Don't dumb down PS2

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by TAA

I disagree. What SOE has been doing is listening to their hardcore player base. That is not a recipe for success. What they should be doing is pulling in casual gamers or non-gamers and asking them how they feel about the game. I hope that they havent done a botch up job with their tutorial. So many games dont put enough effort in it, yet it is the first point of contact between gamer and game.

Once the game goes live will be a real test for them. Random people will be downloading the game to check it out because it is free and they can. They will need a full team of coders on standby to enact changes to the game based on nothing but the usage data they collect. Feedback from us will not matter one bit, and it shouldnt. They are running a business.

As for killcam, I actually love it. The COD style killcam is perfect IMO (I dont like any others I have seen). I find it fun to see exactly what someone did to kill me. No it is not appropriate for a hardcore game. How will their average consumer feel about it? I dont know. Neither do you. It sure would suck to have the ability to do it coded into the game already and lose customers because it wasnt used.

You know what would be perfect actually - put killcam as an option in the cash store. No it wouldnt be something they would do at launch. I reckon they should wait six months until all the hardcore gamers have invested significant time and money into the game and become committed, and then do it to make even more money (along with the ability to buy certs).

One problem with claiming "hardcore" is, what does hardcore mean? To many people, hardcore is people who want realism. In THAT respect maybe realism lovers are against killcam, but people who want the game to be made into an extreme realism simulator are so few in number that there is no way that all the resistance to killcam can be coming just from them. On the other hand most people think of hardcore as simply people who play 10 hours a day. That kind of hardcore is not pre-disposed against killcam.

But you admit that you don't know what the average player thinks of no killcam, so there we are. But I believe there would be more players who leave over a positional killcam being in the game than would leave because there isn't one. You don't have to be a hardcore player to want skill to matter. When you have things like 3D spotting, positional killcam and all the other skill gap compensators in the game that allow the unskilled to have a better chance against the skilled, it converts the game into one big immersion cinematic where you're just along for the ride, much like a movie. That's an extreme embellishment, I admit of course, but it is indeed a step in that direction.

CoD's killcam is better than BF3's in this respect. It replays what the killer did but doesn't show where your killer is AFTER he killed you. It's not better than no killcam, but it is much better.

As for the idea of selling killcam in the cash shop, assuming you mean a positional killcam, that would indeed by pay2win.

Originally Posted by Buggsy

It doesn't matter how squad spawning is "balanced" it destroys the concept of having a front line.

It actually enhances the concept of a front line, otherwise you have a constant stream of people walking back who are easily overwhelmed because they're not organized til they get back.

But hey, you're against jump pads and killcam(as am I), so at least you're being consistent!