Things you will miss from PS that wont be in PS2?

[Xyntech]

Sure, but we already know they are trimming fat. I'm sure respawn timers and hack timers (or however we capture bases in PS2) will reflect that.

I just don't subscribe to the notion that; some people enjoy long pauses punctuating their game experience and thus that should be the pace for all. That would kill PS2. I think we all agree that the open style of gameplay will allow players to find what suits them, so all the devs have to make sure of is to accommodate the different speeds.

Slower paces just seem a lot easier to handle to me. Unless they totally CoD the game up, there will always be room to breath if you need to. On the other hand, you can't provide faster pacing if players are forced to deal with things like 30 second respawns and 15 minute hacks.

It's just a balancing act. How many different types of gamer can you make happy without ruining the game in the process?

[Checowsky]

The fact that apart from names and paint everything has been changed.

Yes certain aspects seem to be staying the same but the entire game has been changed, this is not Planetside 2 for me anymore, its a new game entirely devoid of what made PS, PS. Don't get me wrong I'm excited in all but I will miss Planetside heavily. I just hope to god they get the shooting mechanics right for having lots of players on the battlefield, PS has that nailed pretty well with the arcade style. [A quick note I'm talking about game mechanics, the thing that matters to me more than what the new Magrider looks like]

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Redshift

Since the driver controls it you'd have to make a decision between strafting or 360 turret or having a stupid control system.

It'll be fine since you can turn on the spot and straft anyway

How would using the Q and E keys for strafing in a WASD setup be a stupid control system? That'd be quite intuitive and incredibly easy to use along w/ a 360-turret, and no more complex or confusing than using lean right/left in CoD for example.

I hope you're right though that it'll be fine. Without a 360-turret the Mag needs to have a fast turn, strafe, and reverse capability and hopefully SOE recognizes this. But thus far we've heard nothing at all about the Mag's maneuverability so it's important to make our concerns known to the Devs now while they're still in the early stages of development.

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Sure, but we already know they are trimming fat. I'm sure respawn timers and hack timers (or however we capture bases in PS2) will reflect that.

I just don't subscribe to the notion that; some people enjoy long pauses punctuating their game experience and thus that should be the pace for all. That would kill PS2. I think we all agree that the open style of gameplay will allow players to find what suits them, so all the devs have to make sure of is to accommodate the different speeds.

Slower paces just seem a lot easier to handle to me. Unless they totally CoD the game up, there will always be room to breath if you need to. On the other hand, you can't provide faster pacing if players are forced to deal with things like 30 second respawns and 15 minute hacks.

It's just a balancing act. How many different types of gamer can you make happy without ruining the game in the process?

I agree the pacing of the game should be designed such that it's largely in the hand of the players so it tailors each individual's experience more to their liking.

There is one aspect of pacing though that I fear SOE may be dropping the ball on: The win/endgame scenario.

In PS1 the war rages on 24/7 so it technically is an endless battle. But there is a player-driven endgame of sorts in PS1, and that's locking a cont. When the VS take over a cont and kick the TR/NC off the cont after a hard fought battle I feel a sense of accomplishment, victory, and completion. It feels like we "won" that battle even though the enemy can technically respawn in Sanc, grab a vehicle, and come back to the cont immediately if they so desire.

But with the unconquerable footholds for each empire on every cont I'm afraid that there will be no such feeling of conclusive victory and the fight will literally feel endless.

It's kinda like in the early days of PS1 before all towers flipped once a cont was locked. Even if you took every base on a cont you'd still have a squad or 2 of the enemy ToD'ing on cont, and it often felt like you're work wasn't done until you cleaned up the ToD.

But once that tower got capped they'd just respawn in another tower of their's somewhere else on cont and they'd just go from tower to tower until you went out and capped every single one for your empire which sometimes took hours to complete.

I'm afraid that the footholds in PS2 will leave people with a similar feeling that the job isn't complete even if they hold the rest of the cont, leading to a feeling that you've not accomplished or "won" anything.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Erendil

I'm afraid that the footholds in PS2 will leave people with a similar feeling that the job isn't complete even if they hold the rest of the cont, leading to a feeling that you've not accomplished or "won" anything.

Yeah, but this is really a pointless line of speculation until we get more info about footholds and how many each empire will have.

For all we know, capping a single base in PS2 may be more like locking an entire continent was in PS1. It's just hard to say without actually getting a hands on look.

[Helwyr]

Vehicle Hacking and looting/free form customizable inventory

[Coreldan]

Perhaps if there are several continents, the footholds could lock up if one faction takes all the bases in said continent for at least some amount of time?

Given, quite a bad band-aid fix...

Even if it was just like.. 30 minutes and a fancy broadcast of "NC has taken control of Amerish", would at least make me feel like I won something, even if the battle could just start again in 30 mins when the other factions are allowed to push out from their footholds again.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Erendil

How would using the Q and E keys for strafing in a WASD setup be a stupid control system? That'd be quite intuitive and incredibly easy to use along w/ a 360-turret, and no more complex or confusing than using lean right/left in CoD for example.

you'd loose two useful keybinds for the rest of the time you're not in the mag.

you'd also find it really hard to circle straft properly, you'd have to use your thumb or little finger to straft or lose the ability to go forward or back wards while doing it.

[Coreldan]

I don't see why using Q and E to strafe would have to mean the keys are unusable outside of a Mag. Most games nowadays of the kind seem to be able to seperately keybind the same key to have a different function while in a vehicle or while on foot.

Not that I'd necessarily think it's a good idea, but just saying.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

I don't see why using Q and E to strafe would have to mean the keys are unusable outside of a Mag. Most games nowadays of the kind seem to be able to seperately keybind the same key to have a different function while in a vehicle or while on foot.

Not that I'd necessarily think it's a good idea, but just saying.

it's not a technical thing.
There are keys that are used inside and outside vehicles, that you'd not be able to use on those keys if you assigned them to straft, for example i have Q as autorun and E as darklight, both of those wouldn't be able to bound to those if i drove a mag or i'd have different bindings for them inside and outside of vehicles. I'm not saying it's impossible far from it, but i can see why they've not bothered.

[Coreldan]

Well, I think wasting a Q into autorun is.. wasting While you need it fairly often in PS, but you don't need it in a hot situation, so I'd rather use the Q for something much more "important" keybind.

Then again, I don't even use a keyboard to play

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Well, I think wasting a Q into autorun is.. wasting While you need it fairly often in PS, but you don't need it in a hot situation, so I'd rather use the Q for something much more "important" keybind.

i often autorun, so i can hotswap stuff and keep moving, i know that'll be irrelevent in ps2 though

[Raka Maru]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Well, I think wasting a Q into autorun is.. wasting While you need it fairly often in PS, but you don't need it in a hot situation, so I'd rather use the Q for something much more "important" keybind.

Then again, I don't even use a keyboard to play

That's an interesting gadget.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Raka Maru

That's an interesting gadget.

It is, I don't play any game without it. Being able to do all movement with thumb only is amazing. Usually thumb is just wasted to like space bar that is like.. jump? Thus, I don't have to try to distribute my few spare fingers into awkward positions when doing something like crouch leaning or crouching while strafing or stuff like that.

Well, actually, BF3 I play with keyboard, simply cos the game for some reason refuses to work properly with the DPad. Every other game works flawlessly though.

It's getting quite old and worn out already. Razer sells those nowadays under the name Razer Nostromo. Razer had a big part in designing that thing in the first place (also they did software), which was sold under Belkin's name. One thing for sure, when this breaks, I'm definitely getting a new one from Razer. Playing with a keyboard would be gimping myself after learning how to use this.

I originally bought it for WoW, in which it was truely Godsent. Naturally after I had it, I also just taught myself to play FPS games with it too. The only movement I don't do with the DPAD though is car/vehicles. In APB, I have bound 3, 7, 8, 9 (you can see the arrow keys on them as well in the pic) to the usual WSAD/arrow key format to use while driving. Same went for Planetside pretty much. Worth noting that the picture has the "analog stick" extension on the d-pad, which I have taken off. The D-pad figure alone felt better for me. Better grip.

The other scroll wheel really comes in handy too. I started playing FPS-games with the Rainbow Six-sequel. The very first games, havn't really played the new ones. In there, I recall the default reload button being scroll wheel down. I always liked it, but newer games usually bind scroll wheel to weapon switching. Well, with the n52te I have taken the best of both worlds Mouse's scroll wheel will change weapons, while (in APB especially) n52te scroll wheel down will reload, while scroll wheel up will restock ammo when near a place you can resupply at.

[Raka Maru]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

It is, I don't play any game without it. Being able to do all movement with thumb only is amazing. Usually thumb is just wasted to like space bar that is like.. jump? Thus, I don't have to try to distribute my few spare fingers into awkward positions when doing something like crouch leaning or crouching while strafing or stuff like that.

Took a look and found some of these n52te on eBay. I generally use my thumb trackball for this reason. And no mouse wrist strain. You say there's a new one your looking at?

[Coreldan]

Yeah, http://store.razerzone.com/store/raz...ctID.221675100.

As you can see, physically the thing looks the exact same except for Razer logo (and thus lack of Belkin-logo and "n52te"). I think hardware wise they've made small improvements, at least what I recall quickly noticing from the specs. The software is also improved and actually supported. The pricing is pretty much the same as new n52te originally was. The current software is still well sufficient and I don't really have any complaints about it, which is why I won't upgrade until this breaks. Perhaps I'll just get a cheap Belkin n52te again at that point, but I guess I could go for Razer at that point, at least get some future support.

Depends on the price of the n52tes you found, it might be smarter to just get one, cos basically it's only down to selling the same product on a new name

Q. What are the key differences between the previous Belkin N52te Speedpad (powered by Razer) and the new Razer Nostromo gaming keypad?

A. The new Razer Nostromo boasts several enhancements over its predecessor, the Belkin N52te, like the ability to switch instantly between eight keymaps (up from Belkin’s three), and the flexibility of storing up to 20 gaming profiles from the previous limit of 10.

Gamers can also take advantage of the new onboard chipset (replacing the previous Synapse flash memory) and software driver thereby removing all old programming limitations, as the Razer Nostromo enables gamers to effortlessly program sophisticated macros of infinite length.

The device’s new configurator software puts its advanced macro programming capabilities in the hands of gamers in a user-friendly way, allowing them to conveniently remap all the Nostromo’s buttons with any game command. Any gamer will be a deadly force to reckon with when they’ve got a set of personalized commands and combos right at their fingertips.

It's been through 4 years of every day gaming use and the only difference to day one is that the Belkin logo on the palmrest has worn out, thats it

Getting quite offtopic, hope we won't be punished