Plasma

[I SandRock]

Plasma adds variety and as Spec Assault is a suppression weapon against infantry. Frag grenades do much less damage and are more to kill spitfires or annoy vehicles / max units.

If you decide to stand still when you were hit full on by the first plasma round of spec assault and get hit by another two it's your own damn fault. It's REALLY easy NOT to get killed by these. It's more suppression then kill farming, the only farming you do is noobies.

Originally Posted by Bags

All you have to do is run into a crowd of people holding m1 and you're guaranteed a kill or two + a lot of annoyed, half hp enemies.

So just like the MCG or even the JH? :P

[Aractain]

Well considering that 'noobies' are still kills that pretty much fits the description of kill farming. Plasma was the peak of skillless gameplay - I don't want that again please.

Pressure is the equivolent of suppresion in (multiplayer) games. It works with a health bar better than the out wright damage nessasary for being afarid to be hit. As your health bar goes down you get closer to death the cosntant feeling of 'my health is not optimal' puts pressure on the player to 1) use up medpacks and other resoruces they then might not be able to use in a fight, 2) repair/heal themselves which means they are not shooting at targets and they might be in a vunerable position if assaulted and 3) straight up not have as much health and are easier to kill.

The Planetside plasma was a real assualt weapon better than MA or even HA in some cases (corners).

Never Again!

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by Aractain

Well considering that 'noobies' are still kills that pretty much fits the description of kill farming. Plasma was the peak of skillless gameplay - I don't want that again please.

Pressure is the equivolent of suppresion in (multiplayer) games. It works with a health bar better than the out wright damage nessasary for being afarid to be hit. As your health bar goes down you get closer to death the cosntant feeling of 'my health is not optimal' puts pressure on the player to 1) use up medpacks and other resoruces they then might not be able to use in a fight, 2) repair/heal themselves which means they are not shooting at targets and they might be in a vunerable position if assaulted and 3) straight up not have as much health and are easier to kill.

The Planetside plasma was a real assualt weapon better than MA or even HA in some cases (corners).

Never Again!

So what if it was better than MA or HA in SOME situations? You paid 3 points for it and it was very niche and you really didn't farm that many kills with it. Probably just as much as you farmed grief with it :P

And how many kills did you ever get with the radiator? There is no need to give somebody a gun that can't kill but only annoy. The whole idea of CERTs is that not everyone has exactly the same guns. This means that guns have to be self-sufficient. You probably think everyone has HA + Spec, maybe in that setup spec is pretty powerful. But if you run with just Spec and MA then you rely heavily on spec to do ANY damage, just becoming a pressure tool means you are forced to use MA/HA all the time for actually killing.

You're actually asking for variety to be removed from the game... Might as well get rid of the CERT system and let everyone do everything

[Aractain]

I used SA quite a lot since I didn't like the cookiecutter HA setups which ment MA, Rocklet and thumper when I wanted to actually get some kills.

And you are correct in that with the design of planetsides kill focused system EVERYTHING had to kill well. Why does this need to be the case? If a plasma thumper dude is doing his job and hes being rewarded for the risk then SOME people will use it. I probably would.

By rewarding people who are doing thier role you improve variety AND teamplay by allowing people to play the way they want rather than "this is the best gun so Ill take that".

Ultimately, and maybe this is pie in the sky thinking but other games have done it, I want to play planetside that was orginially intended where different roles supported each other. I.e. you need assault troops (HA), marksmen (MA), special (suppresion), MAXs and the odd cloaker to properly fight.

The dominance of AOE spam and close ranges of most indoor enviroments reduced that.

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by Aractain

I used SA quite a lot since I didn't like the cookiecutter HA setups which ment MA, Rocklet and thumper when I wanted to actually get some kills.

And you are correct in that with the design of planetsides kill focused system EVERYTHING had to kill well. Why does this need to be the case? If a plasma thumper dude is doing his job and hes being rewarded for the risk then SOME people will use it. I probably would.

By rewarding people who are doing thier role you improve variety AND teamplay by allowing people to play the way they want rather than "this is the best gun so Ill take that".

Ultimately, and maybe this is pie in the sky thinking but other games have done it, I want to play planetside that was orginially intended where different roles supported each other. I.e. you need assault troops (HA), marksmen (MA), special (suppresion), MAXs and the odd cloaker to properly fight.

The dominance of AOE spam and close ranges of most indoor enviroments reduced that.

I don't think AOE is dominating at all. I think MAX dominate indoors. Especially when your team repairs you. I've had several base fights in the last few days and I never got bothered by Spec Assault to a point where I thought "This needs changing" (I dont use Spec assault myself but I have in the past).

Spec Assault needs to be viable to kill not because suppression isn't fine but because otherwise you force people to use MA/HA for the majority of the game. As Spec really serves a niche purpose already and would be even more so after your proposed change. Right now you can still use it outdoors for fighting due to it's damage potential.

I think we already have way too much MA/HA use in PS, I want some variety. Not everyone using either sweeper/empire specific machine gun or HA :/

[Bags]

Originally Posted by I SandRock

So just like the MCG or even the JH? :P

Actually the lasher is the only HA that is comparable to the flamethrower's abilities.

[kaffis]

Perhaps plasma (or an equivalent third grenade type with a wide AE) shouldn't do outright damage, but should instead prevent healing or repairing for some duration?

This means it could be paired with frags to create a teamwork-oriented choke point deterrent, or paired with HA to suppress.

Honestly, though, I see no problem with just removing initial damage, and making sure it doesn't stack. Do 30 damage or whatever over 5 or 10 seconds, and it's not that lethal on its own. So long as you don't get hit repeatedly over 15 (or 30, depending on the duration you settle on) seconds, you wouldn't die from plasma. However, it's still providing a motivation to not stay huddled around the corner.

[etheral]

I had an idea of removing plasma and splitting the frag grenade into two types: High Explosive (Middling damage over a similar area to the plasma nade, but no DoT) and Anti Tank (very small AoE but high damage, particularly to vehicles/max). Possibly making the AT grenade handheld only so weapons like the rocklet arent made obsolete by the thumper. Thoughts?

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by Bags

Actually the lasher is the only HA that is comparable to the flamethrower's abilities.

Rofl.

[Raymac]

I guess I'm one of those guys alot of you like to hate because I use SA. I only use it on specific occasions though. I don't care about getting kills or farming. For me it's more about moving the empire forward.

We've all been in those stalemate fights where it's a Tower of Doom or some Interlink front door. You try to run in, but there are just too many people there shooting at the choke point to break through. Well, the plasma nades do a great job of softening up that bottleneck so you can actually break through instead of banging your head against a wall for an hour.

[Jamini]

First: I use SA.

Correction: I use Special Assault for the rocklet rifle. A nice well-rounded weapon that works in a wide variety of situations and can net you a lot of kills in short order if used WELL.

And even then: I still don't want plasma in PS2.

Remove plasma. Remove thirdperson for infantry. PS = a hell of a lot more fun indoors.

[Effective]

The only thing about plasma (and SA in general) is the explode on impact primary function. Remove it , reduce cert points, make SA 4 cert points, and it should be fine.