of "poll" :D

Just kidding, I LOVE YOU MAN!

LOL i questioned myself for a sec, im like...wait no...thats not the right poll....then im thinking maybe i should spell it like that for the last option.

Graywolves

2012-05-30, 03:59 AM

Why are you supporting dumbing down PS2?

Trolling aside I usually just ignore posts that I find to be of ill-taste or provide little to a discussion.

Mezorin

2012-05-30, 04:12 AM

Needs a standard PSU like poll:

You agree that taking modern elements doesn't make it dumber
You believe Planetside 2 is dumbed down enough.
You feel dumb for voting in the poll.

You forgot "Wait until beta to see" in there :)

I figure so long as Higby takes a "What works best for PlanetSide 2 and making this the best game ever" approach, I'm cool with what ever shakes out. No golden cows, we just want the best most enjoyable game that is Planetside 2 and let's us all have a blast, and is successful for SOE.

Also OP, please note that RU vs US 64 man < VS vs NC vs TR 2000 man in terms of controlled chaos and map scale. Caspian Border would be the no man's land between two bases on Cyssor, just two. Let alone the other bases and such all over the map, and the other continents. This also effects vehicle balance, because unlike BF3 where you have restricted numbers of vehicles, in PS2 you can pull what ever you can afford. BF3 suppression would also be bullshit in a can, as one guy with an MCG could wave the gun around in the air and mess up the aim for literally dozens, and Squad Spawning would turn PS2 into a zombie zerg invasion game because you could never FINISH OFF a ten man squad. And let's not even get started how DICE basically neutered the command and squad systems recently and turned BF3 into "Zerg: The Game" , and other things they took out to make the game work on console.

This does not mean that COD or Battlefield are horrible series unto themselves (I loved BF2142, Bad Company 2, COD4, Black Ops, and somewhat like BF3 like many here), it just means they are working in different scaled context. Hell, with a bit of balance tuning and adjustment Battlefield 2142 was basically what Planetside 1 should have been gun/vehicle mechanics wise. Yes, they even got the mechs right in that game :) . Just understand that COD/BF3 balance logic does not always work well when its 320 vs 320 and not 32 vs 32. We don't have a hate-on for the other titles for what they are, but there is already Battlefield and there is already Call of Duty. We want Planetside 2, and we want it to be great.

The Kush

2012-05-30, 04:16 AM

Talented Maori

2012-05-30, 04:16 AM

I agree to the Devs using elements from old FPS games, just not COD or BF3, or any of the other crap games that have come and gone. They should look at how MAG on the PS3 did it, BF3 was puss and felt like a powered up version of the COD franchise, MW3 was 'the same'. MAG actually had good gameplay and was on numerous occasions refered to by people I met playing it as being like PS1 foot battles. This game, PS2, is the only game that has drawn me away from MAG and I hope they don't wreck it by making it COD on steroids. If you had a pile of turd would it be a good thing to make it bigger?

lawnmower

2012-05-30, 05:14 AM

While I don't agree with people not being allowed to speculate, I will agree I am very annoyed of the phrase "dumbed down" being thrown around as an argument with no substance.
no substance where

Anderz

2012-05-30, 05:33 AM

This place is becoming more like EAUK/Mordor by the minute.

NewSith

2012-05-30, 05:45 AM

Actually I do agree with the author. Too much whining for an unreleased game. Concerns =/= Whining.

Dreamcast

2012-05-30, 06:17 AM

"Dumbing Down" is just a word used to discredit something by the elitist...even tho a bunch of the ideas it is used for have nothing to do with dumbing down but just being different.

The funniest thing is that these elitist examples........I mean think about it, they talk about Planetside which probably was an extremely simple game, I mean anybody could play it....Their is nothing complex about Planetside....You could say Planetside was "dumb down".

Next I hear these elitist talking about the CoD type games are dumbdown and should be more like old school shooters (quake,UT,Counter Strike,etc).....lol Quake,UT, and counter Striker were simple games...I mean they were hard because it requires fast twitch movement but they were simple...you could say dumb down.

Fuse

2012-05-30, 06:27 AM

People seem to forget that MW1 was amazing, and MW2 was damn good apart from the rampant game-breaking bugs (some of which were carry-overs from the first...). The series is utter shit, I'm not arguing that. I've sworn off ever giving them another dime... I also remember for a little while they put out games that, had they been properly supported, would have been some of the best shooters I had ever played. Period. Just because Activision is a terrible company does not mean the game's mechanics are inherently flawed. There's a reason they've been able to ride this wave of shit all the way to a golden palace: they had something with the first two. Refusing to acknowledge any quality or knowledge in them is just being bitter and obstinate.

I also enjoyed the shit out of Bad Company 2 and all of the original Battlefield series (never played the 1st Bad Company). BF3 was close, but no cigar. (I blame it on the cross-platform release forcing them to make design decisions they knew were not the best.)

Also, I'm talking MP exclusively. Their campaigns have no relevance and are pretty uniformly disappointing (CoD is almost like a good TV show, crap game tho).

Dreamcast

2012-05-30, 06:29 AM

People seem to forget that MW1 was amazing, and MW2 was damn good apart from the rampant game-breaking bugs (some of which were carry-overs from the first...). The series is utter shit, I'm not arguing that. I've sworn off ever giving them another dime... I also remember for a little while they put out games that, had they been properly supported, would have been some of the best shooters I had ever played. Period. Just because Activision is a terrible company does not mean the game's mechanics are inherently flawed. There's a reason they've been able to ride this wave of shit all the way to a golden palace: they had something with the first two. Refusing to acknowledge any quality or knowledge in them is just being bitter and obstinate.

I also enjoyed the shit out of Bad Company 2 and all of the original Battlefield series (never played the 1st Bad Company). BF3 was close, but no cigar. (I blame it on the cross-platform release forcing them to make design decisions they knew were not the best.)

Another thing I want to point out is that Call of Duty came out in 2003, is practically the same age as Planetside.

CoD was a great game...I remember back when CoD was suppose to be squad based shooter where people could direct their squad mates to go take cover,etc....I was excited because of that...of course the orginal CoD never got those squad commands.

Now looks at the CoD series....No squad commands or anything :lol:

lawnmower

2012-05-30, 06:35 AM

"Dumbing Down" is just a word used to discredit something by the elitist...even tho a bunch of the ideas it is used for have nothing to do with dumbing down but just being different.

absolutely correct. or a way to describe something being dumbed down.

The funniest thing is that these elitist examples........I mean think about it, they talk about Planetside which probably was an extremely simple game, I mean anybody could play it....Their is nothing complex about Planetside....You could say Planetside was "dumb down".
you probably need to read up what dumbed down means.
also do you have source for it being simple?

Next I hear these elitist talking about the CoD type games are dumbdown and should be more like old school shooters (quake,UT,Counter Strike,etc).....lol Quake,UT, and counter Striker were simple games...I mean they were hard because it requires fast twitch movement but they were simple...you could say dumb down.
putting in fifty weapons that behave almost identically and perhaps a bunch of unbalanced joke features doesent equal depth
also cs is a lot like the newschool type of gameplay
they also didnt require twitch movements, they required you to aim. starcraft and I suppose other rts games when played at a competetive level requires very twitchy movements

lawnmower

2012-05-30, 06:39 AM

Refusing to acknowledge any quality or knowledge in them is just being bitter and obstinate.

or not http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-2

ZeroOneZero

2012-05-30, 06:55 AM

Never played BF3 or any COD games. But I've played lots of other FPS's. I know that COD and BF3 have pretty cool features and pretty straight forward game mechanics that everyone can enjoy. PS2 will probably have a little of both game mechanics from both games, but will probably be altered to PS2 standards. Although I loved how PS1 felt and kind of wished they made a remake of PS1 with better graphics and all, but adding something new can be good to. PS2 will have a solid game play which many will enjoy, simply because it borrows from other games (AND WE GOT THE BEST
DEV'S WORKING ON IT). As for ppl using the term "dumb down", i agree it used by elitists. Just look at every sequel of an FPS game, the old generation will always complain about the latest sequel, it's sad but true. PS2 will be innovative and unique in it's own way. Personally, I think many gamers are starting to look towards PS2 as a new FPS experience; and to us vets, it will feel like home again. But that's just my two-cent.

kasiraghi

2012-05-30, 07:15 AM

Heh, my 2p (3c) is that people have valid concerns about this 'dumbing down' but that some people don't understand the context of these concerns.

Let's take another game I love as an example: people worried about the awards system in Tribes: Ascend. In CoD/BF this sytem works well because it rewards different kinds of skill and allows you to advance. In Tribes:Ascend they took the award system and shafted the game because it rewarded a deathmatch-style play in a CTF strategy-based game, and was actively involved in stopping the development/use of team-play and co-operation.

Other mechanics, fine, but a lot of people still seem to be failing to realise how important it is to concentrate on things like co-ordination, and are going to complain about not being rewarded for being an awesome (but potentially 'effectively' useless) player in the sense of the more modern FPS titles.

I like CoD, and play it, but I'm not going to complain when the things which will negatively impact a MMOFPS are not taken into account with the development of PS2 (hopefully).

Dreamcast

2012-05-30, 07:43 AM

absolutely correct. or a way to describe something being dumbed down.

you probably need to read up what dumbed down means.
also do you have source for it being simple?

putting in fifty weapons that behave almost identically and perhaps a bunch of unbalanced joke features doesent equal depth
also cs is a lot like the newschool type of gameplay
they also didnt require twitch movements, they required you to aim. starcraft and I suppose other rts games when played at a competetive level requires very twitchy movements

Source for being simple?.....WTF?

I played the game, I know it was simple....Please tell me what was so complicated about planetside that an average person won't be able to play it.

CS,quake,UT are twitch gameplay games, they require fast movement and aiming...Also I never said CoD had super depth so it was complex..Is a simple game as well.

SKYeXile

2012-05-30, 07:46 AM

Mechzz

2012-05-30, 07:47 AM

I played the game, I know it was simple....Please tell me what was so complicated about planetside that an average person won't be able to play it.

I agree PS1 was a simple game - armour up, grab a gun and go shoot the enemy dudes.

But, it was like chess. Sure, you learn quickly how to move the pieces individually but to get all your pieces to play together well takes a lot of practice and skill. That "game within a game" is what I think kept a lot of the PS1 vets, espcecially people interested in being a "commander" playing as long as they did - there was sometimes a genuine feeling of being part of something bigger in Planetside.

Fuse

2012-05-30, 07:52 AM

All FPS game are pretty simple. out of all of them though planetside probably had the highest learning curve. you could tell many people had no clue when you went to their corpse to get ammo and all they had was gold and frags :/

Eh, beyond ammo types I can't think of anything I really had to learn new for PlanetSide. Granted I played RPGs so the cert system was familiar, but the gameplay was pretty straight forward for the average grunt. Follow some guys to a fight, attack the objective. It didn't even really matter if you knew where the rooms in a particular base type were, you just followed the sounds of gunfire.

Yeah, there's a lot more to the big picture in PlanetSide, but for the average noob it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on.

SKYeXile

2012-05-30, 08:06 AM

Eh, beyond ammo types I can't think of anything I really had to learn new for PlanetSide. Granted I played RPGs so the cert system was familiar, but the gameplay was pretty straight forward for the average grunt. Follow some guys to a fight, attack the objective. It didn't even really matter if you knew where the rooms in a particular base type were, you just followed the sounds of gunfire.

Yeah, there's a lot more to the big picture in PlanetSide, but for the average noob it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on.

not really, you also had to consider carrying a bank, med app or medpacks, you need to know to carry AP ammo ro a deci to kill maxes. with no killcam you have no idea alot of the time to what killed you...eg boomers, the remote symbol in the killspam isn't exactly intuitive.

Yet alone getting to a fight, instant action is terrible, which meant day dot you had to be able to read the map and know wtf was going on, not really that easy.

You guys may not remember your first days playing planetside, I remember them clearly....running to the warpgate in a max(not on autorun offcourse) warping to ceryshen, and around the warpgate, i could see nothing was going on on that continent, but i had no idea how to get there so i wandered back to sanc and figured out how the hart worked and landed near some tower i think i was on solar where the VS was fighting NC...needless to day i was sitting behind cover and got the shit worked out of me from phoenix fire. i got the hang of it after afew days and reading some forums, but its by no means jump in and start killing people.

It was my first MMO, so maybe i learned alittle slower, it certainly wasn't a pretty experience though.

Mechzz

2012-05-30, 08:11 AM

Fuse

2012-05-30, 08:19 AM

I don't mean to derail the thread, but what does it say about someone's programming/maths background when they use:
!= or =/= or <>

to mean "not equal to" ? For example, I use <> because that's how Microsoft does it.

I learned it in introduction to symbolic logic, so it's not necessarily a programming or math background.

Stardouser

2012-05-30, 08:20 AM

Waste of time this thread. If you're going to make accusations, at least be specific about the changes you've seen people label as "dumbing down".

This. You have to evaluate each feature and argue why it's a dumb down.

Dreamcast

2012-05-30, 08:20 AM

I agree PS1 was a simple game - armour up, grab a gun and go shoot the enemy dudes.

But, it was like chess. Sure, you learn quickly how to move the pieces individually but to get all your pieces to play together well takes a lot of practice and skill. That "game within a game" is what I think kept a lot of the PS1 vets, espcecially people interested in being a "commander" playing as long as they did - there was sometimes a genuine feeling of being part of something bigger in Planetside.

Any game is like chess...their is a lot of games where certain load outs and certain tactics must be known or hard to master in order to be good at the game....Even though they same quite simple like Planetside so I don't really see what makes Planetside so complex.

A new player could jump in and play...eventually he will learn that the game allows for players to be medic so they can heal themselves and be op.

Serpent

2012-05-30, 08:23 AM

Mechzz

2012-05-30, 08:40 AM

Any game is like chess...their is a lot of games where certain load outs and certain tactics must be known or hard to master in order to be good at the game....Even though they same quite simple like Planetside so I don't really see what makes Planetside so complex.

A new player could jump in and play...eventually he will learn that the game allows for players to be medic so they can heal themselves and be op.

You're right Dreamcast, absolutely right. Planetside isn't complex in that way, there's nothing you can't learn about loadouts and tactics by playing the game for a while.

All I'm saying is that some players (I was never one of them by the way) really enjoyed "commanding" their outfits, you know, saying let's take this base or that base. Or like Malorn, plotting the best way to capture the world. And doing that is a whole different "level" of the game that someone playing a sniper or a medic might not see apart from Squad Orders or CR5 chat. I'm not saying it's a "better" level of the game, it's not. But that command level is what floats some people's boats.

roguy

2012-05-30, 08:49 AM

you probably need to read up what dumbed down means.
also do you have source for it being simple?

Bad and simplistic vehicle physics: Flying cameras and stationary fighting for aircraft, ground vehicles could climb mountains and couldn't flip over.

Bad and simplistic gunplay: 1 hitbox (so no headshots), no bullet drop nor gunsway.

Non-existent gun and vehicle customisation.

Basic and primitive command system (compared to BF2).

Simple and bad map design: Base fights funneled hundreds of people into a tiny staircase (worse than BF3's Operation Metro....).

Those are just off the top of my head.

Snipefrag

2012-05-30, 09:20 AM

I agree, its ridiculous some of the tripe people are coming out with, i mean did they ever play planetside 1? Just think of the amount of clunky things that made combat slightly annoying:

1) Having to hot swap weapons/grenades/utility items from your inventory
2) Third person view, giving defenders a massive edge
3) The way the camera would force you into third person view for a few seconds when you land after you bail on something and didn't pull your weapon in time
4) having to actually select grenades as a weapon before you could throw one..
5) the overly long reload times on lots of weapons, this being used as some sort of balance mechanic never sat well with me.
6) When healing from a terminal in a tower etc having to buy multiple load outs and mash your heal hot key until your full health or manually pick up a med kit and then click use on the UI
7) Not being able to despawn at tubes when someone is sitting in them, effectively being forced to TK people.
8) unrealistic sights on all the weapons
9) REXO soldiers not being able to jump over tower walls easily when other armor types have no problem
10) Being able to place motion detectors in places to effectively block doorways
11) TINY bottlenecks all over the place, towers and bases wedged 100 odd people into corridors wide enough for 2-3 people.. quarter of all kills were TK's !

These are just a few things i can think of off the top of my head, things that modern FPS games would never get away with. Taking from modern shooters pretty much means making the FPS gameplay mechanics run smoother than PS1.. No matter how much you loved planetside you cant say that the FPS elements in it were particularly smooth and fluid.

MrBloodworth

2012-05-30, 10:27 AM

The above is not what anyone is talking about when they say PS is being "Dumbed down". No one with any sense that is, that's what is projected by some here in this very thread.

The problem with a number of usual suspects in this thread. Is they automatically try to simplify what someone is saying, so they can write it off as "Elitist" or "Bittervet". With zero sense of irony, they cant take the time to understand what some old time players are putting forth, so they simplify and demonize. Completely missing the point. Its a bit like reading a Wow forum.

Somewhere along the lines, they got the idea that they are the ones that need to be convinced, or hear this feedback. They are wrong.

Nick

2012-05-30, 11:05 AM

Taking almost every element from BF3 and putting it into this game and calling it "Planetside 2" is certainly dumbing it down.

Auto repair on vehicles? What's next, I wonder?

Reapter

2012-05-30, 11:42 AM

I agree, its ridiculous some of the tripe people are coming out with, i mean did they ever play planetside 1? Just think of the amount of clunky things that made combat slightly annoying:

These are just a few things i can think of off the top of my head, things that modern FPS games would never get away with. Taking from modern shooters pretty much means making the FPS gameplay mechanics run smoother than PS1.. No matter how much you loved planetside you cant say that the FPS elements in it were particularly smooth and fluid.

All of this is basically the same reason everyone I knew who played the game said its not a game you play for the combat, but just for the scale basically as a reasoning. Basically, most of its combat needed a ton of updating.

With this said, I imagine forums are very poor reflections of who the average player in a game will be and that SOE and others do studies for feedback etc... to see what most people prefer. Since lets be honest, if they listened mainly to the very few vets against any changes and wants a 1:1 clone of ps1 fully it probably wouldn't do nearly as well. This is why we see the magic of compromise between player types.

Taking almost every element from BF3 and putting it into this game and calling it "Planetside 2" is certainly dumbing it down.

Auto repair on vehicles? What's next, I wonder?

That also is if you don't believe in side grades and specializations as I recall the auto repairs are trade off.

Marinealver

2012-05-30, 11:44 AM

I get the feeling that some Planetside vets subconsciously blame COD/BF3 for "stealing" players away from PS1 and this internal blame has manifested into the "Anything COD/BF3 is evil" attitude. Please, please get over this. It's unhealthy.

COD & BF3 didn't take away any players as much as SOE drove them off and away. You find that those games tend to compeete more with HAL0 than planetside. But you got to admit there are allot of recycled ideas in planetside 2, and it is not just from those 2 games.

The main problem that was with Planetside back in the years is that they treated it like their stepchild with more development and attention on Everquest. When everquest had a patch or expansion it was fully flushed out with every detail and sidequest updated. When Planetside recieved an expansion it had gaps and didn't fit too well into the current metagame.

After that the newer content was more too little too late. SOE market was all about one of two things, Their Everquest (which had lost lots of revenue and subscriptions to Blizzard's MMO World of Warcraft), and their newest game which was supposed to generate more revenue. I remember sending an email to (now former) SOE developers and the response was to try out their new MMO Star Wars Galaxies (which we all know how well that turned out).

roguy

2012-05-30, 12:15 PM

The above is not what anyone is talking about when they say PS is being "Dumbed down". No one with any sense that is, that's what is projected by some here in this very thread.

So far in this forum I've seen "bittervets" say:

Ironsights are dumbing down PS.
Higher TTK is dumbing down PS.
Classes are dumbing down PS.
The UI is dumbing down PS.
Multiple base objectives are dumbing down PS.
Lack of 3rd person view is dumbing down PS.
Vehicles have been dumbed down in PS2.

All under the wonderful straw-man argument that is "COD and BF3 did it therefore it's bad".

Eyeklops

2012-05-30, 12:32 PM

It's ok to see a piece of shit (some game mechanic), examine it (playtest), then determine that it really is a piece of shit for a good reason. It's ok to throw that piece of shit at the developer with a note about your logic on why it's a piece of shit with the hopes that they realize its shit.

It's not cool however, to see a piece of shit, and automatically throw it at the developer just because your not used to that shit with the only reason being "this is shit".

How do you even know what type of shit it really is until you fully examine it? There could be awesome berries in there that make the shit not as bad as you thought. Hell, maybe it's manure and what you see as shit will actually cultivate awesome fucking flowers (population) if you ever gave it a shot.

But no, you won't give it a shot because it's not "your" (PS1) shit. And we all know that "your" shit doesn't stink. Obviously "your" shit is the right way to go, just look at your flowers.

I wouldn't blame Higby if he made a "no beta for u" list of the people who have been needlessly dumping bucket after bucket of shit on him and PS2. I would probably fucking high-five him and his hair, then go examine his shit.

MrBloodworth

2012-05-30, 12:43 PM

So far in this forum I've seen "bittervets" say:

Ironsights are dumbing down PS.
Higher TTK is dumbing down PS.
Classes are dumbing down PS.
The UI is dumbing down PS.
Multiple base objectives are dumbing down PS.
Lack of 3rd person view is dumbing down PS.
Vehicles have been dumbed down in PS2.

All under the wonderful straw-man argument that is "COD and BF3 did it therefore it's bad".

Obviously everyone thinks that. Obviously. Boy, did you blow the lid off that one. Thanks guy!

Also, you may wish to reread what I wrote, there are some words in there that mean things.

WCBenzo

2012-05-30, 12:44 PM

Ok too long, didn't read most of peoples points.
But I would like to make one point.

I come from a background of heavy shooters, I am not an MMORPG guy at all.
Planetside 1 was not even CLOSE to perfect for me.

The main problem I had with it is there was no area based damage. If you had a shittier gun then the other guy would win obviously. The bolt driver was a sniper rifle that took 2 shots to kill someone, that is inherently stupid. Thus I feel it rewarded MMO veterans more than it did us guys who were FPS players.

But planetside was the closest experience to waging a huge war in a shooter, so I didn't really complain while I played, and tried to enjoy my self (which wasn't really hard to :p).

maradine

2012-05-30, 12:55 PM

Ok too long, didn't read most of peoples points.
But I would like to make one point.

The fundamental reason these threads are massive, belligerent, and numerous.

WCBenzo

2012-05-30, 12:58 PM

It's the internet and it's a free forum. It's kind of like real life haha.

roguy

2012-05-30, 01:03 PM

Obviously everyone thinks that. Obviously. Boy, did you blow the lid off that one. Thanks guy!

Did I say everyone? Where did I say everyone? Are you denying that what I've listed has been said somewhere on the forums?

I gave you examples, how about you come up with some of your own? You'll find your words having more meaning once you do. Rather than just broad generalisations.

Xyntech

2012-05-30, 01:09 PM

Hell, maybe it's manure and what you see as shit will actually cultivate awesome fucking flowers (population) if you ever gave it a shot.

Lmao. "It's not shit, it's manure!" :rofl:

That's fantastic, and surprisingly appropriate.

For example, I'm not a fan of the auto-repair on vehicles, but it isn't that bad if implemented and balanced properly. More importantly, if it makes the game more attractive to a lot of new players to have options like that, it will add content (players) to the game.

It is a risky line to walk of course. While I'm happy to see PS2 trying to avoid some of the shit that didn't work from the first game, I certainly don't want it to fail within a year because of some brand new problems.

I think that the irony is that the Planetside players are so diverse, so every one of us has a unique perspective on what was vital to Planetside being as great as it was. So you have something get changed to be different from the first game, and you get a huge amount of people criticizing the change, but often for different reasons. It isn't so much that the game will become Call of Battleside, it's that it will be different than what we are used to Planetside being.

For example, jump pads. Not a BF3 or CoD ripoff. Huge outcry from a lot of vets. If being a BF3 clone were some huge problem, stuff like jump pads would be hugely embraced. Personally, I like some of the more BF like changes, but I also like jump pads.

The PS2 devs have a vision of how they think the franchise should be brought into the future. They will certainly get some things wrong, but I'm comforted vastly by the Jon Weathers interview which indicates that they are largely interested in seeing large scale data during beta to make final calls on some of these aspects.

I just ask that us fans do the same. Wait for beta before flipping out. Maybe some of the changes aren't to your preference, but they also may not be so intolerable in the bigger picture.

So let's try to just keep that in mind through all of the debate and speculation. The speculation is fine, as long as it is tempered with the fact that we don't truly know for sure how good or bad some of these changes will be for the game as a whole.