Ugg New gameplay changes in patch-

[Hamma]

I dont think this patch is a good move either.. I think its a multi-part EXP change. But its still bad news :\

[Airlift]

The thing that annoys me is that since people can't drop the level ladder is the game mind set, we will most likely see slower and slower levelling implemented in the last patches before release. One of the things I liked about this game is how easy it was to raise a character up to a comfortable playing level. Unfortunately, we're leaving all that in the dust to appease ladder climbing.

Fuck your goals, this is an FPS.

[Zenny]

As I see it with the XP thing now, the enemy attacks with force and we are defending and it gets rough and doesnt look good, so instead of throwing XP at the attackers I would just leave and hinder them as much as I can. No point in giving the enemy.
Maybe to influence defending of a base till the end, give the defenders XP based on the number of attackers they defend from on each "time slice" based on some kind of system built for the Attackers.

[Hamma]

Originally posted by Airlift
Fuck your goals, this is an FPS.

Rather than restating reasons why this would totally screw up the game, I'll skip to the good part....

PHUK THE NEW TIME SLICE SYSTEM!!!

[Airlift]

I mean it tho. I don't care if Joe Smacktard wants his character to get a halo and a pair of nonfunctioning wings to indicate that he has reached a certain lofty goal, but it pisses me off that his need for superficial longevity is interfering with the first person shooter that I'm trying to play over here. My goal is to frag everyone who shows up red on my radar. I want them to fall in heaps at my feet where I can continue to put rounds into their corpses until they turn into backpacks. Every time I frag some bastard, tick a stat and let me do it again. Don't drag the damned levels out just to make the game hold our attention longer.

Planetside is never going to provide the kind of gaming experience that the most vocal detractors are after, but in the end, their bullshit is watering down the game that was already magnificent in carnage.

[Sando138]

know what? i got NO BEP for saving an entire base singlehandedly. VS hacked a base. i run in, kill the hacker and his escort and hack the base without any hacker certs, and i get diddely. nada. zip. zero. zilch. goose-egg. no BEP whatsoever. why? because i started running to the cap point as soon as the base was hacked, and didn't sit in the corner for 14 minutes before saving the thing.

Naturally, I think this new system sucks.

[Hamma]

Yea, some people are stuck on the RPG aspect :\

[OneManArmy]

OMG airlift's rant needs to be posted in the beta boards, emailed to the devs, and spammed in every chat.

I don't think anyone could of said it better

[Meshuggah]

Airlift said it all.

[Cairo]

/agree

too many people see MMO and finish the rest in their head.....

Coming from a CS freak AND a UO/DAOC/SB player i can see both sides of the coin, but heres my take

Theres a reason i quit UO/DAOC/SB and continued to play CS till PS beta.....

Don't give me a Fing treadmill and take months to reach the supposed "end-game" I liked DAOC and SB's endgame, but honestly, who wants to sit and chat for 6 months to get there?

With PS, 5 mins of shooting VR stuff and i can get my Punisher/Deci combo going, with BR 5 shortly thereafter for reinforced. That IS endgame, right out of the chute.... This is why I want PS. I want an MMO where im not working to play, where im just playing and having fun god forbid.

[Skyler]

So I just got finished playing for about 4 hours with the new experience system change, and it's terrible. Down.right.terrible.

I'm not an experience whore either, but it was so boring. Let me give you a couple anecdotes:

My squad and I were 4 people big. We were fighting over Cyssor and eliminating the Terrans from the North West area of the continent...Wele, Chuku, Honsi, among other bases. Eventually we wiped out the TR population and locked the warpgate on the other side of the continent, thus saving the North West area of Cyssor.

During our push to get TR out, the Vanu crept up from Oshur from the South East. We all moved down to Gunuku since it was the newest base being hacked by the Vanu, and we took them out, one base after another, one resecure after another. Eventually we pushed both the Terrans and the Vanu off of Cyssor, but for some strange reason, the continent didn't lock.

Almost the entire continent (save a few ANT squads) left Cyssor for Oshur to pay back the VS for their cockroach incurrsion. We pushed from bottom to top on Oshur and eventually locked it before I went to bed.

That's the story, but here's how it all happened:

Terrans have base.
We notice.
We advance.
We die.
They die.
We push.
We hack.
Terrans die.
Terrans push from tower.
They die.
We hack tower.
Everyone returns to base.

10 minutes of silence, TKing, and people doing -nothing- in the base that we hacked. Just running around chatting with eachother- it looked like a damn yahoo chatroom.

People shooting tease shots at their empire teammates only to have entire squads fragging other squads only because somebody in your squad asked you to frag somebody in their squad.

After the 10 minutes were over, everyone was awarded about 900-1200 experience, approximately. The highest amount I took for a poll in /broadcast was 1277 from my teammate Jackal. I only got 112 CEP though, probably because I only had 4 people in my squad.

After we left Wele, we went towards Chuku to wrap that up and finish up the TR and picked up 4 more squad members on the way to Chuku, making our squad 8 people big.

Repeat:

Terrans have base.
We notice.
We advance.
We hack.
Terrans die.
Terrans push from tower.
They die.
We hack tower.
Everyone returns to base.

Repeat 10 minute scenario of yahoo chatroom and TK fest. This time however, there was very little resistance at Chuku to begin with, so there was no "pre-10-minute-hack-slice". We walked in, hacked, they noticed, pushed from the surrounding towers, and then gave up.

I did another /b "POLL: How much experience did you get?" and got no numbers above 800. My CEP jumped to 476 (yay!) because I had 8 people in the squad, and yet, spent all 15 minutes in the base during the hack, with no "pre-10-minute-hack-slice" addition.

Even though, as stated above, that I am not an experience whore, it feels good to be rewarded for accomplishing something that took you so long to do- but get slapped in the face with a cookie crumb instead of a cookie.

The experience system changes are NOT good.

[Navaron]

TwistPS
Developer posted 05-13-2003 12:17 AM user search report post
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Well, it's been interesting reading the various threads on exp changes. Obviously we have struck a nerve. Or perhaps exposed the nerve, stretched it out, poured salt and pepper on it and then lit it on fire while chanting ancient dark rituals of pain and dancing in horrible glee. One of those two.
There are some good suggestions here, many of which I've copied into a log as notes. In particular the intent of the changes was not to diminish support roles, although that may have been the effect. We'll be examining that. The rate is a common complaint, and we knew it would be - exp before was too fast. This may be too slow. We'll need to collect some data and see how it actually works in practice to make that determination.

Most of the angst seems to revolve around base captures, which got the largest changes. It would be good to get some comments about kill exp and how that is working out, since that's a very large component of where exp comes from as well.

Please note it's not productive to start the Nth new thread so you can put your own personal spin on how badly exp sucketh without offering fix suggestions that aren't already covered. So please, Zerg the existing threads and add your thought if it is new or just acknowledge you agree with the poster if applicable. That will give those two guys in the back of the room the chance to tell us how badly MAX's sucketh as well.

In the end we'll do our best to come up with a system that is fun while preserving a sense of accomplishment and value to those people who have used exp to specialize their characters. We don't want it to suck. In fact, I'll go out on a limb here and say we WILL make it not suck for as many people as possible (because to paraphrase Lincoln, you can make it not suck for some of the people some of the time, but you can't make it not suck for all of the people all of the time).

Ph33r our determination to not suck!

-Twist

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[Navaron]

Let me just cut one thing off early so as to save time.
EXP is intended in this game as a method of allowing characters to differentiate (through their choice of certs, which are gained as you build exp) and as a slight value in the accomplishments of the character.

The range of EXP was always intended to be thin in Planetside and *not the point of the gameplay*. You play to fight. EXP is a byproduct of that but *not the point* nor was it ever intended to be. When we think of ways of retaining customers, we do NOT think of EXP as a tool for that. All our thoughts along those lines are "how do we make the game fresh and cool so people keep playing". It's implied in all of those discussions that everybody we're considering from a retention standpoint is capped out on exp already.

So for those of you considering that we adjust exp to keep you playing for 2.26 months or whatever on average before you cap out, you can let that worry go. It's not the objective, never has been, and won't be.

-Twist

[ObnoxiousFrog]

Amen. I mean, as a Reaver pilot, you cant stick around a base forever. You need to patrol and help to hold off anybody coming from an AMS or tower. This idea sounds very bad to me.

Side note: I am now COMMANDER ObnoxiousFrog. One step closer to BOHICA whore-ness.