Should SOE include this weapon in PS2?

[omega four]

While gathering some Bad Company 2 gameplay footage recently for my gamer surveys, I came across this nifty weapon: the Flamethrower.


I found the Flamethrower well balanced for gameplay. Much like a shotgun, the Flamethrower inflicts great damage up close but the damage drops off as the range increases. It also causes some residual damage (depends on how much fire hits the target) that lasts even after the Flamethrower stops firing.

The flames, sounds, and resulting kill sounds are outstanding in BC2. SOE will have its work cut out for it if it wants to implement a Flamethrower at the same level of quality.

Most importantly, I found using the BC2 Flamethrower a lot of fun. I think SOE should include the Flamethrower (or its futuristic equivalent like a Plasmathrower) in its weapons arsenal.

[Dragonskin]

Flamethrowers will be in for MAXs with the big MAX update coming. They are on the test server now I believe.

[omega four]

Originally Posted by Dragonskin

Flamethrowers will be in for MAXs with the big MAX update coming. They are on the test server now I believe.

That's great! But I think they should also include the Flamethrower for regular ground infantry as well.

Why should MAXs get all the fun?

[camycamera]

the flamethrowers on the test server suck atm. they are piss weak, it's hilarious.

[omega four]

Originally Posted by camycamera

the flamethrowers on the test server suck atm. they are piss weak, it's hilarious.

Do the flamethrower fire effects and sound look and sound great at least?

[Ghoest9]

If you are shot even once while using a flame thrower you should burst into a giant ball of flame.

[Dragonskin]

Originally Posted by omega four

Do the flamethrower fire effects and sound look and sound great at least?

http://www.twitch.tv/agntv/c/2200833

That is Hamma and Jennyboo's twitch stream where they were going over playing with the harasser and all the new MAX weapons/abilities. Near the end Jennyboo is playing with flamethrowers. They look cool. They sound decent, but they do terrible damage at the moment. That will have to be drastically buffed. People should literally melt in their very close range that they are effective.

[omega four]

Thanks for that link to the PS2 flamethrowers.

I thought the PS2 flamethrower sound starts out nice (the roar) but then sounds bad when it mutates to a hum (like an indoor office air conditioner unit).

I also thought the PS2 flamethrower flames were a little muted and self contained. The flames didn't disperse and spread out the way they do in Bad Company 2.

So far, I like how BC2 depicts flamethrowers better from both a visual and audio perspective.

Originally Posted by Dragonskin

http://www.twitch.tv/agntv/c/2200833

That is Hamma and Jennyboo's twitch stream where they were going over playing with the harasser and all the new MAX weapons/abilities. Near the end Jennyboo is playing with flamethrowers. They look cool. They sound decent, but they do terrible damage at the moment. That will have to be drastically buffed. People should literally melt in their very close range that they are effective.

[Dragonskin]

Originally Posted by omega four

So far, I like how BC2 depicts flamethrowers better from both a visual and audio perspective.

Sadly, that is just something that Planetside 2 probably can't afford to increase much. BC2 is a much smaller gameplay type... like 64 vs 64 max or was it 32 vs 32? PS2 is a open world persistant game with hundreds of people running around. You have to sacrifice visuals to some degree to improve performance. Which is the reason you don't see water in the game... flames and water are resource heavy to actually make them look realistic.

Hossin is supposed to have water and Searhus will have lava, but that makes me wonder what corners they had to cut to get those elements into the game since Indar has no water in it's river beds. Esamir doesn't have any snow falling and Amerish doesn't have any real water either.

All the audio used in the Frostbite engines sound amazing... most of PS2's audio doesn't compare to what Dice has pulled off. It would be nice if they could go through and enchance the audio across the board for PS2.

[omega four]

All good points.

As for the audio, isn't outstanding audio and sound staging also supposed to be CPU intensive as well? I get that impression the way PS2 allows you to manual select how many audio "voices" are played at the same time in the Settings menus.

Originally Posted by Dragonskin

Sadly, that is just something that Planetside 2 probably can't afford to increase much. BC2 is a much smaller gameplay type... like 64 vs 64 max or was it 32 vs 32? PS2 is a open world persistant game with hundreds of people running around. You have to sacrifice visuals to some degree to improve performance. Which is the reason you don't see water in the game... flames and water are resource heavy to actually make them look realistic.

Hossin is supposed to have water and Searhus will have lava, but that makes me wonder what corners they had to cut to get those elements into the game since Indar has no water in it's river beds. Esamir doesn't have any snow falling and Amerish doesn't have any real water either.

All the audio used in the Frostbite engines sound amazing... most of PS2's audio doesn't compare to what Dice has pulled off. It would be nice if they could go through and enchance the audio across the board for PS2.

[Assist]

Originally Posted by Dragonskin

Sadly, that is just something that Planetside 2 probably can't afford to increase much. BC2 is a much smaller gameplay type... like 64 vs 64 max or was it 32 vs 32? PS2 is a open world persistant game with hundreds of people running around. You have to sacrifice visuals to some degree to improve performance. Which is the reason you don't see water in the game... flames and water are resource heavy to actually make them look realistic.

Hossin is supposed to have water and Searhus will have lava, but that makes me wonder what corners they had to cut to get those elements into the game since Indar has no water in it's river beds. Esamir doesn't have any snow falling and Amerish doesn't have any real water either.

All the audio used in the Frostbite engines sound amazing... most of PS2's audio doesn't compare to what Dice has pulled off. It would be nice if they could go through and enchance the audio across the board for PS2.

Esamir has snow falling, just not much of it.