Why you don’t need to worry about PS2

[Rbstr]

Originally Posted by Logit

Clearly they did something right with the original

Clearly they did many things wrong or the game would have more than a token number of subscribers today.

PS for me was never about the specific mechanics...which many people find to suck rather bad...but the scale, persistence, and potential you get when an FPS game is no longer fragmented over a billion server instances.

[DviddLeff]

Exactly Rbstr, exactly.

PS is not about not having sprint, head shots, low TTK, etc, its about massive battles, tactics and strategy. PS did something wrong fundamentally and the sub par combat mechanics, the meat and feel of the game, are probably it. It had the massive scale which on its own appealed to many, and its those players that are left still playing 8 years on because they cannot get that anywhere else.

Over the past 5, 10, 20 years the FPS has evolved into the games we seeing released now and for PS2 to be successful it must look at "standard" FPS games and use those same features, but add the massive aspect that makes PS unique.

Logit, why do head shots sound lame just because the populations are bigger, what reason are you basing that on?

[Forsaken One]

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

Over the past 5, 10, 20 years the FPS has evolved into the games we seeing released now

maybe one or two things have evolved. but most have devolved to cater to the ever growing amount of stupid people in the world.

this pretty much talks about the type of people most gaming caters to now.
watch it. be enlightened.

[DviddLeff]

Half the people in the world have a lower than average IQ

Who's to say that they shouldn't be able to play games? It means that games are more accessible and engaging, and that's surely a good thing for an MMO.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

My only beef with the offline leveling is..

No cue. Have to log in once a day to set them up. Annoying. At least make it two or three days.

There is a queue, and it's 24 hours just like EVE online. And like EVE you can make it last beyond 24 hours by putting a long-training cert at the end of your queue.

For example, fill 20-23 hours of the queue with cheap fast skills, and then throw a 1-2 day long skill at the end of that queue. So you still have the next 24 hours planned but the end of it is a long skill that will take a day (or weeks) to finish. You can do that everytime you play to make the most of the queue system.

It worked out very well in EVE online so I'm not worried about the skill queuing being an issue. It will also help to have data exports that Smed mentioned in one of the Q&A's. If they have a system like EVE where you can export your character's data a phone app can read it and show how your skill training is going so you know if you need to log in and change it or not.

It used to be a major pain in the ass with EVE but once they had the phone apps & the 24 hour queue it was quite reasonable and easy to manage for days/weeks at a time.

[Dragoneye]

Well spoken.

As an old Planetside player/fan, I'm actually pretty impressed with the model they've put forward so far, and I am very happy with the idea of making post-release development more transparent than it was before.

Honestly, I couldn't count the number of times back in Planetside's prime that we saw requests for things like headshots come through Discussions/Suggestions, so I can't imagine that most Planetside vets are really shocked/offended by the idea.

PS: Heya Dvidd

[DviddLeff]

Dragoneye!

Get back to Auraxis, Vindies are having somewhat of a revival!

And be sure to stop by our forums and say hi

[Malorn]

I don't quite get the fear around adding modern FPS features to PS.

I do get the concern that the pacing change will affect the game in a negative way. If lethality increases and speed of returning to the fight doesn't increase by a very significant margin we'll be in bad shape.

I'm a little concerned that the BF games and what not have a good pacing because the respawn is never very far away, medics res'ing is quick, and there's always squad-spawning (on any member). Those aren't all true in planetside so my biggest concern is not being able to get back to a fight and having the actual engagements happen so fast you can get knifed, shot, etc and die before you knew what hit you and end up spawning a long ways away.

The only significant means by which this could be prevented is by having a lot more hard spawn points on the map, shortcutting the typical respawn time and time to re-acquire gear and vehicles. Or by having a lot more frequent spawn-on-squad mechanics and faster transportation from spawn room to vehicle terminal.

It's entirely a logistical issue.

* Time to get from respawn to being in a vehicle on your way
* Time to get from respawn to being fully geared and ready to go
* Time between spawn point and the front.

Unless there's some serious router-like mechanics or a ton more spawn points I have a hard time believing the combat pace can be upped AND we can have rapid return to the action. If there were a lot more respawn points it'd just be that much harder to ever fully conquer a territory.

Spawning already geared seems like an obvious shortcut and would be necessary for spawn-on-squad to work. In the bases, we could have little one-way elevator /teleporter or something that takes the player straight up from the respawn tube to the vehicle terminal area. Or the bases could be like Tech plants with underground vehicle terminals. Perhaps players can remotely queue up a vehicle for construction using a terminal away from the actual pad and then pick up the vehicle at a designated parking stall? Just some rough ideas on how to speed up getting vehicles back to the fight and respawn in general.

If it were slower you could take a few hits and have time to react, saving you the run-back where in a higher lethality world you'd simply be dead. Same goes for anyone who would res you.

I'm still having a hard time seeing how they're going to fix the problem of getting out to a territory and fighting, especially fi they are simultaneously upping the lethality of weapons. That means it'll be easier and faster to die, and more likely that any medics that could res you will also die.

Think i'm just rambling now, but I think you get the point if you read this far.

[Rbstr]

That's certainly right, to some extent. No need for respawn timers to hit 25 seconds. Increased # of mobile spawn points with help a tremendous amount. At the same time, easier deaths without incredibly easy spawning also makes people more cautious and makes them value each individual life more. The extreme end is SWG's original Jedi mechanic or EVE's permenent loss opposite is TF2 and other arena games. Gotta find a place in the middle.

I think they're working on balancing that, with squad spawning and galaxy spawns for example.
More potential points about which you can balance is a good thing. It adds to the potential for player customization and allows very fine tuning to the balance. You can make a single weapon do more, or less damage on a single hitbox if you've got the dedication.

[DviddLeff]

The clarification Higby provided regarding head shots shows that they are making the game much more adjustable than the first; back then a Mosquito and Harasser gun both did the same damage, and any changes to one would change the other.

Now we can have an individual gun which can have different damage values depending on the hit box, which will allow the developers to adjust it at any point. Yet another reason to not worry about head shots.