Planetside 2 Needs Prone

[mirwalk]

I worry about two main things with prone.

First is chokepoints. I see 3 or 4 guys in a stairway laying prone. They do this in a manner that allows them to shoot down the stairs while only having maybe 10% of the body exposed to enemy fire. As such 3 guys (4 if you have a medic) can hold off 10-20 people. This is mostly caused by you being prone and getting lots of cover, and lots of accuracy to shoot at the enemies. While the enemy is denied any cover and loses accuracy since they are moving.
Good tactic? You bet. frustrating as hell to the average gamer? You bet.

The same situation with crouchers, and you can hold off maybe 6-10 people. the amount of extra trouble prone causes to attackers is where most of the issue is. Many gamers can't stand it and most won't care as much that it is gone.

Second scenario. Snipers. Lots of rock and cover out there to snipe from. That's with crouching. Add prone and that locations jump by 100% or more. Very difficult for people to spot and work out where you are. Especially without kill cams. Add a little cloak for movement between sniping spots. A good sniper will be damn near unkillable.

Of course most gamers hate snipers since you get the feeling of having no recourse to fight back as you are not as accurate at range as they are, and you have a hard time locating them in the brush, especially with camo, cloak, and prone.

Both of these situations exist in game currently with crouch. With prone the issue goes up by a lot.

The answer of use grenades and AOE weapons is not as good as it was in PS1. The Devs have stated they are working to reduce AOE use and spamming. Hence the reason grenades cost resources. We don't have the rocklet or thumper.

Also the other rocket/ grenade weapons are AV weapons on MAXs. And from the E3 feeds you can see they reduced the damage those do to infantry. Most maxes died to regular soldiers when using AV against them. So those are not going to help break such choke point scenarios.

Most of these issues will happen in buildings and base fights. You can't call in much help from air when you are in a bunker. They only real hope is breaking these setups with MAXs.

I don't have a decent fix with snipers. The only sniper who would be caught is a static sniper. If he moves every min or two, he will be difficult to take out.

Most of what people want prone for can be accomplished by crouch and little higher cover then in most games. However prone opens a new level of power and use that can overbalance a game in one way or another.

One point I would make on prone and LAs. Sure using prone takes away the ability to jump jet. However, the places they can get to and then go prone at increases. This can make it impossible for anyone but another LA to get to that location to sneak up on them or take them out.

I remember BF3 fights I left after being sniped again and again by someone in a building that I had no way to get to and couldn't shoot at. He had the height for more field of fire, he had open ground to kill me in if I tried to cross the distance, He was hard to locate as to which building he was in. With as open as Planetside is, I don't want to make you average, low skilled player to be easy kills to the point they just say forget it an leave.