Problems with PlanetSide 2 as I see them.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by BuzzCutPsycho, Dec 30, 2012.

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  1. Dekoi

    Great post, Buzz. Completely agree on all points. Feels like its getting to the point where if you aren't in a vehicle, you are just a free kill. :\
  2. Rothnang

    I always agree with a lot of what these threads say until they get to the part where they whine about vehicles being overpowered and how the problem is that the timers aren't long enough and the resources aren't scarce enough.

    That's not where you can fix the issue though, because the timer and the resources actually DO matter, it's just that every time you destroy a tank or an aircraft it isn't just the guy you just shot down that might be pulling one, since everyone can pull one.

    Also this whole "AA isn't effective enough" line is getting tiresome. The reason why AA is as weak as it is is because it's actually crazy overpowered. There is precious little a pilot can do to avoid getting shot by AA, especially bursters which can't even be seen until you're too close to run away from them, so AA is a pure numbers game, 1 AA doesn't do enough damage to kill you, 5 will kill you pretty much without even trying. That's why the individual AA guns are weak, because in large groups they are insanely overpowered. Find a fix for that effect and we can talk about making the individual guns stronger.
  3. SzeronTzur

    +1.

    Although, I do think more needs to be done about major base design and layout, in general, to make them more defensible.

    (On a side note, I would like to thank you for what you do/have done for the community - been enjoying the streams as a lurker recently - ..and lending a measure of competency to the TR of Mattherson.)
  4. Mietz

    10/10 for posters name
    • Up x 1
  5. Selentic

    Agree with most of this. Great post.

    It is definitely true that the anti air rocket launchers and skyguards need work, but on the flip side a small handful of burster maxes make air superiority a laughable advantage. With a few bursters, engineers and medics you can negate all air with ease, and you can continue doing so until every ground unit on your side between you and the enemy ground force dies.

    Severely nerf bursters vs heavy air, and make skyguards a touch stronger vs heavy air units, that way both units have well defined roles, and the issue with bursters negating all air for the duration of larger battles is more or less solved since skyguards are not something you can just casually pull from any point on the map, nor are they something that can sit on a landing pad where they can't be touched by anyone until the end of a battle.

    You don't really solve the problem of support roles being generally unrewarding by penalizing players who don't want to play them. Make playing support a fun rewarding experience and people will use those vehicles without being forced into it.

    Another point to mention is that vehicles do have a pretty steep learning curve, and this would make it even harder for new players to figure them out.

    Agree with this, although velocity relative to the max speed of the target (as in they chase esfs faster than they chase liberators) it's pursuing might also be worth trying out, so that liberators can also have a reasonable chance to dodge behind terrain as well since that gives the pilot a chance to actually have the option to do something beyond fly around in a circle until he loses half his health and then run away.

    ^^^^^^^^^
    Would also have the added bonus of preventing all the insane forum posts floating around here about how aa needs to be able to obliterate all air within 5 hexes so that people can get kill xp.
  6. turtlestation

    Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, if I had tried, it probably would've taken more text, heh. Plus, so many of these suggestions are ******edly easy to implement, such as removing deaths from stat tracking and UI.
    • Up x 1
  7. Uben Qui

    We could use a bullet point summary on that.
  8. Lexicon

    Some good points made, but the irony overload is too much. One of THE biggest farmers in ps2, whether it be by air, vehicle or on the ground, 'suggesting' that they fix this as he's made all his certs and nigh on BR100. Sure, Buzz. The TE nut huggers backing him up are hilarious too, if not a little pitiful.

    TLDR version: "Hey, SOE, I've made all the certs and stats I need from farming, so could you please now stop anyone else form choosing to do so".
  9. Rifle313

    Agree 100%
  10. Drippyskippy

    I may not like Buzz's attitude on his stream, nor his zergfit or the way he abuses people in his outfit for his own personal gain. That being said, most of his points have been said over and over again which SoE needs to look at and seriously consider these changes. I agree 100% with all these changes. Personally, as someone who hates being in vehicles and enjoys infantry combat I have a hard time logging into the game and playing anymore due to the bugs/lack of balance/grinding/lack of meta game/zerg > strategy/vehicle spam this game has. Its plain not fun and probably time for a break until SoE brings PS2 out of beta.
  11. Malacovics

    Agreed on all point.
    Well explained.
  12. Turiel =RL=

    While I agree with pretty much all of the concerns on the list, I want to add something about the capture mechanics. When the game went live Tech Plants could not be taken. Then after the patch Tech Labs could not be defended anymore. With such solutions either the attackers get frustrated or the defenders, so it's a choice between two evils....isn't it? No, it is not!

    Base defense means stopping the attackers. A base can only be defended, if the defenders are able to create a stalemate. If that is not possible, then a base cannot be defended and it is only a question of minutes until the defense breaks down. I am sure that devs were aware of this problem in PS1 and that is why they introduced the NTU as some sort of timer to break the stalemate.

    Now this shows the way how to proceed. When in doubt, make bases much easier to defend, but at the same time introduce a timer to put a definite end to it unless they manage to refill their silos. That also introduces the element of "time is running out" into the game, which is actually quite cool.
    • Up x 3
  13. BeefNoodles

    So you are saying they shouldn't fix the game, because Buzz made a bunch of certs exploiting bad gameplay? What a terrible post...
    • Up x 1
  14. Xarx

    The only interesting thing about these threads: trying to spot the Enclave shills.
    This is nothing new, every single one of these "great ideas" has been brought up multiple times before. Some in beta.
  15. Naigus

    Excellent points in this thread, good job OP. I agree with that bases currently have too many holes and windows in them. It feels more like im playing a tank / air game then a planetside game. In Ps1 bases were more defensive because they had the outer wall, where tanks and esf's fought over to gain ground, then after you breached that wall into the court yard it was still vehicle combat / infantry fights, and once you broke into the main facility it was all infantry based combat from there on. We need this again devs, currently the bases are all just surround it with HE tanks and shoot into the windows while you cap the point.
  16. Linedan

    Can't really find anything to object to here. I like the note about KDR, though I actually do keep loose track of mine just to see if I may be improving as an offensive player. Then again, my KDR also includes a ton of mine kills, which some consider cheap...I don't, because I almost always employ them in terms of playing the objectives (defending a point, etc.) unless I'm just dropping them in a spawn room before it flips, as my way of saying "welcome to your new base!" I would like to see things like ammo resupplies, heals, revives, etc. tracked a lot better than they are so the game is not just about how fast you can frag, but how well you support your team even if you rarely pull the trigger.

    And your point about the death stat is a good one. I've lost count of how many times I've been standing in a bio lab teleporter phone booth (and who here is old enough to remember phone booths?), me and 10-12 other NC, and they're all firing out the door at any TR/VS that happen to stumble by on their way to farm us. If that room all rushed the nearest control point simultaneously, we could easily take it. But they don't. Not even if we've got two or three ScatterMAXes in there, which are vicious in bio lab fights. It's gotten to the point that I, an engineer and probably the worst twitch FPS player on this or any other planet, will charge out solo into the teeth of the defense and die horribly trying to lob a grenade or plant a mine, just because somebody needs to do it.

    I'd lke to see the Zephyr cut to maybe a 3-round magazine maximum, or 1 round with a reasonably fast reload. And the splash damage on the Dalton needs to be cut yet again. Ideally, I'd like to see it all but removed and turn the Dalton rounds into kinetic penetrators, extremely effective against armor on a direct hit but with little or no collateral damage against infantry.

    And the building design is, in general, lacking. The only control point design that I truly like is the "A" point inside the standard tower design on medium-sized bases, the room off the second floor with two entrances and one window. It's defensible, especially with help from a mine in each doorway, but too small to stack a large force in there, and still has a window for potential grenade lobs or creative Light Assault gameplay. Most of the other indoor control points are in rooms with four doors and three or four windows. You'd need the better part of a squad to cover that...at which point, one tank with HE, or one ESF with rawketpawds, or one Liberator, turn it into a cert farm. I kind of lean toward a concept that WWII Online used...they added multiple spawn points in each town. But it's a bit different there, because each town has a finite number of units that can be spawned, and the extra spawns are limited to only spawning infantry, and not much of that.

    The other tendency that worries me is precamping. I'm seeing this more and more, particularly with the VS on Mattherson but the other factions are doing it as well. While one base is being taken, armor and air are moved into position to camp bases well behind the lines. So anybody falling back from the front line is already in the sights of a bunch of Zephyrs and Supernovas before they even have a chance to set up a defense. It's hard to condemn because it's a valid tactic for taking a big chunk of ground, and requires a lot of coordination to pull off properly. But is it fun? Not except for the guys in the armor and air, and maybe not for them (it's not much of a challenge). Is it good for the game? No. But I don't know what can be done about it because it's a perfectly legal, and effective if well-executed, tactic. It's mainly a byproduct of most bases, especially small ones, being indefensible in general.

    It's fun running up against you guys on Mattherson, Buzz.
    • Up x 1
  17. Metavex

    "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."

    I don't quite understand this part, because if you put an overhang over the landing pad, then how are you supposed to actually LAND on the landing pad?

    Suggested changes to HE weaponry seem to go too far, to the extent that people will just go back to HEAT rounds, the lethal blast radius is pretty much exactly the same. I'd suggest reducing the damage to be like a 4-5 hit kill on infantry, but increasing the radius from 10m to like 15 or 20 with very little falloff

    I'm not too fond of the suggested Zephyr changes, part of the fun of using the weapon is that it is an explosive machine gun, something that makes me often prefer using the default Lightning weapon even though it is worse than HE or HEAT. If you were to just half the damage and double the mag size it would give players a bit longer to react and find cover without extensively changing the weapon.

    Windows should not be removed, buildings without windows look silly. Instead, roof access should be improved for all buildings since it is much more difficult to shoot people on rooftops since you can't hit the top surface in order to do splash damage unless your tank is somehow on a hill overlooking the rooftop, and buildings should be laid out slightly closer together so vehicles have more difficulty navigating and players have an easier time finding cover.

    As far as grenade changes are concerned, have you ever been HIT by a flash grenade? The damn things turn your entire screen white for like 10 seconds. It's pretty much a guaranteed kill. Just tune grenade damage down so they can't one shot you if you have a single rank of nanoweave or flak armor (don't understand how nades can one shot but tanks can't) and increase the fuse time by 1 second so players have more time to run away.

    There are plenty of other issues I'm surprised you didn't touch upon, such as buffing the unique Prowler ability to be more in line with the other tanks, buffing VS and TR MAX anti-infrantry to be more in line with NC, making Galaxies something other than completely useless, making ESFs not **** everything that moves then speed away faster than anything else can to repair and restock ammo, Sunderers REQUIRING the spawn station cert - it should be made default so sunderers can actually pick up the other certs in that slot because as is it's pretty much mandatory.
  18. Eric Smith

    I've been thinking along these lines myself, and the timer mechanism I was thinking of was if a territory was cut off from the WarpGate a timer should start. Here's the numbers I was thinking of, but first some quick definitions:

    Base: A major base - Tech Plant, BioLab, or Amp Station
    Major Outpost: Any Outpost with 3 or more capture points (e.g. The Crown)
    Minor Outpost: Any Outpost with 1-2 capture points (e.g. Ti Alloys, Inc.)

    A Base goes on a 30 minute timer if it is cut off from the Warpgate. After 30 minutes it goes neutral unless a link to the warpgate is reestablished. Obviously a faction will find it almost impossible to maintain control of a Neutral base; even if they somehow do they'll lose the 15% defense bonus.

    A Major Outpost is on a 15 minute timer when cut off from the Warpgate unless it is linked to a Base, in which case it gets the 30 minute timer of the base. So a lone Major Outpost (such as The Crown) has 15 minutes once it gets cut off, but if it is linked to a base such as Zurvan or Alltum it gets 30 minutes.

    A Minor Outpost immediately turns Neutral when cut off unless it is directly linked to a Base, in which case it gets the Base's 30 minute timer. In addition, a Minor Outpost that is completely surrounded by the territory of one Faction and/or other Neutral Outposts will immediately go to the control of the Empire that's surrounding it. This will help prevent the lone wolf from taking a bunch of Minor Outposts to cut off a Warpgate - regaining control of all the lost territory will only require taking back one or two of the Minor Outposts and cutting off the lone wolf's link back to his Warpgate, immediately flipping any other territories he controlled.

    These changes will require Empires to defend their Outposts and, most especially, defend their territory rather than sitting on a single territory (such as The Crown or a BioLab) kill farming with no regard to the rest of the territory they control. Their kill farm will end quickly unless they defend themselves.
    • Up x 1
  19. bwdodd

    The developers always ask for specific problems in the game and suggestions on how to fix them and you made a lot of very good points Buzz. You have very smart ways of handling most of these issues. Now that the developers heard from the community and have intelligent ways on how to handle these game mechanics decided on by the community, will we be ignored or will we see some change in game for the better? At the current state of the game I'm not too sure on the competence of this development team, yet. I still need to see where this game is heading before I make up my mind. The game is in a rough state, not bad, but needs a lot of polish. I dearly hope that there is light shine upon these issues Buzz has been speaking about and they are handled in a similar way to his post. I agree across the board with Buzz on all of the suggested fixes that were proposed.

    I hope to see some developer feedback in this post.

    And I want to thank Buzz for this well thought-out post.
  20. Profayne

    Many people do pay attention to KDR because they consider it a reflection of their own personal skill and self-worth within the game. While this certainly alters the way many people play the game, the real problem is the fact that killing other people is the quickest way to earn certs. As long as you have this situation, the game will never be about teamwork. Just like any other MMO, folks want to advance their characters as quickly as possible and kill farming is the best way to do that.

    The other negative effect of the kill-farming mindset is that players are often times forced to play a class that they might not want to play just because it is more effective at killing. This is poor game design. Every class and role should be equally viable when it comes to gaining XP. People should not be forced to do something that they don’t want to do just so that they can get the certs they need to play the class they really want to play. A Galaxy pilot should be able to cert just as quickly as a run-and-gun HA if they are skilled at what they do.

    I also agree about the total lack of incentive regarding base defense. For me, this makes the game feel rather pointless. I can’t count how many times I’m running with a platoon, and as we’re pulling out to zerg the next base, the base that we just took is already being recaptured. But we just roll on our merry way, not bothering to defend the base because there is no incentive to do so. It makes me question why we even bother taking bases at all.

    Which leads to my last point. The rewards for owning bases (and penalties for losing them) should be much more profound. It should truly hurt if your side loses a base (especially the major bases). This would at least provide some motivation to hold them after they have been captured.

    As it stands now, the game is simply a bigger version of Battlefield 3 being perma-played in Conquest mode with unlimited vehicles.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had fun playing this game and still find ways to enjoy it. But there are some glaring issues that will hopefully be addressed as the game matures.
    • Up x 1
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