Becoming Disappointed.

[MrBloodworth]

I really do not like the Auto repair and auto Re-supply. There are invisible walls over land. People get resources automatically every once in a while, just because ( Everyone is special? ). You can switch seats with a key press, you can enter any vehicle from any angle. You can't kick an empire completely off a continent, they have an impenetrable base. You can bail instantly from anything. One man tanks/gunners other than the lightning. No Enter/exit animations, makes the game feel cheap and disassociated. You can spawn on squad leaders. There is no way to deny opposition any equipment ( you spawn fully equipped ). They have power increases in my Planetside.

This isn't a post that "Battlefield did it" but a post about none of the above fits a WAR game.

I thought this was a War game. War games have elements of logistics/denial in it, required teamwork, and you can loose. Most of the above is great for session based shooters where it does not matter after the timer/tickets expire. Session based shooters are DESIGNED to remove reliance on others, it does not discourage teamwork, but its not required.

I personally do not mind that aspects of PS1 have changed. It always needed things like better net code, and more refined shooting mechanics and such. Also, the engine is stellar so far, and the art wonderful ( The VS max is a bit silly ). The team themselves very open, and very much appreciated for all the work to even bring Planetside into 2012.

I just do not understand the push to remove required teamwork to this degree, or aspects that are found in war games. It seems more and more like its becoming imposable to fail in this game, other than death, for a second. Not for a title that is supposed to be a strategic war game at its core. Not for a game that one of its core rules was no player was better than another because of time played. Not for a game that has such a grip on many people IF it got you. I feel many of those PS moments are being removed. I feel like the baby is being tossed out with the bathwater in many areas.

2c

PS: before it comes up. I like the Battlefield series. They are great games. But they are not war games. They are Battle games. Two different types of Shooters. Just like Quake is an arena shooter. Battlefield is a Battle shooter. Planetside is a War shooter. Different designs, different focuses, different game play.

[Stardouser]

Agreed. Autoregeneration of vehicle health is bad, unlimited ammo is bad, and restrictive out of bounds is bad. Not impressed with footholds on every continent, that is one of the few things I'm willing to wait to see in action. One man tanks seems to be a bowing to Battlefield players(not Battlefield copying, but bowing to their players.).

The other things I don't necessarily disagree with though.

Er, you should be able to deny the enemy vehicle and stuff through resource denial, not sure if that's what you were talking about.

But to be perfectly fair, I think we're operating under a certain...safety net, shall we say. This game can't possibly fail to be 10 times better than BF3 even if it doesn't achieve its own optimum design. Let's remember that.

[T MAN]

Yup was thinking the same seeing as how all this is coming out now, soon well see in beta and how much there willing to change stuff.

[proxy]

I don't see unlimited ammo for infantry, are you talking about vehicles?

[sylphaen]

The cockpits look so great, I wish the rest could feel as solid.

One side looks serious and awesome (great design, impressive visuals/sounds, cockpits) and then the gameplay makes it feel inconsequential (instant entry/exit, instant seat switching, low TTK, driver/gunner).

At the moment, I feel like heavy ground vehicles don't feel that heavy at all but more like an armor upgrade for troopers. Especially the Mag which made me think about an arcade shooter (wasd+strafing+highspeed+guns). Another thing I do not entirely understand is that while the Sunderer has good speed (great improvement from PS1), all tanks also seem to go faster.

Of course, it's only a first impression and overall, the game looks amazing. I just really liked PS1 ground vehicles gameplay (which involved trooper play rather than "we do everything from inside the vehicle and don't need to get out") while I always found BF2142 vehicle gameplay super boring (so much that I usually tried to avoid having to drive one).

TLDR: I share the OP's overall concerns and hope for the best for ground vehicles gameplay. I specify ground vehicles because AirCav gameplay looks great (not too many news about lock-on missiles). We'll have to see with the actual result of all this during beta.

[Gandhi]

I still have a lot of concerns, but I'm not worried at this point. Overall I think the game looks fantastic, I just hope the team stays committed to the idea of trying different things and taking community input during the beta. If we start pushing up against release and people are still hot swapping between AV and AA turrets in their solo Vanguards, then I'll start to get worried. Unless I'm dazzled by the awesomeness of these changes between now and then, as unlikely as that seems to me right now.

[basti]

1. Auto Health Regen: Its a customization. If you have it, you dont have flare or anything that goes into that slot. It has a 15 sec delay in wich you cant take any damage, or it doesnt kick in. The delay, the amount it repairs per sec and even the whole thing itself needs to be tested during beta! There is NO WAY of telling if this even makes it into release!

2. Squad spawning is the exact same mechanic as the old Hart + Drop pod. Its just the same without recalling and waiting for the hart. In fact, the sanc recall hart thing was more powerful, as you could send a entire PLATOON, no, AN ENTIRE CONTINENT WORTH OF PEOPLE bloddy EVERYWHERE. At ANY time, without ANY restrictions. Squad spawning wont allow that.

3. Where the hell did you see auto re supply?

4. Those "out of bounds" areas may go away during beta. Theres no point in having them, and its on my list of things i will stress during beta. And they are not walls!

5. Why should you get ressources not once in a while? Theres nothing wrong with that, the whole empire gets them based on the territory you own. It makes the bond within any given empire stronger. I would rather be upset if people would get them individually

6. True that you can switch with a key press, but wait for beta. Once i broke that whole mechanic and shot a few devs in my Mag doing the AV and AA at the same time, as well as blew a few guys up in a lib controlling everything at the same time, this will likley change. I dont like it, at all, its a stupid idea to begin with and got exploited to hell in every game that had this ability.

7. Those footholds wont stay for long, trust me. Devs just didnt have a chance yet to see what they really do to the territory system. But beta will show.

8. You always could bail instantly from anything in Planetside, so whats the problem?

9. What other one man tanks? I have not seen any, and neighter did you. If you mean those Driver = gunner stuff: We had that in Planetside for ages, the Magrider. And dont tell me the PPA was useless, the thing was quite good if you knew how to use it. Prowler and Vanguard may get the option to have a dedicated driver, and thats much needed anyway, because you cannot drive and gun at the same time effectivly, especially with all that stuff around. Trust me, those "one man tanks" as you call them will be coffins for everyone in them.

10. The lack of enter and exit animations saddens me as well, but who knows what that 5 year plan may contain.

11. Power increasing? Wut? Err, nope? its called Customization, to gain extra power in A, you give away power in B.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by basti

7. Those footholds wont stay for long, trust me. Devs just didnt have a chance yet to see what they really do to the territory system. But beta will show.

Now that's some optimism I LIKE, but - people claim that with all "hand design" of the continents going on here, won't that be a major change requiring a lot of work and therefore, would require nothing less than a united community rebel yell to get changed?

And what would we replace it with?

[basti]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Now that's some optimism I LIKE, but - people claim that with all "hand design" of the continents going on here, won't that be a major change requiring a lot of work and therefore, would require nothing less than a united community rebel yell to get changed?

And what would we replace it with?

Ive managed to pull of crazier shit already. Getting a whole community to rebel against something is a piece of cake. Especially if a lot of those people see the issue and know how it could be.
Thats the big benefit of a 2 in any games name: you know how it once was, and how changes affect something.


To go into a bit detail: The devs clearly want to have us fighting over the whole continent. Now, the territory system enforces that, but the footholds completly destoy it. You wont even get near a enemys foothold, because the more territory you take into their direction, the harder it gets for you to keep pushing. As you take more and more of their ground, they have less ground to defend, and the third empire is just going to attack you with everything they got, because your empire has no chance to keep everything secure. All they need to do is open a lot of fronts, hack into a lot of different spots, and then just defend that one you didnt manage to resecure. Bang, free territory. And while your empire is back to square one, trying to keep their land intact, the other empire that you tried to push to their foothold just regains its ground.
In the very end, this will result in a very small area of combat, while the rest of the continent remains silent for ages, with only some combat every few weeks, before everything collapes again.

No footholds + Global lattience and sanctuarys? Well, now every piece of land can really be taken.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by basti

You wont even get near a enemys foothold, because the more territory you take into their direction, the harder it gets for you to keep pushing. As you take more and more of their ground, they have less ground to defend, and the third empire is just going to attack you with everything they got, because your empire has no chance to keep everything secure. All they need to do is open a lot of fronts, hack into a lot of different spots, and then just defend that one you didnt manage to resecure. Bang, free territory. And while your empire is back to square one, trying to keep their land intact, the other empire that you tried to push to their foothold just regains its ground.
In the very end, this will result in a very small area of combat, while the rest of the continent remains silent for ages, with only some combat every few weeks, before everything collapes again.

I'm just not really buying this because we saw major ebbs and flows in Planetside 1. In fact, I think it will even be possible for an empire to capture all the territory on a continent. It will be difficult, but so was Sanc locking an empire in PS1 and it happened.

The footholds just insure that no matter what empire you are on, you will have access to any of the continents at any time. You won't be locked out. It doesn't guarantee that your empire will have equal numbers on a continent, just that you can go there. I fail to see how this will break the game. What I do see is veterans clinging to a lame mechanic because it's what they know.

[Envenom]

Becoming disappointed with a game that is in pre-beta development stages and is 99.9% subject to total change before release. hummmmmmmmmm

[The Janitor]

Man, there are going to be SO many of these threads from now until the game comes out... Hell, maybe even after it comes out, too!

Of course, by then they may change to "auto-repair isn't good enough" at which point I will laugh and link to this post cause I so called it.

[Sturmhardt]

For many points it is too early for me to tell if its good or bad, but one thing is really important about the OPs post: You have to be able to fail. You should have PROBLEMS. Problems like "omg, im nearly dead, I need someone to heal me" or "my vehicle is nearly broken, plz someone fix it" or something like that. If you can do everything on your own its not really teambased anymore and I rally loved that about PS1. I hope a lot of these teamplay-supporting mechanics return.

[The Janitor]

I don't care if we can't kick people off the continents; I kinda want to play Europa Universalis: Planetside Edition. Let's spread the pretty colors across the map while killing people!

[Snipefrag]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Now that's some optimism I LIKE, but - people claim that with all "hand design" of the continents going on here, won't that be a major change requiring a lot of work and therefore, would require nothing less than a united community rebel yell to get changed?

And what would we replace it with?

Like Basti I honestly don't think the staging areas will last that long, they dont seem like a great long term game mechanic. I think they're only there because we have so few continents. The devs don't want people to get locked out of good fights with so few options. A way you could keep the gates and the staging areas and allow a 'continent' endgame is this:

When we have 8-10 continents the devs could do a meta game patch (like they did with the lattice system in the original) that amongst other things allowed you to take down the warp gates by attacking strategic points.. Or purely from bombarding it with loads of artillery fired from all the bases you own (kind of like Titan mode in BF2142). Think how epic that would look. This artillery bombardment could take resources or something, to limit how often command attempts it. It could be a consensus vote or something from commanders on the continent to invoke. You would only have the option to attempt a WG assault when you own the majority of bases on the continent. Think of it sort of similar to how continent capitals work in PS1.

When the defending factions warpgate is taken down then the staging area can be attacked. It would be a race against time to secure it before the warpgate comes back up, if the attackers fail then it would act like a captial shield coming up in PS1 for the enemies inside.. (they get turned to jelly ).

If its secured by the attackers. The defenders would then be locked out of the continent until it repairs itself (say an hour and a half). The attacking faction could 'attune' itself to the gate (similar to hacking, but all alien tech like) so they can enter and defend it in the future when it comes back up. The defenders retain a permanent attunement, and when they take back the holding area the attackers attunement is purged from the warpgates system. One thing that would have to change to make this viable is having the ability to warp into continents with vehicles. So like in the original game you could form up a massive raid and then invade a continent, otherwise it gives the people defending the locked continent too much of an advantage as the attackers would be foot zerging.

And yeah... i know, before you guys say it.. Pipe dream/arm chair development, but i like the idea !