Mines staying active when switching class

[ThGlump]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

There's got to be a way to balance it without forcing people to be enslaved to the engineer class.

What I think is this: Laying mines should be a strategic job you do for your side, and not a thing individual players can do just to lay out traps for free stat padding kills.

How about your empire gets a certain limited resource of mines shared from a kind of common pool? And what about you get some kind of support points for deploying them, but you receive nothing extra for kills? I mean, the game should keep track of the kills your mines received, but not for the purpose of giving you lots of extra points.

As i said before. If youre not on engi mine kills wont count for you. No kills, no xp, nothing. If you lay them for kills, stay on engi, if you lay them for strategic reason then its no problem when you switch class.

[Fenrys]

If mines cost resources, then they should never deconstruct.

If they were free, it would be appropriate to talk about timers and triggers. However, if you are purchasing a mine then it should remain purchased until it explodes. If deconstructed mines are refunded, then they can be treated like PS1 mines (IIRC, auto-decon 15 minutes after leaving the continent or logging off).

Likewise, if you buy grenades and die or opt to respawn before using them, they should either be refunded or made available for free when spawning until you opt to carry them again.

I'm totally opposed to penalties for changing classes.

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

Solution: Persistent mines but quantity and quality are locked behind cert barriers. To plant a goodly sized field you would need to invest points into the engy tree. This gives engineers freedom to play how they want and will prevent CE spam by players who do not focus on the engy tree.

This sounds good.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

No, it does help. Only a certain percentage will play long term, and they will be replaced by a constant influx of new players, so while passionate vets may one day get to that point, the average player will not.

That's a fair point. It depends a lot on exactly how the cert trees work and exactly how deep the skill is. The last couple of interviews have left me with the idea that it may not be a tree as much as just a selection of things...Hm. On top of that Higby mentioned (in regards to vehicles) that you would be able to pick only a couple of certs to enhance your vehicle, maybe that would apply to infantry as well?

However it works, I'd like to see mines be dangerous but not always common things that are indicative of a skilled engineer lurking around, rather than just that some guy class switched for a few minutes.

[sylphaen]

Question about taste, do you prefer:
1. a few dedicated engineers empowered to deploy most minefields/defenses ?
or
2. a lot of wannabe engineers each deploying a few and then switching class for the rest of the fight ?

Important assumptions:
- deployment range restrictions similar to PS1


Once a choice of preference is made, then it's only a matter of making the game mechanics fit accordingly.

Edit: btw, that 4th option about entering vehicles is quite harsh and would decrease richness of gameplay. If you ever played vehicles in PS1, you would realize that mine traps to cover retreat paths were a common tactic and increased gameplay complexity in a good way (it introcudes uncertainty and penalizes players not using their brains).

Maybe some believe this is OP but I find it perfectly balanced and a good aspect of gameplay in PS1.

[Figment]

Mines should stay, since for mines to be effective, someone will have to pass over them and that can take a while and multiple deaths, in which time you could have need for a lot of other things. So binding to a class, no. Binding till you log the character, yes.



The problem we're facing here is that if you don't disable them upon logging, then you can make tons of alt characters with their own mines. Even f2p. I would say a couple minutes after logging (giving you time to return, in case you crashed). 4 minutes after your character lost connection to the server should do.

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

Does no one else have fond memories of randomly finding mines left over from a fight that happened several days ago? We had a member who was legendary for finding lone mines in the middle of no where. I don't understand your fear about this.

I feel like we're trying to solve something that isn't an issue in this thread.


Especially when mines are going to come in variations and no more spitfire turrets, I see no problem or exploit in an engie switching classes. CE spam doesn't feel like an issue either when your vehicles can have anti-mine plating (w.e you call it) and EMP utility slots.

-edit-

If everybody played engineer and littered indar with mines, I don't think it would even come close to ruining anything.

[Fenrys]

Originally Posted by Figment

The problem we're facing here is that if you don't disable them upon logging, then you can make tons of alt characters with their own mines.

That's a good point.

I was hoping mines could last forever, but I guess getting a refund for unused mines would be more ideal.

I wonder if PS2 can be run on a virtual machine or in a sandbox? In theory, someone could have a second computer with multiple instances of the game, and an engineer logged into each instance who is camping sanctuary after having laid mines. I doubt it will be a big problem, but maybe it's something the devs should watch and have a plan for in case it does become a problem.

[Redshift]

Add a skill deep in the eng tree to allow your mines to persist for 20 mins after swapping classes

[Naz The Eternal]

Originally Posted by dsi

Mines aren't a short term weapon, why treat them like one?

This is true, but if we look at the larger scale of things, it could become an issue depending on how effective they are...

The other thing to note is resources, everything in PS2 is going to cost resources, so if somebody takes the time to get mines then they should stay out there until detonated or the person log off, hard earned resources disappearing and going to waste is not going to make anybody happy...

[Ruwyn]

There was never too much CE. The call would go out to CE a position ahead of an advancing army and it was always light. You guys are worried about persistent mines? Really? They were easy to avoid as infantry and in vehicles if you knew what you were doing. Emps decimated them and any worthwhile cloaker carried emp grenades during base assaults to clear paths to the CY. Not to mention everyone else tossing emps everywhere.

Mines should be persistent until, at the very least, logout. If we are fighting in a persistent world, they should stay even longer. I really despise this class system copied into the planetside "franchise". scrapping versatility in playstyle in favor of more generic systems is a step backward.

[Tamas]

Should be a certificate. Also logging out = removal after 5mins.

If you die, but you respawn as engineer - you keep your mines. If you change the class, you shouldn't get to keep them, unless you get a certificate.

[Shogun]

i still don´t get what´s the problem with mines?

there was no problem with mines in ps1 at all, and there everyone with the lowest engi cert could lay them. later also every br40 could lay them, too.
there was never a problem with too much of them.

keep the ps1 limits and everything is fine.
if the engineer is limited even further, just take it out of the game completely.

there are no children on auraxis, so quit whining about abondoned landmines...

[Saieno]

I think we are all hooked on Planetside 1 a bit too much. Items like Mines and Motion-sensors are very important to base defense and offense. Not only do they give information on where an enemy is, but depending on what defenses are still up you can see where they entered from or where they have been.

Because of this I think these should be common pool items across all classes to cert in, instead of throwing it with Combat Engineers because that's how it was in Planetside 1. What if Combat Engineers were more focused on Anti-Vehicular Combat, Turrets, Vehicle Repairs, Remote Explosives, Deploy-able Cover, Enhancing Base Defenses, etc.

Just like how Squad Leading is a certification tree in Planetside 2 now, why can't base defense items be as well? If someone is interested in laying mines and motion sensors then I don't think that should be limited strictly to Combat Engineers. I come to that conclusion simply based on the four pages we've had on this discussion on mines disappearing when switching classes. This fixes that scenario completely.

[Warborn]

The entire point of classes is to prevent people from being able to do many different roles at once. Letting people setup engineer defenses and then switch class and keep those defenses active is contrary to their stated purpose in having a class system active. If it's fine to let people play engineer and setup defenses and then play something else, then let heavy assaults heal/revive as well. Either class abilities stay with their classes, or go back to freeform certs and ditch restricting abilities.

Originally Posted by Redshift

Add a skill deep in the eng tree to allow your mines to persist for 20 mins after swapping classes

This is pointless as after a couple months everyone will have every single cert in the game. Making it require deep certification does not address the problem whatsoever, it simply delays it from becoming an issue.

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Warborn

The entire point of classes is to prevent people from being able to do many different roles at once. Letting people setup engineer defenses and then switch class and keep those defenses active is contrary to their stated purpose in having a class system active. If it's fine to let people play engineer and setup defenses and then play something else, then let heavy assaults heal/revive as well. Either class abilities stay with their classes, or go back to freeform certs and ditch restricting abilities.



This is pointless as after a couple months everyone will have every single cert in the game. Making it require deep certification does not address the problem whatsoever, it simply delays it from becoming an issue.

the heavy can do this by switching to medic, place one of those heal-shields and switch back to heavy.

but he cannot actively heal while holding the heavy weapon. same for engineer. if you switch, you cannot place new mines or repair maxes or yourself while holding the heavy weapon. class system intention met.

also i assume mines will eat ressources like nades and boomers. so spamming mines would strip you off your power to switch to a tank very fast. and not every placed mine will result in a free kill. there are different minetypes now, so a tank will clear anti-personell mines very easyly, even without a mineguard equipped.