Friendly Fire On/Off Servers

With the PS4 launch on the way and future console players in the balance, this is now more than ever the time for discussion on the topic.
I have played Planetside from the original, this beta, and since then now. This has always been an issue, and it is honestly the biggest issue holding the game back from mass market appeal.

These are some of the issues with not having the option:

• The most popular FPS's like Call of Duty have trained the average FPS gamer to not play with consideration of friendly fire
• There are significantly more players than any other FPS, which increases the risk of friendly fire exponentially
• Because of the large numbers of groups, one person's friendly fire has the potential to kill dozens of players (such as an accidental explosive detonation)
• It's a free to play game. This naturally attracts trolls, and friendly fire is a great way for them to get their kicks with no risk. And it is rampant. Warpgates for instance are troll heaven, and at any time, any day, you can go there and witness it. Hardcore players can put up with this, but casual players will not.
• Weapons lock is a completely ineffective deterrent. I think most players can attest they've been locked when accidentally causing very little grief in large scale battles, and yet when they want to kill someone specifically can do so over and over without reaching lock.
• It makes the player base unwelcoming to new players, and frustrating for existing players dealing with new players. To use the same example, if you suck at CoD you aren't deterred from playing more to get better, you go relatively unnoticed at the bottom of the scoreboard. On the same note you aren't really getting in anyone's way, in a significant manner. In Planetside, new players bad at the game are harassed and/or killed by their teammates for accidental grief, and existing players constantly have to deal with noobs who don't know how to play giving them grief.
• I have yet to be in a battle in this game where teammates aren't killing each other after battles over frustrations from friendly fire. This frequently spirals into a private war where people are just rage killing their teammates back and forth and not even playing the game until one person logs out. And they may not come back.
• With there being no lock on faction switching on accounts, logging on an alt to sabotage enemies in heated fights is too common. One guy C4'ing a friendly sunderer is all it takes to completely turn the tide of a battle that's lasted for an hour+. This may be a dynamic hardcore players can adapt to, but it is pure rage quite material for average players.
• Almost every other MMO and FPS have distinctions between hardcore and causal play modes. (eg PvE/PvP, Team Deathmatch/Hardcore modes etc)
• Above all else, many gamers log on to their favorite game for a stress release/just have fun. If they just want to spam rockets at the front lines in a virtual war, they could get their fix and log off and this would be the epitome of games to go get your fix. Friendly fire is tremendous stress, and negates the pure fun escape it was meant to be for casual players.

TL;DR: In the end it comes down to friendly fire is extremely divisive/polarizing, and there should be a choice for players, so everyone can enjoy the astounding scale of this game.

I think it's a little late to do this. Only one region currently has multiple servers, so you're pretty much asking half the player base to take a gamble on whether their server will be on the setting they like, and if it isn't they'll have to play with worse ping on a different one (and an alt, as there's still no server transfers.)

This would perhaps be better suited as a continent-based setting.

That's a great idea! It would achieve the same goal without dividing the player base, and players could switch back and forth at will.

never going to happen

it was a bad idea on reddit and its still a bad idea here - and is based on lack of knowledge about how servers are set up and ignores the fact no one is going to start playing on them, it might be just an idea but its completely unworkable and wont suddenly bring in 10,000 plus daily players, which is what a new server would need in a day to be reasonably popped like the others.

Gladly, this is not Call of Duty.

You are not able to control your fire? Have fun getting weapon-locked and aim better next time.

If you read the above replies and the reddit thread the idea was changed to be continent based rather than server based. And you forget it's about to launch to PS4 with potentially tens of thousands of new players or more used to console games coming to this game for the first time with no prior knowledge or expectations.

This isn't about changing the game for the existing player base, but offering an additional option to casual players who would otherwise not play, and not fund, this game.

EDIT: And let's face it, without some mass market appeal, this game is currently dying.

sure lets call the next map spamhaus instead of searhaus just so a bunch of pimply console users can feel at home rather than learn to play a mans game where firing a weapon indiscriminately has consequences

Would you rather have a separate game mode that doesn't affect your play, that brings in funding for the game you love to continue to be developed for, or continue to turn off the mass user base and the death of this game until it's irrelevant?

ill have option b please bob

id rather have a smaller game where everyone is together than splitting opinion and alienating just as many current users as those it *might* (or might not) bring in

fair enough. After seeing the decline of the original and now this, I'm just saddened to watch such a potentially revolutionary shift in FPS games go unnoticed because it couldn't get the average Joe into it and turn a profit... again.

I guess this all is on deaf ears at this point too, because the only ones left are the hardcore who like it that way... but aren't enough in numbers to sustain it. Such a tragedy... ;_:

I wouldn't play if friendly fire was off. Just makes for to easy mode. Players just shooting through each other. Nah that sucks.

It's not hard to learn to control your fire.
Other issues like trolls could be dealt with by a better griefing system being implemented. The warpgate should be set back to no ff or locked weapons. Something to make it the safe haven it used to be.

Yeah, I totally agree with this.
Why did they even turn the FF in the WG on?
There are no enemies to shoot at, so you don't need to "risk" shooting your
teammates. FF there is only on purpose and trolling your teammates.

There was/is a bug where the server thinks your at the wg when your not. Consequently you were invincible. The devs couldn't fix the actual issue and gave it a band aid fix by turning wg ff on.

FF can be very annoying, thats true, but removing it will just encourage explosive spam. Thats even more annyoing.

Theres 1 thing that needs to be changed though: Deaths caused by friendlies should not count as deaths. Death by friendlies happens a lot in big battles and in the warpgate and it f*cks up your KDR. Sometimes i have more deaths by friendlies than by enemies ...

no, keep FF on. I for one like that aspect of realism (theres so little of it)
500+ deaths from friendlies lol

coercion, harassment and frustration is all it brings to the table.
it needs to be completely removed from the game.

well, I'll agree with the warp gate stuff.
When I log in I never go there first, better to spawn out in the middle of nowhere, then I can look at the map
and find out where to go. When I figure that out, I might go to the warp gate just long enough
to get to another continent, as fast as possible, sometimes stepping over dead bodies to get to the world warp.
It seems to be just getting worse and worse as time goes on.
I'm starting to miss the ol days of lots of people, annoying music, find help, squads, jump in Gal, etc.
*Warpgate lament*

If you removed FF, the game would turn into an explosive mess of HE, Rocket Primaries, and grenades because you could just fire into your friendlies and kill any enemy among them with no problems. Additionally, it opens up a lot of options for people to troll (like blocking doorways with MANA turrets, or fourth factioners purposely putting sunderers in bad locations to prevent people from taking a base).

Do you have any idea how this would change the flow of combat in many situations?

No, of course you don't that's why your positing this.


If this change was made I would stop playing.

They have already done enough to water down this game in order to appeal to the "average joe" gamer.

Anymore and this game will lose all its appeal to me.

Already bad enough we can redeploy anywhere within a minute or less with not a single use of vehicles and that we have stats that people seem to actually care about for god knows what reason in a game like this. In a team based game there is no place for stats, at least for certain ones. Never mind the fact that anyone can be any class use any equipment and use any vehicle.