News: Higby Outlines this Months Patch - Page 9

james · 2013-01-09, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by Kerrec

Amazing! So, you are saying that all of the issues mentioned were not part of community feedback? They saw the issues all on their own, and came up with their own solutions? So you're saying that spawn room defensibility was not mentionned at all in the community? Adjustments to AA was not mentioned? Adjustments to Air was not mentioned? Dynamic XP was not mentioned?

If I bothered to take the time, I can probably find a thread discussing every single major topic touched by these notes. All input from current PS2 players and old PS1 "vets" alike.

Sounds to me like there are no notes (yet) on the isses YOU deem most important and are all pissy and throwing a forum tantrum.

My best friend is a programmer in the gaming industry. They work rediculous hours. Then when it gets to release time, they work EVEN MORE REDICULOUS HOURS. If they've been gone for a month, they're probably taking all the owed vacation time they weren't alowed to take prior to release, as well as taking well earned relaxation time so they don't end up divorced or in an insane asylum.

If you consider that devs are expected to play their own games so they have a clue, and grant that even when they're "playing", they're actually working; then you have to see that they put in rediculous quantities of time WORKING.

Everyone needs vacation, distraction and rest.

Everyone deserves a vacation but basically release a game than taking off a month, during a time period where a large part of your player base is going to play more.
The problem was that they basically left it in a mid beta state, the game had major crashing issues, poor performance, along with a slew of other problems. While every deserves a break, a whole month has caused most of their player base to quit.
There population on steam has just dropped below the 10k mark this week. Not even enough to fill two servers.
I'm not saying they don't deserve breaks at some point, but leaving your game in the state they left it, and releasing in the holiday season. Was just a horrible choice, that as it looks will have major effects on the future of the game.

maradine · 2013-01-09, 06:18 PM

Yes. They fucked up. And now we can be supportive as they try to turn it around, or, you know, not.

If your choice is the latter, take a moment to question what you're doing here.

Maidere · 2013-01-09, 06:38 PM

Changes are pretty damn good, except SMG's, not sure the game needs them now.
If they will deploy patches like this once a month it will be realy nice and the game will be ready for launch in 4-6 months. The problem is, they allready launched it. Objectively it will have too small active playerbase in a half of a year, so they will have to re-launch it.

typhaon · 2013-01-09, 06:40 PM

Dynamic XP: Sounds reasonable - but for most people it's really going to boil down to this: Does this make XP gain faster, or slower? If it makes it slower... I don't think anyone is going to be very happy with it being DYNAMIC!

Whiteagle · 2013-01-09, 06:41 PM

Originally Posted by Figment

Really want to see the new spawn building.

I'm, curious, for obvious reasons.

Indeed, if Malorn used my Alamo Mushroom idea, I DEMAND COMPENSATION!!! ...In the form of an SMG...

Originally Posted by ringring

I also thought that underground structures couldn't be done in this engine, so maybe they've updated the engine similar to when water wasn't possible.

More then likely they're just indentations, trenches in the ground that get a ground level roof put on them.

Amp Stations are probably the easiest to do in this regard, since they already have a bunch of shit lying around on the ground anyways, but hopefully these tunnels will allow better access to things like Generators.

Eliphas · 2013-01-09, 06:49 PM

Originally Posted by Seafort

I don't mind 1 liberator bombing but in this game there is no limit to the amount of vehicles/aircraft you can spawn because of the poorly designed resource/acquisition system.

Therefore they won't be just 1 liberator bombing but several, nevermind the ESFs bombing ground targets too. This is why i think ESFs should have their rocket pods removed, add more and better AA missiles and machine guns and let them be the AA in the skies instead of just ground vehicles, infantry/MAX and static turrets.

There needs to be limits and specialisations in this game so we aren't all a Swiss army knife and be a jack of all trades.
This "be anything you want without any limits or training" is BS.

Agreed.

Drakkonan · 2013-01-09, 06:52 PM

As Higby stated, it looks like they went after the low hanging fruit first, which is why I found it surprising that they're implementing dynamic xp so quickly. I just hope they realize it's going to need tuning, and continually modify values based on player abuse and trends.

And I'll repost my official forum response....since the goal of these posts is to get dev attention and thus, changes:

"UI changes to emphasize score per minute as a primary metric of player comparison"

I was really afraid of this. SPM works as a session stat, because you remember how you played in any given session, but as a persistent stat, over the life of a player, in a non-round-based game it serves absolutely no purpose. We shouldn't be driven to get straight to the fight to boost our SPM when staying in the sanctuary longer to form up with our outfits would actually be more effective. Just face it; There's no stats that accurately measure effectiveness. Just list them all (including SPM, if you'd like), and don't give precedence to any of them.

Overall though. I'm very impressed. I didn't think they were paying attention to the colorblind complaints, but I see they're making dynamic minimap colors. I'm not colorblind, but bravo and delta colors need to be changed.

Graywolves · 2013-01-09, 07:15 PM

I think it's mostly a step in the right direction.

Invulnerability shouldn't apply to someone revived in the field. Even just a 1/4 of a second is enough time to run back to cover if the Medic revives from around the corner.

SixShooter · 2013-01-09, 07:17 PM

Originally Posted by typhaon

Dynamic XP: Sounds reasonable - but for most people it's really going to boil down to this: Does this make XP gain faster, or slower? If it makes it slower... I don't think anyone is going to be very happy with it being DYNAMIC!

If you do nothing but spawn camp then it will go down for sure. Hopefully they balance it so that better kills (killing people who have been alive longer, have kill streaks, ect..), there will be a greater reward.

While it may not deter spawn camping, it sure makes it a lot less worth it.

GLaDOS · 2013-01-09, 07:29 PM

I like this, a lot. The invulnerability after spawning is a bit worrisome, as it could be pretty awful if implemented wrong, but it could also be great if implemented right. I think I would prefer if dynamic XP for kills was not only based on kills, but also support actions, but this is definitely a huge step in the right direction. It would be pretty great if they could eventually give S-AMS destruction dynamic XP, so you get a whole shitton for blowing up the Sundy that's been supporting the enemy push for hours, as opposed to camping it.

james · 2013-01-09, 07:48 PM

Originally Posted by maradine

Yes. They fucked up. And now we can be supportive as they try to turn it around, or, you know, not.

If your choice is the latter, take a moment to question what you're doing here.

The devs have to win back the faith of the community, for many it left a sour taste with people.

Figment · 2013-01-09, 09:09 PM

Well James, they did lose a lot of goodwill and trust from people with high expectations such as ours. They did launch early, they are stubborn on key things at times, but at least there is still movement.

But what I'm seeing is the only game that could potentialy one day be as good as ps1. The devs from my perspective are still learning what makes strategy mmofps games tick. It is a lot more complex to get this right than make a run of the mill mmo like a RPG.

It is why I'm cynical, critical and try to be as patient as I can be despite of my disppointment. If they aren't going to learn from us? Who then? The majority of new players can't and won't have the references for ideas and worked out improvements of ideas based on experience with similar things.

If all ps1 vets leave, who will stand on the bow of the ship, warning them for icebergs in the mist?

They are nice people and willing to learn. Question for them is, who can they trust, when?

They should get a military architect to give them some historic military architecture lessons though have a look at the outposts. That would be money well spend as they would get a lot of experience and ideas out of it.

I mean come on, most worked on games like everquest and free realms. Completely different type of thinking. They may have played some ps1, but even 7 year players sometimes didn't know left from right.

I do reserve the right to call specific parts of their creation utter crap, but at least I'll say why, what they can do to improve on it because just saying it is bad doesn't help speed up trial and error designing (which is largely what PS2 is doing). I can't fault them for at least trying. I just hope they recognise who to listen to out of all the people. Even so, I will compliment them on having the balls to admit players may know better and are using their feedback - even if they don't know which ones all the time.

p0intman · 2013-01-09, 09:17 PM

Originally Posted by Figment

They should get a military architect to give them some historic military architecture lessons though have a look at the outposts. That would be money well spend as they would get a lot of experience and ideas out of it.

No, they should instead be given a lesson by a historian to inform them how geology informed war time policy of nations in the past, and how it shaped history of the world. THEN architecture.

I'm tempted to make the next thing on just that: geology and how PS1 maps actually were useful in comparison. or maybe ill use a map of europe.

Wahooo · 2013-01-09, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by Figment

If all ps1 vets leave, who will stand on the bow of the ship, warning them for icebergs in the mist?

What fucking good does that do when they still wait to run into the iceberg before they acknowledge there is actually ice in the fucking water?

maradine · 2013-01-09, 10:20 PM

Did you miss the part where the rest of the issues, including the metagame, are still being worked on? Or the part about how this is what they could reasonably enumerate for the time frame?

Do you want us to go forward, or would you just like to get off the boat now? No one will judge you.