[Feedback] Colorful "Self-Entitled Opinion"

[NewSith]

I updated the OP with some extra honesty.

[Ghoest9]

You are wrong about unlimited cert points.

1 You can only play one class at a time. It doesnt matter if you are good at 4 things or 1 thing since they are done seperately unlike PS1

2 You can only equip one weapon at a time - its doesnt matter if you have upgrades on 1 or 20 weapons. Because unlike PS1 you only carry one at a time.

3 Most of of the most expensive upgrades exist primarily as sinks and only offer marginal improvements.


Now if you want to complain about the nature of a class based game in general - thats reasonable(and has been said plenty of times.)
But within a class based system like this the unlimited certs dont hurt anything.
Now that I know whats useful and what works for me personally I could be just as effective with a small fraction of the cert points I have spent - but the game would be more boring just for having lost some variety.

[Brusi]

To tell you the truth, i bought Anti-Tank mines but i don't even use them any more. They are not the same as PS... they are now just another way to suicide bomb tanks. Not to mention, no one defends bases anymore for various other reasons.

I guess I've just resigned myself a little bit to our new Planetside

I really hope they put in a lot of these gameplay improving and simple 'Quality of Life' HUD elements down the track.

[igster]

The PCG article also had to summarise the news in a way people who had never played planetside before would understand. So it gave lowest common denominator summaries to the key points of Buzz's post. Stuff that a Starcraft player or FPS player would understand k/d, weapon balance etc.

Generally for me, this is the root of the gameplay issues of PS2 - dumbing down to the lowest common denominator so we can get more players in.

Two points I'd like to add to your great list of things that PS1 did really well that should be re-introduced:

1) Capture Mechanics : The capture timer. A fifteen minute base capture well known and understood by attackers and defenders. For the last few minutes you would be on high alert if you thought a small team would come in to try and recapture the base. Last minute resecures.... "shit we have to get this base within 2 minutes or we're stuck here for the next hour"
Remember even the generator holds that were done by a neutral empire on one of your bases that actually became hacks. Genius in terms of gameplay variations.

2) Gal Drops: Iconic gameplay element that has become redundant in PS1.
In conjunction with Capture timers, Base Resecures, Base Captures and Gen holds these truly defined PS1. The whole CE metagame to help you defend against a gal drop / early warning system has been discarded completely in favour of a lowest common denominator simplified system of get to the capture points and camp the spawns.

[RykerStruvian]

Originally Posted by Brusi

To tell you the truth, i bought Anti-Tank mines but i don't even use them any more. They are not the same as PS... they are now just another way to suicide bomb tanks. Not to mention, no one defends bases anymore for various other reasons.

I guess I've just resigned myself a little bit to our new Planetside

I really hope they put in a lot of these gameplay improving and simple 'Quality of Life' HUD elements down the track.

Thats funny because initially when tank mines came out, people were complaining that people were deploying them in front of spawn terminals. Great, whatever. But then people stopped doing that and simply started using them as hardcore C4 on vehicles. I wonder what the development team said to each other when this started to happen :P I wonder if it was something which was brought up during the development process, a potential situation where the tank mines are not necessarily being used the way they were intended.

[igster]

Tank Mines like PS1 Please. More mines, Less damage. Used to be a fantastic gameplay element where a tank crew could place minefields and 'assist' enemy vehicles over their mines.

Even take a bit of damage to make them pursue you right into your tank trap!!

I think tank drivers that played against us the last few years on Gemini learned not to chase us too far.
*waves at other PS1 tank crews*

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

You are wrong about unlimited cert points.

And I think you are wrong, entirely.

1 You can only play one class at a time. It doesnt matter if you are good at 4 things or 1 thing since they are done seperately unlike PS1

Unlike ps1, you spawn much faster (respawn is up to 7.5x as fast: 4-8s vs 10-30s!). On top of that, you don't need to change suits since you do this bedore spawning. That means that adapting to your opponent, given that you have more options available, and circumstance need (medic, engineer, AV, aa, max) is done not only more rapidly, but also more frequently and also more freely, since a PS1 player is restricted over all his or her lives in certs, while a PS2 player is not.

2 You can only equip one weapon at a time - its doesnt matter if you have upgrades on 1 or 20 weapons. Because unlike PS1 you only carry one at a time.

Wrong. ps2's HA carries AV or aa and a rifle and a pistol and a grenade, by default and could have something in the utility slot like c4 without any trade-off in ammo (always optimum ammo, unless a suit change is made for shield vs ammo). A ps1 rexo carried one rifle and one AV (OR shotgun OR sniper rifle, never all three because that would be too costly an ammo trade-off) and unlike the PS2 version had to trade-off ammo, did not carry a pistol, but a Rek, grenades, engi and/or healing tool, medkits, again at the cost of ammo. The thing with trading-off against ammo is, that the more diverse things you can do in one life-time, the shorter you can actually do that.

An engineer carries recharging turret, ammopacks, mines, a glue gun for both armour and vehicles at once and unlimited ammo, a rifle and a pistol and a grenade. A ps1 engineer, certainly not one in agile, would hav to give up loads of space for a fdu, two different glueguns, two sets of glue gun ammo if they wanted to upgrade or repair for longer than once, again trading out ammo space for any extra's.

A snipefil has built-in rek and hacking certs, carries a sniper rifle, a pistol, grenades, a scout tool and maybe a mine or somesuch. A ps1 infil had one pistol with one box of ammo, a rek, maybe a cud, one pair of emp grenades, maybe, or 4-5 aces at the cost of no gun, perhaps no rek, no cud, no grenades, no medkits, etc. Let alone a long range rifle.

A medic had less issues than an engineer, but would still give up on other certs and would not have unlimited healing. And again, ammo trade-off. And could medics toss healing grenades and work at the range PS2 medics can? No.

A max couldn't have dual weapons UNLESS TR.

No unit in ps1 could jetpack, aside from VS MAXes. Which couldn't enter buildings by themselves, unlike PS2 MAXes, since there are no doors.


Bassically, PS2 classes do not limit players and aside from forcing combinations, require less personalised trade-offs. And over time, none of the class restrictions matter. So you can't snipe and AV? Who cares? You can't repair and heal? Actually, you can! Because armour has been replaced with recharging shields, so you only need to be medic now.

3 Most of of the most expensive upgrades exist primarily as sinks and only offer marginal improvements.

One c4 or two c4 is a huge difference. If you are talking about quickest reacquisition or last shield upgrade of 1-5% each, sure, but nobody cares about those, it is the variety of options in different classes that matters. Not their best level since as you stated yourself, most of those have little to no influence.

Now if you want to complain about the nature of a class based game in general - thats reasonable(and has been said plenty of times.)
But within a class based system like this the unlimited certs dont hurt anything.
Now that I know whats useful and what works for me personally I could be just as effective with a small fraction of the cert points I have spent - but the game would be more boring just for having lost some variety.

Your first and second alinea disagree. At least from the perspective that one wouldn't be able to do everything, which is the point. Over time, you can do everything you want in PS2, no questions asked. Max crash? No problem. Need medic? Next death. Need repairs and ammo? Spawn beacon, kill self, spawn back in. Need an ams behind enemy lines but don't feel like walking and too dangerous to land? Fly any air you want, bail with light assault, place beacon, die, spawn as infil, no hacking cert needed; just steal ams from enemy term. You got all vehicles anyway. Need tank? You got it. Need aa? You got it... And so on and so on.

You are not being forced to be creative with the limited options you had, like in ps1. You don't make trade-offs, you simply exchange sets of traits at will.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Originally Posted by Figment

Your first and second ... don't make trade-offs, you simply exchange sets of traits at will.

I like the way you think with those quick switches. That's putting time and tools to best use ingame, even if it does hamper fun.



I like most of NewSith's post but I'd like to put out an idea for why the devs have moved the way they have and why the logic that it's based on is flawed. The gunplay, base design, vehicle design, class logic, and customization all come from the same place. Higby has said how they're fans of other first person shooters and that they wanted to update PS and bring it up to scratch with modern shooters. And they've done it. Everything in Planetside 2 follows the design lessons that have been learned by the industry in its making of fps games after the last few years.

And that's their downfall.

The last mmofps was made 10 years ago and there hasn't been another until now because, as Matt said, they're really hard to make. As such the lessons on how they are constructed haven't been taught yet. There's just not the pool of experience to say what makes a good one and besides a tiny hand full of devs most haven't worked on a project like this before. They're all doing their best and the results show in the technical polish of the game but the logic they're gripping like a man on driftwood was never designed with this kind of game in mind.

Take a base and break it down to a two way fight with 2 ESF, 1 lib, 2 tanks, and 24 players per side and suddenly the bits of base layout make sense. The doors, windows, multiple entrances, and capture point positions all work with smaller forces. The building's intended flow however breaks in half when you bring in large forces with no vehicle restrictions.

The gun logic also breaks down because there's no way to unbalance the game correctly. Yes, unbalance. Modern fps balance has 3 positions for its weapons: overpowered; acceptable; and not worth it. Assuming all other things equal you can think of these as how long does it take to respond to the threat? Overpowered (rocket pods) require a significant time investment in order to either not die or fight back. Acceptable (most firearms) falls into the range where the time it takes to respond equals the time it takes to kill making player skill at manipulating engagements important. Not worth it (default gunner weapons (m20 basilisk?)) gives the target much more time to respond lethally than it takes to kill them.
Using this scale go back and think about other fps games. You know which guns are crap and which are annoyingly good. The rest are a bland morass of personal preference. PS2 fits right into this system with the majority of weapons sitting in the acceptable range which is what a modern arena shooter aims for as in those games players who know the map can manipulate where and how they get into fights with enough skill to make the game less about weapon choice and more about personal ability. You can't do that in Planetside as the map is too large and the population too unruly to be able to predict player movement. I imagine this is another reason why people like biolabs as the insides can be memorized easily when compared to everything else.

Armor is also a tricky issue in fps as modern games lean to having a default hp pool that only gets expanded to the difference of one or two more bullets. There's no difference in approach when a lighter armor faces a heavier one as more accurate gunfire will always beat the armor difference. And speaking about armor here's a question, why do shields care about headshots? Arena games suffer if there is any great difference in armor as the time to decide on fight or flight is so tiny and they don't have the ability to put in mechanics to hinder the large effective hp armors that could balance them out. In PS1, MAXs were able to have a significantly different armor because they couldn't: Control their own move speed very well; change weapon type easily; heal or repair; use a few implants; and hack anything. They also had a vulnerability to AV weapons which meant that AV weapons were useful indoors as well as out. PS2 MAXs are infantry with large amounts of health and are treated as such rather than offering a markedly different puzzle.

Planetside isn't an arena shooter and can't use the same lessons to make a good game. It's ok to make mistakes with the game as long as you have the ability to admit to what happened and learn from it. It is not the mistake but the demonstration inability to learn from them that destroys player's hope. NewSith has done a good thing in trying to compile a list of items to spark discussion even if I can only agree with him on 3 of the positives. I really think that the devs would benefit from asking us to think about things well in advance so when they reach that point in development they have a thread or two of research they can look at rather than the jumble of threads and complaints that are around now.

[bpostal]

Originally Posted by igster

...
Generally for me, this is the root of the gameplay issues of PS2 - dumbing down to the lowest common denominator so we can get more players in...

While true, you gotta get people on board with drinking the kool-aid first, then tell them that their thetan count is high and they need to purge it by giving you all their money.

Planetside, while not overly complicated, had much more moving parts that tightly interacted with each other. Each part had to be explained, examined and understood before it's effect on the overall could be perceived. That is why the dumbing down has occurred. We're long past the days of large player manuals that were required to be read before playing the game. Games now a day are much more 'plug and play'.

Personally I would have preferred if a large portion of these in depth systems were in place for beta, for those who understand or are willing to research these mechanics. That way they would have been able to be tested prior to their 'real' implementation, sometime after the game had launched.
I can understand why this did not occur, but it saddens me nonetheless.

[Ghoest9]

Originally Posted by Figment

disingenuous crap.

I stopped reading when you brought up the HA AV as an example of of how I was wrong about classes only certing for one 1 weapon.


Seriously just go away since you wont grow up.

[RykerStruvian]

I just don't see why SOE can't implement a test server where they use the mechanics of PS1 in PS2. We should be the judge of what works and what doesnt....just give it a whirl.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

You are wrong about unlimited cert points.

1 You can only play one class at a time. It doesnt matter if you are good at 4 things or 1 thing since they are done seperately unlike PS1

2 You can only equip one weapon at a time - its doesnt matter if you have upgrades on 1 or 20 weapons. Because unlike PS1 you only carry one at a time.

3 Most of of the most expensive upgrades exist primarily as sinks and only offer marginal improvements.


Now if you want to complain about the nature of a class based game in general - thats reasonable(and has been said plenty of times.)
But within a class based system like this the unlimited certs dont hurt anything.
Now that I know whats useful and what works for me personally I could be just as effective with a small fraction of the cert points I have spent - but the game would be more boring just for having lost some variety.

If you allow me I will give you a certain example:

PlanetSide 1. TR.

Loadouts Bookmark:

1. Infiltrator

Agile Exosuit
Boltdriver
AMP Pistol
2 ACE Set to Motion Sensor
Ammo

2. Light Assault

Agile Exosuit
Cycler
AMP Pistol
Ammo
Mosquito to bail on rooftops

3. Combat Medic

Agile Exosuit
Punisher
AMP Pistol
Ammo
Medical Applicator (With Advanced Medic certed)

4. Engineer

Agile Exosuit
Cycler
AMP Pistol
FDU set to Turret and Aegis
Gluegun - to repair vehicles and upgrade Aegis with ammo terminal
BANK Kit to repair MAXes
Ammo

5. Heavy Assault

Reinforced Exosuit
Mini Chaingun
Striker
AMP Pistol
Ammo
Personal Shield Implant

6. MAX

Burster/Pounder/Dual Cycler
Ammo


As you can see class system is in fact not a system parallel to freefrom inventory, it is its direct derivative. Thus the limitations you see are not really limitations.

That with the fact thet you already spawn in a class alongside with quicker respawn times and there you have it.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

I stopped reading when you brought up the HA AV as an example of of how I was wrong about classes only certing for one 1 weapon.


Seriously just go away since you wont grow up.

So bassically since you were wrong by default, didn't even read the actual points made you just decided to not just not read the argumentation (ha having three weapons on them by default), but to also declare any disagreement crap, thus ending debate with a random insult?

Nice depth to your argument. You said classes carried one weapon while each class carries at minimum two guns, including the pistols. AT MINIMUM, since the HA indeed does carry a third and while a different category, it is exactly the same as a rexo with AV and rifle/shotgun/HA.

No there is no Sweeper + Gauss. And why would you possibly bring two weapons in the same range and target category? I don't even see the point of certing them. Besides, pistols in ps2 work almost as well as shotguns close range. And even if you did, who would care? I brought dual Suppressors in PS1, one loaded with AP bullets, just so I would have some form of AV as I could not afford to have a Phoenix or Decimator due to limited certcost. Did it make me invincible? Does it make me more powerful than a default HA or player who can always switch to HA in PS2? No! It does not!

So what? You ignore that you can respawn much faster and next engagement you do have it. Since you don't care about over time use, why should you suddenly care if a person has two rifles? By the same argument you use, one can argue they may carry two, but only fire one. And if they share the same ammo inventory space (like in ps1), you can't even argue they can switch and maintain that longer. All you can argue is that they can better adapt to circumstances encountered with the same weapon. But again, that is fine with your argument that one can only use one thing at the exact same time.

Bassically, you are an insulting hypocrit who doesn't understand his own argument and thus resorts to childish insulting.

Who needs to grow up exactly?

[ShadetheDruid]

I think the class system is fine, they just need to add more stuff (and I would be surprised if they didn't). Class systems are a lot more flexible and allow for a lot more variety than people give them credit for, especially if the time is put into it by the designers.

It's also a hell of a lot easier to keep balanced, because at least the combinations of gear are somewhat predictable and the limits mean different playstyles can (or should, if the devs do it right) be kept equal. An open system on the other hand is very easy for people to break in dozens of ways the devs could never predict (any horror stories from PS1 vets of an innocuous combo of random things that were horrific if someone happened to combine them?). Of course a badly designed class system is also easy to break, but that's another matter entirely.

Just to be clear, it's not that I think the system as it is is perfect (I don't think i've seen a class system ever that I would call great as-is; the key is to have as much variety as possible within the theme*), or that an open system is bad per se.

Whether it should be as easy as it is to switch classes is debatable (I feel there's a middle ground somewhere), but what I do like is being able to switch specialisations without having to make extra characters. Sometimes I start playing only to find out I don't really feel like playing that class today, so I switch over. I like that freedom.

I'm also someone who specialises. A lot. Even within classes, and even with the "limited" number of options currently. Not everyone switches between what's needed depending on the situation to the point where everyone is "everything"; some of us prefer to specialise in the things we enjoy and ignore the rest (while still having that freedom to say "well, I feel like doing X instead now").

*Small reference point: I come from a D&D background, 3.5 specifically. Obviously a class based system, decent amount of variety.. not the best balance (because the designers didn't really think about what they were doing most of the time and just added things willy-nilly). But i've seen what the class system can become if you fix the broken stuff (mages ) and add a ridiculous amount of variety. Classes within classes, options upon options out the butt, to the point where two people of the same class could be almost as different than two people of different classes.. all while keeping the different roles easy to manage, especially in regard to each other. As you can probably guess, i'm the kind of person that has a homebrew version of D&D that looks completely different than the version it's based on.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by ShadetheDruid

I think the class system is fine, they just need to add more stuff (and I would be surprised if they didn't). Class systems are a lot more flexible and allow for a lot more variety than people give them credit for, especially if the time is put into it by the designers.

And once again, I said it - freeform inventory OR freeform classes.

What I mean by freeform classes is what you mentioned in the continuation of your post, "classes within classes". The only class that does that atm is MAX. Because it can either be AA, AV or AI or a mixture of 2.

Just to clarify what I mean by "freeform classes", take Infiltrator as example:


Tools (1 tool Equippable):

• IFF
• Radar Disruptors
• Spotting Disruptors
• Laser Designator (More G2A missiles, why not?)
• Virus Installation Tools
• Sticky Cameras
• Holographic Decoys

Passive Abilities (1 Ability Equippable):

• Advanced Spotting (Shows HP Bars, lasts longer)
• Bullet Tracing
• Stealth Knifng
• Vehicle Temporary Shutdown Hacking
• Group Radar Cloaking
• HE Grenade Spotting Enemies in X tradius

Suits (1 Suit Equippable):

• Ghost Cloak - Only Pistol, invisible to enemies while static
• Hunter Cloak - And any modifications of it.
• Standard Armor - No cloak, allows the use of Carbines (or SMGs if we still want to limit them).

There you have it, it is not a freeform inventory system, at all. But it is pretty much a freeform class, because it allows crapload of options.