Reality check -- playing PS1 for the past three days

[Captain1nsaneo]

My friends, it has often been said that I like sniping. Friends, I like sniping. No, friends, I love sniping!
I love contlocks. I love field fights. I love defensive sniping. I love offensive sniping.
Sniping across fields, in bases, on walls, in grass, on frozen tundra, through deserts, from the beach, from a tree. I love every aspect of sniping that can occur in Planetside.
I love hitting enemies at 400m. My heart leaps with joy whenever teams of snipers mark the unwitting for death, and there is nothing like killing a rezing medic. And the feeling when a soldier runs for the safety of a base only to be cut down by a bolt just short of the threshold, is such an exquisite feeling.
Like when enemy snipers brandish their rifles from behind cover. It moves me deep within my heart to watch a rookie hiding behind cover that just isn't quite high enough to cover his hitbox.
The sight of cloakers being caught trying to sneak past is an irresistible pleasure. And there is nothing more arousing, than the sound of a failed boomer attempt.
When a band of pitiful NC makes their final defense of their AMS in nothing but spawn gear, only to have 5 snipers race for their BEP, I am in ecstasy.
I love it when my allies are broken by the TR. It's so sad to see bases and towers that were supposed to be defended being taken, their backpacks violated. I love being forced out by scorpions. The humiliation as my rounds go just wide, ducking the second round in a duel to go heal.
Gentlemen, all I ask for is sniping. An infantry fight so vast as to make the server itself tremble. Gentlemen, I ask you as fellow brothers in arms, what is it that you really want? Do you wish for sniping as I do? Do you wish for merciless and tireless sniping? A duel whose field is built with iron, and lightning, and fire? Do you ask for sniping so complete that not even cloakers are left to scavenge the dead?

(Repurposed from Helling)

So yeah, I like sniping and think the current mechanics are fine. Sure it's a pain to have to compensate for both travel time and the target's movement but that makes hitting them at draw distance all the sweeter. I don't care much for more recent sniping because the rifles are too powerful for me to consider it fair and thus enjoyable or the maps are based around close range fights and I prefer extreme range sniping. (In BF2 I used to pick people off of the TV heli spawn in Sharqi from max draw distance with head shots. Love that drop.)

tl;dr: Sniping is best when it's high risk/reward and difficult. Otherwise there's no enjoyment for pulling off hard shots. It's similar to how people like getting melee kills (Source: Valve). People like pulling off difficult things.


OH WAIT.

Sorry, the comments about sniping being bad stirred me. So yeah.

1: BFRs are essentially coffins these days. They're only good for getting mow kills. (well the VS one is)

2: Raiders are a problem to man but you're also asking in the wrong place. You'll have much better luck at a front line AMS as almost everyone who's gone back to base is there to pull their own vehicle not crew one. The best way to deal with it though is to work with a squad or with your outfit but for randoms it is a problem but I like to think of it as encouraging people to get in squads.

3: I've rarely ever had problems with grief and I used to heavily use a thumper. It does become a problem when defending extremely crowded bases like an interlink.

4: Mods are fairly easy to understand as far as I'm aware though I could definitely understand someone being confused about them after enough time away.

5: I agree with you on this, I think that the devs will find out that the TTK is much too high once we hit beta but there's nothing we can point to yet to prove it.

6: I think they're fine, you might be having trouble with the lightning though as it did get an armor buff (as did the reaver because AA got a buff [AA turret] to counter the gunship and this is all far too stupid.)

7: Quick tip, enlarge your minimap. Mine is huge compared to what it starts at. Helps a ton if you don't have layouts memorized.

8: Cloaking is awesome. Hard to get BEP doing it but having a small inventory, limited arsenal, and dying to a stiff breeze is worth being invisible permanently for. I hope that style of cloak makes it into PS2. My only worry would be that only cloakers could have sniper rifles turning sniper duels into whoever sees the other first wins. Wouldn't mind sniping as a heavy assault if it meant I could soak a round. Otherwise we'll have to play shoot once and move which doesn't work out sometimes as there sometimes aren't multiple spots to shoot from.

9: If you only play TR how can you say such things definitively?

"Anyone else been playing, rediscovering old loves and ancient frustrations, and pondered what they portend for PS2? And of our hopes and fears for it?"

Oh wait, I guess I was on topic!

[Kalbuth]

Can only concur with Elcyco about how really bad PS1 shooting is. Missing something is very hard to achieve, due to how slow your target is going, and the size of the hitbox you need to hit, @100m, it feels like you're shooting a pee-shooter, and at close range, wielding a HA, seeing the TTK differences and mag capacity, is basically a I WIN button.
The way to override the MA/HA difference is through grenades, adding to the overall spam, or through external items like PS.
Or you can rape the netcode to induce warp, ofc....
You don't need to actually aim, as long as your reticle is roughly overall target body, you're good to go.

I'm not advocating for too short TTK à la BF3, more BF2142 or QuakeWars things, or even smtg like 30% longer than that.
But what is desesperatly needed :
* faster infantry movement
* locational damage rewarding headshots
* less extreme damage degradation
* precise weapons rewarding precision shooting

Q : is BF2142 still somewhate alive, so that I reinstall and test it to compare?

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

It's been a blast, .... nostalgia....

1) Fuck BFR's. Fuck them in the ear. I'd forgotten how badly I hate them. They have mobility, overwhelming firepower, and are impossibly freaking hard to kill. Ditto on the Galaxy gunship.........

2) It is exasperatingly difficult to get gunners, even when you broadcast hey, Raider loading up at the front door, hop in ............

3) The new system of forgiving grief will be a blessing -- particularly those of

4) Whatever resource system they come up with needs to be simple and comprehensible, because I can't understand what mods give you ....

5) The time to kill with handheld weapons against other infantry in PS1 seems to be just right. I....

6) The TTK for most ground vehicles is far too long. I remember the Decimator before it got nerfed, and it was a good anti-armor weapon. Now it's an armor-annoyance weapon that I haven't scored a single kill .....

7) I still get completely disoriented and run around for fruitless frustrating minutes trying to find things like the vehicle pad or the gen room. These new big giant bases better have a user-friendly map you can bring up in your HUD, with everything clearly labeled.

8) I'd forgotten how much fun being a cloaker was.,,,,

9) Despite my grousing about their foot-zerging habits, my beloved TR is much as I remember it. They demonstrably lay more mines, pull more AMS's, do more ANT runs, and fix/heal/help each other more than our enemies do. If we can preserve that Psychotic Combat Engineer corporate culture when we transition to PS2, I'll be well content.

Anyone else been playing, rediscovering old loves and ancient frustrations, and pondered what they portend for PS2? And of our hopes and fears for it?

1. I kinda don't agree with you, I have no particular love of BFR's and I really hate piloting or gunning one .... but, they're not particularly hard to kill ... and.. they are bullet magnets.

2. I never ever do that .... only use outfit mates as gunners...

3. What system of forgiving grief, the ast I heard grief in PS2 will be as PS1?

4. Hmm, I thought it was pretty straight-forward.

5. I agree with you. It will be interesting in beta with a lower ttk plus a lot of people filling the air with lead at the same time.

6. I think it's just fine, I get vehicle kills but rarely when it's only me firing, that's as it should be imho

7. Yes .... ease of orientation, it was one of the reasons that people didn't like caves.


Recent days has seen a big jump in the activity of my outfit and I'm loving it.

Originally Posted by Canaris

I can see you never tried out the TR Navy tactic, a platoon rocking the Raiders can be an extremely devastating team, hell we even smashed a larger force of Magriders the supposed kings of the waves and scared off/blew up everything that was thrown at us. Raiders rule!

They do indeed., My favourite outfit event used to be raiders.

[Gloworm]

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

My friends, it has often been said that I like sniping. Friends, I like sniping. No, friends, I love sniping!
I love contlocks. I love field fights. I love defensive sniping. I love offensive sniping.
Sniping across fields, in bases, on walls, in grass, on frozen tundra, through deserts, from the beach, from a tree. I love every aspect of sniping that can occur in Planetside.
I love hitting enemies at 400m. My heart leaps with joy whenever teams of snipers mark the unwitting for death, and there is nothing like killing a rezing medic. And the feeling when a soldier runs for the safety of a base only to be cut down by a bolt just short of the threshold, is such an exquisite feeling.
Like when enemy snipers brandish their rifles from behind cover. It moves me deep within my heart to watch a rookie hiding behind cover that just isn't quite high enough to cover his hitbox.
The sight of cloakers being caught trying to sneak past is an irresistible pleasure. And there is nothing more arousing, than the sound of a failed boomer attempt.
When a band of pitiful NC makes their final defense of their AMS in nothing but spawn gear, only to have 5 snipers race for their BEP, I am in ecstasy.
I love it when my allies are broken by the TR. It's so sad to see bases and towers that were supposed to be defended being taken, their backpacks violated. I love being forced out by scorpions. The humiliation as my rounds go just wide, ducking the second round in a duel to go heal.
Gentlemen, all I ask for is sniping. An infantry fight so vast as to make the server itself tremble. Gentlemen, I ask you as fellow brothers in arms, what is it that you really want? Do you wish for sniping as I do? Do you wish for merciless and tireless sniping? A duel whose field is built with iron, and lightning, and fire? Do you ask for sniping so complete that not even cloakers are left to scavenge the dead?

(Repurposed from Helling)

So yeah, I like sniping and think the current mechanics are fine. Sure it's a pain to have to compensate for both travel time and the target's movement but that makes hitting them at draw distance all the sweeter. I don't care much for more recent sniping because the rifles are too powerful for me to consider it fair and thus enjoyable or the maps are based around close range fights and I prefer extreme range sniping. (In BF2 I used to pick people off of the TV heli spawn in Sharqi from max draw distance with head shots. Love that drop.)

tl;dr: Sniping is best when it's high risk/reward and difficult. Otherwise there's no enjoyment for pulling off hard shots. It's similar to how people like getting melee kills (Source: Valve). People like pulling off difficult things.

I use to love sniping in planetside, my fondest memories of the game is the sniper duels i had with tr/nc snipers. Unfortunately i've been spoiled rotten with new games, and now the mechanics of PS sniping just doesn't apeal to me.
Don't get me wrong, i'm all for two shot kills, i love getting those massit long range headshots, but i have always believed that one shot kills shouldn't be in fps games. My issue is with the time it takes to get a second shot off, i know it's way more realistic having to wait for reticule to get a good aim, but for me it just feels too slow, and it annoys the life out of me

Guess i'll go back to being an infiltrator and blowing people up

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Canaris

I can see you never tried out the TR Navy tactic, a platoon rocking the Raiders can be an extremely devastating team, hell we even smashed a larger force of Magriders the supposed kings of the waves and scared off/blew up everything that was thrown at us. Raiders rule!

Magrider was only ever 'king' on water by default, because the only other vehicles that floated were the deli and thresher.

The raider and thundy are both superior vs the mag on water because of their ridiculously low profile.

Though both units are still bad in terms of manpower. 5 fully manned mags will wipe the floor with 2 fully manned raiders. 2 thundies vs 3 mags is a somewhat closer match.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Canaris

Raiders rule!

If you have several on TS they're ok..... the reason no randoms will gun them is because they are shit if you're not.
Pull a tank and you'll get a gunner

[Gandhi]

Randoms gunning for a Raider would have been a lot more fun if the driver (or one designated gunner) could call targets through the ingame UI. It's hopeless without that kind of coordination. But I never have trouble finding gunners for tanks that I pull, usually there's even a group of people at the vec pad just waiting for someone to VNG.

One thing I definitely won't miss are the indoor fights, especially once someone breaks out a Maelstrom. Funneling 100 people into a tight staircase with 3 Maelstroms at the other end is just awful.

[megamold]

personally i can still see what made this game great, and still makes it great to this day.
however the flaws of the game became far more obvious with time.
the most glaring fault i notice is the enormous amount of time you actually stand around doing nothing, waiting , or getting from A to B.

but i'm still having a blast

[Figment]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Magrider was only ever 'king' on water by default, because the only other vehicles that floated were the deli and thresher.

The raider and thundy are both superior vs the mag on water because of their ridiculously low profile.

Though both units are still bad in terms of manpower. 5 fully manned mags will wipe the floor with 2 fully manned raiders. 2 thundies vs 3 mags is a somewhat closer match.

A Thunderer with AMP shield should win a direct confrontation with on Magrider if both engage at once. A Thundy getting the drop on a Magrider should win, especially if they see its flank because that's harder to miss even with the inaccurate Gauss canons.

If you've never ran with 20 Thunderers as a group before, you should: pretty much instakills GV BFRs. Quite funny to see.

[Bocheezu]

Honestly, I can't play for more than an hour or two before I get too frustrated to play. Most of that is because I can't hit the broad side of a barn (I can't kill anybody 1v1 and K/D is around 1/2), but I remember thinking fondly of how much a meatgrinder the base assaults were and how you could be fighting in the same staircase for 15 mins or more, and thinking how epic that was. Now I can't stand it at all; spending a minute with spawn time and running to the staircase to get raped by grenades and maelstrom spam is not fun anymore. I am glad the PS2 bases are more open and aren't as claustrophobic as the PS1 ones, and I hope that you can consistently get a clear shot even during the heaviest base assaults.

I've also done some cave fighting and it's fun to remember how absolutely broken VS maxes are in there for a small-scale cave fight. Hey, I'm getting attacked...time to fly up on a roof where no one can shoot me. Oh, they're hacking the CC...time to drop off the roof and kill them while they're hacking. Being able to boomer the end of a zipline is pretty cheap as well (oh, look, here comes the big glowing ball! *CLICK*), but that can be worked around. I liked the concept of cave fighting and using your knowledge of ziplines to come at people from areas they don't expect, but travel time is an even bigger deal in that place and every death is so time consuming. Also, the cycler really sucks; I snuck up and emptied almost an entire clip into the back of a REXO and he was still able to turn around and get a shot into me. I eventually went back to MCG and completely gave up any long-range capability just so I could at least do some damage in close range before dying.

[sylphaen]

NC with OP equipment ? Why am I not surprised ?

If reavers were not common pool, the NC version would be OP.

[Xyntech]

My biggest revelation:

Planetside 1 is still a lot of fun for me, as long as the populations are decent.

I tried playing the game a few months back and couldn't stand it. Admittedly I wasn't playing during peak hours, but that never used to be a problem back in the day. There was always at least a few decent fights 24/7.

I thought the problem had been that the game had aged terribly, and that low populations only compounded it, but the amount of fun I had in the short time I played yesterday proved to me that the scale and massive number of players are the most important element of the game, at least for my personal enjoyment.

There are tons of flaws that I hate about the original Planetside, but there is so much to love as well. I really strongly feel that even if PS2 completely screws up on a lot of things, that it will still be a lot of fun as long as the scale and team work are there.

But personally, I think that PS2 will fix a lot more issues than it will create.

So here's to Planetside. One of the best games I've ever played despite having some huge flaws. July 1st and the surrounding days are going to be a lot of fun.

[Pillar of Armor]

There was a bunch of discussion on other threads about the "skill" involved in using the FPS mechanics in PS1 with retical bloom and whatnot... At first I thought Yeah! Skill! Then I played PS1 the last two nights and realized... Pffff, you can "control" bloom all you want in PS1, but I'm just gonna murder your face by spam dancing you to death... There's noooo skill in PS1 fighting, it is a pure spamfest and nothing less. If anyone can prove me wrong with a good vid, i will change this post, but otherwise I'll cya in game and I will be spam dance killing you and your squad while you lol pace your shots.

[wasdie]

Planetside 2 is going to feel a lot more modern with a lower TTK and ADS.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Pillar of Armor

There was a bunch of discussion on other threads about the "skill" involved in using the FPS mechanics in PS1 with retical bloom and whatnot... At first I thought Yeah! Skill! Then I played PS1 the last two nights and realized... Pffff, you can "control" bloom all you want in PS1, but I'm just gonna murder your face by spam dancing you to death... There's noooo skill in PS1 fighting, it is a pure spamfest and nothing less. If anyone can prove me wrong with a good vid, i will change this post, but otherwise I'll cya in game and I will be spam dance killing you and your squad while you lol pace your shots.

Gun play is going to be fantastic in PS2. I can't wait to play Planetside: Better Infantry Battles Edition

Despite being so simplistic, I'm kind of surprised how much I still enjoyed flying a Reaver and Mosquito. No wonder I stayed in the skies so much when I used to play. I can't wait to fly with PS2's improved flight physics though, that's just going to be amazing.

I'm very glad to get this refresher opportunity on what Planetside is like, under proper large scale conditions. It will be very helpful going into beta to have fresh in mind both what worked in Planetside, as well as what didn't.

By the ways, am I remembering wrong, or did the net code used to be less shitty on distant targets? I didn't have too much problem yesterday at short ranges, but I couldn't believe how much people were warping around when I was trying to pick them off of the walls of Gunuku.