Problems with PlanetSide 2 as I see them.

Fundamentally, this is a good game, but there are some problems which need to be addressed. I won't debate the metagame or lack of here as that has been done to death but I will bring up some stuff which really irritates me.

KDR and Stats

The elephant in the room here is KDR. Everything in this game revolves around the Kill to Death
Ratio and the biggest reason for this is that you get more rewards for killing than you do from
actually accomplishing objectives. The problem is so prevalent that a player is constantly driven
to do cheesy things to get kills because the game, in its current state, revolves around trying to
get as many kills as possible. You never login and say, “Where is the frontline at?” Instead, you
login and say, “Where is the farm at?”

Simply put, KDR must be flat-out removed from this game in order to promote team play. As
it is, the game places far too much emphasis on KDR. When you press tab, you see how many
minutes you’ve been online, how many kills you’ve acquired, and how many deaths you’ve
accrued – all of this is displayed prominently to the player. What you don’t see are total heals,
base captures, Sunderer deploys, Galaxy Drops, Ammo Resupplies, or any stats which promote
team play. You could be an objective orientated player, but you are not rewarded for that.

Team play doesn’t promote KDR; as a result, team play is not pursued in a game which requires
team play to win. Because of the lingering shadow of KDR, which influences players whether
they admit it or not, players are less likely to actually push forward to an objective, sacrifice
themselves to accomplish important goals for the team, and less likely to perform support roles.
As players simply won’t get as many kills winning the game, they’ll instead resort to cheesy play
that seeks to “farm” players for kills for as long as possible.

With this type of gameplay rewarded, why play a support role at all? Not only will your KDR
stat be hurt as a support role, but you get more certs for kills than you do repairing a vehicle,
healing, etc. Not only does the KDR stat promote cheesy behavior, but the game’s cert system
itself further reinforces it. In a player’s quest to increase his KDR, he will be rewarded with
higher certification gain; this further reinforces his inclination to pursue gameplay which is not
helpful to the team/faction.

We are all familiar with the practice of looking for a deployed AMS in order to farm it. Instead
of pursuing the strategically sound option of destroying the AMS, we patiently wait for infantry
to pour out so that we can farm them with HE shells. To make matters worse, we yell at players
who actually destroy the AMS. It might be advantageous to a faction to kill the AMS, but, in
reality, it is better to sit there and farm it for certs.

Other than flat out removing KDR, which should happen, we can move to fix this flaw in the
game’s design by removing the death stat, rewarding support roles with higher cert gain, and add
prominently displayed support stats.

Put simply, the death stat should no longer be tracked. Dying is a measure of failure, but it has no
place in a game when success is achieved by dying in order to take objectives. When the shadow
of one’s death stat hangs over one’s head, one will decide not to go through a bio lab portal and
instead hang back behind the protection of the shield. You have to drive forward in order to do
important things, but the game punishes that behavior.

You can continue to track the kill stat, but it must be buried within the stats page. Kills should
be the least important measure of success in a game so reliant on team play. Instead, things such
as total health healed, Sunderer infantry deployments, and ammo given are just a few of the stats
which should be given a greater spotlight than kills.

The stat itself isn’t the only problem; the incentive to farm kills must be removed for the cert
gain it provides as well. Right now, farming a Sunderer without destroying it with HE rounds
or a Zephyr is the most efficient way to gain certification points. To deal with this problem, we
must remove the incentives to farm an AMS.

First, a couple of seconds of immunity should be added to newly deployed infantry which
protects them from enemy fire. Secondly, a bigger bounty both in terms of cert gain and score
should be given to players who destroy enemy AMS units; higher rewards should be given
to players who successfully destroy a Sunderer which has spawned more infantry than newly
deployed Sunderer. Finally, no or few points should be awarded to players who kill infantry who
have just deployed at a Sunderer a short time ago.

Encourage Fighting and Discourage Ghost Capping

Right now, a big problem with the game is that we don’t get a whole lot of XP for capping
a base; you get a non-insignificant amount, but it pales in comparison to farming kills at a
deployed enemy Sunderer. Linked to this problem is that you get a bonus for capping an empty
enemy base.

The solution to this problem comes straight from Planetside 1; in Planetside 1, your XP gain for
a capture was based upon how much fighting was on that base. If it was a heavily contested base,
the reward scaled appropriately to reflect that. If the base was empty, the reward for the capture
was insignificant. Basically, you were rewarded for taking risks. High risks held the promise
of high rewards and encouraged players to always move towards the areas with the heaviest
fighting.

In Planetside 2, there is no tangible benefit for defending bases. You are given a flat XP increase
for getting kills while on a friendly base, but you are punished for successfully driving the enemy
off and actually defending the base. Once again, we go back to kills and the desire for kills which
encourage stupid tactics like what we see in Bio farms.

Additionally, and as laughable as this might sound, it’s sometimes better to let an enemy capture
a base just to ensure there will be a fight to farm kills with and you get that capture XP if you
take it back.

As a solution for Planetside 2, re-secure XP should be awarded to defenders based upon how far
the enemy was into the capture. If defenders arrive at the last minute and re-secure a base, they
should be awarded for taking the time and effort to do so.

With this in mind, all solutions should encourage players to go forward and find fights. If there
is a reason to defend then players will do it, but right now there is no reason to defend territory.
People will not defend bases, that is actually defend them and drive the enemy out, if there is no
reward for doing so.

While The Enclave has done many a last-minute re-secure ourselves and it is fun for us to
display our collective might, there are no in-game benefits for us to do so.

Capture Mechanics

This is a good opportunity to move on to the state of base defense in this game and it’s all tied
into the fact that you currently cannot effectively defend in this game. The issue is that there
are too many variables which determine how quickly a base will capture. Base capture times
constantly fluctuate due to the abortive influence system and “six people on a point” capture
mechanics. All this does is making the decision to retake a base more difficult than it should be.

For example, you can look at the UI, observe the bar on the map, or even scope out how many
enemies are on the capture point, but none of that gives you any indication of how quickly the
base will flip.

The largest culprit in this is the influence variable. Influence contributes too much to base
captures and, what’s worse, no one cares about it. It’s an asinine concept that has been
floundering since tech test. Throughout beta and now into live, influence still doesn’t work.
Influence should be completely removed and every base should instead have a standard capture
time that is set in stone and easily viewed by everyone.

One should be able to select a base on the map and know exactly how much time is left before
the base flips; this would allow players to instantly know how much time is left for a re-secure.
As it stands now, players think they have enough time to make a difference only to drop too late,
losing the base, putting their instant action on cool down, and making them feel disgusted.

In order to alleviate this across the board, I would extend the idea of a timer similar to Planetside
1’s to outposts as well as the larger facilities. Facilities and outposts need to have their captures
slowed down. Facilities in general are captured far too quickly; by the time you get there, it’s
already been captured. Slowing down base captures will help to promote gameplay both on
a larger and smaller scale. With that in mind, my suggestion for small outposts it to have a 10
minute capture timer; larger facilities should have a 15 minute timer.

And just as an aside for those who are worried about sitting around and waiting: what do we do
in the game right now? We sit around and wait anyway! Sometimes, you can start a capture with
100% influence only to have the capture slow down to a crawl thanks to that same influence
system. Being stuck waiting for 45 minutes for a capture just because the surrounding territories
constantly keep changing hands is not fun.

Even if a player decides to defend, that player has to deal with yet another issue
with defense in Planetside 2: base layouts.

Layouts play a big part in defense, but right now everyone agrees that the bases, with the
exception of the Bio lab, are not at all defensible. The only reason the Bio labs are defensible at
all is because they protect the defenders from the proliferation of vehicles.

The Amp station has a few problems, but the first one is pretty obvious. Despite having large
and prominent shields which prevent vehicle access into the Amp Station’s courtyard, there
are two entrances which are entirely unshielded. While they are blockaded to prevent big tanks
from getting through, it’s not enough to stop an enemy AMS from driving straight through. The
problem this creates is that it allows an AMS to be deployed on the inside of the Amp Station
courtyard next to a tower; a tower gives you access to jump pads. As a result, once a single tower
is compromised, the entire base can be hit from every angle.

The way to fix this glaring problem with Amp Stations is twofold: Fix the towers and remove/
shield the other entrances.

With regards to the towers, make it so that the jump pads only work for the defending team.
This change would mean that the attackers could no longer use the jump pads to swarm an Amp
Station from every tower at once. This also adds legitimacy to the battlements and forces the
attackers to fight across the base.

Tech Plants were very hard to take pre-patch, but, as of last patch, they are kind of a joke. The
biggest reason for this is not so much the displacement of the objectives to the outside of the
base, but the removal of the spawn room teleporters which linked the spawn room to the actual
Tech Plant building itself. Once the AMS inside the base gets taken down, the base is lost. The
defenders get pinned inside the spawn room and are unable to defend the base from that point
onwards. They are farmed for points if they stay and are encouraged to completely abandon the
facility before the SCU even gets taken down.

Something of a unique case for Tech Plant is Eisa; it’s the only tech plant without walls.
Considering that it is also the only Tech Plant on Esamir, one would think it would be more
fortified. Instead, it’s completely open to attack and a joke.

As previously mentioned, Bio labs are the only defensible facility in the game. In fact, something
needs to be given to the attackers. They’re simply too hard to take as is, but they shouldn’t
be neutered to the same extreme Tech Plants have been. Right now, it is necessary to take a
jump pad to push into the base effectively, but attackers end up getting farmed and cannot push
in without overwhelming numbers. A lot of times, an assault on the bio lab ends up with the
attackers getting farmed by defending air even when the attackers otherwise dominate the skies;
an overhang would solve this problem by protecting vulnerable attackers on the pads from
enemy air strikes.

As for smaller bases, a general rule of thumb when designing a base is that a base should be,
obviously, defensible. You don’t want to make it easy for tanks to get in and ruin what should be
decided by infantry. After all, base fights should largely be infantry battles. Tanks and vehicles
should help the attacking force get to the facility, but they shouldn’t decide the outcome of the
interior struggle.

Additionally, no-deploy zones for AMS’s should be added inside bases to prevent an AMS from
instantly deciding the battle. Right now, the big issue is that one simply deploys an AMS inside
the base and the fight is over. The no-deploy zone should be 50 meters or slightly more. Inside
this zone, one simply cannot deploy an AMS. The idea here is to force a fight from one spawn
point to the objective. This would also solve a lot of ******** where Sunderer’s are deployed in
Amp Station and Techplant garages where they should be; consequently, this is an issue which
affects bases of all sizes.

Weapons

Moving on to weapons, we come across the biggest, most cancerous and most destructive
problem in Planetside 2: the overabundance of vehicles. Part of this stems from the fact that
resources are largely irrelevant and timers are insignificant. Anyone can pull a vehicle at any
time; this is proof that the resource system simply does not work. You end up asking yourself,
“Why do I want to be on the ground as infantry? The best way to get kills is in a vehicle!” This
promotes the “farm or be farmed,” mentality of Planetside 2 and once again brings up the specter
of KDR.

My own personal typical farming “rotation,” consists of Liberator, mosquito, prowler, and finally
lightning. By the time I lose my lightning, I can restart the rotation and repeat indefinitely. I
really want to play as infantry, but the game in its current state practically forces me to pull
vehicles in order to gain XP.

Further complicating the overabundance of vehicles are the Zephyr and HE cannons. You can
very easily pull out a High Explosive Cannon equipped tank, do respective damage to armor, and
absolutely murder enemy infantry. The downside to the HE cannon doesn’t go far enough and,
even if it did, it is far too effective at its main job.

As a suggestion to fix this problem, and if we must keep HE cannons, then keep the high blast
radius while lowering the damage against infantry. This would turn the weapon into more of a
suppression style weapon. The weapon would damage and disorient infantry, but be vastly less
effective at actually killing them. Additionally, the damage of HE versus any vehicle in the game
should be drastically cut. A HE MBT should lose to a HEAT/Viper lightning at all times.

Ideally, I would like to see HE removed altogether, but I understand that it is not realistically
going to happen. If we must keep it, then it should be changed in such a way so as to promote
team play over farming.

As for the Liberator and its Zephyr cannon, it is really its own unique problem. Unlike the main
battle tanks of Planetside 2, they do promote team play which is excellent. Unfortunately, there
is not enough really good ground-based anti-air to effectively combat them. Without massed
ground based anti-aircraft fire, such as the kind an entire company can deploy, one liberator can
farm infantry all day. One liberator can get a good chunk of kills, go off to repair any damage
incurred by ground-based AA, and then return to do it all again.

In addition, the liberator Zephyr cannon itself is simply too effective; it fires six rounds of High
Explosive ammunition and kills before infantry can even think to take cover, let alone survive.

The Zephyr should be changed to be more like the Dalton with only round fired before a reload
is required; no more six round HE ******** to rack up kills. Similarly, the infantry damage on the
Dalton itself should be reduced, but it is otherwise fine.

Vehicles in general should have longer acquisition timers over non-combat vehicles. Currently,
someone who fully certs into a vehicle’s acquisition timer can acquire one every five minutes. I
would like to see that increased to ten minutes for combat vehicles such as the Liberator, MBT,
and Lightning. Non-combat vehicles such as the Flash, Galaxy, and Sunderer should be able to
be pulled at any time once they are fully certed into. In essence, a player who wants to play a
support role should be able to pull a support vehicle at whim. This rewards a team based player
by allowing him to delve into his support certifications and consequently support the team. This
would also help to solve the problem of too many combat vehicles flooding the field at any one
time.

Infantry-based anti-air weapons are actually pretty weak. I don’t want to see them make aircraft
irrelevant, but they should be better. There are ways to improve this without actually swinging
the balance too far. Put simply, with regards to the launchers, the velocity and turning speed is
atrocious. They should be increased so that a pilot would be forced to use the terrain to break the
lock – in all other instances he should definitely be hit by the missile. No more slight turns to
break locks! Additionally, ground-based elements should be able to hit all aircraft at the flight
ceiling.

We should be rewarding players for using flak; right now, providing flak cover is a very boring
and thankless job. Flak should give experience based upon hits in addition to kills. It should
also give points for driving the aircraft from the combat zone; players may not be getting kills,
but they’re contributing a great deal by driving those vehicles away and should be rewarded for
doing so. Incentivizing air cover will go a long way towards improving its effectiveness without
making aircraft too weak.

With regards to ground vehicles, allow infantry the option to cert into a universal EMP grenade
that every class has access to; this would force enemy armor be cautious around enemy infantry.
Getting close to any class other than Heavy Assault is not a risk for a tank. Even then, HE rounds
in their current implementation often negate any risk a Heavy Assault at close range would
otherwise pose.

An EMP grenade which detonates on impact, temporarily disables a vehicle’s weapon systems
and slows a vehicle down would improve the current state of infantry versus armor. Giving
infantry this option to cert into EMP grenades as a universal certification would turn infantry of
all classes into a legitimate threat to tanks. This would force vehicle drivers to actually respect
infantry and perhaps even rely on friendly infantry for cover. Promoting more infantry on
infantry interactions will improve the game as a whole.

Defensible Structures

Tying into this, indefensible structures and deathtraps are proof of how little vehicles respect
infantry. There are just far too many indefensible buildings and windows; in fact, the entire state
of buildings could be summed up by the fact that they have too many damn windows. In reality,
buildings allow infantry to project their power outside, but in Planetside 2 we find that role
reversed. Instead, buildings serve as incubators which allow vehicles to farm even more infantry
than otherwise possible.

To illustrate my point, let me ask you this:
Which is more powerful, a building filled with Heavies with T9 CARVs or one vehicle equipped
with high explosive rounds ready to shoot inside?

The real solution here is to close up all the windows; otherwise, it’s impossible to secure a
building when every square inch of the interior can be saturated with high explosive death from
the outside. Give us a little reprieve from vehicles and the game will improve.

Furthermore, it’s too easy to “accidentally” flank elements within a building. Any idiot can
accidentally flank a building as there are simply too many entrances. In addition to removing
those windows, add more closed doors. This adds legitimacy to the light assault class which can
attack from the balcony/roof and makes it harder for an opposing element of infantry to storm a
defended building.

Grenade Spam

The next problem and something that is a child of the “too many windows!” problem is grenade
and grenade spam. In Planetside 2, grenades are more akin to handheld nuclear weapons than
actual fragmentation grenades. This wouldn’t be a problem if grenades weren’t so damn cheap
and KDR wasn’t a constant shadow on this game.

Why would I want to buy a concussion/flash bang/res grenade when they are more expensive
and don’t provide me with kills with which to pad my KDR and provide me with excessive
certs?

Thus, the current resource requirements of grenades should be inverted. That is to say, the cost of
fragmentation grenades should be increased to 125 infantry resources and all non-lethal grenades
should be lowered to 75 or 50 resources. This would both encourage the usage of non-lethal
grenades and stop the promotion of grenade spam.

Another issue with the overabundance of grenades in Planetside 2, and a personal pet peeve of
mine, is that nearly all of the objectives are stacked inside buildings filled with, you guessed it,
windows. Windows only serve the purpose of allowing HE rounds and grenades to farm kills.

When I see a 6/6 capture point located inside a building, I throw a grenade and get six kills.
The fact that the entire objective can be cleared out by one grenade is ridiculous, and why
not? They’re cheap and they pad my precious KDR and Certification points. They’re crushing
teamwork and objective based play, like so much of what is currently wrong with the game.

Certifications

Speaking of Certification points, there is currently too much of a certification grind to this game.
Certifications need to be streamlined; we can do this by adding more universal certifications to
the game. Right now, if you want to cert out a character you must do so in a very clumsy way.
For example, if I buy Flak Armor on my Heavy Assault class, I cannot wear it on my Medic
unless I also cert for it there. Why is that? Why must I grind it on every class for every piece
of armor? That’s not fun and it’s boring. The answer is obvious: if you get it for one class, you
should get it for all of them.

To name just a few examples here, C4, Flak Armor, Grenade Bandoliers, all of these should
be universal and work across all classes. If I unlock C4 on my Heavy Assault, it only makes
sense that I should have it unlocked on my Medic. It already works this way on carbines across
Engineers and Light Assaults; pointless grinding should similarly be removed for all classes.

In fact, vehicle weapons suffer the same fate right now. Let’s say you are driving a Sunderer
with a front and rear Fury; you have to unlock the upgrades for the weapons separately! No one
is going to enjoy grinding the same Fury over and over again. This applies to a lot of weapons
across a lot of vehicles; a bulldog unlocked on a galaxy should be unlocked on the liberator as
well. Naturally, this logic should apply to the certs you apply to those weapons.

Combat Downtime

Finally, I would like to talk about combat downtime. There is just too much of it. Shields regenerate too
slowly. In a game where fire comes from everywhere, you constantly are forced to sit around
and wait a mini-eternity for shields to come back online. I find it very annoying that one nick of
damage forces me to sit and do nothing for ten seconds in order to fight at an optimal level. The
default recharge time should be lowered to at least 7.5 seconds. The advanced shield capacitor
suit modification should be lowered to at least 5.5 as well.

Similarly, Medic revives should always revive you at 100% HP no matter what level the medic
is. Right now, being revived by a brand new medic is the height in frustration and it shouldn’t be.
The only thing that the medical applicator improvement should do is decrease the heal and revive
times. Non-MAX suits should always be revived at 100%.

Great analysis, Buzz. The changes that you suggested are reasonable, and I think that SOE needs to consider them. Thanks for leading the outfit! (did you write this, or did you bribe someone else to do it??)

These changes sound amazing. Really hit the nail on the head. (I am not in the enclave btw).

Instead of making towers in Amp stations for eg. only usable by defenders, why don't you make them capture points of their own - flipping after maybe 10-20 seconds - whoever captures them gets turret and jump pad control. This would allow defenders to see that X tower has been taken by the enemy and attacks are coming from that direction, and it will give a sense of progression for both the attacking and defending forces.

It would make holding the tower battlements somewhat important in restricting the flow of attackers.

Also I like the idea of a set timer for captures, I utterly despise the current influence and adjacency system.

Couldn't agree more, on pretty much every point. The devs need to decide whether PS2 is really going to be a teamplay-focused, objective based game, or just a 24/7 cert farm.

Amazing read and I couldn't agree more with almost every point. Hope the devs read this and give it some consideration.

I do agree on the primary focus on KDR. I like playing my medic, I like rezzing/healing people and I'd love to know how well I've done as a medic. As a support person.
Also, I would love to see Zephyr / HE / Grenades reduced, by a lot! The emphasis on explosions in this game is so high that I've certed from nanoweave into Flak Armour, cause explosions. Bullets should become way more important over time if it would want to interest me. I don't even think all classes should have to use grenades. Make them very expensive, make people think before they throw one.
My current daytime pass time is in a zephyr, I've put a nice chunk of certs in it. The reason to do this is because, during off-hours, it's the most efficient way to get certs and I like getting certs. I like getting kills. But even I realise, a zephyr can absolutely RUIN someones day. It's simply to strong by itself. 2 shots per clip, perhaps even slightly less damage to vehicles?

All in all, I very much agree with your analysis Buzz. I am not entirely sure about the capture mechanics, but about explosions / defensibility / vehicle spam etc. I completely support these ideas!

While my KDR is terrible at around 1.3 ish i feel this needs to stay in. Other stats just need to be added like you said in your post. Everything else is pretty much spot on. I would like to see infantry harder to kill tbh. I dont know how to do it, by either giving them the tools to do it or just more health or resists.

We just need some of those server merges along with any changes to fix infantry combat and i will be a happy man. Zero high pop servers on a Saturday night at 7pm east during the holidays when everyone is home from school is pretty bad.

Agreed on ALL points, I'm sure many others will agree(if they actually read it). Hopefully SOE reads it too and takes steps to implement said changes, it would greatly improve the game.

+1

Not really much to say other then nice write up buzz.

+1, i can agree on all points. I will keep an eye on this thread.

DEVS TAKE A LOOK AT THIS THREAD, IS A GOOD SUMMARY OF MANY PROBLEMS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN DISCUSS IN THIS FORUM!!!

/signed

I would play this game a lot more if they took out KDR; I especially hate how prominently it's displayed. When you see people hang back on Biolab pads instead of charge in, I blame KDR.

Agree with most of it, don't remove KDR though - just add more statistics in to let support players know how well they're doing.

Yep, I'm unable to find much wrong with what is posed as far as quality changes that might make this game less VehicleFarmVilleSimulator2 and more compelling infantry combat beyond who has the most boom boom makers.

Like you said, the vehicle spam is the key issue.

Solve that, and the other problems will fix themselves eventually.

I really hope SOE listens. I in addition would like to request a squad/platoon screen in the tab menu which you can view the stats of your squad/platoon team mates. That way you can see if they are really contributing.

This game is supposed to be large scale organized combat however currently there is no real way to organize anything besides making an outfit.

Do it SOE or die trying

Good starting points to make PS2 an actual game.