Is anyone else concerned about the proposed “faster pace” of combat?

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by Bags

It's faster than PS1, slower than BF.

Originally Posted by Bags

They've stated it's faster than PS1, slower than BFBC2

I am not to worried about this overall, I think it needed to be faster - but I think to fast would be bad for PlanetSide. Since they have stated they are planning to go somewhere in between I am cool with that.

[Traak]

Okay, hypothetically, let's contrast two TTK levels:

TTK of Instagib

TTK of a knife-on-primary-mode wielded by two HA's

Instagib: You spawn, equip, run to the action, get splattered. No armor degradation, no time to duck, nothing, just boom splat. You respawn. Equip, run to th...get splattered. Respawn, equ...get splattered. Respaw...splatter. Re...splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter.

If you are pwnz0rzing: You spawn, equip, find the spot where the fodder are running through, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, splatter, etc. Reload. Splatter, splatter, etc.


Ultra-long TTK: Spawn, equip, run to the action. see your enemy, start shooting. He ducks and covers, you reload, he pops a medkit, you repair armor. Face off again, you are degrading his armor, but he is doing the same to yours. You run out off PS, SW, medkits, and eventually, life. In this battle you had to manage:
Ammo
Health
Armor
Medkits
Implants
Position
Aim
Weapon choice
Stance
Ammo type

While considering the enemy's next moves and what he might be reloading or repairing/healing. What was he equipping? Etc.

Lowering the TTK, to me, makes us spend more time spawning and running, and less time actually shooting. This is a first-person shooter. More time should be spent shooting, and stuff that tips the balance away from making out with the inside of a spawn tube/squad spawn/whatever, fondling an eq term, and running back to battle, and more time actually SHOOTING, to me, would rationally be the best choice.

Battles shouldn't last fractions of a second to appeal to the pre-pubescent Lords of Ritalin. That does not lead to involvement, dedication, or teamwork. It leads to servers clogged with gobs of idiots, followed swiftly by empty servers as they go for the next flashy new thing.

Catering to those with the attention span of a gnat will result in an endless cycle of having to try to introduce new brightly colored polyhedral objects to keep them hypnotized week on week, or watching them grow tired and move on to the next toy.

More TTK means more quality of gameplay. Less TTK means the game becomes a relatively mindless reflex contest.

Hollywood knows this. Ever seen a hero one-shot the Big Revenge Enemy Who Killed His Family? The whole movie builds up, then Bad Guy steps out of his car, and the hero punches him in the face so hard he falls over dead. Credits? Ever seen that? If so, how often?

No, movie fights go on and on and on, ridiculously, unrealistically long. With replays, multiple camera angles, etc. Why?

Because instagib is BOOOORINNGG. Can you imagine Rocky stepping into the ring, after all the training, hard work, acting lessons, whatever, Dolf Lundgren steps up, they touch gloves, Rocky jumps up and floors him with one punch. No replay, no slow-mo, no different angles, nothing. Just KO'd. Credits.

So. Yeah, Captain Ritalin and his lieutenants Dave Noshave, Bucky Braces, and Training Bra Betty can find a different game to OMGPWNZ0RZZZZZZZZZZZ and pile up kill stats. Planetside is for people capable of coherent thoughts, not just idiot-savants whose only ability in life is to point and click, and who have to be locked in a padded room for the other hours of the day so they don't try to eat the mucilage glue or harm themselves with scissors.

You have just been killed again by someone who is so retarded he has to have someone change his diaper, but he is the king of the server due to his single-focused mental (dis-)ability to point and click with shocking accuracy. His teammates hear him on voice comms. "Gu-huh-huh-huh. (slurps drool) I beat you! huh huh huh huh. I farted! hehehehe. I made a peepeee!"

Wow, no. No, I want Planetside to be far more demanding than the cursor-focused dolts whose talent, whose ONLY talent in life, may be to point and click can manage.

Am I against skilled players? No. I am for a game that rewards a variety of skills, and low TTK's only reward ONE THING: Point and click.

Nah. Go play Unreal Tournament. Play Duck Hunt. Play with your dolls. Just don't get near Planetside, please.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Traak

Hollywood knows this. Ever seen a hero one-shot the Big Revenge Enemy Who Killed His Family? The whole movie builds up, then Bad Guy steps out of his car, and the hero punches him in the face so hard he falls over dead. Credits? Ever seen that? If so, how often?

No, movie fights go on and on and on, ridiculously, unrealistically long. With replays, multiple camera angles, etc. Why?

Because instagib is BOOOORINNGG. Can you imagine Rocky stepping into the ring, after all the training, hard work, acting lessons, whatever, Dolf Lundgren steps up, they touch gloves, Rocky jumps up and floors him with one punch. No replay, no slow-mo, no different angles, nothing. Just KO'd. Credits.

Actually, I think one of the greatest fight scenes of all time was the one in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where he shoots the guy with the sword, but thats a bit off-topic.

Your argument is a classic strawman fallacy. Don't drag it through the mud and then complain about it being dirty. This isn't going to be UT fast, or Counterstrike fast, or COD fast, or even BFBC2 fast. It's just going to be a little bit faster than the relatively extremely slow PS1. That's the goal, and that's what they will aim for in balancing.

Plus, we've all played the game so we've all been focus fired and killed quickly, and that will never change. It is an mmofps not just an fps after all.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Actually, I think one of the greatest fight scenes of all time was the one in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where he shoots the guy with the sword, but thats a bit off-topic.

QFT

[Traak]

I understand your points. I was exaggerating for effect, and I took it from the perspective of the two polar opposites we might have experienced, or, at least, could imagine.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I am not to worried about this overall, I think it needed to be faster - but I think to fast would be bad for PlanetSide. Since they have stated they are planning to go somewhere in between I am cool with that.

I had to post it twice because after I posted it people kept talking about two shot kills!

[DviddLeff]

Been thinking about this today and lower time to kill leads to the following changes:

• Individual skill requirement – less sustained accuracy is needed but faster reflexes are rewarded.
• Team play requirement – combined fire needed less, but using players to sweep and clear areas for lone enemies that could cause trouble is more vital.
• Tactics requirement – more important as cover is needed, suppressing fire is more effective so flanking is more useful.
• Weapon choice – less important as each weapon will be more useful in more situations.

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Bags

Waaaa, my 4-cert cheaper MA doesn't counter HA where HA is supposed to shine, what bad balance!

Just sayin'. Agree with most of your yellow other than that though.

I kill HA all the time with MA....well...40% of the time I kill them all the time.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

I kill HA all the time with MA....well...40% of the time I kill them all the time.

Exactly. Even skill, you'll lose with MA. Most other times you have a good chance with MA.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Traak

[amazing points]

Exactly. It's amazing how few people understand this.

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

Been thinking about this today and lower time to kill leads to the following changes:

• Individual skill requirement – less sustained accuracy is needed but faster reflexes are rewarded.
• Team play requirement – combined fire needed less, but using players to sweep and clear areas for lone enemies that could cause trouble is more vital.
• Tactics requirement – more important as cover is needed, suppressing fire is more effective so flanking is more useful.
• Weapon choice – less important as each weapon will be more useful in more situations.

Really good points. I for one want to reward skill, but not just "how fast can I put my cursor to the player's head". You have a lot of choices like "which weapon should I use for X situation". When you make them all basically the same it really destroys their uniqueness. I'd argue that cover isn't as important. You're better off just charging and shooting them since it only takes a few bullets. It's not like the enemy can get behind cover fast enough and do anything really if the TTK is too low. (Imagine uncrouching and taking a few rounds then trying to crouch down behind cover. It really depends on the TTK if that can be accomplished or if you just get killed before you can react).

[MasterChief096]

I fail to see how PlanetSide's pacing was "extremely" slow. Maybe nowadays it is with the clutter of useless shit that isn't needed (BFRs, all the extra CE that was added, viruses, maelstrom and radiator spam which makes people afraid to push, cave locks that give ridiculously overpowered benefits to a base, and the fact that BFRs for whatever god forsaken reason don't require a tech plant to pull). To me its those unnecessary game additions that make the pacing of the game slow, not the actual TTK itself.

Before cave locks you didn't have infantry that stagnated at the shield of a gate at a facility. People didn't retreat from the spawn level stairwell in a bio to the top level once a single guy with a maelstrom started spamming it into the hallway. Aircraft didn't afterburn away to avoid death if they started getting pinged by a Cerberus Spitfire from 100m away.

Back when PlanetSide launched the pacing was relatively fast. During base fights, you often died as fast as you could spawn regardless of the fact that there wasn't all those features. Tanks used to drop instantly when 10-15 AV users focused their fire. What's it going to be like with 10-15 AV users shooting your vehicle now in PS2 with a lower TTK? Not sure I wanna know.

If I play beta and the TTK somehow allows for shit loads of people on my screen at once and doesn't also have the added effect of instant death anytime I turn a corner, then I won't care. But for now, I'm going to have to draw a comparison and say, "Gee, what if the TTK in PlanetSide was lower? Boy wouldn't that mean that I get gibbed as soon as I enter a stairwell battle and the first thumper round hits near my foot? Would my vanguard even last 10 seconds against five guys with a lancer?"

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Exactly. It's amazing how few people understand this.

I think DviddLeff just listed off a lot of the things we don't want to see in the game. Really good points there.

His points were really good except for one thing; there's not going to be instagibbing by infantry (except sniper hs).

BFBC2 < PS2 < PS1

is the TTK

[DviddLeff]

As it stands in PS1 we have a high TTK which leaves us with:

• Individual skill requirement – sustained accuracy is needed making faster reflexes less important.
• Team play requirement – combined fire needed, individual players make less of an impact.
• Tactics requirement – cover is useful, but suppressing fire is not generally effective making flanking and group tactics less useful.
• Weapon choice – vital to succeed in any given area.

Now there are other factors; suppressing fire wastes precious ammo for example.

Traak's exaggerated rant hits a key thing; "Captain Ritalin". We want to get the masses into the game, we want the real twitch gamers to get in the game and stick with it due to the massive scale that other shooters can't compete with. We need to have a balance between PS1's slow and CoDs fast TTK to cater for more people and have a wider player base, so that there's more cash for continued development. BF sits between CoD and PS pace wise; there's still the time to think about tactics if you wish to and set out from the base, but if all you want to do is fight and spawn right in the fight you can.

[FIREk]

I'm sure I wrote it a million times in other identical threads , but nothing stops me from doing this again.

The original statement about pacing is that it will be a bit slower than Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (BFBC2).
The latest statement summed the pacing as "similar to BFBC2".

This game's pacing isn't fast, and is way slower than of Modern Warfare, for instance.
This may be due to some (real or imagined) hit detection glitches, but overall if you got hit, and you weren't moving though open terrain like a moron, you had a good chance of ducking behind cover before they could finish you off.
Up close you needed to land a good shot with a pump-action shotgun to kill someone, or two slightly worse shots.
At longer ranges you could actually kill with an assault rifle, which can't be said for PS1's damage degradation which turned lead into rubber after 50 meters. :P
I thought BFBC2 was slow at first, but then decided that the pacing is perfect for a game with both troops and vehicles.

PS1's pacing, on the other hand, was laughable, especially during long range encounters. You would rin through open ground, get hit a few times, and have plenty of time to find some sort of cover, waltz behind it, heal, repair and go prance about under fire again.

Faster pacing promotes thinking ahead, and thinking fast when thinking ahead didn't work. Personally, I think that's great.

BF3's pacing, though, is just retarded, but we won't be seeing that kind of crap in PS2. Two-shot kills won't work in a game with so many guns.

[Dreamcast]

Planetside was too slow IMO.....Heal or repair yourself behind things most of the time.


It needs to get faster, not too fast of course but a nice balance.