The New Player experience per the Cryaotic Stream: "It's fun when you're not getting **** on."

The airgame is something I've been thinking about, but I don't have the experience required to comment on it. But you're absolutely right - the airgame's difficulty is one of the factors keeping new players in the black hole.

Very informed.

It isn't 2004 anymore.

You're bad at the game, although admittedly above average. At least above average enough to have the viper be your most used weapon--you know how to farm and avoid dying (again, not all that well). You and players like you are a good part of why community support tilts in favor of ultimately pointless or damaging game changes. New players, for a litany of reasons, are the most important thing to cater to.

Gamer attitudes aren't cyclical. The days of intense grinding and massive learning curves are over. You may get some niche support, but for an MMO you can't afford to really narrow the scope of your target demo that much before it hurts the content of the game (in an FPS, that's the players themselves).

I'll give you credit for doing a thing when you do it.

So when you do it, it's "research", but when anyone else does it, it's a problem.

I don't want to make Planetside into anything it isn't already. I've put forth a lot of my own ideas about how Planetisde could be improved, but none of them amount to turning it into watering it down into easy-mode team deathmatch.

CS was a free mod if you'll remember correctly. And it was the center of international tournements long before it was "carefully balanced". The phrase "AWP wh*re" carries so much weight for a reason.

"No one wants to play spawn camp simulator", huh? You sure fooled me. Seems to be all anyone ever wants to play.

"Crammed with BF mechanics" - You attribute one to the other, but there is no proof of that. Roll PS2 back to the PS1 style TTK and you are SURE to lose the majority of players, including players like me who Played PS1 for 2 years and PS2 since beta. PS1 were ridiculously weak. No one wants that.

"That's not a lot to ask." - Actually it is. And none of your original "points" even came close to achieving that. I've actually put forth an idea that would get PS2 closer to a "no farm" style of gameplay, but unlike you, I realize that it would take WAY more than a wave of a magic wand. The difference is that I actually THINK about game design instead of just pulling a bunch of random pet peeves out of my *ss and throwing out a blanket "do do that." You've done NOTHING as far as putting forth any kind of alternate solution, except for "make it like the old PS" which is a ridiculous joke if for no other reason than PS1 suffered from all of the same problem - you just refuse to remember them because of your nostalgia glasses.

Scrapping the resources system and dropping on a blanket 5 minute timer would make vehicle spam WORSE, not better.

When people have to lie about what I said to argue against me, then it proves that I am right.

If I have to be super specific about the meaning of my words, so that you can understand, then I will: NO ONES stats tracking can determine if a kill was made from behind a spawn shield and therefore ALL stats are subject to question. It makes them ALL meaningless.

That has nothing to do with it. The lesson is: "Build what YOU love and you will attract people who like it as well." Compromising vision to attract the largest possible player base is the best way to kill the game. It will be so watered down that no one will like it.

I don't value what you do. I'm proud of the fact that I'm not a BR100 yet. I've savored the flavor. I've spent my time ENJOYING the game. I rush the point so others will follow. Not to mention, I spent the first year playing on a 1.2 Ghz Core 2 Duo at less than 25 FPS. Where does it show things like that in DA Stats? Nowhere. That's why those stats are useless and so are the people that raise them above all else are just as useless.

You want Candy Crush? You go play Candy Crush. You want team deathmatch? Go play some CoD. That's not THIS game. It won't EVER be this game.

You want a better New Player Experience, then let's talk about New Player Experience (Intros, Tutorials, Mentoring Systems, Improved Objective Systems), not watering the game down into something it was never meant to be.

Fair enough. Just waiting on a better API.

The way I see it we definitely need to help new players out, but reducing the depth of the game so they don't have to think about it is not the way to do that.

Instead we need to work on effectively communicating the information that new players need, packaging it in ways they can understand and apply immediately. This means building more and better tutorials. This means making weapon/item stats visible and transparent in-game. For example, the repair tool and Sunderer prox-repair should display their exact repair rate.

Starting certs and initial membership will also help people get through the "no attachments and all my vehicles use Basilisks" phase more quickly so they can actually start playing the game. Let's face it, even if the starting guns are good, having reload speed certed is strictly better than not having it certed and having any suit slot is strictly better than no suit slot.

Yeah, getting a couple thousand single digit BR's on 1 side, against armies of 2 year veterans on the other 2....

and it's really no wonder what happened.

VS and NC should have laid off a little bit but I'm betting the easy certs were too irresistible to pass up.

This is what I was trying to say earlier but in less words, Fortress. I simply do not want the game dumbed down to make it easier for new players to get into it. They still need to be willing to learn, but I agree that the current NPE leaves a lot to be desired.

1) its a mixed bag, but they get better as you invest into them and get better skills



2) it also exists to deal with TK's, but yeah it gets annoying


3) no it doesn't.


4) The RR will solve these things out.





TL: DR of Fortresses OP: INFANTRYSIDE 2 IS THE ONLY WAY AND THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS.

The main thing is that I've spent a lot of time farming, and I don't believe that it adds any depth to the game. I think we can restructure the way vehicles and maxes interact with infantry to reduce farming while still maintaining or increasing the depth of this game.

It's not an easy thing to do, by any means - but PS1 had it half right by giving new players immediate access to all aspects of the game from the get go (even if they couldn't necessarily access them all at the same time) and by giving them indoor base fights, which let them focus on infantry combat without getting overwhelmed by vehicles (maxes nonwithstanding).

So, given the (sometimes unreasonably angry) feedback I've been getting, let me revise my idea:

What I want is either:

A) We give new players easier access to vehicles, maxes, and other massively cert heavy playstyles.

or

B) We give a place where they can be infantry without being destroyed by the playstyles they don't have access to.

Or both! And I don't think we need to dumb down the game to do it. Heck, B can be done with domeshields, and A can be done with a cert cost revamp.

Connery would have been a much better choice, the other servers already consider us the zerg server. I remember when one of the east coast servers all made new characters on Connery and zerged the crap out of it. Believe they captured nearly every continent

And our "alliances" only last as long until someone ghost caps toward a tech plant then all bets are off!

Well, whatever server they hosted it on, they should have turned off cont locking. Because we had two continents locked on Emerald, and the TR suffered heavily because of it.

Vehicles and max's are already too spammy, reducing the cost isn't going help the problem you're trying to fix. Timers are the only barrier to poor play and that's going away in a few weeks.

Lots of bases already do this (minus Indar). We need better cover, from both ground and air, and better defensive positions, such as turrets that can't be instagibbed by the zerg.

Your response is exactly why I refrained from putting out any suggestions in depth. You're nitpicking at what does not exist, while ignoring that there is a serious problem with how hard it is for new players to get into this game.

So please see my previous post for a general outline for what I think would be a great first step to improving the NPE. Note that nothing is set in stone, and I'm not really interested in parsing your hyper aggressive walls of text.

Oh, and I remember PS1 just fine. I played it for eight years. Last I remember, I was never killed by a liberator while on the CC in PS1. So please, don't criticize a game you hardly understand.

If new players can't "spam" vehicles, they will never get good enough at using them. See: the PS2 airgame.

But we don't even have to go that far. We can start by reducing the cert costs for everything vehicle related. Nanoweave starts at 1 cert, but Rival chassis starts at 100, and that's a problem for the cert starved newbie.

Also, vehicle spam is only a problem in the context of easily farmable bases. We knock those out, and vehicle spam ceases to be a problem.

That in mind, you've made me recognize that we would need to combine easier access with better bases.

This game has one massive flaw - the spawns are on the surface! If the spawns were inside a base then there would be no need for spawn shields and no problem with spawn camping. There's not a lot SOE can do to fix it because the whole layout is all wrong to begin with.

Perhaps breaking up some of the vehicle upgrades into more tiers could help with the initial cert investment. The infantry side is plenty friendly to new players assuming they take any amount of effort to learn it. But, new players are "stuck" with stock vehicles for awhile. They don't need more vehicles, just better vehicles/options.

You can farm with pretty much any gun if you find a good spot. Should we remove all guns and fight with waterpistols?

PS2 is not COD, it takes some time to learn.

I'm trusting the RR to deal with vehicle frequency, to be honest, but otherwise we are in absolute agreement. After all, ever pull an uncerted lightning recently? I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

When I say "farm," I mean getting a ton of kills with no effort and little skill on players who can't reasonably fight back. I would consider anyone "farming" as infantry to merely be playing well, and we should not punish skill.

Say the guy famring in the lighting

When I'm in-game, I will use the best tools I have to beat my enemy.

When I'm on discussion forums, I will discuss what I think about those tools and how they should be changed.

Any other questions?