The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation

[headcrab13]

I think some people forget that with a shorter TTK in PS2, a 20% bonus really won't have a big impact on gameplay.

I am personally in favor of the idea, but when it comes down to the actual difference in battle, that only means a new player has to put one extra bullet into a vet to drop him. No biggie.

-HC13

[NewSith]

As long as a sniper rifle does less than 92 damage with non-lethal hit, 20% extra damage is o.k. for me too...

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by NewSith

As long as a sniper rifle does less than 92 damage with non-lethal hit, 20% extra damage is o.k. for me too...

Keep in mind that there won't be 20% more damage. The 20% is an aggregate total of benefits your character might have. Think of a 5% bigger clip size, 8% less cone of fire bloom, 3% more health, 3% more damage reduction, 5% more run speed, 20% faster passive health regeneration (if it's there), a reflex sight attachment for more convenient aiming etc, which all boils down to that magical 20%.

Also, think of EVE Online. For some of the higher rank skills you need to spend months to get from level 4 to 5 (5 being the max level). So to get the full 20% you might as well need to dedicate a year of cert training. Getting 15% might as well require a few months. And everyone might have access to the first 10% within a month, anyway.

Instead of spending that (hypothetical) year on gaining the full 20% advantage, you would most likely spend it on lower levels of more versatility-oriented certs (vehicle and leadership stuff, for instance).

[Goku]

Originally Posted by Shady

snip

Higby already explained it so it doesn't matter anymore. I thought originally it was going to be along the lines what Higby originally said possibility. Though I didn't see any of that and got caught up in the current discussion. With how everyone was talking it looked like Higby didn't even mention anything prior to those posts.

[MasterChief096]

First of all, I would not call myself part of the vocal minority. Quite frankly I'm insulted you'd put me in that category. Over the course of eight years in PlanetSide I never once made a post on either these or the official forums regarding any of the changes made to the game. Sure I had solid opinions about some of them, and wished some hadn't happened, or happened differently, but whatever.

Secondly I didn't attempt to bias the poll in any way. I could have easily have named the poll something like, "vets should be able to kill new players easier, vets shouldn't have an unfair advantage". That would have been a lot more biased. Instead the poll is straightforward and to the point. Granted I did forget to add the Indifferent option but Hamma sorted that out .

Thirdly, I stated two or three times I was open to discussing power and if it swayed my way of thinking I would mention that.

The only thing that seems to be changing my mind right now is that SOE figured out a way to say, "ok there's power advancement, but not really". It seems they made the 20% aggregate power advantage a vet might have at maxed out skills spread out so much that a vet really isn't gaining anything that useful. In a sense they have it just so they can say they have it to appease the 'real' minority in the MMOFPS genre while not actually giving them something too OP. I can live with this. It took an official response but I can see what they did there. Its a bit sneaky, but its clever lol.

[NapalmEnima]

The more I hear, the more I like, the more I WANT.

Home wreckers. SOE is a bunch of home wreckers. Think of the children!

Side-grades:
The sweeper could be viewed as a sidegrade of the punisher. Much more effective in some situations, much less in others. DPS comparisons don't really apply at that point... And that's okay.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by MasterChief096

First of all, I would not call myself part of the vocal minority. Quite frankly I'm insulted you'd put me in that category. Over the course of eight years in PlanetSide I never once made a post on either these or the official forums regarding any of the changes made to the game. Sure I had solid opinions about some of them, and wished some hadn't happened, or happened differently, but whatever.

hmm? No by posting on a forum systems you are part of the vocal minority. It's not as offensive as it is descriptive. You see out of the 100% of players that play any one game only around 1-2% of the community actively involves themselves with the game via the forums or other means. That 2% is an active minority. It's the same reason you don't see 11 million people posting on the WoW forums. Welcome the vocal minority.

[Checowsky]

Not gunna lie, haven't read most of this thread. Anyone brought up Cave locked 120hp boosts in PS? Thats a 20% gain, doesn't really effect the game massively though it is a noticeable difference. I don't mind it too much as long as vets don't just insta gib but if they're getting a 'power' boost then it suggests guns don't just instagib and TTKs will be as long, hopefully, as they are now.

With that in mind I'm ok with it tbh as the current 120hp cave lock benefit doesn't give an overwhelming change to gameplay. Its a bit of a pain but I've never raged over it.


Plus new players to a game are going to die a lot. Its how it works, PS shows this off a lot as new players get horrendously out played by the tactics of the old so I'm not sure a power boost of 10-20% would really change anything for them and older players will have that boost as well so unlike my cave-lock comparison it won't be a change that all players feel.

[Death2All]

Originally Posted by Checowsky

Not gunna lie, haven't read most of this thread. Anyone brought up Cave locked 120hp boosts in PS? Thats a 20% gain, doesn't really effect the game massively though it is a noticeable difference. I don't mind it too much as long as vets don't just insta gib but if they're getting a 'power' boost then it suggests guns don't just instagib and TTKs will be as long, hopefully, as they are now.

With that in mind I'm ok with it tbh as the current 120hp cave lock benefit doesn't give an overwhelming change to gameplay. Its a bit of a pain but I've never raged over it.


Plus new players to a game are going to die a lot. Its how it works, PS shows this off a lot as new players get horrendously out played by the tactics of the old so I'm not sure a power boost of 10-20% would really change anything for them and older players will have that boost as well so unlike my cave-lock comparison it won't be a change that all players feel.

Originally Posted by Higby

The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with.

There ya go.

[nathanebht]

I'm indifferent on this topic. Sounds like certs are already well on their way to being implemented. At this point, doubt the devs are going to make major changes to their "certs" design.

[Evilmp]

Originally Posted by Higby

The goal is for the 20% to encompass everything. By everything I mean: "everything" everything. We're really paper-rock-scissors too, even if you had a 20% damage boost, hell a 100% damage boost, your assault rifle isn't going to kill a base totally un-certed tank, and if you had a 100% health increase that tank would still kill you pretty damn fast.

As for new players, Planetside 1 despite being "balanced" and "fair" to new players still is next to impossible for people to succeed at day 1. Theres way more than just veteran power growth that makes a game difficult for new players, knowing maps, battle flows, knowing how and when to fight, learning what different enemy types are capable of, etc. is by far a bigger barrier in a game like planetside than weapon damage for new players. I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

The most annoying thing for me on day 1 was learning how to throw the grenades.

How will those work in PS2? Are you going to do that quicktoss crap or allow the user to pull it out and run around until he feels the time is right?

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Vancha

http://tinyurl.com/3bufpls

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

psst.. higgles was making a funny with regards to the term 'holistic'.. holistic medicine.. advanced medic.. healing.. roots..

So PS2 will have Alchemy.

Fanfuckingtastic.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Checowsky

Plus new players to a game are going to die a lot. Its how it works, PS shows this off a lot as new players get horrendously out played by the tactics of the old so I'm not sure a power boost of 10-20% would really change anything for them and older players will have that boost as well so unlike my cave-lock comparison it won't be a change that all players feel.

This is very true. It does take some time to understand exactly what PS1 is about when you 1st get into it. I'm sure a lot of people are actually turned off by all the confusion and just quit. Some sort of automated guide (not the stupid waypoints to training areas) should lead you along when you login with the first few battle ranks. Or perhaps they'll just make the game flow more obvious and new players will be able to pick it up pretty quickly.

[DreaM]

Mindless speculation and applying potential PS2 gameplay features to PS1 and assuming they don't work is getting annoying.

[Quovatis]

Only problem I see is that the NC will benefit more from upgrades. If you can get enough damage boost to kill in 2 JH shots instead of 3, you just decreased the TTK by 33%, not 10% as in your example.