Levelcap's opinion on the game state

Hope i'm not late and this is not cold.

He adresses some of problems with the game i don't see mentioned on the forums nearly as much as they should; this is why i personally do not play the game almost at all, and all i do is just take a peek at the forum from time to time to see what people are rambling about next.

I don't know... I can see why anyone who says anything negative about the game, will have a following of people, but some of the points he mentions just go against the idea of the game, and some don't really match with my gameplay experience.

For example when mentions about the game being large zerg crushing smaller forces, and wanting to find areas of balanced fighting, that to me isn't PS2. 32v32 balanced is a standard 'First to X kills' FPS, Planetside 2 isn't that.

Vehicle heavy. Again, my experience a half decent defence will hold against a tank push. Destroy a few of the tanks and watch the game descend into a 'Infantry spawn from Sundy' stream. He even contradicts himself by claiming its tank heavy, but acknowledging the stats show Infantry kills are the larger. You cant argue with numbers.

Don't really agree with him at all. He's missing one thing. This is an MMOfps. It isn't designed for solo gameplay. Although his points are 100% legitimate, i think instead of dumding the game down, cater more to casual players, SOE should promote teamplay more, tactical playstyle instead of farming at the crown 24/7. That in my opinion will fix problems he mentions much better than what he suggests.

Just wait, BCP will make another post taking the ideas from this video and repackage them as his own.

I'm at the part where he talks about the large forces beating the crap out of the smaller forces. There has been times where me and HFA with 2 or 3 full squads of players only defended against a mulit platoon forces of the 666. And we won. But it was at quatz ridge. My point being, its not impossible for a small group to defend against large groups, and isnt that what it supposed to be in real life? whoever brings more people to the fight usually wins?

He has a lot of good points.

Defense needs to be such, that instead of improving weapons, you need improve the place you are defending. The outliers to each facility too, that is an awesome idea.

Adding in something like a spawn outlier would be good for each territory, something else would be to redesign where the points are, so that they can be defended better. Maybe put them in a bunker. There is some people suggesting that they add an SCU to each facility, that might do something as well. Having that wouldn't as much necessitate a new spawn for players, but just Take out the infantry resources other people need deal with.

I'm going to say it again too, I Love his statement about adding more cover for people. Currently the best place to fight, because it is a meaningful battle is the place everyone despises so much: The Crown. You have a few other points that are really good at defense like Quartz Ridge, but the Crown is a beast, everyone notices it, and everyone stays there.

I hate the crown with a passion, refuse to go there, and I still have to acknowledge that.

From my experince it's VERY vehicle heavy. Whenever i get into a good fight its usually vehicle-less, then comes a giant swarm of (usually) prowlers and we get camped at the spawn till everyone stops spawning there and it's capped.

And the part about stats is not specifically infantry vehicle kills, it's infantry everything kills. Even if vehicles consisted of 40% of server population, that would be a HUGE chunk.

However unlike him i do see the resource overhaul as a very benefical thing; hopefully thei will make vehicles cost waaaay more, and buff them a tiny bit in health and armor.

So basically he wants to play Battlefield Online?

It's pretty obvious by the time he gets to talking about "I just want to have fun for 30 minutes" and "who wants to go get a sunderer and miss half the battle" that he's not interested in playing a combined-arms MMOFPS, he just wants to transplant the round-based gameplay he's familiar with from conventional FPS games onto a persistent server, replacing map rotation with a spawn menu.

I knew this would happen, because this is exactly the kind of gamer SOE were hoping to attract when they watered down many PS1 mechanics with lowest-common-denominator ideas from BF and CoD.

I don't understand why people have such a problem with the idea of playing something appropriate; if I only have a few minutes to kill and fancy playing a game, I fire up TF2 or BF3, I don't log into PS2 and then get frustrated with the game because it's not designed to cater to my every whim, just like I don't go into a greasy spoon that serves hot rolls and demand they serve me a five course gourmet banquet.

I will say that perhaps the fix of the resources could do most of this I think. Why? Because currently your reason to hold a base is... well there isn't a reason. Giving us some real reason to Care, via base holding, could pretty much fix the problem.

Yup

PS2 is roughly a Traffic simulator.
Vehicle spam is irritating, because it comes down to turning supposedly valuable assets into disposable transport.
Yes, the game is about combined arms. COMBINED arms.

What do we have ? The epitome of "Playing together, alone".
Those MBTs are always half empty. They do not cooperate with other forces on the field. Aircraft prefers farming bases in green/yellow alert than helping pushes. And the Ti Crown(d) population is here for Nuketown: PS2 edition

But PS offers a very unique experince with its massive scale, it's not the same with neither a shooter like BF nor arcade style of TF2.

This. I can't understand how he come up with such ideas like "I can't solo!" in a MMO.

Yep.

PS2 has very bad flow. The biggest meta game is "know where to spawn and when". Forget about the smaller locations, they are going to be spawn camped already. Satellites down? Don't bother.

It is not a massive change, but one any competent level designer should be able to come up with. Natural bottlenecks for tanks. Tanks and aircraft only providing support from outside of the base. Infantry having strongholds that they can hold and that enemy needs to focus on, instead of base defences that everyone just ignores most of the time.

More information flow on the battle map. Scout reports, enemy armor column movements, detected AA presence. Friendly squad movement. Do that instead of the disco lights. FFS, hire someone to act as supreme commander during weekends if you can't get incentive for players to do that.

as soon as he said infantry needs MORE tools against vehicles, he lost all respect.
Now LC is just a troll to me, and I only play infiltrator
0/10 for Levelcap

Please watch the video before ranting. Lack of decent metagame, battles dissipating because people go all over the place after a big battle ends, problematic spawning are things that affect both organized players and solo players alike.

Secondly, solo players are the backbone of the game. I play in an outfit, but even outfits *need* backup from the rest of a faction's pop and can't go it alone all the time. It's hard to get this when solo and new players are unsure of where to spawn. By limiting where people can spawn after a base is lost and going back to the lattice system, you're going to get more rolling and consistent battles than we do now.

The problem is base design and always has been base design.

Arclegger is actually proud of Bio Labs when he should be ashamed of them. Any Planetside player who like's the current designs are doing the game a huge disservice.

I like the game, hate the level design. I think LevelCap feels the same way. The hex system is blah. The road system is blah. The outpost designs are a JOKE. The Base designs are a JOKE. The terrain is mostly a joke with nowhere to park Sunderer's or take cover. You can offroad just about anywhere because the maps are just barren terrain.

The terrain is not dictating or promoting where to go next. And if it does it's probably taking you somewhere that strategically is less important then where you really want to go. Which means the developers have not put much pre thought in these natural terrain chokepoints.

It's just a mess and I have always said, ARcLegger needs to be removed from the team. We need fresh idea's and reimagining's about what base's in PS2 should be.

I feel we are so far from good designs that they need to be totally scrapped in their current form.

They are not FUN. They are not COOL. They are just something we tolerate because it's what SOE gave us and we have no choice.

And like LevelCap I am getting tired of logging in. Maybe because I play an insane amount of hours, maybe because the core game is missing so many features and sane design decisions.

So he wants to solo around as infantry just like he did in his ESF? PS2 is a game of squads, platoons and outfits, it's about teamwork. If you have a large number of players soloing you get the Crown and we know how fun that is. As for the vehicle spam, there are plenty if areas on all continents where vehicles don't have any effect and not just biolabs.

Watch the video before ranting, and read my post from above:

He made this video prior to GU2 I believe.

Negative, he talks about having netcode issues since GU2.