What makes planetside unique?

[NapalmEnima]

What Makes PS Unique: SCALE. Everything else we've seen elsewhere. Combined arms, grid-style inventory, all of it.

No, you won't be able to create a Kitchen Sink loadout in PS2. PS2 will have classes with roles. That's kind of the point of an MMO, isn't it? Lots of players, working together, to achieve something.

Classes are a little more "RPG-ish", but there have been quite a few successful FPS's with classes, I really don't see it as the problem you do. Tribes(backpacks = classes), TF, BF, CoD, etc, etc.

Forgive me, this won't sound very flattering: It seems to me that you're losing your pet loadout, don't like it, and have blown that into "PS2 Is Doomed". You've done quite a bit of rationalizing (coming up with reasons why This Is Bad after your knee-jerk emotional reaction) to a point where you have convinced yourself that you're logically right.

You're not convincing anyone else.

You cry out against the loss of the tetris-style inventory. If the proposed class system were in place WITH that inventory style, the contents of which were still restricted based on the class you chose, would you still feel the same way? I think you would.

You seem to resent classes. The inventory style is irrelevant... you just want to be An Army Of One.

ACCEPT that PS2 will make that impossible. All your objections to a foundational Design Principle of PS2 is making you sound more and more like the crazy ol coot with one of those "The End Is Nigh" signs.

Don't be a crazy ol' coot.

[Scow2]

I got annoyed that in PS1, even way before BR 40 was introduced, the build-optimizers found a cert-build that served as an all-in-one one-man army.

Personally, I think there was only one real thing that make Planetside truly unique: Epic Scale

Planetside has a massive, persistent world, fielding more units over a given land area than a comparably-sized battlefield in most RTS games. Even if the gameplay and character mechanics were nearly identical to Battlefield, Halo: Reach, or Call of Duty, Planetside would stand out unique because of the strategic nature of the battles. I can't even begin to elaborate on what that means.

Unlike games with battlefields that reset every couple minutes, have no effect on each other, and shuffle teams around, the battles you win today will influence the battles of tomorrow.

An offensive blitz can be brought to a grinding halt if the defenders hold just one base or tower longer than intended. Likewise, a virtually impenetrable stronghold can suddenly fall if the attackers take down the bases supporting it. A mass offensive can be thwarted by a covert squad suddenly capturing a tower deep behind enemy lines, drawing those players who want to "Make a difference" away from the battlefront. Conversely, a small, enemy-owned tower that gets overlooked in an offensive wave to capture all the bases on a continent, a quietly deployed Respawn station or control tower (I probably overemphasize the strategic value of towers way too much) that is ignored can screw up an empire's strategy when "Suddenly, ScatMAX! Thousands of them!" appear deep in enemy territory.


And then, there's the logistics in the battlefields themselves. The static respawn points and open battlefields ensure many loadouts are viable, instead of a few "All-around-decent" loadouts that give consistently high K/D ratios. It's hard to accuse me of being a Scrub when all your base are belong to us.


And "Massive Fights for the Fight's Sake" (Meaningless battles) was a tripping point of the first game... Eventually, people started getting bored of the static "Forever War", where the events of the day ended up meaningless, because the populations and conquest areas would be switched by the next day.

[Talek Krell]

I agree with the above posts. Planetside's scale and combined arms nature are it's defining features. The ability to log into a term and play tetris was little more than an amusing metagame. I always felt like the supposed "freedom" of the inventory mostly just led to a handful of cookie cutter "optimum" builds anyway, so I'm looking forward to the diversity that should accompany classes.

[Captain1nsaneo]

When in a gen hold the only means of resupply are either looting the enemy dead or someone leaving and coming in and dropping a bunch of ammo/med juice/glue. Sharing ammo is also important in these situations as those also carrying AV use up their AI ammo faster that others. If I can't get resupplied from allies or enemies then hold outs of any kind are going to be far less fun and much shorter.

Another example: You are cloaking with a friend. You have a rek, he doesn't. But he does have ADV hack and wants to hack a term so both of you can get new gear. No inventories means no hacked term.

I'm fine with classes. I'm not fine with an inability to carry and drop gear for other classes. I know maxes often carry reks and juice in their inventories despite being unable to use them. A loss of an inventory system is a loss of creative gameplay.

PS has always been to me about the freedom to do stuff with as little limitation as possible. Locking us into spawned with gear runs counter to that feeling and detract from immersion.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

I'm not fine with an inability to carry and drop gear for other classes. I know maxes often carry reks and juice in their inventories despite being unable to use them. A loss of an inventory system is a loss of creative gameplay.

Someone has already pointed this out to the devs here on PSU, and IIRC their reaction was something along the lines of "Oh yeah! We need to put something like that in".

EDIT: I just went through all Higby's posts, and can't find anything to back that up, but I'm still pretty sure a conversation to that effect has happened.

[Talek Krell]

I believe it occurred on reddit. I don't think his reaction was so much instantaneous approval, but I think he said he'd bring it up during the next dev discussion.

[Haro]

I agree with Hamma. The sky is clearly falling.

But in seriousness.... I can't take this seriously. I was never a huge fan of the inventory, and I NEVER thought it was unique, or a defining characteristic. It was neither. I think we may still see an inventory-like function in the game, in that we customize some of what we carry, but within limitations. I don't think it's good that I would be able to carry a rocket launcher with my sniper rifle, or my sniper rifle with my shotgun, etc. etc. But if I could opt out of medkits for more ammo, I'd be happy with that.