News: Some new interview with Matt Higby + character customization

[spinach chin]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

Someone brought something about time to unlock skills. They said how in EVE, that even if they started today and never stopped unlocking their skills that they would never catch up to the people who've been playing since the beginning.

Veterans will have more variety, not more power. If it's just like EVE, you hit a wall at specific roles after a few months of training. Everything after that is just picking up new roles. A new player could start and in a few months would be just as good as the vet at something, putting them on even ground in a fight.

[Rbstr]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

Someone brought something about time to unlock skills. They said how in EVE, that even if they started today and never stopped unlocking their skills that they would never catch up to the people who've been playing since the beginning.

I really hope PS doesn't take this route. I guess it's a reward/incentive for veterans but it's kind of disheartening to noobs

I don't know how many times this has to be gone over but this is a non-issue. Its about specialization and the exponential increase in training time as you go from level 1 in 5 minutes to lvl 5 in over a week (or worse in higher rank skills). My corp recruits lots of noobs and they easily catch up in terms of being effective in a certain area. Sure for a month or two they're little but a fodder/tackler, but a fodder/tackler is a very important combat role.
Sure, they're not going to be able to fly all 4 races of a certain ship type, but you can only be in one ship at a time.
Honestly, 6 years in and I can't even fly all the combat ships in the game, and only a single, mostly worthless, industrial ship. While a year old player or less can fly some ships better than I can. An alt I started a while back was mining only 5% behind a 3 year old industry player within 3 months.

Far more important is the money to buy the things you can fly. Honestly, that's simply a grind like any other RPG. Skills can be nearly irrelevant and you can still rake in the dough.

But, part of EVE's point is that it's a very harsh galaxy and it's designed around long term goals.
PS need not have the learning cliff imposed on it. Time is just a parameter that can be adjusted in the skill system, after all.

[DreaM]

Seems like planetside 2 might have quite a harsh learning curve.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by DreaM

Seems like planetside 2 might have quite a harsh learning curve.

And Planetside didn't? All MMOs have harsh learning curves because there's so much.

[Hamma]

Also what makes you think it would be a harsh learning curve? I doubt it would be that harsh.

[1Shotwonder]

awesome find does sound steep on the one year and you wont even be maxed out in a certain area hopefully its not to long to obtain something you like ........ sucks starving for info. lol

[Traak]

Learning curve is part of the fun.

"click and win" games that involve one mouse button and even fewer brain cells may make soccer kids feel like they are not retarded, but I like having to master a whole keyboard full of commands plus a many-button mouse.

[Sifer2]

Is it just me or does a year sound too long for maxing a single discipline? Especially for leaders since people only want the leader with the most perks to be the one they group up with. So if you don't get started on that at launch you can forget it.

For normal combat stuff it wont be as bad so long as they stick to that 20% max thing. But even then if there are really important weapon mods or something near the top of the tree as there almost certainly will be. That's going to be annoying to have to wait that long to get to it. It would be like every class having really good 2 year veteran rewards.

I think they should do what some others have suggested an have your rate of skill learning slow down the more you obtain. So you can learn a particular discipline in a month or two if that's the one you want the most. But future one's will take longer an longer to train.

[Huma]

Im willing to bet that you will only be allowed a single tower per hex. It'll probably also be limited by terrain as well.

[Huma]

Part of the reason for the long train time is to keep the game interesting. Not to mention it shows how dedicated that individual is. You have to remember that he also said that that's the time it would take to completely specialize in just one aspect of tree. The slower train time also means we're not gonna have people with crazy gear right off the bat.

[Sifer2]

Originally Posted by Huma

Part of the reason for the long train time is to keep the game interesting. Not to mention it shows how dedicated that individual is. You have to remember that he also said that that's the time it would take to completely specialize in just one aspect of tree. The slower train time also means we're not gonna have people with crazy gear right off the bat.

It's also going to make the nerf whining all the louder. When people do reach that higher gear, discover its OP an abuse it. An then only they can use it cause its like a year before you can too. Guess the bright side of that is flavor of the month will be impossible. Instead it will be campaign to get this nerfed cause it would take too long to get it for myself. There will also be the opposite side of that i'm sure. The one's who level up their class to find it sucks an they wasted all that time. An its even harder for a small minority to get a buff than it is for an angry majority to call for a nerf.

In other words I guess you could say I think having such a long train time for individual class's is a very risky thing. An may end up causing a lot of frustration.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Who cares about defending it! I want to use it as an orbital strike! Heck, have the thing fall sideways and forget the retro boosters and you could wipe a whole hillside with it!

Originally Posted by Desoxy

My personal guess is one character per server since they already confirmed that you won't be able to be in two different empires on server - at least at launch.

It will probably be like PS was at launch where you can have several characters but only belong to 1 empire. The only reason that was changed was due to server merges.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Bags

I'm glad that there's no reason to make multiple characters. Why should there be?

I have to agree with this, I've always hated when/if I've had the feeling in games that I need to create an alt to do something.

I really like the idea of being able to specialize very deeply into something, while still allowing basic versatility.

[FIREk]

I think the learning curve will be flattened in comparison to PlanetSide 1's, mostly because of the automated mission system, more convenient spawning methods and (most likely) adding people to squads automatically.

Something tells me that "solo" players will be added to ad hoc squads for every mission and these squads may end up being automatically disbanded as soon as the mission objectives are met.

[headcrab13]

Great find, OP, I love seeing new info every few days like this!

The outfit towers are welcome news, and the super-long skill trees are also very exciting. I always felt that longer character development would benefit PlanetSide, and they seem to be right on the money with PS2. In a persistent world, you start to become a little disconnected as soon as you've unlocked everything and you're no longer earning abilities or experience points.

I'm pumped that I'll be able to pursue a "flight" skill tree for months, making my character better and better, and when I want to switch roles to infiltrator or medic, I can simply change my focus and continue bettering the same character. I also see this as a better system than PS had, because before you could simply untrain skills and sudden go from Gal pilot to combat engie/hacker in 24 hours, for example. In PS2 you'll have to truly LEARN the skills you want to use, and when you see someone's name you can recognize what they're working on and what they are good at.

-HC13