Tank drivers acting as gunners in PS2

[Goku]

Well air is normally one man unless we are talking bombers. Tanks are known for needing crews to work. I do not think you can apply that to tanks as a result. The more I think about it this for the cash shop. Giving the driver the main means more money spent on upgrades for yourself. I wouldn't spend cash for others in my tank. No issue doing certs for upgrades of course.

[Raymac]

It seems there are some contradictory arguments being made here.
1) Solo tanks will be overpowered because 2 solo tanks > 1 tank with 2 players
2) Solo tanks will suck because driving and shooting at the same time is hard.

Now, I've said I'm not a big fan at all of the driver controlling the main gun, but I do see alot of people turning a blind eye to one of the benefits to it. More casual players (which is something PS2 needs to not only profit, but even have the numbers to play) have a much more difficult time gunning or finding a gunner which means the whole tank portion part of the game is at best difficult to try and at worst impossible to participate in.

Having an individual player be able to participate and enjoy the fun of the tank game is a bonus. A solo tank will also be very gimped in that they will be VERY easy targets for air units, so a tank crew will always be preferable.

Like I said, I don't like it, but that seems like a legitimate argument in favor of it that none of us here will mention because we've all been a part of organized outfits.

Now, since I don't like it, I lobbied the devs on twitter a bit and got this response from Higby: "We've discussed giving certain vehicles a cert for a "gunner seat" that would allow them to spec to have a dedicated gunner...TBD"
Higby: "a dedicated secondary gunner is going to be a bigger threat 2 ur reaver. There will be a lot more A2G and G2A gameplay in PS2."

The first response is fairly interesting since it would allow organized tank crews to still have dedicated drivers and dedicated gunners which seems to be the main point of contention from most of us here.

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Raymac

It seems there are some contradictory arguments being made here.
1) Solo tanks will be overpowered because 2 solo tanks > 1 tank with 2 players
2) Solo tanks will suck because driving and shooting at the same time is hard.

This is not contradictory, both points are independent of each other.

2) A driver that also has to gun is relatively ineffective, since he can't aim his turret at an angle and still drive properly.
1) Since a tank is always gimped due to 2), two gimped tanks are superior to one gimped tank with a relatively weak secondary gun manned - unless you count in air, of course.

I'm still saying that the driver should use the secondary gun for reasons described earlier, here.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Now, since I don't like it, I lobbied the devs on twitter a bit and got this response from Higby: "We've discussed giving certain vehicles a cert for a "gunner seat" that would allow them to spec to have a dedicated gunner...TBD"
Higby: "a dedicated secondary gunner is going to be a bigger threat 2 ur reaver. There will be a lot more A2G and G2A gameplay in PS2."

The first response is fairly interesting since it would allow organized tank crews to still have dedicated drivers and dedicated gunners which seems to be the main point of contention from most of us here.

A "dedicated gunner" still won't be investing unlocks/certs that affect the tank at the time its conjured out of a vehicle terminal. Oh there might be "+5% gunner traverse speed" type certs, but it's the person calling up the vehicle in the first place that'll be spec'ing out the engine/armor/secondaries/etc.

[Malorn]

And yet according to Higby secondary guns are "no joke"

If his statement is accurate (and we have no reason to believe it isn't), and his other statement about the secondary guns being more powerful than the main gun then we have reason to man the tanks as opposed to running around with a bunch of solo tanks.

If a vanguard ends up being a main-gunned tank with a skyguard turret on the top of it that's a pretty awesome thing. Mix a few of those in with mortars or whatever and you've got a strong set of tanks that will be hard to destroy. Run around without the secondary guns and you have no air defense and you may have weaker effectiveness against infantry, which gives the single-manned tanks a strong counter which a group of fully manned tanks does not have. The end result is motivation to fully man tanks.

This will be one of those key pieces of feedback for beta - is a fully manned tank worth doing vs many single-manned tanks.

As far as the effectiveness of single-manned vehicles...BF games have done it for years and its actually surprisingly easy to drive and spin a turret at the same time. And it ends up being a lot like driving a lightning.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by FIREk

This is not contradictory, both points are independent of each other.

2) A driver that also has to gun is relatively ineffective, since he can't aim his turret at an angle and still drive properly.
1) Since a tank is always gimped due to 2), two gimped tanks are superior to one gimped tank with a relatively weak secondary gun manned - unless you count in air, of course.

I'm still saying that the driver should use the secondary gun for reasons described earlier.

I don't know if I 100% agree with you there, but I definitely see what you are saying. I guess it kind of depends on how "weak" the secondary gun is, and how prevelant air is.

That whole part of my post was kind of a side thought. The most important thing I wanted to convey was this:

Higby: "We've discussed giving certain vehicles a cert for a "gunner seat" that would allow them to spec to have a dedicated gunner...TBD"

I really hope that is something they put into the game.

[Goku]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Now, since I don't like it, I lobbied the devs on twitter a bit and got this response from Higby: "We've discussed giving certain vehicles a cert for a "gunner seat" that would allow them to spec to have a dedicated gunner...TBD"
Higby: "a dedicated secondary gunner is going to be a bigger threat 2 ur reaver. There will be a lot more A2G and G2A gameplay in PS2."

I still do not want the driver having anything to do with gunning anything to be honest. There is plenty of areas for a "casual" player to have fun with. Don't ruin tank fights because of that. Casual tank battles would suck if their the majority of the tank force. I want coordinated 2 man team based tank platoon commanded by outfits going head to head on the battlefield. Not some guy smacking into a tree or using the tank as artillery.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Goku

guy smacking into a tree or using the tank as artillery.

1-man MBTs will be vulnerable to AV troops and much more so to A2G attacks without a secondary gunner.

Tank vs tank battles rarely happen in isolation (though it does happen). Yes, a tank vs tank battle might go poorly for a 5-tanks-with-secondaries squad versus a 10-tanks-without squad. But that second squad is LUNCH when the Reavers and AV infantry shows up. The first squad (given a good mix of secondaries) can handle all that with style and come out the other side with a few scorch marks.

OTOH, we don't know how powerful AV secondaries are. They just might out-DPS the main gun in some circumstances. Or all. We Just Don't Know.

[waldizzo]

Should just get the "best" (using the term loosely) solution for both points of view. Have it so if someone pulls a tank, they control the main turret. If someone gets into the "main gun" spot, then the driver just drives like normal.

[FIREk]

Originally Posted by Raymac

That whole part of my post was kind of a side thought. The most important thing I wanted to convey was this:

I really hope that is something they put into the game.

What I'm reading here is "optional 2-man Reaver". I'm tellin' ya, Higby sounded very cocky when he commented on the old screenshot in light of the currently-solo Reaver. :P

[Goku]

That is what I am getting at. The tank battles should NOT be that way. Most fights should be far more coordinated. Coordination is what actually breaks stalemates instead of zergs just keep on killing each other for hours on end. I still do not even like the idea of tanks having AA in my opinion. I do not see how air will really even fair against ground targets unless their TTK in the is far quicker compared to what the Reaver did in PS. The SG worked wonders, I see no reason to take away that vehicle either. I just do not know what the devs are thinking in regards to vehicle battles with this one change and how it impacts it.

I do not care how good the secondary is either. I just do not want anything to do with it. The driver and gunner system was perfect in PS. No reason to change it for PS2 for the casual player excuse. I keep seeing this swung around all the time. From the sounds of it a casual player will not be even playing with anyone with how everyone talks. If casual players are going to be the base of the game pop wise I do not see how this game can work. The number of players on conts is suppose to be far higher then in PS, how is that going to be coordinated properly without being with in a outfit? Random squads rarely get anything done too. In my outfit I had quite a few guys who I would call casual that played only a few hours per week. Though they loved all the team oriented ops we were doing, not running around doing solo kill whoring.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Now, I've said I'm not a big fan at all of the driver controlling the main gun, but I do see alot of people turning a blind eye to one of the benefits to it. More casual players in PS2."

I understand the need to bring in additional players and I far from disagree, but shafting your existing playerbase and compromising one of the most unique and interesting parts of your game isn't the way to do it.

Ideally I'd like to see both groups appeased, and I don't think that's much to ask. You could use the Lightning. You could work it into the modular system. Even just tweaking the squadding tools would help address any difficulty in finding like minded individuals.

[Kurtz]

Individually all these changes may seem like "WTF change?, this would never work in PS", but collectively they could all work together flawlessly.

I can see the need to modernize the Franchise to steal away CoD/BF fans, and am remaining neutral on all the changes until I see them together.

Personally I'm a big fan of Slower TTK and the good ol RTB (returning to base) after a successful mission. I'm not really into the BF/CoD spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die game play and paper tanks and planes. I feel that living for a long time is a morale booster. Dying often has the adverse effect, even if you win the match, round or whatever.

Driving a vehicle in PS1 was a pretty thankless job due to the lack of stats for drivers. A good tank driver (Someone you could trust not to push in too far, knew when to retreat, avoided mines, and most importantly found you a tower door to camp), was a hard thing to find. So from that perspective, I can certainly see why they did it. After all you want to reward the person doing all the work to earn the certs.

I can go on a "stay off my lawn" rant and say "in my day I drove an AMS...we didn't have turrets...I didn't get a % of kills or any BXP % from kills from those who spawned off it....it was the single most frustrating experience of my life setting those up on Emerald around June 2003." Knowing a good AMS would turn the battle was enough.

Those days are over, and those types of gamers are long gone...or they're playing ArmaII. The point is that there aren't enough folks that like slow TTK and have the patience for the PS1 gameplay. Certainly not enough to fill a 5000 slot server.

We just have to be patient and see.

[moosepoop]

I am very against the idea of drivers controlling the tanks. it would discourage teamwork and encourage noob soloing and rushing. it would also allow for massive tank spam completely dominating infantry outdoors.

i think the tanks should stay in the classical ps1 format: a driver, primary gunner and secondary gunner.

i have played battlefield games and the tank combat is MUCH less dynamic than planetside, there is a lot less strategy and teamwork.


mister higby, in my opinion, my favorite part about vehicle combat in planetside are the vehicles with a lot of gunners, like the raider. i think vehicles should have more gunners, not less. gunning with other players is a special unique experience in planetside i found nowhere else. if you remove this critical aspect of the game, it would negatively impact gameplay. please remember battlefield games have a lot less players, and some of their concepts may not work as well for an MMOfps.

the only reason i still occasionally come back to ps1 is to experience the team based vehicle combat. it was the one thing that stood out to me about this game. if this aspect is removed, i would be a lot less interested in planetside.

inspiration from other games is one thing, plagarism is another.




the whole point of the class system is to prevent people from going commando and solo in a team based game. giving the drivers solo control of one hit kill turrets is a very bad idea and sevrely hampers teamwork, and goes against the overall gameplay design. it doesnt make sense.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by moosepoop

the whole point of the class system is to prevent people from going commando and solo in a team based game. giving the drivers solo control of one hit kill turrets is a very bad idea and severely hampers teamwork, and goes against the overall gameplay design. it doesn't make sense.

Unless that vehicle is extremely vulnerable to air or AV infantry.

And we don't know that the turret will be able to one-shot infantry... though seems a reasonable assumption given PS1's gameplay + faster TTK.

I get the feeling tanks are going to feel a lot clunkier unless the driver works hard to cert/spec it for maneuverability.