Cloaker and a more complex hit box?

[Xyntech]

Well the pistol should never be more powerful than some of the other options, so if you have a rifle with you I'm sure it will be as you say Jimmy, a low ammo contingency option.

Still, there will presumably be more options for it than that. If it can be suppressed, it could be a more stealthy option even for non cloakers. Conserving ammo could be useful sometimes even when you still have quite a bit of ammo left. And let's not forget the all important gloat kill, killing someone with a weaker weapon just to fuck with them or because it's fun.

Primarily I see the pistol mostly being used as a supplemental weapon to fill gaps in a players loadout. Maybe a player is carrying all AV or explosive weaponry, so they'd use a pistol as their only viable ranged option.

Obviously the cloaker will be the most obvious one to use a pistol frequently though, and I think this is appropriate. That just means that they will have even more fun taking advantage of all of the pistol customization options.

Being able to balance headshot bonus damage for each weapon should make overpowerdness pretty avoidable. If all classes share the same pistol, I would say they should primarily balance it against cloaked users. If each class gets its own pistol customization tree, the problem isn't even a problem at all.

Personally, I'd generally like to see head shot bonus be something along these lines:

Sniper Rifle > Pistol > Rifle

But everything should always be done with an eye towards optimal balance.

[Kilmoran]

As a cloaker, I use pistols for maxes. I sometimes use an AMP or a repeater for infantry just because it gives me range. Most of the time, I use a knife, which can be as powerful as a bolt driver. All of that said, I doubt cloakers will be over powered in any sense. Even if they can kill fast, they can, at least currently, die faster than they can kill.

[Rbstr]

I like the idea that a pistol can pop someone with a couple good shots to the noggin. For any class. Makes it a legitimate sidearm.

I hate it when pistols are just peashooters.

[Grognard]

Well the two characteristics that would impress me about pistols, thereby making it attractive to use, would be...

1. Small ammo size, so you can carry a lot in less space.
2. Fast reload time (speed loader).

For me, those two characteristics / certs, would make it worth using.

+plus the gold plating, I really liked that...

[Minor]

Hi,

I was reading the dev interviews in the 2nd post "what we know about planetside 2".

In one of said interviews, the dev says that players will no longer have armor but shields.

In another response, the interview asks whether or not headshots = kill.
The response was headshots = headshots.

Thus, I deduce that heavier "armor" will only in reality constitute more powerfull "shielding" and a headshot will have the same effect on the "shield" as would a center mass hit.

Thus you will not be able to headshot kill with an inf, at least anymore than you could as an infantry using the same gun. So, an inf might be more usefull as a sniper.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Minor

Hi,

I was reading the dev interviews in the 2nd post "what we know about planetside 2".

In one of said interviews, the dev says that players will no longer have armor but shields.

In another response, the interview asks whether or not headshots = kill.
The response was headshots = headshots.

Thus, I deduce that heavier "armor" will only in reality constitute more powerfull "shielding" and a headshot will have the same effect on the "shield" as would a center mass hit.

Thus you will not be able to headshot kill with an inf, at least anymore than you could as an infantry using the same gun. So, an inf might be more usefull as a sniper.

If I read your post correctly, it appears you're assuming that shields give you ubiquitous protection around your whole body and thus taking more damage for a headshot will not occur.

This is incorrect.

Think of shields in PS2 as more like "regenerating armour." All weapons will have a multiplier applied to the damage they do if you hit someone in the head. The exact multilplier is determined on a per-weapon basis, so some weapons will benefit more from a headshot than others. And some will get a x1 multiplier, meaning they'll do no extra damage from a headshot.

Here's Higby's comment from last year's reddit Q&A

Originally Posted by Higby

The system allows us to have different damage bonuses for each weapon. This way we can make it so that sniper rifles give a 200% bonus making them OSOK on headshots and chainguns get a 0% bonus making it make no difference. Other guns like pistols or assault rifles might be somewhere in between based on how rewarding we feel precision should be with each of those weapons/weapon types. Vehicle weapons will likely have a 0% bonus.
Exact balance for this is not final, but that's the general idea that we're going with and we'll tweak as necessary.

[Xyntech]

I hadn't seen that specific clarification from Higby. Thanks for that. That sounds like it is right in line with where I was hoping they were going with headshot bonuses. As always, it seems like it will be easy to tweak if it's not quite right when beta starts.

[Minor]

Thanks for the clarification