Tank drivers acting as gunners in PS2

[Duddy]

Whilst I think we need to wait and see, I'm certainly sceptical of the new system as I voiced when we first found out about.

My largest complaint is the lack of agility which, in contrast to PS1, the new system allows for.

As people have pointed out this will probably lead to more static vehicle battles, but more so concerning to me is the vehicle based AA.

I loved the Skyguard in PS1, so perhaps I am biased, the ability to be highly agile but also have powerful AA weaponry made it a great offensive and defensive platform.

With this weaponry being moved to the Lightning, I question how drivers will actually manage to remain agile while having to keep track of aircraft which have far superior manoeuvrability. You saw a lot of Lightnings crashing into things in PS1 (if you saw them at all) and that was before they had to pay attention to the sky.

The point being, it would appear most weapons platforms are designed with two people in mind because one person does not usually deal with handling 2 tasks at once very well.

Whilst the change benefits the individual, I think it detracts from overall gameplay.

That said, if they at least provide the option to choose then I'd be content.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Duddy

That said, if they at least provide the option to choose then I'd be content.

Agreed. The best system would naturally be used if tanks are agile.

On the other hand, if tanks are slow like a snail, drivers won't really be needed. Slow tanks would not be fun to drive anyways.

Let the players have control and choose!

[Figment]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

On the other hand, if tanks are slow like a snail, drivers won't really be needed.

Robo-drivers?

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Figment

Robo-drivers?

Maybe that's the A.I. Higby mentionned !

Playing a gunner in PS2 would then be more like a shooter on rails. And at least, it would not be SuperSoldierOfMetalAndSteel.

[PrISM]

No seperate gunners is terrible. Now there's gonna be no yelling at your gunner (or getting yelled at) on Vent.

[Malorn]

The ability to switch seats without leaving the vehicle is the only thing that bothers me now about the tank situation. I think this is a big mistake.

Having the driver gun the main gun is not a bad thing to me however, and the real issue we have with it is the AA/Air balance issue.

The root of the problem however is high populations of aircraft necessitate AA. They can easily tweak this by lowering the proliferation of Repair/Rearm facilities for aircraft. That means more aircraft will die or stay out of a fight if they get significantly damaged.

Additionally, increasing vehicle acquisition timers for aircraft would mean fewer aircraft and less need for AA configurations on tanks.

And lastly, having the other configurations on tanks highly effective would make AA configuration a liability unless it is really needed. It would also make 1-man tanks significantly less effective than 2 man tanks.

All of these together can help control the population and prevalence of aircraft and thus the need for AA.



For more details of my conclusion, read on...

I recall Higby saying the reason they went with this design is so you can always drive a tank, no matter what is going on outside.

Aircraft got fairly ridiculous in the latter years of Planetside but that was more a problem of cert-creep and vehicle timers than anything.

In the beginning when you only had 23 certs and had to pay 7 of those certs to get both the reaver and the mosquito, there were no Repair/Rearm pads AND the vehicle timers for each was 10 minutes ... you didn't see a lot of aircraft. It was a heavy investment.

When the Skyguard was first released I quite literally laughed at its existence because the vehicle seemed completely unnecessary - there simply wasn't enough aircraft to warrant a Skyguard.

Not only after the skygaurd they changed the vehicle timers, and other changes started to appear...

Repair-Rearm pads made it easy to fix & rearm so that bumped aircraft appearance.
Packaging Reaver & Mosquito together with just a few cert points made it less of a burden to have them.
Increasing cert points meant you felt it even less.
The 12mm gun was changed to be wildly inaccurate to being extremely precise - this meant the mosquito was not a death machine instead of largely a transport vehicle.
And 5 minute vehicle timers (each - mosq and reaver had individual timers) means you could constantly pull them.

When all was said and done aircraft became extremely popular.

So in PS2 it's obvious how they control aircraft populations.
- Since everyone can fly one and there is no cert investment required, they can't use certs to control aircraft population.
- They can limit access to repair/rearm facilities, meaning aircraft stay out of the fight a bit longer or learn to start finding Sunderers.
- And that leaves vehicle acquisition timers. If they're short, like 5 minutes, you're going to see a lot of aircraft. If they're 7-10 minutes, you'll see significantly less.

It seems the direction they're going also is to effectively put AA on everything so swarms of aircraft can be easily countered, even by tanks.

This is not a bad design, and it certainly keeps tanks relevant in the battle no matter how much air is present. That's a good thing and I absolutely know what Higby is talking about when he says PS1 has a problem where pulling a tank isn't always a productive decision due to so much air and tanks not having any defense against it. I would also argue that is a problem of air getting out of control in PS1. I think by the proliferation of AA you will have the opposite problem in PS2 - the inability to fly aircraft because there's too much AA.

There is some ways to avoid this however. For example, if the secondary gun in AV or AI configuration is highly effective against those targets, it means that a tank with AA config is going to die horribly to a tank in AV config. And if there's lots of other tanks and AA about then not every tank needs to field it.

Vehicle timers on Aircraft could also help this problem. Making them longer than 5 minutes would mean people would have to alternate between flying aircraft and doing ground operations. That will lead to lower aircraft populations. With lower aircraft populations the necessity to run AA in your tank goes way down and may even become a liability.

[sylphaen]

I usually do not yell at teammates and I loved the separation of drivers and gunners in PS1.

You hate my terrible system. I do not like your optimal one.

Opinions and preferences, that's just what it is.


You could at least admit that thinking about robo-drivers was a great idea ! I found it was a funny joke

[Figment]

Originally Posted by PrISM

No seperate gunners is terrible. Now there's gonna be no yelling at your gunner (or getting yelled at) on Vent.

The lack of drama and stress on TS! D:

[Mechzz]

Originally Posted by PrISM

No seperate gunners is terrible. Now there's gonna be no yelling at your gunner (or getting yelled at) on Vent.

This.

And no, I don't mind if combined driving/gunning is the default mode. There are advantages to that as well.

I just think we need an option in the cert tree to change vehicle setup so we don't have to drive and gun at the same time if we don't want to. If we want people to keep playing this game for a long time (and we do ) then surely catering to the broadest range of playstyles is best?

Someone else mentioned there are no Dev/Community manager comments on the driver/gunner threads. What would shut me up is for one of these to say either
"Dude, the model design we chose means we can't do that now/ever/until an expansion comes along."
or
"Dude, this is a great idea as it extends the gameplay options without costing us (SOE) anything and makes a broader section of the playerbase happy spenders. We will implement it for testing in Beta."

[Gandhi]

Making it optional is one thing, but having one man MBTs at all is a design decision that I'm still struggling to understand. Out of all the changes this one makes the least sense to me.

[Raka Maru]

Chiming in here after 53 pages...

I will cert a MBT, I like it that I can actually use the main gun rather than waiting for a random to gun for me. This is my tank and my gun, but I'd like to also be able to give that gun to my team when I want. For drivers changing seats, I like that too so I won't be dead meat when aircraft show up.

Hope the Devs get the interface and config right and give the options to fix it up with your play style, and it is a play style... When my buddies gun for me, I like to just drive. Why not give your gunner all the guns. It's not like they can shoot them both at the same time. All these can be configurable options just as diverse as any skill tree. I would actually save/use several configs depending if my buddies are online.

[Neksar]

The problem with giving gunners both guns is the overall decrease in tank power. I understand that the idea is for the gunner to be able to deal with any threat the tank faces, and that there will be more precision with the main gun since the gunner's not distracted like the driver. The problem, though, is that a tank's AV weapon is probably going to be firing at targets that don't take a terribly large amount of precision to shoot. Because of that, giving the option to let the gunner handle the main cannon seems to require some sort of other benefit as well, like increased effectiveness of the secondary weapon.

Otherwise folks complain about gunner-controlled main cannons being less effective than a tank with a driver-gunner and a secondary gunner. Of course, the response to that is that it's optional, but that doesn't seem to cut it 'round here. Unfortunately it's late, and I'm only on here because I'm unable to sleep, so I don't have an answer and my delivery is flawed.

[megamold]

Originally Posted by Malorn

The ability to switch seats without leaving the vehicle is the only thing that bothers me now about the tank situation. I think this is a big mistake.

actually i really like this addition, to me it makes way more sense, since being able to move around in the vehicle is one of the inherent advantages of actually having a vehicle imho.

i dont think you should be able to fly a bomber, switch to the bomber position drop bombs switch again and fly off.
but i do think that being able to jump from being tank driver to topside gunner is a logical and beneficial thing to do

a better example might be the bomber being operated by 2 people.
1 person to fly it, and 1 person to man the rear AA gun and the bombing position when the target has been reached.

[PrISM]

I never usually drove tanks so I was more often a gunner. I've gunned for some people who were really skilled at driving and keeping us alive, while all I needed to worry about is shooting. If the driver is now sidetracked with having to take care of both roles, I feel as if he's become less effective. I really think that having two people is more better.

[kadrin]

Originally Posted by Wargrim

If the devs have shown one thing pretty clear, it is that they really do care in general. But i would guess they want to see what existing veterans and new players will say about it after actually having played it in beta, instead of getting into an argument on a topic that generates so much heated debate.

This right here concerns me greatly.

I really wish they will take more seriously the feedback from us Planetside 1 veterans over the ADD generation FPS gamers. I appreciate and understand them wanting feedback from new players, but all the new players they will be getting will only have CoD, BF and Halo to look at as previous experience, and it's safe to assume that since it's what they know and like, they will want changes that make Planetside 2 more like those games, and less like Planetside.