The issue with realism in games

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And that's a problem, because it leads to the not-combined arms environment that we have today.

When I talk about realism, I think it might be more productive to think of it as simply an example of a balancing mechanic that is proven to work. I don't want PS2 to be more realistic for the sake of realism, but because I think realism can solve many of the key problems with PS2.

For a moment, pretend that Real Life was simply another video game, called the Real Life Game. It's totally okay to say, "hey Planetside has this major problem, and the Real Life Game solves the problem in this way". If I made a reference to an FPS or RTS game for inspiration on how to fix PS2's issues, it wouldn't draw as much fire. If I talked about how tanks were balanced against infantry in Battlefield, we'd have no problems. If I talked about how infantry units in Starcraft were tier-1 early teach units outclasses be later heavier units, people wouldn't crack dumb jokes.

Planetside's major problem is that apart from vehicles that support infantry, there's no point to have vehicles. And the Real Life Game offers excellent ways to make vehicles indispensable to combat, because in the Real Life Game there is an absolute need for vehicles. In the Real Life Game, the army that shows up to fight with 90% infantry will get torn apart by an army that is 30% armour, 30% aviation, and 40% infantry. This is because in the Real Life Game, vehicles are important for two reasons:
1) Vehicles in the Real Life Game are incredibly lethal, far outclassing the damage that a single rifleman can do, or even a platoon or two. This means that they are true "force multipliers".
2) Vehicles in the Real Life Game are supported by the terrain. Long distances between "bases" and actual logistic lines for reinforcement and supply mean that it is important to hold areas that aren't an arbitrary capture point. And since vehicles in the Real Life Game are more effective in the open (especially when they're not allowed to or aren't capable of razing a town), this gives them a proper role.

Changing PS2 in these two respects would greatly improve the overall balance of the game. Currently in PS2, a mostly infantry force can do very well against a combined arms force... whereas really the result should be that infantry-centric forces should be mercilessly slaughtered. This would in turn encourage infantry-heavy forces to reconfigure to include organic armour and air elements.

As for the money issue, I don't think that "casuals" are actually a solid source of revenue. It's well known that F2P games mostly succeed on the back of "whales", or the few players that can put down enormous amounts of money on the game. These players are usually not "casuals", and instead focus largely on a handful of games.

Pretty much PS2's emphasis on "casuals" can explain why it's not been the financial success it probably should have been.

Actually, any hit would be a lottery on how much damage it does, with high caliber weapons having a higher chance of good damage. There's people who've had multiple headshots and more than 70 bullets in their body but came out without too much permanent damage, there's people who died after getting one hit in a major artery and bleeding out in seconds. 20% of the shots to your body are actually lethal, anywhere else current medicine is capable of helping you survive if they an get you there within 30 minutes (if I recall correctly). In the PS2 battlefield this would mean that players have multiple nerve and bloodvessle systems, as well as breathing systems that directly connect the blood vessles with the open air so 2 collapsed lungs doesn't even slow you down that much.
As far as headshots go, most of these would actually be less lethal than we see in PS2, even in current warfare. The head is spherical and made of one of the toughest materials known to nature (living bone). Even without a helmet most bullets are deflected (but cause concussions), with a good helmet a headshot is not the most enjoyable place to be shot, but not exactly lethal.

Real Life provides a good base. Even Super Mario Bros has a base in reality. When Mario jumps, you expect him to fall at nearly 9.2m/s or pretty close. Half that speed and it seems off, as does double.

But RL has alot of things about it that isn't fun to put in a game. There's a reason why most of you haven't played the Real Life Game (and for those that do want to try, check out www.goarmy.com and sign on, then come back in four years and tell us how it went). Its dirty, its gritty, its tiresome, and the laws of physics can never be suppressed.

This isn't to say we shouldn't have realistic velocities, lethal vehicles, or be able to engage out to much further ranges. Like I said.. there's a base in reality that should be followed so we can have a realistic expectation that if we do X, then Y happens.

But we do have to be careful how realistic we want to push it. my recommendation is to push the realism until you reach a point to where it either annoys you or isn't fun. Firing a weapon at 800-1200 fps makes sense. Going over a rough patch in the road and busting an axle on your Sundie isn't fun and shouldn't be added.

Personally here's what I would do:

1. Increase render range to 6000m. That's half the continent. This applies to everything, vehicles and infantry.
2. Increase velocities to match what they should be. Not many weapons need too much tweaking... for example the T3 BASR have 650m/s, while modern day sniper rifles are 700-800m/s. The assault rifles would see a crazy change if they wished to match the M16's 950m/s. And pistols would probably be unchanged (the Commissioner is a little quicker than real life .44mags). Of course I would keep them balanced to the empire they are in and to each other like they are now.
3. Remove or severely reduce Cone of Fire from Aiming Down Sights. I was at the range the other day and hitting targets consistently with a rifle at 300m that I cannot hope to do in PS2. Hitting targets 25m away with a pistol that I can't even do with a rifle in PS2. And both instances.. Iron Sights.. I don't use scopes IRL, not for stuff 300m and closer.
4. Allow vehicles to be tougher, but cost more. But this requires a resource revamp. This way there is thought behind pulling and using resources. Their weapons would have higher damage and slightly wider (33-50%) blast radius.
5. Give vehicles a role in base assaults. Allow them to attack bases directly and damage/destroy walls, bridges, ceilings, floors, tunnels, and other emplacements. The whole base doesn't have to be destructible, but key points that the attackers could use to get easier access to objectives or to hinder defenders from getting to said objectives.

Casual is a bad term. It was coined up back in 2003 a little before World of Warcraft came out. I know because thats when the first raider vs non-raider debates (or arguments) started happening. It was made up by players who were not raiding (they couldn't, they didn't have enough guildies, and the raiding guilds had such targets locked down, there was no instancing). They called raiders 'hardcore' and used it as a derogatory term to hide their own shortcomings.

Basically the intent was, "Anyone who can take down targets I can't can only do so because they have no life and spend 8+ hours a day playing." In reality the ones they were speaking of, only played 3-6 hours a week since raid targets had lengthy respawns. It didn't take hours to take down a single raid mob. And that's what made the 'casual' players' claims ironic.

Casual only became a derogatory term in WoW because raiding was more accessible. Instanced dungeons meant no locking down targets. Now more players had access and were no longer considered 'casual'. So the term 'filthy casual' came to be known to describe the players who still couldn't get said raid targets down despite not having to compete for them anymore.

Now skip forward a decade to PS2. Planetside 2 is a PVP game. If you take a base, you're taking it from another player. When you take a base, a set of players can't spawn in it anymore. Same thing if they take it from you. Anywhere you go outside your warpgate you can be engaged and affected by other players.

What does that mean? We're in competition to one another. None of us are casual, not by the original definition and not by the newer definition. However some are trying to use the term casual in a new way. The intent is still the same. They use it to describe unorganized or semi-organized play involving small amounts of players, or solo play. Without the hardcore intent to win.

But the intent is still the same as 2002. "I'm casual, that's why I don't win. You win because you're hardcore and have no life." Basically casual is an excuse and an attempt to marginalize the successes of better* players.

Lengthy response to what you said to be sure. But to be clear, you are right. They shouldn't cater to self identifying casual players. The players who wish to win, are the players spending credits on things to help, ensure, or commemorate their winnings. Lets be honest, some derpy little lone wolf, sitting outside a 1-12 enemy base sniping isn't spending a dime, not even for cosmetics. The guy who has 3 screaming toddlers and has to take 3-4 breaks every 10 minutes to take care of them because their fat baby-making wife is watching TV on the couch doesn't have a dime to spend.

But maybe they'll have realized that by the time they make a PS3, if they do before liquidating the franchises.

I'm not really a fan of HE buffs, the only way I'd see it as reasonable is if you didn't get points for killing infantry with it.

I'm not entirely certain why you feel not getting points for killing Infantry makes strong HE permissible. The complaint against strong HE was always the concern that it kills a lot easily.

However, the evidence easily showed that plenty of other things, like Frag Grenades and C4, were killing more things far more easily than HE shells.

The cries to nerf HE did not stem from that, it was simply an irrational hatred of tanks and an inaccurate attribution of all explosive-related deaths to tanks. Whereas in reality the greatest farmers of infantry were other infantry.

Specific numbers may have changed since posting, but I would expect for it to be reasonably accurate.

Because people only use it to pad their K/D and Cert farm. If you remove those incentives then people would use it because they want to help their team by suppressing enemy infantry.

Well, imo adding a touch of realism to a game isn't the same as trying to convert it to a sim(in this case a military sim). Theres things like limiting sprint duration, and adding more intertia to strafing, 3 man crewed tanks and giving them the ability to carry more than 1 type of round etc that could be very good for the game but also be considered "realism".

I think the overall pace of this game needs to be toned down a bit, most will agree it feels more like battlefield or call of duty than probably any of our ideas of what PS2 was when it was brand new to us. The meatgrinder perpetual deathmatch mmofps model isn't built to last, a touch of realism adds depth

There are some serious flaws in your argument:
1. Number of Tanks and number of infantry.
2. The significantly lower TTK of an infantry player.
3. Explosive consumables are limited and are used by a much larger number of players than tanks.
4. Most tanks are used to counter other tanks and armor.

In a nutshell, all you've proven is that there are more infantry than tanks in the game.

Sure there are more infantry than tanks.

But if the problem is explosive spam, most people don't care how many enemies are out there. They just get frustrated over things that kill them the most.

Hence if you want to reduce explosive spam, your goal is to reduce the total number of times a player dies to explosives. If players are upset at being bombarded with explosives, they really only care about not being blown up.

Say that a player is complaining about explosive spam. In an hour of playtime, they review their deathfeed and find:

4 deaths from C4
3 deaths from Frag Grenades
1 death from HE

And the player is given a choice to improve their game experience... whether they want to remove HE (in which they would have died 7 times instead of 8) or C4/Frag Grenades (in which they would have died 1 time instead of 8).

A rational player would think, "Hey, these things are blowing me up more than that other thing. If those things were nerfed I would have a much better explosive-free game experience, so we should nerf those."

So why didn't this happen?

Because infantry like being able to launch explosive infantry spam at each other. Certainly nerfing C4 and Frag Grenades would greatly reduce infantry death to explosions, but it would also reduce the ability of infantry to farm each other. Whereas nerfing HE wouldn't harm the ability of infantry to farm.

That's why infantry opted for the "irrational" approach. They really have no problem with explosive spam or dying to explosions... so long as they can do the same to others. Infantry have always been the worst farmers in the game... any glimpse of a Biolab or SNA easily shows heavy amounts of farming going on without a vehicle in sight.

Daybreak should look at heroes and generals.
They did a fantastic job of balancing tanks to be completely terrifying and can stomp infantry, but counterable by being...i dont know...massive hulking beasts of metal that is hard to miss a rocket on.

The problem isn't explosive spam. So there is no point in exploring that argument.

Everyone hated the pre-nerf PPA, everybody hated the pre-nerf HE rounds, everyone hated pre-nerfed Rocket Pods. They were disruptive to the game and the reason people are going so far as to advocate for their removal is because we remember what a ****** experience they made the game.

I wouldn't exactly call the approach "whatever kills me the most is OP" rational either. I would call it a fallacious argument.

Personally I think the resource system should make vehicles much more restrictive to begin with. If a player can't essentially spam-pull tanks, maxes, ESF's, etc., then you open up room for possible buffs. As it stands, the resource system is virtually non-existent and allows players to pull vehicles almost at will.

There are flaws in this game on a fundamental level that restrict good gameplay, and it's not just weak/strong vehicles.

We live in a generation of double standards and biased thinking. One of them being kids want realism without realism. They want the game to feel like real life without it being remotely close to real life. This will never happen, ever, but expect to keep seeing it cause people don't stop asking for farfetched dreams.

The issue with this is that infantry have a good way to kill other infantry. It takes about a second, and involves lots of bullets. Tanks, on the other hand, can bombard the spawn room from 300m away, and there isn't really much that any lone infantryman can do about it. A coordinated squad could galaxy drop on them or spawn at a further base, but these are unavailable to most people. If you die to c4, there's a sense that it's your fault, because, generally, it is, at least in part. HE tanks shelling you, on the other hand, have no functional retaliation.

Also, Taemian, increasing the render distance to 6000m would mean that we would need 400x more computing power to render all of that. Maybe 20 years in the future, but as of now, that's just unreasonable.

Agreed. It's not their fault though, most players have no true concept of combat realism, therefore they use their limited knowledge to make claims for "realism". I'm sure there are still people who think M67 Fragmentation Grenades create massive fireballs, like some movies indicates. Those who demand for true realism, but to still have a fast paced exciting game, should try ARMA 3. ARMA can be a VERY fun game, but it takes a different mentality and patience to enjoy it.

This topic reminds me of the joke trailer The Onion did on Modern Warfare 3 some time ago. Veterans get it see below:

OK that video is seriously awesome XD

But seriously, everything goes bad if you don't use it in the right amount.
Realism, yes, but nobody want's to be the guy who has to haul the ammo to the frontline.

The easiest solution for all this ******** would propably be to raise the nanite maximum to 3k oe something...
Then you can put a tank to 1.5k nanites and have it able to deal and withstand some serious damage.

And regarding resource changes:
The greatest crime of the "resource revamp" was not the much claimed tank spam.
What suddenly got spammed a lot were MAXes. And most of all: C4 and grenades.
In some fights I bet that if you weighed all the explosives infantery chuck around that you might get over the weight of all participating vehicles combined....


....
You know I specialized myself in vehicles once.
My HE Prowler could suppress any choke point entirely by itself.
My ESF could either rain death from the sky at selected targets or clear the air from enemy aircraft.
My Liberator could wipe whole plattons from the face of the earth.
Well.... assuming they just brainlessly kept doing what they do instead of trying to defend themselves (which sadly was and is the rule, not the exception - and thats where most complaints come from imo)

Nowadays.....
My ESF is mostly a taxi, or my way to get rid of ceiling Gals.
My Prowler can only do two things - hold down a road with anchor + AP or hunt sundies.
The only thing on the Lightning I use is the Skyguard.
The only vehicles I use on a regular basis are the (wraith)Flahs and Sunderer.

Vehicles are just not worth the effort. The only ones capable of doing their job properly are PPA scythes and AP tanks.
And propably A2A ESFs in general.

And this is why for 3 years I've been saying that such players should be ignored. If they quit. Boo hoo. I've always claimed Quality of player is better than quantity.

"But then the game would have failed and those devs would have lost their jobs."

Ironically.. the game dropped off anyway and the devs lost their jobs. One thing I've noticed with gamers, is quality brings quantity. Not the other way around. A great outfit will have players flock to it. A game with great players will catch on.

Instead we have cert farmers, zerglings, and lone wolves. With a smattering of objective players who the majority follows because they can't do anything but act like lemmings.

Seriously if the cert farmers were organized, they'd organize cert farming events (find a spot with two hills, park sundies across the valley from each other and cert farm the crap out of each other), But they are too derpy to do that. So they have to follow the few remaining players trying to get a base.

Except zerglings and lone wolves make money. Planetside would be worthless if there were 100 of each faction, total, on each server. You may hate on them, but they are the majority of the playerbase, and so Daybreak will never alienate them. I'm not saying that that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's generally bad business to lose the majority of your customers.