The reason why PS2 is shallow is not metagame.

[Rothnang]

Lack of Metagame is not the reason why the PS2 experience is shallow. People keep throwing "metagame" around as though it's somehow the magic bullet to everything that makes this game boring, but there is a giant Elephant in the room that nobody ever looks at, and that elephant is infinite respawning infantry.

Yea, half of you are already starting to type flame posts at this point, because if anyone insults the glorious infantry playing master race they are obviously just a vehile noob, but to those of you actually interested in hearing a fresh point of view, I'll try to explain:

Infantry fights in Planetside 2 are incredibly dumbed down to the point where I simply cannot enjoy them. The spawn mechanic and how completely meaningless it makes death is the single biggest reason for that, and by extension, the reason why Planetside 2 lacks depth in general.


Planetside 2 is supposed to simulate a vast and wide open battlefield, however, when you play infantry you never ever get a taste of that. The need to hitch a ride on a transport vehicle for all practical purposes is non-existent in PS2 currently. The only reason why people do it is because it's satisfying to act like combined arms means something for a minute here or there.

You can get to a battle by hitting instant action. If you don't have instant action available you can just redeploy and spawn hop your way to the front that way faster than any vehicle could ever move, and without ever leaving the safety of the spawn room. Even if you've just taken a base and you missed the Sunderer driving to the next one, all you need to do is redeploy and wait for the Sunderer to set up in the next base over, and voila, instant teleport into the fray.

This by itself just utterly shits on one of the biggest tactical aspects this game should have, because getting your guys to the front isn't a logistical challenge in PS2. They don't need help from vehicles getting around on the map. They never even need to set foot in the open areas outside of bases to go to every single place that matters in PS2. Why even bother with having a huge gigantic world if, at the root of it, the only unit that moves through it with purpose is the Sunderer, because that's the one single unit that has to actually move through the world to expand your spawn-network.


Medics are also marginalized to the point of being only a minor convenience, not the backbone of a successful assault by the spawn system. Infantry in theory is the only unit in the game that can stay in the field for an infinite amount of time. A squad with members of all classes is entirely self sufficient, and can accomplish pretty much any task set before it.

The reality is however, this game doesn't reward people for playing in a tight knit squad like that, it rewards people for rolling a Sunderer up to the enemy base, and doing a banzai charge, hoping that the base flips before the Sunderer gets blown up by a landmine suicide bomber who also doesn't really care about medics.


These two things alone make the game more shallow all by themselves already, but the really big thing that ultimately robs PS2 of depth is the fact that killing people simply doesn't matter.

A few months ago removing K/D from being one of the key stats in the game was a big thing that people kept talking about. "Everyone who worries about K/D is just stupid and doesn't get the game" seemed to be the sentiment of the day. My quesion is: Why does someone who worries about K/D not get the game? The answer is pretty simple: If Death doesn't matter, then neither Kills nor Deaths matter. Killing huge numbers of your enemies isn't something that meaningfully contributes to the fight.

The thing is, in a game where getting killed is a bad thing, and killing the enemy hurts them in some way K/D is not a meaningless measure that only stat whores care about. But that's not the kind of game Planetside 2 is currently. You can't win a battle in Planetside 2 by adopting a strategy that yields a particularly high K/D, because since neither you nor the enemy stay dead there is no such thing as attrition. You can't beset an enemy base with a small team of snipers and just pick off defenders until they are weakened to the point where you can move in and take them out for example. As a result there is no need for anyone to ever devise a counter-strategy to such an attack, and no need to devise a counter to the counter and so on. The only strategy that ever matters is "How can I get so many people into this base that they overwhelm the defenders, lock them in the spawn room, and can hold out like that till the point flips. Since that's the only strategy that works, there is no room in the game for clever thinking or the unexpected.


This is really ultimately the reason why this game lacks depth. 90% of all mechanics in Planetside 2 deal with the killing of people. Most of the functional skills that the players need to develop deal with the killing of people. The vast majority of group strategies that squads can employ deal with the killing of people. Yet the one thing that makes absolutely not a squirt of shit of difference in the grand scheme of things... is killing people.

Metagame would be nice to have, but in all honesty, it's the minute to minute ground pounding in this game that falls flat, because it's not your mastery of life and death that decide your fate in a world where death has no teeth.

[LoliLoveFart]

Oh man I have been starting to think this recently. When sundies couldn't be pulled from anything remotely looking electronic, losing your sundy was a huge deal. When they added sundies to every vehicle term all of a sudden it was fucking whack a mole where killing a sundy didn't mean jack they would just pull one from 10 seconds back and there would be no break in the fighting.

That and the amount of times i suggest suicide chaining to move from A to B incredibly fast makes me blush a little bit. I wish I knew how to make deaths mean something instead of a 10 second break in the fighting. I guess we have to hope SOE notices this and agrees with us haha.

[Goldymires]

The game is too convenient then?

[Rothnang]

Convenience in itself is not the problem. It's providing a convenience to players that overrules the core challenges of the game that is a problem.

A core challenge in any shooter should be how many people you kill and how little you die. In Planetside 2 that's pretty much not a factor at all in who wins a battle. Since the vast majority of what you do in a shooter and how you strategize in a shooter deals with killing and avoiding death this just absolutely kills Planetside 2s infantry gameplay. Making clever plans to kill your enemies is a fringe element of the game at best, and strategies that produce more XP, even if you die a lot as a result are always favored over strategies that give good K/D.

A challenge that should be unique to Planetside 2 is using transport vehicles to deal with the vast landmass in the game, that also gets entirely overruled by the spawn system.

Another challenge that is important to military shooters is rewarding teamplay and moving as a tight unit. That's also marginalized since respawning is often easier than getting resurrected.


So, the game should be as convenient as possible, but when you convenience yourself out of meaningful gameplay you enter the realm of dumbed down and shallow.

[Pella]

If you played BF3. You will recognize the much loved Metro Map. An all out frag fest. Little Tactics. Just get your farm on.

Now add in x2 of the amount of players on your screen. And you will arrive at PS2.

And im certain its where higby got his inspiration for PS2 from.

Fast paced. No Nonsense. Shooters. With Kill streaks to Boot. Thats what FPS players love. And that's what PS2 has been designed specifically for.

Sorry to say for the armchair generals here. But your out of luck.

[Ghoest9]

I agree its not "meta game" thats the big issue.

But the issue is more complicated than you describe.
At its core is that there is no reason to think or play strategically other than for fun.

From a ration perspective its better to capture something large as quick as possible than it is to think concurring in a defesible manner or even defending at all.
Most player play rationally or at least rationally to the degree that they understand the game.

[Rothnang]

Of course there are other issues, people have debated most of them to death already, and fixes are in the works. What really kills the game though is that at the end of it all there is no real way to trump superior numbers with superior strategy, and that's largely due to the fact that K/D doesn't matter.

Pella, I don't even think that having fast paced infantry combat is a huge problem. It's not even the fact that you can respawn in 10 seconds that's the problem. It's the fact that kills and deaths don't matter, the only thing that matters is how much of the base you can clamp down, and that's a fight that the larger force will always win.

Planetside 2 will have asymmetrical fights most of the time. The chances of getting two forces of equal numbers together is relatively low, which is why in this game it's actually way more important than in other games that a good strategy that allows you to outkill a larger force can lead you to victory. This is essential for Planetside 2, precisely because you don't get teams of equal numbers and a timer that runs down.

[Ghoest9]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

What really kills the game though is that at the end of it all there is no real way to trump superior numbers with superior strategy, and that's largely due to the fact that K/D doesn't matter.

To be frank - this is utterly and completely wrong.

In fact superior strategy can take base after base with small numbers. And isolate large bases which usually then fall when the defenders get bored. You wont directly push a superior force out of a given base in most cases which in fact makes sense strategically. But you can easily take other bases with small forces.

In a strategic sense this game greatly favor a small force interested in map control over zergs which just want points for capping large bases.



Perhaps you would like the actual fights to favor skilled players over zerg players but thats purely a tactical issue.

[Baneblade]

I think it would be better if the Sunderer was only able to be spawned at the Warpgate.

[Rothnang]

Sure a small force can win under the right circumstances, but the point I'm making is that a shooters primary focus when it comes to mechanics, skills and tactics is on killing people and avoiding to be killed. You can play in a way where you harass a larger force and wear them down, but the game doesn't do anything that allows you to win that way.


If a base had a limited number of spawn tickets for both sides for example, which is even between the two even if the number of people in the base is not you'd see people actually building strategies based on what ratio of kills to deaths they need to attain to win.

[p0intman]

You know what would be awesome?

An actual AMS with a cloak bubble, and the ability to kill spawntubes instead of spawncamp til somebody bothers to kill a gen.

also map design that encourages defending bases in such a way where you aren't retarded for doing so.

The reality is however, this game doesn't reward people for playing in a tight knit squad like that, it rewards people for rolling a Sunderer up to the enemy base, and doing a banzai charge, hoping that the base flips before the Sunderer gets blown up by a landmine suicide bomber who also doesn't really care about medics.

Fucking key paragraph right there.

I've been saying that a for a long while now.

But no, its "too much like PS1 and too linear and not open enough". Neither myself nor the OP have a point. Nope.

[zulu]

Well, I think the lack of a metagame (or, more specifically, a lack of incentive to play with the map) does contribute to a lack of depth on the field. Example: If your enemy is just rolling in a huge armored column, coming to take your base, a good option would be to counterattack elsewhere -- perhaps at their tech plant to prevent them from pulling more MBTs. Or maybe you could attempt to encircle them, cutting them off from more armor reinforcements.

But attacking elsewhere isn't going to get you much. Yeah, maybe you can take the tech plant and stop them from pulling more tanks, but people want to either get certs so they can unlock fun stuff or win. And seeing as there are no "win" conditions beyond "win this single battle," that means most people are just going to chase certs, and that means probably just attacking the tank column (and then when the tank column destroys their smaller, piecemeal force, they'll start complaining about "tank spam" on the global chat).

So that leaves encircling, but that has no real effect -- not quickly, anyways. Eventually you might wear down the enemy army when they start to run out of MAXes or lightnings or sunderers, but probably not. More people will spawn in the area, they will bring their resources, and little gets done.

So there's no real reason to go anywhere but where the enemy is massed. Zergs running into each other guarantees certs, which allow you to play the game in a way that pleases you.

Giving players a real reason to play with the map -- to attack in multiple places, to counterattack,, to encircle the enemy and cut him off from reinforcements -- would undoubtedly make the game deeper and more interesting.

Infantry respawning is a related issue, but frankly I only see a few ways to change that that would be acceptable. I think few people want to be forced to, say, respawn at a nearby base and be shuttled into battle, because I don't think many people would be willing to run the shuttle service. OTOH, people do run resupply/repair sunderers, so perhaps it could work with enough of an XP incentive (say, you get XP for offloading people into an enemy hex, or the deployment kill XP bonus time would be extended significantly).

I think you've talked before about limiting the number of people who could spawn at a sunderer -- making it limited to a squad or platoon. I don't know about that. I don't think that could work at all.

Making the map matter could do a lot. I don't know, though. But at the moment I think what we have is a more free and open version of Battlefield, basically. That's not bad, but it's perhaps also not what people imagined when they started playing the game.

[Aaron]

I understand where you're coming from, and I wish there was some depth akin to this. However, since PS2 isn't match based, there's a heavy price it has to pay for adding more meaningful actions (ones that actually hurt the enemy when you hurt them). That price is the speed of getting players to the action, getting them there quickly, and maintaining a persistent fight for the duration of their play session. The outfits and squads will look after their own, but the new player/solo player/player that doesn't even want to spend five minutes organizing an attack might give up in frustration.

[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.

[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.