Devstream summary, Wrel strikes again.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Liewec123, Aug 28, 2020.

  1. pnkdth

    The question is though, do people go to Bio Labs because they're fun or because it is the best way to earn certs? Personally, I avoid them like the plague but I think that's largely due to me having all the certs I'll ever need. So in my mind, if they start making other activities more lucrative they might just be onto something.
  2. icufos


    Thought it's all sheer genius.

    I agreed with everything 'WREL' said.
    The game needs this right now.
    Can't wait for the changes and I'm pretty sure I will be able to recruit more players due to them.
    My son is already over the moon about it.

    All the ideas add enormously to the experience of living and dying on a alien planet.
    I am the happiest of happy bunnies.

    And incidentally, the 'WEATHER' has always played a major and important part in warfare.
    It's all part of the experience....
    • Up x 1
  3. Liewec123

    this is just Wrel saying "where do people enjoy fighting? TI Alloys? Mani? Biolabs? k lets remove them all."
    he adds the most annoying things that he can think of
    pocket orbitals, invincible farming bastions and now shield breaking lightning storms that target big fights.
    and he removes all of the enjoyable bases from the game.
    how can this be anything other than intentional sabotage?
    does he secretly work for a different game company or something?
    i often say he's on an agenda to destroy the game, but ffs it has never been clearer.
  4. Demigan

    If its a question, should the devs be poking it with the chance of a backfire?

    You can actually deduce it. Fights at large facilities draw lots of people. Techplants and AMP stations will even cause biolab populations to go down, often a biolab breakthrough is made shortly after a tech or amp station is opened up.

    Then there's Esamir Techplant. For years the only reliable method of getting MBT's on the continent and build in the middle of the continent, it should have been the Crown, a 24/7 grindfest around that base. Yet instead it sees much fewer action than other techplants aside from the opening battle. The simple truth: its not a fun place to farm, despite how many chokepoints there are and how tough you can make it to keep the farm going for both sides. So fun > farming. And biolabs are fun. I too have more than enough certs, and I like biolabs for their ability to cater to all my playstyles. When I'm up for mindless combat, it offers it. If I'm up for using my brain to achieve success, it offers the tools to get into flanks, rears, break chokepoints, divert enemy attention etc. This is one base where every room counts, and all terrain is useful.
    • Up x 1
  5. pnkdth


    I suppose my follow-up question would then be, does the PS2 population prefer and/or gravitate towards to the opposite of what Planetside offers, i.e. a smaller scale arena where they can have a controlled death match with infantry only.

    In some ways it exemplify PS perfect because it is a persistent meatgrinder and rarely does it matter when you enter or leave te fight. On the other hand it is mindless and exacerbate a major issue current in PS2, namely, it glorifies the farm and stat junkies. This doesn't mean people people are bored but a large part of what makes an experience rewarding is if it gives actual rewards and the Bio Lab is a very lucrative and easy cert farm.

    Another issue with Bio Lab design is that it demolish every single aspect of combined arms. They might as well just make them instanced and create three way death machines with infantry only and focus on making open world Planetside about fighting across the entire battlefield.

    That being said, they could scale the Bio Lab up across the entire continent and this way very well be what they're trying to do. For things to change though Bio Labs (which are a part of the problem) will have to go or be changed.
  6. T.A.94

    Yes
    Yes
    Should been usable since introduction
    Yes
    Hol up buddy don't forget the missing MBT

    Also Indar changes are fine (except Crown D uplink is too far away now), only thing I regret is not being able to finising the construction OS kills for the directive.
  7. NotziMad

    wait ....


































































    they removed biolabs?


























    THEY REMOVED BIOLAB?????????????????




















    THEY REMOVED BIOLABS ??????????



































    ARE YOU ******* KIDDING ME ????????



























    [IMG]
  8. Pelojian

    weather impairs visibility and aircraft controls via high wind speed.
    it doesn't disable vehicles or drain shielding.
    also weather is not sentient, it doesn't maliciously target the biggest fight.

    weather as they have designed it is to crap on infantry and vehicle players at the same time, in other words you ether lose your vehicle because it's been disabled or you have half your effective HP unless you are running carapace in that case you have double the effective HP of anyone else.

    at most storms should have impacted visibility upto a certain amount reducing engagement ranges so long range combat is nigh impossible while making it impossible for aircraft to simply hang high in the sky blowing ground units due to limited visual range.

    they basically took the ion storms idea from tiberian sun and applied it to all vehicles instead of just aircraft and hover units.

    wonder how long it'll take them to nerf carapace.
  9. Demigan

    Smaller scale? The Crown and Biolabs have always offered some of the largest scale battles in the game! The surface area it happens on might not be the biggest, but the fights are!
    Compared to the overall intended gameplay it is disproportionately big. The intended gameplay of capture base, move on holds the smallest and most uneven fights in the game, as that is what gets you to capture the most bases. Also any fun large facility will attract large amounts of players. Biolabs are among them, but also AMP stations, Techplants and "basic" large facilities such as Howling Pass, Indar Excavation, The Crown will draw large crowds. Many of these are not infantry exclusive, but do offer a more structured combat where you need more than just one single arm of the army to defeat the enemy. Even around Biolabs you'll often see some vehicle combat on the ground as the vehicle spawn offers a choice to spawn where an enemy isn't and then duck back behind the shield to prepare for a short engagement and aircraft have always had a massive effect on the airpads no matter if it was attackers pushing in or defenders pushing out.

    So why would players push for an "infantry only" match? Well they don't, but even if they did then the answer is actually simple: The game isn't set up for combat where infantry engages vehicles and aircraft. That is why since forever the developers have had to segregate infantry from the rest, and remove any feature around a base that allowed vehicles to fire into a base as even with the segregation vehicles would (and still will) have a disproportionate effect on a battle. So players love a space where they don't have to deal constantly with sudden OHK's from enemies that take a ton of time and effort to take down until they effectively choose so. Such as Biolabs or fights at AMP stations and Techplants. Even if stats and certs wouldn't be a thing, I think that most players would still end up in their current positions. Although a lot of the more active farming will be eliminated.

    What combined arms? PS2 has 3 arms. Air, vehicle and infantry. But having 3 arms does not mean they are combined. In fact PS2 has done it's best to make them as segregated as possible.

    This is teamwork:
    A scout helicopter spots a target and guides a helicopter or aircraft with the right weapons to the kill.

    This is combined arms:
    A scout helicopter spots a target and guides a tank or infantry(group) with the right weapons to the kill.
    Variations on these include anything where one arm of the army works in a mutually beneficial cooperation with another arm of the army. As you may notice the only difference between teamwork and combined arms is that the one they are doing teamwork with is from another arm of the army.

    PS2 has precious little of this type of teamwork. An infantryman seeing a good target for a tank or airstrike has too many requirements to effectively do teamwork:
    • Needs to be in the same squad/platoon
    • Needs to know the tank/aircraft is anywhere nearby, along with their relevant loadouts
    • Needs to know the relevant position and knowledge of the tank/aircraft to effectively communicate
    • Needs to have everyone else in the squad/platoon quiet so he can communicate the targets position relative to the aircraft/tank
    Unless you are standing almost against each other this is all highly unlikely to happen. Similarly an aircraft spotting an armor column has a hard time communicating this, especially since squads and platoons gravitate to one-type-teams. You either call for everyone to get a vehicle, or an aircraft, or infantry, but calling for a mixture and guiding them all is like herding cats with fireworks as the communication systems in place are just inadequate.
    Even if the communication's systems were finally created to be up to par you would still have aircraft, vehicles and infantry that aren't designed to support each other any more than "shoot that". There's little reason for infantry to form mechanized infantry squads and keep up with vehicles to protect them from flanks or the vehicles to protect a mechanized infantry push. An attack on a base has first the vehicle phase where vehicles clear enemy vehicles for the Sunderer. Then the infantry phase where the infantry push to the point to cap it. Then the vehicle phase begins again. The vehicle phase is heavily hampered by base designs, as it's hard to safely pull a counter-force before the attackers reach the next base or even to pull vehicles and defend the base you are currently at, which already means that it would be unfair for combined arms to even work since only the attackers would benefit.
    So in short: The design of the game in terms of communication, base design and infantry/vehicle/aircraft design all point to segregation of arms, rather than combined arms.
    I keep saying it and i'll repeat it again:
    Make the intended gameplay fun.
    If you make proper combined-arms combat, with proper infantry/aircraft/vehicle designs that complement each other, with proper base designs that actually promote and allow the use of combined arms by both the attackers and defenders, with a proper communication system in place and a proper gameplay flow from fight to fight. Players will leave biolabs.

    Since you just had to ask if they attract people because they are fun or because they get you certs, how can you say that Biolabs are part of the problem? If Biolabs are simply superior fun to the intended gameplay, which they are, then removing/changing them just leaves you with less fun content to deal with. If instead you make the intended gameplay as fun and engaging as Biolabs, while simultaneously removing many of the problems that cause players to be forced into biolabs to begin with, then people will leave biolabs and work with the intended gameplay as well.
  10. Twin Suns

    All these changes for the game and those mofo's at DBG haven't ever revamped the rewards system.

    Take the Biolabs out, the players will find another cert farm somewhere in the new meta.

    But ironically, DBG's paltry reward crumbs will still be the same. Fact.
  11. Alkasirn

    That's what's bugging me about it. Random bases could experience random weather events which would encourage certain styles of play without punishing players. Some things I just thought of and could have flaws but I'm just trying to get the idea across:
    - Rain which causes a fog-like effect at long range, making life harder mostly for sniping infils, but the rain effect would make the environment so "busy" a CQC infil could be harder to spot.
    - A heatwave on indar which causes a distorted depth of field effect, potentially allowing players to move undetected while in an enemy's "peripheral." If it would work like I'm thinking, it could completely change how players would need to position themselves to be effective; no sense in going to all the spots everyone knows people go to or you can't benefit from the distortion!

    What we get instead:
    - Magic storms that punish you if you're not super lucky / spent a bunch of money on lootboxes / spent an absurd amount of certs on lootboxes that you would have gotten significantly more of if you spend a bunch of money on boosts
    • Up x 1
  12. MonnyMoony


    How about fixing some of the bugs that have been round forever (floating AI mines).

    How about reworking some of the useless or nerfed into the ground crap that has been around foerever (ZOE Max)

    How about addressing some of the cheesy and exploitable gameplay mechanics (ADAD and crouch spam).

    How about reworking bases to make them more accessible to other classes other than LA, especially for defenders (e.g. ramps and ladders up base walls to allow them to be used more effectively as ramparts).

    How about removing ghostcapping crap by requiring proximity to the capture point in order to hold it.

    How about adding more skill based Max AA option - this has been being asked for pretty much since launch.

    How about trying to fix some of the fundamental game mechanics issues (like weapon damage output being affected by your frame rate).

    How about doing more to address cheaters (only a couple of days ago I had a TR LA warping around under terrain shooting sundies with a rocket rifle - would have reported him, but you can't spot people under terrain and he was careful not to actually kill anyone).
    • Up x 6
  13. Liewec123

    It's bad that you can outline an infinitely better bunch of ideas than the incompetent idiots in charge.
    I'd much rather have any of that (or hell, no patch atall!) Instead of Wrel s**ting over everything
  14. Pelojian

    at this point can you even be sure the patches aren't meant as a way to kill the game off so whatever sequel they put together no matter how bad will actually attract players?
    • Up x 1
  15. Demigan

    Since that seems to be their modus operandi with promoting parts of their game (rip something else apart so something they want looks better) you might actually be right. Which is scary because after all this time PS2's potential is still there.
    • Up x 1
  16. NotziMad



    funny, though seriously, it seems to me like they are driving a wedge inside the PS2 community between two groups of players who used to cohabitate happily (so to speak) and who's interests and purpose are more and more opposed.

    But not just that, it seems (I haven't checked the test servers for the recent changes so it's possible that they prove me wrong) they favour one of these groups rather than the other (the mindless "play for fun"-"who cares about alerts"-"who cares about taking or saving bases"-"being in a faction means nothing, we don't fight for the faction, we fight to grind, we fight to fight and that is all", and in doing so, are driving the first (historical, often outfit based) objective oriented group out.

    edit -> And by out, I mean, driving them to simply not play the game anymore.
  17. Liewec123

    Actually they f**ked both groups, the people who care about the alert now aren't rewarded as much,
    And for the rest of us who enjoy the big grinder fights, the best ones have been removed from 2 continents.
    (And our big fights will be attacked by the r**tarded storm.)

    So whether you focused on the objective, or would rather just head to the big fun fights,
    Wrel has f**ked your game.
    • Up x 1
  18. AlcyoneSerene

    Biolabs are fun, TI-Crown bridge was unique and fun, 'weather' disables sound horrible, fewer bases on Esamir doesn't look good.

    For all the wrong changes, there's one positive, Esamir warpgate re-placement.

    Not a good trade-off. Then again I don't see a point for the Bastion, Colossus, pocket orbitals, cortium bombs, and other outfit-leader only resources that tend to amplify zerging.
    • Up x 3
  19. Liewec123

    yeah that is about the only good thing from the patch.

    esamir is getting absolutely RUINED by that idiot youtuber.
    going from 60 bases to 43...he's removing a third of the bases on the map.
    including all biolabs.
    and the 43 that do remain are also getting ruined, like Mani Tower now has 3 capture points, and they're OUTSIDE...

    enough is enough, DBG have let this idiot ruin our game enough, someone needs to stop him.
  20. Brok9000

    I like the bio labs. I guess my only complaint is the hanging out fighting at the spawn when it is basically all over. So why not get rid of the ability to spawn once the lab has been taken? No idea why they would remove a cool spot to fight at. It is one of the few places there aren't more invisible snipers than actual boots on the ground fighting.

    Which brings up the weather, the TTK is fine, no idea why they want it lower. And notice they don't say the weather will impair cloaking or lower ranged visibility. It is my major gripe, the game has way too many 'invisible' infantry (the standard infs/cloakers and then they seem to have added more ways). In Planetside you had good counters, so cloakers had to be skilled. The counters in Planetside 2 are so weak they aren't worth the effort, hell that flashlight says 'head shot me' lol. It affects the way you have to do combat, can't really set up lines, have to charge or be the one inside the room doing the 'medic-hunker down' (sqaud with 2 medics, yadda yadda, inside a defensible room). I like the charging and the medic-hunker but... so little variability. And if you try to doing anything like flank or get creativee, 80% of the time get headshot or stabbed from behind. I probably need to LA more since they can be more creative than an HA or engi. Still, main point stands.

    ==> It is a real shame IMO. Some HA and LA are very skilled and it is fun to do open field fighting with them but it is so very rare to have it possible. Along with other battle scenarios, all made unlikely due to so many 'invisible' infantry. I am steadily spending more and more time inside vehicles, turrets and soon mech suits. That and the occasional hunker or charge.
    • Up x 1