Top cause of players leaving PS2 (2014)

[BlaxicanX]

The way you've described them doesn't make them sound useful. If no sniper can OSK, then why bother using a bolt action instead of a semi-auto rifle? In fact a weapon with the faster RoF is going to be a better suppression weapon anyway.

I'd also posit that a sniper rifle doesn't make an effective suppression weapon in this type of environment anyway. There's just too many players. Rather than taking pot-shots at individual players, why not just hop into a tank and suppress entire groups of players at a time? You've got almost as much range.

[Gatekeeper]

Well, it obviously depends on damage-per-shot, refire rate, reload time, etc. etc. etc. You might as well say "how can a gun with lower RoF but higher damage-per-shot ever be useful unless it's a OSK" - which is an extremely reductive argument.

As for "why use a sniper-rifle for suppression instead of a tank" you could equally well use the same argument for using either for outright kills. The answer is that they have different pros and cons - a tank is a big, obvious target that requires an investment of resources and is limited in where it can go compared to infantry - but in return it's tougher, and has more firepower.

FWIW a tank doesn't need to one-hit-kill infantry in order to be effective either - the PS1 Magrider was a strong anti-tank platform but (relatively) weak against infantry (at least once it's 'magmowing' roadkill potential was nerfed) and was still both fun and effective.

tl;dr - there are plenty of ways of differentiating weapons without resorting to "this one has a OSK while this other one fires faster but doesn't" and OSKs aren't essential to the game.

[Taramafor]

Originally Posted by Gatekeeper

PS1 sniping was less about getting a lot of kills, and more about suppression - you forced wounded enemies to fall back or dive for cover, and so reduced the opposing force's ability to fight back. That's not to say you didn't get kills through sniping, but it was more a matter of cat-and-mouse, or teamwork, to get kills and less of a lone-wolf multi-kill thing.

Honestly I'm all in favour of a longer TTK all around. I don't think it should be as slow as PS1, but I don't think less OSKs will hurt the game at all - and it'll certainly help to retain new players, which is good for everyone in the end.

PS1 was only slow because of character movement and towers that people creep from instead of using common sense to grab vehicles from bases. If cover and suppression is used more effectively in this game, I'd most likely love the fuck out of it and look over most of the games flaws. But for some reason the devs don't like defense, and therefore are unlikely to go down the route of using cover. And unfortunately, the lag that causes people to die a moment after actually getting killed doesn't help. It can easily make people think they're dying in cover when they actually got the killing hits outside of it. That'll need to be fixed first regardless of cover use I think.

[Babyfark McGeez]

Originally Posted by ringring

Because, I imagine, because of the whole the rich get richer and the poor get poorer thing.

If the territory division means that one empire is starved then they're starved everywhere, you can't change continent to get more resources and if that happens you start asking what purpose does resources play at all.

Mind you, the problem with resources is indicative of many flawed systems. They should have designed this game from the top down rather than the bottom up.

But how often are you so fucked with all continents combined? There has to be atleast some continent where your faction holds some territory, otherwise you're boned regardless of the system and either have like 10% global pop or your faction is functionally retarded.

As i see it, it can happen that your faction gets warpgated on one continent, but usually in turn they dominate another continent. Aside from the odd hours (where the current system is no help either) the territory control pretty much evens out when viewed globally, which is why it would make way more sense to treat resource income globally too. It would even things out.

Buuut let's see what they make up, i mean, come up with.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Babyfark McGeez

But how often are you so fucked with all continents combined? There has to be atleast some continent where your faction holds some territory, otherwise you're boned regardless of the system and either have like 10% global pop or your faction is functionally retarded.

As i see it, it can happen that your faction gets warpgated on one continent, but usually in turn they dominate another continent. Aside from the odd hours (where the current system is no help either) the territory control pretty much evens out when viewed globally, which is why it would make way more sense to treat resource income globally too. It would even things out.

Buuut let's see what they make up, i mean, come up with.

This is part of phase 2 for resources which will combine with intercontinental lattice and ANTs.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Mietz

This is part of phase 2 for resources which will combine with intercontinental lattice and ANTs.

So they actually *are* bringing back the ANT...?

They gonna do anything about the time to kill?

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

So they actually *are* bringing back the ANT...?

They gonna do anything about the time to kill?

Yes.
Its started already with a damage nerf to explosives.

[Mordelicius]

Originally Posted by BlaxicanX

So you admit that I proposed no argument, but ask me to provide evidence to support this non-existent argument anyway?

Basically, you tried to promote your thread as having objective merit rather than being merely your opinion on some balance mechanics, and now you're upset because by asking you to provide evidence to support your assertions, I've exposed how baseless your claims really are. Okay.

Trying to paint the situation as me having some kind of secret personal hard-on for you is flattering, but inaccurate. You're not nearly interesting enough of a person to warrant "trapping" into an argument, to be honest. There are more interesting, and seemingly more capable posters on this forum for me to engage in discussion, and in fact by this point I'm mostly just responding to you out of obligation- you've already conceded that your arguments are based on nothing more than personal sentiments, so there's no point left for me to make.

In short, calm your tits.

Funny, you keep throwing words like 'source', 'data', and 'objective', yet you have yet to give any form of example of any. Again, what's your criteria for being objective in PS2 forum/discussion? Remember, I didn't use these words, you did.

From the start, you want to open an epistemological debate on PS2 'source'/'data' (and now 'objectivity'), yet when I ask you for examples to know your position, you come with nothing.

What is 'source' to you?
What is 'data' to you?
What is 'objective' to you?

Basically, you don't say anything despite 3 of my questions, and expect me to interpret your philosophic positions and debate with myself. In short, you want a debate you don't want to be part of it. That's what's going on here.

Reveal your positions, define it, then make an argument based on them yourself. Otherwise, the only one you are confusing is yourself.

[Babyfark McGeez]

Originally Posted by Mietz

This is part of phase 2 for resources which will combine with intercontinental lattice and ANTs.

Ahyeah i forgot, phase-one-side...

What a bunch of hacks...

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Gatekeeper

Regarding sniper rifles and OSKs - in PS1 no sniper rifle was capable of a OSK, and the bolt-action rifles were still powerful and useful, it's just a matter of balancing them right.

There were two sniper rifles in PS1:

Boltdriver: Bolt-action, one shot at a time, which did IIRC 90 health damage and a lot of AP damage.

Heavy Scout rifle: Scout-Rifle, fast sniper, which did very little health damage, but shot quite rapidly and had a clip. But it did so little damage, it was to the point most players didn't use the HSR at all. It could have been balanced better by dealing half to double health damage per shot then what it did. I don't think anyone would have minded.


The current sniper rifles in PS2 that fire fast, seem to fire almost as fast as an uzi. At least that's how it feels when you empty the clip at short range. The refire rate has always felt insane to me at the damage they do and the accuracy they have. Granted, I'm not a terribly good shot, but I recognise it when someone who is could go haywire with it... I just fail to see the point of the bolt-type in comparison as it is a lot more forgiving, certainly at short range. I've seen many people use it as a shotgun and SMG for infils before they actually gave shotguns and SMGs out and be very effective with it. The only reason to use a bolt in PS2 right now is because it can one shot.


IMO, the speed-firing snipers should be slowed down a bit in rof, while the bolt should lose headshot capacity when silenced and not shown on radar.


I'm not a sniper player myself, as I'm more the melee type ambush player, but this is what seems fair to me and would make there be more of a choice between the playstyles and as I think Blaxican said, offer some balancing options between the empires.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Figment

There were two sniper rifles in PS1:

Boltdriver: Bolt-action, one shot at a time, which did IIRC 90 health damage and a lot of AP damage.

Heavy Scout rifle: Scout-Rifle, fast sniper, which did very little health damage, but shot quite rapidly and had a clip. But it did so little damage, it was to the point most players didn't use the HSR at all. It could have been balanced better by dealing half to double health damage per shot then what it did. I don't think anyone would have minded.


The current sniper rifles in PS2 that fire fast, seem to fire almost as fast as an uzi. At least that's how it feels when you empty the clip at short range. The refire rate has always felt insane to me at the damage they do and the accuracy they have. Granted, I'm not a terribly good shot, but I recognise it when someone who is could go haywire with it... I just fail to see the point of the bolt-type in comparison as it is a lot more forgiving, certainly at short range. I've seen many people use it as a shotgun and SMG for infils before they actually gave shotguns and SMGs out and be very effective with it. The only reason to use a bolt in PS2 right now is because it can one shot.


IMO, the speed-firing snipers should be slowed down a bit in rof, while the bolt should lose headshot capacity when silenced and not shown on radar.


I'm not a sniper player myself, as I'm more the melee type ambush player, but this is what seems fair to me and would make there be more of a choice between the playstyles and as I think Blaxican said, offer some balancing options between the empires.

Yea the normal sniper was 2 shots to kill while the HSR was 4 shots.

I actually never used either but especially not the HSR until very late on in the life of PS1. Funnily enough the HSR was very effective. I mean if you were shot by a sniper rifle you immediately ran for cover however if you were shot by an HSR people didn't seen to worry about it. You'd be surprised at the number of people who would hang around to be shot all 4 times.

[Gatekeeper]

Well I guess the HSR didn't appear until quite late - by that point people's "oh shit! Bolt Driver!" instincts were pretty finely tuned

[Calista]

They need to stop working on PS2 beyond bug fixes and polish and start working on Planetside 3. Just basically keep on with the general direction of the game while adding "maps" and other features (maybe add a 4th faction for better monetization etc.) and go for another marketing push under the guise of a different title. Sound familiar? Cheesy I know but it seems to work. If it weren't for the PS4 version coming out soon this would be a no-brainer and might still be viable in this case as well. Pops are stale and this incremental release process isn't helping much at all. Just freeze it and bundle up new things for a push under a new title and hopefully with all the work that has been done the past 2 years the retention will be better the next time around.

[CrankyTRex]

Well, when I left PS2 it wasn't because of minor balancing issues like sniper rifles. It was because I didn't feel any sense of accomplishment playing the game, and I suspect most people who try it and bail feel the same way.

There's just very few opportunities for an individual, particularly a newb, to feel like they did something important, which is due to the combination of low TTK, awkward base design, and bad spawn/heal/territory control mechanics. Instead of fixing how one captured bases, they just dropped the lattice on everything and officially made the game a meat grinder.

Meat grinders are fine for games with rounds and points like CoD because then the sense of accomplishment comes from winning a round, but PS2 is open ended, so that isn't an option.

All the potential MMO avenues of accomplishment like levels, skills, quest rewards, and such are blunted by the whole cert system which is designed around revenue generation. Obviously they're not going to spit out a new gun or camo for you every couple levels/achievements because then you'd be less inclined to pay money for certs, and similarly the amount of certs required for anything of note has to be high enough to encourage paying instead of playing.

And it's not terribly organic at grouping people together outside a zerg either. A small group of five guys have pretty much no chance of heroically stalling a larger enemy assault and thus build some form of camaraderie such that they might stick together for a while. If you're outnumbered, you might as well just leave rather than fight to the death.

So once the novelty of the scale of it wears off, there's not much reason to stick around unless you happened to make some friends with an outfit.

[Mordelicius]

Seems they are reverting the alert changes.

In Emerald, VS just cap every continent while NC and TR just Indarside through it all. There's no reason to participate on multiple alerts that goes on and on. That is even when they recently changed it to 50-51% victory conditions.

Any future continent locking mechanics should prevent stacking in one continent. This will make it more challenging and rewarding to cap a continent.
Example:

Esamir Lock Conditions: 95% Esamir base capture + 33% base capture on 2 (or 3) other continents.

Sure, players may not be in Esamir, but the will still be a part of the process while withholding the 33% base percentage from a faction stacker, while fighting in Indar, or Hossin. This will bring back the multi-continent 'campaign' feel that was lost when they discontinued the Global Alerts .

These conditions should be explicitly stated in the Warpgate terminals for the non-alert event. Or better yet, it should be in the map.

Currently, too much continent stacking. This will remain true even if they revert back to the last alert/continent cap mechanics. It's almost as if it's a race who get to zerg through the continent first, while neglecting the other continents. And if one caps first, it's a race whether the next cap can be stopped or not.