As the game moves towards the future, walled in bases granting protection from vehicle spam are more numerous. For good or ill, neither of which are important to this thread. It isn't about walls, so kindly take complaints to another thread. To return on point...infantry gameplay with other infantry currently measures up to the typical modern shooter, in that it's largely twitch. Accuracy is rewarded, but to a small degree. Simply landing bullets on the other dude before he lands the same or equal amount on you is the name of the game. It creates a very fast paced, but somewhat lacking experience. Weapons that might excel at supreme accuracy at the cost of fire, damage, or other traits generally pale to extra dakka. A great example of this are the battle rifles. Any carbine outmatches them as the enemy is simply able to output more damage before you can land the headshots. So, we could polish, balance, and tweak every weapon in the game...or we could buff HP to slow things down a tad. A suggestion on the test server, as putting it into live without feedback would...well. I don't really know where my pitchfork is but I'm certain forumside has enough to spare were that the case. This isn't an attempt to bring back the glory of PS1, mind you. I understand that in PS1, TTK were rather long except in certain cases. This is more an attempt to smooth gameplay. Planetside is a big game, with a lot of players. This means there are a lot of differing connections speeds and skills. Latency is an enormous issue, with frequent killtrading or dying behind walls. With extra health, some of that might be eliminated. Skill becomes more of a factor, rather then simply taking the fastest firing weapon you can get. Flanking and surprise wouldn't go away, either. An enemy still needs to realize what is happening, and you would have taken shields or HP, giving you the advantage. It would simply change it so that they don't die before realizing what hit them. There might be a chance to fight back, escape if salvation is right there, or other circumstances arise. It basically would theoretically deepen gameplay and allow more variance. Most weapons damages should stay the same. It would highlight their use, too. NC weapons superior damage would actually a chance to, you know, stack. Headshots would be devestating, but the NC would need to control their recoil. Vanu have an excellent advantage in their easy to use weaponry, and their fast reloads would frequently mean being caught with their spandex down isn't likely to happen. TR fire rate and clip size means they can down an enemy or more, or win in a drawn out dakka battle. Some would need tweaks, yes. Primarily sniper rifles, and other weapons that rely on supreme alpha damage, such as pump actions. Some tank rounds and rocket launcher shots would need examination as well, as they may or may not need a tweak to infantry damage to still instantly kill. We could also actually get a look at which weapons really should instantly kill. Pump actions have been largely nerfed to the ground. Should they retain their supreme alpha damage? Or maybe we can keep them as they are and give them faster firing rate, with less damage, making them more like the semis with less forgiving aim? Things like that. As for vehicles...that's something else entirely. I just simply believe that Planetside needs its infantry side addressed now, and a simple HP buff strikes me as an excellent 'minimal effort, maximum investment' option. Thoughts?
I think this would definitely hurt all players that are great in flanking enemies and play their card very clever, but... well... how do I say this without insulting people...? SUCK at aiming? There are many players who's only chance to survive is to stand with the group and to make the best out of the situation, instead of winning because of their superior $k1llz. These players wouldn't stand a chance against everyone who can slightly better than them. Actually, even now there are situations in which people stand rather close to me, shoot me from behind but I'm still able to turn around and kill them because they aim rather bad.
That's dead on me... I can flank enemies in almost any situation with light assault or infiltrator, or even with a heavy, but my reflexes are far from good, so I have trouble getting enemies who see me, especially if they ADAD... I tried playing HALO, and the experience wasn't good at all... So please no, please.
Increasing the TTK (time to kill) in Planetside 2 is a near must, as infantry combat is way too fast-paced for anything really to happen. There is little to no space to run (unless it's TR shooting you, then you'll survive for a long while ) away and bait your assaulter away No real option for flanking anyone, because someone can just blindly hit you with a shotgun and ruins your well deserved tactical flank etc.
Wouldn't increasing the TTK just make long range weapons even more pathetic than they currently are? It's already trivial to rush someone and shotgun them, and this would surely make it even more so.
Buffing HP doesn't just slow things down a bit, it completely changes the game balance. Small arms are fairly well balanced at the moment, buff hp and sudenly chump actions lose their appeal, sniper rifles also not so good. Not to mention the gameplay changes discouraging flanking and encourages fire team blobs to just twitch aim at whatever is close enough to concentrate fire on and kill. Very bad idea, and not going to happen.
While it sounds bad, the TTK in this game hovers around a second or two. A mere doubling would put it at 4 seconds, which is hardly slow at all. Flanking, surprise, and all other elements are still very much viable. It would simply be much less 'see them first, they die' and 'see them first, they lose 75% of their HP before being able to respond and die'. Add in latency, lag, chaos, etc, and it won't really be all that different, I'd imagine. There's also a reason why I suggest the test server, as well. A change would naturally need to be, well, tested. Get a feel for it. What weapons suddenly underperform? What weapons are great? And so on. The players would be able to report these while devs only change numbers, which is absolutely effortless. And if it turns out to be a bad idea, well, it was tried if nothing else.
Pick a selection of weapons and go through their current TTK and mag percentage required, then do the same for double health infantry. Also factor in NW5 and resist sheilded heavies. Currently there is good risk reward balance for both flanking and twitch aiming; I very much doubt that would be the case if the healths were doubled.
So you're suggesting doubling shields and HP, I take it? Giving players 2250 HP with nanoweave. The common 143/100 carbines would take somewhere between 16 and 23 shots to kill. It's not practical to semi-auto 23 shots into someone, so you're going to want to close with those weapons. At close range, a proper 143 damage bullethose will chew through 2250 HP in 1.1 seconds. Doubling HP is going to make long range combat nonviable, forcing people to close range -- even more so then they currently are -- where TTK will still be very short.
P Perhaps not. I simply feel that infantry gameplay is too erratic currently. All the above listed technical issues make for sometimes frustrating gameplay. Alterations could include NO damage dropoff, or mitigated dropoff. It would produce a need for accuracy at range. A full auto burst might kill in a second and a half at close, but at range it would mostly miss due to recoil and COF. Likely it would be the latter, so as to not make soft point or high velocity obsolete, nor sidearms and SMGs incredibly powerful.
