Dev AMA on Reddit notes

[Timithos]

I thought I knew how reddit worked in prioritizing threads, but now I'm confused. How does the AMA Dev reddit thread get pushed down to topic 187 with over 900 interest votes and over 1600 comments? Did the moderators turn the scoring off?

[Roy Awesome]

Originally Posted by Timithos

I thought I knew how reddit worked in prioritizing threads, but now I'm confused. How does the AMA Dev reddit thread get pushed down to topic 187 with over 900 interest votes and over 1600 comments? Did the moderators turn the scoring off?

I hate to bump this dying thread, but I'm sure I heard this question asked before.

You should read this article: http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588

It explains how reddit works pretty well. Time makes things go away, not activity.

[libbmaster]

Originally Posted by Timithos

And the whole abandonment of the hex system and focus on the lattice system is something you can rest half the blame on from esports focus. (The other half is vets requesting some sort of lattice system, and the devs threw-up something.) That major change drew away a lot of dev resources that is certainly not zero time spent on esports. Enhancing hex would have cost less staffing resources. Now we're stuck with a restrictive lattice that already has been relaxed and they're indicating they'll relax it further included within the resource revamp. They wanted to funnel these fights in part because they thought people would want to spectate more for potential esports.

Nexus battle islands were developed because of esports. There was no initial plan to place these as interconnection between continents. But now that they spent so much development time in them, they're going to use them.

We can only guess how many weeks and months Planetside has been set back from the schedule it should be on right now due to esports. I surmise that if you look to see what Planetside looks like in January, that's what it should look like now.

Incorrect. Lattice had absolutely nothing to do with E-sports.

Lattice was pushed by PS1 vets as the solution to the hex system's biggest failing, which was also it's biggest selling point: mobility.

Under the hex system, the zerg always attacked where there were no defenders. This makes sense, and seems like a good idea, IF YOU DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT.

See, the problem was that the enemy zerg was thinking and doing the exact same thing. So, instead of rushing to defend the Territory under attack by your zerg, the enemy zerg would go the other detection and attack the territory you just left, because they were being "tactical" and were "diverting the enemy zerg", even though they weren't, because the enemy was never coming, because they were doing and thinking the same friggin' thing..

So, basically, hex devolved into zergs circling around each other on the map endlessly while achieving absolutely nothing because the territory that they captured was going to be recaptured by the enemy when they left to go recapture the territory that the enemy was capturing right now.


So the lattice was hailed as the the way to fix this, and SOE agreed.

Unfortunately Instead of hearing what the players were asking for which was "Remove all of these IDIOTICALLY small and exposed groups of ramshackle huts, make the major facilities actually worth fighting for, make them actually able to sustain a fight and then connect them with lattice", SOE heard "Take the hexes and draw lines on them LoL".

So now, instead of having a pointless and repetitive game of glorified "whack-a-mole", we have a pointless and repetitive grind where we wait five minutes in the middle of a massive traffic jam for an outpost to capture, make the thirty second drive to the next tiny cluster of buildings, rotflstomp the defenders inside of a minute, and then wait another five minutes in the middle of a massive traffic jam for the outpost to capture while LoL-podders and Zephyr Libs repeatedly rape the "spawn shack" where the defenders are curled up on the floor quietly sobbing.


TL;DR: Hex was dumb, "new" lattice is a poorly implemented hybrid system that is a band-aid fix and thus no fun. E-sports didn't affect that, because E-sports affects nothing.


Also, I'm not usually this bitter, it's just that it's late, and you said something wrong on the internet, so it was serious.

[Timithos]

Originally Posted by libbmaster

Incorrect. Lattice had absolutely nothing to do with E-sports.

Lattice was pushed by PS1 vets as the solution to the hex system's biggest failing, which was also it's biggest selling point: mobility.

Under the hex system, the zerg always attacked where there were no defenders. This makes sense, and seems like a good idea, IF YOU DO NOT THINK ABOUT IT.

See, the problem was that the enemy zerg was thinking and doing the exact same thing. So, instead of rushing to defend the Territory under attack by your zerg, the enemy zerg would go the other detection and attack the territory you just left, because they were being "tactical" and were "diverting the enemy zerg", even though they weren't, because the enemy was never coming, because they were doing and thinking the same friggin' thing..

So, basically, hex devolved into zergs circling around each other on the map endlessly while achieving absolutely nothing because the territory that they captured was going to be recaptured by the enemy when they left to go recapture the territory that the enemy was capturing right now.


So the lattice was hailed as the the way to fix this, and SOE agreed.

Unfortunately Instead of hearing what the players were asking for which was "Remove all of these IDIOTICALLY small and exposed groups of ramshackle huts, make the major facilities actually worth fighting for, make them actually able to sustain a fight and then connect them with lattice", SOE heard "Take the hexes and draw lines on them LoL".

So now, instead of having a pointless and repetitive game of glorified "whack-a-mole", we have a pointless and repetitive grind where we wait five minutes in the middle of a massive traffic jam for an outpost to capture, make the thirty second drive to the next tiny cluster of buildings, rotflstomp the defenders inside of a minute, and then wait another five minutes in the middle of a massive traffic jam for the outpost to capture while LoL-podders and Zephyr Libs repeatedly rape the "spawn shack" where the defenders are curled up on the floor quietly sobbing.


TL;DR: Hex was dumb, "new" lattice is a poorly implemented hybrid system that is a band-aid fix and thus no fun. E-sports didn't affect that, because E-sports affects nothing.


Also, I'm not usually this bitter, it's just that it's late, and you said something wrong on the internet, so it was serious.

I can't agree that esports had nothing to do with it. Plenty of devs were talking it up earlier this year, so plenty of devs had esports on the brain. Some of the biggest spectated games on Twitch TV are MOBA games. You can see the influence of MOBA with the lattice designs - the lanes. It wasn't nothing. It wasn't much, but it wasn't nothing.

I think the lattice should be tied to resources, bonuses, xp bonuses, and vehicle access. And that holding each sector increases all the bonuses over time for that sector. I don't think the lattice should tell you where you can and cannot fight, or at least in the lightest restrictive sense possible. (like major facilities only)

[Timithos]

Originally Posted by Roy Awesome

I hate to bump this dying thread, but I'm sure I heard this question asked before.

You should read this article: http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588

It explains how reddit works pretty well. Time makes things go away, not activity.

Interesting - so reddit is an open source code. I wish the Planeside subreddit moderators would reduce the emphasize on time then. It is set too high. It's a real shame this thread died in under 3 days. The moderators should have at least stickied it for a couple weeks.

[BlaxicanX]

Originally Posted by Timithos

I can't agree that esports had nothing to do with it. Plenty of devs were talking it up earlier this year, so plenty of devs had esports on the brain. Some of the biggest spectated games on Twitch TV are MOBA games. You can see the influence of MOBA with the lattice designs - the lanes. It wasn't nothing. It wasn't much, but it wasn't nothing.

That isn't a logical connection at all, though. The lattice and MOBA "lanes" have absolutely nothing in common besides "they're both lines".

Competitive PS2 won't even interact with the lattice, because competitive PS2 takes place entirely on battle-islands, which are a single-hex. So there are no hex-to-hex capture mechanics in MLG PS2.

I concur that the lattice is entirely the fault of PS1 vets pushing as hard as they can. However, I'm also of the opinion that the lattice, even as we have it now, is much better than the old hex system.

[Emperor Newt]

The only thing I miss about the hex system is that you can no longer sit in a zerg galaxy/sundi and getting a lot of certs while doing your dishes. Which basically is the pre-lattice zerg in a nutshell.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by libbmaster

So now, instead of having a pointless and repetitive game of glorified "whack-a-mole", we have a pointless and repetitive grind where we wait five minutes in the middle of a massive traffic jam for an outpost to capture, make the thirty second drive to the next tiny cluster of buildings, rotflstomp the defenders inside of a minute, and then wait another five minutes in the middle of a massive traffic jam for the outpost to capture while LoL-podders and Zephyr Libs repeatedly rape the "spawn shack" where the defenders are curled up on the floor quietly sobbing.

This, pretty much. The entire concept of the invulnerable-yet-vehicle-spammable spawn-outhouse is a disaster. It's humiliating for the defenders and frustrating for the attackers. It's boring. It ISN'T FUN.

They need to provide covered walkways to adjacent buildings, have two doors total, get rid of the one-way shields, and make spawn tubes destructible. That's a kludge, but it'd work. It'd nudge gameplay closer to what we had a decade ago, which was arguably much better thought-out than what we have now.

In other news, Higgles is pushing the idea of bringing back the Galaxy as a spawn point -- if only for your squad. So once every other squad has one, we'll have invulnerable spawn points you can neither see nor shoot at parked on top of every goddam building raining attackers on your ass. Again. Like beta. Wheeee....! Dynamic gameplay FTW!

And apparently the un-mannable giant metal fences -- NOT walls, just these giant Tesco barriers you can neither see over nor defend properly -- on Esamir are here to stay. So are the lame-ass 'Non-Deployment Areas' or whatever they're called. More kludges deriving from lousy base design. More frustration. Park your AMS in a necessarily exposed area just *outside* the deployment zone and join the angry trail of army ants raging around the big blank fence-thing, trying to find their way in! Run for a minute and a half and circle three-quarters of the way around the tower and and die instantly from rocket spam! Wheee! More fun! And they doubtless wonder why Indarside remains the only game in town....

Originally Posted by BlaxicanX

I concur that the lattice is entirely the fault of PS1 vets pushing as hard as they can. However, I'm also of the opinion that the lattice, even as we have it now, is much better than the old hex system.

If that's partially my 'fault', I'll happily shoulder the blame. I couldn't access the WG queue for love or money last night (again), so I wound up on Amerish with the Terran Republican Guard and one other big guild, steamrolling the smurfs... in circles. Dash back and forth, take this, resecure that, ghost-hack the other, wait for five minutes, move on, move back... this tightly-organized vehicle zerg with nothing to attack except an enemy that played virtual Viet Cong with you by popping up anywhere at any time. I logged after about twenty minutes and had my little Two Minute Nerdrage wondering why one continent out of three was STILL lattice-less after six months. Why the Planetside franchise was still driving down the middle of the street and straddling both lanes, including the one with big obsolescent potholes in it.

Pardon the wall-of-text ranting, but Jesus! This is all of a piece. It's the result of the almost palpable pushme-pullyu tug of war between two competing schools of thought on the dev team. The Dynamic Gameplay faction, while they have some fresh ideas that have worked nicely at the gameplay level (generating big field battles by letting everybody pull armor, flying light infantry, etc.) keeps fucking up the big picture (lousy base design, no metagame, no sancs, no way to WIN) and having to backtrack and apply Band-Aids to the wreckage of their pet theory.

Then the Traditionalists try and salvage something and are only allowed to succeed halfway (the lattice superimposed on a hex map with no Spheres of Influence being the most visible result. As are the Tesco barriers and the non-deployment areas, I guess). Wash rinse repeat, on almost every aspect of game design for the past year and a half. If I were Malorn I'd have died of a goddam aneurism by now.

I cannot farking *believe* the sheer time and money and development hours Sony has wasted and continues to waste reinventing, un-inventing, and trying out different shapes of wheel.

/holds head, groans

[Wahooo]

Putting blame for things being slow to develop on those who wanted, then got a lattice over the hex is a bit misplaced.

Had they listened and put in the lattice in early Beta it would not have caused the slow down this far along. The Dev team ignoring that feedback and pushing along with the Hex only to see its failures after 6 months... then retroactively trying to replace it with the long requested lattice is the problem. BUT the change from Hex to Lattice still isn't that much to blame because as the Hex was it would have needed changes, lots and lots of changes and resource system overhauls. So really we are in the same spot we would be REGARDLESS of whether the bitter old PS1 vets got a lattice or not, shit would have been pushed back as the broken down territory system was going to get worked on and require dev time no matter the direction it went.

Still don't understand exactly why Hossin is going to take a year to come off the PTS.

[Crator]

Not sure I remember players saying they wanted lanes. Perhaps some had the idea? No, players (PS1 vets) wanted lattice (no lanes required). The devs put in the lanes. I always thought the main bases should have direct lattice links (like in PS1) with the smaller outposts/towers in-between not attached to the lattice. With that framework, place the outposts/towers properly on the map and shape the terrain to make the progression towards the main bases that are linked by the lattice fun. The issue here was time the devs didn't have. They already had to reshape a lot of the terrain to make the lattice work properly (once they decided that was what the game needed). They didn't have time to go back to the drawing board to properly place things to make the lattice work like it did in PS1 imo.

PS1 maps had strategic locations, that you could capture, spread out; Sometimes too spread out. PS2 maps have locations that you have to capture too close together. But really, there's nothing to drive you to want to go in any one direction on a map in PS2, other then the arbitrary lane that you are forced into by spawn choices or terrain. You just fight, and pretty much in the same areas thanks to the lattice lanes and constant 3-ways. The inter-continental lattice and continent locking, with empire home continents, and without 3-empire footholds, is what gave PS1 that feeling of progression/winning/ownership, and what PS2 is missing. There were reasons to hold on to a continent or cave in PS1. You got benefits, good ones, from having them. And those benefits were fed via the lattice links to the main bases and through the inter-continental lattice links. This gave a reason to go and attack or defend a continent/cave because if you lost it you would loose those linked benefits via the lattice connections.

A major issue with PS2 is that there's a constant 3-way always happening. That wasn't the case in PS1. Yes, there were 3-ways in PS1 and do you know what resulted from it? Stalemates. Where all 3 empires could not advance on each other. Sometimes those stalemates went on for days. That's how it is in PS2 all the time, with the lattice. Without the lattice and with hexes, it was wack-a-mole.

The PS2 hex adjacency system allowed for better progression across a map. It however didn't help an empire hold on to captured terrain for long. The PS2 lattice+lanes system hinders progression across a map but does help empires hold on to captured terrain. Catch 22. But a balancing act the devs have been playing with throughout the game's life. Hopefully one day it will all come together nicely...

[Roy Awesome]

Originally Posted by Timithos

Interesting - so reddit is an open source code. I wish the Planeside subreddit moderators would reduce the emphasize on time then. It is set too high. It's a real shame this thread died in under 3 days. The moderators should have at least stickied it for a couple weeks.

We can't. It's not something that's available to us unless we run our own website, which is never going to happen. Any change to that code is going to effect the whole billion page-view/day website.

[Mox]

Once upon a time..... nice fairytale. I belief it when i see it.

[War Barney]

Woo finally it looks like NC is going to stop being the worst faction. Hopefully this balance will include a complete overhaul of the NC MAX as theres huge streams of evidence showing how bad it is right now