Your personal observations

[Toonlad]

Not an exhaustive list by the OP, but pretty much covered a lot of my feelings. Nicely put together

But my biggest gripe is the sight picture, obviously dependant on what empire you choose. On the live streams i was finding it very awkward. For want of an example the TR is red framed, and when you get an enemy in your sight, you see red, but i noticed a lot of players seemed to be targetting tons of friendlies due to the fact they see the reticule as red and engaged a friendly lol.

I personally would like to see more definition between enemies and friendlies in the sight picture. Obviously it was live streamed so quality not too great, and alpha build, as on lots of occassions enemy didnt get red tagged name.

To some this may not be a big deal, but you will be looking down your sight 90% of the time. You just have to see from the game play to date all the friendly shooting going on.

So devs if your looking in give it a tweak for me please. Cheers

[Malorn]

I know Figment didn't want us to comment on other people's observations, but I think he made a lot of great ones, many of which can be extrapolated well beyond the demo, but some of it is just new players not knowing how things work, and/or having lots of resources so you didn't care about losing things.

Overall the big takeaways that I saw was TTK was noticeably too fast.

This makes medic healing and engineer repair a lot less valuable, as was spotting like Figment said, though I expect that will pick up a lot. TTK on vehicles was also way too fast. Nothing lived long enough to be useful and it was really just a matter of who saw the other guy first. That doesn't leave much for strategic or team-based gameplay.

Also support activities did not appear to be encouraged at all. The game doesn't help that either by focusing on kills, killstreaks, k/d, etc, instead of objectives and overall score. So they got what they encouraged.

I think I'll defer to Figment's observations, pretty much the same here. Game looks great, but gameplay has a long way to go.

Edit: oh and of course I like the new centralized UI, but I already had a thread on that.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Overall the big takeaways that I saw was TTK was noticeably too fast.

This makes medic healing and engineer repair a lot less valuable, as was spotting like Figment said, though I expect that will pick up a lot. TTK on vehicles was also way too fast. Nothing lived long enough to be useful and it was really just a matter of who saw the other guy first. That doesn't leave much for strategic or team-based gameplay.

It's good to have you observing this about the TTK, maybe people will take it a bit more seriously now.

[Drakkonan]

-Total kills is at the top of the stat list, above total score and assist points.
-KDR is right below total kills.

[sylphaen]

Good post, Figment. I share a lot of your observations.

Here is one I noticed:
- due to the way shield and health regen works, when soldiers meet and both damage each other badly, they both try to hide to wait and trigger the regen.
- an VS infil exchanged fire with a NC LA on a roof but none could finish up each other. Shields regen on the infil. LA pops out for another exchange of rounds but without going through the infil's shield: health starts regening on the infil. No one died, both hide behind cover to wait for regen.

[QuantumMechanic]

On day 2 or day 3 of the live stream it was mentioned a couple times that the Prowler was the largest of the ES tanks. What?? From the size comparison screen shots that we've seen from a while back it was the smallest of the three.

[RNFB]

Originally Posted by DjEclipse

The regen has made the medic job obsolete. Unless there is some super medic power we are not seeing yet.

Medics are not obsolete... they can heal faster than you can regen, and heal during combat better

[Malorn]

A lot of Figment's observations revolve around TTK being too fast, and I wholeheartedly agree with them. Chains of events like this...

Vehicle TTK high -> Galaxies don't live long -> Galaxy not worth deploying -> Galaxy not used as a mobile spawn

Vehicle TTK high -> Vehicles don't typically survive long enough to escape & repair -> vehicles aren't repaired & sunderer aren't used for repair services

Although you also have to factor in new players won't necessarily know about galaxy and sunderer abilities or how to do them, but there were also a lot of SOE players participating who could have easily done those things and tried to support the new players and show off those features...but they didn't, or couldn't because the TTK was too fast.

So yeah great observations Fig, lot of examples there on how the high TTK dumbed down the gameplay and made things less valuable.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Vehicle TTK high -> Vehicles don't typically survive long enough to escape & repair -> vehicles aren't repaired & sunderer aren't used for repair services

-> Secondary gunners are afraid to jump in the rolling coffin (they would also kill just as fast with their own gun and be more in control of where they go)

[cellinaire]

I think it's also important to take some of these details to the official PS2 forum. Just sayin'

[QuantumMechanic]

The day to night transition was fast - like it happens right before your eyes fast. I assume this was just for the E3 demo purposes. I want to have nice lengthy dusk and dawn periods.

[Malorn]

They appear to have changed the prowler model in the E3 videos. It used to be in-between the mag and the vanguard in width, but shorter than both in length, and sit lowest to the ground.

It definitely is taller now, they may have scaled it out to be bigger.

I liked the old racecar look to it, it fits that its' the fastest tank. The big blocky square prowler from PS1 doesn't feel fast to me and was an easy target.

Prowler of the videos looks different from previous prowler imagery.

And it isn't the only vehicle - since the Air combat video we saw the Reaver tail change from pointing down to being more like a traditional aircraft tail. They may have also changed the prowler model. The Liberator also recently changed. I think many vehicles got minor cosmetic overhauls. Prowler size may have been one of them.

I was going to post on it but I wanted to see more prowler shots before making The Prowler Thread 2.0.

[mirwalk]

I don't know if I am just seeing things off or not. But some of the guns had some horrible recoil. It seemed like the SMG was pretty nice but the actual assault rifles were everything from spot on to all over the place.

[captainkapautz]

Originally Posted by LightningDriver

Only one, as a hearing impaired player.

• Where the heck is the chat box, and how am I going to communicate with others?

Originally Posted by WildVS

Well, not being a hearing impaired player I concur. Where is the chat box? Also is cross-faction chat enabled?

Top left corner.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Originally Posted by cellinaire

I think it's also important to take some of these details to the official PS2 forum. Just sayin'

This is the official forum right now.

Partly agree with a lot of problems stemming from this being that the people playing don't know the base layout and such. Partly disagree as this is a micro-beta and we should learn everything we can from it.

What I saw (from day 1 I hear day 2 was better):

• No autorun.
• Man portable AA doesn't work unless it's MAX AA.
• The mini-map is now in color (yay!)
• Very low ammo stocks for everyone.
• Clegg needs to work on not hogging the microphone.
• Gals unused or are short lived.
• Tracers no longer work properly. That being that every round is a tracer rather than every 3rd or 5th.
• Flame throwers don't do enough damage to justify giving up the range the normal AI weapon has. (should be high vs infantry medium/low vs MAX)
• Health regenerates.

I'll think of more after I post this. I always do. But let's talk about that ammo point for a second as I think it's very important.

Light Assault -> deigned to be in hard to reach spots, on their own, flanking -> everyone has low amounts of ammo -> light assaults are only ones who can give out ammo and are thus shackled to the squad.

I really don't think that's the mechanic that you want. Light assaults are cool, I like the idea you have for them but I really don't think that clipping their wings by requiring them to be part of the squad make up. Let's further go into this.

I want in my squad Rexos/MAXs, Medics, and Engies for indoor fights. Now I'm forced to have one of them be light assault despite that if he uses his jetpack at all inside he's just going to get himself killed but I need him for ammo. TTK is fast enough that he will never have the time to be told to flank and to carry out the flank and be useful. Pushing through with MAXs will always be better indoors even when dealing with stairs as the MAX has longer TTK and weaponry. In this the light assault is a burden on the team as we have to keep him alive as he is the squishiest of the squad but critical for its success.
Massive massive problem.

Another squad I'd like to make would be entirely light assaults. Their mobility allows them to get around and attack from angles and if there's several of them I can see them tearing it up. But going inside would compromise their mobility advantage so they have to stay outside with the aircraft which is just fine. I can see that being fun. But if they're critical to normal squad they're going to be constantly running to squads to help them out with ammo and such.

Suggestion: Give ammo to engineers and let light assault keep their explosives. LA should emphasis quickly getting in and out. They shouldn't be part of the normal team dynamic. (the more I think about them the more they seem to be built for lone wolf work)

Regenerating health. Remove it.
The shield regen is fine but remove the health regen. This is something that I thought was nailed down a long time ago in that the health system was going to work like borderlands not halo. This also allows you to have longer TTK systems and avoids peek-a-boo gameplay as each peek costs some health.

Man portable AA problems: the rocket launcher can be scraped off if you know what you're doing in an aircraft. The TR always had problem with their strikers being legitimate AA threats and now every side has their problem and solution. That being that flack is the best AA and shoulder mounted lock-on is terrible AA. This means that pilots no longer need to think about who they're fighting for AA avoidance purposes as everything is homogenized.
tl;dr Faction AV has a large impact on how gameplay is approached by both the user and the used.

In closing, THANK YOU FOR SHOWING US THIS. No seriously, thank you.