The reason why PS2 is shallow is not metagame.

[Goldoche]

Originally Posted by CToxin

I have to agree that death is completely meaningless and therefore so is killing.
If I may, a couple of quick thoughts on solutions:
Resource cost to respawn. This can either draw on your infantry resources, a small amount, say 20-30.

Respawns deplete a recharging resource from spawn points and sunderers.
Facilites have 200 units, outposts have 100 units and satellite bases have 75. Sunderers would have 50 units (upgrade-able) (these are all just random numbers really). Every respawn depletes say 5 units and the base generates say 1 unit every few seconds. Sunderers would have to go to a friendly resupply tower to resupply units.


These are just two quick thoughts I had on a possible solution. I hope the idea gets through more so than the specifics.

NTU silos...

[Goldoche]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Replacing the SCU mechanic with respawn tickets that slowly regenerate

NTU SILOS!!!

[Rothnang]

Maybe we should just have hardcore servers where AMSes don't exist and spawn rooms only work if you died in the region they are in.

[Gonefshn]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Maybe we should just have hardcore servers where AMSes don't exist and spawn rooms only work if you died in the region they are in.

If Planetside 2 had a huge player base this would be a sweet idea and could totally work despite the lol.

At this point though it would obviously just thin out player numbers in servers.
In a perfect world though I think that would be the best solution.

[Figment]

Btw, I believe they tried the "spawning tickets" with NTU silos refill on bases (not AMSes I think?) in PS1 beta. Weapon swaps and vehicle spawns also took energy.

It wasn't liked as bases turned neutral quite quickly.




Say a base has 300 respawns. I'm not sure how many kills there are in any given base fight, but I'm under the impression it's quite a number per second. Certainly with these one hit kill weapons. Say we have 4 deaths per second for all the defenders at a base. Then in 75 seconds, the spawn tickets are up. >.>

So if we then assume a fight has to last 15 minutes... That's 1125 seconds, a base would require already 4500 tickets to not run out prior to the base being taken. After the base has been taken, it would be incredibly low on tickets so it'd be almost useless for the party who just took it, making them extremely vulnerable to attack.

And how often would people have to make ANT trips?


On an outpost basis, say there's a 20 defenders at an outpost. A fight lasts three minutes before it's taken as is. Do we really need to add tickets and make it easier there? :/ How low would the ticket amount have to be to even make an impact?


Similar questions can be asked for the AMSes. Currently my AMS is often unthreatened for many, many minutes, depending on the fight and the proximity to it. Should it be punished for being placed and defended well?

Wouldn't it be given so many tickets to sustain a bit bigger fight, to not even impact a small fight?

Is it worthwhile to impose arbitrary limits on the amount of people spawning there over time? :/

Wouldn't it cause a lot of frustration to constantly have your spawnpoint drain and having to make back and forth trips of minutes at end? Gonefshn complains about respawn times being increased not being interesting to players who want action action action. So how would this be felt by those players? Having to run back and forth constantly with freshly resupplied AMSes? Wouldn't they feel they're spending too much time on that?

Wouldn't this also hamper the already weak position of defensive AMSes and wouldn't this weaken field positions? >.>

And would this at all make an impact if you can't even fight the people respawning, since there's tanks between you and the objectives and Libs camping the heck out of the CC?



I dunno, I don't have a good feeling about the respawn tickets. Too many buts and ifs.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Figment

I dunno, I don't have a good feeling about the respawn tickets. Too many buts and ifs.

Yeah tickets seem to be not a great idea in this kind of design environment.

How about respawn-timers dependent on facility adjacency and influence?

Cutting off links from a region could be used to strongly weaken an overwhelming force and break stalemates strategically.
Thinking specifically about situations like the crown where the fight goes on forever even though most adjacent hexes have been taken.

On the other hand it could be too much catering to zergzerg and ghostcap gameplay, it would need a closer look, as always, at capture mechanics first.
Also facilities are already really hard to hold as it is so i don't know if we need to make it have diminishing returns as well... :/

EDIT: clarification, when I'm talking about respawn timers being dependent on links, I mean this -region wide- i.e. the attackers underly the same limitations and their AMSes spawn slower.

[Rothnang]

Respawn timer doesn't do anything to create an attrition mechanic, it just annoys people. The whole point is that if you kill a crapload of attackers or defenders they eventually start feeling it, even if you aren't spawncamping them.

[typhaon]

Not sure I dig the title.... cuz I'm not sure PS2 is any more shallow than every single other FPS/MMOFPS that has ever existed...

BUT - I agree... infinite respawning infantry, largely brought about by the infinite ease and availability of sunderers, definitely dumbs down attack/defense combat.

And yes... the suicide mine bombers are another dumb mechanic.

[Gonefshn]

I also want to mention that if this change was implemented it would completely alter and change the meta game, thus making this threads title an oxymoron.

[Babyfark McGeez]

Originally Posted by Badjuju

I think we all agree on this, the problem is we don't have proper interiors to bases (tech and amp) which acted as a barrier to enemy spawning PS1. Having that large and intricate interior prevented enemies from spawning right on top of objectives. They had to travel a fair distance through the base to reach any objective. This is why some people are suggesting no deploy zones as you can park an AMS right on top of any objective or camp them with vehicles (as there is next to nothing making up the insides of bases).

I alluded to my next point, the proper interiors we had in PS1 also allowed objectives and spawn tubes to be properly protected (not vehicle camped and deep within the base). Because of this we also had the system where spawn tubes could be physically destroyed as you mentioned, since they were at the heart of the base instead of in a hut outside.

The base design we often refer too made things so much more fun IMO. I am not saying we should have mirror images but the actual interiors did allot for the overall game play. It did wonders actually. PS2 is no where close to producing equivalent fights for me at this point. They arn't fun for me, and I would rather fight in the field. In PS1 i looked forward to both fights. It is a problem if people don't like the fights which are suppose to matter the most.

They actually felt allot more like bases to me as well. Not a single base in PS2 feels like a meaningful objective, just courtyards with huts in them. There is no "this is our fortress now," just "this is our courtyard with an aesthetically pleasing useless structure in the middle."

As I've preached over and over, the burning flag capture system is awful, at least for large bases. There is no excitement to it, its not nearly as intense, and it limits your tactical options. Not to mention it heavily favors numbers. This is another big downfall to base fights and a big reason why death does not matter IMO.

An elite outfit can drop on a force with overwhelming numbers which has flipped the flag. They can break through, reach the flag, drop the enemy force, and then what? They wait for it to slowly tick as the opposing force regroups and floods in, pretty much taking over where they left off.

In PS1 these outfits would be feared, as well as the gal drop. If they broke through, they could cancel the hack removing your progress. This could help your faction in a number of ways. It could simply slow their momentum allowing you to prepare for the assault on the next target. It could give your faction time arrive with back up; or you may even get the tubes up as well during this assault, and you could completely re-secure the base, pushing the enemy out (assuming base design dosen't allow for vehicle camping.) The hack and hold system allowed for much more tactically diverse gameplay, and made living to defend a point (defensively and offensively) very important.

I think they devs did a good job updating the game to more modern fighting mechanics. However I think they strayed to far from the overall game mechanics and base design philosophy which is what made PS1 the game it was. Again, you don't have to make the same bases, but for the love of god make them feel and operate like a proper base, not a typical FPS shooter map. The bases look great and are massive from the outside, but then you walk in you say "oh, just a whole lot of nothing. Actually, not a whole lot, there is nothing to the inside." Huts in a court yard do not constitute a base for me.

I can only wholeheartedly agree with this post. The SOE guys made a good shooter, they just don't really seem to know what to do with it beyond staple "Battlefield" formulas.
That goes from team-deathmatch map design over capturing mechanics all the way to a more deep and immersive gameplay and gameworld.

[bullet]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Yea, some kind of cost attached to respawning that acts as a type of respawn ticket might be a good first step toward allowing strategies that work on killing to be successful, and thereby open up the vast majority of the games mechanics to being the basis for success, as opposed to just window dressing for the same hand full of mechanics. Generators and Sunderers and Control Consoles aren't a bad thing, the problem is that they are the only thing that currently matters.

Just gonna point out PS1 had this. It was called NTUs. I guess thats why they removed it!

[Realmofdarkness]

I agree with OP too. what I would like to see is
1. prolong spawntime alot when you are within enemy hex. this would make more players spawn in nearby friendly bases or sundies in a friendly hex to bring the battle outside.

2. add a new spawn generator that when destroyed would prolong the spawntime for the enemies in that base.

3. is the enemy base doesnt have a direct connection to the warpgate disable instant action on that base. this should also cut off resources gain from players so they eventually would run out of resources.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by bullet

Just gonna point out PS1 had this. It was called NTUs. I guess thats why they removed it!

Only in beta, it was removed prior to launch. And the only attrition on NTU was damaged base equipment due to base auto-repairs, BFR NTU siphones and drain virals (very late game).

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Respawn timer doesn't do anything to create an attrition mechanic, it just annoys people. The whole point is that if you kill a crapload of attackers or defenders they eventually start feeling it, even if you aren't spawncamping them.

Nothing in a game bar permadeath can create true attrition.

Tickets and longer respawns both do the same thing, prevent people from spawning numerously, this is in its own way an attrition mechanic.

I don't think waiting 2x as long would make me annoyed if the quality of firefights and emotional rewards go up.

Its all a question of balance in the design.

Right now we have quick respawns and fragfest behavior, generally combat is "meh" due to lemming rush behavior. If you make encounters and firefights more enjoyable, higher quality, longer respawns -will- be tolerated.

Its a tested mechanic in other games.
You either provide frequent easy encounters that provide little emotional reward, or you have less frequent encounters that provide challenge.

"Down-time" is like white space in graphics design, you can't be afraid of it else you create noise.

[Rothnang]

Originally Posted by Mietz

Nothing in a game bar permadeath can create true attrition.

Really? I've run with several groups that managed to completely break the back of an enemy tank or air zerg to the point where their numbers went down from 20+ to maybe 3 or 4 at any given point in time. Despite what vehicle haters always claim, the timers and resources do eventually stop people from pulling more vehicles. Pretty quickly even.

This isn't even about denying an enemy the ability to spawn more infantry in general, just denying them the ability to spawn more infantry in a place where they are taking losses at a rate that shouldn't be sustainable.

Downtime isn't the aim, allowing people to adopt a wide variety of strategies that don't just involve sitting on a certain point is the aim. A small group of defenders in a base that is skulking around and assassinating people should have the ability to eventually break the attack if they rarely die. Instead the game always just hands the victory to whoever controls more territory, which is ALWAYS going to be the larger force. All the thousands of creative things you can do to kill enemies never play into who wins or loses.