Inventory and Resupply (Dropping Ammo)

[Bobby Shaftoe]

Just as an aside to this...

Planetside is one of few FPSs where you really interact with your surroundings in beyond just a tactical sense.

BF/MW all you really do is run around, get a good position/cover, fire, move on etc etc.
The only things you interact with are dropped kits and "The Objective".

In Planetside you've got all the various forms of CE (hackable and otherwise) and base turrets for outside and then indoor/tower fights you've got equip terms, vehicle terms, med terms, doors, main consoles, generators, spawns, painfields, modules and of course backpacks. Many of these objects have real tactical value beyond just their use for your side, eg kill the vterm on a cont that an enemy is trying to open and you've just put a major dent in their early logistics support and might even kick them back off the cont.

I just get the feeling that this sort of 'deeper' level play that is commonplace in the original PS is going to be 'streamlined' in PS2 into "The Objective(s)", I just feel it's a natural progression from a starting point of dropping ammo/removing inventories.
I'd love for someone to point out information that this is wrong but I've just got this nagging feeling that this is whats happening.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

well, us old people know that this is happening with society in general.

/on Can't hurt anybody's feelings by "failing them" at any aspect of their lives. Lets send them for counselling because it's not actually their fault. They have a disease.

Let's just make things a bit easier for everyone so that we don't have to upset anybody by failing them.

Let's not use red pen anymore.

Oh, you only got 6%? Well, I'll just put that down as "not yet competent" and not "moron - will never achieve objectives"

What's that? Can't read? Can't do maths? Oh well, you can still graduate with a 65% and get into NURSING where you are now in charge of people's LIVES.

/off

If you make everything *TOO* easy, there will never be any proper feeling of accomplishment. Basic philosophy will teach you that.

[Graywolves]

I don't remember where I saw this but I think someone would drop an ammo box and then a number would appear above it. The number was how much ammo is inside so as people grabbed more ammo it would get lower.

Something similar would effectively make an ammo consolidation point. What if you could even add into the pool as well as take away from it? If someone ran out if ammo, a person with abundance could put some ammo in the box for his buddy to take away from it.

This would just leave the final balancing to effectively being who gets to carry it and what the trade off is.

[Chefkoch]

Originally Posted by Sabrak

It was fun in Planetside to have to pay attention to your ammo, and to organise your behind enemy lines moves to make sure you'd have a way to get supplies when needed.

That feeling one had when, during a long skirmish behind enemy lines, you realised that you've wasted too much ammo to kill some guys and that you're going to run out soon...
You knew you were screwed, you might even have been mad at yourself, but that was a Planetside moment. You usually only find that kind of things in (good) survival games.

Amen !!

I also liked that you could bleed out a Genhold by denieing them Ammo...or on the other side loot enemys to get meds / rep to keep going. This ammo box thing will make the game Spamside again. Its not needed imho.

[Azren]

It's just one in the line of miserable ideas that made it into PS2, but it's not the worst by far.

At least make max-es drop the ammo, it makes no sence for a light assault character to be able to carry so much weight with him.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Azren

It's just one in the line of miserable ideas that made it into PS2, but it's not the worst by far.

At least make max-es drop the ammo, it makes no sence for a light assault character to be able to carry so much weight with him.

Higby says they are thinking about giving it to the heavy assault, which makes sense to me.

[Death2All]

A lot of people are dancing around or completely ignoring the issue of the OP.

This issue isn't that we could have more ammo in PS or we have less in PS2. This issue is that you could theoretically defend a choke point forever because you could never run out of ammo. Which class has the ability is completely irrelevant.

Some solutions I've come up with:

Give the the ammo refill ability to Engineers and have it be dispenser like deployable a la TF2 that you could only deploy outside with restrictions similar to the Aegis Shield generator. (You could actually upgrade and allow them to give you ammo, I wonder how many people didn't know that).

If it is given to a Light/Heavy Assault class, give it a limited number of uses. Only 1-3 per life. Also disable the ability from being able to recharge upon revival. Only a limited used based on the last time you hard spawned.


Remove it from the game entirely and bring looting back.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

A lot of people are dancing around or completely ignoring the issue of the OP.

This issue isn't that we could have more ammo in PS or we have less in PS2. This issue is that you could theoretically defend a choke point forever because you could never run out of ammo. Which class has the ability is completely irrelevant.

Some solutions I've come up with:

Give the the ammo refill ability to Engineers and have it be dispenser like deployable a la TF2 that you could only deploy outside with restrictions similar to the Aegis Shield generator. (You could actually upgrade and allow them to give you ammo, I wonder how many people didn't know that).

If it is given to a Light/Heavy Assault class, give it a limited number of uses. Only 1-3 per life. Also disable the ability from being able to recharge upon revival. Only a limited used based on the last time you hard spawned.


Remove it from the game entirely and bring looting back.

I can't believe these will have more than like 10 clips per pack. Maybe they should limit it on a per person basis, IE you can only get 2 more mags per pack/life?

And yeah, I'm really confused why this isn't an engineer item... Higby!!! Support class should support!

[Gandhi]

I'd much prefer looting ammo over having a class supply it, but if a class absolutely has to have that ability it should be the engineer. Heavy assault doesn't make much sense either, I just don't like the idea of offensive classes also carrying ammo drops. Like Bags says it's a support item, give it to a support class.

[Bags]

I mean, I don't like the one man tank gunner taking away from team work, but this is perfect for teamwork and then they just ignore the potential x.x

[Duddy]

Giving it to the engineer would probably be a good way to get the class used more for infantry combat, so I approve.

Then again we don't know how good engineers will be anyway, prefer it on them than LA or HA though.

[kadrin]

Something to consider, in a game like Battlefield 3, with 32v32 people on a small map in relation to what Planetside is going to offer, focus was on a few points on the map so you were almost always guaranteed to see a Support who would drop ammo.

They're trying for hundreds vs hundreds in Planetside 2 (with talk of thousands), but from the looks there are still points that will be the focus of attacks that numerous players are going to be fighting over, the chances of you not seeing at least 20 people who can drop ammo, especially if it's going to be the Light or Heavy Assault class, will probably be slim. Even if it's relegated to a class like Engineer, which will supposedly be less played for infantry fighting, you're still going to see a good number of them.

Personally I don't see ammo ever being a problem if there is a class that can drop it, which defeats the purpose of even having it, might as well give everyone an infinite pool.

[dsi]

I dropped ammo for allies in Planetside 1.

It's called sharing your own ammo, we don't need some gimimck mage-power. If you need ammo ask someone, if someone else needs ammo drop some of yours for them.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by kadrin

the chances of you not seeing at least 20 people who can drop ammo, especially if it's going to be the Light or Heavy Assault class, will probably be slim.

....might as well give everyone an infinite pool.

Yep. My thoughts exactly. In order for it to work, they better make the amount of ammo you can grab out of those boxes *extremely* limited.

[Hmr85]

I'm not a fan of this. Its to BF'ish imo. If they have to go this route for some unknown reason. Give the ammo drop to the Engy.

I would also go as far as to limit it like many others on here have stated to maybe 5 complete refills for 5 players. That's one time per player. I would even limit it even further to a 30 to 40 minutes CD.

Why even give the Sunderer the ability to resupply ammo in the game if I can just find the nearest ammo box on the ground. There needs to be a risk to this. Gen holds are going to become stupid if they can just sit back with unlimited ammo. IMO bring back the backpacks and bring back the free form Inventory. I personally enjoyed the thrill of combat when I or a outfit member was about to run out of ammo. It forced me to scavenge/give ammo to a outfit member or fall back to safe place to refill my ammo.

To put it simply stop dumbing the game down please.