The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation

[Higby]

We're going to have hundreds if not thousands of certs at launch. These will vary from certs that unlock new weapons, implants, vehicles, weapon/vehicle attachments and class skills to ones that allow for faster reloading, less cone of fire, larger ammo capacity, and yes, additional damage. When we say overall 20% increase in power we're talking holistically, not necessarily "each of your bullets do 20% more damage! a winner is you!".

The spirit of the PS2 cert system is very much based around the PS1 paradigm of advancement by addition of situational flexibility and overall breadth of gameplay options. A good fps player playing light assault with minimal certs will always kick the shit out of a bad fps player playing light assault with a lot of certs.

Edit: MasterChief096 - I'm definitely not trying to bust up your thread by stating any of this, it's a great poll and I appreciate seeing everyone's point of view. I just want everyone to understand what our goals with the cert tree and power growth actually are. Carry on!

[MasterChief096]

Originally Posted by Higby

We're going to have hundreds if not thousands of certs at launch. These will vary from certs that unlock new weapons, implants, vehicles, weapon/vehicle attachments and class skills to ones that allow for faster reloading, less cone of fire, larger ammo capacity, and yes, additional damage. When we say overall 20% increase in power we're talking holistically, not necessarily "each of your bullets do 20% more damage! a winner is you!".

The spirit of the PS2 cert system is very much based around the PS1 paradigm of advancement by addition of situational flexibility and overall breadth of gameplay options. A good fps player playing light assault with minimal certs will always kick the shit out of a bad fps player playing light assault with a lot of certs.

Well I must admit I'm pretty impressed at how fast an official response to thread actually arrived.

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by it being holistic? From what I understand you mean that the potential 20% increase is going to be spread out between the various stats? Players won't be able to solely increase damage by 20%, but rather keep unlocking certs (in the form of modifications/implants/whatever) that upgrade a weapon or vehicle base stats by slight amounts. So an example would be a veteran with maxed out MA certifications might have a 20% advantage over a new player, but its going to be something like 3% damage difference, maybe 6% ROF difference, 4% accuracy difference, 7% clip size difference?

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by MasterChief096

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by it being holistic?

Holistic: relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts


I.e. 20% total improvement, after adding everything up.

[Higby]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Holistic: relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts

Also, medical certs will be replaced with using various roots, meditation and acupuncture to cure combat wounds.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Higby

Also, medical certs will be replaced with using various roots, meditation and acupuncture to cure combat wounds.

Can we also solve mysteries by studying the interconnectedness of all things?

Originally Posted by MasterChief096

Character advancement in PS served to allow you to more closely follow your play style by giving you more options without increasing power, I see no reason why PS2 should be any different. It was one of the few things PS actually did completely right that was different from other games.

Options are power. You suck less frequently. You spend less time running around with the wrong equipment being ineffectual and getting killed because you have fewer hitpoints and can't drop back every time you take damage for a quick heal or whatever.

And PS gave straight up power with levels. Pshield, second wind, melee booster, surge, etc. These are not available to newbs. How is 100 extra hitpoints that a newb cannot possibly get in any way until they level not increasing power with levels?

And it had command ranks. Gave you an emp, radar scan, and OS. What are these if not increased power?

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Higby

Also, medical certs will be replaced with using various roots, meditation and acupuncture to cure combat wounds.

Are you saying PS2 will have RPG style crowd control? You do realize that is a guaranteed kill for an FPS... right?

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by Sobekeus

Are you saying PS2 will have RPG style crowd control? You do realize that is a guaranteed kill for an FPS... right?

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

[Manitou]

Originally Posted by Vancha

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Vancha

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

Try :bang :

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Vancha

Now where oh where did I put my facepalm emoticon...?

Not those kinds of roots, Sobekeus.

What kind of roots then? Because as far as gaming is concerned there is only one kind.

[Higby]

Originally Posted by MasterChief096

From what I understand you mean that the potential 20% increase is going to be spread out between the various stats? Players won't be able to solely increase damage by 20%, but rather keep unlocking certs (in the form of modifications/implants/whatever) that upgrade a weapon or vehicle base stats by slight amounts. So an example would be a veteran with maxed out MA certifications might have a 20% advantage over a new player, but its going to be something like 3% damage difference, maybe 6% ROF difference, 4% accuracy difference, 7% clip size difference?

Correct. We definitely are relying on tradeoffs more than anything else. Most of our weapons for a class are "sidegrades" rather than upgrades, but there are upgrades here and there that essentially follow the model you suggest. We also unlock things like weapon attachments such as a scope or flash suppressor would be part of what we use to calculate that 20% advantage, although exactly how some of those are calculated gets a bit tricky.

[MasterChief096]

Originally Posted by Higby

Correct. We definitely are relying on tradeoffs more than anything else. Most of our weapons for a class are "sidegrades" rather than upgrades, but there are upgrades here and there that essentially follow the model you suggest. We also unlock things like weapon attachments such as a scope or flash suppressor would be part of what we use to calculate that 20% advantage, although exactly how some of those are calculated gets a bit tricky.

Well in this sense I'm not as against it as I once was, but altogether the true PlanetSide player in me will never support even a 0.5% power advantage. Obviously I will be playing PlanetSide 2 even with power upgrades, so long as they don't become game-breaking. I guess I'll calm down a bit until you guys release more detailed information or we find out in beta and how it all works out in actual gameplay.

Also, Higby, another huge concern is if a player can achieve 20% advantage at sometime, how much MORE of a percentage will be added to that if that player is in an outfit that also specializes in that individual's playstyle and unlocks even MORE certs and what not for that players weapon's/vehicle's? Or is the 20% calculation made from both player advancement as an individual as well as outfit advancement combined?

[Higby]

Originally Posted by MasterChief096

Also, Higby, another huge concern is if a player can achieve 20% advantage at sometime, how much MORE of a percentage will be added to that if that player is in an outfit that also specializes in that individual's playstyle and unlocks even MORE certs and what not for that players weapon's/vehicle's? Or is the 20% calculation made from both player advancement as an individual as well as outfit advancement combined?

The goal is for the 20% to encompass everything. By everything I mean: "everything" everything. We're really paper-rock-scissors too, even if you had a 20% damage boost, hell a 100% damage boost, your assault rifle isn't going to kill a base totally un-certed tank, and if you had a 100% health increase that tank would still kill you pretty damn fast.

As for new players, Planetside 1 despite being "balanced" and "fair" to new players still is next to impossible for people to succeed at day 1. Theres way more than just veteran power growth that makes a game difficult for new players, knowing maps, battle flows, knowing how and when to fight, learning what different enemy types are capable of, etc. is by far a bigger barrier in a game like planetside than weapon damage for new players. I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by Higby

I know lots of experienced FPS players who go 1:20 their first few sessions of planetside and I'm sure you all do too, right?

Yeah, but that's a given man; People generally accept that they're not going to be masters at something the first time they try it, or even right away. What pisses new people off though is when they don't actually have time to play the game between deaths, because others are able to insta-gib them (nothing is worse than waiting 30 seconds to spawn and then walking out a door only to get an artillery shell in the face). What's the point of playing when you really have no chance at all of winning, no matter how hard you try?

Most of the my time in WoW has been on PvP servers and the biggest complaint about "world pvp" has always been that the low level character don't have any chance at all against the high level ones. And I mean none - there's a miss chance that grows exponentially when attacking enemies higher level than you. People never cared so much when they were killed multiple times by someone around their own level, because it was a fair fight.

"Options are awesome", I always say. With that in mind, it's good to know that your 20% did not mean "we'll give players up to a 20% damage bonus", because that would overpower any other options out there.

[Soothsayer]

I want to specialization to mean something, the time I've put in to the game should translate to a meaningful increase in whatever abilities I choose to develop.

To the people who are saying that having vets who are specc'ed into whatever will be a deterrent to new players, I've heard the same argument from people who haven't tried EVE. Its the first two weeks that really matter, once you're in and you have a good time you don't leave for a while... then you come back for more later. The main reason you don't have a good time is when you try to play it like a single player game. If PS2 has engaging gameplay for all levels of player, people will like what they see and stick around longer.

Due to the transient nature of achievement in PS, the PS2 skill system offers something that lasts longer than capping a continent. A record of achievement or advancement that can't (and wouldn't) be wiped out with a "reset all" cert button.

Sorry to keep going on about EVE Online, but we're talking time base skill training and that's the current model we have to base this on.

Best way to shut down a person arguing that a 6 year vet in EVE Online always having an advantage is this... that 6 year veteran can only fly one ship at a time. You could be on an equal playing field with that vet within a couple of months. So it comes down to skill. That 6 year veteran may have been mining asteroids for the last six years, the guy playing for six months may have just spent all that time flying cheap ships, getting blown up and learning how to pvp effectively.

In PS2 you'll only be able to fire one weapon at a time, may not even have that many more weapons than that (we don't know what the inventory system is like). The difference is that the skilled up vet will have different options.

The skill system offers versatility within a specialization, how can you say that a BR1 player has the same level of power as a BR20? PShield, med apps, BANKs, Rexo w/extra medkits and ammo... The BR20 has significantly more resources at his disposal than a BR1. They are equally matched in terms of damage per shot, but survivability is nowhere near equal.

I have no issue with the skill tree because power differentiation is not solely about having a more powerful weapon, but the ability to customize that weapon to suit your playstyle/situational needs.