Planetside 2 - new players leaving

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by karlooo, Dec 24, 2019.

  1. BloodArmoredApostle

    I
    In every fps shooter I have player Veteran Players will crouch to mess up their hitbox. Calling that an exploit is like saying skill is illegal because not everyone has it? Your approach is more socialist than I thought. You want to give everyone participation badges for just logging in? That is now how you retain customers.

    Problem with your statement and what will kill the game is this: trying to build the game around new players instead of the player base you already have will kill the game most definitely. You want the new player experience to be simple to understand in terms of what to do. I guess new players what their hand held like a child and not really exploring the world around them and figuring out how to play the game? Games like Metroid and Mario you had to explore your world and move forward experiencing the game they are not fps but the point remains the same. This handing everyone a candy bar because they are frustrated is fine in my opinion. I want my player base happy the core player base rather than pander to the newer player who is not going to keep their interest in the game. Getting new players is feeding the player base you currently have.
  2. Bragg

    Simple fix, make this game more casual friendly. This is business, and casual / normal players are those who drop the money into cosmetics and stuff. But if you just focus catering on hardcore players which are usually minority in any game, they casual / normal players will leave. There is nothing for them.

    So to simply put it, you want the money from 9/10 to player base, or only from 1/10 them? (this is exaggeratedexample)

    There has been many changed during years, which are just blatant open invitations to all kinds of bad things in this game, and they are in still place.
  3. Endlave

    In my experience, Planetside is a sandbox game and you will have to decide yourself how to play it and have fun. And this, sadly, is never really told to new players who join and are lost, and quite understandably so.

    When I started the game, I got drop podded into a fight and not only 5 seconds later I got a headshot from some sniper I couldn't even see. There was no deathcam back then. Thank god there is now.
    I ended up learning the basics the hard way. I brute forced my way through the game, and even gave up sometimes, only to come back half a year later to try again because I REALLY liked the idea of the game.

    It was a harsh experience and it annoys me that I will have to admit this, but I really learned most of what this game was about from joining an Outfit's platoon, even though I absolutely HATED their gameplay. Deploy, redeploy, all switch class, everyone spawn vehicle, abandon vehicle, redeploy or kick.

    It INFURIATED me because it felt like someone else decided how I should play so the first thing I did once I felt I understood the game? I left the outfit and never turned back. Now I am lone-wolfing and having the time of my life in this game. I decide the fights and how long I stay. I decide what I pull and how I spend my nanites. I decide how I make my certs. Occasionally I might even join a squad or platoon to roll with them for a bit, but once their direction annoys me, I simply leave.

    I never had more fun in this game ever since.

    And this is the problem. The game can be INCREDIBLY fun and satisfying once you get to THAT point, but it can feel FRUSTRATINGLY annoying until you get there. Steep learning curves, no handholding, infuriating outfits with oppressive gameplay doctrines and a general stigma against lone-wolfing will do their part in driving most newcomers away and letting just the most stubborn ones remain. This is not the way. If you want this game to stay around, you need the new players to get to a point at which they want to stay.

    And even though I admit that outfits are helpful with teaching the newbies the ropes, they are far from the ideal solution because, frankly, they are mostly led by dicks. And it is somewhat paradox that you would have to join such an annoying group of people to get to the point this game actually starts being fun: Playing without one.
    • Up x 2
  4. Tozze101



    I agree with alot of things you said but i can honestly say i learned the game in a different way.
    First when i joined 4-5 years ago there were still alot of helpful people at the warpgate. I also watched alot of videos and learned how important it was to lvl up my tools first. I then proceeded to watch fights. I deployed to spawnrooms with big fights and watched as a stalker how the battleflow went and how breaching tactics was used. As i started to understand how the game was played i got a kill or two and soon i started using a heavy but still keeping to the back lines and letting the vets go first.

    After that i joined an outfit and this is where i agree with your experience. The constant redeploy, run out into a barrage of tankshells and air bombardment. The usual tactics at that point in time was usually a mass MAX assault if a base was almost capped. It still is to some degree but not as frequent as back then. The most fun was when two outfit leaders from different factions started an event and we would see these massive open field battles with everything from tanks to flashes and/or ESF's. We even had one with an entire platoon pulling Galaxy's and just kamikaze them into one enemy base. Yes, it was fun but outside the events it became very boring and the constant moving around and leaders screaming in your ear was too much.

    I then ventured out alone but still part of the outfit. Me and a handful of friends started a suicide squad. We were not good in any way but we had our fun. The friends started dropping out of the game one by one but i sticked around for a couple of months more. I left the outfit and i have to admit i spent alot of time in spawnrooms just watching the map. One thing to keep in mind. there's always toxic players that will teamkill you in spawnrooms for "not playing the game the way they want". This became more and more frequent as i would join in spawnrooms on the frontline and not be part of the first wave exiting. This was usually high BR players. I got a little petty at some points and went out of my way to hunt those guys down in the middle of battle to tk him. Soon after i took a break.

    During the years i took a break of a few months and came back a couple of times but i never fully got drawn in again. Lost my account due to poor password managment and a pc crash. Got back but the game was dying at that point. A year or so later the game got an influx of players and some new stuff i wanted to try out. OS was one of those things and i had to see it in action. Also the endgame bombardments as TR was pretty cool to see but other then that the game felt..weird.

    Weapons were not as unique anymore to certain factions. Weapons in general made every faction feel the same just with different looks. Harassers were deadly to every tank out there. Attacks on bases did not feel organised anymore. Yes the influx of new players made for an easier time for me as an average player to get kills but lane managment was terrible. The implants were a nice thing but they also made alot of the game frustrating. Suddenly alot of the classes could cloak. They were invisible on minimap. The radar on my tank was now useless. The capping was either done by a high skill squad that could hold off platoons or a zerg that would shell the spawnroom so no one could get out to defend. Cosmetics were starting to get annoying to the point of me accidently killing my own guys several times due to them having same colour as opposing factions. Indar which was my least favorite continent back then was even worse as 80-90% of the pop would get stuck in the 3 middle bases.

    I could go on but personally i feel the game took a turn for the worse at some point and it's not just the big things that chase new players away. It's also all the small things. Alot of players don't want to stick around. Using Recursion i can say that alot of new players ragequit because they can't figure out what's going on as they are just following the zerg and usually there's only one zerg available. They join small fights but immediately get cut down by high skill players and often ragequit. VR training is mostly abandoned at most times of day. It used to have alot of players messing around in there but lately i'd be lucky to find 5 people there at the same time
  5. MonnyMoony

    The biggest issue IMO is simply frustration. The game mechanics are far too easy to exploit by vet players which given newbies very little chance, even if they get the drop on the vet. There is nothing worse than feeling like you got killed cheaply, or that you got cheated out of a kill by somebody exploiting the game mechanics. Even as a long term player (7 years), this still frustrates me - so goodness known how demoralising it must be for a new player.

    Some quality of life improvements I would make to reduce the exploit-ability and give newbies a fighting chance:

    1. Reduce the headshot multiplier for CQC and medium range weapons. Headshots should give a small advantage, but currently they give far too much (especially when combined with fully certed nanoweave - which newbies wont have access to). Headshots should give no more than 5-10% advantage. Reducing it to this level would mean that in a toe to toe fight, all else being equal, the more accurate gamer would rightly come out on top, but it would reduce the incidence of vets turning round and pinging a newbie in the head even if the newbie got the drop on them. Vets already have a huge advantage in gameplay experience and kit - without this advantage being multiplied by the headshot bonus.

    2. I'd rework damage falloff - so that few if any weapons plateau after a certain range. Damage should drop off to zero for all but the longest range weapons.

    3. Do something about ADAD and crouch spam. Give infantry momentum and/or add a weapon accuracy/bloom modifier for side to side or crouch/stand movements (similar to the run or jump penalty).

    4. Add damage for road kills to the flash and harasser - the fact that they can mow down rafts of infantry and Maxes as if they are made of mashmallow is so cheesy. The Flash especially should not be able to mow down a fully loaded Max without as much as a point of damage or even a small change in speed or direction. A flash impacting a Max at full pelt should die, even if the Max itself is killed too. A Harasser should suffer serious damage and should incur a speed penalty indicative of hitting something large and heavy.

    5. Improve vehicle and aircraft physics.

    Most of these changes would also reduce the impact that cheaters/hackers have too - since many cheats and hacks exploit these same mechanics, especially things like aimbots, recoil dampers etc.
    • Up x 3
  6. ican'taim


    r/planetside "bUT MAh HeADshoTsS aND KAYyydeeEEEEeE!!!1!11!11one11!one!11"

    Seriously though, if Planetside wants to survive this needs to happen. That and full CAI reversal+C4 becoming a deployable.
  7. karlooo

    Oh wow that would be a great change.
    But if so then the MBT and Lightening tank shouldn't have access to third person view, and the MAX would need some change IMO.
  8. That_One_Kane_Guy

    Headshot discussion has been done to death a thousand times and while I do not share your position on the subject, I can appreciate where you are coming from.
    Planetside's HSM is actually roughly on par with its peers. What sets it apart is the difference in TTK with headshots vs. without, but even this only becomes a significant factor when one player has a skill advantage high enough that the particulars become irrelevant.

    I don't see the point of this. If your end goal is to reduce the impact of hacking by altering game mechanics (itself a flawed position to take) doing this will not achieve that. Unless aimbots can lead targets for you they are never going to be a problem past a certain distance in a projectile-based shooter. Especially with the kinds of weapons you are talking about changing.
    In fact, the problem will get worse by forcing players to engage at the closer ranges where these programs are more effective. The players who will be hurt most by this change are those who have learned to eek out that extra bit of engagement range via weapon control.

    Beyond this, well lets just say that hamfisted attempts to force an FPS community to play a certain way typically go over like a turd in a punch bowl as one Developer is finding out.

    No arguments here. Halo is a fantastic example of how to do this. This will likely impact the "got turned on by player you had the drop on" scenario more than anything, since the reasons this happens are usually caused by a failure to track the target, rather than inability to do damage quickly enough.

    No arguments here.

    Ditto.
  9. MonnyMoony

    That's exactly the point. Getting the drop on a headshot bunny can be futile, even if you are accurate with body shots because the TTK is so long, they still have time to spin around and kill you.

    This is compounded by nanoweave as it serves to widen the gap between head vs body shots and as a consequence, is a massive boost to those who already have a big advantage in being able to reliably land head shots.

    Perhaps the HS multiplier wouldn't be so critical if nanoweave was removed. Either way, something does need to be done. The gulf in TTK between head vs body shots needs to be reduced.

    The goal is to make the damage model more realistic. Damage falloff should be smoother and more logical for kinetic weapons. The reduction in the impact of hacking would be a side effect of this.

    The only weapons that shouldn't suffer damage fall off at range are explosive weapons.
  10. MonnyMoony

    A couple of additional changes I thought of.

    1. Give HA shield activation a very short cool down after taking damage. If a HA is actively taking fire, they should not be able to activate their over shield.

    This would make the HA shield use more tactical - with the HA having to activate the shield before wading into the firefight, instead of the situation we have now where it's a twitch activated "I win" option (often combined by vets with nanoweave and headshots as discussed above). The cool-down would only need to be a fraction of a second to change this dynamic.

    I'd even be happy to see the shield strength or shield duration increased a little to compensate for the loss of "I win" capability.

    2. Reduce the "kill box" nature of many bases. Give non LA infantry defenders a greater ability to get up onto boundary walls and rock faces (using ladders, ramps etc), instead of the situation we have now where defenders are often hemmed in by their own base design.

    Also, give more bases teleport rooms and relocate the ones that do exist to different locations. Teleport rooms should be at the other side of the base, or at another remote location away from main spawn. It's ridiculous that many bases have teleport rooms that are right next door to the spawn room and can thus be closed off by the same HESH wielding tank on a hill.
  11. That_One_Kane_Guy

    As I said above, the problem isn't the damage output. TTK for most guns with bodyshots hovers in the 450-650ms range, while the TTK with headshots is usually 200-300ms. Factor in the average human reaction time (~200ms) and the average connection lag (~50ms) and you are looking at a cushion of a cool ~200ms for a player to react, turn and kill an attacker that does not miss their shots.
    This absolutely does happen on occasion as there are indeed some very skilled players in the game, but the number of times it does are almost certainly exaggerated. More often, the ambush-er missed their shots and got punished for it by someone who didn't. This is why I stated that adding player momentum would probably have more of an effect on this phenomena than tweaking HSMs would.

    1. This game is not predicated on realism. The weapon systems in this game would be feeble by WW2 standards.
    2. I would very much like to know what your "realistic" precedent is for damage models involving Energy Shields, Plasma and Gauss weaponry.
    3. All pedantry aside, as I stated earlier, shortening the effective ranges of weapons serves only to amplify the effects of aim-assist software while hurting only the people who have learned to control their weapon. This is precisely counterproductive to your stated intentions.
  12. Halkesh

    What's the point of damage falloff anyway ? We don't have long range firefight. All the combats are close range fights with tons of explosive near capture point.
    It's sad to say, but PS Arena is better than PS2 in this regard : there are much more combat in the open than in PS2, and I think devs should work on that so we'll profit more of the whole map instead of a 10m² room where there is a capture point.
    • Up x 1
  13. MonnyMoony


    1. I never said the game was predicated on realism, however that's not to say we can't leverage real world mechanics. If it makes damage more logical, surely that's a good thing, especially for new players who have yet to learn the idiosyncrasies of the game mechanics.

    2. I would very much like to know what actual plasma and gauss weaponry exist in this game. Weapons may be labelled as such, but in reality, this means very little. Most faction weapons are cookie cutter versions of each other with slight tweaks to damage, recoil, load times etc and most use identical "planetside 2 weapon mechanics" for the most part regardless of whether they are supposed to be projectile, plasma or laser based weapons and regardless of what 'real world' acceleration mechanics they are purported to employ.

    3. It would have the effect of making weapons sit better within their niche and would prevent hackers using aim assist and recoil dampening to make CQC weapons work over a wider range of scenarios. That is my stated intention and it would achieve that goal. The side effect you mention about people who have learnt to control their weapons is just a variation on the "git gud" argument (i.e. we shouldn't make a change that benefits many players, and especially new players because it might hurt a few vets who have gotten gud)
  14. Marik

    I know you have to make it easier for newer players to get in, but is it really that necessary? Of course a tutorial and so it is practical. But we should not spare them too much.
    They want to sell us a permanent war after all. And recruits should be thrown in at the deep end. It's not nice, but I think it's the only way to attract good players. Only those who have the necessary frustration resistance to take several deaths in quick succession will be able to keep up with the crappy battles.
    They also have to learn the hard way, that you don't shoot at teammates. Kill me and I will kill you. Who plays for the Reds(TR) must also understand that you don't shoot at the Reds.
    But I am of the opinion that you do not need such players anyway. Most of the time there are players who either throw around as light C4, run around all the time as a permanent cloaker, are only ghostcaping or run around as heavy.

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

    Ich weiß das man für neuere Spieler den einstieg erleichtern muss, aber ist wirklich so sehr nötig? Klar ein Tutorial und so ist praktisch. Aber wir sollten die nicht zu sehr schonen.
    Man will uns immerhin einen permanenten Krieg verkaufen. Und Rekruten sollte man ins kalte Wasser werfen. Es ist nicht schön, aber nur so kann man meiner Meinung gute Spieler heran ziehen. Nur wer die nötige Frustresistenz besitzt auch mehrere Tote schnell hintereinander einzustecken, wird auch dran bleiben wenn es in Kämpfen mal ganz ********** läuft.
    Auch müssen die auf die harte Weise lernen, das man nicht auf Teamkameraden schießt. Töte mich dann töte ich dich. Wer für die Roten(TR) spielt der muss auch begreifen das man nicht auf die roten schießt.
    Aber ich bin der Meinung das man solche Spieler dann eh nicht braucht. Sind doch dann meist Spieler die entweder als Leichte C4 um sich werfen, die ganze Zeit als Dauercloaker rum rennen, nur am Ghostcapen sind oder nur als Schwere rum rennen.
  15. MonnyMoony


    It's not necessarily about making it much easier for new players.

    IMO, it's about making the game mechanics more consistent such that when you die, you understand why and can therefore learn from it.

    Even now after 7 years of gameplay, I can get the drop on somebody, pump them full of lead - and they still spin around and instagib me, and their killboard shows they have only lost about 1/4 of their overshield.

    I'm left wondering WTH I did wrong. Did I miss at point blank range, did my hits not register, is a full mag of the weapon i'm packing ineffective against this target's combination of utility slots and implants, did they exploit some game mechanic (like ADAD span) or is the person running a cheat or hack.

    It's also about making the game mechanics less exploitable. Certain quirks within the game give a player who known how to exploit them or has gaming kit that allows them to be exploited a massive increase in effectiveness versus somebody that doesn't know about them or doesn't employ them.
    • Up x 2
  16. Nuggz

    This game not being stupidly easy to figure out is what has kept me here in the first place. If you're looking for a hand holding experience a full on mixed unit continuous warfare game like this should probably not be where you start out. That being said every experienced player you see started out as one of those clueless noobs. Experience makes the soldier not the tutorial.
  17. That_One_Kane_Guy

    Damage dropoff is leveraging real-world mechanics, bud. There is nothing logical about bullets doing zero damage within visual range of a target, from either a reality or video game perspective, sorry.

    Congratulations, you have discovered the futility of applying the real world to a video game. See that wasn't so hard.

    Yes. How dare I suggest that one should learn to control their weapon. In a First. Person. Shooter.

    There are times when the "get good" argument is used offensively, or incorrectly. This is not one of them. Look, I understand what you want, just stop pretending there is logic or real-world mechanics behind it. You want an artificial range limit, so say so.

    Gameplay changes won't fix bad networking.
  18. MonnyMoony


    The problem isn't that people do it - the problem is that the game engine doesn't penalise them for doing it.

    Crouch or ADAD spamming should have a significant detrimental impact on hip fire or ADS accuracy (in much the same way as jumping or using jetpacks does) - but it doesn't.

    Other games I have played have much better mechanics when it comes to running, jumping, crouching and strafing - games much older than PS2 (the one i'm thinking off the top of my head is Lost Planet).

    You cant stop people crouch spamming or ADAD spamming - but the game engine can be designed in such a way to minimise the level to which it can be exploited.
  19. MonnyMoony


    Damage drop off is, but damage plateauing isn't. That's what I want to change. Damage falloff shouldn't just stop after a certain range. When I was talking about dropping off to zero, I was talking at infinite (or max) range - not necessarily within visual range.

    Also - we already have the "zero damage within visual range" mechanic now, with AA turrets. We also have the "no projectile damage" mechanic with bursters - you your ar

    Nobody is suggesting 100% physical accuracy - you are just resorting to ad-hom because you don't have a real argument to make.


    Again - nobody suggested that, but "git gud" shouldn't be used as an argument against fixing known deficiencies within a game.

    Well it kinda sounds like it is.

    There is. Show me a single real world weapon (side from explosive ones that I have already covered) whereby the kinetic damage only drops off to a certain range - then is effectively the same until infinity.

    There is nothing artificial about what I am suggesting. Damage plateuing after a certain rage certainly is artificial, as is the hard caps on range and zero projectile damage applied to AA turrets and bursters as detailed above. You are arguing for a far more artificial damage model than I am

    No - but they can minimise the exploitability of it.
  20. Zizoubaba

    I don't know, whenever I look around me, and/or when I press tab to check scores, all I see is new players. Seems to me that there aren't really that many "older" players left.