News: Matt Higby doing a Q&A at reddit!

[Chufty]

Relax mate, I was just chatting.

[Hamma]

Guys please get back on topic or stop responding. The Lounge is a great place for mindless banter..

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I'd have your back, but between throwing me under the bus earlier on this thread, and sticking with My Little Ponys.....you're on your own.

But seriously sorry about that, I could have sworn you asked the question. Guess not.

Originally Posted by Chufty

Relax mate, I was just chatting.

I ain't even mad.


Big question for Higby: how will these "uncapturable footholds" work? How campable will they be? How can you capture a continent with them?

[NapalmEnima]

Hello Mr. Higby. Glad to meecha.

I have several questions:

1) Will we see the return of Smoke Jumper? That guy rawked.

2) How does "you can specify training time up to 24 hours ahead" jibe with "you train faster while online"? If you're on the entire 24 hours (and not getting idle-kicked because you're a PS fiend with a meth addiction), you'll be able to train More Skillz than someone that was offline the entire time. "24 hours of off-line time" sounds reasonable.

3) Classes and skills: Lets see if I understand this correctly. Classes will (to varying extents) dictate what equipment is available. Skills will either modify various attributes (overall health, damage with weapon X), or unlock Addition Stuff (specialty gear, weapon mods, new classes?, new vehicles?).

4) Outfit Skills: Will they be unique to outfits (outfit health +1%, +2% vs player health +1%, +2%..., spiffy unique-to-outfits unlocks (siege tanks! Make It Happen!!ONE!)) possibly stacking with similar player abilities, or will they allow outfit members to simply skip training certain player skills? Sounds like the latter would create Potential Issues when a player left an outfit after buying skills that built on those from an outfit.

• Solution 1: Only allow outfit skills to be "leaf" skills, where there's nothing after them to take.
  
  Solution 2: Training built on an outfit-purchased skill "falls down" and fills in the gaps. It trickles down uniformly to fill in the gap. A bunch (all) of the leaf skills would need some additional training to be completed (again).

5) You've stated you want experienced players to be no more than 15-20% more effective than new players. Is that per attribute, or overall?

If I'm dishing out 20% more damage per hit, hit more often (20% smaller cone of fire), and can take %20 more damage, that's significantly more "net advantage".

Lets say they both start off with 100 health, do 10 damage per bullet, and every 5th bullet misses. The experienced player will have 120 health, do 12 damage, and miss with every 6th bullet.

newb: 100, expert: 120
bullet 1: newb: 88 expert: 110
bullet 2: newb: 76 expert: 100
3: 64, 90
4: 52, 80
5: 40, 80 (missed)
6: 40(missed), 70
7: 38, 60
8: 26, 50
9: 14, 40
10: 2, 40 (missed)
11: dead, 30

Not quite as overwhelming as I'd imagined, but decisive none the less.

6) One of the principles of PS was "you never need to worry about buying bullets". Will this carry over into PS2? Given no resources outside what's available in an Empire's uncaptureable foothold on a given continent, will players be able to field anything at all? I presume basic gear is free (or so close as not to matter).

Will resources be stocked by empire, by outfit, and or by player? How would players get access to empire/outfit resources? Mission bonuses?

7) Do you plan to keep the "empire balancing" features of PS, where underpopulated empires are given an experience boost, health bonuses, and so forth? Seems like you wouldn't be able to give empire incentives when a given account is locked into a particular empire on a given server.

Idea: Let people sign up for "OMG, we need help" emails/text messages from a given server, perhaps limited to a particular time range (Don't bug me at 5am). And don't bug me while I'm online, or have logged off within the last N minutes (60?).

Idea: Pull instead of push. Create facebook/google+/twitter accounts for each empire on each server, maybe an RSS feed. They can start calling for aid when needed, give reports on the days events, and so forth. That'd be pretty damn cool.

8 ) What kind of missions will be available? Are we talking "kill that guy", "take that place/facility", "take that continent"? What kind of granularity are we talking about here? And how many missions can a player/squad/platoon?/outfit?/empire? have at once?

Will missions be limited to "take this, blow up that", or will there be Other Stuff (assemble here, patrol there, deploy defenses over yonder).

Low exp patrol missions generated automatically by an empire might be good for getting a few mossy's & buggies zipping around looking for trouble. I suggest XP bonuses for actually spotting intruders, or they could just turn into "blindly follow the waypoints" missions.

9) Back-hacking sucked. The "you have to capture this before you capture that" system forced the creation of Front Lines, where Fighting Happened. Back-hacking turned into a round robin where commanders and players got BEP and CEP (which is gone now, I get that) for standing around and picking their noses. Dull. And it sounds like you're aiming for considerably faster pace than that.

It sounds like you're going to allow back-hacking. What do you propose instead to Create Conflict?

[Tool]

Originally Posted by Bags

Big question for Higby: how will these "uncapturable footholds" work? How campable will they be? How can you capture a continent with them?

I'm curious about this as well.

[Tigersmith]

I love how cross faction chat is right now. Fantastic

[ShowNoMercy]

I didnt really read through all 26 pages of comments so if someone mentioned this i apologize.

According to Higby's answer on pg 13, you indeed would be able to pull and AA max right out of a term if you spotted reavers outside. The certing system was so valuable to PS1 because it forced teamwork, nobody could be a running 1 man army, but now you can as long as you are by a term. Why cant we just make it so that only a certain number of your skill branches are available at one time? then on a timer base you can activate different sections of your skill tree. Wouldnt make much difference to a newb since they will likely try and specialize off the bat, but later on when vets start getting very complex skill trees they would be able to do everything with the click of an equipment/vech term. Granted they will not be as effective as a mid range player who full specialized, but still an AA max at any skill level in this game can be totally devastating to a reaver as compared to the suppressor that i usually carried around in PS1. I never had AA max certed, but i had engi and adv med, so you bet your ass i was healing and repairing AA maxes as a form of self preservation. Additionally, i was far more likely to get SEP from healing an AA max when reavers were all around. PLEASE CONSIDER THIS.

[Ranik Ortega]

Question for higby : What type of Time to kill (TTK) are you looking at? How many shots from a
MA vs MA player?
MA vs HA ?
LA vs HA ? etc etc

In comparison to PS1 2/3rds as long, 1/3?

1-3 good shots ala BF2/CoD/Arma?

[Straws]

I've never been a fan of cross faction chat. For new players, I think it can be quite intrusive to the learning experience. You do something well for a change and then suddenly a torrent of abuse flies your way.

Not saying that hate tells are exclusive to cross faction tells. I'm pretty sure "hey, you stole my kill" is more prevalent than "stop camping me, nub", mostly because finding the camper and killing them is more rewarding, but it's just something I think the game could do without in regards to making and keeping the game attractive to new players. We all know how elitist veterans can get towards anyone that's making silly mistakes.

HOWEVER, despite this opinion, I do think listening in has a place in the game. I feel that chat channels being secure is important, but to undervalue the importance of spy tactics through such a system is fundermentally against the nature of the type of game Planetside is. It shouldn't be easy, and maybe limited to broadcast and tells being intercepted, and with some form of interruption in the data received.

Local banter between the empires, however, should be allowed. That can be witnessed by everyone and members of each empire can deal with traitors in their own way

To summerise;
Cross faction chatter
Local = Yes (incl. emotes)
Broadcast + tells = yes, via hacking specialisation. Listening only. Communication static present.
Squad/platoon/command/automated faction instructions = Maybe, but maybe allowed for hacking commanders (players maxed in hacking spec and working on being a commander). Listening only. Communication static present.
Outfit = never

[Highwind]

In reply to Straw's Post mainly:

Don't limited direct tells between players just because they are on other empires. The idea of it being an unfair line of communication between spys working for other empires doesn't make sense. Only in the most clutch pre-drop or pre-backhack situations would that intel be meaningful in any way, and even then, its only one to one communication in a game made for more or less team play. Everyone should be able to read the map and the flow of battle easy enough, even more so with dynamic missions etc, that I don't think single tells will be an issue that is insurmountable to the point we should spend any effort limiting it at all.

On the second thought of being able to really "spy" (listen in) on party/outfit/command and spoken VOIP via a talent tree, I disapprove of that (Local "Say" chat is clearly fair game, like any voice macro would). The idea that someone can read your in game chat or hear you talking to your teammates is going to be the FASTEST way to get people to start using Vent or Teamspeak etc rather then in game systems. No one that's even semi-hardcore is going to risk tilting their hand to the enemy that way. Unlike the sending tells issue, there might be 100 "spies" on the other empires around you that "hear" you say X or Y about the game. On the other side of the coin you can't talk to one of your in game buddies or RL-Friends about your life/kids/friends/family/work either over in game systems if 100 random kids can all eavesdrop on you in an often and persistent way, it kills casual talk between people that know each other 'enough' already, some of what can make the MMO experience so great.

The real issue that the Devs want to put in the full spectrum of communication tools in the game, and if they get undermined by their own doing it will be kinda sad to see all that effort go down the drain. If there is "spying" the in game VOIP will go the way of the in game voice chat that "WoW" has, unused, and forgotten for example (imo WoW's fails due to lack of features and performance, combined with late implementation, but that is another story with a sad ending). I am sure there are other example of failed in game chat systems all over the place for various reasons, all I am really saying is lets not encourage the Devs or anyone else to shoot themselves in the foot on this issue. (in the end descent idea, but it wouldn't work AT ALL in this game the way I see things)

In short TL: DR, don't do anything that infringes on a players ability to communicate under "normal" gaming guidelines, and don't do anything that would make a player afraid or unwilling to communicate normally. Done.

[Volw]

If people want to spy they will spy anyway.

There's TS, there's Vent, MSN, skype, steam etc etc.

Not a huge inconvenience either.

[Elude]

Originally Posted by Higby

There are no dice roll mechanics in PS2. We don't have critical hits. Player skill-based locational damage is predictable and equalized.

I always figured locational based damage while predictable is still a dice roll to a degree.

How many times have you accidentally shot someone in the head in an FPS when you were simply just trying to hit them?

[Hamma]

That is true, but Higby also said some weapons will not get bonuses to headshots.

[Malorn]

I have to say I like cross-faction communication. It helped develop the community, as much as it might not seem like it does.

I have several great outfit members with us to this day simply becuase of the fact that we have cross-faction communication. They deleted their characters and switched sides because they liked how we played and liked talking to us.

How else are the NC supposed to free the minds of TR and VS from the tyrannical evils of technocracy and autocracy? Afterall, NC are expatriot TR and VS. Cross-faction communication makes that possible instead of completely alienating the other team.

That and I admit one of the things I missed the most in games since Planetside was the reception of hate tells.

Most FPS games offer this capability today also. Adds some strategic and cultural dynamics into the game. Glad to see it there.

[Straws]

@Highwind You're spot on with the spy aspect I proposed. Side affect of on the fly ideas is that not much thought is given to long term effects.

However, cross faction tells will always be a bone of contention with me. Yes, by looking at the map, anyone can tell where the general flow of combat is going, that understandable. This aspect has been made easier with the tactical overlay that was introduced, but the important thing to remember is that this information is vague, and it's vague by design.

Players abusing the tell system in the past has completely ruined moments of the game for many players, and no matter how brief these moments are, they are in complete contention with the spirit of the game.

Remember back before BWGs and when 'Instant Action' was broken, forward planning and staging was actually part of the game. Now, imagine our frustration back then when we would plan an attack on an enemy HC, only to find them waiting for us because 1 or more members of our empire would send tells to our intended target of our plans. It was frustrating to hell to do that much planning only for it to become a WG campfest.

Now, what I do have to remember is that this issue was made more frustrating because of the amount of time that ended up being wasted. With the introduction, amendments and remedial adjustements to the convenience aspects of travel in PS, this has disappeared, even if only due to the fact that general planning aspects of the game have disappeared.

However, despite this realisation, it doesn't change the issue that cross faction tells allow for specific information to be traded, and that potentially spoils the smaller, more detailed tactical event aspects of the game.

But, to reiterate, as big an issue as I may seem to be making it out to be, it is momentary and is not the main concern to be had with cross-empire tells. However, has long as players can CHOOSE to block incoming tells from opposing factions, then maybe that's the approach I should be lobbying for, as long as the blocking feature is on by default.