Dev Letter - Onward to 2020

Sounds like this "teamwork" its going to fail from its conception.

While it is a popular idea that a leader of a squad, platoon or outfit constitutes teamplay it simply cannot be a proper basis for teamplay. If all that you have is essentially one person screaming at others there is little real teamwork going on.

You need to start with the basics. Why would a player go and destroy a generator? Well to bypass a shield. Why would he want to bypass a shield? Because an objective is behind it. Why would he want to take the objective? To advance the player's goals. What goals are those? Currently the goal of many players is getting stats like a high KD because the capture of a base or continent doesnt matter tomorrow but your stats are persistent. So you need to first get player goals in line with the game's gameplay hook of capturing bases and continents.

Once you do that everything else falls into place automatically.

The goal is to capture the continent. (The end goal that leaders can strive for!)
You need to capture bases to capture the continent. (Still a leader goal.)
To capture bases you need to capture the points<-- the first player objective that can be completed (a goal for both players and leaders)
To capture points you need to complete sub-objectives like:
Place spawnpoints-->needs vehicle superiority to keep the Sunderers safe as an objective (a pure player goal)
Bypass shields-->you need to secure a path to the generators and secure the generator room long enough to detonate it. (A pure player goal)

As you can see the goals for platoon/outfit leaders are meaningless without the smaller objectives. If we cut out the objective of points you cant steer people to capture bases and all leadership is meaningless. Leadership can only be used if smaller goals exist that the leadership can steer people towards!
So will creating objectives for leaders work? No of course not! You cant order your players to capture the continent as that is a meaningless order. To improve leadership you need to create more smaller goals, more secondary objectives that need to be met and that the leaders can steer their players towards. What you need for PS2 is the following:

- more secondary objectives, preferably made by the players themselves so it automatically scales with population
- change the displayed stats so that the focus becomes more on actions that support the game, like completing objectives or taking chokepoints held by the opposition.
- make information more available. Voice chat is highly limiting as the information is gone the moment the player stops talking, only one player can talk at a time and it cant be used to target relevant players with ease. You need more visual information that allows players to select which information is relevant for them while multiple players can add information simultaneously.

This will give the leadeship the tools to actually, you know, lead people by dividing their tasks as a leader is supposed to do?

Because I cant shut up about this, an example!

Imagine if they add a leader goal of capturing 3 specific seperate bases and then the leader(s) who did it get something like a leadership point or support power. Great for the leaders but... what about the players they lead? Their gameplay doesnt change one bit. They still place the same sunderers, fight over the same ground through the bases and capture the same points. They have no immediate reason to listen. At best they fight to get themselves a support power. But this is also one of the bigger problems: all your work could be in vein simply because your side didnt make it but the other one did.

We already see what happens. In theory we have the tools to use fireteams and divide work to better press the enemy, but because there's little reason to use them over simply swarming the point and the death of a member means you either need to wait or push on without him people rarely use them even if they do divide into fireteams.

A natural way to facilitate this is by giving players an immediate advantage. They work together because it rewards them now[/] and not someone else in a potential future assuming your side wins.
If you have somehing that rewards the players now, fhey you can also ask them to do it. "Group A place a Forwards Station at the gatehouse" (the Router was originally the Forwards Station, a spawnpoint that allowed people within a 100m or so to spawn on it). This is a good order as it gives an immediate advantage to group A in the form of a new spawn option to push at the enemy, it helps everyone else nearby and if you fail at the grander strategy it still felt rewarding for the users. Not to mention that the leadership now has the stragetical option to ask this of their players and they can ask them to be placed anywhere they deem fit. Tadaa! More rewarding things for the leaders!
And even better: the opposition can now prioritize these things for destruction. The destruction of such a forwards station or similar deployables is of stragetic importance that gives both the leader and the players responsible an immediate advantage. So not only does this improve gameplay for the users, it helps with improving that of the opposition as well!


Something that also needs to be adressed for teamplay purposes is the individual rewards. Assists are nigh on worthless in the game even if you deal 99% of the damage. And even if your actions were instrumental in achieving victory you dont get anything as long as others make the kills.
For this reason xp and certain stats should be somewhat shared. If you are with a group keeping everyone alive as a Medic you should share some of the spoils as well! Players still get full XP for everything they do. But if someone near them does something and gains XP, then you get a portion if that XP as well as it is assumed that your presence has helped in some way. You protected their flank for example. This way you can start rewarding players for what the group accomplishes and people are rewarded for teamwork.

What could also be interesting would be a distance-related squad composition. Instead of your squad being a static amount of members it is based on which players are nearby. The nearest 11 other players are in your squad, allowing you to communicate and coordinate with them more easily. If one dies and someone else is closer they join your squad instead. To prevent undue server and client stress it would only update every 10 or 20 seconds.
This means that these squads are dynamic and you are always playing with the people most relevant to your position at that moment in time. You could have semi-dynamic squads where players can open up some of the positions as dynamic so you can keep some friends as permanent positions and keep them around easily while the rest of the positions cycle out based on the proximity to the squad leader's position.

sounds like the outfit stuff is too little too late. does dbg even have a community manager?

Or how about fixing bugs that have been around since day one, like the scythe flipping on a flat surface while landed.

The game will continue to decline without new features. Most players will agree that the most enjoyable moments in planetside 2 have been huge battles. There needs to be a continent crash alert where everyone is on one continent. People get too obsessed with balanced, faction numbers are almost even. Would be amazing if everyone is forced to fight on Kolytr. The winning faction can get a cert bonus. I know the servers can support it, just like they could in the old days, especially after this decline. 2-3 hour continent crash alerts.

A team deathmatch alert would be great. There would be a meter in the corner saying the number of kills for each faction. Winner could get a cert bonus. I bet you will never implement my ideas because you don't wanna copy them but I am giving you permission to copy them. Perhaps you think they are not good ideas but they obviously are, most people will enjoy being forced to fight on the training continent for 2-4 hours. It would be more of an epic battle since that koltyr is small.

Koltyr is usually dead and people can train in VR training anyway, there is no need for 2 training continents.

Has been suggested before but a straight up deathmatch would be a horrorshow. The faction with the most players has the easiest time getting kills by virtue of more guns at the same area. Players would also be encouraged to camp chokepoints, spam vehicles and use cheese tactics instead of going for capturing bases.

You want things to matter. Destroying a vehicle should gain you more than killing infantry for example. You dont want continuous cheese to be the main feature of your game mode.

The real problem with Kolty is that you can train/fight while waiting in the queue. But as soon as you die there, you will leave the queue. Which is why I don't fight there anymore. Also, there are no heavy vehicles.

---------------


Das Eigentliche Problem an Kolty ist, das man da durchaus trainieren/kämpfen kann, während man mal in der Warteschlange wartet. Aber sobald du da einmal stirbst fliegst du da aus der Warteschleife raus. Weswegen ich da nicht mehr kämpfe. Auch gibt es da keinen Schweren Fahrzeuge.

i think if the devs can listen to the community of planet side(mainly the ones who played ps1 back in the day and know what they talking about) the game can be waaay better just listen to us and everyone can be happy with the game, i have agreements,suggestions and a bit of critic...i agree with mechmaniac about the insta-kill knife its really annoying i got killed so many times like that with a cloaked inf people(in spawn rooms too) they can easy tank a good and solid squad formation like that(its so unrealistic) only with a knife makes no sense it needs a teamwork to be able to disrupt a enemy line its ''child play'' really they dont even think they just go there and do a kamikaze because they know they will get lots of kills like that its really unfair these people dont have skills they just want easy kills they dont want to think about their moves they just want to rush i hope you devs can fix that. also these smokes grenades are very useless they drop a lot of frame rate i played before these smoke grenades and was nice. who thought cloacked flash with shotguns would be a great ideia? who? its very useless and dumb choice i see lots of inf taking cloacked flash with shotgun and tanking sunderers spawn points like nothing its really annoying because you cant see them coming to prepare yourself when you see boom you are already dead, also in my opinion i dont think light troopers should carry c4 or any type of bomb that can drop from the air and do big damage in vehicles and can 1v1 vehicles i see a lot rushing flying around and droping c4 out of nowhere to destroy vehicles and mainly sunderers i think thats pretty op i lost so many sunders and vehicles in a blink of an eye because of that i think that stuff should be on heavy trooper or engineer instead i think the light trooper tertiary weapon the one that fire the little missiles i think that weapon is sufficient to do damage and have a chance against vehicles instead of hitkill stuff not to mention they can already fly and can easily move around so who are inside the vehicle have a hard time trying to hitting them. i agree with cyberdroid about the infiltrator class its true before they could work with smg and do something about it now its the type of class that only camp in hills and hidden areas its now a useless class because the other classes already have long range rifles that can deal with long range targets lets hope the devs can bring the real infiltrator back,also it would be cool to have some armors and cosmetic stuff for certs too would bring more variety in the battlefield.

now about the vehicles i want to know when you devs will add the mechs to ps2 really its been like decades and still nothing about the mechs/walker vehicles in ps2 Im sure it can be balanced theres a lot of awesome artwork(mainly in deviantart) with some cool mech designs to ps2 not only mechs but other vehicles too...its a shame that all the vehicles are the same to all factions/empires for example TR lightning tank,galaxy,ant,sunderer, etc... is the same as NC and VS just with different colors that is very boring(yes i know we can buy the cosmetic and make something different from cash shop but i mean the default version of the vehicle not aditional stuff) this does not bring identity to the empires of course except for the heavy tanks and the fighter aircrafts vehicles but its not enough in my opinion except for the heavy tanks(prowler,vanguard,magrider) and fighter aircraft(mosquito,scythe,reaver) the other vehicles does need a redesign to feel that the specific vehicle really belongs to that empire we need unique vehicles for each empire thats for sure, also please dont put vehicles behind pay wall like was made with the hover bike that is really a stupid move.



lets hope ps2 this year get better and more close to the original( i have my doubts because of what is been happening to ps2 so far)ps2 should be better than ps1(its obvious) but its not still a lot of stuff to remove,add and fix in ps2 to really become a 100% experience of planet side i will never understand why they removed the inventory mechanic from ps1... in my point of view ps2 right now is more like BF or COD with a huge map size and tons of people running around just rushing and tanking around its more like ''oh look how much skilled i am with my high DPI mouse'' and ''how much people you have with you there'' its really like roll dice because if the enemy have 200 soldiers and you 100 you are lost but with tactics and team work that can change of course and i dont see that in ps2 right now unfortunately the game still cool to play the way it is now but i think needs a lots of changes to become better we dont need sh*t like planet side arena we need a better planet side 2 make planet side great again!

Is there anyway you can help me to get someone to respond to my ticket about my account I forgot my secret question and can’t login to my original account and have been waiting for a week

Thanks for making a great and lasting product with Planet Side 2 I have been coming and going from the it since the release of Planets side 1.

There is a lot of reflection on how to make the game or a future game more attractive. Much of this should focus on giving a positive gaming experience within the first 5 min this is the time it took my friends to drop it even thought it is a great and deep game experience.

I hope you have some relevant developments for a new generation engine, for me I simply hope for a better inclusion of more players over a larger the scale of distances. Simply said this is the core of PS, not the close courter combat where it it 50-50 who lives or dies. But make sure that the macro fight are relevant.
Kind regards and thanks

It might be interesting to see Outfit Carriers for logistical support fueled by coordium. I liked the refining of coordium a while ago and I think it could bring more people to base building again. By using these command carriers you could use the models you have used in planetside arena and make outfit leaders have control of how these support carriers will support and/or buff their outfit during Ops.

A quand un char lourd et un aéronef léger pour les comptes NS ?
Peut être aussi avoir de nouvelles armes exclusive et un peut plus de cosmétique pour les personnages ?
A part ca rien a dire un jeu super continuer comme ca

just throwing it out there but one thing that would help is some kind of xp bonus for being in the same area as your squad and maybe a smaller one (that stacks on the squad one) for being with your fellow fireteam members. maybe the bonus is just an added percentage or maybe it is a boost to gained xp (110 for a kill instead of 100 for example)

ONNU had 350 players over in game as an outfit... 2 full platoons any day of the week... till people in game took it upon themselves to stalk me as leader IRL... this is why I personally left PS2.

so since basicaly victorypoints returned with empirestrength will you change PMBs again to also provide some empirestrength?
not speaking about the return of hives but maybe building PMBs could give empirestrength on the ammount of hexxes it holds, like say 3 hexxes = 3 empirestrength?
pmbs should definetively need to be operated and not abbandoned ..

Honestly this game is like a drug to me.

No matter what happens, no matter how hard I try, I always come back. I've played other games and thought 'maybe this is it, maybe this one will top Planetside 2'...

I might go for weeks, even months, but I always end up thinking "man I'd be having more fun shooting the **** in Planetside 2".

To Wrel, and the rest of the Planetside 2 team, however many of you are left, I just want to say, don't give in. Before you even think of pressing the big red button to shut down this game, please, please make sure we have a Planetside 3 to play.

If you don't I might well have to chuck my PC out of the window and actually start giving a **** about my work/life, and that's the last thing anyone wants to do.

Honestly as far as the new player experience is concerned, I always wondered why the starter weapons are not highest rof close quarter ones. I know when I first trialled the GD-7F as a crappy newb I thought "Sweet Jesus I can actually kill things!"

Then again I must be some kind of weirdo because I'm still not even good after like 4 years and I cannot stop playing this game. It's actually unhealthy the amount I enjoy this game. I tried getting my mates to play it and they lasted about 5 minutes. This was alarming because I swear they were better than me...

Part of me suspects that this game could go on forever if we get at least some form of content every 6 months.

The problem is this game will probably never get another advert...

Right now the game sucks !!! Spawnroom camping everywhere !!! Farming ppls 24/7 !!! Totally OP air vehicles ( still after 7 years not 1 effective AA system ~ they can fly in and fly easily out ) and much more ...

I agree, after so many years this game remains the same, some factions are OP, valkiryas with the strikers, go cloth, liberators that are impossible to tear down, and what to say about the types that fly and dodge everything you throw at them, the tanks, of some factions like terran with more and more defensive resources and shields, with the avant-garde with protective shield, while the magruider, only movidlity and sorrow, this is a real disgust, after people who appear and disappear in your noses, they attack you from under the ground or from rocks, they cross walls, or they kill you behind a respounp in short it is in pain, and the only thing that they do is to fix pimps and not fix what really is important, the mistakes that players take advantage to Breaking down the reputation of the game, for that we pay, I have been paying for at least years, and I am very disappointed with all this, the claims and error reports are worthless, most do not read them, more than 11000 info Daily rmes are going to read, not even in a row, this game is increasingly obsolete and dead. a shame


Estoy de acuerdo, despues de tantos años este juego sigue igual, algunas facciones estan OP, valkiryas con los strikers, vaya tela, liberators que son imposibles de derribar, y que decir de los tipos que vuelas aereos y esquivan todo lo que les echas, los tanques, de algunas facciones como terran con cada vez mas recursos defensivos y blindajes, com el vanguars con escudo protector, mientras el magruider, solo movidlidad y de pena , esto es un autentico asco, despues gente que aparece y desaparece en tu narices, te atacan desde debajo del suelo o de rocas, atraviesan muros, o te matan detro de un respounp en fin esta de pena, y lo unico que hacen es arreglar pamplinas y no arreglar lo que de verdad es importante, los errores que jugadores aprovechan para echar abajo la reputacion del juego, para eso pagamos, yo por lo menos llevo años pagando, y estoy muy defraudado con todo esto, las reclamaciones y los informes de errores no vale para nada, la mayoria ni los leen, mas de 11000 informes diarios van a leer ni de coña, este juego cada vez esta mas obsoleto y muerto. una lastima