Indoor combat improvements

JackEarthrider · 2009-12-02, 02:18 PM

After playing planetside for quite a while now I've figured out that the fighting in this game seems to be oriented around either fighting in the field, or fighting inside of a base.

All the possible tactics in the field are well covered with a very full range arsenal (vehicles, deployables, VTOL aircraft, snipers, etc).

However, once you get indoors you find that your weapon options are somewhat limited to things best suited for the field (assult rifles, rocket launchers, etc.) which is why you probably see so many people "holding the door" open for their vehicle buddies outside or spamming plasma grenades to break an indoor defence.

Well I propose that since there are so many options outdoors, then there should be more options indoors.
Some suggestions:

SMG weapons = these would be high rate of fire, low recoil, but moderate to light damage. Preferably used around tight corners or when going into doorways. Of course they would be given crappy range so people mostly used them indoors and were ineffective outdoors.

Flashbang/stun grenades = these would be grenades that would give the person on the other side a temporary sensory overload making it near impossible for them to see what their doing, giving you a 5 sec window to get em.

Night vision/kill the lights = this would be a two part tactic. an implant would grant the ability to see in the dark; which would be combined with a expert hackers ability to "disable lights" making it so the inside of a base could be easy pickings for an unprepared defence.

Destructable doors = were all tired of door camping, but instead of just using a 10th plasma grenade the attackers should have the option of either blowing the door open or holding it open with a hack.

Smoke grenades = this creates a foggy barrier which impairs vision for everyone exept for those without some sort of sensory enhancement. (this could also be great in some cases for outdoors).

Lean/sticky cover = this is needed pretty badly for indoor combat. You need to be capable either of "leaning" so that only part of yourself is exposed around a corner or using sticky cover so you can quickly expose and recover; without one of these two your close quarters firefights are going to be a lot worse. Implementing either "leaning" or "sticky cover" would make the indoor firefights much more intense, challenging, and skill based.

Most of these ideas are from indoor based shooters (like rainbow 6) However, if done correctly I think it would make indoor combat just as fun as outdoor combat and people would enjoy the game that much more. (I also think some of them are pretty feasible ideas, especially the lean).

Please post any suggestions or comments to these ideas.
Thanks
JackEarthrider

ANaKeR · 2009-12-03, 11:41 AM

Planetside had the problem of players standing around the main doorways waiting for individual enemies to come in and then blowing them to pieces. It usually took a long time for progress to be made. What i would like to see is Invincibility Mode. I'll refer back to Team Fortress 2 when describing this one.

In TF2, the medic has a healing gun that charges as he or she heals fellow players. After a long while healing, the healing gun charges to 100% and the medic can discharge it, making another player and themselves invincible for a short period of time so they can rush.

I would like to see a similar system in Planetside Next. Rushing doesn't often happen because no one wants to be the first one to run in. If you have an invincible guy rushing in first, everyone will follow. This eliminates long stand-offs and adds another element of strategy to the game. Outdoors, it can be an effective way for a soldier to take out a vehicle (hitting its weak point) and for a faction to re-secure the courtyard.

I like the idea of night vision. It would be cool to have rooms that are very dark and flashes from gunfire light it up.

JackEarthrider · 2009-12-03, 02:55 PM

not so sure about "invinciblity mode" cause that might not be very fun for the person on the receiving end.

However, some games have stimulant boosts that make it so your guy moves faster, shoots faster, reloads faster, etc. (that could be something the medic uses)

I still think that special grenades/tactics are the answer, id be very reluctant to implement technical gimmics that circumvent the game rules.

Still though, ideas are better than keeping everything the same.

ANaKeR · 2009-12-03, 03:15 PM

Invincibility Mode sounds skeptical, yes, but if you've played Team Fortress 2 you see it in action and it really makes a big difference. The invincibility mode lasts only 8 seconds so it's just enough time to breach the door. The main benefit is the 'scare' factor as opposed to decimating everyone around you. You don't end up getting very many kills because everyone sees you and they realize that they need to keep their distance because its a losing fight to go against them. It does suck to be on the receiving end, but if you're running towards them shooting at them then you should expect to get killed.

Sifer2 · 2009-12-04, 12:04 AM

One thing that might help the situation could be the ability to shoot through walls. So if you know someone is camping right around the corner you just shoot the crap out of it. There could also be things like Riot Shields where you cant use a weapon while carrying it but could provide heavy cover from the front and a damaging melee attack that could push an enemy backwards. Something like that on a MAX would be cool.

JackEarthrider · 2009-12-04, 01:05 PM

On most games they let you use a pistol as a secondary when wielding a shield, so that at least they can do something if their caught in the open.

The shooting through walls thing should only work on certain types of surfaces (like doorways) otherwise there is gonna be ppl lighting up the wall 24/7.

Yet, I still haven't heard of what ppl think about movement screens (smoke grenades) or sensory overload devices (flashbangs). I don't think they would be terribly difficult to implement, and they would probably improve indoor combat dynamics quite a bit.

ANaKeR · 2009-12-04, 01:58 PM

Flashbang/Smoke Grenades are a no brainer. They would definitely be useful in the game.

Throwing a couple of smoke granades in a doorway and then rushing in would be great! You have to make sure that some care is taken when implementing them into the game because you dont want it to be easy to fill a whole room with smoke.

A possible setup:

Smoke Grenade
Outdoors - Thick, copious amount of highly translucent smoke.
Indoors - Thinner, semi transparent smoke
White colored smoke that lasts about ~20 seconds and stops emitting smoke when sustaining a small amount of damage

Flashbang Grenade
Degree of blindness determined by angle at which grenade explodes in front of you and distance. So say within ~5 meters and ~20 degrees - fully blind (translucent white) for ~3 seconds. Greater than ~5 meters and/or more than ~20 degrees - semi blind (semi transparent white) for ~2 seconds. Beyond a certain distance you see a bright explosion but doesn't blind you at all. Friendlies get a only semi blind but duration is the same. Very light damage within ~1 meter of exploding flashbang. No effect to players in vehicles or looking through a window.

Kumoblade · 2009-12-04, 08:30 PM

Come on, this is the future we're talking about here =P. Hopefully they'll have something more sophisticated than Smoke as thats a double edged sword if you're trying to use it to assault. The moment you lob a smoke, the enemies are going to start blasting with heavy firepower making a hallway a deathzone, and its not like you can see through it to pluck them out. Smoke is used to provide cover to get from Point A to Point B under concealment, not launch a full out assault through it, because you're just as blind as the enemy that you're trying to charge at.

Theres a ton of ways to do a Door Breach. Penetratable materials are one way where you can fire rounds through objects to hit the targets on the other side, but I somehow think that bases are built sturdier than that to allow 9mm-10mm slugs go through it.

Other Methods would be adding a Utility MAX to the arsenal, replacing an Anti-Infantry MAX. I think Aircrafts/Vehicles/MAXs should be very expensive, as well as their counters so there are fewer MAXs and fewer Counter-MAXs, but one could make all the difference.

Give it a Shield it can hold out infront of itself/Melee with in close quarters to bust up enemy infantry lines, and a Deployable Shield battery it can drop to allow infantry to take cover behind that is destroyed after sustaining a large amount of damage.

Instead of a Smoke Grenade, why not a displacement field generator that will trick the enemies into thinking that theres no enemies coming. Place it out infront of the door, it goes to work, you open the door and charge in, but the enemies still see the door as closed until you come bursting through the field of influence.

Think of Speed, how they set the camera on the bus to loop around to think nothing is going on, even though they're trying to get off. All enemies within the field are Masked/Invisible until they come bursting through. That would be far more effective for Rushes than smoke.

JackEarthrider · 2009-12-05, 03:50 PM

Well I didn't really know enough about this game to suggest futuristic ideas, but still any extra arsenal for assulting indoor areas would be welcome and apprecaited.

In some cases as much as half the battle can be fought indoors, I think we need just as many tools indoors as out.

Anything to help improve gameplay, thanks for the suggestions.

Kumoblade · 2009-12-06, 01:51 AM

Originally Posted by JackEarthrider

Well I didn't really know enough about this game to suggest futuristic ideas, but still any extra arsenal for assulting indoor areas would be welcome and apprecaited.

In some cases as much as half the battle can be fought indoors, I think we need just as many tools indoors as out.

Anything to help improve gameplay, thanks for the suggestions.

I wholeheartedly concur. Interior combat needs to be just as immersive as vehicle battles. I'd like to see less spray and pray (cough cough lasher) and more tactical combat strategies that matter instead of flooding a room with enough plasma that you rack up as many friendly kills as you do enemy kills.

I hope the devs will be creative. I'd really like to see a good Sticky cover system and penetratable objects (eg blasting through a door to the idiots on the other side.) with some great physics.

I miss the Red Faction Railgun when it came to idiot campers hiding.

DviddLeff · 2009-12-09, 01:41 PM

I recommend that everyone goes and tries Star Wars: Republic Commando as it is one game that I think nails how infantry combat should be in a sci fi setting.

The main thing is door breaching; you as squad leader call for either a stealthy hack or a door breach, and your squad then goes to it; squad leaders in PS would be awesome with the orders key that this game has, as well as games like Brothers in Arms. Back to the door entry; hacking is just like PS, quietly open an enemy door while door breaches require you to plant explosives and then stand back, after which the troops throw in flashbangs and then storm it; in PS this would be amazing.

Smoke grenades would be great; by smoking out defenders they will find it hard to shoot unless they already have their crosshairs lined up, and in which case they are still not aiming for you, just firing blind. Smokes also in the field would be very useful providing cover from snipers or vehicles as infantry travel.

Good idea regarding SMGs; they should be more useful indoors due to their rapid fire rate. At the moment heavy assault harms the game, it simply gives those who use it a massive advantage indoors due to the damage output, giving MA users little chance due to the low damage output and time to kill; in my eyes HA should be broken up and separated, but the main change would be to make SMGs that can perform on par with them at close quarters.

Killing the lights in a building would be fantastic, especially if you combined it with an implant that let you see in low light, torches or infra red vision.

Regarding the idea about TF2 invincibility I simply don't think its needed as MAXs should fill that role. At the moment they do not as everyone carries a decimator, which gives MAXs about the same life expectancy as an infantryman indoors. Change MAXs so that they take deci damage like any other infantry and they will become a lot more useful indoors.