How precious is life?

[Nekota]

After playing Planetside for almost a week now I've noticed that there's little importance to staying alive. People are using Reavers as Kamikazes and soldiers are flinging themselves into heavily bombarded hallways with total disregard for their own safety. Of course why should they care if they die? The penalties of death are so minor and the convience of towers nearby every base of contention that dieing is little more then an inconvience easily overcome. This also raises the question of why have an Advanced Medic? I've been in several squads where we had a medic and he was nice enough to ressurect us whenever possible but, what's the point. I would sometimes wait longer for him to get to me then if I'd just ressurected at our tower or a nearby AMS. Which brings me to a suggestion.

How about when you die instead of your timer increase for you to respawn how about your timer increasing for you to despawn. Thus leaving your body on the battlefield for a longer and longer amount of time as you die more and more frequently. The reason for this? Vehicles designed to scoop up the near dead and create prisoners. Vehicles could be like an AMS. Once destroyed the prisoners will be released but, until then you're a captive of your enemy. I'd also suggest that instead of weapons lock for excessive friendly fire that you instead at a certain point (should be rather high I know you MAXs have a hell of a time with target recognition when you're carpet bombing a tower stairway) instead of a weapons lock get recalled back to your sanctuary where you can cool your heels in your side's Brig. Now to prevent tragic imprisonment. Give us more communication methods. Let tank drivers send out a warning that an area is about to be rained with fire or maybe show a marker of where friendly Sunderer's shells are going to land so we can get out of the area. However you MAXs and other pilots need to learn to control your fire. I've been in some rather hairy dog fights with my Mosquito, I've fired into hot battles with friendlies mixed right in there with the enemy traveling at 80+ mph with a rather inaccurate 12mm chaingun and have managed to keep my grief points below 50. I understand everyone wants the kill and there's no XP for contributing to the kill but, we need more discipline as it stands now amount of spam experienced is way out of control at times. Anyway those are just a couple of my ideas let's hear some of your own. Feel free to flame I won't take it personal .

[Jimbo]

Interesting idea. I doubt it will happen though.

There may be very little importance to staying alive but I try to live as long as possible because I feel I am letting my team down while I am waiting to respawn.

[Demdadar]

With a penaltie = No fun .

But ... Anyway , i think SOE will do anything respect that .

[Nekota]

Well you're right it'd be no fun for the prisoner other then maybe the anticipation of his squad rescuing him/her and, person penalized for excessive griefing won't be having fun but, it's punishment it's not supposed to be fun. However dieing over and over with no penalty and the same for your enemy sucks any sort of accomplishment you may get out of killing your enemy. It's not just that they'll be popping up but, sometimes they'll be popping up in the next room or right outside. In games like DAoC where battles are fought all the time the penalty of dieing in the frontier was that you'd have to either wait for someone to ressurect you or, you release and have trek back out to the battle. That's one of my gripes with Planetside is that every base has a tower right next door with spawners in it. This minimizes the usefulness of Adv. Medics and AMS drivers. When you can just pop up next door or in the base itself if you're side controls it.

EDIT: More suggestions. How about laser fencing that could be set up by Combat Engineers. Hasty barriers that could be used to funnel infanty into mine fields or help slow down infiltrators from CC rushes. How about some gates on some of the bases as well maybe a control room like the bunkers that are found out front of most bases could have a button that turns on and off a forcefield or larger laser fence that could keep land vehicles from rushing in to run down infantry in the courtyard. Give more (I know they're already sought after already) value to the Galaxy pilot who'd then be able to hot drop in light vehicles and MAXs.

[Nekota]

Ghoest9- I think your post was heading here . You're right no one signs up to play a prisoner. However it's the cost of death. It could be reduced perhaps give you an option to respawn back at your sanctuary rather then remain an EPW and there's always the opportunity your squadmates will give a damn enough to come rescue you. I know it'd be fun as hell to send my infiltrator in to go blow the prison truck and rescue my comrades. As far as the griefers are concerned it's a fitting punishment. Since the only thing you really have on any of these games is time. All the warnings in the world aren't going to stop the dedicated griefer. Suspensions don't hurt because they can always play another character while the suspension ticks away. However if they had to actually sit out the time. The sentence wouldn't be days mind you an hour maybe. Then you're back out there fighting again. You go back to jail a second time 2 hours. Third time well I don't know... banning or character deletion or something. There really isn't an excuse for excessive grief points. If you find yourself aquiring too much grief swith your loadout because you're not safe with explosives or any area effect weapons. If you're still get grief then I have little sympathy after that.

[Tieom]

Half-way through the original post it turned into something about prison vehicles, but the idea at the very top I like - instead of increasing time you wait for a spawn tube, there's an increased wait as a corpse if you die a lot, meaning an Adv. medic can help you out of that 25 extra seconds (Not to mention time getting back into the battle).

[Nekota]

I know instead of a mobile prison truck. How about if you contol a Detention Center on a continent it gives your medics the ability to ressurect enemy soldiers to spawn them in the Detention Center. Where every 8 minutes (same as it would of been for a HART transport) the holding cell will get gased and all the prisoners free to spawn at a friendly base. Or allow your soldiers ability to shoot into the cells killing the prisoners basically allowing a soldier to offer double XP for being killed twice. Of course you could still be given the option to recall back to your sanctuary if you don't feel like being left to the mercy of your captures. It would help by providing a visble progression of the war to have your enemies beging to deplete rather then recycle endlessly.

[Destroyeron]

I don't like it..

[Nekota]

Well it seems folks don't like being prisoners, imagine that . However I'm curious why you don't like it. Is it that you don't want to be a prisoner well that's understandable the next step would be to avoid becoming one. However can't you also see the thrill of breaking your squadmates out. The importance it'll put on keeping yourself alive rather then endlessly throwing yourself on the nearest MAX over, and over, and over again. Wouldn't you like to see some progress made. I mean you kill an entire squad and the first guy is already firing at you before the the last one hits the floor since the respawns are so close to the action. It just seems like preperation and organization should be more important then they currently are. As it stands now people just rush like lemmings to a base with no regard to what would be the best approach since the penalty of dieing is non-existant. You don't lose XP you don't lose anything but, around 5 - 10 sec. tacked on to your respawn time if you die too often which is tiny.

[MountainManDX]

While I doubt they could be implemented anytime soon, there are a lot of good ideas being thrown around here. There needs to be some way to earn a respite from continuing enemy responds, and I think the prison idea is good. Of course, I'll be spending a lot of time in prison more than likely...

[SuperGlue]

I love your idea Nekota!

I've always hated this endless recyclying effect. I like the idea of a adv. medic reviving enemy soldiers to make them prisoners for 8 mins. And dying over and over in short periods of time would increase the amount of time that a adv medic could revive and enemy soldier.

Also if the prisoner idea dont fly, how but just taking away exp every time you die. All these people saying that this is a bad idea just want to get to lvl 20 as fast as possible and say hey look at me!!! just a bunch of egos zerging at eachother.

they could also make it where if you are killed by a much lower lvl then you loose more exp. If you are killed by a simillar lvl then you lose a moderate amount of exp. And if you are killed by a much higher lvl then you loose minimal amounts of exp.
Also.....maybe killing a enemy commander would give you more exp then a normal soldier...

just some ideas


Flame away!

[gonnagetyou]

This is just a wild suggestion to go along with the prisoner idea.

If you become a prisoner make it so that you have to work off your incarceration by doing beneficial chores for the enemy. Things like ANT runs, repairing turrets, generators, deployables and vehicles. For every successful chore you gain points toward your release. Once you reach that magic number you are released and sent back to your Sanctuary. The amount of points you need to reach doesn't have to be high. Just enough to make you feel like you don't ever want to be a prisoner again.

Oh and make it so that prisoners can't be killed while trying to perform their assigned tasks.

[Tieom]

If you kill someone, they will be back in action in a matter of seconds, killing them is just an inconvenience to them.
***THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY A PROBLEM***

The point of killing someone is not to put the screws to them, but to make it easier to push forwards by temporarily removing them (and others) from combat. Who is dead at what time does not matter, what MATTERS is gaining the advantage by having a large number of the opposing force in a continuing state of respawning, so you can gain ground.

[MountainManDX]

Lots of good ideas, someone needs to tell the developers

[MountainManDX]

I don't really think it does you much good to gain ground in this fashion. The enemy can reinforce itself at will, and that's problematic. There's no downside to dying, and that's a real problem...