News: Matt Higby doing a Q&A at reddit!

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by WellWisherELF

Air vehicles won't be able to "sit" anywhere anymore, they're taking a more realistic approach towards air physics/combat.

It's a figure of speech, not meant for pedantic analysis.

[Volw]

I might get crucified for this.

I think Outfit specialisation is really cool and it will bring a completely new level of interaction between outfits.

PS Today:
Since there is no specialisation everyone has tanks, air and infantry. Sure some outfits prefer one role than the other, but in general they are fairly diverse.

If there is a need for Reavers, people bring Reavers. If there is a need for tanks, people bring tanks. Fairly straight forward.

PS2:
Firstly, specialisation will cause some drama, because in order to get better toys for their favourite role, players will be somewhat forced to seek specialised outfits.

What it brings to the table in terms of interaction and dynamics is outfits will be almost forced to cooperate. You will have a tank outfit asking air outfit for CAS or Air Superiority. Then they might need an infantry outfit to clear buildings.

So end of the day, we *should* end up with a very interactive system and I think it's a benefit to the players as well. I for example, love to fly stuff, so if I join air outfit, I will be able to do just that most of the time.

Mind the advantages of being in a specialised outfit don't prevent from playing as other role. They only provide an incentive to specialise.

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by Volw

I might get crucified for this.

I think Outfit specialisation is really cool and it will bring a completely new level of interaction between outfits.

PS Today:
Since there is no specialisation everyone has tanks, air and infantry. Sure some outfits prefer one role than the other, but in general they are fairly diverse.

If there is a need for Reavers, people bring Reavers. If there is a need for tanks, people bring tanks. Fairly straight forward.

PS2:
Firstly, specialisation will cause some drama, because in order to get better toys for their favourite role, players will be somewhat forced to seek specialised outfits.

What it brings to the table in terms of interaction and dynamics is outfits will be almost forced to cooperate. You will have a tank outfit asking air outfit for CAS or Air Superiority. Then they might need an infantry outfit to clear buildings.

So end of the day, we *should* end up with a very interactive system and I think it's a benefit to the players as well. I for example, love to fly stuff, so if I join air outfit, I will be able to do just that most of the time.

Mind the advantages of being in a specialised outfit don't prevent from playing as other role. They only provide an incentive to specialise.

Unless they bring in alliances, at which point general-purpose and/or combined-arms outfits are going to create mini-outfits and then ally up.

[Volw]

Originally Posted by Firefly

Unless they bring in alliances, at which point general-purpose and/or combined-arms outfits are going to create mini-outfits and then ally up.

Most likely. Even if so, it will create an easier way to cooperate with other outfits and make battlefield a lot more organised.

Cause now we'll be seeing proper platoons using their specialisations instead of a random zerg.

[Malorn]

I hope the specialization for outfits works like "Tactics" worked in Warhammer Online. I liked that system.

Basically in warhammer you had a set of tactics that modified behavior of things, sort of like glyphs in WoW (they took the idea from Warhammer).

You could only have a limited number of tactics at a given time and most of them were tradeoffs or minor bonuses.

Outfit specialization might be like a set of tactics that applies to all members of the outfit. Outfit certs open up more potential tactics and going down a specific tree grants more specialized tactics.

Then the outfit leader & officers can set the tactics for the outfit based on those avialable to them. Supposed they had like 5 tactics they can choose...

Sample tactics:
* Rapid Air deployment - reduces air vehicle timers by 1.5 minutes for the entire outfit (affects all vehicles)
* You want some of this? - infantry weapons damage is increased by 15%, but rate of fire is decreased by 10%.
* Runs like a machine - resource costs for the entire outfit are reduced by 10% (affects all upgrades)
* Incoming MAX Units! - reduces MAX suit timers by 1.5 minutes for the entire outfit
* Move it, soldier! - Infantry speed for the outfit increased by 5%

If this is how they implement it, I can see minor bonuses like 5% more damage, or 5% more speed or what not as entire outfit bonuses being acceptable when its scoped to specific things. I think this is OK to have a flat bonus mainly because the outfit doesn't get ALL of the bonuses available to them and instead they must choose which set of bonuses they want. This adds some minor differentiation among outfits and makes them make hard choices.

Additionally, new players who join the outfit would immediately get the benefit, so it isn't really a penalty to new players, nor does everyoen converge on the same set of bonuses. So this could be a good way to add differentiation and specialization with something tangible without screwing up game balance.

They could do this tactics thing with individuals too, though I think the outfit level is better. Should also be a reasonable timer delay between changing outfit tactics, like once per day or something like that.

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I hope the specialization for outfits works like "Tactics" worked in Warhammer Online. I liked that system.

Basically in warhammer you had a set of tactics that modified behavior of things, sort of like glyphs in WoW (they took the idea from Warhammer).

You could only have a limited number of tactics at a given time and most of them were tradeoffs or minor bonuses.

Heh. One time where I can say "you're welcome".

[Chufty]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If this is how they implement it, I can see minor bonuses like 5% more damage, or 5% more speed or what not as entire outfit bonuses being acceptable when its scoped to specific things. I think this is OK to have a flat bonus mainly because the outfit doesn't get ALL of the bonuses available to them and instead they must choose which set of bonuses they want. This adds some minor differentiation among outfits and makes them make hard choices.

I like this idea. It sounds like they're gunning for much more Outfit features this time around so I wouldn't be surprised to see this sort of thing in the outfit cert tree, which has already been confirmed.

Love your choice of names too

[Kurtz]

Outfit specs seems to be more geared towards the PS1 later years rather than the first few months of PS1. Same with Alliances. Neither of these seems necessary with the ridiculous pops we'll have in the early days of PS2 although I can see some purpose to the outfit specs.

One person posted, and I would tend to agree, that this would force large outfits to splinter off into 3 smaller outfits just to get the maximum benefits.

This will effect outfit points and leaderboards etc...

So the best solution would be to have DIVISIONS within an outfit.

special forces, infantry, air force and armor division. These divisions could access the different perks.

In the first few days of PS1 I ran an enormous outfit on Emerald that prided itself on having air, armor and infantry divisions and we were extremely good at organizing our attacks. When we came over a hill, we weren't just an armor threat...we were a threat at every level.

The fun was in the precision organization...pushing in our air first, then supporting them with armor to help clean up the AA...finally we'd drop our special forces in to take out gens and our infantry to take towers and hack cc's.

Towards the end of the games prime, when game play changed and quick response small elite outfits were popular - the game dynamics forced the outfits to adapt or become obsolete. While there were still large outfits overwhelming the elite outfits with sheer numbers, they usually couldn't get some of the key objectives done...primarily because large outfits were general grossly mismanaged and disorganized while smaller elite forces ran like a well oiled machine.

Thus the need for alliances.

I just don't see the need for alliances early in the game. Sounds like an afterthought for bad continent design. Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps I misinterpreted an interview but I don't like the idea at all of being able to cap a base with a mossie and not having to get out of the vehicle. This is how I interpreted some of the wording in interviews I saw. I could be mistaken but want to be clear on the matter.

I liked the original PS1 design where it was clearly best to use Air to transport troops on certain continents, but tanks and large ground vehicles were sufficient on others. But no continent was exclusive to any style of play until the caves and the Battle Islands.

There shouldn't be "Air only" continents or zones where its just a dog fight 24/7. (I am a pilot and the idea of this still bothers me.)

For one, all the pilots may be lured to this "air only" continent and not want to play with the rest of the outfit causing a division within the outfit.

secondly, see Paragraph 6. Every battle should be decided in the air first...once air superiority is established that lays the foundation to the ground attack.

I would be against the idea of protecting an "all armor" continent by simply not letting air in for some (insert lore) reason. I am also against infy only battles...if you don't want EPIC go play the 1000 other FPS out there. I am not saying that this is planned, but I thought some language eluded to it.

I like the idea of an open grass continent where tanks cam dominate the landscape and them having an easier time navigating, but they should always be susceptible to a formidable air attack. I liked PS1s diverse terrain that gave certain types of attacks and transportation an advantage but never made any unnecessary.

Rock Scissors Paper was key to making PS1 great.

Sounds like PS2 is going to be everything I was hoping it to be, I just hope that we make sure that it will never be for Console and that we always remember what made PS1 great.

Faction Loyalty was the first and foremost thing that made PS1 great and I am so glad that the dev team is sticking to their guns on that one.

[Malorn]

The Division Idea is a good one.

I too see how the specialization of outfits will hurt larger outfits. They shouldn't have to break up to work around the game mechanic. The game mechanic should take them into consideration.

Building on the tactics concept I posted about earlier where an outfit chooses which benefits it wants out of a set of benefits it has certed, it could be that Outfits have a certain amount of divisions (based on outfit size / activity perhaps, maybe fixed at 3 or so) and each division is allowed a tactic set. Each member can only belong to one division within the outfit. That would allow larger outfits to not require splintering to be effective.

However, time learning outfit certs is still real-time, so small outfits will be able to go deeper into the specializations while larger outfits have to move around and pick up different things from different trees. This will still slow the progression of large outfits. That might be unavoidable, but long-term they should be able to have specialized divisions

[Aractain]

Dosn't an alliance just defeat the purpose of exclusive specilisation in outfits? Isn't that just like having one outfit with all the benifits (with the exception of only certain people can get the buffs)?

[Malorn]

Alliance is for cross-group coordination and social structuring. You don't have to manage people in other outfits, you just have to coordinate with their leaders. They're autonomous units. That's the point.

There wasn't any form of alliances in PS1, but CR5 chat ended up functioning as one giant alliance chat and was utilized for coordination.

I'd like to see it formalized as a flexibile in-game-chat for communication & coordination. Its little more than a pair of chat channels with outfit-level permission control over who has access to the chat, and outfit control about which members within the outfit have access to the chat. I had a post about it earlier in this thread with more articulated details.

If we have that we don't need CR5 chat and we don't need CR5s.

[Desoxy]

Originally Posted by Aractain

Dosn't an alliance just defeat the purpose of exclusive specilisation in outfits? Isn't that just like having one outfit with all the benifits (with the exception of only certain people can get the buffs)?

Well, if players want to coordinate while one group as perk A and another group has perk B, then the game should not hinder them. Noone keeps them from forming a larger outfit outside of the game anyway.

All outfits really do in terms of balance (at this point) is making sure each player will only receive at most one outfit bonus.

[Bags]

Updated with a new answer.

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by Bags

Updated with a new answer.

Eh?

[IceyCold]

So, headshots with a sniper rifle do 200% dmg, effectively a one shot kill; but a chaingun would do 0% bonus damage for a headshot.

I don't know, on one hand since we know ballistics and bullet drop will be featured in the game that would make sniping and actually achieving a headshot a bit of challenge; but still this is something that will need to be tested out.

But glad to hear that more pray and spray guns won't be able to get a random lucky headshot.