To start out on topic, I answered that I'm indifferent. I won't say that I would have advocated for straight-up power increases (holistic or otherwise) based on knowlege of Planetside's cert system. I didn't find the old system broken, per se, until they started handing out too many battle ranks and consolidating the certs because the populations couldn't support all the vehicle diversity.
On the other hand, I can recognize the reasons to put power increases in, and, given that, believe that Mr. Higby and his team have chosen a good approach (lots of small bonuses that lead up to a holistic maximum to consciously balance around), and have identified what I would estimate to be a reasonable starting ground for that holistic limit. Given that perceived wisdom, I have some faith that they'll be actively analyzing and tuning these things, particularly in beta, to find the most balanced thresholds.
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
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To stray and stay off topic with you briefly, you just said three words that make me very, very happy. I was seriously worried that CoF and bloom management were pretty much dead and buried when I heard you guys talking about iron sights and the like.
Originally Posted by MasterChief096
Traditional MMO fans that are used to stat increases are traditional MMORPG fans. MMO can take any suffix, RPG, FPS, RTS, etc. It is not a traditional part of MMOFPSes to have stat increases. This is in large due to the fact there aren't really any MMOFPS games out there. So in my opinion, its up to SOE to decide now with this game how the standards of the MMOFPS genre are going to be set, and I believe that they should be set by not offering raw stat increases.
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You know the reason there aren't really any MMOFPS games out there?
It's because SOE, then the industry giant of the MMO genre, tried it with Planetside 1, and the game couldn't keep a large enough subscription base for other companies to say "wow, that's really profitable, and there's room in the market for us to attack it and steal a slice of that pie -- and still be profitable!"
Now, the reasons for this are, I believe, two-fold. MMO was still a pretty small market, all told. As a percentage of gamers, the number of MMORPGers was probably something like 5%. So not a lot of people were used to the idea of paying a subscription fee to play a game. *Especially* not a lot of FPS players. They might've bought the game, tried it for the free month, and then said "okay, that's great, and all, but I can play Counter-Strike for free."
The second reason is that Planetside, with its very flat advancement system that promoted diversifying your options rather than becoming more powerful in any one thing, doesn't appeal to role playing gamers. So Planetside didn't draw in the audience that *was* amenable to the notion of paying a subscription fee. Really, what PS did was to appeal to the subset of MMO gamers who were also FPS fans, rather than conquer the FPS market the way they thought they would.
As such, I have no problem with offering modest, overcomable power gains if the development team believes that will help to expand the market PS2 appeals to, and ensure that the game has a thriving population to provide a fun and exciting community and play experience for years to come.
Could they take the approach that the MMO market is much, much bigger today, and that thus the subset of MMO players who also enjoy FPS is large enough to sustain the game by itself? Probably; except, I suspect, that here in 2011, that's largely irrelevant, because the subscription model of MMO is dying off in favor of microtransaction supported F2P models in various incarnations. If they had tried that 3 or 4 years ago, it probably would have succeeded on its own merits.
Originally Posted by Tatwi
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.
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This is very much the case. And this should prove heartening -- there are some out there who will dive into a mature world PvP environment as newbies in WoW, regardless, despite the fact that the power level differential is many, many orders of magnitude greater than 20%. We should look at that for perspective to realize how manageable 20% is, especially if it's on a sliding scale where the rate of power increase starts fast and slows.
Furthermore, this can honestly be seen as limiting power growth, if you think about it.
As we've already established, newbies start out without a lot of game knowledge, and with varying degrees of hand-eye coordination, and with no familiarity with the characteristics (fire rate, bloom characteristics, bullet drop/fire arc) of the diverse range of weapons with which they can choose to equip themselves. As shorthand, I'll choose to equate these three factors, as an aggregate, to the simple term, "skill."
So we already know that the newbie has a vast "skill" difference compared to a veteran. Whether they have some skill that carries over from outside the game (be it studying wikis to glean maps and statistics for different weapons, having friends recount basic tenets of strategy such as what does and does not represent a favorable engagement based on a given weapon on hand, or carrying over hand-eye coordination from other FPS games), the gulf is likely formidable, and will heavily favor the veteran.
Now, two of those three skill factors will carry over regardless of specialization, as the newbie plays the game and slowly becomes a veteran. So he can get a new cert, and, suddenly, is considered significantly more veteran than another newbie who just started the game, despite having similar time devoted to a particular specialization, role, or cert!
With a system that builds in power advancement, that veteran does NOT get the full benefit of his play in other areas of specialization, merely by being a veteran of the GAME. Thus, it slows his power advancement down, because he has to earn his veteran status in each SPECIALIZATION he wants to tackle.
In other words, a newbie who earns his 20% in a specialization over 6 months (or whatever), can go up against a 3-year veteran who has only been focusing on this specialization for a month, and will be
at an advantage! Despite facing somebody with 6 times the game time as himself. That's because the more veteran player's advancement has been, effectively, *slowed* by the system.
Originally Posted by 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.
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I basically agree with all this. Except, I haven't played EVE specifically. People are forgetting that the 20% for veterans is in a specialty, not character-wide. Sure, given infinite time, that 20% could be character-wide, but every impression I've gotten from Matt talking has indicated that it will take a considerable amount of time to reach that 20% in a single specialty. If we're talking attaining 20% over the course of a year, or even 6 months, you're still going to have to either be a day-1 newbie in some areas of the game, or spread your attention so you're not that 20% in anything. So it's not accurate to say that if everybody has 20%, then vet on vet is the same as 0% bonus. That's only the case if both vets are singularly specialized in the same thing. It's far more likely that you'll see two equal time vets in a 20% on 15%, or a 15% on 5% power differential, and challenge them to make their skill overcome being "out of their element" (or, conversely, reward them for the specialization they chose to engage in when they're in their element). I'm heartily behind this.
Originally Posted by Bags
If everyone gets 20% more power, nobody has 20% more power.
All this does is make vets 20% stronger than noobs, which is completely unnecessary.
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As I just said above, it makes specialized vets 20% stronger than vets who specialized elsewhere, which is, if not strictly necessary, very rewarding and makes the specialization meaningful.
Originally Posted by CutterJohn
RPG aspects are hooks to keep you playing so they can earn more $. They serve no other purpose in an fps. Which I don't care for, but also don't care much about so long as its reasonable. But the proper foundation for an fps is everyone is always on an equal footing, and skill is all that differs. The fact that you have to earn something means the developers took something away from you so you could 'earn' it back.
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I agree on all points. It should be noted, however, that competing FPS franchises have adopted power advancement, too. And they seem to have no problems with complaints that "good" weapons are locked away, and need to be earned, or attracting new players who have to overcome the fact that they're more poorly equipped than some of their opponents.
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