News: PC Gamer Article The anatomy of a Battle - Page 2

polywomple · 2012-02-23, 02:38 PM

lots of stuff to read wooohoooo

ringring · 2012-02-23, 02:40 PM

Sounds good and highly reminicient of ps1. Sure a few differences in detail but the spirit is there without a doubt.

Edit and I really liked this "Players are the thing that is keeping you from winning, not game mechanics."

Yep, the players are the thing!

Snowfake · 2012-02-23, 02:41 PM

Interesting! Looking forward to see how it works.

polywomple · 2012-02-23, 02:48 PM

I love how they want to be away from the "automated" gameplay that you get from generishooters like COD and even PS1, things like automated turrets and the always A -> B gameplay. Sounds exciting and involving many covert missions

DayOne · 2012-02-23, 02:56 PM

Originally Posted by polywomple

I love how they want to be away from the "automated" gameplay that you get from generishooters like COD and even PS1, things like automated turrets and the always A -> B gameplay. Sounds exciting and involving many covert missions

With the new territory capturing so it's not just bases we are going to see more diverse battles.

Raymac · 2012-02-23, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by ringring

Sounds good and highly reminicient of ps1. Sure a few differences in detail but the spirit is there without a doubt.

Edit and I really liked this "Players are the thing that is keeping you from winning, not game mechanics."

Yep, the players are the thing!

I had the same thought. It more or less sounded like somebody describing a PS1 battle. And that makes alot of sense considering the testing they've been able to do so far hasn't been on a large scale. It also means that the true heart and soul of Planetside will be alive and well in PS2.

The only concern I have about this is the repetative nature of capturing bases in Planetside. After 8 years of doing it, it can get a bit routine, so I'm really excited about the terrain capture system to liven things up.

Also, this article had some beautiful images. That one of the Scythe on top is out of this world.

Vash02 · 2012-02-23, 03:15 PM

Originally Posted by GTGD

Interesting that when a base is hacked, the spawn tubes go offline. Has that been stated before or is this the first we're hearing?

NO MORE INTERFARMS!!!

People are spawning in in full armour now and not in PJs anymore so it kinda makes sense.

I'll miss the pajama parties *sob*.

DayOne · 2012-02-23, 03:16 PM

Originally Posted by Vash02

People are spawning in in full armour now and not in PJs anymore so it kinda makes sense.

I'll miss the pajama parties *sob*.

On noes! Now I can't be shot in the face by someone camping the tubes with a shotgun! D:

**Malorn** · 2012-02-23, 03:16 PM

I'm glad they cycled back to having players as the primary defense mechanic of a base.

A base needs objectives of course, and I like shield generators and vehicle pads as objectives that can be disabled. Looks like spawn room is still an option, and that we still "hack" the base to capture it. Hope base generator is still there as well.

Wonder if hacking/capture speed will be naturally tied to classes, particularly with the infiltrator class having faster speed than others. Or maybe it's a general cert. I like it class-based better.

All in all, some goodness here. PS1 had a great model for base capture, nice to see the aren't throwing it out the window.

Vash02 · 2012-02-23, 03:35 PM

Originally Posted by DayOne

On noes! Now I can't be shot in the face by someone camping the tubes with a shotgun! D:

I've always favoured a lethal electical shock to the keyboard/mouse of anyone spawn camping. That or insta-death when entering the spawns. Simply have a power module that they can destroy instead of the tubes themselves.

DayOne · 2012-02-23, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by Vash02

I've always favoured a lethal electical shock to the keyboard/mouse of anyone spawn camping. That or insta-death when entering the spawns. Simply have a power module that they can destroy instead of the tubes themselves.

Shouldn't be a problem in PS2 now as the bases, or the tubes at least, go neutral so no one can spawn there during the hack. Annoying for defenders but more of an incentive to not allow them to get into the base anyway.

TerminatorUK · 2012-02-23, 04:22 PM

This is a great article...for me at least it's confirmed a bunch of things I personally haven't seen confirmed before (in no particular order)

- There is still a "Hack and Hold" mechanic for capturing bases and it can be reversed by the defending team
- The hack disables the defenders spawn tubes (rather like Planetside at release used to)
- Terminals, Vehicle "Spawners" (working title?), Shields can still be destroyed / disabled
- Base facility items (Turrets, Shields, Terminals) still need repairing post-battle
- Galaxies can hold 10 MAXs (Higby's example of 50 MAXs over 5 galaxies = capacity of 10 MAXs each)
- The gameplay seems to have been tailored so it isn't an always an inevitable loss for the defenders once the CY is taken
- Courtyard shields have been done away with (or certainly aren't invulnerable without taking out the gen or removing the lattice benefit etc..)
- Ethic of not competing against the "game mechanics" where there is no human opposition (hopefully the end of destroying unmanned turrets, dropping tubes and gen for the sake of it in an unmanned base etc...)

SniperSteve · 2012-02-23, 04:46 PM

And you get to those solutions, the ability for players to actually be geniuses at your game, to be experts at your game, by taking things away from game mechanics are preventing stuff and allowing it to be players that are preventing stuff.

Anyway. That’s something that we stumbled across, I think, as a “Why isn’t this fun yet?” kind of thing. “You know what, I think there’s too many barriers to it being fun.” I told the world designers when we were talking about this stuff, I said, “I feel like we’re trying to outsmart ourselves, and that we’ve succeeded.” That’s just…what’s the reasoning behind that? Okay, cool, we’ve made some really intelligent, cool game designs for these mechanics, these are really compelling, awesome designs. And they’re unnecessary and they’re preventing us from having fun. So let’s just get rid of them. And that’s what we did.

Higby is brilliant. The depth in PlanetSide was one of the really awesome things about it. Glad they are shooting for this. Keep it up!

And also the willingness to remove 'cool' things because they don't add to the enjoyment is a hard, but good, call. +1 for Higgles!

And as far as base mechanics go, I think my personal opinion is that base objectives (tubes, gen, shields, etc..) serve to make the the base easier to capture by completing them, not as prerequisites for capturing the base.

Sifer2 · 2012-02-23, 05:58 PM

Originally Posted by MgFalcon

Wait did I read that correctly? 50 person MAX crash, 5 Galaxies... Ohhhhhh I'm so happy to know my baby can carry 10 MAX'es now!

Yeah I read that part and raised an eyebrow. Either MAX's are WAY weaker in PS2 compared to 1 or this is going to be pretty broken. Since from what I have ready currently MAX needs no resources like Vehicles. And now it doesn't need its own slots in transports either. So what is going to keep MAX spam from just dominating? Unless they really took all the power out of them. Which would suck since I want to see strong MAX's again just with proper limitations like last time.

Also I found Matt's revelation with removing artificial barriers so players could have fun to be kind of ironic. Considering it sort of spits in the face of their continental footholds concept.

SurgeonX · 2012-02-23, 06:02 PM

So the essence of PlanetSide is alive and well

Despite the ProSiebenSat fiasco, the stuff that matters, ie, the game, still keeps sounding better and better.