PS1 -> PS2 - what things should not have come across?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Kid Gloves, Oct 11, 2013.

  1. jak

    They were the good infantry playeres, so yeah...the minority.
  2. Axehilt

    Things PS2 shouldn't have brought from PS1:
    • The "random guy shooting infinite bullets" bug
    • TR Anchoring without any defensive advantage
    • Waist-high railings combined with bad jumping mechanics (and a lack of vaulting.)
    Things PS2 just did better:
    • Base design variety (including bases like Amp Stations which are just outright better base designs than anything PS1 had.)
    • Lightnings that don't suck
    • Shooter gameplay
    • Infiltrators who don't suck
    • Snipers who, while a tiny bit weak, don't suck
    • Flight model
    • Medigun isn't terrible!
    • AV MAXes kill vehicles!
    • Everyone gets Bursters!
    • Visuals (PS2 feels much closer to the best-looking shooter than PS1 was for its day; it's behind in both cases, as is the nature of an MMO, but the difference is smaller and that's impressive.)
    • Weapon balance (despite the blatantly imbalanced things which remain imbalanced for months, at least I haven't had to suffer through years of an underpowered Pulsar and Lasher!)
    Things PS2 did worse:
    • Vertical progression (playtime now makes you stronger)
    • Population imbalance (caused by having fewer, larger-pop-limit continents)
    • Invincibly defensive bases
    • No respawn time ramping
    • No capture XP unless you're sitting right in the territory when the base flips
    • MBTs where the driver uses the maingun
    • Harassers which beat MBTs
  3. Axehilt


    Is Rock complaining about Paper again?

    (Meanwhile the great infantry players didn't complain about MAXes, because they were able to handily defeat them.)
  4. The Shermanator

    You can cherry pick specific examples. The fact of the matter is that most of the bases in this game are not defender-friendly.

    As for Biolabs: Once they hit a critical mass of defenders, they become borderline impossible to attack. Everyone knows this and it is a problem with the design. It doesn't change the fact, however, that PS1 bases were better designed for use with a lattice system, as they universally gave defenders a chance while also being interesting to assault. I attribute this to a few factors:

    • Usable battlements that allow defenders with appreciable protection from direct-fire HE while allowing them to fire back.
    • Universal turrets that were equally effective against all targets, streamlining the whole process and eliminating the situation wherein the wrong turret is in the wrong spot.
    • Tight corridors and room-to-room fighting offered tactical opportunity for both attackers and defenders, in comparison to what we have now.
    • Hackable doors.
    • Bases with an actual anatomy, with NTUs as the life's blood.
  5. Regpuppy


    Do you mean they were complaining about them during the beta, when they costed absolutely no resources and you could spawn them just like you could a regular infantry class? Well, people definitely complained about them then, but not for the reason you're quoting. The majority of the arguments are now based on faction vs faction max or even that maxes feel too disposable or too expensive/cheap. But nowhere do I see anything about removing them entirely. Not since old maxside 2 beta period.
  6. jak

    The outfits of elite players in PS1 often didn't pull MAXes out of respect for each other. You are correct, we did not have any problem killing them, but we sure as heck didn't like them.
  7. jak

    Comment was referring to PS1, not PS2.
  8. Regpuppy


    Then I'm not sure it's relevant. Maxes have actually translated to PS2 pretty well. They serve a purpose while not marginalizing infantry and even needing a lot of infantry support.
  9. jak

    I was replying to his post saying PS1 players didn't complain about MAXes...

    I agree mostly with your statement. PS2s MAXes are more easily killed than PS1s version, so they're not a huge deal.
  10. Vastly

    If "properly" involves taking a randomly generated map, dotting a few trees, rocks, roads and bases on it (which are mostly cookie cutter copies of each other, all defended by the same, brain-numbingly, boring gameplay of spamming doors, like a Biolab on steroids), and then drawing lines between them later when it becomes clear a complete lack of any map flow is detrimental to overall gameplay, then you're quite right. PS1 did it properly.
  11. jak

    I think you're mistaking me saying the lattice design that dictated battle flow was done properly in PS1 with me saying PS1 was a perfect MMOFPS. The point was you had bases that were important to take supported by a system that created clear lines of a battlefront rather than the current clusterf* we have now. If you want to break it down to the simple points - 1) Bases that *mattered* because of their benefits and, well the lack of them, 2) a lattice that supported the creation of multiple *important* fronts, 3) supported by base design that (while not perfect) promoted something that resembled a hard battle. PS2 has 1) bases that don't really matter, 2) a lattice system fit onto a map that's far too cluttered with bases to create anything that really resembles a front, and 3) base design that simply supports "size matters".

    I'm not saying PS1 was the ultimate solution. I'm saying that you can't take a component of PS1 that was actually good and drop it in PS2 and assume it's going to make PS2 that much better.
  12. Phazaar


    I played PS1 from beta, through to closing (minus a year or two when I couldn't stand paying SOE money after SWGNGE)... I'm more than aware of that. The problem is that the vet community is entirely set in its ways; having not emerged from a bubble for 10 ears, most players really just wanted a graphics revamp to their favourite game, rather than something to bring it into the AAA realm where it ought to be. There was faaaaar too much propagation of the idea that people didn't play PS1 at the end because it had outdated graphics, or that they simply hadn't heard of it, and nowhere near enough realisation that people didn't play PS1 at the end because it was -boring- and not just possessing outdated graphics, but outdated mechanics, principles, and even themes...

    The lattice is an obvious example of this. It worked (boringly) in PS1, yes. It required completely different maps+bases than what we had at launch in PS2. It also (by almost everyone requesting the lattice) also required further mechanics to make it anything but a huge zerg+yawnfest (which it currently is) - Resource revamp/ANTs, continental lattice, backhacking, and even arguably the class system itself. The thing that no one managed to penetrate the thick skulls of our vet community with though, was that there was no reason NEW mechanics could not be created that would NOT require a timewarp back to outdated concepts, and would NOT require countless hours of map sabotage/cleansing, and would actually create a Planetside 2 instead of Planetside 1.2.

    So you're saying the thing wrong with the lattice implementation is that it's got half-***** implementation (assuming you mean regarding base/map design and 'metagame' - resources etc). What was wrong with the hex system? Metagame. Why choose the solution that involves making no progress and wasting countless extra hours when the maps were great for the Hex system, there was just no reason to fight...

    So yeah. Lattice = worst thing to come from PS1. I won't say it was great in PS1, because it wasn't. It was repetitive and old by year two or three. It was not -awful- though, which it is in PS2, and will be until we've reverted the rest of the game back to PS1, which will instead be awful in itself.
  13. Phazaar


    Lol, I come from PS1, so GLHF.

    Lattice: Had we implemented real metagame instead of wasting months implementing pretend metagame (and half of it, as is), the game would not have died as it has.

    Shotguns: impossible to balance in a game like this, as we observed constantly in PS1. It was the wrong decision to continue to try to press the Shotgun mentality instead of using Gauss as our prime tech. Shotguns have necessitated some of the loudest nerf calls in game, and by this association, have necessitated nerfing into the ground... Which faction suffers most? NC. Unbalanced.

    Self-contradictory faction traits: Really not sure what these bring to the game... I'm all for much much larger faction differences, but for the love of God there's no reason for them to be so ridiculously badly imagined and implemented.

    PS1 vets: If no one from PS1 was ever involved in PS2, we would at least not have had the lattice. We might not have had the hilarious faction traits... We vets have done easily as much harm as good.
  14. jak

    • Up x 1
  15. Axehilt


    It's kind of a stretch to call anyone "elite" who intentionally avoids using the best tool for the job in every given circumstance. I mean sure, in the majority of circumstances in PS1 MAXes actually aren't the best tool for the job. But anyone who refuses to use them for some arbitrary reason in the situations where they are the best tool isn't really an elite. Elites play to win.
  16. Crashsplash

    Yes and it wasn't true anyway.
    • Up x 1
  17. jak

    Yeah, we won outfit wars and were considered one of the best outfits in the game...
  18. Axehilt

    Eh, those factors were pretty trivial regarding base defense.

    The major factors are the distance between various types of spawns (hard (base), soft (sunderer/ams), medium (tower/satellite)) from each capture point, and the cover provided to possible soft spawn deploy zones. There are some outdoor bases where despite a complete lack of base facilities they're extremely defensible on account of the hard spawn being 25m or so from the capture point.

    The other major factor is how you could reliably (though not always) spawn at the next-closest base in PS1 to grab a tank or aircraft, which allowed counter-vehicle-zerging to happen. Whereas in PS2 players basically just allow themselves to be trapped in a spawn room (largely because spawns can't be killed as easily in PS2, whereas in PS1 it would kick you out, you'd come back strong with Reavers/Tanks, kill their AMS, repair the tubes/gen, and retake the base.)
  19. Axehilt


    Well that's either "big fish, small pond" or it's a matter of outfit wars being designed around fights where MAXes didn't make sense to use. Because when competition is truly tough, the best, biggest weapons are used.

    If the battle conditions favor MAXes, and two outfits of similar skill clash, the outfit which utilizes MAXes in that favorable condition will win. Pretty simple.
  20. WorldOfForms

    While PS2 borrows very little that was good in PS1, at least it made some good moves by not including a lot of the annoying things from PS1. There are just a few things it took from PS1 that it shouldn't have:

    Lockon weapons (though this isn't really a "PS1" thing, and PS1 had fewer lockons).

    The worst is Lockdown. The PS1 devs already realized how bad lockdown was, and that's why they gave Overdrive to the TR. That's right - "ZOE" as we know it was originally a TR MAX ability, alongside lockdown - you could choose which to use at any given moment, and the Overdrive had a timer, meaning it was better balanced than ZOE.

    Really, lockdown is a terrible gameplay concept designed by somebody that is clearly not good at FPS games. Mobility is everything in these games. Sitting still is death. There's a reason why you never, ever see TR MAXes using lockdown, and rarely see prowlers using it (and they usually die). Only a person bad at FPS games could think "Cool, I can sit in one place and spit out awesome death bullets!"

    At the minimum they should have at least given lockdown some kind of armor or regeneration bonus. That MIGHT have made it useful.