Nanite Ned and taking Emergent Gameplay Just a Tad Too Far

[Tatwi]

I honestly expected to log in and find Nanite Ned hocking his wears in some far flung part of the map. I really did, but he's no where to be found. In fact, the only "stories" being told in PS2 are that of the BFR and those of the many terminals, beeps, and the distant sounds of animals.

Planetside had a lot more "character" than Planetside 2, with the attention to detail given to things like emotes, enter/exit animations, vehicle variety, and the distinctiveness of each type of armor (and its upgrades). I am by no means saying that PS2 is bad, it just for some reason doesn't invoke the same feeling that Planetside did. This is interesting, because both games are completely devoid of any life or "story", beyond what the imagination conjures by observing the scenery.

PS1 was also able to allow the players to "tell better stories", because it delivered a more robust variety of game play, while also encouraging players to learn a role they enjoy. The end result was that players developed an identity within the game, which then made them a "character" within the "story" of the game.

PS2's class system negates the possibility of players naturally developing a "character" in the game, by virtue of the ability to play any role at a moments notice. While this certainly makes for entertaining combat, it blunts the ability for players to recognize each other's contributions, especially contributions from outside of one's squad. It forces players to focus on the action of combat rather than to develop an appreciation of the experience as a whole (or as a story).

I believe that PS2, in its current form, has taken the mantra of emergent gameplay (player generated content) too far, causing the world of Auraxis to feel lifeless and leaving overall experience of the game detached from many of the important emotions that allow players to define attachment and meaning.

There are many ways in which SOE could overcome this issue, some of which would change the game entirely while others would simply add just enough "magic soup" to make the game "stick" with the people who play it. Here are some of my suggestions.

1. Bring back the Don Ferrone music from Planetside. It was the most captivating character in the whole franchise and it fits the genre and mood perfectly.

2. Add some "flair" NPCs to uncontested locations that are scripted to act as though they are the normal inhabitants of the location. Make them invulnerable and really quite full of random "pathing" and activities. Even as few as two or three non-soldier-looking people "doing stuff" in a Biolab would really bring the whole facility to life.

3. During battles at facilities, script small acts by NPCs, such as ducking into into a doorway and closing the door. The door would not lead to a location where players can enter, thus giving the illusion that the facility is alive by giving the player the impression that he is interrupting the normal activities that take place there. Tiny quirks of life that we'll catch out of the corner of our eyes.

4. When combat is at a minimum, add a few invulnerable animals here and there. Yes folks, I have changed my mind about the NPC/animal thing since 2011.

5. Make Nanite Ned a real character in PS2, by having him periodically show up and do random hilarious things, with his band of Nanite Systems scavengers. Do this in the heat of battle, but make it something that is truly special and random. Perhaps even assign the triggering of these scripted events to real, live CSRs who will be able to select the location in real time, for maximum effect.

6. Make sanctuaries and make them completely epic, actual cities with Nanite Systems factories, NPCs, and all of the things that will make players give a damn about fighting to protect and expand their societies. I am thinking DCUO quality cities here, SOE. Planetside is your property, you can make it as epic and unparalleled in the industry as you would like. Don't miss out on this opportunity to "nail it".

7. Develop something that will not only allow people to specialize in a role (as the class/cert system does allow), but that will actually encourage people to be recognized for specializing in their chosen role. Providing players with the ability to be recognized for their specialization is the best way for the person behind the keyboard to become a "character" in the emergent "story" that is Planetside 2's gameplay (rather than just a character in the community that is external from the game, like BCP and many of the kind folks around here). What is the "something" that I would provide? I would trade access to classes/vehicles for access to deeper, more detailed certs in specific classes/vehicles. It would be as simple ticking a box to give up a class, which then grants you the ability to tick a different class you'd like to unlock "Advanced Certs Level 1/2/3/4/5" on. This, of course could be reset and any cert points placed in Advanced Certs would remain there in case you wanted to use them again another time. Perhaps make it like PS1, where you can only reset 1 level every 6 hours, again to encourage specialization and the building of an identity. With this, a person could go all Engineer/Lightning if they wanted or they could go Engineer 3/Max 1 and Galaxy X/Lightning X/Flash X, etc. Advanced Certs would be genuinely FUN, game play changing sidegrades rather than power increases.


With the exception of #7, these suggestions are all "little things" that [the extremely seasoned MMO building company that is] SOE could do to bring to life the world in which the game and the "story" take place. I fear that without servicing these important emotionally impacting details, Planetside 2 is going to miss the mark required to really grab people and make them care about the game (and ultimately, their time and friends within it).

I want Planetside 2 to be "my game" for years to come, for myself and hundreds of thousands of others. SOE has the experience and talent to make that happen, so I hope they also have the spirit and direction to focus their efforts on building Planetside 2 with a soul, because without a soul Planetside 2 will quickly wither and fade away.

[Rothnang]

I agree with the call for more specialization. I have never played Planetside 1, but what I find most fascinating about everything I heard about it is that when it initially launched you had to make a call on what your role would be in the war.

I personally think people should be allowed to play as a generalist like they can now, but if they want to give up the ability to play well with certain vehicles or classes to be a little better with their favorite one it should be a possibility.

[ShadetheDruid]

I agree. Encouraging people to specialise through things they can only access by doing so would be a much better way of getting people to specialise than forcing them to.

[Koadster]

Didnt play PS1. But I really agree with the cert specs, it bugs me that I can drop thousands of certs into my medic to make him effective but a BR1 medic can drop in and rez/heal people just like me, obviously not as well but it really removes any depth to classes or becoming a specialist in that role. There is no "Hey player X we need you for this spec op mission coz we know your a good medic" its just "Random player in squad change to medic to help with the mission"

[Thunderhawk]

What you're asking is good when you think of a group of players from all 3 factions starting the game together and growing up in the game as a force vs each other.

What you have now is PS2 which is F2P which relies on the high turnaround of players to keep going, players that play the game for a month then leave, players that log in 1-2 a week, those are the players SOE are targeting with all this cool shit, and those are the players that will get hurt if you introduce specializations.

Don't get me wrong, I been banging on about wanting specializations for months and months and form the start of them allowing public onto Tech test servers, but its just not going to happen, enough has been said form the dev side to show that this will never be introduced.

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Now your NPC idea of getting places to look more vibrant is cool, but that would add extra load on server CPU/Memory etc... that is best diverted to the optimization of the actual player experience.

I would love to see NPC mining in a mining outpost, NPCs in Biolabs in Lab coats walking about doing their business, when facilities switch faction the NPC become more faction specific (TR Bio Lab engineers) - (Vanu Mining Excavators) etc... but will that happen? (I know Smedley would love it, but I think it got shot down in a design meeting many months ago)

[ShadetheDruid]

Although too late to do now, I think what would've been interesting for the specialisation aspect (without unnecessarily limiting people) would've been to have separate XP/cert pools for everything rather than one general pool.

Meaning a seperate XP/cert pool for each class and each vehicle. You use a class/vehicle a lot, you get XP/certs for that thing - and the more you use it, the more things you get for it, and the more you specialise in that through just playing it a bunch. Obviously some things would still be universal, like universal class certs (or something like the Flash), where you could just spend certs from any class/vehicle on them, or weapons that carry over to other classes where you buy it with one class' certs and get it with the other class(es).

That would've given more of a specialisation feel to the game without really changing how the game works from what we have now, as such. Plus you would have the interesting aspect of people having an overall battle rank, as well as ranks in individual classes or vehicles. If you were to look up someone with battle rank 40, and they were, say, a rank 10 Medic, rank 18 Engie and had rank 26 in the Reaver (to pull random numbers out of my butt), you'd immediately know where they'd specialised.

[HiroshiChugi]

Not only do I see amazing ideas in this thread, but I also see a potentially whole enw and different game. As it is obviously too late to add all of this stuff in, it would be much easier to just make a new game entirely. They could even pull all of this off to the side to make a "Planetside 3" down the road and have it F2P but have a lot of the stuff member-only accessible, like member-only continents, vehicles, weapons, classes, vehicles, etc.

The potential for this game is being wasted. I do agree with that. BUT, the game itself is amazing already. You just have to look at it from a general player's point of view. Like such:

"Oh hey look, a new FPS. I wonder what it entails. Woah, 100s of players on a single map? Each capture point the size of a few CoD or Halo maps? More than just a few vehicles! Holy shit this game looks amazing! Plus more than one continent to boot? Ermahgerd I want to play this game! AND it's F2P!! Amazing! I can't wait to tell my bros about this! It's like an FPS and MMORPG hi-bred game! I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before."

You have to look at it from this standpoint, because right now, that'sthe way SOE is looking at it. If it was P2P, then they would look at it from our point of view, the avid gamer point of view. So if PS2 doesn't gor P2P, then they will continue to ignore most of our statements in this forum and continue to do their own thing until they don't feel like it anymore. I hate to say it, but this is what's going to happen. It's sad really, that such a game like this would go to waste. I would really love to see more adeed to this game. Such as NPCs, more advanced cert treesm more class and empire diversity, etc. Albeit, I love this game. They have successfully created another FPS-MMORPG hi-bred game, and are making shit tons of money off of it.

Edit: Grammar.

[Rolfski]

The game could use more "character" and specialization but part of it is already on the road map.

[Catfart]

I get confused when people say that compared to PS1, PS2 does not allow specialisation of characters.

As far as I recall in PS1, you could change your class certs every couple of days (Was it 24 hours?). You could put all your certificates into being the sneakiest infiltrator one week, the next a red hot pilot. Sure you might prefer to stick to one class, but you didn’t have to.

In PS2, yes you can pull any class at a moments notice. But if you have specialised into Engineer related upgrades, you can only be a basic Heavy Assault because you cannot move your certs.

Surely the result is characters with greater specialisation compared with PS1

[Sledgecrushr]

Npc animals would be cool. Random npc events would be fun as well. Maybe ps2 can start to borrow assets designed for eqnext, if it is just animated deer and rabbits using the forgelight engine.

[PredatorFour]

Originally Posted by Catfart

I get confused when people say that compared to PS1, PS2 does not allow specialisation of characters.

As far as I recall in PS1, you could change your class certs every couple of days (Was it 24 hours?). You could put all your certificates into being the sneakiest infiltrator one week, the next a red hot pilot. Sure you might prefer to stick to one class, but you didn’t have to.

In PS2, yes you can pull any class at a moments notice. But if you have specialised into Engineer related upgrades, you can only be a basic Heavy Assault because you cannot move your certs.

Surely the result is characters with greater specialisation compared with PS1

Specialization was better in PS 1 cos you could customize your loadouts.

example....

I could hop into a tank as 'engineer' but instead of a gun just carry a repairing device. the rest of my inventory could be filled with 11 mines(or c4/mobile turrets ....combat engineering devices)
Then in my tank i could open the boot and put lots of repairing canisters in aswell as more mines etc.. customized to my needs.

You could do this with whateva playstyle you liked which was awesome.

[Phantomdestiny]

give me them city sanctuary please

[Corvo]

Separate XP pool for weapons is a pretty good idea. However, if the devs don't want to go that far they could just use existing mechanics to make weapon specialization waaay better.

(1) Allow players to have two rail attachments at once - both a laser dot and a foregrip if they have made X kills with a particular weapon.
(2) Allow "advanced" attachments for weapons that won't normally have access to them, say an advanced foregrip attachment for TMG-50, available after getting a Gold Medal for it (doesn't need to be a gold medal, just threw it as an example here).

DO IT! It doesn't require that much effort since the stuff is already in the game.

[camycamera]

i say no to the human NPC's. according to lore, aren't all civilians on some ship in SPAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCEEEEEE or something? but i would like to see npc animals, i guess that can be killed :P but i dont mind, as long as they dont get in the way.

a few things that will increase immersion or story telling, if you will, would be continent locking (coming) and the ability to name captured hexes for outfits that have captured them (also coming). THAT would be awesome.

[typhaon]

They could surely put NPCs into the game... but we've already got enough rendering issues and performance problems to deal with - so I think it's best to wait.

I would like to see elements added to bring a bit more life to the continents...