Kill Cams

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Zulthus

New players can learn the game the right way without the crutch that is killcams. They did it in Planetside 1, and they can do it again in PSCOD:2. If you don't know how you got killed, you either weren't paying attention, you're really bad, or it was a skilled sniper. What kind of fun is being able to see exactly where the guy was who killed you? I'm not against killcams because it's "not planetside", but I am against them because they're stupid.

Crutch, tool, those are semantics, but killcams are a learning mechanic. It's not that you learn where the player was that killed you. It's you see what you were doing when he did. In my personal experience with killcams, there have been a ton of times where I thought I was behind cover, or thought I was dodging effectively, but then when I saw myself from the perspective of the player that killed me, I LEARNED that I was wrong and I adjusted my play accordingly, and I improved.

You know whats more "stupid" than killcams? Dying over and over again and not being able to figure out how to improve. You said it yourself, if "you're really bad" then this can help you get better.

(Of course we may be talking about 2 different styles of killcams like Accuser posted)

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Crutch, tool, those are semantics, but killcams are a learning mechanic. It's not that you learn where the player was that killed you. It's you see what you were doing when he did. In my personal experience with killcams, there have been a ton of times where I thought I was behind cover, or thought I was dodging effectively, but then when I saw myself from the perspective of the player that killed me, I LEARNED that I was wrong and I adjusted my play accordingly, and I improved.

You know whats more "stupid" than killcams? Dying over and over again and not being able to figure out how to improve. You said it yourself, if "you're really bad" then this can help you get better.

(Of course we may be talking about 2 different styles of killcams like Accuser posted)

Instead of relying on a crutch to help you get better, adjust your playstyle to see what works. And as Ghandi said, killcams are next to worthless in such a massive game. Some guy gets that last shot on you indoors, so what? Yes, I suppose 5% of the time killcams could, in some odd way, be a "learning mechanic". But the other 95% of the time it will be used to see exactly where this person was when he killed you, not to fix your strategy. Sniping would be rendered useless, and quite possibly cloaking.

[Graywolves]

All cars are the same to me.



I don't care about the killcam for the most part. In the games it is featured people typically just skip past it.

What does bother me about it though is snipers and other covert styles of gameplay. Sometimes a sniper can be well hidden, you know they're somewhere within a 40degree cone but that's still alot of ground to cover. With killcam you just know exactly where they are, which may also reveal other information (they're surroundings, spawns/turrets/vehicles/etc)


For Planetside I think killcam is just a pointless feature that causes more problems than...well it doesn't provide anything so it just causes problems...

Maybe they could just show a picture of their character and their loadout?

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Zulthus

Instead of relying on a crutch to help you get better, adjust your playstyle to see what works. And as Ghandi said, killcams are next to worthless in such a massive game. Some guy gets that last shot on you indoors, so what? Yes, I suppose 5% of the time killcams could, in some odd way, be a "learning mechanic". But the other 95% of the time it will be used to see exactly where this person was when he killed you, not to fix your strategy. Sniping would be rendered useless, and quite possibly cloaking.

Adjust your playstyle how, dude? If you don't know what you do wrong, then you don't know what to adjust. The same is true with any mistake you make in anything, in video games or in real life.

And the scale of the combat has absolutely no bearing at all on how helpful a killcam would be. You'd still see where YOU were and what YOU were doing from the perspective of the player that killed you.

In a game like Planetside there are sooo many ways to die, so sometimes you'll see that you just were unlucky and got hit by a random tank shell. OK bad luck and nothing I could do about it so let me keep doing my thing. The point is, you'll get to learn which it is.

And don't even try to start saying sniping would be rendered useless because that's total BS. If that was the case, you'd never see snipers in COD, and we all know nothing could be further from the truth. As for cloakers, same thing. In PS1 if you stay in the same close-quarters spot, that last guy you killed will come back with Darklight and smoke you. So neither of those points hold any water.

[Blue]

I wouldn't mind it as much if there was a skill/talent/trait/perk/whatever to eliminate kill cam on your character. So if you are specializing in covert operataions which rely HEAVILY on players not knowing where you are, you can sneak through taking people out without them knowing exactly howmany of you there are, which gun you have, which angle you came from etc.

[Helwyr]

I'm against kill cams for PS2, how much against would depend on the details of how the kill cam would work.

The only good reason I've read here for having Kill Cams in the first place is for catching cheaters, but such info doesn't need to be shown to players, just accessible to GMs/DEVs.

As to new players, everyone who ever played a FPS was a newbie once. So why all of sudden do newbies require Kill Cams as a 'learning aid' now? Are new players today less capable than players from a decade ago?

"Other FPS have kill cams." So, what? This isn't other games, it's Planetside. As an MMOFPS it isn't even in the same category of games that I've seen listed here as having Kill Cams.

Granted the devil is in the details, but a kill cam is another form of intel on your opponents and perhaps some don't care but as others have pointed out it's also immersion breaking. IMO none of the pros for Kill Cams outweighs the potential for damage in terms of hurting the tactical and immersive side of the game.

[Aractain]

If they use the BF style kill cam, I would say its only to show how awesome the paintwork on the guy's armour was so it encourages you to buy something cooler from the cashshop.

If its the "heres how you died" version that would be better for gameplay (mainly of the new players not all you UberSkillzVets).

I am okay with killcam (but not okay with third person camera).

[Furret]

I seriously don't know what the hell kind of 'intel' you think people are going to get from watching what's already happened. People are complaining that the faster TTK will encourage camping. Well if you're camping, then you'll get found in the killcams, easy fix. If you're not camping, then dammit it doesn't matter where you were 30 seconds ago.

Snipers are a slightly different issue.
For this fix i refer you to what someone else posted:

Originally Posted by Blue

I wouldn't mind it as much if there was a skill/talent/trait/perk/whatever to eliminate kill cam on your character. So if you are specializing in covert operations which rely HEAVILY on players not knowing where you are, you can sneak through taking people out without them knowing exactly how many of you there are, which gun you have, which angle you came from etc.

All they need to know is that Furret killed 'em with a sniper rifle, and they can get that from the killfeed.


Even still, we can't pass too many judgments on how difficult it will be to find a sniper. Preferably, the sniper should be able to get off 3-5 shots before everyone with eyes knows where you're shooting from, from tracers alone. That amount of time isn't all that much different from death, wait 5 secs for killcam to show, wait five secs to figure out snipers location in killcam, wait 5 secs to tell squaddies where the sniper is, wait ~30 secs for them to ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.


I will agree with everyone, killcams would be very hard to balance in PS1. BUT THIS ISN'T PS1.

This is a completely new game, with completely new mechanics. Let's just calm down and see how it turns out.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Aractain

If they use the BF style kill cam, I would say its only to show how awesome the paintwork on the guy's armour was so it encourages you to buy something cooler from the cashshop.

If its the "heres how you died" version that would be better for gameplay (mainly of the new players not all you UberSkillzVets).

I am okay with killcam (but not okay with third person camera).

As vocal as I've been for it, I actually agree with you here. I'd have to say I'm not a huge fan of a 3rd person view killcam whether it be replay or live.

As for intel, I think you can get just as much if not more intel from the death cam in PS1 now. For example, I can run my max into a gen-hold, die, and have a 360 degree view of who is in there, how many max units, and where exactly they are. THEN keep that view for a few minutes being able to feed intel the whole time.

So I like the killcam as a learning tool more than anything. I mean even vets get those "wtf just happened" deaths.

[razor851]

This shit gets worse and worse.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by razor851

This shit gets worse and worse.

Thank you for contributing to the discussion.

[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by Blue

I wouldn't mind it as much if there was a skill/talent/trait/perk/whatever to eliminate kill cam on your character.

I think having to obtain some skill or cert to make up for what amounts to broken game mechanics in that situation is pretty lousy. It's along the same lines as allowing bunny hopping because headshots are too easy. Instead of addressing the problem they'd just be trying to cover it up with some new must have "feature".

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Bags

Thank you for contributing to the discussion.

Yeah dude. Just ignore that troll. He just comes into a thread, says "PS2 will suck" and leaves. At least he just sticks to 1 liners.

[Higby]

Originally Posted by Hamma

What do you guys think? I'm not so hot on this idea..

Once we get to beta if we think it sucks we'll remove it.

[IceyCold]

Originally Posted by Higby

Once we get to beta if we think it sucks we'll remove it.

Glad to know you guys are open to revising plans if players don't like them. I must ask though Higby if you could answer real fast:

What kind of kill cam is it exactly that is in the plan? Is it a replay of your death or is it a view of your killer after you die? And why did you guys decide to consider it for the game?

If you could answer those two questions we could get a better founding for our discussion here.