The Reddit Q&A Makes Me Nervous - Page 6

Raymac · 2012-03-25, 11:50 PM

Originally Posted by BorisBlade

Honestly most of the problems didnt really exist. They dont want sancs, so they put up 3 on every single cont? Clearly sancs werent a problem. They function exactly the same as the old ones, just now you have a ton of em instead of just one per faction. Seriously, before you flew(or drove) out of the sanc through a wg to your target cont from the corner wg, now you fly out of your wg sanc from teh corner, the only difference is the loadtime between the gates, thats meaningless for "speeding up gameplay." And all the issues those permanent uncapturable things cause far outweigh that negligible load time elimination.

I don't think Sanctuaries were a "problem" per se, but there was certainly room for streamlining and improvement.

We don't need a whole separate zone. It's more than just about the loadtime. For example, your outfit wants to organize for a raid during a major battle to help turn the tide, so you all zone out and go to the Sanc to rally and load up. You get your whole raid all set and your target picked out, head to the warpgate ready to kick some ass when OH WAIT that continent is pop locked. You gotta wait for 50 spots to open up or go fight somewhere else. THAT is a problem.

Now without a separate zone, you can still rally up and get your raid ready in the safety of a no-fire zone, but not have to worry about any problems getting back to the fight that you want.

Also, uncapturable footholds are absolutely no different than the warpgates in Planetside 1. Every empire always had access to 3 continents. Planetside 2 is launching with 3 continents. A rose by any other name is still a rose. The only difference is the ability to capture territory instead of just bases which I think is a HUGE improvement to the base hopping system of Planetside 1.

KrazeyVIII · 2012-03-25, 11:59 PM

They are no longer in the business of running a game into the ground (PS1). If it doesn't work in beta then they WILL fix it.

cellinaire · 2012-03-25, 11:59 PM

From what I remember, even in PS1, there was absolutely no option to occupy the home continents(I mean, sanc) so many people on official forum and some prominent PS players have discussed it..(sanc invasion)

But yeah, I'm also not that fond of this 'foothold' idea(can live with it, though) and when they begin to introduce more conts post-launch, I hope they don't install footholds there.

(and obviously, Higby got a lot of inspiration and ideas from Battlefield series. It's been mentioned several times)

And thinking about the list of things they will change in Beta... well don't get your hopes up so high I'd say.

Stardouser · 2012-03-26, 12:17 AM

Originally Posted by cellinaire

From what I remember, even in PS1, there was absolutely no option to occupy the home continents(I mean, sanc) so many people on official forum and some prominent PS players have discussed it..(sanc invasion)

But yeah, I'm also not that fond of this 'foothold' idea(can live with it, though) and when they begin to introduce more conts post-launch, I hope they don't install footholds there.

(and obviously, Higby got a lot of inspiration and ideas from Battlefield series. It's been mentioned several times)

And thinking about the list of things they will change in Beta... well don't get your hopes up so high I'd say.

One thing I definitely don't want them taking inspiration from is BF's uncaps and uncap rules. Think about it - every single 64 player area of BF has 1 uncap base for each team. And whiners who want duel simulators institute uncap rules so that you can't even attack those bases, forcing one team to never be able to completely get the upper hand on the other. Can't steal vehicles, can't suppress aircraft at the airfield, nothing, constantly meeting at the same spot in the middle of the map, totally boring and repetitive, completely denied the right to be aggressive and take the fight to the enemy. Imagine if Planetside had some kind of safe area every 1500m like that?

And the problem here is this: Most Battlefield maps are TINY. Uncap rules are almost understandable when the maps are so small, as they are in BF3, that you can almost fire infantry weapons across the map from one uncap to another. When maps are big enough that it takes a lot longer to reach them, there is NO excuse for making them unable to be attacked. Planetside 2 has a huge play area. There is no excuse, therefore, for PS1 to take any further inspiration from BF's uncaps and uncap rules. I'm not yet sure if uncappable footholds on all continents is a good idea or not, but I definitely know that I do not want to see any more uncappable stuff than that. I am greatly afraid that they're going to do something nuts, like institute a deathtouch punishment for attacking bases out of order, which would force you to meatgrind directly through the enemy at all times.

It could happen if the duel simulator and meatgrinder lovers from the CoD and BF3 communities had their way.

Raymac · 2012-03-26, 12:37 AM

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Planetside 2 has a huge play area. There is no excuse, therefore, for PS1 to take any further inspiration from BF's uncaps and uncap rules.

Who said it was taken from Battlefield? It could just as easily be taken from the warpgates in PS1.

EVILPIG · 2012-03-26, 12:47 AM

Players don't need multi-crew vehicles to cooperate. Organize better than your opponents.

Stardouser · 2012-03-26, 12:47 AM

Originally Posted by Raymac

Who said it was taken from Battlefield? It could just as easily be taken from the warpgates in PS1.

It wasn't my intent to suggest that it was, just that Battlefield could sadly inspire more.

CuddlyChud · 2012-03-26, 01:27 AM

I feel like a lot of the things they took out of ps2 (like sancs or the ability to cont lock) were cool if you had a lot of time to play, but aren't as fun if your time is limited. It was really hard to jump into the game if you only had 30 or 45 minutes to play. Loading up sanc, waiting for the hart, baby sitting hacks, etc... The worst was when your opponent abandoned the cont, leaving you to mop it up. I remember pretty often 30-40 min downtimes between when the fight for a cont ended and the next one began. Taking a cont is an awesome feeling, but only if you're there for the majority of it. Otherwise, the important part is the individual base fights. There were so many time sinks in the game, and I think that ensuring all the conts have a fight on them all the time is a good Thing. I think that's what the changes were meant to do.

Lokster · 2012-03-26, 02:54 AM

Wow, seriously people. Wait for beta to start nay saying and bitching.

I'm a long term PS1 player as well, but I am reasonable enough to realize that a lot of PS1 sucked. Continent locks being one of them. Continent locks did two things, slowed combat and time between battles and restricted vastly the amount of landmass in contention.

Continent locks was only a good thing in PS1 because with 6000 continents (exaggeration of course) and only 200 players, it forced people to fight on the open continents. Hopefully PS2 won't have the horribly sparse population problem PS1 had because it won't have stupid, useless crap like sanctuaries, 15 minute hacks, continent locks, and the likes.

Remember, PS1 died for a reason. Too much of it WAS NOT FUN.

Asking the developers to simply recreate PS1 with new technology is asking them to waste millions of dollars on a game that will not succeed (again). Major changes are necessary, even if PS1 players do not agree with them.

cellinaire · 2012-03-26, 04:46 AM

Originally Posted by CuddlyChud

I feel like a lot of the things they took out of ps2 (like sancs or the ability to cont lock) were cool if you had a lot of time to play, but aren't as fun if your time is limited. It was really hard to jump into the game if you only had 30 or 45 minutes to play. Loading up sanc, waiting for the hart, baby sitting hacks, etc... The worst was when your opponent abandoned the cont, leaving you to mop it up. I remember pretty often 30-40 min downtimes between when the fight for a cont ended and the next one began. Taking a cont is an awesome feeling, but only if you're there for the majority of it. Otherwise, the important part is the individual base fights. There were so many time sinks in the game, and I think that ensuring all the conts have a fight on them all the time is a good Thing. I think that's what the changes were meant to do.

Hmm, yeah I agree. While I personally hope them leave many things which made PS1 unique in the first place, not all the people who will play this game or thinking of trying PS2(let alone the playerbase who have never played SOE games before) prefer what's suggested on this thread.

DOUBLEXBAUGH · 2012-03-26, 05:27 AM

The main counter to allowing a cont cap with no footholds seems to be "that 30-40 minutes of mopping up a cont". Then leave the zerg to finish it once you see you have 2-1 + pop advantage and move to the next fight. Back in 03 and 04 when the game still had a big population Emerald would have 2-3 big pop locked fights, a medium fight (around 100 from each side) and a cont or 2 with small squad vs squad fights. If your cont is ending and you don't want to wait for that 30 minutes of mopping up, DON'T, just move on. Also when the game had a good population the enemy mostly stayed till the last base to fight, you didn't have to ghost the last few. Anything post 05 shouldn't really be used to judge PS game play, because the lower pops made it a different game.

Without cont locks there is no form of winning in the game, taking a base just isn't the same as taking full control of an entire map! Also, once you locked a cont in PS1 you didn't have to set up defenses at the WG. The enemy got kicked off the cont back to their sanc and they would go somewhere else. Now they will stay on cont and try to push out, and everyone loves WG camping right?

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Is there a veteran's manifesto that breaks down the vet opinion issue by issue and lists as many issues as possible? I've done one for Mordor for BF3 and I'd love to read a PS1 vet's manifesto to compare.

Malorn wrote one a while ago

http://www.liberty-clan.com/topsecret/psm.pdf

I never got around to reading the whole thing, but most of what I did had good points.

Marsgrim · 2012-03-26, 06:00 AM

Posted this yesterday and didn't expect such a big response, however I'd like to address some points made on people deriding the opinion of Vets and posting that continent locks were a bad thing.

Firstly, for those of you who think the veteran players are being over-reactive and negative on everything, if you haven't played Planetside for a significant period then you are missing the viewpoint we have which has been formed from months of real time playing in massive battles.

My points and feedback come not from the FPS angle, but from the MMOFPS angle. Veterans like myself (and I was in the PS closed beta) can remember fights over the southern Gunuku bridge on Cyssor that went on for a week (typically between TR and NC as the VS vehicles could move over water). Literally a week of 200+ players fighting over a bridge to a base. That means you fought at that bridge for 4-6 hours, logged on the next day and found the same fight ongoing. This happened every day for 5 odd days.

What this highlights, that is different from a regular FPS, is the ability for choke points on a map to become impassable when there are enough defenders to hold the attackers. Facilities and bases by their nature are choke points, this leads to a huge impasse when equal numbers fight over the base.

If the forces are split 50/50 between attacker and defender then a base becomes untakable. This is why the original PS bases needed NTU and could eventually run out of power, go neutral and allow an attacking force to capture it. The NTU feature essentially made a siege possible and winable, where you starved the defenders out through draining their NTU.

Even with the third empire dynamic, it often led to a continent split where 50% of one empire fought 50% of the other two - i.e. 50% TR fighting 50% VS and 50% TR fighting 50% NC, with a third fight ongoing with 50% VS against 50% NC.

What moved the map around and stopped stalemates over a base, was the ability for small outfits/squads to go behind enemy lines and cut a base link. This feature proved unsustainable though when any base could be hacked, and the lattice was introduced to focus fights. The lattice then introduced a strategic element whereby Generator holds could cut off the plant benefits to the front line base, or another lattice point was hackable which allowed a small outfit to try and take the base, draw defenders from the main fight and allow their empire to advance.

Now with the current PS2 plans, resources seem to be taking the role of NTU, however they do not appear to be adding the facility to siege a base e.g. lack of resources may mean you cannot spawn vehicles, however it does not appear at this stage that a lack will prevent people spawning at a base. Even if resources impact an empire ability to spawn their specific weaponry, I cannot see from the plans at the moment how it will allow an attacking empire to capture a base. In fact, if there are uncapturable bases it implies that resources are not required to spawn weapons/armour (where as NTU was). The reason this is important is the simple advantage a defender has in defending the choke points of a base (and with a reduced spawn timer) this makes it very hard for attackers to win.

Further to this, the other way in which afight could be advanced was by an outfit/squad heading to another continent more valued by the empire they were attacking, and begining an offensive there (i.e. TR defending Oshur). Thus a legitimate way to move your empire forward on Cyssor was to send a small force to an enemy home continent that you had a link to and begin a hack there. One of the best things core combat added was the ability for the caves to link to a continent, allowing an empire to hack and open a base with cave benefits on an otherwise secure continent. This threat would then lead the defending empire on Cyssor to respond to that base hack, ideally allowing the Cyssor fight to advance.

This tactic worked because bases are natural chokepoints, meaning an empire had to send more responders to resecure a hacked base than the other empire had committed to taking it - opening a numbers disparity on the Cyssor fight and allowing that empire on the offensive who hacked the base to advance on Cyssor.

There were a number of occassions as well where our empire managed to break the broadcast warp link from an enemy sanctuary to the main fight because we were ignored on hacking that Empires home continent that linked to the main fight.

The point I am trying to make is that I believe the developers have dumbed down the tactical and strategic play that linked continents and sanctuaries gave. By allocating un-capturable bases on each continent and removing the links, it makes it much more liekly that a fight is going to be stuck over the same base or chokepoint without changing for days on end.

Even with the prospect of behind lines hacks to territory, at this stage I do not see how it can have the same affect as hacking a different continent, because the reduced time the defenders need to respond on the same continent means the tactical impact on the frontline base is minimal, particularly if the base/facility/hex capture time is much shorter if that empire controls the surrounding areas.

In short, it means a tactical shifting of the defender forcdes has much less impact on the fight because they can get to the threatened location quicker (same continent) and even if they fail to prevent the flip, they can recapture it much quicker due to owning surrounding territories.

Although I spoke of purpose via continent lock (and sanc locks) I have not advocated a map reset as a result or a permanent win condition, I have advocated having a purpose to playing and a way to play in such a manner that players are not just banging their head against the same base wall for 3 weeks. Having a massive scale and map means very little if the fights are always around the same bases, and the game becomes stale if a base can hold out for days. who on the attacking side wants to be "farmed" for days as they try to take a base?

Having sanctuaries, linked continents, NTU, lattice networks and base/continent benefits added a strategic level to Planetside. What does PS2 have on this scale that will meaningfully move and direct fights?

xSquirtle · 2012-03-26, 06:34 AM

Originally Posted by KrazeyVIII

They are no longer in the business of running a game into the ground (PS1). If it doesn't work in beta then they WILL fix it.

your optimism is honorable, misguided, but honorable.

What exactly has changed to really make me believe they would not simply run the game into the ground? This is SOE, who for the better part of 8 years constantly stuck game breaking materiel into every single one of their titles especially Planetside 1 of all games.

Sorry if I do not share the same optimism as you, but having to deal with dumb decisions, one right after another and has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Skitrel · 2012-03-26, 06:49 AM

Originally Posted by xSquirtle

your optimism is honorable, misguided, but honorable.

What exactly has changed to really make me believe they would not simply run the game into the ground? This is SOE, who for the better part of 8 years constantly stuck game breaking materiel into every single one of their titles especially Planetside 1 of all games.

Sorry if I do not share the same optimism as you, but having to deal with dumb decisions, one right after another and has left a bad taste in my mouth.

Tonnes of hyperbole in that response. Use supporting information to demonstrate you points, not hyperbole.

basti · 2012-03-26, 07:00 AM

Originally Posted by Marsgrim

Posted this yesterday and didn't expect such a big response, however I'd like to address some points made on people deriding the opinion of Vets and posting that continent locks were a bad thing.

Firstly, for those of you who think the veteran players are being over-reactive and negative on everything, if you haven't played Planetside for a significant period then you are missing the viewpoint we have which has been formed from months of real time playing in massive battles.

My points and feedback come not from the FPS angle, but from the MMOFPS angle. Veterans like myself (and I was in the PS closed beta) can remember fights over the southern Gunuku bridge on Cyssor that went on for a week (typically between TR and NC as the VS vehicles could move over water). Literally a week of 200+ players fighting over a bridge to a base. That means you fought at that bridge for 4-6 hours, logged on the next day and found the same fight ongoing. This happened every day for 5 odd days.

What this highlights, that is different from a regular FPS, is the ability for choke points on a map to become impassable when there are enough defenders to hold the attackers. Facilities and bases by their nature are choke points, this leads to a huge impasse when equal numbers fight over the base.

If the forces are split 50/50 between attacker and defender then a base becomes untakable. This is why the original PS bases needed NTU and could eventually run out of power, go neutral and allow an attacking force to capture it. The NTU feature essentially made a siege possible and winable, where you starved the defenders out through draining their NTU.

Even with the third empire dynamic, it often led to a continent split where 50% of one empire fought 50% of the other two - i.e. 50% TR fighting 50% VS and 50% TR fighting 50% NC, with a third fight ongoing with 50% VS against 50% NC.

What moved the map around and stopped stalemates over a base, was the ability for small outfits/squads to go behind enemy lines and cut a base link. This feature proved unsustainable though when any base could be hacked, and the lattice was introduced to focus fights. The lattice then introduced a strategic element whereby Generator holds could cut off the plant benefits to the front line base, or another lattice point was hackable which allowed a small outfit to try and take the base, draw defenders from the main fight and allow their empire to advance.

Now with the current PS2 plans, resources seem to be taking the role of NTU, however they do not appear to be adding the facility to siege a base e.g. lack of resources may mean you cannot spawn vehicles, however it does not appear at this stage that a lack will prevent people spawning at a base. Even if resources impact an empire ability to spawn their specific weaponry, I cannot see from the plans at the moment how it will allow an attacking empire to capture a base. In fact, if there are uncapturable bases it implies that resources are not required to spawn weapons/armour (where as NTU was). The reason this is important is the simple advantage a defender has in defending the choke points of a base (and with a reduced spawn timer) this makes it very hard for attackers to win.

Further to this, the other way in which afight could be advanced was by an outfit/squad heading to another continent more valued by the empire they were attacking, and begining an offensive there (i.e. TR defending Oshur). Thus a legitimate way to move your empire forward on Cyssor was to send a small force to an enemy home continent that you had a link to and begin a hack there. One of the best things core combat added was the ability for the caves to link to a continent, allowing an empire to hack and open a base with cave benefits on an otherwise secure continent. This threat would then lead the defending empire on Cyssor to respond to that base hack, ideally allowing the Cyssor fight to advance.

This tactic worked because bases are natural chokepoints, meaning an empire had to send more responders to resecure a hacked base than the other empire had committed to taking it - opening a numbers disparity on the Cyssor fight and allowing that empire on the offensive who hacked the base to advance on Cyssor.

There were a number of occassions as well where our empire managed to break the broadcast warp link from an enemy sanctuary to the main fight because we were ignored on hacking that Empires home continent that linked to the main fight.

The point I am trying to make is that I believe the developers have dumbed down the tactical and strategic play that linked continents and sanctuaries gave. By allocating un-capturable bases on each continent and removing the links, it makes it much more liekly that a fight is going to be stuck over the same base or chokepoint without changing for days on end.

Even with the prospect of behind lines hacks to territory, at this stage I do not see how it can have the same affect as hacking a different continent, because the reduced time the defenders need to respond on the same continent means the tactical impact on the frontline base is minimal, particularly if the base/facility/hex capture time is much shorter if that empire controls the surrounding areas.

In short, it means a tactical shifting of the defender forcdes has much less impact on the fight because they can get to the threatened location quicker (same continent) and even if they fail to prevent the flip, they can recapture it much quicker due to owning surrounding territories.

Although I spoke of purpose via continent lock (and sanc locks) I have not advocated a map reset as a result or a permanent win condition, I have advocated having a purpose to playing and a way to play in such a manner that players are not just banging their head against the same base wall for 3 weeks. Having a massive scale and map means very little if the fights are always around the same bases, and the game becomes stale if a base can hold out for days. who on the attacking side wants to be "farmed" for days as they try to take a base?

Having sanctuaries, linked continents, NTU, lattice networks and base/continent benefits added a strategic level to Planetside. What does PS2 have on this scale that will meaningfully move and direct fights?

Very good post.