[LIST] MarkovForums gameplay input. Srs thread.

This text originates from markovforums.com. It is home to many long-standing members from the PS1 community, and several of the top Planetside 1 and Planetside 2 players. This is a compilation of what we collectively agreed needs to be worked on. Suggestions in this thread were introduced by multiple experienced players and compiled.

Base Design and Infantry vs. Vehicle Combat:
Most players enjoy the mix of infantry and vehicular gameplay that PS2 provides. No one likes getting farmed by libs/tanks/esfs as infantry or roflpwnt by striker/phoenix/lancer/AA max zergs as vehicles. While steps have been made to help fix this issue, infantry should have enclosed areas to play in (maybe steal map designs from other games)? Vehicle and infantry combat should be less intermingled at times.

Fast TTKs with respect to netcode and game scale:
PS2 always will be "laggy" compared to other FPS games. When ttk is low sympathy kills become more common and things like bullets registration and delayed shot registry become a problem. There are a lot of problems with kill trading, and since this game will never be as responsive as small-map shooters, TTKs should be toned down a bit.

Aircraft Collision Damage:
The inconsistency of collision damage between friendly and enemy aircraft is frustrating and poorly implemented. It needs to be reworked or significantly lowered. There are 3 types of collisions:

1. Collision occurs from both player’s point of view. This is an acceptable way to die.
2. Player A sees a collision from their point of view, however Player B does not. Result: Both players die. This is unacceptable. Either just Player A should die, or neither.
3. Player A and Player B narrowly miss each other. Result: Server calculates a collision took place. Both players die. This is unacceptable.

Mandatory Certifications:
Certain certs are mandatory to play the game as intended. Examples would include flares for aircraft, mineguards for ground vehicles, and flak armor for infantry. No cert should be mandatory for survival or for an enjoyable experience. Flares need to be made baseline for aircraft (particularly libs), and either mines need a slight nerf or all ground vehicles should have a baseline damage reduction to them. A small level of flak armor should also probably be baseline for most classes of infantry. There are other examples throughout the game, but the premise remains.


Introduction of Overpowered Weapons:
A player should want to buy an item because they genuinely love the game and want to be a part of it for a long time, not because it’s overpowered and poorly balanced. Sadly it’s becoming believed that weapons are purposely introduced in an overpowered state in order to sell more. I hope this isn't the case, but nothing has been introduced that really shows otherwise. Weapons need to be properly “tested” before they are released into the game, and if they are deemed overpowered, adjustments need to be made quickly instead of weeks later. NC AI maxes are a prime example of something that should have been hotfixed months ago, but only recently was something done. It’s absurd that players dread weapon introduction patches because of how lousy the gameplay experience becomes. Prime examples include shotguns (particularly pump shotguns) and the recent empire specific launchers. TR territory has turned in to a liberator no-fly zone, and NC/VS territory are no-drive zones. These weapons aren’t sidegrades, they are flat out upgrades that promote a poor gameplay experience for the receiving end.


Introducing more weapons when the game isn’t balanced.
You can’t build a good game by slapping junk on top of junk. All you end up with is an even bigger piece of junk. So please stop adding more weapons so frequently until what is already out can be fixed. We understand a lot of money is made off weapon sales, but this is also scaring players away. Every patch the game gets more frustrating to play due to lousy imbalanced implementation on top of previously imbalanced implementations. I personally don’t want to spend money on this game because of this, and others share the same opinion.


Stop nerfing the ability for ESFs to skillfully kill other ESFs:
This is a direct reference to the semi-recent rotary weapon changes. Every time the ability for ESFs to kill other ESFs is reduced, it is actually a buff to ESFs as whole. Currently it is too hard to kill another ESF due to the rotary weapon round velocity changes. They do not belong and all these changes have done is give ESFs more air dominance. Meanwhile, the ability to kill Liberators has increased because each rotary clip does significantly more damage when the shots are landed. Libs are in a lousy state and are good for nothing beyond spawn camping in the majority of situations. All these changes have done is increase ESF air dominance even though it obviously wasn’t the intent.


Stop introducing minimal skill cap weapons:
Learning to use something should be rewarding. A 10 year FPS player should not have the same success with a weapon as somebody that’s been shooting at players for 3 months. This primarily is in respect to lock-on weapons, but it extends beyond that. And if weapons are minimum skill cap, they should not be rock/paper/scissors based. Because player has X, doesn’t mean he should always beat Y. Instead X should have an advantage over Y.

The Resource System is Lousy:
The current system sucks, and SOE needs to stop pushing a resource-driven agenda unless it is fundamentally changed. It is a momentum-driven system that punishes underpopulated empires, legitimate players that lose vehicles to cheaters and anyone that has a client crash. Nothing is more frustrating than saving up resources for 10-20 minutes only to have their vehicle instantly blown up by an aimbotter, a friendly that doesn't know how to drive/fly, or see it lost due to a client-crash. The system contributes to the zerg-fit plague in this game where numbers are more important than anything. As if 15-20 minutes vehicles timers aren’t enough... and nobody likes afking on empty continents for resources.

Instant deaths due to items such as Proximity Mines/BBs/Claymores/ and Phoenixes for ESFs:
These 1-shot weapons promote poor gameplay. The mines are next to invisible and 1 shot anyone not using flak armor. They do not add to the gameplay experience. Instead they detract from it and there are no appropriate counter-measures. The same goes for Phoenixes; there is no reason for them to be essentially 1 shotting ESFs and almost 2-shotting libs.


Liberator:
The liberator’s role is flawed. It is outstanding and overpowered in small fights and not allowed to participate in any other sized fight. This is because it is large, slow, can’t be flown skillfully enough to prevent incoming damage, and it lacks countermeasures. Like many players predicted in beta, the solution to lib balance was never to give it more health. That bandaid fix put it in its current overpowered/worthless state. Fundamental lib changes must happen because every patch it’s easier to kill than the one before. A great initial step would be to move either flares or afterburners to the “passive” cert tree until further changes can be made. Changes do need to happen.

Warpgates:
Make them work. Pulling a vehicle on a continent when you first spawn is pretty much automatic. When you end up spawning on Amerish and your outfit is on Indar, you should be able to switch continents with your vehicle.

Debris:
Debris acts randomly. You can kill a lightning on the ground, and it’s debris might fly off 200 meters into the air and one shot any aircraft that just happens to be flying around in the area. Debris also hangs around in the air without actually falling to the ground at times. Let's not forget a piece the size of my watch can take down a liberator.

Late Night Moderators:
There are none. You need some. Hackers and script kids are rampant at night. (Especially on Connery).

Lack of prompt and effective balance patches:
Gamers do not appreciate imbalanced multiplayer games. Particularly from games which are attempting to enter the competitive scene. Planetside 2 would benefit greatly from a weekly patch full of small incremental balance changes. This would take relatively little dev time if the right people were responsible for it. (Hire a few top players as part time consultants if you need to.) With proper balancing more weapons would be viable and as a result SOE would probably make more money. League of legends is the gold standard here as they have a well balanced game and are swimming in money.

Yea why not

Although
How the hell do you change AP mines without making them useless?

maybe lower damage, but larger blast areas. Also make the claymore harder to spot. The role would then not be to leave a boobytrap behind in an empty base to get a free kill which is usually what everyone is complaining about, but instead as the first step in a defense setting in order to strip the attackers of their shields.

When you say "TTKs should be toned down a bit," you mean make TTK longer, right?

Regarding the liberator:
I'm glad someone else finally says it - the liberator is completely overpowered and underpowered at the same time. It dominates small fights, but cannot contribute meaningfully to large ones. No amount of changing its HP, damage output, or weapon effectiveness will fix one aspect without breaking the other. The liberator, therefore, needs a complete overhaul.

My suggestion would be to make it into a bomber like PS1. In PS1, it could contribute to small fights by hovering over the battle, but it was balanced by the fact that the bombardier didn't have a gun that could aim anywhere and insta-gib infantry. The lib had to physically fly over its intended target, allowing small groups of infantry to avoid it and fight back. Meanwhile, in large fights, it could contribute by being a fast strike-bomber, or by bombing from maximum altitude. As a strike bomber, it could only threaten one target at a time, so it was effective but not too powerful (similar to ESF hit-and-runs), and at max altitude, it was difficult to kill with ground-based AA, but the long fall time of the bombs combined with the difficulty of acquiring targets made sure it wasn't too powerful. The bombs showed up on radar, and you had a good 10 seconds to get out of the way. Of course, being effective at high altitude requires it to be able to render infantry at range, or at least be able to damage non-rendered infantry.


Other Thoughts:
I'm surprised this thread makes no mention of MBTs, especially since it's been a hot topic lately. MBTs are so easy to acquire and use that we end up with 20+ tanks per side in a large fight, so SOE had no choice but to make them weak and easy to kill. I'd love it if they made tanks tougher, but less numerous.

If the liberator becomes a bomber, and we decide we still want a gunship in PS2, the role of gunship can be taken by the Galaxy. The galaxy gunship, I think, may be more appropriate for this role than the liberator, because it requires more manpower to man its guns. It took a minimum of 4 (max 7) people in a GG to be effective in PS1, while a lib in PS2 requires only 2 people. This means that, while the GG might be able to dominate small fights, the attackers have to commit a considerable portion of their force to manning the GG instead of fighting on the ground. This decreases the "power:soldier" ratio of the attackers when compared to a 2/3 liberator.

Allow AP mines to disable all infantry in the blast radius.
(Blows off their legs) They would have to crawl around.
Doesn't damage them, but it makes them into easy targets.
(Normal movement would be restored on respawn)

How is that for a compromise?

I support this fabulous thread.

I am onto them and their Introduction of Overpowered Weapons:
I probably will hesitate to buy anything in the future with fear that it will be purposely OP then nerfed a few weeks later.

Less damage, more mines laid, minimum distance between mines, less resource cost. So they force people to move slowly and can be actually used as area denial weapons instead of zero-skill cert farms.

As long as they can only be removed with emp nades.

Bump for Nox. Good ideas here.

It could be as simple as reducing damage slightly or adding additional effects to the mines that reduce performance etc. They don't have to be 1 stop explosions.

That sounds ideal. It seems vaguely familiar, though, as if we've seen mines work perfectly well in this fashion in some other game... a game similar to this one that perhaps we could draw some inspiration from... Hm.

All good stuff that I think would keep the existing playerbase around and help it grow.

That's basically the intent. PS2 has tons of potential but it's little annoyances that drag it down. If they could start hammering those out rather than selling OP weapons every patch it could be a big step in the right direction.

Hahaha, he's talking about PS1! I guess is they are scared of 20 mines per player degrading performance, maybe 10/10 max capacity for AT mines, and reduce damage per mine by half. And, would it kill them to add... a toggle'able deployed mines 0/10 indicator?

The amount of times that i have died to an anti-personnel mine, at the exact instant that i go to place my own anti-personnel mine is unbelievable.

I now look at the ground constantly whenever i am walking through an area that i think i could get a kill with a mine... but still manage to set them off before i can see them!

I don't really mind that much though. For a game that is so lacking in defensive player mentality or automated defensive measures, such as spitfires. Sometimes leaving an AP mine back at your previous base is the only way to slow down ghostcappers.

In the small handful of times I have agreed with every suggestion an OP posts, this is one of them.

Jumping on this bandwagon

I fully agree with this. Nice to see the old PS1 vets pulling together and working to better PS2.