Hey. There has been a lot of talk about the Spiker pistol recently, and I just couldn't find a good video on it anywhere. So...I decided to make one. The video covers the implementation of Planetside 2's Lasher, Lancer, and Spiker in Planetside 2. If you've never seen what the original Spiker is like, you should watch this and see why many are upset that it's not a faithful representation of the original weapon. Cheers.
PS2 isn't Ps1. Just because a weapon was one way in Ps1 doesn't mean it should be that way in Ps2. The only thing that i really feel that way about is Jetpacks instead of ZOE, but that's because i like the idea even without the PS1 influence. The Spiker on the PTS is good. The Burst fire is good, and while the Chargeup is mostly pointless it's still a reliable burst sidearm now. I have no complaints.
Yea, thats true, but we really could use some different and unique weapons in PS2. PS2 is set in the future, but most weapons are just todays weapons with a different look. Even the Vanu weapons, which are supposed to be alien laser guns, are just normal guns with different colored tracers. Where are the awesome future weapons? Electro gun? Laser gatling? Freeze gun? Bio rifle? Plasma gun? Weird, living alien guns? Todays FPS games have such a boring weapon selection, its embarrassing. It should be mandatory for art directors to play old, classic shooters like Untreal Tournament, Quake, Renegade, Turok, Doom, Duke Nukem, etc. They could learn A LOT from them.
Problem is today's games want to be "realistic" and "fast paced shooters" (seriously every single FPS for at least the last decade has called themselves "fast paced") which means ultra fast TTKs. One of the major downsides to fast TTKs is basically you have no variety in weapons; it either kills or it is useless.... and in the rare times it isn't either of those it is stupidly OP.
That's a result of spoiled players caring only about their K/D. In old games, you died all the time to everything, and that was fine. But nowadays people complain all the time when they get killed, so it doesn't work. Also, these people who do this also tend to do everythign they can to abuse game mechanics for massive killstreaks, so it's a bad circle. Some say the Spiker is OP on Live right now. Some people should just be ignored.
I do agree with you to an extent. I think the existence of KDR is a good tool for measuring individual performance. However, perhaps what they should consider is making the KDR rank private and unlisted. So you can keep track of your own performance, but it's not displayed prominently on your stats page. Going back to the days of BF1942, UT, Quake 3, and others...yes there would be a lot more focus on doing something crazy and not caring too much about dying so you'd take as many risks as possible just in order to increase your total kill count, with death only meaning you have a bit of a delay until you get back to where you were. So up to this point, I agree with you. It's the same reason I have a few different characters including some low BR1 accounts I keep making/deleting, and doing whatever I want, without concern for what my KDR is. And not having to worry that someone will get pleasure from killing me and knowing they killed me. I am competitive. But I find I enjoy myself more when I'm anonymous and don't care about my performance. However...and this is where I do disagree with you..."how you die" is an important factor. One-Hit-Kills are extremely annoying. Because you don't feel you were challenged and defeated. It's like...playing pool against someone. And off the break they sink the 8-ball and win. Sure. That person won. But it doesn't feel good. Because you never actually got to challenge them. Now here is why this issue is an issue. A lot of people are bad at FPS's. And I mean, quite bad. This feeds back into the KDR problem. In order to address KDR and poor player performance, developers do some things to make players think they are better than they actually are. First off, they allowed Revives to remove your death stat. What does this do? Well...it artificially inflates all KDR numbers. So someone could have 60 deaths and 50 kills, or a 0.83 KDR. But because they also received 20 revives, the KDR they now see is 1.25. So that takes them from a player that dies more often then they kill, to someone who gets more kills than deaths. Now...this is one part. And I brought it up to show how devs are trying to make worse players think they're better than they are. The second part of the equation, is to give weapons that make people feel powerful and skilled. Shotguns, for example. There are 6 different shotguns per empire. Especially a full auto shotgun. These weapons don't take much skill at all in cqc. They get massive kills. I know, because I'm finally working on my Shotgun directives. The problem is in a game with any amount of lag, especially one with as much lag as Planetside 2 allows players to have (there are lots of 300ms+ players), the lower the TTK, the more insta-kill that happens. When playing BF3, if you play on a server where you're getting 20-30ms ping, you and your opponent pretty well see each other at the same time even when coming around a corner. But with Planetside...a foreign player with high ping can come around a corner, put a shotty to your face, and kill you before human reaction time allows you to even activate your shield as a heavy assault. So when it comes to "death" bothering me, I now have a filtering mechanism: 1) I deserved to die because I wasn't aware of my surroundings, so I will be more careful next time 2) I misfired/got beat in that match up. sucks, but I will try better the next time I run into that person 3) I was outnumbered. Stupid me...time for new tactic. 4) wtf. that was total bs. there is no way that would happen in a 0 latency environment. i just died to lag. 5) wtf. stupid br1 sniper. out of my range on a ridge invisible like a coward, popping out to play a click game with no risk to him. (at this point I get on a sniper and snipe him back...or grab Heavy with resist shield for the headshot damage reduction) 6) wtf....I didn't even hear that banshee flying. how? but I died to him in 0.1 second even with 50% flak while I'm running/strafing 7) wtf...shotgun to the face...how am I supposed to deal with that in cqc? (at which point, I grab a shotgun as well) Not every death is annoying. Dying to claymores, for example. Why? Because I should Q-Spot before entering a door way to see them. I can use an implant to see them. Or I can use Flak armor. Or just use better "awareness." Dying to a Max isn't annoying because they're slow, can be C4'd or shot at etc etc and you can hear them when they're nearby. So even the insta-gib NC shotty max, can be heard before it kills you. Dying to grenades isn't annoying because there is a grenade indicator. Or you can use flak. Dying to tanks sucks but isn't super annoying because there are counters and they can't show up indoors, and because Flak protects from insta-death by all direct hits except for the vanguard. So it's not that all OHK's are annoying. It's the OHK's you didn't have a chance to do anything about. There is no prevention method. There is no option like nanoweave/flak to prevent headshot damage multipliers for example (as nanoweave no longer reduces it). There is no Kevlar or whatever designed to reduce just shotgun damage. So this is where the problem rises. To kill that sniper, I have to switch to sniper. To kill that shotgun in CQC, in most cases I need to grab a shotgun. And that's not resolving the issue posed by those play styles, but adding to it. The problem at hand leads to more of the same. That is toxic. Unpreventable OHK's are the issue. Deaths that you feel were unfair in that you couldn't do anything about it, are unfair. There are many excuses people will come up with for why it's perfectly ok behaviour. But to give you an example...when I run into a good player at a base/tower and we decide to fight and challenge each other, we don't pull out shotguns to do it. It's to the point where when I see a good player kill me with a shotgun, I message them saying "I see you're working on your shotgun directives, haha" and that is exactly what they're doing. Sorry for the long essay. But I needed to clarify that dying isn't the issue. But "unfair/cheap" deaths are.
Resist shield does not reduce headshot damage. (fyi) Also, it seems to have been the case that resist shield didn't reduce damage from sniper rifles at all. I'm not sure about that, as I predominantly use the nanite mesh generator. Nanite mesh generator and the adrenaline shield do work vs headshots. Shotgun to the face: balanced weapon. Yes it can kill in one shot, but only at very short range. So, the ultimate CQC specialist. SMG's are 'decently' effective out to mid-range. Also: consider this: the TTK at short/point blank range with several CQC weapons is under half a second. the "normal" pump action shotgun has a RoF of 80 RPM. What if you partly miss? You can be dead before firing a second shot, even in a 1vs1.
Resist shield DO reduce headshot damage. But resist shield DO NOT reduce damage which is 400 or higher - that means, direct hits from tank shells, RL, BASR and so on.
For the record, I was replying to someone who said people hate death. I said no...people hate stupid deaths to things that are unfair. I'm not asking for nerfs. I used to play UT Instagib mode. That was fun because everybody had the same weapon. What makes it less fun in PS2 is that certain weapons are really fun to use, and work well in 90%+ of cases. But all it takes is one person to grab a shotgun, and then you have to do the same as well. I understand that there is skill involved in the path/angles you use when you have a shotgun, and that it has limitations in terms of range. But what I'm saying is that in CQC, it is without an equal. Maybe I should make a video of me with my Pandora...I'm not saying I'm bad with it. I actually have my highest KPM with shotguns and absolutely wreck people. But I'm saying I'd be happier if it didn't exist. I'm even ok with SMG's, which a lot of people complain about. The kills I get with the shotgun, I don't even feel like I out-skilled anyone. I just pointed the Pandora in their face, held a button, and God did the rest. As for resist shield and headshots...I don't know what to tell you. When I'm on a tower airpad shooting down lasher orbs and have it active, I don't die to headshots from snipers. They do probably about 700~ damage if memory serves me.
Aha, thanks for the correction. (and apologies for wrong correction earlier At what point is the 400 dmg checked? Suppose I shoot with a 200 dmg pistol into the head. 400 dmg. Is it "resisted" or not? Overall point: don't pick resist shield vs snipers; unless you cant to disco them to death
My apologies for the double post; I want to comment on how Higby'd things are if indeed the resist shield doesn't work at a damage threshold of 400: Semi-auto sniper: resist doesn't work at 10m. Stepping to 12m, suddenly damage is about halved.. Shotgun slugs: resist shield doesn't work... (at short range, which is where shotguns are used..) I would suspect this includes shotgun shells from NC maxes.. then, there is the commisioner that no-one uses and does 450 damage.. and apparantly goes through resist shield too LMAO, GJ SOE, GJ.
