HART Timer idea

[Zanzuke13]

Originally Posted by HawkEye

leave the HART the way it is 5 min enuff people arent paying $13 a month to wait around.

Good Point

[Cauldron Borne]

And what about those people that like goin' solo? alot of them don't have vehc, they are tripped out infantry, so they get screw'd. They either have to join a squad, but they want to go solo. Or wait around a long frigggin ass time to get on the HART. not cool. The HART was made so fast transport can happen from sanc to distant loc. The bloody thing is called the Higgh Altitude RAPID! Transport. what good is it to wait 20min to reenforce yer buddies if by the time you are ready to drop, they lost the foot hold. The trans. vecs are more for intracontinental travel anyway. And also to add that extra power of a tank rollin' into the field. I say keep it how it is, everyone seems okay with it now anyway.

[WCruler]

DONT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE, keep it as it is so you can get in on the action fast, why the hell would you want to wait around! Waiting around and having to find a gal piolet and orginizing this big tranportation deal just to get to action is NOT FUN.

If are busy posting in this forum on how to make people in game the game not have fun then you are messed up.

[Ait'al]

I dont care what any one says the galaxy needs to be alowed to be a major form of transportation!!

[Cyanide]

The HART was 15 minutes for a long time. Nobody seemed to mind it back in beta. I think it's much too short now. I could even deal with 10 minutes, but 5 is too damn short. The sancturary is all but pointless these days. You might as well just use instant action because you're going to HART into the battle anyway. When the timer was longer the benefits were as follows:

1. It was EASY to form or find a good sized squad in the sanc.

2. It was easy for SLs to find the people with the certs they need to form an effective fighting force.

3. You could load up the whole sqaud into a gal, or get any vehicles you wanted and move out as a group. This promoted orginization.

4. You could tell people where they could find a good battle without taking them from one they were already involved in.

Now that the timer is so short, the benefits are as follows:

1. You don't have to worry about instant action sticking you in the middle of nowhere.

There, that's about it. No real benefits, just getting your worthless infantry ass into battle a little faster, and thus being blown up by a vehicle or group of enemies just a little bit faster.

Now for the cons of having a short HART timer:

1. It's next to impossible to form a good squad in the sanc. It is all but impossible to form a decent sized platoon, and then organize an attack.

2. Idiots constantly drop on big battles in their worthless agile suits, then get blasted by a max or a vehicle. It would be INFINATELY more beneficial to the emipre if they had joined a group, got some real firepower (a tank, reaver, a squad of guys in a gal, etc) and then joined the battle. But no. That never occurs to these idiots. They think they are doing something worth while by endlessly zerging the enemy with infantry. Most battles could be easily handled by a single platoon (which would be easier to form in a sanctuary like we had before the short HART timer) of organized people using armored units effectively. Instead, it requires 3 times that many brain dead morons who drop in with no squad and no real firepower. The short HART timer pormotes stupidity AND the zerg.

3. It's impossible to keep a squad organized because people don't need transport anymore. They just recall and hart in to the next base or whatever base they feel like going to.

4. Attacking a locked continent is a nightmare. The retarded zerg will move into the locked continent from the continent providing the link. When all their vehicles have been destroyed, they just continuously zerg infantry from AMSes and towers. It takes 5x longer to cap the enemey base than it should because a few enemey vehicles and maxes can mow down the infantry 10+ kills to 1 death.


BTW, those of you who want fast action all the time are in the wrong damn game. PlanetSide is supposed to be a war game, not a deathmatch. If you simply can't stand to "waste" 10 minutes forming up a squad, picking a target, and moving to that target as a group, then go play UT2003 or one of the other 10,000 or so FPS games made specially for kids with A.D.D and no sence of teamwork.

[BadAsh]

Originally Posted by Cyanide

BTW, those of you who want fast action all the time are in the wrong damn game. PlanetSide is supposed to be a war game, not a deathmatch. If you simply can't stand to "waste" 10 minutes forming up a squad, picking a target, and moving to that target as a group, then go play UT2003 or one of the other 10,000 or so FPS games made specially for kids with A.D.D and no sence of teamwork.

Great attitude. And that's exactly why there was a server merger, why the dev team is being consolidated to San Diego only, and why cash was pulled from the bandwidth expendatures. The 15 min HART chased away many good players... the 5 min was done too late to save the servers and whole dev team. Now we all will make due with less because the decision was made to "force" a certain game play e.g. Galaxy usage over HART drops.

Let me share with you my first 3 Galaxy rides...

1. merciless "we need passengers" voice spam until we finaly fill up... we fly for what seemed an eternity and then the pilot lagged/went AFK (who knows) and we flew into the water... we all drowned.

2. After fooking around for about 7 min we finally filled up enough for the pilot to take off... 8 passengers... we encountered enemy aircraft and had to bail out... I landed and got mowed by a Magrider (my 2nd PS battle experience)

3. Similar to #1 above but we crashed into a tree... as I waited to respawn I debated deleting the 7 day demo and just finding another game... my 2 buddies did and never played again... their parting comment was along the lines of: "great, we can wait forever for the stupid HART or some jackass can get us killed" followed by "This is stupid, I'm deleting"

Yeah let's bring that back and savor in the "teamwork".

Personally, I wanna have teamwork when I'm in the action. I don't want to have to rely on teamwork just to start playing the damn game.

[Veteran]

The monthly subscription is irrelevant. Keep the HART the way it is and you kick a different group of people in the balls.

The HART should only drop you in friendly SOIs. The HART should never be used as a tactical insertion vehicle. As long as it is, it's an NPC, and you guys know how you feel about NPCs.

I'm sick to death of my towers going enemy cause people are HARTing behind the lines.

[BadAsh]

Originally Posted by Veteran

The HART should only drop you in friendly SOIs. The HART should never be used as a tactical insertion vehicle. As long as it is, it's an NPC, and you guys know how you feel about NPCs.

I'm sick to death of my towers going enemy cause people are HARTing behind the lines.

Ok, now THAT is a good idea! Leave the timer to 5 min and have it ONLY drop to a friendly SOI.

[Incompetent]

Badash, I feel I should share my most recent galaxy experience with you.

Ish was in the middle of it's customary three way invasion, and we were fighting against the NC. Once the Enkidu spawn room fell our squad rallied at Akkan and decided to galaxy down to marduk and kill the gens. We met in the courtyard, our gal pilot pulled out a gal, set it down, and in under thirty seconds we took off with a full load of assault infantry and MAXes. We jumped on the backdoor of the base, rushed down to the gen room and had the gens down and were ready to defend in less then 45 seconds. Making extensive use of advanced medics, a few of the much maligned DC maxes and good old fasioned riflework (only one of use had HA,) we held out for maybe 5-10 minutes (wasn't really watching the clock) against at least as many enemies and i would guess maybe twice tops (Vick would know how many.)

Then we respawned and did it again, only this time we were short one spot, we had to dodge a reaver on the way in the door and it took us a minute to load up since we took the safe route and rallied in sanc. We didn't hold it as long that time around since there were still a few there and they weren't exactly happy with us removing there ability to spawn Vanguards.

Short HART timers directly discourage this type of gameplay, it discourages teamwork, encourages soloists, encourages zerging and impedes the development of higher tactics. Maybe after your friends stood around waiting for the hart a few times, they could have picked up a Transport cert, or a tank cert, or joined a squad forming up at sanc. Yes, people actually used to do that instead of running around alone xp whoring.

[BadAsh]

Originally Posted by Incompetent

Short HART timers directly discourage this type of gameplay, it discourages teamwork, encourages soloists, encourages zerging and impedes the development of higher tactics. Maybe after your friends stood around waiting for the hart a few times, they could have picked up a Transport cert, or a tank cert, or joined a squad forming up at sanc. Yes, people actually used to do that instead of running around alone xp whoring.

There is nothing wrong with going solo if that's what you want to do. If you join a random public squad its pretty much everyone is solo, except one solo guy gets CEP for base captures. You might get some way points, but that�s usually all the �leadership� you will get from some random SL. So, your example is nice but has a pre requisite of it is having a squad of organized friends or outfit buddies. Also, you did not mention what happens when a new guy joins. He would be stuck in the sanctuary until the HART came. Unless the Gal pilot was willing to fly all the way to the sanctuary to get him and come back dodging enemy aircraft the whole time. A single mosquito can kill you both. If he gets behind you he will rip you apart. When you bail you will die with 12mm holes punched through you. Should more people waste their time and provide escort or perhaps fill the gunner positions?

What you want to do is discourage the HART from being your preferred mode of travel once you get in the action. But slapping some massive timer on it will affect more than just that. Many players prefer to solo and this does not consider them. Many players have no vehicle certifications, especially the lower level guys who want to fight. This does not consider them. Alienate them and you can lose a lot of your player base. I suspect this has already happened. The change to 5 min was too little too late.

[Veteran]

Crack babies will never groove with PlanetSide. The HART does less to please them than it does to offend the heart and soul of the game - the loyal, patient, team-oriented players.

[Incompetent]

This game is not about soloists, if you want to solo, go pick up UT2k3, and i'm not proposing putting a massive timer on the HART, i'm proposing axing it completely. Public squads used to be relatively organized compared to what they are now, they grouped up and moved out en masse for sanc with transport, although the ones formed in the field were often scattered, and they often scattered when they arrived. The whole throw down a waypoint and pray is a relatively new development because the 5 minute HART impedes organization.

If a new guy joins, he makes his way to the front as best as possible, he can either take his own vehicle to the front, or if he is a lower br someone with light scout or transport would withdraw and help him out. No need to fly the whole damn squad back when you only need to send one guy. The twenty on the back of the gal can deal with most any enemy aircraft as long as the pilot is smart and dodges the bulk of the enemy force and flanks them, or is accompanied by escort craft.

I really don't care if it alienates soloists, this game is not about soloists, it's about teamwork. The five minute hart drives away experienced soldiers who know how and want to work as a team. The HART as a whole makes chokepoints worthless and nullifies the benifits of holding terrain, it makes disruption tactics nearly useless, ambush tactics useless and simply ecourages a style of play where battles are won by the number of rifles (or rather, shotguns) fielded rather then the tactics used.

[Veteran]

Agree 100% with Incompetent's view. Why should a crack baby arrive on the battlefield as quickly as a squad-based player? Aren't there supposed to be advantages to organization? Surely Mr. Crack Baby isn't a strong enough political force to dement the game towards the Quake mentality. At least I hope to God it isn't.

[Cyanide]

Originally Posted by BadAsh

Great attitude. And that's exactly why there was a server merger, why the dev team is being consolidated to San Diego only, and why cash was pulled from the bandwidth expendatures. The 15 min HART chased away many good players... the 5 min was done too late to save the servers and whole dev team. Now we all will make due with less because the decision was made to "force" a certain game play e.g. Galaxy usage over HART drops.

Let me share with you my first 3 Galaxy rides...

1. merciless "we need passengers" voice spam until we finaly fill up... we fly for what seemed an eternity and then the pilot lagged/went AFK (who knows) and we flew into the water... we all drowned.

2. After fooking around for about 7 min we finally filled up enough for the pilot to take off... 8 passengers... we encountered enemy aircraft and had to bail out... I landed and got mowed by a Magrider (my 2nd PS battle experience)

3. Similar to #1 above but we crashed into a tree... as I waited to respawn I debated deleting the 7 day demo and just finding another game... my 2 buddies did and never played again... their parting comment was along the lines of: "great, we can wait forever for the stupid HART or some jackass can get us killed" followed by "This is stupid, I'm deleting"

Yeah let's bring that back and savor in the "teamwork".

Personally, I wanna have teamwork when I'm in the action. I don't want to have to rely on teamwork just to start playing the damn game.

Well then maybe you should have gotten a transport cert of your own. Did that every cross your mind?. I've been in my fair share of galaxy crashes, but I learned to deal with it. If I think the pilot is a newb then I just grab a mosquito or reaver and fly air support. You should realize that part of playing a team based game is that your team is made of other people, and they may or may not be idiots. Good luck finding a team based game that isn't full of idiots. The trick is to find ways to deal with them, or avoid them.

Personally I'd rather have 3 servers full of team players with brains, as apposed to 10 servers full of A.D.D newbs hyped up on anphetamines who can't even fathom the concept of team warfare. If PS becomes just like every other FPS then it will lose players from that too. Do you have any idea what the average lifespan of a normal FPS is? It's less than a year. HARTing into a zerg fest and dying every 10 seconds gets f*cking boring after a while. That is where the team based stuff comes in. You survive longer, and thus have more fun if you're smart enough to work as [b]part[/p] of a team, instead of running infront of all your teammates just so they can shoot you in the back. It's dumbasses like that who ruin the game for those of us who actually use our brains.

Just because you had THREE bad experiences with the gal doesn't mean that it's a bad thing, or that cutting the hart timer by 66% is the solution. They should have implimented broadcast gates from the start. That is not a new idea, it was floating around in beta, but it's taken this long to even get to "in concept".

[TheRagingGerbil]

I am a huge advocate of removing the HART all together. I can imagine all the whines though...

How about just letting a user access the HART once every 60 minutes?