A few things that Matt Higby needs to realize

DiabloTigerSix · 2012-05-29, 08:03 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...lS5MYgM#t=117s

Originally Posted by Matthew Higby

So we've brought all those modern FPS elements that today triple-A FPS players, people playing Battlefield, people playing Modern Warfare, have come to expect and love and we've put them into the world of planetside.

1. This "modern FPS" has done nothing remarkable worth noting (let alone putting in your game) other than dumbing down the genre in order to make it more accessible for causal players.
NOTE: "Accessible game" is not same thing as "simple game". A properly made game can be complex, yet still accessible to players who want to just jump in for the first time and do something, ignoring the complex bits - this is what the makers of Battefield, DICE, failed to understand, stripping the franchise off its core features.

2. If you're new to FPS, if you have been playing FPS games just for a couple of years, then yes, you may love these modern elements. But if you, like me, have been playing first person shooters for 10 or 15 years, you'll most likely hate them. Dedicated gamers are tired and sick of modern FPS elements. For example, if you're taking elements from Battlefield 3 which adopted 1/2 of its features from CoD, you're basically taking elements from CoD. This is how nearly every developer out there thinks. FPS market nowadays, is full of the same game and lacks originality because everybody said somewhere in mid-process "Well, CoD is successful!. So let's make this bit and those bits like CoD. People will be familiar with that and like it." Seriously, don't you see how contra-productive this can become? Even people who have been playing first person shooters since CoD 4 - the game that spawned many of these elements) are getting tired of the same gameplay over and over again, would sure love to see and welcome something fresh.

Why am I concerned? Well for the start, the gunplay of PS2 shown so far looks awfully like CoD, that means it looks just like in most generic first person shooters and it doesn't stand out. I dare you to do something about that - looking at Battlefield 2 AND BF2 mods instead of Battlefield 3 might be a good place to start.

3. Catering to your core audience is the most important thing to do. If they're happy, then the whole community will be. If your whole community is happy, then they'll be helpful and friendly to newcomers. If they're not, they'll spread hate.

You might think that you're doing "triple-A FPS players" a favour by putting in features and game mechanics they're familiar with. The opposite might be true. Numerous games have failed trying to grab the call of duty audience by mainstrimizing their gameplay (e.g. Homefront, Operation Flashpoint: Red River,...).

To sum up, even those who love Call of Duty, don't starve for another one or anything overly similar. After all, we're just people. We love to learn and experience new things. And there's been enough of Call of Duty elements everywhere. Being another game to implement them is in no way a key to success.

I beg you not to overdo it in this area.

4. All modern FPS have one thing in common - they're all meatgrinders. Personally, I'd like Planetside 2 to have more tactical organized gameplay heavily featuring teamwork, but from what we've learnt so far, it's turning out to be a meatgrinder. Surely, Planetside 2 had huge maps, but then they might not be big enough for 2000 players and I'm saying this as someone who's got years of experience focusing primarily on games with open landscape battles. I've played games which had 4x4km maps, 64-128 players and there's enough action. 2000 might require bigger maps.

I'm especially concerned about infantry gameplay inside bases and run'n'gun gameplay between portals. It might resemble mainstream shooters too much, but with even more players and less control, meaning you can't influence much when you're getting ganked by 30 people at a time.

5. Which brings me to another thing and that's traveling. Matt Higby said in an interview that they wanted reduced pointless travel times and they were going to achieve that by spawning closer to action. Traveling certainly isn't pointless to everyone. Besides the fact the it can be very "romantic" and allows you to enjoy beautiful environments, it brings natural pauses that make the game more teasing, tense and more fun in a long run. It also gives you time to rethink your next move. Fighting in a meatgrinder 24/7 isn't what people enjoy, however they do tend to do it just to rank up faster.

TL;DR:
- taking inspiration from modern fps (mainly BF3 and CoD) = not good. Going further back in time and taking some elements from there = far better.
- maps very likely to be too small for 2000 players => meatgrinder ALERT!!
- traveling essential to provide players with diversion and regular breaks from combat

Goku · 2012-05-29, 08:13 AM

Just one thing on the maps. There is a bunch of different reports on the actual size of people that will be playing. This can easily be balanced during beta. Really no reason to be complaining about that.

In terms of traveling that is for troop spawning. Not vehicles. Did you play the original PS? You had to depend on human player spawn vehicles you could deploy on your own. Sounds good in theory however not many people had them certed. You have a entire base being assaulted and only have 2 AMSes. Easy enough to blow those out with OSes. Enemy team proceeds to push out attackers and force them to the tower. That was the problem in PS, only one hard spawn for the attackers to go against the base. You are still going to have to go back to bases for vehicles as well. You will see the landscape enough that way. Fights will be very dull having to go back to a base every time you are killed.

Stardouser · 2012-05-29, 08:14 AM

1. What are some more specific examples of how modern FPS have dumbed the game down? I agree with you but I'm curious as to whether you are against the exact same things as I am.
2. Elaborate on gunplay? I do agree with you that they need to look more to BF2/2142 than BF3.
4,5 together. This is the biggest concern for me. I mean, on the one hand, you do want to eliminate pointless travel time insofar as the 2 mile walk from the closest main base. But I think we should have a system where Galaxies are deployed 750 meters from a target, and once you get closer to the target, squad spawning is the primary respawn method. However, it should be squad leader spawn only, meaning if the SL dies, he has to run the whole 750 meters back- this will help prevent meatgrinding since squads will advance more carefully.

As for the Galaxy at 750m from the target, my vision for an MMOFPS has always been a large game world, with 4-5 miles between bases, and the attacking army is able to set up a forward base no closer than 1 mile to the target base.

Some people will come and say that Galaxies, not squad spawning, should be the primary respawn method. But if that were the case, then Galaxies would have to be a lot closer than 750m from the target base. And from what I have played of PS1, AMSs were usually set 10 feet outside of a base wall under sensor jammers. Certainly not what I'd like to see. Having a Galaxy 750 meters away isn't a HUGE penalty, but it makes wiping out an attacking squad very satisfying, knowing they've got a 45-60 second run back. Also provides a great target for reinforcements coming from elsewhere.

Goku · 2012-05-29, 08:21 AM

Originally Posted by Stardouser

As for the Galaxy at 750m from the target, my vision for an MMOFPS has always been a large game world, with 4-5 miles between bases, and the attacking army is able to set up a forward base no closer than 1 mile to the target base.

There were quite a few wide spread bases in PS. Empires would at first be fighting in between the two bases, but not for long. Once one lost the momentum it would go right to a base fight. There was no reason to stay out in the middle of nowhere, so everyone went right for the base. That is one of the major issues that Higby said they are trying to solve with the hex system. I don't think we know how well this system is going to work until we have a fully populated battle from all three sides going on these maps.

SKYeXile · 2012-05-29, 08:30 AM

I agree with all points.

You should also note that travel time play a vital roll because of supply, In ps1 is was ams and ants along with long ranges for resecuires, the all add layers to the tactical meta game.

Goku · 2012-05-29, 08:30 AM

Gandhi yes thats true. However people never wanted to cert the AMS. I found it lacking so much when I played the last year I actually certed it in order to at least have one at base assaults. This issue was still wide spread when I was playing years ago as well. There shouldn't have to be a total reliance on player made spawns, we should at least have a few more hard spawns around a base. Just consider it a few more towers to retake.

Gandhi · 2012-05-29, 08:39 AM

Originally Posted by Goku

Gandhi yes thats true. However people never wanted to cert the AMS. I found it lacking so much when I played the last year I actually certed it in order to at least have one at base assaults. This issue was still wide spread when I was playing years ago as well. There shouldn't have to be a total reliance on player made spawns, we should at least have a few more hard spawns around a base. Just consider it a few more towers to retake.

That's true. It seemed like there were times when AMS's were plentiful and others when you literally had nobody bothering to pull one, and lost an attack because of it.

Plenty of times I pulled an AMS and drove it to the target only to find out I couldn't deploy it anywhere because it was already swamped with the things. I think that discouraged a lot of people too, it would have been really nice to be able to see deployed friendly AMS's on the map including the interference zone around them, or even AMS's currently en route somewhere. The whole system was really lacking support in a lot of ways.

Sledgecrushr · 2012-05-29, 08:56 AM

Cod and the bf franchise are doing something right since they have millions of players.

Kran De Loy · 2012-05-29, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

Cod and the bf franchise are doing something right since they have millions of players.

Graphics, 'feel', fluid/responsive controls that add to a higher level of immersion as well as they just have more options than any other current generation competition.

PS2 looks like it will match the first, Higby already said they are focusing on the second and third and PS2 itself will blow the fourth out of the water entirely.

Levente · 2012-05-29, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

Cod and the bf franchise are doing something right since they have millions of players.

yes they do something right: Lies and some more Lies. Thats how BF3 hype campaign started,DICE promised the BF community that maps are gonna be big in BF3 but yet they are almost the same size as a cod map. Not only that, but they removed all the teamplay tools that worked very good in BF2. Result? result is a shit frustrating game that i cannot play for more then 10 minutes. of coruse theres a whole list of more problems but i dont want to make a list.

Gandhi · 2012-05-29, 09:10 AM

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

Cod and the bf franchise are doing something right since they have millions of players.

Those games only have to convince you to buy them once to make them successful, which is pretty easy with a huge, aggressive marketing campaign and a lot of brand recognition. Even SWTOR sold over a million copies despite some huge problems, now look at it.

A F2P game has to convince people to put money into it on a constant basis, it's a whole other ballgame. It's far more dependent on replayability and general satisfaction of the community.

Elude · 2012-05-29, 01:34 PM

Call of duty does indeed have some pretty fucking terrible gameplay in my opinion but so did PS1, in fact if you wanna know the truth I actually thought it was much worse than call of duties.

If it were not for the persistence and large scale battles I would of passed up PS1 in a heart beat, so long as PS2 stays true to this I am sold!

solracseptim · 2012-05-30, 02:46 AM

I see what you guys are saying but as I am sure was stated in some form or another you can borrow things that work without cloning the game the ideas came from. Honestly PS, just on paper is so unique that even if its game play was exactly the same as COD or BF3 its still a drastically different game. They will no doubt meet us in the centre with the changes and there are definitely annoying as all hell things that were in COD that aren't in PS. Also who is to say that the game wont have a different feel from those games, there are so many different factors that contribute to that from art and effects to animations etc.. From what I can see PS2 is essentially a remake so its natural for it to garner worries from the fans who have more then fond memories. Question is, how much of this worry is for the sake of the game's success and how much is just nostalgia.....

Jinxsey · 2012-05-29, 09:07 AM

Suggesting something sounds like bad game design, without identifying specific issues (film grain effects? kill-streak rewards?) is of limited value.

Any good beta tester will tell you, identify specific issues, identify specific causes, make sure they are repeatable and then call it a problem.

Old games = better, new games = crap, just sounds like nostalgia talking.

Homefront failed because it had sloppy writing, unballanced killstreak rewards, tiny overly cluttered maps and weapons copy-pasted from a dozzen other shooters it was directly competeing with. It did nothing new, and did the old stuff worse. This dosen't tell you that new shooters are rubbish, it tells you that if you don't do something different, or do it better, you're going to fail. Planetside has always been about big maps, big teams and persistent play.

From all the vids I've seen so far, PS2 looks like PS1 with BF3 visuals, that dosen't make me sweat, that makes me grin, because you know what I like about modern FPS games? They're slick and they're gorgeous.

Badjuju · 2012-05-29, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by Jinxsey

Suggesting something sounds like bad game design, without identifying specific issues (film grain effects? kill-streak rewards?) is of limited value.

Any good beta tester will tell you, identify specific issues, identify specific causes, make sure they are repeatable and then call it a problem.

Old games = better, new games = crap, just sounds like nostalgia talking.

Homefront failed because it had sloppy writing, unballanced killstreak rewards, tiny overly cluttered maps and weapons copy-pasted from a dozzen other shooters it was directly competeing with. It did nothing new, and did the old stuff worse. This dosen't tell you that new shooters are rubbish, it tells you that if you don't do something different, or do it better, you're going to fail. Planetside has always been about big maps, big teams and persistent play.

From all the vids I've seen so far, PS2 looks like PS1 with BF3 visuals, that dosen't make me sweat, that makes me grin, because you know what I like about modern FPS games? They're slick and they're gorgeous.

This...using mechanics seen in bf3 and cod are to make the game feel more realistic and thus more immersive (at least for me). I don't think these mechanics dumb the game down at all, and I don't think they are what sets the tone of the game. If there are specific features you dislike then name them or this argument will go no where. Personally my only concern at this point is the balance of the ttk, but like most issues it is to early to worry about until we play the beta and see how it fits and how they adjust it.