The Reddit Q&A Makes Me Nervous

[Maarvy]

I dont realy see what differance it makes , If you have pushed back a faction to there foothold or to there sanctuary . you shat on them and they have to start from basicly nothing on that continent .

wtf was the point in wining a continent in PS 1 when they can just use the warp gate to come back endlessly to fight for the base closest to the gate over and fucking over again . What's the major deal seriously ....


Lets be honest PS1 very quickly lost the majority of its subs , lets not pretend it was some perfect incarnation of a mmofps . It needs changing and updating bringing up to speed to where games are today unless it gets stuck with the same few 100 super fanboys after the first 3 months .

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by TheDrone

You're misunderstanding me.

In terms of judging a COMPLETELY NEW GAME, which PlanetSide 2 is, a non PS1 vet will be far more objective. Period.

I sincerely hope that the devs will listen to the players with the rational and funded arguments.

No, I know what you mean, but I am saying that new players will be as subjective because of their ignorance as vets will be subjective because of their attachment. New players cannot be objective about something they haven't experienced, and the game, just like the servers of pre-BC2 Battlefield games, is too underpopulated now even if they did want to try it, to get a good feel.

With that said, I agree, they need to listen to rational arguments. The problem is this, and I know nobody wants to hear more about Battlefield, but BF2 vets were accused of exactly the same thing despite the fact that most of us were posting huge lists of things that we would change about BF2. No matter how much we would have changed about BF2, we were accused of wanting carbon copies of BF2 just because we didn't like the direction that Bad Company 2 went.

In the same way, as time goes on and more info comes in, it will not matter how many changes PS1 vets would accept, if they don't accept what the devs decide for PS2, people WILL accuse them of wanting a carbon copy of PS1. It has happened before, it will happen again.

[TheDrone]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

No, I know what you mean, but I am saying that new players will be as subjective because of their ignorance as vets will be subjective because of their attachment. New players cannot be objective about something they haven't experienced, and the game, just like the servers of pre-BC2 Battlefield games, is too underpopulated now even if they did want to try it, to get a good feel.

With that said, I agree, they need to listen to rational arguments. The problem is this, and I know nobody wants to hear more about Battlefield, but BF2 vets were accused of exactly the same thing despite the fact that most of us were posting huge lists of things that we would change about BF2. No matter how much we would have changed about BF2, we were accused of wanting carbon copies of BF2 just because we didn't like the direction that Bad Company 2 went.

In the same way, as time goes on and more info comes in, it will not matter how many changes PS1 vets would accept, if they don't accept what the devs decide for PS2, people WILL accuse them of wanting a carbon copy of PS1. It has happened before, it will happen again.

Yes, you ARE misunderstanding me.

I'm not saying new players will have an easier time judging PS1 or whatnot. It's not about judging PS1. It's about judging PS2. Having not been influenced by years of PS1 they are sure to be more objective.


You keeping saying "haven't experienced it yet". Neither have you. Maybe all in all 200 people in the whole world have experienced PS2.


And if you don't like people claiming you want a carbon-copy of PS1, for one stop comparing the two games so much and stop suggesting PS1 mechanics to be put in PS2.

You'll notice if you stop referring to PS1 you'll be less susceptible to this kind of criticism.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Lokster

Well said bro. We must be in the minority of PS1 vets who embrace change and improvement over "more of the same".

I was a very hardcore PS1 player -- in fact I stayed in the top 5 for kills on Markov for 2 years after I stopped playing. I know PS1 was an awesome game; I loved it. More than any game I have played since.

That being said, a lot of it was less than savory and always needed a tweak or change. Seriously people; the PS2 development team is looking at ten years of data. They know what worked in PS1 and what didn't.

Perhaps with the new changes we will have a highly populated game for the next 10 years .. instead of a moderately populated game for the next 6 months.

------------------

Also, I'd like to add a little story here for those of you who don't understand the typical gamer; the folks that will comprise 75% of the in-game population. I convinced a co-worker and avid gamer to try PlanetSide 1 recently in an attempt to get him interested in PS2. He almost quit prior to leaving the sanctuary; because he didn't understand the sanctuary purpose or why anyone would waste so much time making an entire continent that essentially serves no purpose whatsoever -- especially since he was the ONLY person in the sanctuary.

I finally convince him to "instant action" and fight in a battle. He was impressed by the large scale combat but quickly became frustrated and quit within 8 hours of play time. He wanted to drive a tank, he wanted to fly, but he didn't want to be fodder for 15 hours to get to that point. He also hated the health/armor system (something I always thought I loved -- but then realized I hated it too, once I thought about it). He had died 82 times and killed only 8 people. And I know from experience that he is a very good FPS player.

I didn't understand why he would expect to be able to play the game efficiently within 5 minutes of starting a new character. But then I asked myself, "why is that? He is a good player..." and didn't have an answer.

It's simple things like this that make people stop playing. These "problems", along with many other issues with PS1 have effectively been fixed in PS2.

Maybe 600 PS1 players will be pissed about it -- but perhaps a million other gamers will love it...

Obviously you and your friend both suck rather hard, because you didnt see the fundamental reason why a good player in a averange FPS sucks in PS: Its very very different. FPS isnt just running around with a gun in your hands. FPS games are quite different in its core mechanic of running and shooting. Thats the reason why so many Counter-Strike 1.6 pro gamers hate Source, as it plays different, while being EXACTLY THE SAME from its mechanics. Yet, the aiming, the feel, its just different.
Planetside is that massivley different from todays FPS that you cant just put a player of one group into the other. Obviously, thats something that has to go away, because you cant expect the COD, BF, CS and whatever crowd to learn walking again. Planetside 2 needs to feel like similar to most other FPS games in its core mechanic of running and gunning, otherwise people wont even give it enough time to start realizing that there is much more than just running and gunning.


And i put a line down here now, the "Vet vs Vets vs non Vets" crap is enough.
Truth is, the fundamental truth, and i accept no different opinions here (you shall burn in hell! ): Us Vets who stayed for ages got a clue, a very good one, more of a clue than anyone else, but we also feel attached. The attachment makes us blind in some areas, while giving us great insight in other areas.
Others, especially non Vets and people completly new to Planetside, have absoluty no clue, but also no attachment. This allows them to see features from a different angle, once thats just invisible for us vets, allowing new ideas to spread. This is exactly why most of us vets understand and accept the change from cert points to class system.


In the very end, we all want a MMOFPS. And while the devs work hard, we need to ensure they do it right, because they just cant figure everything out by themself, as they are, with us, on new ground.

Only if we work together, only then we can get us the game we want, we love, we hate and we play for ages. We need to stop the appearing hatred right now, or it will devour us all.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by TheDrone

Yes, you ARE misunderstanding me.

I'm not saying new players will have an easier time judging PS1 or whatnot. It's not about judging PS1. It's about judging PS2. Having not been influenced by years of PS1 they are sure to be more objective.


You keeping saying "haven't experienced it yet". Neither have you. Maybe all in all 200 people in the whole world have experienced PS2.


And if you don't like people claiming you want a carbon-copy of PS1, for one stop comparing the two games so much and stop suggesting PS1 mechanics to be put in PS2.

You'll notice if you stop referring to PS1 you'll be less susceptible to this kind of criticism.

when I was talking about not having experienced it, I meant PS1. Obviously very few people have experienced PS2.

As for me, I can't possibly want a carbon copy of PS1 because I've spent all of 30 minutes in it. But I know what stereotyping of veterans of previous games is, and I know it's happening.

Sometimes, the mechanics of older games is just the right way to do things, and sometimes, it isn't. The problem is that often, people assume that just because something is new, that it's better, and they sweep away everything that the previous game did, with no regard to sorting out what should have been kept and what shouldn't. And when I say this, I am not talking about the devs...I am talking about the players who offer up their opinions on the games.

For example, games(Battlefield, at least, I don't know about other shooters) used to be about using your own eyes to find the enemy. Now, it's all about the game providing you with the information, and you just put your aiming sight on the target and pull the trigger. And unfortunately, the new players who started playing after this became the norm, think it's OK. They don't care if it takes skill and tactics out of the equation.

But if these new players had actually experienced the older games, had felt what it was like to find an enemy player with your own eyes without the game telling you where to shoot, things might be different. But now they have an emotional attachment to their free help from the game and it's all over.

[Aurmanite]

Originally Posted by basti

And i put a line down here now, the "Vet vs Vets vs non Vets" crap is enough.
Truth is, the fundamental truth, and i accept no different opinions here (you shall burn in hell! ): Us Vets who stayed for ages got a clue, a very good one, more of a clue than anyone else...

That is an opinion. It is not fact, and it's hardly even true.

Only if we work together, only then we can get us the game we want, we love, we hate and we play for ages. We need to stop the appearing hatred right now, or it will devour us all.

I can dig it.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Aurmanite

That is an opinion. It is not fact, and it's hardly even true.

It actually is a fact, and true. Fact is, if you didnt play planetside, then you are not a Vet. If you are no Vet, you never played a MMOFPS, as Planetside is the only one. And if you never played a MMOFPS, how could you know and understand their mechanics?

[Graywolves]

Ok stop the PS vets vs new people war.

It's just dumb. I honestly couldn't think of a better way to get people to stop reading your posts than to pick a fight with half the community just for being who they are.


With that said. I think (I believe it was Marsgrim) made a very good point on the strategic values in the original planetside through the lattice network and generators.

Like many people say though, we pretty much just need to wait for beta. Although if a warpgate/foothold functions as a sanctuary, we won't ever be able to deny assets. But we might be able to take some forces to take adjacent hex's around where the zergs are headbutting and surround that battle so we take it quicker (and perhaps there will be a good purpose to cut off hex's from the rest of their territory besides capture time)

[Aurmanite]

And i put a line down here now, the "Vet vs Vets vs non Vets" crap is enough.
Truth is, the fundamental truth, and i accept no different opinions here (you shall burn in hell! ): Us Vets who stayed for ages got a clue, a very good one, more of a clue than anyone else...

It actually is a fact, and true. Fact is, if you didnt play planetside, then you are not a Vet. If you are no Vet, you never played a MMOFPS, as Planetside is the only one. And if you never played a MMOFPS, how could you know and understand their mechanics?

These are not the same.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by basti

It actually is a fact, and true. Fact is, if you didnt play planetside, then you are not a Vet. If you are no Vet, you never played a MMOFPS, as Planetside is the only one. And if you never played a MMOFPS, how could you know and understand their mechanics?

Being a MMOFPS "Vet" doesn't make you very exclusive. The mechanics from PS1 are heavily borrowed from the FPS genre. You could go all the way and say that there are no original mechanics in PS1. Being a "Vet" doesn't say much.

The next is, if we are posting here on a forum dedicated to PS, most of us have played PS1. So we are all technically "Vets" or at least should be assumed so unless we have stated otherwise. And our opinions are not homogeneous and uniform.

[IronMole]

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive anyone?

[Figment]

Tbh, never have I heard someone say "it's different from PS1, so it's bad!" by default, not here, nowhere. It's always "it's bad, because where PS1 did something like this for this and this reason; they do this in PS2, for that reason, but that's no good reason at all, because such and such".

I really dislike the simplification and stereotyping that is going on now and then for that matter, especially since it often comes over as an attempt to stop PS1 from influencing PS2. For no other reason than "PS2 is a new game, you have to accept that it is completely different", which is tbh the actual worst, most biased argument without content regarding changes I've heard on these forums. They just happen to be "in favour".


Waiting for beta is another such debate killer, that's often applied uni-directionaly by a certain group of players, under the pretense of giving a game mechanic a "fair chance" (in the meantime frequently argueing that they see no reason for concern at all).

Typicaly that same "fair chance" is not provided to alternative mechanics, whether or not they stem from PS1 and this is typically by those with the utmost trust in the devs infallibility.

I think the devs are nice guys, but also like everyone else here, only human. They will make huge mistakes. Our job as a community is to make sure they are aware of pitfalls. And tbh, the people with most experience in pitfalls are PS1 vets.



The main thing people have to stay aware of is that their reasoning is thorough. If you look at the old Dev Forums over at PS1 (and sometimes in PS2 idea vault), there are a lot of topics that are just ghastly, horrible ideas that in some cases even got some support, while by some ("likers") criticasters were almost executed for being too conservative.

Yet if you checked for actual argumentation, then it wasn't the side that liked it that had the most, the most thorough and also the only side that checked if it fitted in the game by doing some user scenarios.

We're talking really outlandish ideas here like "flying outfit bases that would take an hour of sustained fire to take out, could spawn aircraft and players and had these huge gun turrets on them".

Similarly, there were those that embraced BFRs upon release and gave them a "fair chance". Some of these "fair chancers" even asked for buffs because they paid 8 certs for them and thus they should be many times as powerful as a "normal" vehicle. Balance with other vehicles? Overuse? Upsetting the rest of the playerbase? No way these could be valid issues!

Phantasm (heavily armoured, unlockable by AA, cloaked transport aircraft that requires around 20 seconds of infantry held Flaklet fire to kill) with 12mm front mounted, pilot controlled 1 sec TTK anti-infantry gun being used to farm unsuspecting infantry everywhere? How could we possibly know this would be abused! We should give it a fair chance on the test server. Test server results indicating everyone used them to farm infantry? Well, test server is suddenly not representative of the actual game, because not everyone is doing their own thing, but everyone "wants to try it out on test". No, you would be biased against it or simply too conservative. "Give it two weeks to balance out after implementation, then we'll see". Great. Just great... We saw the pop drop indeed.


People like that that defend every idea or change can really kill games if they're not careful. They should realise that a badly implemented game mechanic or unit causes an instantly bad experience that can well dominate the entire judgement of the game. When it is around too long, it causes permanent damage as players leave to stop the bad experience and will be weary of returning because of these same, bad experiences.

BFRs were toned down quite drastically. Did players return? Not really: BFRs were still there. However, the remaining pop stabilised and pops didn't fall further. See, it's easier to lose players over something temporary permanently, than it is to get them back through "changes". Changes based on people leaving will mostly affect the chance of staying of those still to get into the game and those still in the game.

Ironing out bad gameplay pre-beta is a good thing. Critique is fine, bashing is not, neutrality appreciated, but a full non-critical wait-and-see stance is IMO simply self-destructive.





TL;DR: Remember the sayings: "nothing is as permanent as temporary" and "preventing is better than curing".

[megamold]

i just think people are getting a little antsy
most likely for not getting any details, or any info regarding beta.

i know i am.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Figment

Tbh, never have I heard someone say "it's different from PS1, so it's bad!" by default, not here, nowhere. It's always "it's bad, because where PS1 did something like this for this and this reason; they do this in PS2, for that reason, but that's no good reason at all, because such and such".

You do an excellent job of backing up your arguments but not everyone does the same. I've seen many many posts where it is said "It was just fine in PS1 so it doesn't need to be modified." Perfect example is why we would need to keep Sanctuaries as a whole seperate zone when the same thing can be accomplished by combining them with warpgates. This would increase the speed and ease with which you can enter a battle, and also avoid the pitfall of losing your spot on a pop-locked continent just so you can rally a raid. the main reason I've heard to keep them is because PS1 did it.

You do make an excellent point that I need to take to heart. There is nothing wrong with hashing out and dissecting these mechanics, especially the new ones. While we are stuck hypothosizing and speculating until we actually see them in action, that should not curtail discussion until then. You are right in saying that's exactly what these forums are for.

[ArmedZealot]

Originally Posted by Figment

Tbh, never have I heard someone say "it's different from PS1, so it's bad!" by default, not here, nowhere. It's always "it's bad, because where PS1 did something like this for this and this reason; they do this in PS2, for that reason, but that's no good reason at all, because such and such".

I really dislike the simplification and stereotyping that is going on now and then for that matter, especially since it often comes over as an attempt to stop PS1 from influencing PS2. For no other reason than "PS2 is a new game, you have to accept that it is completely different", which is tbh the actual worst, most biased argument without content regarding changes I've heard on these forums. They just happen to be "in favour".


Waiting for beta is another such debate killer, that's often applied uni-directionaly by a certain group of players, under the pretense of giving a game mechanic a "fair chance" (in the meantime frequently argueing that they see no reason for concern at all).

Typicaly that same "fair chance" is not provided to alternative mechanics, whether or not they stem from PS1 and this is typically by those with the utmost trust in the devs infallibility.

I think the devs are nice guys, but also like everyone else here, only human. They will make huge mistakes. Our job as a community is to make sure they are aware of pitfalls. And tbh, the people with most experience in pitfalls are PS1 vets.



The main thing people have to stay aware of is that their reasoning is thorough. If you look at the old Dev Forums over at PS1 (and sometimes in PS2 idea vault), there are a lot of topics that are just ghastly, horrible ideas that in some cases even got some support, while by some ("likers") criticasters were almost executed for being too conservative.

Yet if you checked for actual argumentation, then it wasn't the side that liked it that had the most, the most thorough and also the only side that checked if it fitted in the game by doing some user scenarios.

We're talking really outlandish ideas here like "flying outfit bases that would take an hour of sustained fire to take out, could spawn aircraft and players and had these huge gun turrets on them".

Similarly, there were those that embraced BFRs upon release and gave them a "fair chance". Some of these "fair chancers" even asked for buffs because they paid 8 certs for them and thus they should be many times as powerful as a "normal" vehicle. Balance with other vehicles? Overuse? Upsetting the rest of the playerbase? No way these could be valid issues!

Phantasm (heavily armoured, unlockable by AA, cloaked transport aircraft that requires around 20 seconds of infantry held Flaklet fire to kill) with 12mm front mounted, pilot controlled 1 sec TTK anti-infantry gun being used to farm unsuspecting infantry everywhere? How could we possibly know this would be abused! We should give it a fair chance on the test server. Test server results indicating everyone used them to farm infantry? Well, test server is suddenly not representative of the actual game, because not everyone is doing their own thing, but everyone "wants to try it out on test". No, you would be biased against it or simply too conservative. "Give it two weeks to balance out after implementation, then we'll see". Great. Just great... We saw the pop drop indeed.


People like that that defend every idea or change can really kill games if they're not careful. They should realise that a badly implemented game mechanic or unit causes an instantly bad experience that can well dominate the entire judgement of the game. When it is around too long, it causes permanent damage as players leave to stop the bad experience and will be weary of returning because of these same, bad experiences.

BFRs were toned down quite drastically. Did players return? Not really: BFRs were still there. However, the remaining pop stabilised and pops didn't fall further. See, it's easier to lose players over something temporary permanently, than it is to get them back through "changes". Changes based on people leaving will mostly affect the chance of staying of those still to get into the game and those still in the game.

Ironing out bad gameplay pre-beta is a good thing. Critique is fine, bashing is not, neutrality appreciated, but a full non-critical wait-and-see stance is IMO simply self-destructive.





TL;DR: Remember the sayings: "nothing is as permanent as temporary" and "preventing is better than curing".

True in all points. I only say "if its different from PS1, it's bad!" sarcastically because, although it isn't stated in plain english it's often stated as "Why is PS1 becoming a battlefield/cod clone" or "This feature encouraged teamwork! removing it from PS2 just makes the game more dumbed down!" only fails to really fight the argument against said feature and makes the poster look like a bittervet.