The reason why PS2 is shallow is not metagame.

[zulu]

Originally Posted by 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.

What if you had a certain number of tickets based upon surrounding territories or something? So, to look at the new map:


Let's say TR is attacking Tawrich Tech Plant. Maybe they could get 250 tickets for each adjacent territory they control. If you run out of tickets, then you can't respawn in the area until the tickets regenerate or something. So territory would matter quite a bit, but successfully defending a base would also mean that you have time to stage a counterattack (since your enemy won't be able to attack you for a while without simply shuttling in infantry with sunderers and galaxies).

Something like that could work but also still keep the battles fast-paced.

[OCNSethy]

I have to agree with almost all of the views in this thread.

I played for about 4 hours last night, the first two hours I played as a sniper attacking Ti Alloys and that okay. However it became very apparent it was a farm fest as there was very little in the way of attempting to take the plant. Waay to many tanks and not enough feet on the ground.

The last two hours I played as an engi at Allatum Bio Lab following the MAXs around repairing, laying claymores and ammo. Again, it was repeative as the both Alloys and Allatum flipped 4 times during that session.

I hear what you are all saying about spawning and spawn limits but given the lore around rebirthing, we might be pushing it up hill with a pointy stick trying to get changes through.

Im at the point where I think SOE and the devs just want to get bums into the game regardless of the implications to the game. Given this, I really think the only reward carrott this game has at the moment is the promise of certs. Everyone I saw last night, including me, where chasing them.

I dunno guys, i really like this game but without a radical rethink on the part of the devs, I cant see gameplay improving anytime soon.

[Fishy]

PS1 had a more limited spawn mechanism and it was one of the things that hindered the flow of the game, I think the abundance of spawn options is a lesson learned.

[Rothnang]

Well, there has to be a balance between making death matter and cutting people some slack.

Replacing the SCU mechanic with respawn tickets that slowly regenerate, and having Sunderers only give a limited number of respawns unless they are somehow resupplied would be an interesting start. I don't know if that would work in any way, but I like the idea of spawn tickets simply because they serve as somewhat of an equalizing force when the number of people in the battle isn't even. If there are a lot fewer people on one faction than the other you will have an easier time killing them, but you will still have fewer people to kill, so their tickets will last longer. A huge group of people on the other hand is a liability if they get killed way too much.

[Mietz]

PS2 is designed to be a fragfest.

Ticket mechanics wont change the combat and will ultimately only lead to very conservative and slow play which the design team doesn't want, like, at all.
PS2 is a Rush game, its gameplay experience is too inconsistent to be able to benefit from ticket or respawn limitation mechanics.

I've drawn this analogy before: Heroes And Generals (currently in o. beta)

H&G has a strategic and FPS side. In the strategic side you move troops via links between maps and these troops represent your resources available on the field.
Theres only so many tanks, airplanes, APCs available and only so many slots for specific infantry.

You even get a timer when you move forward spawn-points in the map itself, simulating the troop-movement.

This works because the gameplay is more methodic, the guns perform very good over long and medium range. Maps have multiple ways/routes to achieve an objective. (weapon) TTK is very low.
Terrain is better designed and cover as well as obscuring LOS plentiful (tall grass, trees, brush). The game is balanced for both holding and assault of objectives. Troop-dispersal is quite large even in battles that are chock full of people, providing less concentrated damage potential (explosives kill-whoring).

In comparison most PS2 guns perform badly at long/medium range and severely lose accuracy and damage. TTK is too long for long range fights with most guns (except sniper rifles). Regenerating health/shields provides too much of an edge for conservative fighting and leads to stalemates. The whole game is balanced around rushing close and blasting with full auto as the concentration of targets is larger.

Maps don't support conservative play, there is no way to hole up and play defensively, no obscuring LOS (grass can be turned off, dorrito spotting).

Targets can not be approached differently, "maps"/regions can but once it comes to an objective like an SCU you have to take it from one possible way, or if there are multiple, they are usually completely equivalent (no gradation of difficulty in objective approach).

I don't think that PS2s design could be adapted for ticket or resource play at this stage as it would undermine the main gunplay and combat mechanics.

[wave]

PS1 actually made death "hurt". Your spawn time was increased in proportion to how fast you were dying in a certain area. PS2 has no "hurt" in death.

[Kail]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Well, there has to be a balance between making death matter and cutting people some slack.

Replacing the SCU mechanic with respawn tickets that slowly regenerate, and having Sunderers only give a limited number of respawns unless they are somehow resupplied would be an interesting start. I don't know if that would work in any way, but I like the idea of spawn tickets simply because they serve as somewhat of an equalizing force when the number of people in the battle isn't even. If there are a lot fewer people on one faction than the other you will have an easier time killing them, but you will still have fewer people to kill, so their tickets will last longer. A huge group of people on the other hand is a liability if they get killed way too much.

That would severely hurt team play; squads / outfits wouldn't want randoms using up their tickets, and new players or not-so-great players would actively hurt an attack or defense.

I think the spawning system is fine by and large with a couple caveats:

1. Available spawn locations can be almost half a continent at times
2. Reviving at a sunderer takes less time than at a base (this is completely backwards to me)
3. while hotspot deploy is great for quickly getting you into a fight, I think it should have been a hybrid of the HART system (instead of waiting for the shuttle, you can use it from a warpgate every 15min at most). You can argue that Redeploy > Warpgate + Hotdrop isn't terribly different than just Hotdrop, but I think that extra step does a lot for the mentality of a player. You're not just flitting around the battlefield, you're heading back to base to redeploy.

[Silent Thunder]

I could maybe see it working with resources, but absolutly not with tickets. The problem with tickets is that although the idea of it is intended to push players to more careful, strategic play, at the end of the day there will always be the half dozen or so players who will still ramborush everything, costing their side tickets, and making the experience arguably much, much worse for teh players who attempted to do things strategically.

EDIT: Damn, ninja'd

I will say that Sunderers should only be able to be pulled from the same bases as MBTs, although I would wave the tech plant requirement in that case for Sundies.

[Baneblade]

The largest problem with the current spawn system is that offensive spawns are faster than defensive spawns. Mobile spawns should always be the slowest possible spawn option.

[basti]

I see your point OP, but your solution is crap.


Infantary always need to spawn forever from any given spawn point. Otherwise you get quite the imbalance between big and small battles.



The real problem is the Spawning itself. Planetside had it in a good direction, but not quite right. In Planetside, spawning at a base was faster than at an AMS. On top of that, the more you died, the longer it took for you to spawn again.


Granted, planetside numbers got insane, with spawn timers of 30 seconds etc. But the basic idea is a good one: Spawning at a base should be a lot faster than at a AMS. The whole "longer spawn time the more often you die" thing can happily stay away, it punishes new players way to much. But spawn timers need to be somewhat longer. Maybe 5-7 Sec for bases, 10 sec for AMSes.


The next important thing is where you can get AMSes. They should be only spawnable at the terminals where you can get tanks from. The whole "AMSes everywhere" thing was never asked for, and we never wanted it. It really needs to be removed now.






What the game needs is logistics. Attacks on bases need to form, rather than having people just randomly roll out everywhere. For this to happen we first need more natural direction, means something like Marlons new hex system prototype, something that naturally tells everyone where they should go, and where the enemy is coming from.
Once we got that, it should be pretty easy to set up proper defence positions, allowing both the defender and the attacker to form up in proper armys, rolling out together, instead of just being a mindless mob.

[Badjuju]

Originally Posted by 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.

Completely disagree. PS1 had infinite spawning and so far I have yet to play a game with as much depth as that. Spawning isn't the issue. Perhapse not having a SOI limiting drop pods, no deploy zones in bases, or spawn room design may contribute to spawn issues. However the game is bigger than just whether you liver or die. I think there should be changes made to restrict attackers capabilities to flood I players since there isnt any real interior to bases, which is included in my statement above.

It is a collection of issues IMO. Bad battle flow with current hex system, ability to spawn to close to objectives, burning flag system on major bases, lack of diverse capture methods/targets to assault, no real interior of bases.

I dissagree that death dosnt matter in PS2 however there are ways to make death matter more with out removing some ones ability to spawn (which I think is an all around bad idea). For one, you can have a war of attrition with out saying, "well it was an intense battle but too many of you died. Sorry, I know you put up a good defense which can often result in allot of deaths but your done".

In PS1 bases had power supplies which drained as people used in base equipment such as terminals (maybe spawns too?). If you ran out of power, the base would become neutral and it would be up for grabs to whoever hacked it, assuming they returned power before the hack finished. To return power you had to charge a vehicle called an ant at the warp gate and bring it too your base. It would take some time to transfer energy to the base when deployed, making it very vulnerable.

This created the possibility for a war of attrition and added much more depth to the meta game. Not only could you dwindle some ones resources, but you could counter some ones attempt to do so by supplying your base with an ant (hard to do due to its vulnerability and attackers expecting it).

There are others contributions which makes death matter less as well. One of the biggest IMO is the burning flag system. The burning flag system favors numbers, and that is all. You can fight your way in, kill the enemy on the flag, but if they have more numbers they will probably just come own and take it back.

With the hack and hold system we had in PS1' dying was a big deal. One you could not spawn right on top of objectives as they were actually well inside of bases, and so were spawn tubes. More importantly, if some one hacked your base, they had to hold that hack for 15 minutes. If you broke through, killed their men on the objective and you re-secured the hack, then you struck a big blow. Them dieing allowed you to cancel out the hack completely, even if there was only 5 seconds to go, and they had to return all the way from outside at their AMS or tower to try and get another hack. You could often get tubes or the gen up allowing the rest of your empire to spawn in and possibly push back the aggressors.

I remember sitting in the CC of bases in PS1 after getting a hack on a base knowing they were going to come with gal drop to attempt a resecure. It was an exciting and nerv racking experience where death mattered allot, but my ability to spawn was never limited. You would fight to the bitter end knowing that if you held on just long enough to get the hack off, you could repair the spawn tubes and have a stronghold within the base which was now yours. So far I have yet to have this experience in PS1.

In PS2 there is no interior to the bases as far as I am concerned. Instead of fighting to approach the base, then battling for the court yard, then pushing into the large interior to the base to destroy the tubes or gen (both prevented spawning) and hack the CC; we now only fight to approach the base, then win the courtyard and its game over (all while fighting for tiny huts and basically a big vulnerable hanger we call a base). And when we get this hanger we wait for the flag to tick, not concerned with life or death as if the enemy clears the flag room, its ok. We just hop back in and all is well since they can't cancell out our progress, it just lslowely ticks the other way until we return for our sundie 30 yards away.

My point is that I don't think unlimited spawning is an issue in the slightest. There are all kinds of mechanics which can contribute to the importance of surving in a game. I don't see the need to irritate people with mechanics which limit their ability to spawn, or how you can implement this in a way that is fair for both the attackers and defenders with out making people miserable.

I'll agree that dieing isn't a huge deal, and the game play from an objective perspective is stale. But I think it has more to do with how close we can spawn to base objectives since their isn't that large intricate interior of the base posing as a spawn barrier and protecting objectives from vehicle spam; and of course the capture method posing no risk of resecure with out an overwhelming assault. If the bases are not going to have proper interiors with the objectives and spawn tucked within them, then there should be no-deplorable zones on bases.

When I stop and think about it, it is amazing how boring base fights are in PS2 with the design and capture philosophy compared to PS1. So yes it is boring because getting killed and defending means little and the fights are not intense at all, but I don't think it is due to our ability to keep spawning.

Ps. There will likely be odd words due to me typing on my autoincorrecting ipad and am too tired to proof read.

[Gonefshn]

How long do you suggest a player should sit there and do nothing after every time they die?

Maybe for a lot of people your idea would be more fun but if you made it so that you had a huge respawn timer 90% of the people would not play anymore.

How would this be a good idea if it takes out all the fun for probably over 3/4 of the population?

I would be pissed if I had to wait a really really long time to actually be in a fight, probably would quit playing.

Your idea isn't bad it's just a totally different and totally niche game.
It might seem like this has huge approval from people posting but that's because those 90% of people that would leave are the people who don't care enough to be on forums.

You might be right about it lacking depth but the reality is most people don't want a game with that much depth.

[mirwalk]

The issue I feel is not the infinite spawn but the low TTK. Higher TTKs allow skilled players to hold or push locations easier. Most nights I am on, we have shotgunning LAs, headshot snipers, Bombarding tanks, and grenade spam. All taking advantage of the fact you can down people quickly.

If it was harder to kill a person, then taking defensive positions, unit cohesion, and classes matter more. The design of things may need to be changed to not over power defensive setups but I think it would work at lot better instead of people doing whatever will allow them to rack up easy kills. Cause when those people are on a streak, they far outstrip the XP they would get supporting, or taking a position.

[Vashyo]

Originally Posted by Gonefshn

You might be right about it lacking depth but the reality is most people don't want a game with that much depth.

Remember that half the players don't even play the game as it is, so I think most people don't agree with you and do want some depth to the game. Player numbers keep on dropping.

[MrVicchio]

I think too many of you have nostalgia for a bygone game and are looking backwards instead of forward.

Two things change the meta-game of PS2 from previous iterations; time and size. It's 2013, technology, experience, markets have changed. We have better tech, which means more people can play in a battle and experience of the dev team to cater a game that works with the large battlefields and still cater to the modern FPS Market. But the real crux of all this is size of the population able to participate in battle. Whatever meta game, deep thinking that applied in PS1... doesn't anymore. The battles are too big, far more random then anything PS1 could have dreamed of.

I've been involved in some long long attrition battles, good times. Hell yesterday on Matherson there was a fight over the Altium?(spelling?) Biolab that raged for... HOURS.



Personally I think the biggest problem with PS2 is the exp reward for taking empty bases and no xp reward for defending.