What do you think of this? (Class System)

[Nubcake]

First damn post on this forum and I have to do it in a new thread. I'm going to need a flame suit, or fifty.


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This is a bloody long post!
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Found out by sheer luck that a new PS is in the works last night and almost jumping about it, then I thought that it will probably make a mess of university.
So I was bored as hell and had a random idea knocking around in my head for something that suddenly went "Hang on! This could work in PS!". Common sense said no, sheer dumb stupidity said see what people think.

I've tried to run around the forum and find quotes that back up this idea so I hope nobody minds if I use their words.

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

1. Too many cert points to spend on fast transport (On what killed Gal Drops)

Originally Posted by Ait'al

The game doesn't revolve around it if people figured out how to hold continents again and had roaming tank columns or had every figured out how to use better recon to defend one after the took it. People just suck so bad they could never get the cooler parts of the game. (On indoor fights)

Originally Posted by naeadil

I would have to agree with other posters in saying that Planetside has truly become session based. When I utilized the command system early and put together some of the very first 'raids,'the game was truly a simulated war. Massive. Commanders were almost playing a macro heavy RTS game. I'm not saying that small micromanagement based squads are bad, but you actually had the option to play with these massive armies.

Battle Rank:
It worked out. Certification points need to be scarce. Having a ton of certification points was bad for the game. Why? Because if you had a large amount of points, you could do almost anything on your own. Having low cert points helped contribute to the MMO factor. You needed that solid Medic, or that Galaxy pilot to get from Point A to Point B, etc.

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

I never see anyone use them against the Vanu and that is being there are too many AA options and they're too easy to access.
AA fire is needed in the game or Aircrafts would be too powerful but I think there needs to be a balance that makes fewer people have it.

I was a Max and this basically made me useless and I don't see it fair that it can lock onto Maxes. The main problem is EVERYONE can have access to these weapons very easily because people have too many certs and things are so cheap.

- Again talking about Max's they're pretty weak and pointless now. Everyone has AV weapons to take them out easily and they don't do much damage to people anymore so it takes forever to take them out and you usually end up dead first.

This is the Exo Suit (or whatever its called) and then a Heavy Weapon, AV weapon and HEalth + Armour repair. This build can take on people and vehicles (Aircraft too if you're TR) and you can last forever repairing yourself. I find it so overpowered because it covers all bases and everyone is using it.

Damn, that's long enough for everything as is.

The Problem

The Zerg in Planetside (PS) is a force to be reckoned with, a massive wave of enemies that simply rolls over everything in its path. The Zerg however is not the problem, quite the opposite; the Zerg means that there are the large scale battles that were envisioned when PS was at the concept stage. The problem lies in the name itself, Zerg; like its namesake a Zerg does not display much in the way of team play or thought-process; it is, for all practical purposes, a steamroller without a driver. This is due to the fact that many players have become self-sufficient due to their certifications and this is the issue that must be addressed.

Therefore, in short, the problem is that players have become too diverse and each individual has become something of a Swiss-army knife in their role flexibility.

A Possible Solution?

Naturally it would be completely illogical to return to the standard RPG-style practice of shoe-horning every player into a set class that is designed for a certain style of play and forcing them to stick to with it. It was the sheer flexibility that made PS appeal to such a large player base as each player was able to tailor their avatar to their unique play-style as opposed to trying to select between (for example) a medic or engineer when the player would have opted for a distinctly support based play-style that encompassed elements of both roles.

My proposed solution is hopefully a step in the right direction to removing the Swiss-army soldier and promoting team actions in PSN.

When starting a game a player should be asked to select a ‘role’ to play within the game. This role then allows the use of certain certs, implants and abilities which would be unavailable to other roles. Alternately a selected ‘role’ would change the price of certs dependent upon whether the cert was in line with the ‘role’. This therefore means that it becomes either impossible or highly difficult and time-consuming to create an avatar that is able to perform every role within the game. It also avoids show-horning the player into selecting a distinct class which limits their possible styles of play and retains a degree of the cert flexibility that assists in the appeal of PS and PSN.

NOTE: The ‘role’ proposal does NOT affect the accumulation of CEP up to CR4.

Game Alterations

The advantage of this proposal is that it does not require a complete overhaul of the entire game’s mechanics and instead chiefly alters the certification system with other minor alterations.
However, for the examples of how the system could operate below I’ve made some alterations that could have to be implemented into the game. In these I have also used the PS systems as a base for each.

My only critical alteration is the insertion of a new armour set into the game. It could fit either side of the reinforced armour in the game creating a tree that possibly looked something as directly below.

Planetside
Pyjamas --> Stealth Suit --> Agile --> Rexo --> MAX

Proposed
Pyjamas --> Stealth Suit --> Light --> Medium --> Heavy --> MAX

Other alterations are minor alterations such as the implementation of humvee style vehicles which would be available for all classes, expansions to the CR abilities and the implementation of a new OS formed from a small barrage of Relativistic Kill Vehicles (RKVs) AKA Rods from God. A possibility is to also implement further specialisation in certs. For example instead of becoming certified only in medium assault I could then choose to spend further cert points on this which would increase my avatar’s proficiency with med assault weapons. This could mean a larger magazine capacity, increased damage, smaller cone of fire or a combination of the above implemented to various levels.


Are There Problems?

Yes.

I’ve never even dipped my toe into the murky depths of game development but I have an inkling that this would be a difficult and time-consuming system to implement, especially during the balancing phase and it is likely that at the end of the day the players will find a ‘role’ (such as Cavalry) which acts something like the Swiss-army model that caused problems in the first place.

There will evidently be players who would be disgruntled by the implementation of the proposal since it would alter their play style. For example, a number of current PS snipers, myself included, are also certified adv. Medics and spend time sniping and reviving since generally medics are hard to come by up on the hills. The implementation of the proposal will obviously create a issue in that a change of play style will be enforced that would be detrimental to the sniper as any adv medics would be at the front where they are more likely to get revivals than with the snipers.

As mentioned above, there is also the risk of a disproportionate amount of players choosing a ‘role’ that perhaps acts as a Swiss-army knife, unbalancing the team play element and returning the problem to square 1. A further issue is the opposite, a player selects a ‘role’ and then decides that it does not fit their play-style. This can be fixed by, similar to the cert system, allowing a player to re-role themselves with an associated time limit, such as a month.

This is also hardly a fix for some of the problems that are present in the game. This proposal skirts conveniently around lasher spam, mosquito hot drops, biffers (thank god they aren’t in PSN!) and other issues.

In Summary

The ‘roles’ system is an attempt to remove the ‘Swiss army player’ and promote teamwork within the PS Universe with minimal adverse effects to the current system. It is also designed to do this without the need to overhaul the entire game system and instead focuses mainly on the certification system with minor adjustments to other systems.
It does not force players into a fixed RPG-style class and instead makes the player select a vaguely defined class which has minor limitations imposed on it, such as limiting unrelated certifications or imposing a greater cost upon them.

The system does require a great deal of effort to implement and is unlikely to be universally accepted and there is the risk of a ‘role’ becoming the ‘Swiss army model’ or gaining a disproportionate amount of the player population.

The system is ultimately designed to attempt to address a major issue in PS and create a system for PSN that does not carry over the flaws and evolves the certification system.


Possible examples in post 2. Was only 8000 characters over!