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2014-05-30, 09:05 PM | [Ignore Me] #2 | ||
Corporal
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Apologizes then. I was going off what I generally hear from in game. Seems there was more negative comments towards it than positive. And I was more so referring to the no squad deploy inside bases instead of sundies but then I should have more so stated it more clearly.
Last edited by Azzzz; 2014-05-30 at 09:12 PM. Reason: Destroyed by the Devs has that effect ;) |
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2014-05-31, 04:26 AM | [Ignore Me] #3 | |||
Major
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The reason being is that attacker Sundy spawn can be blown up while defensive spawn is indestructible. Hence, attackers have to apply extra players to the Sunderer so it won't simply be blown up. If the developers were simply worried about parking Sundies right next to the cap point, they could have easily adjusted the radius to around 10-20 feet. Instead, they had to make it large, again, to satisty the equidistance argument. The negatives far outweigh the positive. The NDZ has been voted down at least 2:1 at the official forum (2000+ against vs. 1000 yeas). This mechanic restricts gameplay while reducing the unpredictability of game (a hallmark of PS2 up to that point). I made so many posts on how toxic NDZ is to gameplay (even before they finally decided to implement it). Also, this is more of a philosophic battle about how PS2 should run more than anything. "For NDZ": Developers should have tighter controls of mechanics leaving less decision to players. Something that I accurately predicted as a slippery slope. Since NDZ was implemented, they also disallowed players from dropping mines on Vehicle pads and mines on infantry jump pads. Again, rather than letting players clear the mines themselves(which shouldn't take more than 5 seconds on most bases), the developers feel it's their role to be an invisible guardian. All this does is make pvp stale. A player blowing up in vehicle pad is that player's fault because the pad wasn't checked for mines. In a middle of a fierce, contested Tech Plant fight, mines on the vehicle pads can mean a loss or a victory. Instead, if you ask the PS2 developers, that meta fight for the vehicle pad shouldn't be even part of gameplay . This is one of multitudes of reason why I often say that the PS2 devs don't even play PS2. Alot of gameplay, meta and balance context is foreign to them. "Against NDZ": Hands off. Let the players decide and fight it out. This is the type of philosophy the new SOE game, H1Z1 foster. When somebody asked Smedley if there will be a safezone, he answered "what is a safezone", meaning it won't be implemented. In, short they are letting players decide the gameplay. Is it a suprise to anyone why that type of Laissez Faire gameplay is what makes games like H1Z1 very popular? In PS2, they operate in another direction, there's too much gameplay interferance mechanics that the Devs sprinkle inside the game. Instead, they should just give players more tools. A Spawn Jamming Sunderer would have sufficed, rather than a No Deplay Zone. Deploy a Spawn jamming sunderer. Any enemy sunderer caught within the AOE radius cannot spawn players. That would have been a much better alternative. And that's something that have been suggested way before they implemented the NDZ. One of my many, many posts about the NDZ (this one after it was implemented): http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=55971 Related: Suggested fixes to Spawn Camping/ Sunderer Wipes: http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=56877 |
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2014-05-31, 10:00 PM | [Ignore Me] #4 | |||
Contributor PlanetSide 2
Associate Programmer |
Call it hand holding or what have you, being able to place mines on the vehicle pad is one of the cheapest things you could do and added very little to the game. |
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2014-06-01, 12:15 AM | [Ignore Me] #5 | |||
Contributor Lieutenant Colonel
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As more and more mechanics are added to PS2, such as the intercontinental lattice and cont locking, the game must remain easy to get into. Of course, these same mechanics need to provide the depth, the meat, that veteran players need to keep us engaged. |
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2014-06-01, 05:45 AM | [Ignore Me] #6 | |||
Contributor General
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Anyway, if someone says 'it's like this to make it easy for new players' I'll generally be supportive. |
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2014-06-01, 11:55 AM | [Ignore Me] #7 | |||
Staff Sergeant
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Using Titanfall as a model, you essentially have the Grunt/Pilot dynamic. Grunts play to jump between zergs and have less clutter to deal with, meanwhile Elites are the players playing for tactics, working in outfits and determining the shape of engagements. |
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2014-06-01, 05:14 PM | [Ignore Me] #8 | |||
Contributor Lieutenant Colonel
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2014-06-02, 12:21 AM | [Ignore Me] #9 | |||||
Major
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Think of another game, say, basketball. A referee would draw random circles on the ground where offense can't step on. After watching the offense dance around like clown just to get off a shot, the ball changes hands and now it's the other team to do it on the other side. Now, would I call that 'holding hands'? Would you call it holding hands? My guess, no. What I would call it is gameplay degradation, increased predictability, messed up flow, unnecessary rules and overall an overreach by the officials. Now, back to Planetside 2. The No Deploy Zone does the same. Anything and everything that can happen when a basketball player steps on the circle will NEVER happen because it is prohibited. Anything and everything that can happen when a Sunderer parks in that zone will never happen because it is prohibited. So, If I drive a Sunderer in a risky desperation move to park and nail it on a side of a wall, under fire inside NDZ will never happen. And any and all chain of events happening as a result will never happen EVER! That's my point about reducing gameplay variety and unpredictability. It's a simple rule of reciprocity. Defenders are allowed to park Sundies, hence offense should be allowed to park. Defenders use shotguns, offense is allowed shotguns, etc etc. Secondly, about the mines on the vehicle pad (and I understand how important the newbies are). I believe there are far worse things in PS2 than that and most of them involve gameplay balance. It's something we've been warning the Devs since the beginning. Example: (Dec. 17, 2012 http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...000#post868000)
Instead newbies are leaving because of gameplay imbalances: The Zoes, the lolpods, the Harassers, the Prowler HEs of yesterdays etc etc. Newbies are also leaving because the Developer solutions eschew the basic gameplay, such as allowing Sunderer spawn to wipe easily, coming from the buffed Liberators and is the main reason why stopped logging on (http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=58093). But, I'll give an example of a current imbalance that the Devs are trying to solve heavy-handedly (same way as the NDZ, vehicle pad, jump pad solutions). It's Sniperside. Before Sniperside, Snipers are this way: Ranged advantage + low Detection advantage (stealth) + Can't 1-hit After much circle-jerking at the official forum, the Developers decide to change Sniper abilities. And despite warnings of how they are being gamed (read, I'm referring to Sniper posts at the official forum btw: http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...199#post948199 )
Range advantage + low Detection advantage (stealth) + 1 hit kill head shot. Hence, this crazy, advantage has been used to farm newbies. What's the Dev solution? Death Screen. In a similar vein as the NDZ and such, it encroaches unnecessarily on player gamespace. It's not player action that is telling where people are, but the Dev indirection action. A better Sniper solution would be simple, well thought balance pass: Remove stealth ability from Snipers! Finally, I reiterate that this is a philosophic battle whether the Devs should jump in or keep their hands off gameplay and leave player interactions to just the players. I still say that all the former does is make Planetside 2 fights less exciting and more bland and cumbersome. |
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2014-06-02, 01:14 AM | [Ignore Me] #10 | ||||
Contributor PlanetSide 2
Associate Programmer |
The reason most noobs left was because of performance until OMFG. After that, it's usually one of these: not being able to find a fight, or dying a lot. Some players have no idea how they're dying and the feedback the game gave was very sparse and difficult to understand. That's one of the reasons we added the killcam. Personally, I wanted to go further with the killcam, but what we have is still pretty good. There's no "we keep hands off gameplay." Everything we do has some hands on or design direction. For the best games out there, it's really hard to notice the designer's hand in the game, because it all flows so smoothly. There are some rough edges where you can see the designer's hand, but I don't agree with your solutions to fix that roughness. |
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2014-06-02, 03:32 PM | [Ignore Me] #12 | |||
First Sergeant
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It's about giving us a big free and open world, a bunch of cool weapons to blow shit up with, and letting us go. You want to hold our hand. No thanks. I understand this is not always a nub-friendly environment, and may not live up to your profit-making expectations. Continue to sell-out as much as you need to. In the mean-time real gamers will go find the games on the cutting-edge, just like we did with Planetside 1. Last edited by Illtempered; 2014-06-02 at 03:37 PM. |
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2014-06-02, 05:07 PM | [Ignore Me] #13 | |||
Second Lieutenant
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Offensive quips aside they have said from the beginning that this game would be like a bad battlefield clone and slowly get more and more planetside elements over the year. It's nice to get some features in the game that can keep everyone happy but imo I think more so than the newbies who the devs like to hold hands its the 'vets' who are influencing the game in a bad way. They're so set on 'This is how it was in PS1 and it worked. So surely it needs to be in PS2.' This has been hashed out countless times and theres a bunch of good arguments for and against that idea but at the end of the day Planetside 1 and Planetside 2 are 'not' the same game, quit trying to make them the same. |
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2014-06-03, 07:28 AM | [Ignore Me] #14 | |||
Lieutenant General
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What we lacked in PS1 for a long time (till the "tutorial missions") was a proper introduction design. I feel PS2 shouldn't have launched life without one. In part, I agree with you that DURING THE GAME, the player doesn't need to be held hands. Think like mines on vehicle pads... Eh. They're the most logical spot to place them, are they not? So just make sure that when a player pulls a vehicle, he has a good oversight from the console on the vehicle pad: any blowing up is then your own fault. Of course, in PS2, the consoles are sometimes inside a room, or way above with the vehicle pads 50+m away. In some cases, we even had vehicle pads you could use as an enemy, with an enemy SHIELD in front of it (!). You know, at that base people refered to as the Star Ship Troopers fort. But the problem is that players should be taught valuable skills before entering the game. They should understand the map, but not just the icons, what it means, strategically. I really liked that PS1 eventually had all these pop ups and exclamation marks for new characters, to make it easy to draw attention to things and explain it. But even knowing the equipment or consoles is not enough - even if a must - doesn't suffice. The VR-Room is important (and IMO, players should probably start here, so they know of its existance and also, since it's an environment where people can ask questions and get an answer). Currently I think the new player is not taught some of the more important stuff. One of the most important things is teaching the player to communicate with others. And be very clear and predictable in how and when these chat commands work (influence of zones, etc.) The most important thing however, is teaching a player about situational awareness. Now, what this dev is on about, is teaching them while playing, after they got killed. Possibly, it might be more interesting to teach them off-line on where you could expect what kind of danger from. To teach them just how much danger there is. And that you should always be aware that any form of tunnelvision leads to being killed by something else from the side, above or behind. I think it's more important to teach them how to move through terrain infested by hundreds of people (and how to observe the fight before making a move), than teach them to burst fire. Teaching them what information they need, where they can find it or how they can obtain it. Or at least, how they can reocgnise it and then how to use that information. For instance, how to deal with camped and defending situations (where to check for enemies, what units to prioritise (those camping close, medics, spawn vehicles, etc), last resort: respawn elsewhere). Also teaching them that the most straightforward route may not be the most succesful route. Teach them to flank. Teach them to think about what their opponents will be trying to do and how. This can be done with simulaitons, or even a paused scene from an actual player assault on a base, where in different moments different situations are recorded and frozen for the new player to learn from (both good things and mistakes, like running into a firing squad time and again instead of coming up with a different approach). Teach them to be creative with the tools they have. Teach them to prepare for the next fight by reading the map and noticing what is going on, so they learn how to make a choice on where to go, why and what they can expect in terms of enemies and friendlies turning up. If you want to take a base three lattice points down the road, what counter-actions can you expect from enemies? What equipment will they be able to bring and what kind of preventive measures could you take? Should you consider changing vehicle? But above all... Teach them that most of this knowledge will come over the months you play. Teach them that getting better and mastering this is the ultimate challenge. Don't teach them that short term gain (kills, exp) is relevant. Teach them the long term objectives. A lot of those things people learn from experience. And it is exactly that gap of experience that a lot of people have with those who already play (or are simply smarter and adapt quick) that prevents them from getting into a demanding PvP MMO like this game. This could partially be done with a simulator against AI, it could be done with "(De)Briefing Tutorials" (tactical analysis of a player battle as described before). But the problem with that all, is that it's an awful lot of work. Plus... I'm not impressed with the tactical analysis prowess I've seen that lead to the various base designs and camping in the first place, so I'm not sure I'd trust the dev team to provide this properly. It would be good if tutorial videos could be submitted by players though and accessed from in game, sorted by category of gameplay and situations. |
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2014-06-04, 05:20 AM | [Ignore Me] #15 | ||||||
Major
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As for the hockey thing. I've seen this hockey video before. What if I implement a PS2-style no-sneaking-behind-the-goal-post-like-a-ninja-zone. That wild move would not ever happen ever. I read the Youtube comments and they are going crazy about this move. Dropping a huge offensive no-skating zone circle around that goalpost would severely reduce alot of gameplay as well, I'd say.
Most pads are 5 feet away from the console. In a middle of a raging fight. you mean to tell me, 5-20 guys with line-of-sight won't spot it? Because that's the crux of it. I'm talking about mining it in a middle of a fight, especially at the crucial vehicle pad next to the Tech Plant SCU. I really doubt there's someone going around, randomly mining empty bases just to make alot of newbies quit. Also, how is dropping an AV mine on a vehicle pad different from dropping AI mine on a stair or a doorway? The way you characterize newbies, means they will just die off these mines and they will quit as well. And I sincerely doubt you would call dropping AI mine on a stair, door or an elevator pad cheesy too. Because if it is, then as all slippery slopes go, the AI mines will be next to drop off the precipice.
I'm pretty sure Higby said kill-cam was added to stop newbs from being farmed or something to that effect, especially by Snipers. That's why imo, it's better off to just remove their stealth ability. Stealths are for infiltrators. Having triple advantage of ranged, stealth and 1-shot kill is broken.
If I try to park on the NDZ: - Am I interacting with other players? No - Am I fighting other players? No - What gameplay is created? None - Who is preventing me from parking? The Devs - Then who am I fighting? The Devs - Who is winning? The Devs - Are the Devs a faction? No - Is there a gameplay born out of this Player-Dev NDZ interaction? None I could do the same comparison with the Vehicle pads, Jumppads and Death Cam. We're not talking about safezone areas like the Warpgate or Spawn rooms. It's in the middle of the battlefield. Who determines what Continent will be locked? Player vs Player interactions. Who determines who parks in the NDZ? Developers, not Player vs. Player interation. Do players have any input to at least turn it off via generator? None. There is literally no player input, interaction or gameplay with this system. It's not like a Generator mechanic, which has pvp and gameplay implications. Give us tools instead that effect the same NDZ using Player vs. Player interaction (which is gameplay). Example: I suggested the Sunderer Jammer as alternative even before NDZ was released. - Offense deploys AMS Sunderer. - Defense deploys Sunderer Jammer and prevents AMS Sundy from spawning player. - That interaction has the same effect but is a Player vs. Player interaction (which is pvp is called Gameplay). - Offense can move the AMS Sundy from the Sundy Jammer's AOE or just blow it up. - Defense can defend the Sundy jammer or attack the AMS Sundy or both. - All of these Player vs. Player gameplay interaction. The Devs ideally would have just given us tool fight each other, while removing their "hands on" fingerprint in-game, hence "hands off". |
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