Shields Replacing Armor - Good or Bad Change?

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Redshift

TBH i just assumed shields wouldn't charge if you were firing, apart from that everything else is the same, you sit round a corner for a bit and you're back to full health, no one ever ran around healing others because it was mostly pointless as everyone just did themselves. You never ran out of juice because you just looted it you needed, or carried a spare can of each giving you 20 lives worth of rep/med juice!

What they've done is remove the tedious bits of medic and eng and made them more exciting, the med now actively heals during the fight, far better than just pointing the med app at a crouched guy.

The eng i assume is going to get some funky tools, i heard a turret mentioned at least.

I don't consider supply management in a War game as trivial. Before they added extra certs, people did indeed heal others. The Added certs were given to tray to attract the session based player, who see reliance or dependance on others as a hindrance.

Correction to your supply comment. YOU never ran out of juice, because others could augment your supply. This won't happen if you are alone, or unprepared.

This is my point. Shields remove this need to bring the right tool for the job, this includes extra supplies for those long Gen holds. The side effect of all the juice swapping created moments of vulnerability while trading and healing. Shields will not.

[Bonius]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

I don't consider supply management in a War game as trivial. Before they added extra certs, people did indeed heal others. The Added certs were given to tray to attract the session based player, who see reliance or dependance on others as a hindrance.

Correction to your supply comment. YOU never ran out of juice, because others could augment your supply. This won't happen if you are alone, or unprepared.

This is my point. Shields remove this need to bring the right tool for the job, this includes extra supplies for those long Gen holds. The side effect of all the juice swapping created moments of vulnerability while trading and healing. Shields will not.

They've added a whole class dedicated to healing and ressing other people, how is that not "coming prepared" for a gen hold?

SOE is trying to cater for everyone this time around, not just the well organized outfits, but also the people that enjoy playing in a more relaxed environment. I can guarantee that one of the reasons PS1 didn't attract that much attention was because it relied too heavily on coordination and teamwork, thus alienating the most profitable playerbase ('carebears').

I for one did not enjoy spending hours a day waiting for someone to come gun my MBT (or spend hours in a tank with an incompetent driver), chasing after medjuice, scouting for invisible and buggy AMS-bubbles or get completely buttsecksed by reavers/mossies everytime I pulled a vehicle out of base when the rest of my outfit wasn't available or online.

[MrBloodworth]

Yeah, I don't disagree with your point. Just arguing for a middle ground. Shields feel like tossing out the baby with the bathwater.

[Aurmanite]

Actually, it's the carebears that have a problem with this system. They want more down time, slower pace, and less action. They rail against the idea that people should have any level of self sufficiency in Planetside 2, despite that fact that at BR 12 in Planetside you could have med, eng, rexo, medium assault, heavy assault, and AV. That is way more one man army style than we will see in Planetside 2.

Plus, we don't know how the engineer class will interact with shield regeneration. Perhaps they will have tools to slow the regeneration of enemies, and increase friendlies.

Less down time does not equate to less team work. It just means less down time.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

I don't consider supply management in a War game as trivial. Before they added extra certs, people did indeed heal others.

dunno what you were playing but BR20 was more than adequate for a solo kill whore loadout.

I remember several times playing a low level char and it being faster to kill yourself and respawn than wait for someone to heal you up, it just wasn't done because everyone was self sufficient.
In this one a whole class is dedicated to being a med, they'll be doing nothing but healing, they'll only role that class to heal others, hence it'll be more teamwork orientated.