TheYamiks: Thoughts on Balance

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Daigons, Feb 17, 2017.

  1. TR5L4Y3R


    when was i ever talking about 6v6? stop assuming things
    and good snipers don´t just aim at a cluster they pick of classes that keep a team going ..
    also why exactly is it not a good idea to have oneshootkills when your armor get´s flooded with with a meatstream?
    if ohk´s aren´t skillbased why are multishotkills? this doesn´t make sense ...
    also why do you care on snagging kills? A kill is a kill every dead enemy is closer to capturing the objective .. your mates get plenty of opportunity to get kills ...
  2. ModsFreeAreForTV

    Who cares if your team is winning? Seriously? What do you personally get if your team wins. Nothing. You get a trash amount of XP. Congrats. Which, if you fended for yourself instead of teaming up to be the next American Sniper with an outfit, you would've gotten that same amount plus more with Kill XP. Having your faction win doesn't mean anything.
  3. adamts01

    Let that be a lesson to not stand in a cluster in the open. This game is already too dumbed down as it is, stop trying to protect idiots.


    Plenty of people like squad-based combat. And plenty of people like 1v1 and 2v2 combat in PS2, Hossin is proof of that. I personally hate big fights, they're just a cluster **** of idiots running around. I much prefer coordinated squad combat.
  4. Corezer

    the good thing about longer spawn timers is they force players to thing.

    In this game, like many others, I see a lot of tilted kids shoving their face in a meat grinder...
    • Up x 1
  5. adamts01

    but but but... muh action! Why you trying to nerf fun? If you guys make me wait 10 seconds inbetween suiciding into a room with a proximity mine I'll just quit and find another game. You'll kill the game. The allure of PS2 is the braindead masses bashing their faces in to walls, don't make us think.
    • Up x 3
  6. ModsFreeAreForTV

    The cluster of idiots is why people play. This games major marketing feature is its major battles of hundreds of people.
  7. Haquim

    Well as a matter of business sense / survival I have to say that that decision is imo not the correct one.
    Basically everybody else does that better than PS2 - so the only thing it has going for it is its uniqueness.
    Which they are throwing in the trashcan.

    I didn't play for weeks now since PS2 simply has nothing that appeals to me anymore.
    ****** hitdetection, lagwizards, maybe still a couple cheaters is the only thing I really notice.
    Good fights are rare like a unicorn, since most fights get crushed offensively by zergs and defensively by mass-magical-transportation followed by instant generation of a dozen tanks and two dozen sunderers in the besieged base.
  8. ModsFreeAreForTV

    Exactly. But people like that. Think about it, if people didn't enjoy the unbalanced fights or zerging, there wouldn't be a Zerg. People just wouldn't play. PS2's unique "wow" factor is the fact that there's hundreds, on very rare occasion thousands, of people playing an FPS at once. If you try to take that away with small fights this games community will become more of a dying niche than it was to begin with.

    SOE (now DBG) did this to Star Wars galaxies. They took out the MMO part and basically made it a singleplayer game you can play with friends. It has to keep that MMO appeal, that "wow I can be a part of an unstoppable 300 man Zerg" feeling. Or it's done for.
  9. Haquim

    I don't disagree with the MMO part. In fact I totally agree with that.

    Its the handholding for whiny footmen thats pissing me off.
    When I count the number of times a vehicle has impacted a fight (that I was part of) in a meaningful way in the last months that DIDN'T involve transporting infantry or being/protecting/destroying a sunderer I get the grand total of: 1.
    And that was a magrider hovering where no other tank could, HE shelling a place other tanks couldn't reach.
  10. ModsFreeAreForTV

    I don't see why everything has to have some super meaningful thing on the battlefield. A lot of stuff isn't meaningful. It's a shoot em up game not some deep emotional campaign saga. You're a peon among a thousand other peons, that's what makes this game so great. It's fun cause you're a part of something bigger than you not because you're billy solo bad@ss.
  11. zaspacer

    1) It's the primary formal objective of the game
    2) Much of the game's built-in "rah rah" is oriented toward it
    3) It's often the best way for casual players to find/start/sustain interesting fights/gameplay
    4) It's something to do (reliably)

    If you want to proactively Grind XP or boost Stats, then you should explore your portfolio of options. If you don't care about proactive Grind XP or boost Stats, this doesn't matter much.

    Enjoy the game however you want. Lobby for whatever you want. Post whatever you want. Deal with any consequences however you want.
    • Up x 1
  12. adamts01

    That's contradictory. People don't play PS2 because of a large cluster of idiots, if that were the case they'd play against AI. People play PS2 because of the large war populated by thinking humans. Now here's the big problem, the dumber you make the game, the dumber the target audience is. Right now we might as well be fighting AI, I actually think we might be at this point.
  13. Demigan

    Trying to make headway through this post, I'll just comment on the general "Redeployside must go/stay" discussion that's evolved.

    Redeploy can't simply be removed or force you to the warpgate. The ability to respawn at the nearest base must stay, unfortunately you won't be redeploying inside your own base all the time, but you'll be redeploying inside enemy area's as well. You don't want to have to spawn half a continent away just because you had the choice of walking several Hexes distance or redeploying to the warpgate.

    The best solution I think is to simply put a limit on the amount of redeploys per minute or something. You want to give players enough redeploys to relocate to another battle once, so they aren't instantly stuck at a battle they don't like or are forced to do a lengthy transportation to another battle.
    For example: You can 'store' 5 redeploys, and every 5 minutes you gain 1 new redeploy. So for example you start at a new continent, you have the ability to redeploy 5 times to get to the frontline. Then you need several minutes to regain enough redeploys to get all the way to another fight, severely limiting redeployside while keeping the average player's ability to swap battles if they don't enjoy it.
    If you run out of redeploys, your only option is the nearest base and the warpgate, but not adjacent bases. So you can always redeploy if you happen to be in a bad spot (lost your vehicle in the middle of nowhere).

    Additionally, I would love it if player-made-bases (PMB's) became logistic's centers that support fast movement of forces. Just as a rough example: PMB's get access to teleporters that have a 1000m range. The teleporter is just two large flat disk you can walk/drive/land on. Then you can spot friendly teleporter icons within 1000m range, use a Q-radial menu on them and teleport over (that way you know which way you are teleporting). The teleporter consists out of two disks so you have one disk to send troops and one to receive, to prevent accidental spawnkills. Again, just a rough idea, there's probably a lot of alternative methods to teleport but I thought this one might fit in the current PS2 UI system.
    Suddenly having multiple PMB's across your territory (and enemy territory!) gives you a method to quickly transport large quantities of troops, including vehicles, across large distances. It also means that taking out a PMB teleporter base can suddenly cut short the amount of maneuverability you have available. Creating teleporter chains gives your team a powerful foothold, but you have to consider where to place the teleporters: In the usual far-flung "my enemy can't get to me" bases the people teleporting there have little chance to get out and get to the fight. But build the base in a too open area and it's too easily found and destroyed.
    Only problem: How do you make maintaining such bases fun? How do you get (enough) players to enjoy creating these bases? You could make teleporters generate a small amount of cortium for the nearest Silo, so that it can support a small base and make it less of a chore to keep it powered. You could also add a small amount of pre-set teleporters across the map. These pre-set teleporters can simply be captured by placing a Silo next to it and can't be destroyed. That way you can use a bare-minimum of a silo to gain control and use the teleporter without needing to build a large base around it, and it's also not too easy to capture in case an enemy tries to do a flanking maneuver with teleporters.
  14. Haquim

    Then you don't understand.
    Everything HAS TO be meaningful.
    If it has no meaningful purpose it has no place in the game.

    It's called KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.
    Don't have unnecessary stuff, wether in your source code, game design or user interface.
    It is only more stuff you have to pay attention to without gaining anything, in the worst case it even distracts the user from actually important things.
    And it is one of the most basic things any programmer should know.

    It not only annoys me because I want tanks to have a place in a game about futuristic combat - it pisses me off because I know it violates some of the most basic laws of good design.
    Which is NOT good, since there should be professionals working on this game, right?
  15. JonnyBlue

    Personally I think the Devs have a really difficult job to do , On one-side they need to keep there vets happy and on the other they need to make the game more appealing to new players.

    Fresh blood is what will keep this game going the average mmo player normally spends 2-4 weeks on a game and spending between £8-20 before moving onto pastures new , So DB need to try and retain those new player and not let them leave.
    On the other hand most vets are subs or ex subs who have achieve most of there goals in the game and don't need to buy new stuff or spend money.

    So how to keep both happy the vets and the newer players , For the vets they need to give better rewards out maybe even introduce housing of some sorts like in other mmos where they can show off there gear have party's...

    For newer players I think they have done more than enough to help them , Ive been playing 7 weeks now and think the way newer players are treated is spot on.
  16. ModsFreeAreForTV


    The incentives to the game are to get more XP and Certs. If you bump the amount of XP or Certs you get from killing someone while in a vehicle, then people will want to use it more. And it has "meaning". But if you're not gonna make the game more rewarding with certain things than others, no one is going to play it. They're just going to stick to infantryside.
  17. TR5L4Y3R


    personaly i get the satisfactory experience of contributing to the team having fun with the game that way .. if you don´t care about that then that´s simply you, and that´s ok


    the incentive of certs or xp are merely there to unlock the gear someone wants so what do you do after you are done with getting your loadout? .. i don´t care about battleranks or xp and certs or the derictives in themeselves they are meaningless ... what matters is the game expierience itself which in its core lies in base to base combat in whatever way possible ... if you want to go with the zerg then do that .. if you want to go with a coordinated squad/platoon/outfit then do that .. heck if you want to go solo then just do that ...



    while you may have a lower skillquality with having a broader playerbase you have to consider that tinkering the game to the skilled crowd would limit the game to a minor playerbase .. and from an investmentpoint that might be very dangerous ... now you could say ok let the hardcorecrowd pay more to keep the game being supported and getting access to everything the it has to offer ..
    but then you would run into the problem that every new player may have to follow a steeper learningcourve and you would risk being stuck with that small playerbase while wanting a bigger one but being frankly stubborn to accept any change that goes torwards lowiring the skillfloor or learningcurve ... and consider many people don´t have the time to get better and learn the game to become veteran or prolevelexperienced just for you to be a satisfying challange .. but still want to experience the scale of this game because frankly ... there ain´t ANYTHING like it ...
    • Up x 2
  18. adamts01

    Perfect reply to Mods, I feel the exact same way. I play these games for the experience, not some imaginary currency.

    As for the skill curve, I also agree. Air in this game suffers because of how steep the learning curve is, and I don't want the entire game to be like that. I like the idea of limited re-spawns, and simple basic infantry combat, but I still think the game could go much farther and please everyone. Let logistics be hard mode for all the braniac generals, let there be a recon class that gets away from the zerg and plays hard mode behind enemy lines. I'd be fine with ESF being the hard mode of the sky if there was a way a pair of average pilots could defend themselves against a top ESF pilot. I think the big picture could become complicated and awesome but still let basic infantry be the necessary pawns in the front lines, spawning, killing, dying, spawning, killing, dying, spawning, killing dying.... drunk without a care in the world, just like they like to do it.
  19. BrbImAFK

    This sort of idea simply can't work for two primary reasons.

    ONE: Under this system, if a person runs out of redeploys, they're "punished" with doing nothing / boredom / unpleasant (to them) fights. Planetside 1 had a system like this. The more you died, the longer your respawn timer became. People hated it. Even the vets who didn't die often hated it, largely because of Reason 2.

    TWO: Planetside supports a large amount of variety in terms of bases or fights. Now, I don't really know what makes a good or bad player but, based on everybody else I'm playing with, I generally consider myself slightly-below-average (1.3 KD, 330 SPM, 27% acc, 19% HSR, ave lifespan 3min). So, already, I'm going to spend a lot of time waiting to respawn after my first few are up. That's boring. The other issue is type-of-fight. When I'm playing small 1-12's in the middle of the night, I can go anywhere between 2min lifespan (fighting one good dude) or 8-10 min lifespam (roflstomping 3-4 bads at once). When I'm sniping, I can last in excess of 20 minutes. When I'm playing with my outfit, it's almost irrelevant, 'cause we almost always have medics around. When I'm pushing to resecure a biolab in a 96+/96+, my lifespan is often less than a minute, 'cause I PUSH, I don't coward out and camp for kills. So many lives-per-minute or whatever will NEVER work in PS2.

    Oh wait... I just reread your post and you're talking about redeploy, not respawns. NVM. I'm going to leave this here, because some people HAVE been talking about limiting respawns.

    Back on topic... my bad! :p

    I don't think a limit on how often you can redploy is a good one. First, for solo-ish players, they'll easily get locked into fights they don't like and will be less encouraged to take fights that they might not like. For example, even when playing solo, I'll often redeploy into a outnumbered-3-to-1 fight just to see what it looks like. If I think I've got potential to make a difference, or there's a possibility of some fun farm (even if we lose) I'll stay. If it's a 3-to-1-completely-camped-into-spawn-enemy-vehicles-everywhere fight, I'm just going someplace else. If I was limited in my redeploys, I wouldn't take those "risks".

    As for large, full-platoon zergfit types, I don't think this will make a difference. Either they have a spawn right into wherever they're going, or the few organised players are pulling Gals for the randoms to hop into. I've never seen a zerg redeploy hopping across the continent - largely because they'll just lose most of the zerg doing it, but obviously that's just my server and experience. Hell, even DIG - the zergiest outfit that ever zerged a zerg (or something :p ) - pulls gals from the nearest airbase any time they change lanes! The problem again, is not how often they redeploy, it's where they are allowed to redeploy. From what I can tell, the redeploy changes that limited your options once you got to 50-50 made a big difference to redeployside. A few further tweaks wouldn't go amiss though.

    I disagree with this idea completely, at least under the current construction system. I'm not going to go into all the details, because my posts already approach epic length, but just a few issues in list form:
    • Construction currently has an extremely high barrier to entry, meaning that only vets who already have everything they want are likely to cert into it. And be honest... most vets would rather spend their time farming noobs or whatever.
    • The construction mechanics are badly done. I like the idea of construction, but after just trying to place a few walls in reasonable positions I hated the system so much I just said screw it to the whole idea. Let alone build actual, feasible bases in a useful amount of time.
    • The 50k limit on a silo seems pretty small, since you can't build two silos in most bases. 50k cortium does NOT last a long time when you've got a decently sized base established and, while keeping it topped up when nobody's attacking you is merely boring, getting an ANT in while a decent-sized attack is going on is virtually impossible. In my experience, most player-build bases that have fights larger than about 12 on each side, are usually ended because the base runs dry, nothing else.
    Agreed. It's a ****** job but, on the other hand, they did choose to do it! :p

    Not sure I agree with this. I dunno where you get your 2-4 weeks stat, but it seems a little low. I also dunno where you get your £8-20 stat (unless it's from a sort of monthly sub thing), but I can't see how it applies to PS2 as F2P. From what I can see, most people playing this game pay nothing, ever. As for the vets, my experience is that many of them pay whether they need to or not because they feel that the game deserves support and they don't want it to die.

    Finally, I think I could be considered a vet. I've been here on 'n off since beta, I've racked up nearly 60 days gametime (on my main alone) and I've been a subscriber for most of that. I don't have nearly all I want, but I've got pretty broad tastes in terms of playstyle, so maybe that's it. A lot of "vets" seem to only play HA, with one LMG, and farm ground with lolpod ESF's, so I guess they've got everything they want! :rolleyes:

    I'm all for more rewards, but DEAR ******* GOD, don't get started on ******* housing. We don't NEED that **** in PS2!

    I'm not sure I agree with you on this one. Sure, the new player experience is better, and those bonus certs help, but PS2 is so big and so complex with so much going on at any one time, I don't think they do nearly enough to help newer players get started. I certainly see low-BR dudes doing stupid stuff a lot of the time, so yeah... not buying it!


    Ummm... no. Killing a vehicle already awards something like 8 times the XP of killing an infantry dude - and that's if you don't actually kill the dude! If you kill the dude/s as well, especially if they've had a good kill-streak or got a bounty or whatever, you can get like 3k XP (30 times what killing one infantry dude) gets. XP changes nothing.

    If a dude doesn't enjoy vehicle gameplay, you're not going to make him do it with XP. And if he does, he's gonna do it without the reward. Personally, I don't enjoy the vehicle gameplay in PS2, so I mainly do infantry stuff. Now, I'm going to learn to do vehicles, but only because I want to be a better, more experienced, planetman. XP will change nothing. I absolutely detest the flight mechanics in PS2, but I'm going to learn them as well (eventually), for exactly the same reason.


    I remember the glory days of Planetside 1, rose-tinted glasses and all... Back then, there was no redeployside. If you wanted to get to the next base, you DROVE there, even if it was just pulling a Flash or hitching a ride with an outfit mate. You couldn't just wait for the first AMS to go up and spawn there, because the next base was WAY out of AMS spawn range. Hell... AMS spawn-range was so small that, if there was one AMS on each side of a base, depending on where you died, you could potentially access only one of them.....

    Often, though, you didn't need to bother with that, because there were huge fights between bases, and you could literally just spawn-hop your way there as the front advanced, contributing to the fight as it went. Even respawning was to be avoided as far as possible back then... given the respawn timer, the no-deploy zone and the distance back to the fight, you could easily do nothing but run for more than a minute, every time you died before you saw your first enemy again.

    I remember back when having Lodestar support was what made the difference between losing an armored fight and winning one. Back then, it could take sometimes in excess of a minute to fully repair an MBT, even if you were both engies, and with both dudes doing it (which was usually a bad idea - it was always good to have your gunner stay in to protect you! If you - the driver - got killed, he could still potentially take out the enemy then leap out and rez you). Going back to the lodie for repairs was a good idea back then. Back then, it was a 5 minute drive to the last base and it's ammo tower. The nearest friendly lodie was often a lot closer!

    Back then, unoccupied vehicles could get hacked by appropriately certed infiltrators (and ALL infiltrators were Stalker back then!). The only way to make sure your AMS stayed put was literally to sit in it doing nothing. Back then, AMS's didn't even have guns. If you spotted an infil, you needed to call for help! If you got out to kill him, he'd usually decon your vehicle before you got him! And I was OK with that, tbh. I even completely Auraxiumed my AMS... Back then, I was an officer in an outfit. I led a full platoon for 2-3 hours most weeknights. As a result, I needed to spend a lot of time watching the map, talking to people, giving orders, providing intel etc. etc. Sitting in an AMS (or lodie, if we were running armor) was a perfect place to do it from.

    -------------------------------------------------------

    But let's be honest.... those days are OVER. I doubt the current playerbase could possibly cope with PS1 as it was back then. And trying to bring it back to those days is simply going to kill the game. I like the idea of more logistics - but come up with a suggestion that isn't going to be boring as hell to play, because I sure as hell can't!

    As for recon type stuff, we can already do that in PS2... it's just that most people don't bother. Firstly, pure recon simply isn't really necessary. Bases are so close together, that by the time you get telling people an armor zerg is coming, it's arrived. However, special ops stuff is perfectly doable, it's just that people don't usually do it. Just as an example, my outfit regularly does hack'n'holds behind enemy lines, while they're pushing our base. We're going to die, but it usually takes 2-3 times out number (or a properly decent team) to push us out. And then they're stuck there while the timer ticks down - because if they leave, we just come back. And while they're sitting there, we're busy getting started on a new base behind enemy lines! Alternatively, if we decide point holds aren't feasible (depending on the base) we often camp the vehicle bay to stop them pulling vehicles. Snipers shoot the dudes, engy's with cloaked sundy's lay mines, stalkers camp and hack the terminal killing anyone the sniper can't get. If you're desperate to "win" and don't mind killing the fight, you can easily run around with a Valk, dunking on literally every sundy in the area - and it doesn't even matter if you die... you can respawn straight into the Valk! :p And on and on and on. Options are plentiful, it's up to players to take advantage of them!

    As for ESF's... I vaguely remember how the l33t skyknights *****ed and whined and moaned like they were being castrated without anesthetic back when Coyotes (I think it was them) were released. It gave newer pilots a way to fight back against the much more skilled dogfighters and, for a while, it made the run-in-shoot-run-away-turn playstyle viable, rather than the currently required hover playstyle. But we all remember what happened then, so trying it again.... well,... you know what they say about insanity, right?
    • Up x 2
  20. adamts01

    Construction needs a ton of work, but it has a solid foundation and I think it's the way to go. It lets fights be a little bit different every time, which is very important for longevity. I'm a semi-new player and it's what sold me on spending money on the game, not because I was necessarily interested in construction, but because it showed that the new owners were actively trying to make big changes and were willing to spend money to keep the game going. And as a semi-new player (started maybe 6 months ago), this is an easy game to get in to. Vehicle combat takes a long time to cert in to but infantry combat is simple, cheap, and you have plenty of tools to be effective after a few hours of playing. The tutorial should be focused more on PS2 specific things instead of how to aim down sights like every other game, but it's alright. Basically spawn in and kill ****, that's easy enough.



    I don't think that's the right strategy for PS2 anyway, especially since they've built up a CoD kind of player-base. So keep front-line infantry combat simple like it is, but offer meaningful objectives for those who aren't here for the mindless spam. You even stated what I'm going to say next. Most people don't bother with the recon crap because it isn't necessary. Not only is it not necessary, tactical gameplay is less efficient than just mashing the kill button and holding territory. Give infiltrators a real purpose aside from running around cloaked with a knife or trolling vehicle terminals. Make actual infiltration a thing. Make necessary special ops missions a thing, but do it without screwing over the brain-dead basic infantry population this game has attracted.

    Perfect example of why re-deployside is crap, and why I play Arma. Too much stupid **** in PS2.

    Air weapons are a mess and air is unquestionably the worst balanced part of this game, as shown by the complete re-work of equipment trying to balance air after 4 years. It's just a mess. The developers can't figure out how to implement medium-skill weapons for average players, or low-skill weapons without making them annyoing for everyone. That sums up most of the A2A problems. Air/ground is ****** because there's no lethal and skill-based AA. What would be insanity is to not re-work everything and let air continue to be the **** show that it is. Coyotes were broken from the start because they gave free, no-skill dps to analready potent nosegun while reloading. Let any weapon only reload when it's selected and most of Coyote's problems go away. Add some medium-skill/medium-reward weapons to the air so that average players can fly without having to resort to noob weapons and gank squads. Infantry and armor have great examples of medium-sill weapons, it's not that difficult.