PC Gamer's "What we know about PS2"

[Lunarchild]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/08/pl...e-know-so-far/

Some interesting quotes:

There is currently no plans to allow players to jack other faction’s vehicles with the Hacking skill. We hope they change this, but it sounds unlikely.

This will almost assuredly be a Playstation 3-crossover game. Smedley all but confirmed it when asked about it during the press panel.

[Logit]

Fine, let the **** with their thumb sticks get owned by my superior mouse skills.

[Firefly]

Players can swap between classes in between deaths (Medic, Engineer, Infiltrator, Heavy Weapons, etc.), which essentially act like weapon/armor loadouts.

Uh... yeah not on the fly!

[Manitou]

Originally Posted by Firefly

Uh... yeah not on the fly!

This is similar to most FPS's today.

[MgFalcon]

Originally Posted by Logit

Fine, let the **** with their thumb sticks get owned by my superior mouse skills.

Very true, in fact this has happened before with good results for Mouse and Keyboard players. Being mediocre even pwns over the Sticks. Here is the link to the article http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...console-gamers

My favorite quote

The console players got destroyed every time. So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative.

[Rbstr]

RPS says it's PC only.

PS3 players would end up being fodder unless they get auto-aim cheats, which would be super lame. Controllers just can't compete with KB/mouse without it.

I bet you can swap classes at an equivalent to an equipment terminal still. Which would make it little different than it was before.

[Lunarchild]

With game updates differing and such, I personally deem it unlikely that they'd be playing on the same server. A similar structure to DCUO however does seem plausible.

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by Lunarchild

With game updates differing and such, I personally deem it unlikely that they'd be playing on the same server. A similar structure to DCUO however does seem plausible.

Keep them separate if you absolutely have to money-grub it and whore it out to everyone.

[Rbstr]

Don't pretend that the reason they're making the game isn't to make money at some level.

A leader is as viable as a role as a scout, healer, tank, assassin, or vehicle pilot.

I worry about this time. I like the idea that leadership is a separate set of levelling from the combat skills.
If you make leaders a class you have to make sure you can make them viable as a leader of any given class type...leader infil, leader pilot, ect. They don't need to have all the perks of the class but enough of them.

[Lunarchild]

Originally Posted by Firefly

Keep them separate if you absolutely have to money-grub it and whore it out to everyone.

My point, exactly

[2coolforu]

After watching the video from the Fan Faire I have some happy thoughts and some nasty thoughts so here's my 2 Cents

The idea of adding resources and making all the map useful is good, capturing territory should be given some reward, additional customization and personalization of characters is great as it can immerse you in the game more and creating detailed environments with a lot more depth is brilliant. The mention of sea battles and urban warfare made me cream my khakis I must say.

The bad however is getting worrying, the first thing that shot up to me is the 'EVE style skill trees'. I don't know if SOE has read any of EVE's monthly reports but about 90% of the kills made are young players of age less than year, even characters older than a year have a low chance of survival because they are dominated by characters that have been playing longer and have more diverse and complex skill trees. The beauty of Planetside was that a BR5 and a BR20 were roughly equal in any 1 on 1 fight, the advantage of being a BR20 was that you could drive your squaddies into battle in a deli or heal yourself after the gunfight. Of course now that the max Battle Rank is 500 or some horse shit and the high-ups can cert every skill and hop from hacking to BFR to tanker the balance is gone and there is a distinct advantage, but the original game was well balanced in this respect.

Now the worst thing a game can have is unbalance, look at Call of Duty, its almost unbearable if everyone is using the power weapons or the Model 1887's or what ever guns Activision adds in to make the youtube 'zzIiinsaneSKILLZz guys feel pro.

Now I'm open to SOE somehow balancing this EVE skill method so that it is perfect in every way, however they are going to need to do some serious beta-testing and alpha-testing.

Secondly the idea that there will be no sanctuary, this is incredibly stupid. The best feeling to Planetside was capturing that last base and wiping the enemy off the continent, the war stories are always 'We were holding that last base on Ish' or 'In Tore we held for 6 hours before wiping the Vanu off the continent". Now we have an 'uncapturable foothold' on every continent, this sounds horrible to be frank, absolutely horrible. I don't know if Smed wants to clarify this in any way or if anyone has an answer but this totally goes against Planetside, now we can just spawn constantly on any continent? There is nowhere to develop massive raids? The fights will always be the same, on the same bases from the same foothold? SOE Have you not listened to any TR talk about the constant fucking backhacking at Dagda and how fucking dull it was since that was generally a constant link the VS had to Forseral, having a sanctuary meant that many links to neutral conts came from other captured bases elsewhere meaning attacks could come from different areas, we could experience different terrains and angles. I can't see how you could ever 'control' territory if the opposition has a constant foothold on EVERY continent, it just sounds dumb.

The other set of problems I have comes from this article "http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/08/planetside-2-what-we-know-so-far/"

The first thing that glared out to me is 'Mosquito fighter can upgrade that vehicle’s handling, damage, or armor – or unlock secondary weapon slots like AA or anti-infantry cannons"

No, just no. You can't balance all these different aspects and upgrades, one will trump the others and people who chose the other paths before this was known will get the short end of the stick. Over complication is the main way to cause unbalance and stagnation, merely look at the difference between Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 1; In the first there were far fewer various perks and attachments, in the second there were ten buttloads of everything which led to huge unbalance (lightweight tac knife, lightweight Ump-45, blah de blah blah) its also horrendous giving a player who has spent more time such a huge advantage. This isn't getting red armor this is a serious advantage, having a second gun or giving the mosquito capabilities beyond what the standard version has.

"Players can swap between classes in between deaths (Medic, Engineer, Infiltrator, Heavy Weapons, etc.), which essentially act like weapon/armor loadout"

Why do we have classes? What was wrong with allowing a player to set up his own 'class' and get the weapons he wants. One of my favorite elements of Planetside was creating my own class, this should be adding on the customisation - not removing it and adding set classes. Classes are ridiculously inflexible, a player who has been in the game for years knows far more than the developer who probably played fleeting inhouse alpha game sessions, a player can create classes specific for exact situations that pre-set classes cannot.

I see ideas that are really good, outfit customisation, new bases, resource management and territory defense and capture, large continents, naval warfare, urban warfare and larger scales however a lot of the ideas are also totally un-Planetside.


There are a few other things I would like to add: Smedley, SOE, If you are listening DO NOT ADD a spawn on squad-leader ability. I know Battlefield 3 is doing it but its a fricking retarded idea in a planetside style world, Please keep AMS's kthxbye, seriously imagine gen holds with 'magical spawn on leader' abilities, or any base hold with this ability, its dumb.

Secondly, do not fucking add kill-streaks. I know CoD does it but CoD sucks.

[Firefly]

Originally Posted by Rbstr

Don't pretend that the reason they're making the game isn't to make money at some level.

I know. But it's like a high-class whore. You know you're paying out the ass for it, but you still get a hot babe who pretends she wants to fuck you.

[Rbstr]

Originally Posted by 2coolforu

The bad however is getting worrying, the first thing that shot up to me is the 'EVE style skill trees'. I don't know if SOE has read any of EVE's monthly reports but about 90% of the kills made are young players of age less than year, even characters older than a year have a low chance of survival because they are dominated by characters that have been playing longer and have more diverse and complex skill trees.

A couple months into EVE you can easily be competitive in certain ship classes. As the game has gone along they've continually made is easier for new players to enter the game. They start with orders of magnitude more SP now than when I started. You can only put so much SP into any given ship configuration and lvl5 skills only give you 2-7% extra for your month's training, the noob has the skill to lvl4 in a week.

But that doesn't really even matter.
Advantages in EVE are primarily based on the amount of money you have. Your economic strength lets you buy all sorts of fancy shit that skills can never make up for. Money in EVE works far more like a traditional levelling system where playtime=levels/dollars. That's where the system gets lopsided.

[2coolforu]

Clearly you haven't read the EVE monthly economic report, it totally contradicts what you are saying.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/QEN/QEN_Q3-2010.pdf

Characters in the 1-5 million skill point range typically account for 14% of all losses yet a fraction of a percent of killls. It is not until the 20-30 Million skill point group that kills to losses break even, this represents over a year of playtime.

Money = Playtime, same difference. even then skills give you a huge advantage over a person of less skills even if you are of equal wealth so the point is moot.

In fact the article asserts a playtime of 2 years is required to be competitive in PvP in 0.0, 2 years is a ridiculous amount of time.

Now SOE could perfectly balance it, it could be awesome; however all we know is that it is 'like EVE' and EVE has some serious problems with learning curves and newbies, the worst thing we can do is have a circlejerk about how awesome its gonna be, we need to have concerns and pressure SOE to balance it and think it our properly.

If we just sit around and jerk SOE off onto our collective faces we'll just get what happened to CoD, where noone dared critique it so Activision just unloaded turd after turd on the community


This is exactly what we don't want, long-time players massacring the newbies.

[Hamma]

Funny how things can be taken differently.

I was in that panel when that question about Playstation was asked. Smed simply said there was nothing to be said. I for one don't take that as a confirmation.