[Suggestion] Infantry Should Cost Nanites

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Scroffel5, Oct 7, 2019.

  1. Scroffel5

    Ima do a Zizoubaba and just keep commenting and starting threads today. This is an excert taken from a thread put in the wrong category, so bear with me. Before you comment, just read it and think about it, then assault me.

    "I, for one, think this is an idea. If every class costed nanites, not a lot, it would be very important to not die. The team without medics is the team that loses. If that is the case, there should also be an increased revive timer, to balance that out. It would honestly benefit every class, I think. If a sniper takes someone down, it matters more that they die. If you kill the driver of a vehicle and they gotta use more nanites to spawn, you have done something to stop them. If someone repeatedly comes back with C4 to blow up your sundy and you take them down twice, they won't be able to respawn for a minute until they get their nanites back. Players will have to play safer. I honestly think they should put this idea on the test server and see how it plays out. Take feedback into consideration for the idea, but don't base it all on that. If it works out better than the regular game, add it in. If players get mad and upset because it isn't the way things were before, they can take their leave, or maybe balance it out "

    What do you think? Stupid idea? Good idea? I think, whether or not it is a good idea or not, we should try it. See how it works. Imagine a game where everyone had one life, but you could be revived at any time. I think everyone would play it like real life, minus the stuff you can't do in real life. I think it'd be fun, trying not to die when someone is trying to shoot you 24/7. Plus, it'd be pretty easy to see who is a hacker, or maybe who is just a legend, but that is besides the point. We should try this idea on the test server, run some numbers, some playthroughs, and see if, for the most part, the community is OK with it. It'll make some people happy, some people mad, some people leave, and some people come back, but it should be tried.
  2. Campagne

    I don't really think that would be a great idea personally.

    For starters, dying too much would mean a player might be completely unable to respawn or play at all. And secondly, infantry just isn't worth paying nanites for and especially not with consumables and much more powerful vehicles also costing resources.

    Also if everyone has only one life players will be either complete cancerous ****sacks lacking any kind of vertebra or die instantly.
  3. Scroffel5

    I said "imagine.' I don't want this game to be a one life game. That'd be dumb.
  4. Campagne

    The first two lines apply to the concept of resource-costing infantry.
  5. Demigan

    This idea pops up from time to time usually by frustrated tunnel-vision tankers and is a terrible idea. We dont have to imagine what nanite-costing infantry would do because we alrrady know what it will do!

    Adding a cost to infantry is meant to make the individual life of infantry more valuable. We already have ways to make players feel their life is more valuable by making KD a prominent feature in the game. The consequences are people who farm with vehicles, Heavies and MAX's, people who will never rush a chokepoint but always man it, people who will leave any fight where they dont have superior numbers or positions. Adding more value to individual lives would exacerbate this problem and basically be a fast-track to killing the game. A battle royal game has the setup, the weapons, the vehicles, the lobbies etc to make valuable lives fun. PS2 has too many OHK weapons, too many chokepoints, too many badly designed bases and too skewed a balance between infantry vs vehicles vs aircraft to make infantry lives mean even more.
    Who is going to break the spawncamp or chokepoint if they are punished for trying? Who is going to experiment with certain weapons if they are rewarded for making their gameplay as stale and one-sided as possible?

    Besides that infantry do cost resources in a way. 50 resources is 1 minute of time. One death is 1/6th of a minute whih means each death costs 8,33 resources. After all resources do if you run out is make you wait for them. They arent earned through gameplay but by simply waiting and playing the game without dying.

    You need to go the opposite direction. Make lives mean less. Add more objectives for vehicles and infantry to complete and add counters for people who love seeing stats rise but have mostly KD to focus on right now. Also make vehicles cost less if not make them completely free (perhaps just vanilla vehicles with all loadouts at level 1). Then make resources a small force multiplier used for special ammo types, short term boosts to your infantry/vehicle (LA or Medic who's ability temporarily doesnt run out of energy for example), boosts that last the lifetime of the infantry/vehicle (say a somewhat more powerful gun or permanent higher speed).
    This makes people more likely to experiment and play the game, rather than play the only thing that gets them success and never try to learn anything else.
    • Up x 1
  6. Scroffel5

    Yes.
  7. Scroffel5

    That part may be true, that you may get farmed up with vehicles, but think about it this way. If you get in a vehicle and get your vehicle blown up without getting back all your nanites, you have just lost -vehicle nanites and -player nanites. Sure, they may be able to farm you up a ton, but there will be more medics there to revive players with a longer revive timer. So at the same time, its a bigger risk to be in vehicles, because the player drives it. If the infantry unit is dead, they can't get another vehicle, can they? There isn't enough value to your life, because so what if you die? You may lose your position, but other than that, so what? If you die right after you spawned a vehicle, you lost those nanites, but so what?

    KD doesn't make your life more valuable, except to the few. For the most part, players just want to stay alive, but they aren't stat watching. By making infantry cost a few nanites, there are limited respawns in a set amount of time. That means you have to stay alive. There is a bigger cost to dying. How many times have you been attacking a base, farming down the other team, even to near-even numbers, but they come back just because they are the defenders and they spawn in the base? All I can speak for is me, and I have seen it too often. The team who is losing the most people would be losing the fight, if this idea was implemented. We can just forget about this and that for now, because honestly, we don't know how it would work. I have said it once, I have said it again, but this is just an idea. Any of my forum posts are an idea. They can change and be molded into the mold of balance and fairness.

    Lets use the one life example again. Say it is 100 v 100, and everyone has just one life. If one side is losing more that the other, who is going to lose the battle if the trend continues? 90 v 95, 80 v 90, 50 v 75, and so on. The left side is going to lose without reinforcements. Now lets relate this to Planetside. If there is a cost to dying, that means you gotta make the most of your life. If everyone on your side spam dies cuz they can't get their act together and they get farmed, they lose. Players would have to change their playstyle, maybe work together. Y'know what I have always wanted to try? I want just random players to work together in this battle formation. Everyone besides stalkers stay in the spawn. Stalkers sneak out, get semi near the campers. On the count of 3, they all uncloak, take down targets, draw fire, and then the infantry in the spawn room comes out and takes down everyone else in an explosive massacre. What I am saying is, if you gotta risk your life for a common goal, better do it together. I'm not saying that this is how it will definitely work out, but it is a small possibility that I want to see.

    If this idea was implemented, everyone would have to play their part even more. Heavies would maybe probably start to specialize as Anti Vehicle, because they got the goods. A small group of them taking out vehicles keeps a player out of the game. If 1 player can't play, it makes it easier for your team to charge. Engineers would have to keep vehicles alive even more, because if it dies, you are losing a player from tank and playernanite cost. You can't have that. Engineers would also be on crowd control with their MANA turrets and spitfires, making sure nothing gets past the perimeter, and if it does, they turn it to ash. Light Assaults have to be getting as many kills as they can, in and out, from rooftops, trees, and zooming past corners and hallways with their speedy boi jump jets. Medics have to revive even more now, because people won't want to respawn as much. It costs them, and why pay when they can get revived for free with the new surplus of medics around? Infiltrators just do the same things they always do. I don't know how they fit in all of this. I guess getting repeat customers to their Shop of Death would work nicely, and at that point where their targets' resource count is getting low, they are going to be drawn away from the battle to replenish and find you.

    That last sentence was another point I wanted to cover. When peoples' resource counts start getting low, they are gonna play it safe. They don't want downtime. Low risk, low reward. High risk, high reward. If they are drawn away from the battle because they don't want to die, the other side is losing players. 35 v 50. 15 v 40. 5 v 20. Soon, only a few are left, and because every played their part, you are going to win. Oh no! What is that sound? Guess what? They called reinforcements. Oof.

    P.S. I also think redeploying should cost nanites, a larger or smaller sum based on how far they are traveling after the redeploy. The equation would be based on how long it takes to get there in a ground vehicle, I guess. Something like redeploycost = flashtraveltime (say... 2 mintues by flash) x 50, idk. If that is added too, people have to travel by vehicle more or use up nanites. If they do, and they redeploy in by a large amount of infantry, they have just used up a sum of nanites that they now can't use to get large vehicles. Risk or reward. I have more i want to add but now this is getting long, so I'll just wait for a reply.
  8. LodeTria

    You still get resource ticks if you are dead though. The only time people don't get resource ticks is if they have thier thumb up their **** in the warpgate for too long.
  9. TR5L4Y3R

    .... i make this short ... if infantry start costing nanites the snowball of a overpop will just be harder ...

    even if you go and increase the nanitegeneration for an underpop .. that underpop more than likely will get stomped ...
    and at worst of course you cause players to have to wait longer until they may be able to respawn ..
    what does "not a lot" mean in this case?
    • Up x 1
  10. Scroffel5

    Finally, a valid point. That is very true. That is why I also suggest adding a resource cost to redeploying too. It'll take longer for the overpop to happen. On the flip side, if or when it does happen, the underpop has even less incentive to stick around and get farmed. They leave, there is just an overpop of forces sitting around, doing nothing, since there are no enemies to fight, and they either move on to the next base or dissipate. Also, there could be nanite cost changes due to how many forces are in an area or by who has the significantly higher percentage of forces. That punishes players for overpopping, but that could get negative feedback. Thank you for your reply.

    Edit: I mean it punishes players for dying in an overpop.
  11. TR5L4Y3R


    yea but at the same time it may reduce the ammount of big fights happening which is what this game actualy wants to advertice, in this case it´ll take the incentive of the undepop to defend in the first place and wait for reinforcements .. .. potentionaly favoring aggression more than before .. .. ..
  12. Scroffel5

    True, but what may actually happen is that big fights are quicker and happen more often. For instance, if the losing team leaves one area, they will spread out to take more bases at a lower risk fight for them to get their resources back. BAM! More enemies happening. Players with tons of resources will head to that area to create bigger fights. High risk, high reward. Then the cycle will repeat, with less stand still, no mans land battles and more quick, big, fast moving battles.
  13. Demigan

    But before a vehicle has been blown up it has gained much more.
    And the punishments for losing your vehicle are:
    • You need to respawn
    • You need to wait for nanites... If you didn't survive long enough
    If forcibly waiting and not being able to play what you want is a punishment, then death is equally so a punishment. In fact it's a worse punishment than waiting for nanites as at least during the wait you can play something else. Considering that the tank will on average cause more death time for his opponents than he will have to wait for his own nanites the vehicle is more efficient. Add the consideration that this is based on tank on tank combat as well that is far quicker and more lethal than infantry vs tank combat and vehicles on average always survive long enough to recuperate their nanites when fighting infantry... Except those people who return to the exact same spot they were C4red before, change nothing about their behaviour and get killed the exact same way as before and are surprised by that.
    Medics being able to revive is also not really that much of an impactor. Players getting killed by vehicles are usually in a bad spot to be revived and the amount of (useful) revives in the game aren't that ludicrously high.

    KD doesn't make your life valuable? Are you crazy?
    Players just want to stay alive? Ok so there is value in staying alive right? You can't go "players don't value their life because so what?" and then turn around in the next paragraph and say "people just want to stay alive". Why would they want to stay alive? There has to be a reason right? Well because staying alive has value. It prevents the death that prevents you from playing the game for a few moments and it allows you to get your stats higher. Since stats are more permanent than a continent capture players are more likely to try and achieve those.

    How many times have I been defending a base, trying to get the players to get out and push the attackers instead of spawncamp and preserve their KD? How many times have I wondered how much better the game would be if players weren't restricted by thinking of KD and would just assault, over and over as hard as they can until either side breaks? If you listen to the players who were in the beta, the very moment KD was introduced almost everyone changed their playstyle overnight. I don't want lives to be valuable because it doesn't fit the game. There's too many situations where your death could not be prevented or is even required to succeed at something. More value to lives makes no sense. All you say is "but it'll make it more valuable and players don't want to die anymore", but we already know from the KD ****** where that will lead. You don't think any further than "value" and don't seen "consequences".

    Ok let's use the one life example. The first thing people will do is go for the most effective method of farming the opponent. The game wouldn't revolve around pushing or flanking or trial and error, it would be about farming the hell out of enemy infantry. If the enemy captures the points in a base and simply sits on the chokepoints no one will ever try to push them off unless they vastly outnumber them. There is no reason to attack it as it would only make you weaker. Basically you would immediately give up trying to take back any base that is being captured because there's simply no point.

    So we have people who will use the most effective weapon for them over and over again rarely ever changing their loadout or tactics because experimentation is punished and they will try to unbalance it as much as possible in their favor. Enemy Zerg comming at you? Leave the fight immediately because there's no point! Zerg's are snowballing now? Well let them run rampant without contest because fighting them just means you run out of nanites! Fighting at a base in favor of the attackers? Leave it immediately or you'll be punished. See a chokepoint or a well defended area? Don't try to break the hold of your opponent there because you'll be punished for it! This value on the life is 100% counter to everything PS2 stands for. It is not designed for it in any way, shape or form.

    No one would play their part more. It would be a Heavy fest because why specialize if you have one class that is pretty much optimal or second best in all situations? Oh and Infiltrators ofcourse, because F you and good gameplay. F variety, F trying to beat a superior enemy, F players who try to attack something without prior knowledge, F trying out new weapons and loadouts, F people actually wanting to play instead of being forced not to play.

    We already have low risk low reward high risk high reward. But we also have low risk high reward strategies that completely break your premise. Ok so you play it safe and avoid combat... Is it going to capture the enemy points? No. Is it going to keep your base safe? No. Is there some magic that makes a resource costing infantry suddenly play much better to their class strength? No there isn't.
    Also, why wouldn't players play it safe all the time? You can play it safe by joining a Zerg, or only sticking to chokepoints in your favor, or only picking fights at bases in your favor, or only using equipment like a tank to farm infantry. We already know this because again KD ****** already value their lives and do this exact thing!

    You are truly crazy. There are much better ways in making redeployside less of a factor without hamstringing the game in a high-speed deathspiral.
  14. Scroffel5

    I only read the first part of it with the vehicles, so that is what I will reply to first. We haven't established numbers for nanite cost yet. You would have to die without surviving a minute to continually be losing nanites, if the nanite cost is 50 for each spawn. The cost of an MBT is 450. That means it will cost you 500 nanites if you do not survive a minute. At that point, you can't get another tank for a few minutes. If the nanite cost was 100, it would run you 550 certs and you can't die within a minute. You'd have to survive even longer in tanks to make your life worth it, and so on and so forth. The higher the nanite cost becomes, the more risk it is to be in vehicles. Sure, they are your iron shield, but they are also expensive. As of now, there isn't much of a loss to being in vehicles unless the other team is rushing you with way more of them. As long as you don't die immediately, you have made some use of a vehicle. By adding a cost to death, you make vehicle play more dangerous, as if you do die, you may not be able to respawn into your actual infantry unit. Life, as an individual, should have a value, and so should death. If you get rid of that, this really is a war.
  15. adamts01

    Make infantry more powerful.

    The way this could be awesome is if infantry were free next to or in the warpgate and if they became increasingly more expensive as your faction gained territory. Say up to 50 nanites if you held 90% territory. Maybe 20 nanites if territory was split 33/33/33.it would really help with doubleteaming.
  16. Scroffel5

    Yes. I say we test it whether or not its a good idea and see what happens.
  17. adamts01

    The big downside to infantry cost would be a snowball effect if you start losing, but the territory thing counters that. This would also essentially fix any underlying balance/population/attitude/drunk player issues by propping up the weakest faction, no matter what that weakness happens to be.

    It's worth testing anyway.
  18. Scroffel5

    Yeah thats what I was thinking. If you start losing, you'd start losing baaaaaaad. Doing what you suggested would be good.
  19. Demigan

    Rather than a straight upgrade, how about a kind of compromise between "all infantry cost resources" and "make infantry more powerful"?

    Add a bare-bones MAX suit that enhances classes. Costs somewhere on the lines of 75 resources and vanishes upon respawn. It could improve a variety of things like faster movement, higher ability regen, higher maximum ability energy, a second primary etc.
    You get to pick maybe two things the suit upgrades to encourage more versatility and choice to customize your class for specific situations. To facilitate this "weaker" choices would gain more boost than more universally good choices.

    This allows infantry to cost resources for being more powerful but not hamstring players from just playing the game. You would always be able to spawn and play, but without resources you simply have less powerful options.
    Someone is going to suggest "why not make them less powerful without resources?" Right now. Because you want players to just have the versatility and gameplay choices we already have. The resources should expand the options, not give you access to basics that you should have access to anyway.
  20. adamts01

    I've always thought some infantry weapons, some launchers for example, should cost resources. That's how most every other game balances infantry/vehicles. We simply can't have powerful rockets if they can be spammed. The same goes for vehicle ordnance.

    My desire for infantry cost is more so for infantry combat reasons. I much prefer thoughtful combat rather than throwing bodies at problems. But that's just me.