Of pressure and tension build-up

[sylphaen]

Of pressure and tension build-up

... or how everything made instant and easy is not always for the best.

DISCLAIMER: this post can easily be labeled as a "PS1 vet's lament" because it is one. Please, avoid posting before thinking; please, avoid judging before understanding.

This warning is here because too often, I see mind terrorists starting a "Vet vs. Others" or derailing a thread to start a war of sterile comments which is, as far as I'm concerned, useless and the best way to kill a debate and discussion behavior.


TEXT: During this past year, I have had the chance to discuss and share/oppose a lot of ideas with posters on PSU about Planetside as PS2 was being progressively revealed.

Before anything, I would like to thank SOE for actually creating a sequel to the concept of Planetside. Yes, it's arguable whether this sequel/reimagining has achieved to maintain the PS concept in its current state but at least, the ideal was given a second chance.

I have played with the PS2 beta and had fun with the game but surprisingly:
1. not as much as I expected to
2. without as much fun as I had in PS1

"Why is that?", I thought. Undeniably, the graphics are awesome. Undeniably, I had fun using LA and a large map to flank and shoot raws of snipers in the back. Undeniably, the gunplay is more fluid than PS2. Undeniably, it was also much faster and simpler to pick up than PS1.

Yet why haven't I been interested in playing at PS2 that much ever since I tried it ? I have been trying to understand it. NewSith might have part of the explanation when he says the gameplay feels too unlimited:
http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=47735

My other idea on the issue is that PS2 lacks tension build-up. Some of the games I have enjoyed the most in my life involved a lot of tension build-up and the most massive was in PS1.

I loved Day of Defeat for the risks it involved capturing an objective. I loved Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory for its capacity to attract all the pressure on a series of objective, one after the other (a 16 vs. 16 felt like a huge battle). Then I loved Planetside for slowly building up that flow of battle-tension whose climax was base assault.

That's what's missing to PS2. Its lacks direction, paths of tension and above all, tension build-up.

When I look at PS2, I see that:
- paths that build up tension are too diffuse
- once built-up, tension is released too fast

This has parts to do with TTK but mostly with map design. When compared to W:ET (sequential objective-based maps) or PS1 (lattice), player activity is focused all the time along/towards/between the objectives. Then, along those lines, a tension builds up where the heavy fighting takes place (a front is created !). This tension build-up slowly and very high as attackers near a final objectice and a fierce resistance becomes focused and determined to defend at all-costs. Then, as soon as the objective is taken or offense defeated, all tension is released and starts building up along another line of conflict.

In W:ET, since maps were linear with attackers vs. defenders, tension was usually moving one way (i.e. as attackers accomplished objective before time was elapsed).
In PS1, this went both ways: you took the objective or your spawn point was destroyed and pressure turned the other way.

In PS1, the tug-of-war was a lot more dynamic and I can't describe what a lot of vets call the "flow of battle". It's something you sense. However, it was not entirely random because the lattice gave rules to focus the lines of tension. It's what commanders could read to develop a strategy for their team. It's what the common player could guess to choose his vehicle/weapon set-up for this spawn. It was never too fast (entering a continent took effort) and at times could definitely be too slow (ghost hacking a continent). But it built some of the most massive and entertaining battles I played in.

This flow of battle is like the flow of a river. It flows along a river bed and merges with other flows converging towards the same objective. Pressure builds up like a water against a defensive dam which hopes to hold against it. Then something breaks and all that power is released in a grand finale ! the scattered rivers then start flowing again to the next objective. PS1 had reversing current flows but that wouldn't fit with the rivers metaphor.

Anyways, what I am trying to express is that PS2 lacks that great build-up of tension. Objectives move out too fast and no tension has even time to build-up. The frontline is spread of a dozen of hexes at all times so things are too spread out. When tension builds up, it tends to get released too fast (locked base timers). Any tension can be by-passed by going straight to an objective (foregoing any opportunity to build some action in between). Any tension can be avoided to ghost hack. etc... It's all too fast (strategic-wise, gunplay is fine imo) to properly enjoy the scale of a 2000 player game.

Changes to Zurvan were a good step in the right direction. Hopefully, more effort will be given to build a better game flow.

I hope PS2 achieves that flow of battle because to me, it was one part of the true essence of PS1. Good gunplay is nice but imo, meaningful and strategic mechanics are more important and should be the core of the game.


(Thanks for reading and my apologies for being a bit verbose. Not everyone has gifted and elegant writing.)


Edit: If I could summarize, PS2 offers no suspense because it's combat offers no story of itself.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspense)

[Sledgecrushr]

Well ese past few weeks air assault has been the modus operandi. As things develop I believe it will be harder and harder to leapfrog from base to base the way we have been. Believe me when I say that the tank wars are coming, there will be a defined front line and air power will be somewhat diminished.

[Mox]

What we need to get epic battles or "tension" in PS2 is:

- Some kind of lattice
- Walls/Defenses
- a ground vec buff
- more ground vecs
- AMS instead of the gal as spawn
- better capture mechanics
- comand chat

[Snipefrag]

Not sure lattices are the answer, I just think there needs to be a larger reason to "go and take that base that is really well defended" or "Defend that base that's getting zerged!". Just getting an extra 5 auraxium or whatever isn't going to be enough of a draw to make an empire really commit to an attack when they can just go take something where they can pad their kill count and get +500 XP. If you think of how the resource system works at the moment it pretty much discourages direct confrontation and encourages back hacking and avoiding the enemy to take as much land as possible. What compounds this issue is the lack of warning when an enemy is attacking your land, so the resistance and suspense you talked about doesn't build up.

Post is pretty well written, and I agree with some of your points.. But I'm pretty sure the devs know the meta game needs a lot of work. At its top level (and if it interests you) PS2 should be a thinking persons FPS with some in depth rules and strategies. PS1 in all honesty didn't do things the right way, it forced these rules down your throat.. And if you didn't understand them then for a new player it was very easy to get lost. Steep learning curve. I hope you have posted this on the PS2 beta forums, I would recommend doing so and linking it in here.

Finally.. Good post, well thought out and raises some very legitimate concerns.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ringring]

Nice post.

[Fazed]

I do agree with you, having myself played wolfenstein ET a lot because of the very interesting player's made custom maps with loads of different fortresses/tank advancing scenarios which created so many different fronts in one game!

I think that planetside2 needs a commander mode, like battlefield 2 had.
You would have to be elected or to earn the title of commander in some certain manner that there would be a limit on how many there could be for each faction, say 4 per factions, that would be able to send out request directly to squad leaders.

E.G.
Commander requests reinforcement on a zerg'ed base, he opens a chat/voice communication with a nearby squad leader

Squad leader answers but cannot move from current location, doesn't have transport for his troops

Commander sends in two gals by request to other players trolling at the warpgate.

As much requests you would dispatch, it would give you some sort of point, whoever has more would seem to be a more reliable person to request for the commander.

[sylphaen]

Thanks for the kind answers, guys.

I was not sure if the post was expressing what I thought correctly enough. For instance, I tried to stay as abstract as possible in order to focus on the idea of battle flow and tension rather than its implementation.

I'm glad you enjoy the topic and shared your ideas about current/past/potential systems that can/should be fixed/improved/built upon.

@Snipefrag: I'll follow your advice and post a copy on the official forums. I usually prefer the PSU community though.

[Flaropri]

Some interesting thoughts. I may not quite agree with all points, but it was well put together. Having read this and some other thoughts, I made a potential suggestion to try out:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...503#post836503

I personally still very much like the idea of going behind enemy lines and capturing territories and disrupting supply lines. Obviously however, if the world is too open to the point that supply lines don't exist than that may be counter productive. Still, as I said in the linked post, I don't have enough information to come to a real conclusion about how much of and if it is a problem.


Overall, battle flow is something that is really hard to gauge on an individual scale, and a lot of it will be effected by balance issues. For example, many of the last few streams I saw had a lot of Air based play, and large parts of that are no doubt at least influenced by balance issues between air, ground, and anti-air. I think part of it is also because of the availability of vehicles without certs, and that most people enjoy flying as a part of human nature (let alone blowing people up while flying).

In WoW, one of the things that Blizzard said they would do is sort of "once again" limit flying mounts on the new continent (where in Cata you could fly just about anywhere right away). One of the reasons they decided on this is because they didn't want people to "skip" over the world, it's terrain (it's mobs) and have a more in-depth look at it. I think they actually have a point to a degree.

A lot of the bottlenecks, the ambush locations, and other things are bypassed by flying, and for AA to be effective it thus has to be dispersed (relatively anyway) to cover the wide angles of attack that Air can employ. Also, having to navigate around terrain (especially in enemy territory) inherently creates tension, and prolongs it before that tension can reach a climax, whether that is finally beginning to bombard the walls of Zrvan or suddenly having a bunch of HAs and LAs with boomers pop out from behind a ridge or attack from the canyon walls your group is going through.