Where do you stand? Advocacy within the community.

[Rothnang]

I see a lot of posts accusing me or other people of having no interest in the game at large, and only wanting to serve themselves with their ideas somehow. I personally think that advocating for the things you care about makes perfect sense, because if everyone speaks out for what they care about we get good arguments for all sides of the issues out of the community.

In this thread I want to encourage people to lay out their points of view on the game, and what they deeply care about in it. Instead of trying to act that though anyone speaks for the whole community, let's embrace the fact that if everyone speaks for themselves we will get a much better sense of what the community as a whole is about.


I'm going to make a list of the core points in my philosophy when it comes to the game, and how I would like to see it changed, and I would like it if other people do the same, and give us an honest look at what they are all about. Having a better sense of where people are coming from will hopefully help us have more healthy discussions.




Alright, so here Rothnangs broader view on the game:

- I play mostly as an Engineer, because I love vehicles. My favorite Vehicle is the Liberator. When I play infantry I often find myself going with an HA, because the added firepower really helps.

- I think that the macrogame for Planetside 2 needs to focus less on conquering a whole continent in a few hours, and instead have long term goals that a faction needs to pursue as a whole over the course of days, if not weeks. To me the only way for map control to be really meaningful is if your impact lasts in some way. It shouldn't matter so much who controls a territory at the moment, it should matter who controls it the most.

- I like specialized players that can genuinely identify themselves as experts at one particular job. I don't mind it if people want to go more of a generalist route, but to me the social aspect of an MMO becomes way more interesting if what someone can do is just as important to whether or not you want them around as how much like you that person is. In real life you always want to recruit the best people, not the nicest people, that's what makes good managers important.

- I dislike any system that doesn't allow me to pull more vehicles because my faction isn't doing well enough. It doesn't make anyone happy if vehicle players are going back and forth between being overpowered and being unable to play with the units they like, so it makes no sense to me to have vehicles be expensive as though they are some kind of treat that you can't always have - that just sets up an expectation that they are way more powerful than infantry. I don't mind some cooldown timer, but never just end of the line, leave the continent or play something you enjoy less.

- I really dislike any game system that rewards people for risky behavior on a unit that incurs no penalty for being destroyed. I don't like things like engineers making mine runs on a Sunderer, knowing that if they succeed they will get a huge amount of XP, and if they fail they can just try again 30 seconds later. High Risk/High Reward makes sense, No Risk/High Reward does not.

- I think Sunderers are the most overpowered unit currently in the game. They are absolutely essential to success in the game, and the whole game revolves around deploying and destroying them at this point more than anything else. To me the Sunderer represents a missed opportunity to get real logistics into the game.

- I dislike infinite respawning. I think dying should carry a small penalty that eventually adds up to losing territory if enough people get killed. People should be made to rely on medics and caution more instead of treating respawns as the first go-to option for quickly getting back in the fray.

- I'm not a big fan of explosive anti infantry weapons, I think it would make a lot more sense if tanks were equipped with machineguns for anti-infantry work. Explosions should serve to flush enemies out of cover, not just instantly kill them so no flushing occurs. If it only takes one shot to kill the infantry the weapon is no longer a tactical tool to get them out of cover, and just becomes a weapon that scores kills while going around cover.

- I dislike how ESFs basically can do the job of all the other aircraft as a one seater and on top of that dominate in air battles. Whenever you pull an equivalent number of ESFs to any crewed aircraft you end up with a unit that does the job better. Even a fully loaded galaxy can't do anything that those players couldn't accomplish in individual fighters as long as they have rudimentary flying skills.

- I play Vanu, but I have an NC character for when I want to drive a tank, because to me the Magrider isn't a real tank.

- The thing that pisses me off the most about recent changes is that they made the Dalton really inaccurate but only gave a tiny little nerf to its blast radius. I don't need a huge blast radius at all on that thing, I want it back to being highly accurate. I have never cared about killing infantry in a Liberator, I want to kill tanks and Sunderers in particular, and the weapon is pretty lackluster for that now.

- I think infantry AA and AV firepower are a bit out of control at this point. It seems like the lethality of combat is going up and up and up. I would have much rather seen changes that made infantry more resilient to vehicle weapons rather than making them just as deadly.

- I think XP sharing needs to be a thing. I think its stupid that the reward structure in this game is practically always based on the individual, since it undermines a lot of advanced strategies. Nobody is happy when a Liberator comes down and bombs their enemies into the ground, because it's not seen as being helped, it's being seen as having your kills stolen. That really sucks, I want to help people, not compete for XP with them.

- To me the holy grail of Planetside 2 is to achieve true combined arms warfare, where infantry and vehicles operate side by side. I want to be able to provide fire support to troops as they call for it, or give them transportation around the battlefield. I want people to be able to designate a target for airstrikes and then get XP if an aircraft kills that target. People should be able to plop a transport request on the map that shows Galaxy pilots where the person is and where they want to go, so you can take them there etc. I want a system that really emphasizes working together with people, and helping other people achieve their goals while everyone gets rewards for doing so.

[Sledgecrushr]

I like liberators. So we have some common ground there.

[Sirisian]

I agree with everything you wrote. Most of my posts here, on the official forums, and Reddit have been focused on getting those kinds of things implemented. Most of the things you have suggested either I or someone else has put up a suggested implementation. That's all I focus on. Even on my site I listed problems I saw in the developer's plans and provided revised implementations for them. (Resource metagame and faction balance being my favorite topics).

Originally Posted by Rothnang

I see a lot of posts accusing me or other people of having no interest in the game at large, and only wanting to serve themselves with their ideas somehow. I personally think that advocating for the things you care about makes perfect sense, because if everyone speaks out for what they care about we get good arguments for all sides of the issues out of the community.

Yeah this is why I toned down my post count as the game got closer to release. Before release I was making a lot of posts and twitter messages to get changes made, but some people viewed it as spamming my ideas so decided to scale things back and stopped updating my site when tech test started.

My main ideas for Planetside 2 revolve around:

- A resource system based on purchasing power is the only solution for limiting players and providing a deep specialization system. One where every infantry, land, and air loadout costs resources beyond the stock weapons provided forces players to utilize their resources and making strategic changes only affect purchasing power and not earning power means casual players are on the same foot as players that player for hours a day. (Last post on the subject other than my site).

Originally Posted by Rothnang

- I dislike any system that doesn't allow me to pull more vehicles because my faction isn't doing well enough.

One of the main reasons I hate supply line solutions for resources which many people on Reddit like. Can't stand the idea that my resource count is based on the zerg or that my specialization and ability to play as a casual player would be directly affected by it. I usually login and play for about an hour and a half at a time.

Going back to my thoughts:

-Large continents with vertical gameplay and distance between bases was one of my top priorities when posting early on. When they said they decided to make the maps the same size as the PS1 maps (8x8 km) with little to no vertical gameplay I was crushed. I wanted each continent to be 16x16 km with massive features between bases and very few roads. I hate roads since they direct the battle. In PS1 we had forests between bases and towers. In PS2 we're lucky to have a mountain or a plain with one or two trees for cover. Also for vertical gameplay I was very vocal about cave systems from the start to make the lattice complex and give infantry, vehicles, and air a lot of choices about where to go. Also massive floating islands with bridges and jump pads and elevators for vehicles was something I always wanted to make things interesting.

- The other thing I wanted which PS1 didn't have was immersive continents. With large continents I wanted a full wildlife system with hostile and passive creatures between bases. I've written about this at length to make the game feel alive when traveling to take an outpost or as tanks move across the land.

- The other thing I've always advocated was very complex weapon and movement choices. Using magazine systems over ammo pools and throwing magazines to friendlies in a full teamwork based game. (Not a big fan of ammo drops). Regarding movement simple FPS stuff like climbing ladders, vaulting small walls, sliding to cover from a sprint. Forgelight is still new, but those kinds of things would have been nice since the player choices for movement need to be greatly expanded.

- The last point I've always advocated is that asymmetrical gameplay between the factions is a pipe-dream and can't be done in an FPS game. I've written in length on the subject and I feel it's stealing a lot of the development time from the developers and really hurting the overall skill in this game when playstyles are locked to one faction. That and most of the community wouldn't notice in the slightest if all the factions were mirrored with different graphics and particle effects for weapons, ESFs, and tanks.

Originally Posted by Rothnang

- I dislike infinite respawning. I think dying should carry a small penalty that eventually adds up to losing territory if enough people get killed. People should be made to rely on medics and caution more instead of treating respawns as the first go-to option for quickly getting back in the fray.

I won't quote all of these, but in PS1 we had progressive respawn timers per unique spawn location. If you died frequently then you couldn't respawn as fast at that location which gave you a hint to spawn someplace else. This benefited both attackers and defenders since as a battle went on fewer people spawned. Would need to be reworked in PS2 slightly since Sunderers are spawned and destroyed so frequently it might give attackers an advantage if the time penalties for specific places (base, outpost, Sunderer) isn't handled correctly.

Originally Posted by Rothnang

- I play Vanu, but I have an NC character for when I want to drive a tank, because to me the Magrider isn't a real tank.

I had a few twitter messages with T-Ray where I told him to give the VS a real tank with dual hover treads and handling identical to a mechanical track with a non-fixed turret. He seemed indifferent to the idea. Anyway yeah Magrider even in PS1 didn't feel like a tank. Felt like an upgraded Thrasher. Don't get me started on our Scythe.

[Ghoest9]

1 I think the core of the game should be fun and varied play for infantry.

2 Im against vehicle and vehicle weapons that are primarily used tofarm infantry.

3 Im against changes that remove fun from infantry(such as adding automatic turrets or nerfing jump jets.

[Neutral Calypso]

Advocacy eh?

Well in that case...


I think each faction should, while holding to their individual themes, be less extreme about them.

TR should have SLIGHTLY faster fire rates.

NC should have SLIGHTLY higher damage per bullet.

VS should have SLIGHTLY smaller fire cones and recoil or whatever the heck their gimmick is.

Instead we have... well... what we have. But eh, the game is new yet. All imbalances will be balanced eventually. We'll just be sitting here wishing they'd get balanced NAO.

[Corvo]

1 I am primarily an infantry player, so I generally oppose any idea that slows down the pace of infantry gameplay. Infantry is the backbone of this game and should never be encumbered in any way, including additional penalties for dying.

2 I think that ground vehicles are too cheap and don't feel strong enough. I'd double their resource cost, timers and health. Players should really feel their presence on the battlefield and dispatching of them should instantly make a noticeable difference.

3 Air is too fragile and carries too much firepower. ESF's need to have more health and have more specialized weapons that are only good at one thing and one thing only.

4 Sunderers shouldn't have an AMS slot and should fill the role of an APC/IFV. AMS functionality should be transferred to a specialized vehicle with zero combat capabilities.

5 We need to get more empire-specific weaponry in our arsenal.

[Gatekeeper]

Very much agree about explosive weapons vs infantry and infantry AV/AA power - I think battles would be improved if infantry was harder for vehicles to kill with their main weapons and required more use of specialist AI weapons (Kobalt, PPA, etc. rather than horrible, skill-less HE), and if infantry was balanced by having their damage vs vehicles reduced.

Also broadly agree about ESFs - I have no problem with them dominating other aircraft, but only if they're specialised AA platforms. Ground-attack fighters should be pretty useless against other aircraft.

XP sharing is also a good point. I'd definitely like to see this implemented in squads and between vehicle crews. TBH this should have been in the game from launch, and I have no idea why it's been overlooked. At least assists scale now though, which is a good start.

As for my own perspective: I regularly change my play-style over time. I used to drive Mags a lot, then Lightnings, then I did a lot of HA, then a spent a while flying Scythes, then LA, now mostly Medic and recently I've been toying with the Flash. For me, variety is king. One of the biggest strengths of PS is that you turn it into a whole new game by just switching your loadout or your vehicle of choice.

I exclusively play VS though. Variety is one thing, but loyalty is everything.

Overall I think PS2 still needs a lot of work, but it's improving steadily all the time and I'm very impressed with how responsive the devs are. It still puzzles me that they left so many great ideas from PS1 behind, but at least they're learning.

[Ghodere]

Every element of the game must be clearly defined and have a well thought out role. Roles should be simple and intuitive, trade-offs should be apparent and meaningful, and if a change must be made it should not be a band-aid, but as major a redesign as required that eliminates the problem innately instead of moving to a 'balanced' yet essentially broken state of affairs (see: air/armor).

If it needs to be said, PS2 is a trainwreck in terms of core design, and the microtransaction model means it's very likely that these core issues will never be properly addressed, as shown by SOE's unwillingness to implement such a simple change as removing the G2A launcher's dumbfire (which is not to say this would have been a good change, merely that SOE backed down from such a tiny redesign). At this point, I'm playing the game because it's pretty fun; I'm not expecting any meaningful improvement to the core of the game.

[VaderShake]

I just want SOE to continue push the boundaries or Forgelight and server capabilities.Yea like everybody else I could put out a list of things I (me, just for me and what I want) would like to see in PS2 but really it would probably cut the population down and I would jsut have a few people to play with and the game would probably die.

So I throw some ideas out there (Psst..SOE has no shortage of ideas just limits on implementation) and I hope they put in some things I would like to see but I think part of the fun of this game is having to think and adjust and find out how to be sucessful after each update and when new content is introduced into the game. I play this game different than when the beta started,...heck different than last week even and it keeps getting better IMO, I hope it continues the way it is heading and with whats on the roadmap with a few surprises too. The changes good or frustrating are keeping PS2 fresh for me anyway.

[CodeVertigo]

As a person that tries to view the mechanics of the game as a whole and not from the point of view of any one faction, these are my philosophies behind how I believe Planetside 2 should be developed. To make it easier to read, I'll separate each point in quote boxes.

Unfortunately, it's getting late here, and I can't write all that I wanted to, but hopefully this is informative enough.

The game should be designed around the idea of teamplay, and should be central to most, if not all considerations. In particular, the game should be designed around the idea that those who are most coordinated should gain the greatest advantage over those who are less so.

As an addendum to the previous, the game should be designed such that the biggest factors that will influence the outcome of a battle will be teamwork, planning and individual skill.

NB: Teamwork does not mean simply having numbers - it means having coordination within those numbers. If possible, design should also take into account that larger groups will be harder to organise and micromanage, and allow smaller groups to exploit that to a small degree. Long story short - having great numbers should not have a significant bearing on the outcome of a battle unless those numbers are sufficiently organised.

The game should cater more towards the serious players, not the casual drop-in/drop-outs. This implies a greater degree of complexity in the game's features and mechanics that involve serious consequences for taking or losing important facilities, among other things. While understandably controversial, I believe that given the scope and potential depth of this game, it is important to focus on a target audience.

From my personal observations and ad-hoc interviews with random players, concessions made in this regard have left the game in an awkward position. It seems to have failed in satisfying the playerbase of the original game or new players looking for the more strategic, social and immersive experience they heard about in the first game. Meanwhile, I got the impression that the concessions made to simplify the game did not seem terribly well appreciated by the audience they were intended for (possibly because it's hard to get excited over the omission of features).

Another controversial issue, but I am an advocate of a higher time-to-kill. Not necessarily because it allows for a higher skill ceiling of gameplay (although I personally believe this to be true), but because based on my analysis from a minimum-assumption economic framework, time-to-kill is positively correlated with the effectiveness of teamwork, of which I am a big advocate in this game. In addition, I believe that having a higher TTK would in fact aid in solving or reducing the effects of a number of other problems that have been observed in the game thus far.

Once again, I understand that this is a very controversial topic. If I have time, I will try to provide documentation of my analysis at a later date to help justify my beliefs on this matter.

Given the three types of unit featured in the game thus far (Armor, Air and Infantry), I believe that bases should be designed in a way that separates their areas of effectiveness. By this, I mean that as fights move deeper into a base, certain units should become far more useful, and certain units far less useful.

Game balancing should NOT use stats as the only/main basis for balancing.

Consider a situation in which one Empire has a greater average level of skill than the other, for whatever reason. Perhaps there was a large outfit that began running advanced training drills that taught people how to be more accurate with a particular Carbine, for instance. This could cause a noticable upward bump in the stats which could be interpreted as the weapon being overpowered and subsequently nerfed.

The result is a situation in which large numbers of players trained to play better with a particular piece of gear can end up being punished for being more capable.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by CodeVertigo

The game should cater more towards the serious players, not the casual drop-in/drop-outs. This implies a greater degree of complexity in the game's features and mechanics that involve serious consequences for taking or losing important facilities, among other things. While understandably controversial, I believe that given the scope and potential depth of this game, it is important to focus on a target audience.

You can do both though. That's actually how I've focused my resource system. Using purchasing power rather than earning power means players are affected by their own skill while at the same time they make choices based on strategic changes in territory control which doesn't hurt their play experience directly in anyway. This can be applied to any part of the game so complexity is preserved for good players without hurting casual players like myself who login for only an hour or two at a time. The current system hurts me since part of my resource earning power is based on other people's success. It's fine if it hurts my purchasing power though like if I can't take a tank on the front lines for the same price as an outpost though since the decision is mine.

[CodeVertigo]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

You can do both though. That's actually how I've focused my resource system. Using purchasing power rather than earning power means players are affected by their own skill while at the same time they make choices based on strategic changes in territory control which doesn't hurt their play experience directly in anyway. This can be applied to any part of the game so complexity is preserved for good players without hurting casual players like myself who login for only an hour or two at a time. The current system hurts me since part of my resource earning power is based on other people's success. It's fine if it hurts my purchasing power though like if I can't take a tank on the front lines for the same price as an outpost though since the decision is mine.

I checked the link in your sig and I think it's an interesting idea. I do have a few concerns with your proposed system, but I'll read it again and give it some more thought. I'll get back to you via PM or something when I've collated enough points worth discussing?