Higby's Beta Update (Nov 7)

[PoisonTaco]

Lots of big changes here, outlined in a wonderful wall of text (and pictures!): http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/beta-update-and-beyond-11-7-12.42528/

Hey all -

The dev team is continuing to sprint to the finish line here on Planetside 2. With last week's patch we released our final launch continent, enhanced players ability to stick with their squad, added our twitch integration, fixed aton of bugs and put in some big ticket optimizations.

This week's patch is going to be another huge one, with a lot of big changes to metagame, core gameplay, new items to unlock, updates to lots of areas of Indar, and of course tons of bug fixes and more optimizations! Are you excited yet?!

First up, metagame additions I discussed a lot of these changes in the metagame thread I posted a couple weeks ago, but these are the areas that are coming online this week:

Continental Domination
With this week's patch we'll be adding continent domination benefits into the game. You'll get a global benefit that is acquired when your empire controls 100% of the contestable territory on a continent. This benefit will remain on every soldier in your empire until the continent is conquered by another empire.

In addition to bragging rights, the benefits are going to reduce your resource costs for Air vehicles (Amerish), Ground Vehicles (Esamir) and Infantry consumables (Indar)

Linked facility benefits:
Each facility type will provide a benefit to connected territories. Some of these benefits will be useful in all regions, some will be more useful when combined with other facilities or outpost types.

Tech Plants - Provide access to MBTs from connected towers and facilities. You will always be able to pull MBTs from the warpgate in addition if you don't own a tech plant on continent.
Biolab - Increased innate health regeneration (see below for more information)
Amp Station - Increased turret heat capacity, so turrets can be fired a lot faster.

Finding a fight:
One of the pieces of feedback we've heard over and over is that it's challenging to find a fight, with this patch we're fixing some bugs and adding some functionality on the map that should help to address that. Here you can see the new map region tooltip:

http://i.imgur.com/AmWnj.png

Now you'll be able to see the capture progress of any contested base on any continent in real time, as well as a measure of strength of enemy forces in the area (this has a bug on beta currently, that causes any base that's under contention to list "No Activity" - very helpful, right?). You can also see which benefits are currently present on the region and what benefit owning the region gives.

It's our hope that by showing the capture progress as well as an accurate depiction of enemy troop numbers will significantly help the cause of finding you a good fight.

Tug-of-war base capture and XP changes:
This is a pretty major change to the way bases are captured in the game.

Currently bases are captured by a ticket race that is initiated when a base control node gets flipped and starts generating tickets, those tickets are then multiplied based on influence your empire has on the base. In this system two factors, control node ownership and adjacent territory control dictate the victor of the base capture. The ticket race method sometimes results in unintuitive victories where your empire has a clear advantage on a base, but because the other empire USED to have an advantage earlier in the fight, earned lots of tickets during that time and hangs on to one control node, they can still win the battle even though they're clearly out-muscled. Tug-of-war puts an end to all that.

With the new system, there will be three factors that determine the capture of the base, control node ownership, adjacent territory control and player leverage.

Player leverage will be the number of people you have simultaneously influencing a control node. More players near the control node = more leverage = you capture the base faster. We've greatly expanded the range which you can be influencing a node, these should feel a lot less restrictive, and allow you to effectively defend the point from different vantage points, not just stand within 10 feet of the node. Initially, most bases / outposts will allow 12 people to be influencing them at once, bases with only 1 control node will be able to have up to 12 people influencing that node, whereas bases with multiple nodes will have the number of players split amongst them. You can still capture the base by having one person at the node, but having more gives up to a 3x increase to the capture time beyond what is possible right now.

So, how is it a tug-of-war. Well, now the ticket count is zero-sum. This means that when a base is attacked, it starts off at 100% owned by the defending empire and the attackers have got to burn down the defender tickets at the same time as they increase their own. If they wrestle control back from you, they'll have to burn down your progress as well. For multi-control node facilities such as Biolabs, or outposts like The Crown, having people locking down the nodes becomes more important than just rushing to the next node to flip it, not only because the people posted up on that node are keeping it from being captured by an enemy, but also because they're helping to move the capture needle faster for your empire.

We're also making XP changes to the way attackers and defenders earn XP. As an attacker you'll earn XP normally for actions you complete in the course of attacking a facility, and you'll get a large XP bonus when the base is successfully captured. Defenders will earn bonus XP for all actions taken in the course of defending their base, but they won't get a bonus for resecures or when the base is lost.

These changes combined we predict will result in a few positive changes to the base capture:

1) Less attacker and defender dead time - at a certain point in most battles the base is won, but the time it takes to secure causes some dead time for attackers and defenders. Attackers like to use this time to camp spawn rooms, defenders like to use this time to take pot shots at the guys camping the spawn rooms. Now that attackers can stack up on the point and capture 3x faster by doing so, we expect this dead time, and thus the spawn camping to be cut down quite a bit.
2) Resecures are less taxing on defending players - between the control node reverting to the owner of the facility, and the tug-of-war mechanic, bases can be 'resecured' by defenders just by kicking the attackers out. The defenders will be able to leave immediately once the threat is removed, and the territory will naturally resecure itself.
3) less cleaning up after ghost cappers - now that capturing is more reliant on boots on the ground at the location, we expect to see a lot less of people grabbing a node and bugging out, forcing people to do clean up on bases that aren't really under contention.

Getting the tuning just right on this is going to be tough, we like what we've got so far, but we're going to rely on a lot of feedback from you guys when this goes live about what we can do to make it better.

We've got a bunch of general gameplay enhancements coming this patch as well:


Indar polish and outpost revamps
We've taken a lot of the lessons we've learned on Amerish and applied them to some of the outposts and general flow of Indar. You'll see substantial changes to a pretty good number of outposts, including some being removed, replaced or added. The main outposts that have been modified are:

- Defunct Solar Hub
- Quartz Ridge
- The Crown
- West Highlands Checkpoint
- TI Alloys
- Xenotech Labs
- The Palisade
- J908 Impact Site

We're not done on Indar, but these are the outposts you'll see changes on this week. In general these outposts should have more defensible spawn rooms that are less prone to camping (especially by vehicles), they have better overall flow (especially where / how vehicles can access them), and in cases of outposts like West Highlands Checkpoint and Quartz Ridge (which has moved about 750 meters southwest from it's current location) these now provide real defensible roadblocks for the empire which owns them.

Beyond the outposts, a lot of work has been done to add better roads and direction to Indar. You'll notice a lot of new road ways, a lot of non-road areas that are going to be a bit less traversable than they are currently for vehicles (so you stick to the roads!) and more integration of these outposts into the traffic flow we see when watching players move around the map.

New sidegrade weapons and store updates
With this we'll be opening up a few more sidegrade weapons, these will be the weapons that are available on the store day-1 of release. We're also putting in final pricing both in Cert points and Station Cash for items in the store. We're doing this because so many of you have asked what the prices are going to be for items in the game. You still will not be able to spend Station Cash during the beta, but at least this will give you a solid idea of the prices of items in the game. Just incase you can't wait, here's a preview:

Infantry and vehicle weapon sidegrades will range in price from:
48 - 720 Cert points
250 - 700 Station Cash

Cosmetics such as camo patterns and armor attachments (for infantry and vehicles) will range in price from:
50-1200 Station Cash

Consumable boosts for additional resources or XP will range in price from:
75 - 700 Station Cash

But wait, theres more:
Here are a bunch of other changes going in this patch, in addition to a lot of bug fixes:

We're going to be fixing some bugs with XP granting, and changing the XP:Cert Point ratio to 500:1 to better reflect the rate at which players are earning XP and some of the new XP sources that have been added.
Cert prices are being further refined
Attachments on weapons have been adjusted so that they more correctly match the role of the weapon (i.e. long range scopes on long range weapons, reflex sights and laser dots on bullpups, as you'd imagine)
Empire specific fighter rocket pods have had their damage reduced
Liberator has been buffed, both in offense (105mm and Shredder turret) and defense (added resistance to flak.
Non-remote detonated deployable explosives such as tank mines and claymores will now stay in the world even if you switch classes.
MAXes will be getting some additional durability
As you can see, it's been very busy around here. We're really excited about these upcoming changes and hope you are too. As always, let us know what you think!

[Hamma]

Updated OP - marked as news. Some interesting stuff!

[SixShooter]

I'm excited to see the changes to Indar and really happy that they plan to make more changes in the future. Also glad to see this patch is going in this week since this weekend will be the last time I can get any substatial play time in before launch. :)
:cheers:

[wormywyrm]

Will removing all bonus points earned for defending a base lower the amount of players willing to defend?

[Dagron]

People already seem to have little interest in defending facilities as it is, i don't understand what they're expecting this will accomplish.

[Hamma]

Base benefits give the bases a bit more meaning. Should be interesting to see how it pans out.

[PoisonTaco]

Base benefits give the bases a bit more meaning. Should be interesting to see how it pans out.

Esamir will be interesting with only one tech plant. I see there being a lot more lightning packs.

[Chewy]

When first seeing this I popped in game just to find no update :(. I had to skulk around a bit to find out that the patch is going out most likely on friday.

Starting to think that I should skip on the last few of the beta updates and play other games. That way it could be like playing a whole new game on the 20th.

[Roidster]

and when are they going to fix the vehicle fov with multi monitor users

[Talek Krell]

Biolab - Increased innate health regeneration (see below for more information)
Did the "more information" part of the post get left out, or am I not reading carefully enough?

I haven't been keeping up like I used to, but I hadn't heard about there being innate regen.:confused:

[Chewy]

Did the "more information" part of the post get left out, or am I not reading carefully enough?

I haven't been keeping up like I used to, but I hadn't heard about there being innate regen.:confused:

In short, 20 ticks to start regen and 40 more to go from 1% to 100%. Also, like auto repair on MAXes and vehicles any damage will reset the timer.

Im not a fan of this. Engies already get pissed on by a (I hope) bug that blocks getting XP for repairing a flipped base. Now medics will have an even harder time getting hurt troops to stand still for heals thanks to them running from the front line to auto regen.

Then again I get massive XP from revives alone, so it may not be that bad from a XP point of view. But it still will hurt teamplay when every pup player runs from a fight.

[Sirisian]

The link benefits seem like such a pointless addition. It's another thing as others have pointed out before that no one will take into account when playing or planning strategies. Kind of a weak thing to add to the metagame.

[Crator]

Holy crapton of good stuff! Nice work. Especially like the tug-of-war implementation! I do believe the devs have finally figured out how to properly make it so base captures are quicker when attackers have more numbers and defenders are few. This was a big issue in PS1 with the standard 15 minutes cap time for a base.

If they can get the map indicators working right and the appropriate time to cap a base (which should allow for some sort of reaction time by the defending empire) it should work out well! Another thing that could be consider, if needed to allow defenders better reaction times, is to allow binding to spawn points.

But ya, other great stuff as well! Linked base benefits, continental locking, MBT tech plant requirement. Nice! Sounds like everything is really setup now to allow the continental locking!

[Hamma]

The link benefits seem like such a pointless addition. It's another thing as others have pointed out before that no one will take into account when playing or planning strategies. Kind of a weak thing to add to the metagame.

I like that you come out of the woodwork every few weeks/months to say everything being done is worthless. :lol:

[DirtyBird]

:rofl:

Interesting updates, looking forward to the patch and with it, 24/7 testing!
Doesnt mean much for you folks in the USA but Oceanic its pretty much a godsend.

Hope they fixed those little bugs as well like nades.

edit: And remove the health regen.

[Timealude]

I kinda dont see the point of continental benefits at the moment seeing as you really cant take over a continent...maybe its just to lay the ground work for when they add the 4th and home continents......

[NewSith]

I like that you come out of the woodwork every few weeks/months to say everything being done is worthless. :lol:

He has a point though... The suggested benefits are indeed not substantial.

Tech Plant? Why care to have it, people will pull tanks from the warpgates.
AMP Station - Seriously, the turrets are too weak when it come to 1vsMany balance, the increased RoF (this is what the slower overheating is) does mean much when turret dies in just a few tank hits...
Biolab?

Oh, this one is special:
First and foremost,, please update the OP with

Players will have basic health regeneration, this will kick in about 20 seconds after you've taken damage and take about 40 seconds to fully heal a very hurt player. It's not meant to replace combat health regen (like med kits, or medics)

Secondly - They added health regen in... Why do we need medics now? Why make the game yet more generic? Why does a facility give a bonus to an already low enough regen time?

I am not a fan of regenrating health. At all.

[maradine]

Secondly - They added health regen in... Why do we need medics now?

Presumably, becasue you don't want to hide behind a tower strut for 20 seconds with your gun between your legs waiting for the health regen to start.

[NewSith]

Presumably, becasue you don't want to hide behind a tower strut for 20 seconds with your gun between your legs waiting for the health regen to start.

Here's a more complex version of my reply:

The suggested benefits are not substantial at all. I especially like how having a base gives you more advantage, than having a continent...

As for the base benefits:

Tech Plant? - Why care to have it, people will pull tanks from the warpgates.
AMP Station? - Seriously, the turrets are too weak when it come to 1vsMany balance, the increased RoF (this is what the slower overheating is) does mean much when turret dies in just a few tank hits...
Biolab? - Oh, this one is special:

I myself am against hp regen, but seriously... 1 minute to recover my health? It's totally useless for fighting, yet it's a significant buff to Snipers and all long range campers. If it's in, at least make it worthy of being in and not just a half-assed change that was brought as a cosmetic addition attempting to make the people who want full regen in to submit. Do not decrease the actual engagement range to point-blank distance.

Secondly, - my primary point - They added health regen in... Why do we need medics now? Why make the game yet more generic? Why does a facility give a bonus to an already low enough regen time? I am not a fan of regenrating health. At all. Halo, SW:RC, WH40k:SM at least had 1 Gameplay/UI element that made the game far more interesting.

EDIT: Also, I wanted to rebuke the new capture mechanic, but I think I'll stick to "wait and see" on that one.

My point is -

Health regen is exactly why BF3 is so sniper heavy on any more or less open map.

I'm pretty sure BF3 has so many snipers because it's so easy and there's so much cover.No, it's just that you can't kill a sniper (the one sniping from afar), because he is just going to hide, wait, regen, pop out again.

Regening Shield+Static Health give a sniper a limited room for mistakes.
Regening Shield+Regening Health give the said sniper an unlimited room for mistakes.

As simple as that.

[Timealude]

Here's a more complex version of my reply:

For the sniper part, I just do that already with the restoration kits, if you cant find a sniper within 20 seconds (unless hes good) you have big problems already.

[NewSith]

For the sniper part, I just do that already with the restoration kits, if you cant find a sniper within 20 seconds (unless hes good) you have big problems already.

I'm talking about long range combat where you simply CAN'T get to a sniper in 20 seonds, because he is, for instance, on a hill 100 meters above you. Like in, say Broken Arch. Also, AFAIK, restoration kits are limited...

[Chewy]

I'll say it again.

The addition of health regen is the removal of teamwork and adding lonewolf tactics. Just like NewSith quoted

"Regening Shield+Static Health give a sniper a limited room for mistakes.
Regening Shield+Regening Health give the said sniper an unlimited room for mistakes."

I f***ing hate snipers. They belong on the battle field and have earned my respect many times over for what they can do. But I will forever hate them. Why, you ask? Because of the ones that distance themselves from the team effort in every way they can in order for the highest personal gain with lowest risk.

The reason we have regening shields is because of static health. I say make teamwork needed more, not less.

[psijaka]

Really liking the direction that SOE are taking here.

And it's very obvious that they have been listening carefully to their community.

Exciting times!

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Higby
Players will have basic health regeneration, this will kick in about 20 seconds after you've taken damage and take about 40 seconds to fully heal a very hurt player. It's not meant to replace combat health regen (like med kits, or medics)Yeah, I don't think I much like that either. A few builds ago I wouldn't have minded, but now that classes start with their abilities charged it seems like it's just giving medics the shaft and defeating the purpose of the shield bar.

[Canaris]

The dev team is continuing to sprint to the finish line here on Planetside 2

I just hope you don't fall on the last hurdle like most people who rush things

[Helwyr]

I'm sorry but I'm just rolling me eyes at all these comments about how health regen is going to ruin teamwork. PS1's system allowed everyone to cert a medical applicator and most did, yet somehow teamwork was more apparent in PS1 than it has been in PS2 with no regen.

..and ruin the Medic, seriously? Does having shield regen rather than an Engineer repairing all our armor ruined the Engineer class? Of course not!

I'd have been happier with a classless cert system, flexible inventory and just med applicators and med kits like PS1, but alas that's not what we got. With what we've got, health regen is a good addition. The times may need to be balanced given there's an unknown biolab bonus, but that's all.

[ringring]

I'll say it again.

The addition of health regen is the removal of teamwork and adding lonewolf tactics. Just like NewSith quoted

"Regening Shield+Static Health give a sniper a limited room for mistakes.
Regening Shield+Regening Health give the said sniper an unlimited room for mistakes."

I f***ing hate snipers. They belong on the battle field and have earned my respect many times over for what they can do. But I will forever hate them. Why, you ask? Because of the ones that distance themselves from the team effort in every way they can in order for the highest personal gain with lowest risk.

The reason we have regening shields is because of static health. I say make teamwork needed more, not less.
This bit is overly dramatic.
It's just a small health buff and no where near to removing teamwork from the whole game!
And ....... who ever said lonewolf was an invalid playstyle anyway?

Just play it out, I bet it won't make much of a difference at all ..... and if you want something to complain about how about cloakers with shotguns!

[Mox]

Good stuff BUT

-Auto health regain wont help the medics
-i am sceptical about tug the war. We will see where it leads.
-sc pricing is a bit too high.
-i hope they dont rush this thing too fast out. We dont need more buggs atm.

[Sturmhardt]

Sounds promising, but I don't like the idea of regenerating health at all, I think the current system is pretty good in that matter. It's gonna make medics and teamplay less important, so I hope they will scrap it again.

[Jaybonaut]

I just hope they don't kill off ghost capture gameplay, further limiting play options.

[getembees]

I appreciate you changing the rules for deploy-able mines and other objects. All too often I'd need to go MAX for just 2 minutes (a wasteful temp switch already). I'll be in better spirits being able to keep my ammo on the ground as well.

I think this will allow lone-wolves to be more functional overall should they choose to play with deployables. It will also help the zerg stay equipped.

I suggest engi-turrets not be on this list, as players already like to make "walls" of turrets and this could lead to an easy exploit.

[Dagron]

I don't like the health regen times at all either. It should take longer than 20s to kick in and a lot longer than 40s after that to get you to full health. It could work if it was at least 1 min to kick in and after that somewhere between 3 to 4 min to get you to max health, but i'm just guessing... maybe even those numbers would still be too fast.

Edit: Anyway, the point is it shouldn't affect the outcome of an engagement too often, it should mostly be a tool to allow you to be effective in the next one after you survive this one.

[Sturmhardt]

I just hope they don't kill off ghost capture gameplay, further limiting play options.

Ghost capture gameplay is nothing I would miss. The only guy having fun with that is one player, the others are just running around.

[sylphaen]

Ghost capture gameplay is nothing I would miss. The only guy having fun with that is one player, the others are just running around.

It's the "play alone in a MMO" gameplay. It's also currently the only valid PvE ini PS2. This kind of behavior also creates the "hack-a-mole" dynamic for all other players ! A win-win situation for everyone.
:rolleyes:

[Ruffdog]

I would like faster respawns throughout the cont if linked to a biolab.
Maybe a resource discount on health kits and med grenades.
I would not like health regen.

Looking forward to the patch though regardless

[Jaybonaut]

Ghost capture gameplay is nothing I would miss. The only guy having fun with that is one player, the others are just running around.

True, let's give infiltrators even less things to do. It's all about the ZOMG SHOOT 'N SPAWN....

[sylphaen]

True, let's give infiltrators even less things to do. It's all about the ZOMG SHOOT 'N SPAWN....

Ghost capture means capturing undefended territories (which can be done by anyone and isn't the specialty of any class). It has nothing to do about infiltrators.

I suspect we are talking about different things:
- infiltration is a gameplay
- capturing undefended territories is not (it would fall into the metagame category, or rather, its absence thereof)

[Crator]

I just hope they don't kill off ghost capture gameplay, further limiting play options.

People should really read all the patch notes, especially looking for things that they care about such as the above. Solo capturing should be valid but should defiantly take longer then an entire team doing it.

Originally posted in Nov 7th Patch Notes:
You can still capture the base by having one person at the node, but having more gives up to a 3x increase to the capture time beyond what is possible right now.

Now, what I think you really want is a way to mask the fact you are solo capping. I wouldn't be opposed to allowing a silent capture to happen when only a couple of people are trying to capture a point, but only up to a certain point. This would perhaps allow the solo attacker more time to get ready before the defenders respond (allow the solo person a little more time). Even then, I just came up with this off the top of my head and it probably has a lot of holes in it.

[MrBloodworth]

I'm sorry but I'm just rolling me eyes at all these comments about how health regen is going to ruin teamwork. PS1's system allowed everyone to cert a medical applicator and most did, yet somehow teamwork was more apparent in PS1 than it has been in PS2 with no regen.

Right. Because as we all know, in PS1 you could be healing yourself and firing your gun at the same time, no need for anyone to watch your back as you healed. Not only that, but the medical applicator made no noise, did not require you to be motionless, and had unlimited charges. Its EXACTLY THE SAME!*

This is indeed yet another item, that adds to the total number of items that remove any reliance on anyone else. Yet another "Playing alone, Together" feature.

Solo capturing should be valid but should defiantly take longer then an entire team doing it.

You can capture a point while in a tank. No need to expose yourself, or have other back you up, guard you as you hack, or watch the doors. This is good game play!*


* No, its not.

[MrBloodworth]

Dear god, they have no idea what they are doing do they?

Instead of fixing the base layouts that PROMOTE Camping, they triple down on mass on point mechanics? Tug of war? You mean the chance for a comeback, that's a bad thing that needs to be removed? I am so, so disappointed.

...............

[Crator]

You can capture a point while in a tank. No need to expose yourself, or have other back you up, guard you as you hack, or watch the doors. This is good game play!*


* No, its not.

If that is an issue, simple fix, then simply make it so you can't progress the capture while in a vehicle.

[MrBloodworth]

If that is an issue, simple fix, then simply make it so you can't progress the capture while in a vehicle.

They won't. Maxes can take points too.

Instead of expanding and modernizing the "hacking" game play they have chosen the mass on point game play of session based shooters.

[Crator]

^ They make changes all the time based on player feedback and data collected from their systems. Saying they won't change something if it causes issues like this is short-sighted.

[Fear The Amish]

Couple Things

1.) Base mechanics: I see alot of people saying "well if you don't have it just pull from WG who cares!" think about that... if your fighting on Indar and your VS and the front line is at twarich think how long that tanks gonna take to get there, and how this would disrupt an armored column.

2.) Health Regen: "medics will be useless!!!" ok this is ridiculous medics still will be needed to heal in fire fights as well as resurrect. Now they just wont be needed for after the fight top off's.

3.) Tug of War: basically AWESOME! finally i can lead my platoon else were with out having to go "how long before i have to come back and recap this from 1 lone infil/LA"

4.) Continent Lock bonus: they are setting the ground work for some awesome last ditch defenses and offenses, and eventual continent lockout. Couldn't be happier.

Basically all this looks like great stuff, I really like the way this game is heading.

[MrBloodworth]

^ They make changes all the time based on player feedback and data collected from their systems. Saying they won't change something if it causes issues like this is short-sighted.

I wont hold my breath on this one. "Playing alone, together" is clearly the first design point.

We now have a capture mechanic that relies on a bunch of randoms accidentally being in the same area.

[Crator]

I wont hold my breath on this one. "Playing alone, together" is clearly the first design point.

We now have a capture mechanic that relies on a bunch of randoms accidentally being in the same area.

If you're talking about solo players, then yes, your statement is correct.

But you are incorrect in saying the capture mechanic only relies on this. There are organized squads/platoons that can do the same thing with more proficiency, which is how it should be imo.

What do you mean by "Playing alone, together is clearly the first design point."?

[Bags]

I can't wait to solo entire bases while my passive health regen keeps me at full health.:D

[brighthand]

I like everything I've read in these notes EXCEPT the health regen.

Making your game more noob friendly won't solve the problem of player retention -if this is the reasoning behind it. Giving new players direction via an automated objective system would bring alot of things inline, and achieve the goal of hooking them for a long time; Compelling gameplay over crutches please.

[Striker KOJ]

Can't wait for the auto-replenishing ammo. I mean, why should I have to find an engineer or a terminal if I just wasted all my bullets? I should just be able to sit back for a minute and get them all back, right? It's too uncasual friendly to run out of ammo...

Call it a slippery slope argument all you want, but this is a step entirely in the wrong direction. "Just spend X Smed Bucks on this implant that decrease the time for auto-regen to kick in... it's just a side grade, we swear..."

[Crator]

I actually disagree with the folks saying the auto-heal is bad. The TTK is low in this game. As long as the auto-heal takes a while to kick in, what's the issue? I find this a valid compromise for the low TTK. It doesn't take away from the need to still have a medic since they are really used to revive more then anything.

[dethred]

Innate health regen is BS. It's straight from COD and BF3 (shit games). If it must be included (even if just to give Biolabs a purpose, then please GOD make it slow as hell and only useful for when you've found yourself travelling across the continent and need to be fresh for the next firefight. 40 seconds to full regen means the guy you just put 20-rounds into just to take his shield and 75% of health away, can warp or hide in a safe area and then come back at you with full health.

Stupid. The lack of health regen was one of the things I mentioned to a few friends as a positive when plugging the game.

[maradine]

40 seconds to full regen means the guy you just put 20-rounds into just to take his shield and 75% of health away, can warp or hide in a safe area and then come back at you with full health.

He's out of the firefight for an entire minute. In a game with low single digit infantry TTKs, that's an eternity. It's longer than if you had actually killed him and he respawned with, you know, full health and a new pack of grenades.

[Bags]

I actually disagree with the folks saying the auto-heal is bad. The TTK is low in this game. As long as the auto-heal takes a while to kick in, what's the issue? I find this a valid compromise for the low TTK. It doesn't take away from the need to still have a medic since they are really used to revive more then anything.

This. In no way is this going to replace medics.

It might be a buff for snipers, but whenever I snipe I generally either die in an encounter or dont' take damage.


I need to stop reading the PS2 official forums...
It affects the entire game...and not in the good way. We don't need to start making medics more useless for smaller groups.

"Oh man that was a hard fight, I wish we had a medic around to patch us up now. I used up my personal med kit already....oh wait lol HP regen gg ez-mode ammo regen too lolzies no friendly fire huehuehuehue unlimited instant action drops for life and kill cameras there he is kikakikakika!!"

[Helwyr]

Right. Because as we all know, in PS1 you could be healing yourself and firing your gun at the same time, no need for anyone to watch your back as you healed. Not only that, but the medical applicator made no noise, did not require you to be motionless, and had unlimited charges. Its EXACTLY THE SAME!*


The health regen is out of combat, I don't think anyone is going to be benefiting from this in an active fight. It's clearly for between fights. You also seem to gloss over that there was also a health regen implant in PS1, not many people used it, because the medical applicator was a much better option in most circumstances.

While you didn't say it, others that are calling this change a CoD/BF influenced change clearly didn't play or remember the original Planetside game play. Rather than showing Health Regens disconnect with Planetside they're showing their own.

[sylphaen]

The health regen is out of combat, I don't think anyone is going to be benefiting from this in an active fight. It's clearly for between fights. You also seem to gloss over that there was also a health regen implant in PS1, not many people used it, because the medical applicator was a much better option in most circumstances.

While you didn't say it, others that are calling this change a CoD/BF influenced change clearly didn't play or remember the original Planetside game play. Rather than showing Health Regens disconnect with Planetside they're showing their own.

Well, I think they could have made it cost resources, a utility slot, cert points or at least force you to forgo something else for this benefit.

I'm not sure why it's given away like that when it could be a customization option.

[Bravix]

Whelp boys and girls, put away your medic guns and don't bother certing Triage!

Besides the health regen stupidity, it all looks good.

[Crator]

I'm not sure why it's given away like that when it could be a customization option.

I do believe it directly aligns with the concept of removing downtime for the player in between battles. The auto-heal makes it so the player doesn't have to go search for something to heal them, or just suicide, and then move on to another objective.

[EVILPIG]

Leverage was a part of the original capture concept. Seems to have finally emerged.

[SixShooter]

He's out of the firefight for an entire minute. In a game with low single digit infantry TTKs, that's an eternity. It's longer than if you had actually killed him and he respawned with, you know, full health and a new pack of grenades.

^^This^^

[Hamma]

Let's ease up on the rage about health regen. Smed and Higby said on Twitter it will be yanked if they see it cause major issues for medics or game flow.

[ThGlump]

Im little concerned about tug of war captures. It seems they replacing skill with numbers in smaller fights. On bases with multiple points, when you have less (say 5-8) ppl, but are defending 2 points very well so 12 cant get to it, but they can just go to third point and since they have greater numbers theyll will. Not fan of that.

But i like that they reintroducing resecures. That was my favorite part in PS1. Coming in in last minute, fight through defenders and resecure it. I just wish they picked another method for do that in PS2.

[Beerbeer]

I don't like the health regen at all. If they're worried about people dying too much, they should raise the TTK across the board instead, and give people more ammo. This will allow people the "feel" that they are able o do more than an artificial heal.

[Crator]

Im little concerned about tug of war captures. It seems they replacing skill with numbers in smaller fights. On bases with multiple points, when you have less (say 5-8) ppl, but are defending 2 points very well so 12 cant get to it, but they can just go to third point and since they have greater numbers theyll will. Not fan of that.

Did I miss something in the patch notes? I just read them again am I'm not seeing where they say if you're required to capture all nodes. I just assumed that was the case.

[sylphaen]

Im little concerned about tug of war captures. It seems they replacing skill with numbers in smaller fights. On bases with multiple points, when you have less (say 5-8) ppl, but are defending 2 points very well so 12 cant get to it, but they can just go to third point and since they have greater numbers theyll will. Not fan of that.

But i like that they reintroducing resecures. That was my favorite part in PS1. Coming in in last minute, fight through defenders and resecure it. I just wish they picked another method for do that in PS2.

One thing not to forget is that they may eventually introduce more diversity in capture points. Maybe we will see the return of hacking and command consoles.

Edit: More thinking about regen

While I do not support the change, I have to admit that it was a pain to heal yourself solo without wasting consumables for those 3 reasons:
- changing classes does not refill health
- as a medic, you cannot heal yourself with the medic gun
- as a medic, the charge for the area-heal ability starts at zero

So unless I missed an undocumented mechanism to heal yourself solo, you either must use a consumable (if it is unlocked) or change to medic, wait for the ability to charge up and use it.

I agree that it is kind of frustrating to have to wait like that next to a terminal in order to heal yourself. However, on the field, I still think it is more interesting to force a player to take risks and go get some healing; what was wrong is how difficult it was to solo heal yourself when reaching a terminal; there was nothing wrong about having to reach it first.

I feel more intensity by running around at low health, trying to survive when my medic has been shot than seeing heals happen magically (no attrition, no supply chain, no forced repositioning, no choice involved). Of course, the cooldown is very long and regen is slow but I still do not understand the decision. I also think the change will affect those occasional survival low-health situations involving snipers and low-pop combat. If a guy got isolated into a base, why should he be able to hide and wait for regen instead of having to take more risks ? IMO, It's unfair for those who lowered his health down. I could find some situations where such a mechanic would have given me the upper hand. On the other hand, it can't be unfair since everyone has it by default.

Of course, I do not understand what they are trying to do so we'll have to see how it plays out, but I wish a more elegant solution could have been found.

[ThGlump]

Did I miss something in the patch notes? I just read them again am I'm not seeing where they say if you're required to capture all nodes. I just assumed that was the case.

As i understand it there wont be any capturing points. You will be directly capturing the base just by standing near a point. If VS have 3 people near A, and 5 people near B, while NC have 12 people near C, the base will start turning to NC. You wont capture points.

[EVILPIG]

One thing not to forget is that they may eventually introduce more diversity in capture points. Maybe we will see the return of hacking and command consoles.

Edit: More thinking about regen

While I do not support the change, I have to admit that it was a pain to heal yourself solo without wasting consumables for those 3 reasons:
- changing classes does not refill health
- as a medic, you cannot heal yourself with the medic gun
- as a medic, the charge for the area-heal ability starts at zero

So unless I missed an undocumented mechanism to heal yourself solo, you either must use a consumable (if it is unlocked) or change to medic, wait for the ability to charge up and use it.

I agree that it is kind of frustrating to have to wait like that next to a terminal in order to heal yourself. However, on the field, I still think it is more interesting to force a player to take risks and go get some healing; what was wrong is how difficult it was to solo heal yourself when reaching a terminal; there was nothing wrong about having to reach it first.

I feel more intensity by running around at low health, trying to survive when my medic has been shot than seeing heals happen magically (no attrition, no supply chain, no forced repositioning, no choice involved). Of course, the cooldown is very long and regen is slow but I still do not understand the decision. I also think the change will affect those occasional survival low-health situations involving snipers and low-pop combat. If a guy got isolated into a base, why should he be able to hide and wait for regen instead of having to take more risks ? IMO, It's unfair for those who lowered his health down. I could find some situations where such a mechanic would have given me the upper hand. On the other hand, it can't be unfair since everyone has it by default.

Of course, I do not understand what they are trying to do so we'll have to see how it plays out, but I wish a more interesting solution could have been found.

Last I heard regarding this, was that they plan to implement multiple capture methods. Perhaps, by base type.

[sylphaen]

Last I heard regarding this, was that they plan to implement multiple capture methods. Perhaps, by base type.

Thanks for the info, that's great news. With new continents, there will also be more room for diversity.
:cool:

[Crator]

Still confused by that. So you are saying you think you have to stand by something that allows you to capture a base, but that thing is not a capture point? Even though the patch notes talk about some bases having multiple capture points while others only have one. I don't see anywhere in the patch notes that tells us how exactly that works tbh. So we are just jumping to conclusions without any reference to back it up.

[ThGlump]

Yea no capture points that you can capture and move on. When they talk about capture points in new system that mean point, where if you are near, you contributing to capture base. But that capture point will never turn to be yours. If you stay alone at point C and there is no enemy at A,B or even C point range is big, you start capturing base. As one enemy step into any of those points, capturing will stop as you even each other. If you leave to kill that guy, you leave capture point and enemy start winning base back.

Thats what i understood from patch notes, and patch stream. But i could be wrong.

[Crator]

Ok, I just read the patch notes again, to make sure something wasn't being missed. I think you are incorrect about no capture point. The starting sentence in the tug-of-war description says this:

Currently bases are captured by a ticket race that is initiated when a base control node gets flipped and starts generating tickets, those tickets are then multiplied based on influence your empire has on the base. In this system two factors, control node ownership and adjacent territory control dictate the victor of the base capture.

This tells me that the current system requires control node ownership.

With the new system, there will be three factors that determine the capture of the base, control node ownership, adjacent territory control and player leverage.

This tells me the new system also requires control node ownership. So same as what it was before the patch with added requirement of player leverage.

Player leverage will be the number of people you have simultaneously influencing a control node. More players near the control node = more leverage = you capture the base faster.

This tells me they are talking about a single node. The rest of the paragraph points to him talking about a single node as well to capture. The range at which you have to be from the single node has been increased so you don't have to be right on it is all. Also I think when he put the "= you capture the base faster" while using a singular reference to a control node it didn't include a base that has multiple nodes in the statement. I think that's where you are getting confused.

For multi-control node facilities such as Biolabs, or outposts like The Crown, having people locking down the nodes becomes more important than just rushing to the next node to flip it, not only because the people posted up on that node are keeping it from being captured by an enemy, but also because they're helping to move the capture needle faster for your empire.

In the above, he does talk about multi-nodes which is towards the end of the patch notes. Which he states you must have people lock down nodes, meaning more then one.

[Hamma]

By the way - earlier today on Health Regen:

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/266638003626192897

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/266638092390240257

[Kail]

Ok, I just read the patch notes again, to make sure something wasn't being missed. I think you are incorrect about no capture point. The starting sentence in the tug-of-war description says this:



This tells me that the current system requires control node ownership.



This tells me the new system also requires control node ownership. So same as what it was before the patch with added requirement of player leverage.



This tells me they are talking about a single node. The rest of the paragraph points to him talking about a single node as well to capture. The range at which you have to be from the single node has been increased so you don't have to be right on it is all. Also I think when he put the "= you capture the base faster" while using a singular reference to a control node it didn't include a base that has multiple nodes in the statement. I think that's where you are getting confused.



In the above, he does talk about multi-nodes which is towards the end of the patch notes. Which he states you must have people lock down nodes, meaning more then one.

Yeah - the way I understood it is that it's basically exactly what we have now with three changes:


The range to be included in a control point is much larger, so you don't literally have to stand around it
The more people you have standing around it, up to a point, also increases how fast your respective color bar fills up
Instead of just beating the other colors, you'll be subtracting them as you fill


I think of it like attacking currently - you need to have a person sticking around a point because it'll start auto-flipping back to the defender's side. With these changes you're not just baby sitting, you're contributing.

[NewSith]

By the way - earlier today on Health Regen:

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/266638003626192897

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/266638092390240257

I'd underline the second statement...

It's not the amount of medics people are worried about, it's about long range combat turning into a slow crap of duck'n'cover 'till you're bored...

[Crator]

I'd underline the second statement...

It's not the amount of medics people are worried about, it's about long range combat turning into a slow crap of duck'n'cover 'till you're bored...

Wouldn't that be a valid tactic for teamwork to take care of? Hold the guy by throwing a sniper at em and then flank him with your other teammates.

[Helwyr]

I'd underline the second statement...

It's not the amount of medics people are worried about, it's about long range combat turning into a slow crap of duck'n'cover 'till you're bored...

Where does this sort of combat occur for you where players are killed in a single fire fight with their health bar slowly knocked down by attrition of long range shots?

I don't think that's ever occurred to me, it's just not the way fights are won or lost. TTK is too fast, and if it isn't fast at the range your engaging at you've probably made a tactical error by engaging the enemy under those circumstances with that weapon.

The time's I do have partial health is after a fight, from falling damage, or FF/bad driving.

[Chewy]

Where does this sort of combat occur for you where players are killed in a single fire fight with their health bar slowly knocked down by attrition of long range shots?

I don't think that's ever occurred to me, it's just not the way fights are won or lost. TTK is too fast, and if it isn't fast at the range your engaging at you've probably made a tactical error by engaging the enemy under those circumstances with that weapon.

The time's I do have partial health is after a fight, from falling damage, or FF/bad driving.

My health gets chipped in every battle, more so if I need to defend.

In an outright "bash your head on the wall" assault in a base, yes you will die to fast for ship damage to do much. But that's after you get in the walls of a base and are fighting to get inside the main building with a spawn close by. What about when you haven't gotten to the base yet? What if the fight isn't indoors and out on a road or hillside with your only hard point spawn being 300+m back and the deployed sundy is under heavy fire?

I have fought that fight many times and every bit of health you have is VITAL in order to stay alive. Loosing a single troop in a fight like that can cost the entire mission because of one less gun, medic, repairman. You can't balance a game thinking that you can get back on the front lines with every respawn. Attackers just don't get to have that luxury, they have to fight to get and keep their spawns points.

With health regen the attackers in a fight like that will fall back with every nick/cut and will make defenders hard as fuck to kill. Defending a base is holding out as long as possible against an army. Chip damage adds up when holding a line. Making every hit you take mean that you need to rethink on either to hold your ground and wait for a medic, or fall back for help with the risk of attackers pushing up. Health regen negates damn near all of that.

Why do you think it costs so much to cert into armor regen for vehicles and MAXes while giving so little pay off? Because it's pure power.

Maxed out regen on a MAX is 1% every tick and it takes 15 ticks to kick in, so 115 ticks for a full heal at the cost of SHIT TONS of certs (the wiki says a total of 8640 goddamn certs, which will now cost 500XP each). But every single troop get double the regen speed for free with a bio lab. Something wrong there if you ask me.

[Jaybonaut]

Ghost capture means capturing undefended territories (which can be done by anyone and isn't the specialty of any class). It has nothing to do about infiltrators.

I suspect we are talking about different things:
- infiltration is a gameplay
- capturing undefended territories is not (it would fall into the metagame category, or rather, its absence thereof)

That's not what I was saying - but ghost capturing is ideal for infiltrators as they can hack all the terminals and spawn whatever they need including sunderers in unoccupied bases.