Fact: I play BF3, but would rather play PS1

[Shogun]

you know, in ps1 stardousers "full immersion" was almost realized?
in some vehicles you could see the gunner in his seat, operating the vehicle gun. in the harrasser for example, you could even see in which direction the gunner is looking not only by the position of the gun, but also by the turning of the gunners head.
you could see almost all the drivers and pilots sitting in their seats. that was awesome and unique for that time! there was no first person view of all this for the executing player, but all spectators would see it.
so the full package with first person internal vehicle view and real boarding should be possible today and would make the players drop their jaws for sure. but i guess to have it fullscale would add more than a year to developement. this should have been an early developement decision. but i still think it would be great if this concept would be added in after launch. maybe in little steps, like one vehicle type at a time, to be able to develope other content simutaniously.

but i don´t know if this glory polish feature would come for a cost like playercounts or performance. don´t know how much sacrifice would be tolerable.

[Tialian]

Originally Posted by ArmedZealot

Well what about from the average PS1 players perspective? How much time do they get in and out of vehicles compared to shooting other players?

A lot actually. Have you ever ran around in a Mosquito hacking empty towers?

The sequence goes something like this: Fly, land, get out, hack, get in, fly

There might be no shooting involved in that scenario, it just depends on what you are doing. PlanetSide isn't about numbers, its about an experience. If it was about numbers every battle would have an equal number of players on each side, sometimes its a squad against 100, or a platoon against an empire.

Have you ever held off an entire empire with a platoon? I have, and it wasn't about numbers, it was about tactics.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Tialian

I think that you used a poor analogy, if you look at the referenced poll it is basically asking a yes or no question based on the PS1 community affinity for animations:

Do you like animations?
Yes 215
No 11

Isn't that what we are discussing here? Whether animations are important to a playerbase that plans on playing PS2? I would think so, and the answer is an obvious yes.

Perhaps. But think about it for a second, do you think such a poll really takes into account the money and manpower the devs would have to allocate to put animations in the game?

Do you think the average poller/player would know these things? Do you think they care about these things? No, they just want more fluff in their game, because why not?

I mean who doesn't like animations? The purpose of a poll should be to distinguish a trend between non obvious choices, not ones with a blatantly obvious answer.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Tialian

A lot actually. Have you ever ran around in a Mosquito hacking empty towers?

The sequence goes something like this: Fly, land, get out, hack, get in, fly

There might be no shooting involved in that scenario, it just depends on what you are doing. PlanetSide isn't about numbers, its about an experience. If it was about numbers every battle would have an equal number of players on each side, sometimes its a squad against 100, or a platoon against an empire.

That isn't an average players perspective. Or at least, not when PS1 was in it's prime. If it were the zerg would be flying around to empty towers in mosiquitos all day.

Originally Posted by Tialian

Have you ever held off an entire empire with a platoon? I have, and it wasn't about numbers, it was about tactics.

How is this relevant to this discussion?

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Shogun

you know, in ps1 stardousers "full immersion" was almost realized?
in some vehicles you could see the gunner in his seat, operating the vehicle gun. in the harrasser for example, you could even see in which direction the gunner is looking not only by the position of the gun, but also by the turning of the gunners head.
you could see almost all the drivers and pilots sitting in their seats. that was awesome and unique for that time! there was no first person view of all this for the executing player, but all spectators would see it.
so the full package with first person internal vehicle view and real boarding should be possible today and would make the players drop their jaws for sure. but i guess to have it fullscale would add more than a year to developement. this should have been an early developement decision. but i still think it would be great if this concept would be added in after launch. maybe in little steps, like one vehicle type at a time, to be able to develope other content simutaniously.

but i don´t know if this glory polish feature would come for a cost like playercounts or performance. don´t know how much sacrifice would be tolerable.

Well, for something like a Liberator, you really can't have the full immersion I was talking about for a Galaxy but I would like to see some things like the ability to turn your head in all your directions within the cockpit, and have a few switches such as cockpit lights, that kind of thing. In fact, the ultimate immersion in that respect is if at night you had to turn on cockpit lighting to see certain screens inside your aircraft...

I suppose if someone wanted to take it to an extreme, a parked, say, Reaver, would have its cockpit flip up open, a small ladder extend, and you have to climb it and you can't hit the enter button until you are actually standing in it...

But for a Galaxy, there IS enough room for full immersion. A galaxy pilot should be staying with his ship while it's in combat anyway, so if he has to walk in through the rear ramp, that's no problem. And, if all the passengers have to walk in as well, that allows for things like...an enemy sneaking up and throwing a grenade in as it's closing...or, in the ultimate stealth action, sneaking in, placing a C4 pack inside, then retreating and waiting for enemies to get in, then blowing it up.

By the way, being able to individually detonate your C4 packs would be cool, too. Industry standard unfortunately is that if you lay down 4, pushing Detonate blows all 4. Imagine the mayhem a sneaky bastard could cause with individualized explosive detonation? Place two C4 pack on something - 1 to wound it, the 2nd to detonate when engineers come running to repair it.

[Dir]

Originally Posted by Tialian

Devs take note:

I would like to hear from others regarding what immersion means to them.

You have said it all and it amazes me how many "privates" are coming out of the woodwork each day that passes as we get closer to beta expressing these same concerns. Unfortunately I don't feel like reading any responses to this because it's like kicking an angry hornets nest...of generals...and then I get depressed. The game will either live or die but both to thunderous applause.

Dir

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Dir

You have said it all and it amazes me how many "privates" are coming out of the woodwork each day that passes as we get closer to beta expressing these same concerns. Unfortunately I don't feel like reading any responses to this because it's like kicking an angry hornets nest...of generals...and then I get depressed. The game will either live or die but both to thunderous applause.

Dir

"Planetside 2 is dead before it launches because it won't have vehicle and terminal entry/exit animations! Oh no!"

The reasons why privates come forward is because they don't know what half the features PS2 has been stated to have. Just like half of Tialian's points were all things implemented already.

And there are plenty of nostalgia loving bittervets that agree with Tialian as well, you for example.

[Eighm]

Originally Posted by Figment

From what I recall (if memory serves me correct), when new members to the animation team were allowed into the PS1 team, the first thing they were to do was make a vehicle entry animation to show of their abilities in a playful, yet useful fashion.

It's not just functional but also seems like a good excercise as well to me. And doesn't have to take that much time for an animator really.

It wouldn't take much time if all of the models had been built with this intent in the first place, but they weren't. Adding in animations like the ones from PS would involve completely remodeling every single vehicle model, save maybe the ATV since it's completely exposed.

Oh, and for some of these vehicles, like the Galaxy with its 5 or 6 interiors, would effectively have their poly count doubled, which would be a big hit to performance.

[JPalmer]

Originally Posted by Tialian

I think that you used a poor analogy, if you look at the referenced poll it is basically asking a yes or no question based on the PS1 community affinity for animations:

Do you like animations?
Yes 215
No 11

Isn't that what we are discussing here? Whether animations are important to a playerbase that plans on playing PS2? I would think so, and the answer is an obvious yes.

A better question would be, Do you like animations, if so can you live without them?

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

By the way, being able to individually detonate your C4 packs would be cool, too. Industry standard unfortunately is that if you lay down 4, pushing Detonate blows all 4. Imagine the mayhem a sneaky bastard could cause with individualized explosive detonation? Place two C4 pack on something - 1 to wound it, the 2nd to detonate when engineers come running to repair it.

That does actually sound pretty cool. I bet there are balance issues related to that though. How many C4 packs would you be able to lay before you couldn't anymore? How do you go about detonating multiple explosives sequentially? Multiple remotes? A detonation queue (where the first time you click the trigger, the first c4 you laid detonates. second trigger/second c4 etc.)? Seems rather complex over having them all blow up at once.

[Figment]

They already do full interiors...

[Shogun]

ps1 boomers had individual triggers. for every boomer layed, you got a trigger and if you could remember which trigger was for which boomer, you could boom them in any sequence you liked.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Shogun

ps1 boomers had individual triggers. for every boomer layed, you got a trigger and if you could remember which trigger was for which boomer, you could boom them in any sequence you liked.

The more you know. I never really had a use for more then 1 boomer as a cloaker. I always just laid one then detonated it on the spot before they realized it. I was doing it all wrong.

[Tialian]

Originally Posted by ArmedZealot

That isn't an average players perspective. Or at least, not when PS1 was in it's prime. If it were the zerg would be flying around to empty towers in mosiquitos all day.

How is this relevant to this discussion?

The point is there are situations where animations happen more frequently than you claim.

Numbers are relevant to the discussion because you keep bringing them up, like we are here to crunch numbers and get the best dps in WoW or something.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Tialian

The point is there are situations where animations happen more frequently than you claim.

Numbers are relevant to the discussion because you keep bringing them up, like we are here to crunch numbers and get the best dps in WoW or something.

Well as a developer where do you want to spend your time? On the 1 person that has a fetish for mosquitos or the 100 getting headshots?

Numbers show in a quantitative way how valid your opinion is. The more you can prove how valid your opinion is the more people are likely to agree with you, like the developers.