A critique of DBG/RPG, and how to improve most changes

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by UberNoob1337101, Nov 10, 2020.

  1. UberNoob1337101

    0) The absolute state of PS2


    I can’t believe that a studio works this hard, does this much, and most work ultimately amounts to very little. Depending on who you ask, game arguably got worse.

    The game's being held up by player loyalty, nostalgia and update hype. The game is still excellent in my opinion, but it has stagnated.




    Let’s analyze the most recent major update, Shattered Asshol-Warpgate :

    Campaign is buggy, basically the Halloween event with plants that spawn below terrain that you have to inspect and destroy, instantly cancels when an alert starts, and you'll probably get farmed by vehicles, with multiple boring, unclear objectives to complete afterward. And you have to pay certs to do it. "Fun".

    I'll just sit in a biolab as a revive bot, no thank you. I still don’t get what’s the purpose of the campaign, if you took it out there’d be literally no difference.

    Some of this got patched, but it’still a broken, tedious, borderline impossible mess.


    Missions are a mixed bag. Training missions are mostly great for new players, but some like convoys, "go to X, take Y and go back to Z", grind a bazillion XP from this and that missions are boring and sometimes almost impossible to complete, which is a shame since the rewards aren't bad, but I won't go out of my way to do chores. If you're a new player, see an easy-ish mission that gives you a weapon, do it. Else don't bother.

    During writing this they seem to have gotten ninja-buffed – even so, they’re very dependent on good RNG so you don’t get the borderline impossible ones and get nice rewards. Too much RNG involved, not enough integration with the rest of PS2, ppl just do it for the free weapons/ISO-4. Overall, nice for new players, good if you get the good ones, not worth the trouble for anything else.


    The new Esamir. I liked it at the beginning of the update, was a bit different from the standard, but as time went on I really miss the old Wallamir. The new continent has some promising changes and a really nice aesthetic, but has some of the most disruptive design and it really stretches the population between the SW and everywhere else, but from what I’ve seen in the limited fights I had, it looked good.

    Once people stopped doing the dog**** campaign? A few serious fights and it didn’t take long to notice that most new Esamir bases are terrible. Visually they’re great, but gameplay-wise they’re farm-a-thons. No second teleporters, not a lot of cover, many spots leave you wide open to attack from literally everywhere, they are so open yet so restricting, and it doesn’t give much protection from the more cancerous elements this game has. The fact that most good bases got removed is icing on the cake. Not saying that most Wallamir filler was good, but it wasn’t this bad.

    The storm : destroys construction bases, gradually reduces shields of players, makes vehicles unusable and the lightning strikes, literally AIDS in game form. Who thought this was a good idea?


    To accommodate new rewards, we completely remove alert rewards... where are the promised rewards? Locked behind lame, grindy missions? Did daily ribbons die for this? Again,as of writing this, alert rewards are back! BUT, in my opinion, instead of missions daily ribbons could’ve been improved, it’s a system that covers everything a player could do in-game.

    Central Indar got changed, instead of fixing Ceres Hydroponics, they decided to make TI Alloys impossible to take and added SNA under Crown. Craptastic. It’s literally impossible to break the stalemates in Crown and TI, and if your faction is from Ceres, good luck!


    And then finally, there’s the good. Harasser price to 300 isn’t the change I would’ve went with, the problem is more complicated than that, but it works. Less harasser spam results in more fun and prevalent tank battles.

    The AA MAX/AA Base turret buffs are appreciated, if weak.


    I had surprisingly little good to write about it, and it was a big update.


    I’m fine with having an update that every once in a while isn’t very good, it happens to even great studios, but every single update since 2017 being mediocre at best is surely taking the piss.



    If I had to sum up most changes in DBG/RPG updates in general, it’d be like this :


    1. Major update every 3 months, the new content is completely different from the rest and the content introduced isn’t changed significantly afterwards. This is a great marketing/player retention move, but there’s a clear lack of polish, testing and seeing if new features fit well into the game. Great benefits in the short run, but the experience starts getting dragged down in the long run.

    2. Shoe-horned membership benefits. I wouldn’t mind this if the benefits introduced are cool instead of bypassing cert walls, unlocking something unfinished or both. ASP is IMO more satisfying to get with 10000 certs, NSO is bugged and unfinished with a limited arsenal, campaign is crap.
    Why spend money on mostly filler membership when there’s better stuff to be bought with DBC, like voicepacks, or cool camo, or vehicle horns, or literally anything else. It’s literally more worth it than whatever’s packed into membership anyways.


    3. Mostly irrelevant additions : Missions, campaign, construction. Supposedly massive changes that in reality, amount to almost nothing. The hype might stick for a few weeks and then it wears off. Stuff you guys release NEEDS to be built upon, and work with already existing systems.

    4. Pointless nerfs : CAI, shotgun changes, most 2015-2017 changes. Thankfully most stuff isn’t nerfed randomly anymore, but so much stuff was nerfed back in the day I feel like only 20% of the arsenal is worth using.

    5. 5+ almost pointless, useless currencies introduced. A7? Merit? Who-gives-a-crap-ium? What’s wrong with just certs, nanites and free stuff?

    6. Broken untested releases : Canis, pre-Colossus Bastion, pop balancing on launch, EVERYTHING ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN. How did this get through testing?

    7. Major bugs unfixed : Game still has ppl clipping into terrain/walls, Rocklet/Survivalist bug, loadout swap reloading animation bug, some others I won’t mention. Some are fun, but before-mentioned ones are very annoying.

    8. Performance : Still a major issue. It improved quite a bit, but there are problems. DX11 might cause micro-stuttering for some players, there are random FPS drops in some areas, game still runs very poorly in the big fights for potato PCs.

    9. Reinventing the wheel. Some elements are replaced with worse ones, for no reason. Alerts and daily ribbons got removed instead of being expanded upon, and what we saw was massive backlash for ****** missions (they are still mostly crap). If it ain't broke, don't fix it, make it better.

    10. Out of touch development. Many changes are neat ideas on the surface, but the implementation is bad. Want a list?

    · Sanctuary : Nice idea at first, until you realize that this entire area is 100% pointless and all the new resource shops could just be fitted into the Warpgates or in a menu.
    · Construction : I don’t want to repeat myself, but it went from “really promising” to “I almost forgot it existed”.
    · Outfit assets : really cool idea, but the result is that we have the cancer spam Outfit OS and Bastions/Colossi, depending on situation going between “Oh, it’s there” to “extremely annoying”


    There's some good, there's some godawful, but I feel like most of the content in updates is pointless filler that nobody cares about.
    Who cares about repetitive, boring campaign and missions?
    Why continue to nerf mostly useless construction into the ground?
    Why did something get changed for no reason?
    Who is this made for, honestly?


    What I find most hilarious, is that Wrel, Lead DesignerTM, long before he was working in DBG/RPG, made a series of videos doing more with less, feedback, some other important stuff, and yet – the state of PS2’s development is the exact opposite of what he suggested : we have 3-month updates that do barely anything except make things marginally worse, dishonest “we listen to your feedback guys!”, “Salty vets lmao”. You do you, man, but you're sending some mixed signals.

    Look, I understand that things shouldn’t be taken too seriously and that dev work is very exhausting, but I feel like the updates would be miles better if most of the dev team, for one day, decided to play the game for more than 5 minutes, and run an actual, long, repeated test for some new changes.

    Just take a big change, test it whole week long, multiple runs, check if there are any major bugs or if the stats are off, and then fix if needed and push it out instead of shoving it out into live with one test on PTS. Holy ****, checking things only once isn’t how you do tests!



    Everyone screams about new player retention, but we’re at a point where most ppl who’d be interested in PS2 probably already heard about it. There are some new players, and a lot of recent changes have dealt with most of the issues like grindy progression, A lot of fat got trimmed, so to say, but all existing flaws don’t only affect new players.


    What’s really starting to hit the pop is veteran retention. A lot of play-styles and weapons got nerfed, especially the more unique ones are hard-hit, many bad changes take the toll on the player base. Lots of aspects weren't worked on. I’ve legit quit this game at times because of some game-breaking bugs, I just can’t play the game.

    30+ min queues killed WoW for me, and so did it kill PS2 for a time.

    There was a bug that bricked the game when accessing terminals.

    Random crashes that wouldn’t be resolved until 2018.

    And I can count some more, you get the point. No matter how fun the game is, the experience is awful because I can’t play the game at all.



    It’s not like this game lacks publicity : the population exploded when Escalation was launched, almost rivaling 2014 pop numbers. But as time went on, pop went back during the following days and finally settled to ~2000.



    Is the game bad? Perhaps in theory, but I've never had more fun than in this game : when it works, it's fantastic. There's a reason it isn't dead yet.

    And in fact, I think that there’s arguably the best game of all time hidden under, it’s just covered by an increasingly larger pile of ****.




    SO! I'll try to suggest changes I'd actually like to see, based around mostly tweaking existing assets and adding a few new things. Not going too much into details, mostly giving a general idea what should be changed.
    • Up x 8
  2. UberNoob1337101

    1) Arsenal fine-tuning

    Problem : Weak and useless weapons/abilities.

    Solution : B U F F. All weapons in general could receive a faster TTK pass to make them (feel) more powerful.


    · Animations and shooting mechanics should get a modernization pass.


    Anims in particular feel snappy and robotic with extremely fast input for some actions, while cone of fire was a passable system back in the day, it’s very dated now compared to say, the new CoD : MW. I’ve had times where CoF decided to meme and I couldn’t land shots I otherwise would’ve hit.

    A general reduction in CoF RNG (tightening it up a lot and reducing CoF bloom) would modernize the system and make it more consistent. Giving most guns an actual kick and less-random recoil pattern would make them feel more powerful while reducing RNG in recoil patterns. New SFX for existing weapons to make them sound more threathening (no more TR woodpeckers, NC milkshakes and VS sloshing).
    • Lancer gets it's old velocity and range back, but gets a render-range sniping restriction, the least charged up shot has the highest velocity and the charge-up increases damage by a lot, but reduces velocity. I never see anyone use lancer anymore after the nerf.
    • Phoenix should automatically reload after firing a shot, to increase DPS. Greater missile acceleration and maneuverability. A fuel meter so the player can choose to either maximise range, speed or maneuverability of the missile. Potentially also return the OHK ability versus infantry if it’s deemed okay. Another meme weapon, I don’t see anyone use it seriously.
    • ZOE gets buffed so it isn't crap.
    • Lockdown(MAX) is made more consistent, the buffs it gives are great on some weapons, but “OK” on others.
    • NC AI MAX weapons get buffed so they aren't nerf cannons. Not quite pre-nerf level, but close enough. Also bring back slugs pls.
    • MAXes in general could become support-oriented : weapons that heal teammates and deal damage to enemies, arm-mounted support weapons with special properties that are weak in 1v1, but excellent in closed spaces and behind cover, AoE buffing around friendlies, MAXes could deploy and act like improvised cover/infantry terminals/long cooldown spawn points. Some special abilities at the expense of weapons. In any case, rework needed.
    • MANA AV turret gets most of it's range back. To compensate, MANA AV turrets, their projectiles and their gunners can be seen farther away.
    • Tankbuster could get a tweak or two.
    • Harassers have their cost reduced to 200/250, Vulcan gets toned down a bit, Aphelion and Mjolnir get buffed to be on par with post-nerf Vulcan, Enforcer gets it's old reload back and a little bit of extra punch, Kobalt and Basilisk get a minimum damage, velocity and rate of fire increase. ES AI top-guns get buffed significantly.
      • Harasser rumble seat now has 360o coverage and better aim stabilization while ADS.
      • Their old TTK gets restored : they kill quicker, but die in 3 shots, burn in 2 from AP/HEAT/HESH and generally die a lot faster. Repair rates from the rumble seat go back to 33% from 50%. Harassers should be relatively cheap, fast and deadly, but not repair/damage sponges.
    • Fury and Bulldog get a(n) (in)direct damage increase, so they're usable again.
    • Hornets get increased damage, but longer reloads, to make them hit-and-run.
    • Base turrets are tankier and overheat slower without the Base Turrets Heating buff. Spear Phalanx Anti-Tank turrets come with co-axial Basilisks/Kobalts. Aspis Phalanx AA turrets get better DPS and accuracy. Xiphos Phalanx AI turrets have significantly improved accuracy and fire rate.
    • Deployed sunderers are made tankier so a single Light Assault can't delete one in 5 seconds.
    • Standard dumbfires now OHK ESFs on hit.
    · Sniper rifle rebalancing : T1 rifles get the same fire rate and reload speed as the CQC bolters, to make them have some advantages over other rifles.
    • Improvements to NC/TR auraxium weapons, and other trait-less auraxium weapons get unique traits
      • TRAC-Shot has 2 barrels, firing 2 shots alternating between each other. Vertical recoil is minimal, but horizontal recoil is high, albeit always predictable and going to one side, then to the other, and so on and so forth. Harsh pattern but one that’s very repetitive highly accurate and with good DPS.
      • T1A Unity has a special firing mechanism : the first 2 shots fire extremely quickly (Could be passed off as 2 projectiles being fired in 1 shot) at 1800RPM a la AN-94, then the gun’s starting RPM and recoil drop the longer the weapon fires. The intent is to give it a lot of stopping power early, then improve it’s controllability as it fires. High recoil at first, but becomes very easy to control after about 15-20 shots.
      • Butcher is now belt-fed (no or near-instant reload) and can only be hip-fired, RMB zooms in and is more accurate. Great run-and-gun, but doesn’t have as much range as the others.
      • For the NC : GODSAW now does considerable damage to vehicles and projectiles go through players/bodies/vehicles. It’s main change is that it’s damage is that it’s ammo goes through 2 stages – high impact and high velocity. When the bullet is fired within 50m, it has standard stats, but after 50m it accelerates to 1000m/s, thus it’s velocity dramatically increases and so it’s damage increases over time.. At 100m it’s damage is 225 with a velocity of 1000m/s. Might be overtuned, but I really want it to be noticed.
      • Gauss Prime can alternate between a very high damage 20-round 250DMG/333RPM rifle and a 30-round 167DMG/600RPM one. Kind of wanted to put a SCAR-L and SCAR-H into one gun.
      • Fortuna gets 1.0 ADS movespeed. It’s already very solid, and this gives it a more distinctive niche as a run-and-gun weapon.
      • Auraxium ES SMGs are tuned so they don’t suck
      • Auraxium BRs are tuned to have ES traits.
      • Auraxium NC/TR Pistols get traits
      • Addition of Auraxium noseguns and tank cannons, merely cosmetic
      • Auraxium skins for weapons a player gets upon getting 10000 kills with said weapon. Some cool rewards for using 1 weapon for a long period of time.
    • Lasher and MCG could use a small buff, to slightly nudge them into being more practical.
    • On the other hand, Jackhammer could use a big buff.
    • Flak AA in general gets minor buffs and increased range. I’d at least like the ability to kill ESFs and Libs without them immediately turboing away.
    · ESF air combat overhaul
    • Faster speed for ESFs when mostly flying forward, improvements to Racer High Speed Airframe, afterburners accelerate a bit slower, but offer greater max speed.
    • Dogfighting airframe needs to do something, it’s quite literally an increase of mouse sensitivity for your plane, and is debatably detrimental to equip. Needs to have some actual effect like acceleration or boost to both flying and hovering speed.
    • Hover dueling still remains king during protracted air fights, but it’s play-style isn’t the only way to play.
    · Banshees get a slight nerf, LPPA gets a slight buff. Nothing over the top, but banshees are cancer and LPPA could use a tweak to stay on-par with it’s competition.
    • Lock-on rocket launchers have their range increased to 500m, from 350m. Lock-on time now varies depending on range, longer range means longer lock-on time and vice-versa. More effective up close, can be reacted to from a distance.
    • The Combined Arms Initiative update gets completely reverted, old TTK is restored for faster and skill-based gameplay. CAI had a mostly negative impact on ground vehicle gameplay, and made a lot of vehicles feel like damage sponges, harassers in particular.
    • Greater vehicle customization, old armor values and slots are back, with buff to existing underperformers
      • IR Smoke becomes Electric Smoke – same effect, but does great damage to all targets in it’s radius
      • Vehicle stealth doesn’t conceal the vehicle within 30m, but in return it operates silently.
      • Flank armor becomes heavy armor – protection against everything, but reduces maneuverability, turret turn speed and vehicle max speed.
    • New vehicles – IFVs with shielded rumble seats, new ANT modifications, some vehicles reimagined from PS1.

    · Galaxies get a slight health reduction, but get a buff to their on-board weapons and get extra support options.
    • Galaxies can now act as mini-ANVILs, transporting certain vehicles into the fray.
    • New customization slots to launch infantry in semi-guided drop pods, ability to drop heavy payload bombs, Cortium carrying…

    • A general buff of all non-AV top guns.
    • Repair speed is reduced a little, and repair speed while a vehicle took damage is cut by 33%/50%. Aimed to make fights more decisive and less “peek and shoot, then repair” and increases the importance of support equipment and personnel.
    • 2017 shotgun changes get completely reverted, effectively a net buff for semi-automatic shotguns, pump-action shotguns and Jackhammer.
      • These weapons were never particularly great, overshadowed by the full-auto shotguns in almost every case and the 2017 shotgun changes reinforced that. Semi-autos should have the best accuracy, both aimed and from the hip, pump-actions need to be more reliable in OHK-ability at point blank (better accuracy from the hip, a few more pellets, better pellet spread), and Jackhammer sucks now, period.
    • Gun angles of Sunderer top-guns are brought back to pre-nerf values, allowing for better sunderer self-defense.
      • Speaking of Sunderers, a few new Battle Sundy mods could be added, like adding an extra few rumble seats or a buff to nearby infantry. The goal is to give it an important support niche, while steering it away from the battle sundies of old.
    • Due to AV buffs, co-axial machine guns for tanks would be great. MBTs and Lightnings could use more diverse weapons like missile launchers, minelayers etc.
      • At the very least, after most of AV options get buffed, undo the AoE damage/radius nerfs on tank cannons. When counters to tanks become powerful, tanks also need to feel like, well, tanks. With powerful weapons and strong armor.
      • Tanks in general could be more powerful, but a bit slower and less maneuverable. Make them more about positioning and make them feel more like tanks.
    • Numbnutz reactor actually does something : either it does something when the shield breaks i.e improve stats, shield HP gets spent for improved stats or some abilities or shield HP starts at 0, but regenerates shield while taking damage, making the Vanguard weaker to massive bursts, but very strong versus sustained damage.
    • Lastly, Canis could get a slight RoF increase and slightly faster spin-up time. It's pretty mediocre and the spin-up kicks in too late. Gladius SPRW ammo grants 600m/s, from 500m/s bullet velocity.
    There are probably a few extra changes needed for some other pieces of gear, but I believe I covered most of them.

    There’s always room for more content, and it’ll fit into the game well if it’s balanced and properly tested as long as the foundation is good.

    2) Implants

    Problem : Some are too situational, RNG-based or just useless. No real reason not to use the few best ones.

    Solution : Two god-tier implants are removed and potentially implemented into the base infantry stats, some notable trashy ones get a slight tweak.

    • Assimilate gets removed - it's just too good. It gives you a ton of up-time and lets you go from kill to kill easier. It empowers vets and farmers, and honestly has to go.
    • Battle Hardened is implemented by default, or left as-is. Another godly implant that is IMO almost necessary to have, because everyone has explosion-induced seizures apparently.
    • Reinforce can be equipped by MAXes
    • Infravision can be turned on or off
    • Experimental stims either apply all of their buffs for a short time, or the player can choose which buffs he'd like to have upon using resto/med kits.
    • Other implants in general get made less situational and receive minor buffs.
    • Crafting Exceptional implants requires 10000 ISO-4, from 45000 ISO-4
    There are plenty of "overly situational" implants, but outside of changing them completely I'm not sure what to do with them. I want all of them to fit the role of “situational but useful” so all are decent choices, but not great, and you’ll have to mix and match to find a fitting mix that suits the player, which I think’s a lot better than having a single set you’re always going to use for each class.

    The exceptional implant costs might be a bit low but IMO some like Carapace and Bionics significantly change the way you use some classes, Medic and Engineer aren’t the same without these, so I'd say they're necessary to have at some point.
    • Up x 6
  3. UberNoob1337101

    3) Construction

    Problem : Everything

    Solution : Everything

    • First off, cert costs are decreased across the board : construction is prohibitively expensive to get into. 1000 certs max for a construction piece. 750 certs for each construction piece seems reasonable, considering you'll need mostly everything.
    • Construction is sped up a bit, and divided into 3 tiers :
      • Tier 1 is mostly new and adds some basic trenches, sandbags, small walls, small bunkers and such. Very easy and fast to build, easy to destroy with heavy weapons. Lets infantry build some minor fortifications to hold out in remote or tight areas. These can be built with infantry with cortium containers on their backs. Adds a bit of cover where needed, or to be used as a barricade to close off certain angles of attack.
      • Tier 2 are most construction bits that exist right now. Buildings like tunnels, improved roads that boost movement of vehicles and infantry could be added here. Relatively quick to build, moderately expensive cortium-wise.
      • Tier 3 are orbital strikes, flails, glaives, fortress walls and gates (see Lithcorp fortress walls for reference), and skylances (basically stationary colossus but without the shields and 4 side turrets). Take a long time to build and a lot of cortium, everything except walls requiring maintenance, but are very powerful : fortress walls can withstand massive damage and have small tunnels within to shield friendlies and modules from harm. Some special fortifications take a very long time to fully destroy, but can be compromised and broken in with light units.
    • A deployable flying drone when building : to give some perspective and a look from a different angle. Could also reduce the back-and-forth between silos for blueprints, and allow you to build from a bird’s eye.
    • Base markers : designating your base on a map for friendlies and showing them what your base has - vehicle pads, routers... On the flipside, they could also be used to request reinforcements.
    • More cortium deposits. 6k cortium deposits need to be more common. Certain bases could automatically resupply Cortium.
    • Maintenance costs only apply to powering Orbital Strikes, Glaives, Flails, Routers, active modules and some defenses. Overall cortium upkeep is massively decreased and should only be a concern when turrets/modules are active for an extended period of time.
    • No-build zones are massively reduced and only cover the vicinity of spawn points and vehicle pads. This is merely to prevent (un)intentional griefing with construction, otherwise the entire world is your oyster now.
    • Orbital strikes are no longer outfit assets and must be built.
    • Orbital strikes are revamped : they are no longer tactical nukes and have much smaller AoE but become extremely powerful precision strike weapons, something along the lines of the Particle Cannon. Extremely high damage, the beam can travel on the orders of an OS target designator. Its range, duration and speed depends on charge. Maximum range is 1000m. Can't be used on and can’t pass over spawn points. If standing still, the laser has a longer lifespan.
    • Glaives are the saturation bombardment option : shelling a wide area at extended range with many shots, but with low accuracy. Still remains extremely effective versus skyshields, but gains increased effectiveness versus other targets. Aimed to slow down concentrated enemy formations.
    • Flails can be fired anywhere but has a fire rate limitation i.e it can fire every 30/40 seconds or so.
    • Buffs to base turrets also apply to construction turrets.
    • Cortium bombs are less effective versus construction fortifications, and their timer is increased to 30/40 seconds. Cortium bombs get automatically spotted, and potentially cost cortium, currently they're basically free. I'm even fine with completely removing them, hacking some modules and base parts as an infil would be nice to disrupt a base, but not completely brick it.
    • Walls have much more HP, but now have individual sections that can be destroyed, so while they're more durable, concentrated fire will destroy parts of the wall. Effectively makes them much more useful for containing aggressors, but it’s possible to break through some sections.
    · Most weaponry and modules can be manually operated. This means that GLAIVEs and Flails can be manually targeted, not from the map menu but directly. Will take some getting used to and a good spotter.

    I think that covers some of the changes construction needs. I've probably forgotten something very important, but to sum up, construction becomes Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. BS counters to construction are toned down or removed outright, and there are some user-friendly additions.






    • Up x 6
  4. UberNoob1337101

    4) Metagame

    Problem : Alerts are mostly meaningless now, not enough variety, they happen too quickly. Missions are completely divorced from ordinary gameplay. Not enough incentives to coordinate with other players. Needs more strategic layers and less incentive to zerg.

    Solution : Team-based missions-objectives, worthy alert rewards, objective-based squads, better bases. Alerts get an overhaul and have multiple types.

    • First things first, the current campaign, mission and outfit asset systems are scrapped. Bastions, ANVILs, Steel Rain and Colossus are still there, but they'll be crafted by other means.
    · Bases themselves are harder to capture, have bonus objectives that speed up/slow down capturing them and generally support the defenders. All of the bonus objectives extend capture time, but some have special properties.
    o Small bases now have multiple points of interests like watch towers, REC rooms, pain field projectors, sensors and bonus capture points that provide benefits to defenders like spotting nearby enemies, barracks that spawn AI soldiers etc, slowing down capture timers and generally being helpful for defenders. Also makes most areas in bases feel like they have an actual purpose.

    o In terms of base balancing, sunderers can be deployed near capture points again, inner Amp Station vehicle shields can no longer be broken into via GSD-using vehicles, to counterbalance : the outer gates are moved a bit outwards and there’s less clutter in the outer area of the Amp station to make vehicle combat in-base more practical. There are some extra areas under the Amp Station itself accessible by vehicles.

    o It's impossible to spam GSD sunderers and overwhelm defenders in Amp stations, but getting a foothold into an Amp Station with said GSD sunderers is important, delegating them to an useful tool instead of an I-win strategy.

    o Tech plants and many other bases get their removed base turrets back, to improve their defensiveness.

    o Some non-sensical spawn room locations are reworked to be harder to camp and more sensible. It should be less of an easy camp and more of a stronghold to launch counter-attacks from.

    o Ceres Hydroponics becomes more defensible with better elevation, moved farther away from the high ground of TI and Crown, and finally, the Crown-TI Alloys rock bridge gets brought back. Huzzah!

    o Proposition to mix original Esamir and Wallamir. One of alert outcomes is to turn the entire area into a shattered continent. Alerts during particularly populated days are played in a "best of 3". Tournaments could be played in a "best of 5".

    · Most bases will either strategically contribute by providing certain benefits (i.e bases with Solar Plants and amp stations will power Cortium PMBs in the vicinity, Uplinks can provide Steel Rain and ANVILs within range, some have cortium reserves, some provide materials and resources to build Asset Parts)
    • Resources (Auraxium, Synthium, Polystellarite) are now faction-wide instead of outfit-based.
    • Empty fields and certain bases like J998 impact site and Indar Excavation can be excavated, revealing Asset Parts that have to be transported back to base to assemble Bastions/Colossi and other potential new assets.
    • Certain research-focused bases like Tech Plants and Vanu Archives give blueprints to said Asset Parts, usually of superior quality and it's possible to choose what is created. These can be manufactured using specific resources (Auraxium, Synthium and Polystellarite, the ones a faction gets by owning certain bases), but any of them can be supplanted by massive amounts of Cortium. Crafting parts grants massive amounts of XP and certs, especially if it's mostly crafted using harvested Cortium. XP is split between the harvesters.
      • Said research can be stolen, and said parts can be taken back to your own warpgate. They can also be destroyed. Both offer great XP and cert rewards, but capturing/stealing is rewarded twice as much as destroying parts. When you get hold of a part, you instantly begin a mission to take it back to a warpgate. Others can join a mission to escort you to safety, and other factions can take a mission to steal your part/blueprint.
      • Parts/blueprints can be transported via Galaxies and ANTs, that receive a movement speed reduction and a special minimap marker visible to all players, and are always spotted. When destroyed, parts are dropped (or if dropped in an inaccessible location, completely destroyed).
    • Bastions and Colossi are crafted at Warpgates or Techplants, and are of varying power depending on parts used. They can also be repaired in either Warpgates or Techplants, or be upgraded with available parts.
    • Bastions can deploy all ANVILs (up to 3 at the same time), deploy Steel Rain, spawn discounted ESFs (if upgraded, it spawns all air vehicles in general), and have a self-defense complement of 4 guns. Engines, Manufacturing (ANVIL and air vehicle production), Defensive armament, artillery, orbital drops and citadel (increased HP for all modules and hull) are all parts that can be upgraded alongside the existing 4 needed to pull a bastion. Only the existing 4 are necessary to build a bastion, but if other parts are missing then the bastion's performance in said area is sub-par (i.e long cooldown on abilities, lower RPM on weapons, ESFs are more expensive and it takes longer to build them)
    • Bastions now have multiple hitboxes : turrets (which can be destroyed), hangars (which can be damaged), engines (which can be damaged), you get the picture. The idea is to completely remove the weakspot system and make Bastions susceptible to battlefield damage that lowers their effectiveness. Overall Bastions are much tankier, but lose effectiveness over time as they take damage. This is aimed to make Bastion vs Bastion fights less decisive, but make small skirmishes and bombing runs more impactful and less prone to repairball Galaxy spam covering weakspots.
    • Bastions can now be boarded and have a spacious interior. Most modules can be sabotaged from the inside. There are spawn points inside the bastion, with all of them being destructible except the one in the bridge.
    • Colossi are easier to build than Bastions (like now), but Bastions overall will be more powerful, albeit not much in terms of brute force. They’re extremely powerful, but it’s power is hard to utilize to full effect.
    • As expected, Colossi will mess up Bastions really bad with their Skylances, but for different reasons : Skylances will go through multiple sections of the ship, dealing massive damage. Makes Bastion targeting more methodical.
    o On the other hand, one can specialize the Colossus into a proper super-tank, focusing on killing ground targets.

    • Objective-oriented squads : squads automatically form for convoy escort, convoy raiding, bastion crew, bastion hunting etc. The idea is that if people tend to have the same goals, they should be organized to be with other like-minded players. An attempt to improve cross-outfit and random co-ordination.
    • Alert types : Standard "take the continent", Last Bastion Standing, Shattered Warpgates.
    · Standard : Alert starts when a faction has over 100 victory points, and the continent must've been open for at least 3 hours for an alert to start, and the requirements are a little more strict so they don’t pop up literally right after a continent opens and fights break out.

    o Alert lasts between 60-180 minutes depending on continent's population. Faction with most territory wins, with 300 certs and 200 ISO-4 given to winners, 150 certs and 150 ISO-4 for runners-up. All participants may gain XP boosts, implant packs, classic decals and camos depending on how well they did and if an outfit particularly distinguished itself during an alert. Alert wins aren’t massive per se, but if someone tryhards for the win it adds up, effort and playing well is rewarded.


    · Last Bastion Standing : Alert will start in 3 minutes when there are 3 Bastions on the field. Warpgate shields are disabled and Warpgate hexes no longer count as restricted areas, so Bastions can't hide anywhere. Faction with the only Bastion remaining wins. Alert lasts for 3 hours maximum, and ends in a draw if there are more than 2 Bastions in the field.


    · Shattered Warpgates : All warpgates' shields are disabled and can be captured with a 15-minute timer. The faction that holds all 3 Warpgates wins. The faction that gets eliminated can spawn in other owned bases, and it also gets the option to "wave-spawn", where every 15-20 seconds a Galaxy of 6+ players spawn at the edge of the map, and can call ANVIL support to drop vehicles to land back to the continent. The faction that loses the warpgate can make a comeback. Alert lasts for 3 hours, and ends in a stalemate if the faction doesn't win in that time period.

    • Over time, as alerts go on and time passes while a continent's open, the terrain of a continent might undergo some changes, from heavy rain and floods changing the terrain, to dust storms blocking most sensors and HUD, to aerial anomalies/rifts in reality changing the landscape causing parts of terrain to float. Some bases might get damaged and changed the longer the continent is open.
      • Esamir storms don’t spawn in lightning strikes that randomly deal damage, and the shield reduction and vehicle disabling effects are also disabled. The storm should at most be visual and remove most HUD elements.
      • As the continent remains open – some visible changes start happening that affect base layout and map flow :
        • Esamir : the continent either decreases in temperature (heavy snowfall, formation of glaciers, most bases are buried under the snow and are connected via snow ravines. The surrounding ocean starts freezing, and the playable area expands.
        • Or it gets hotter. Rivers start melting, and yet undiscovered ground is revealed beneath the snow. Plant life flourishes in some flooded areas.
        • Indar can be hit by massive dust storms, covering the landscape with dust. Most buildings made of metal start to rust and partially crumble.
        • In Amerish, an earthquake happens.
        • Hossin gets a forest fire.
    • World Domination Season : Once a year, alert wins are measured during 3 months (usually June-July-August). Rewards for individual players are split during 3 phases, one for each month. The faction that wins the most alerts gets a 6-month 50% XP boost, 1500DBC, 2000 ISO-4, 1000 certs, one of the A7 weapons if they don't have one, and a special seasonal camo and decal. Runners-up get 800DBC, 1-month 50% XP boost, 500 certs and 1000 ISO-4. Overall massively rewards winners, but participants from all factions get great rewards as well, so it’s mostly a population-buffer event.
      • Individual rewards for a player’s performance during this event are anywhere between golden variants of starter weapons, weapons that were only available during a promotion event, currently unavailable camos, DBC, discounts on bundles, one month of membership, certs, XP boosts, cosmetics for vehicles and infantry, titles etc. Would be a nice motivator to try your best during this event and should ultimately exceed event win-loss awards.
      • Rewards for this event might be a tad too much, but numbers can always be tweaked and it’s guaranteed to be a big motivator for players. It guarantees that the game gets a lot of pop during one quarter, thus freeing up the team to push larger, more polished updates other times of the year.

    The idea is that the entire faction works to build these very powerful assets and then fights for them, while tying in convoy and data stealing missions together into a somewhat coherent whole.

    Zergs are neutered not by gameplay tools and mechanics, but because their metagame viability is reduced : they stop being highly efficient.


    Owning the most bases means that you produce the most parts, but not necessarily end up having the most and there’s strategic decision-making depending on what a faction needs.

    Small, organized squads are encouraged to strike deep into enemy bases and raid while protecting their own assets. There’s a reason to get organized, but solo players can definitely help out too and have fun. In terms of how it’s structured, I hope it won’t break map flow too much.

    Can’t focus on taking all the territory because you’ll end up with little parts for superweapons, but focusing mostly on part protection/collection leaves your territory vulnerable.
    • Up x 5
  5. UberNoob1337101

    5) Bugs

    Problem : Bugs! Some of these have been around for years.

    Fire rate depending on FPS
    NSO bug letting players pull every faction's MBT
    Vehicle shields get vertically misaligned
    Step noises when no-one is walking
    People warping underground
    Jump pads bugging out and not working
    Visual bugs when swapping weapons/interacting with terminals while reloading
    Floating mines and C4
    Mines detonating either too soon or too late
    C4 sometimes not dealing any damage
    Missions not working
    Highly buggy crouch spam
    Janky vehicle physics
    Clipping into, and shooting behind, walls
    Infinite magburn fuel
    Infinite LA fuel
    Performance
    Netcode
    Anti-cheat

    And many other minor bugs that are quite annoying. RPG pls.

    Bug fixing department would benefit greatly from proper testing, as would everything else.

    I think that massive updates dedicated to only fixing and balancing stuff would be VERY appreciated. I like some of the new stuff and the fact that it draws people back to PS2, but it’s hit or miss. This game already has massive amounts of content, but a lot of it needs to be polished.


    6) Advertisement

    Here’s a recommendation : for a month, put a lot of promotional ads on some sites like ModDB, maybe even Youtube, land a sponsorship, I dunno. Try something other than mouth-to-mouth advertisement once the game gets polished. The population count will explode, but they’ll only stick if the game runs well and plays well. I'd relaunch the game once most content fits well and is put to good use, and most performance/anti-cheat/bug problems are ironed out.




    TL : DR – Dear devs, stop being out of touch with the game and start playing it. If you’re adding changes, don’t try to push them out of the 3-month schedule ASAP, work on them. You can’t build update hype for the game forever, it needs to be backed up by good updates and actual progress!
    You’ve already added a lot of stuff, now fix most of it.
    • Up x 5
  6. Johannes Kaiser

    Goodness, you have taken a LOT of time and effort here. And while I do not agree with every singe point you make (with most of them, though) that alone merits likes on all posts. :)

    I'd add one thing to PMBs: make AI modules detect and target enemies at longer ranges and give the turrets increased resistance to tank shells as well as a slight increase in heat capacity. This has been requested in other threads and it would make just casually deleting bases with 2 tanks significantly more difficult. No more "30 min to build, 3 min to tear down" crap!
    • Up x 2
  7. JustGotSuspended


    As they say in French, DBG is a master at "brasser de l'air". Basically, they wave their arms around hoping to attract attention and their efforts amount to very little past helping air circulate around them; not very useful or successful in producing observable results. It's not hard to see past the illusion that nothing is being done, and there's a complete lack of direction and mismanagement.

    And this isn't particular to DBG or RPG. An overwhelming majority of companies collapse due to the complete lack cohesion with their brand image. Much is done to give people the illusion that something is being done, but an illusion of achievement is but a mere illusion, and what remains is wasted resources for a lack of [positive] results.

    Let's examine customer service for example. Many companies pride themselves on communicating with their "valued customers" and listening to feedback. DBG is like this. However, any comment remotely surpassing the complexity of a 1rst grader's sentence is completely discarded. If your input is greater that 3 words that stray outside of 'good product'/'bad product', you can generally save your efforts and avoiding commenting altogether. You see, many companies aren't ready/willing to receive the feedback they ask for. These [dev] abandoned forums are a formidable example. Ironically, DBG is overwhelmed and can't handle the feedback they receive. They simply ask for feedback - which they get in return - and then are forced to ignore it, because they aren't really sure what they want from the feedback. That's why unless you're a popular youtuber, you'll never see your suggestion read or replied to by a dev, because the devs themselves aren't sure what they expect from your feedback, because they don't have a concrete objective to reference it with.

    Most companies are like this. They don't know what they are looking for from the feedback, and therefore chose the path of simplicity, going with the flow and remaining completely oblivious to uniqueness. It's why many companies don't seem to think, as they basically robots, who believe they are dealing with robots. That's why when you deal with customer service they tend to send you the same copy/paste responses that have nothing to do with your issue. It's also why people flock to companies that show the slightest bit of humane treatment to their customers. Take Emirates for example, one of the most successful aviation companies that's barely 30 years old. You'll notice you actually get a decent seat, meal, treatment and more - even if you're just in economy! Try a majority of the other airlines like air Canada or KLM for example, and you'll see animals treated better than you if you booked anything below first class. But these airline companies will continue their toxic measures, while advertising their immense care for their customers, and wonder why all their potential customers flock to Emirates or Cathay Pacific (where economy is practically first class compared to other companies) instead.

    It's a bit of a tangent, but I hope it gives you a bit of background for why DBG is doing what they do, and that they aren't the only ones who act with such disregard to everything around them.

    Now there's a ton of issues that have been voiced, and there still seems to be the devs on one side, while the community laments on the other. People are so passionate about this game because there is nothing like it, and as soon as a company creates a similar game with lightly better community treatment, this game's community will migrate (a lot have migrated to different games, but there's still nothing like Planetside, which is why a few players still cling on to it despite the complete chaos it is).

    Again, it's a bit overwhelming for devs to be faced with people like us, who will write entire essays, diagrams, code, etc of feedback, in hopes of improving the game. I would say the best thing to do would be to revive these forums, and let the community upvote which threads should be implemented/looked at by them, and maybe even post surveys in game (like they used to!) or on the forums to get controlled player feedback that they require. Letting people write what they want is going to be painstaking for such a small company to analyze. Instead giving people a predefined survey with simple answer questions could help the devs come to a consensus about things that should be done. Little rewards can be given for taking the surveys (like they did in SOE days), but I'm sure the community would take the surveys regardless, glad that their input is valued.

    Before these surveys, or requesting community feedback, the company needs a serious reflection of their goal. The endgoal, is to make money, of course. How they will do so is the question. They aren't sure themselves, which is why we hear of Planetside 3, planeside arena, the release/cancellation of Oshur, campaigns, weird updates no one asked for, outfit wars, etc. Because of a lack of a clear, defined objective, the devs release everything and nothing, amounting to community frustrations, and a worsened/identical state of the game. This is why, before anything can continue, the company should plan out it's vision. They can use the community surveys to help them define that vision, but they shouldn't be asking concrete input for specific suggestions and in-game improvements until that visions is clearly defined.

    Ideally, the devs will focus on the 20% of things that bring 80% of players. At it's core, people are/were attracted to the game for it's large scale, combined armed aspect, that is as close as anyone can get to the chaos of war. We often forget this, but a majority of players who stick around do so in hopes of reliving that one epic battle, that one epic moment that made them appreciate planetside's unique scale. Ensuring players smooth, large-scale fights should be a priority. It is with that base that the devs can then add the bits of progression, mechanics, and whatever details that come together to complete/enhance this large-scale, combined armed experience.

    Now that we have an objective clearly defined, the game can then start to plan out it's route to achieve that objective. It can use player input if necessary, but it should set a clear path to reach that endgoal, without straying away from it. Everyone in the company should be aware of that which defines their brand image, which is what makes them unique and competitive against other companies. By focusing on delivering the absolute best large-scale combined arms game, Planetside is defining itself, it's vision, and will attract players who will invest in it. Honestly, with the endgoal defined, it would be easy to builds planetside from scratch and focus on streamlining the components that make the game's strengths. Improving servers, performance, etc that can allow players to experience huge fights in fun conditions would bring back much more players than adding giant vehicles only a handful of players will ever have access to.

    At the moment, no one knows what Planetside's objectives are, much less what the endgoal is. Everything is done secretly, conflicts with past patches and nothing is revealed to the players until updates hit live, because the devs can't communicate what they are doing - they themselves are unsure. It's why every update has been as worse as the last, and the game is basically just running around in circles.

    The problem is, we have already suggested many similar things to what you mention. The devs aren't ready to hear it, and they won't be until they finally reflect upon what goal they are trying to reach. Hopefully this will be sooner than later, before the game inevitably dies. The devs do not read the forums, nor do they listen to community feedback, aside from the 3-4 big youtubers. I'm sorry to reveal to you that your efforts posting this thread here have been to waste, much like the other millions of threads that disappear into the nether of these community fed forums. I would say next time try reddit, because occasionally the devs check the official reddit.
    • Up x 4
  8. RabidIBM

    Ok, I have to throw something out to the community here: I have no idea how to get the devs to actually take notice of something, but this guy deserves it. We have to get this guy noticed, how do we do it?
    • Up x 3
  9. DrostenVS

    I don't really agree with a lot of those ideas and I think other ones would require more funding and developers to implement.

    I really don't like the idea of TTK being lowered. This is the future and we have shields, after all. If the TTK was lowered further, I'd expect the game to scare off new players even more than it already does and unless friendly fire was also removed along with that change, good luck to the NC. I'm thinking this is more of a "It sounds good to me, so it must be a good idea" situation and not one that you've considered thoroughly. Although it looks like a bunch of your ideas follow that logic.

    I'd spend a bit more time looking at them from the opposite perspective. Consider what could go wrong with each idea and also whether the developers have the funding, time, and ability (enough developers available) to implement them. Sometimes, when you spend time considering the issues that could arise from changing or creating something, you'll realize that the original idea may not work because it would create new issues that would now also need to be solved.

    In the case of new content, the ideas may sound great, but you also need to understand how development works and the costs/time involved that would make certain ideas (for example, your section on environmental effects for the different continents) unviable for a game that isn't as wildly popular as some other games. If this game was bringing in hundreds of millions a year, there would already be a PlanetSide 3 in the works (or finished a long time ago) or there would at least be more continents introduced to fight over and more content overall. I know that I would have loved to see Searhus with its volcano make it into PlanetSide 2.
  10. ican'taim

    Agree with everything except the metagame part.

    Arbitrary alerts are the last thing the game needs. Sure, they're good for the short term, but then what? End of the day it still feels kinda pointless. This is why we need Oshur, Intercontinental lattice, and faction specific sanctuaries. (NS sanctuary can stay for NSO and a starting point for Campaign)

    These sanctuaries only have two warpgates, one is hard-linked to a continent, the other is a "broadcast" warpgate, in where you can travel to any warpgate that has a lattice link with a major facility. However, all warpgates on the "normal" continents are hard-linked to each other.

    "Cool, but what does this have to do with anything?"

    I'm about to get to that, be patent!

    In these sanctuaries, there is a "master console" (NOT a control point). This controls all bases linked to your empire, and is a lore reason to how base capturing works. If this control console is hacked...game over! However you'll need to either:
    • Control the warpgate that is hard-linked to the opposing faction's sanctuary. The time to hack the terminal is 30 seconds... and is right next to the spawn rooms that have a fixed 2 second respawn time. Compare that with your 15 seconds to spawn in a router!
    • Obtain a Remote Electronics Kit from your Sanctuary. You CANNOT use the broadcast warpgate to travel, or the REK will lose it's effectiveness! The time to hack is one minute. Think you can sneak in with your stalker cloak skills? Think again! You're exposed for a full minute and you are perpetually spotted, so the entire enemy faction knows your every move!
  11. JustGotSuspended



    uhhhhhh

    twitter?
    reddit?
    youtube?

    all viable options if you're friends with wrel and have 10k subs
  12. JustGotSuspended



    you seem worried that having a polished game requires time, funding and dev resources.

    Here's the thing: much of the content already exists, Oshur is already built, there's tons of stuff the even date back to SOE days.

    The devs do have the team and resources to dedicate to such updates. Really, they're already added PLANETSIDE ARENA, desolation, revamped continents, added bastions, colossus, campaign, PS4 content....they even implemented the construction system when the team was in worse shape than now.

    It's not that the team isn't big enough, nor about funding and resources. It's just that they aren't sure where to allocate those resources.

    That's why we end up with a bit of development here, a little there, and a bit more there, with nothing actually getting done. The devs are working quickly on too many things, because they don't have a list of priorities set.

    If they really sat down and made a plan, they would know what issues to tackle, and when. It's why I think they should release a timeline, that way the community can help validate if those objectives are met.

    If the team wanted to, they could focus on fixing all the bugs, then move on to the battleflow issues, then add Oshur, then add a proper campaign, then add more weapons.... It's just that since they are trying to do everything at once, they end up doing nothing. Sure, the team isn't massive nor does it have billions to spend, but they do have a sizeable team and a decent budget, enough to accomplish anything, all that changes is the amount of time required to do something.

    The revenue from Planetside 2 has been mismanaged, but it's clear since Planetside arena and H1Z1 died that it's DBG's best bet from stable revenue. That's why they are hiring more devs, there's more resources allotted to the team and we've seen a lot more content recently (albeit pretty trash and unpolished).

    Don't worry about the dev team and their resources, they have enough to do what needs to be done. The problem is that they aren't sure what they are doing, therefore they rush to create unwanted content, while stalling on fixing the foundations of the game. It's more an issue with mismanagement and lack of adequate planning than anything else. The devs overwhelm themselves with silly tasks, and they basically throw their time and resources out the window, like with PSA, aux turrets, OW, and whatever other updates they release only to remove a few patches afterwards.
  13. DrostenVS

    PlanetSide Arena was most likely an idea from the top because of Fortnight and Apex Legends. The owners want to make money and those two games were making money, so why not make one too and see if it takes off? Aux turrets probably took very little to implement and remove since they weren't building an entirely new model with new behaviors/effects. Outfit Wars is not a terrible idea, in my opinion. It gives outfits the opportunity to prove their skill and may actually encourage more tactical gameplay in the game overall. As far as I can tell Outfit Wars isn't being removed either.

    I don't think either one of us knows what resources the developers have and how much input from the top shapes what they do. Environmental effects, like the post I was referring to mentioned, are not easy to implement and balance. They also need to consider performance as well and there's already issues in larger fights as it stands right now. I also can't speak on Oshur because I don't know how much was completed because I can only find old info about them working on it in 2018 (was still in early development from the videos that I saw). As far as I can tell, there is nothing that says that the continent was completed, so I'm not sure if you have some insider info or if you're making an assumption.

    The Shattered Warpgate is not a bad update, in my opinion. Sure, there are bugs, but it's something entirely new so I'll let it slide as long as they fix the bugs and we see less of them as they get better at it.

    The update also allowed them to finally move the NE warpgate and get rid of the biolabs to have Esamir be the vehicle continent that it always should have been. Aircraft do have a bit of an advantage, but the lack of cover makes anti-air more effective. Hossin is already the infantry continent, Amerish is one of the better ones for aircraft (lots of large rock formations to hide behind), and Indar is all three. The changes to Esamir also allowed them to test a continent with fewer bases and more vehicle capture points. I could see them keeping an eye on whether players are constructing bases on those points and how successful those bases are (at least I hope they are). As for the update overall, I welcome the lore and am not bothered by the storm. It can be a lot of fun to fight in if people don't just give up when it rolls in.

    As a final note, I really love that they added in vehicle and aircraft reclamation on Esamir. Reclaiming Vanguards with the neutralizer device is great for me because they are just big lightnings and I like driving lightnings. I also don't have to switch to NC to drive them, which makes it even better. To be honest, I really want the reclaiming vehicles/aircraft aspect to remain on Esamir. It just fits and it's fun. (That's what she said.)
  14. JustGotSuspended


    From what I recall they only had a few bases and some terrain features to polish. Many of the features that are in the shatered warpgate resemble Oshur assets. That aside, all you've shown in your reply is that the devs DO have resources and the team to do stuff.


    Also there are open job offers at RPG, or at least there were not long ago, go check their linked-in.


    The rest of your post is just an opinion about their update(s) which is....cool? but not really relevant to this thread.


    If you analyze the numbers, you'll see that while we're glad you liked the update, the population numbers are pretty bad, even worse than before. Conclusion: nothing was accomplished, or what was is detrimental to the game. That goes back to the point, the devs have a team and resources, just not channeled correctly.
  15. DrostenVS


    I gave my own opinion because you talked about content being added only to be removed soon after and there's currently this negativity surrounding The Shattered Warpgate update that is entirely overblown and seems to be more of a "This thing annoyed me and that person is also annoyed, so it must be bad" situation. It's become a bit of an echo chamber and I wanted to show that some of us enjoy the new content. If complaints are the only thing people hear because the unbothered/happy people remain silent, it creates a situation where little personal annoyances become amplified by a few and then more hop on because it annoyed them one time and then pretty soon the entire perception of something is shifted because the complaints are all you hear. Even if the logic is flawed and only based on the personal opinion of someone who will refuse to change their mind no matter what, those vocal complaints were louder than anything else, so people thought it must be true.
    • Up x 1
  16. JustGotSuspended



    There's tons of content that has been added/worked on, only to be scrapped a bit later, or completely left unfinished. HIVEs, Koltyr, Desolation, Hossin, battle islands, Oshur, the tutorial etc. Really, if you've played the game, you'll recall there's an infinite list of things the devs push out despite community cries only to reel them back or leave them completely forgotten/unfinished. That's not personal opinion, that's factual. Attempting to say otherwise would amount to the same as denying the existence of air.

    I didn't mention the shattered warpgate in particular, it's just another trash patch in an ocean of trash updates. There's numerous reasons why it sucks, which have already been discussed in detail, and can be discussed again at your discretion in other threads. The main reason these patches suck is simple: each time they are added, the player population spikes. problem is, the population is quickly disappointed and numbers return to normal, or worse than normal soon after. And after being disappointed once, or more than once, it's harder to get these players back. That's why this "insane patch" that is the shattered warpgate barely brought half the players that escalation did. And the few players it brought back are...already leaving. We're glad one or two wrel worshippers have been pleased, but overall the patch was detrimental to the game, my personal thoughts aside.

    https://ps2.fisu.pw/population/
  17. UberNoob1337101

    Understandable. Some suggestions are unrealistic.


    Fair point, although I should've defined the "what" & "why" of the faster TTK change (post too long, kept hitting the word limit, didn't want to bore ppl with walls of dense text).

    Looking back at it, I did word it poorly :confused:.





    About infantry, I wanted to effectively shorten the TTK by improving animations, removing Nanoweave Armor and buffing a few weapons. I feel like it's mostly "just right" as it is, but needs extra polish and slight balancing changes.

    For anti-vehicle and vehicle combat, it was simply buffing a lot of weapons, thus shortenting TTK, with an occasional caveat.


    Now, an explanation of "why" :
    Nanoweave, at least in my opinion, devalues bodyshots a bit too much. Vets land headshots a lot more compared to noobs (some getting >40% HSR and even >50% HSR). As weird as it sounds, effectively increasing the power of bodyshots by removing Nanoweave would give noobs a better chance, because when they do hit they'll do more damage on average. It also messes with some damage types a bit too much.

    Better animations because they look silly at times. Crouching should have an extra frame or two, right now it's instant unless it's spammed. Rapid strafing looks ridiculous and is very poorly displayed to the observing players when done right.

    Some small arms aren't very good so I wanted them buffed.



    I think that it won't benefit only new players, but all players in general, and doesn't reduce TTK by a lot.




    For vehicles, they feel way too spongy. Especially aircraft versus AA. Flak has very low DPS versus aircraft, lock-on launchers take too long to achieve too little. Air versus Air works well, but then you're most likely fighting as a new player versus pilots with years of experience under their belt. New players can't do anything here. Two passable options are Skyguard, which needs a 875 certs for the gun and a lot more for kitting out the tank, and Burster MAX which needs 1000 certs for an extra arm and 1000 certs to put extended mags in both Burster Flak arms. Not economical and arguably not very effective.

    Ever since the Combined Arms Initiative update, ground vehicles are very tanky versus infantry AV, but they also don't do a whole lot against infantry. I don't feel powerful in a tank, Sunderers usually can't defend themselves with their armament because of bad gun angles and nerfed weapons, I don't feel like I make a difference with rocket launchers unless I pepper the target with 5+ missiles. Rocklet rifle is only useful to steal vehicle kills and finish off burning Sunderers with 2 C4. Ever since AV MANA turret got nerfed very few players use it.

    This is why I just put "revert CAI" and didn't go into a lot of details here, with the exception of Harasser/Galaxy rebalancing and some additions to MBTs. It had increased TTK (what ppl tend to see as a "noob-friendly" change), but in reality it only changed vehicle and infantry-vehicle balance for the worse, made most affected weapons feel weak and 15-20% of the playerbase left. It also made Harassers very powerful - for the wrong reasons.



    The goal here was not only to make everything more powerful and viable, but also enhance the experience of using said weapons. Nothing's worse in an FPS than feeling like you're shooting enemies with nerf guns, and that might be the first impression of new players.




    On new players, I don't see how these would make it worse for them. Most new players don't move very well, don't aim very well and will inevitably be killed (and sadly, usually farmed) by vets. I don't see how making (some) weapons better makes it worse for them.

    Almost no ISO-4 rewards is an issue that impacts everyone, it just impacts new players more because they have none in reserve. So are bad weapons, but they will inevitably impact newbs more because they don't know what's good and what's bad yet. The only real exclusive NPE problem I can think of is that Construction and Vehicles are too expensive in terms of certs.

    My point being, we're at a point where I think that New Player Experience can just be called Player Experience. Most every game issue impacts everyone, and it'll impact newcomers more.
    I'm not sure what section this refers to (I can't blame you, lol).

    I definitely did put a lot of emphasis on the rule of cool and weapon feel in my weapon/implant suggestions, while also giving balance suggestions. I do think that weapon feel has a lot of importance alongside weapon balance.

    About the construction section, it's nothing but construction buffs since PMBs always hit a new low every 2 updates. It's really unfun to play, and the only niche PMBs have are routers and free vehicle spawns.

    Metagame, aside from base revamps, was bound to be the worst section simply because it was something I spent the least time doing in-game. I mostly play for fun and saw alerts as a means to get more XP and have more fun, so I wanted to mix things up with new alert types and changes in continent layouts. This was definitely the "this sounds cool" section.

    A really good compromise would be to swap out different versions of each map every continent lock.

    Esamir for example, has 3 variants - the Original Esamir (the one with Commander's Rest and some other bases), the pre-SW Esamir, and the SW Esamir.



    The environmental changes section is over the top, but I'd be completely fine if we only got a dust storm visual effect on Indar or monsoon rain on Hossin. A little extra to make the continents feel like a real place and less like giant battle arenas.

    Agreed. While I believe most ppl have their own reasons to dislike this update, I think most of the negative reactions were bolstered by update hype and disappointment.


    I looked forward to it and was disappointed as well, but looking at the bright side, almost every major change didn't affect everyday play, on the contrary, the Harasser/Lightning price change and minor flak buffs were positive changes that apply everywhere.

    That said, the hype was short-lived, and we're back to normal. I just want to see the playerbase grow after one update.
    • Up x 1
  18. JustGotSuspended


    Honestly I would take a different approach to this. Clientside and headshots can cause people to die super quickly, while at other times some players may seem to have infinite health. At times I land quad headshots on a dude who misses nearly all his shots yet still manages to trade kills with me. Other times a poor guy shoots at me and I turn around and murder him without even losing my shields. Lowering ttk even a bit I feel would amplify these problems. Sure, we could have ping restrictions, upgrade server hardware/performance and all, but I still think the ttk shouldn't be lowered.

    I would keep nanoeweave, however I would either remove or drastically reduce the headshot multiplier. Skilled players would still be rewarded with implants, a slightly faster ttk by bypassing symbiote/nanoweave, and maybe more benefits that don't directly impact an engagement could be rewarded for headshots. Don't get me wrong - I love the ability to 1-2hk people with the commissioner or collect rage tells for murdering people with headshots. But overall I think it's not the best thing for the game, and I would be more challenged if the headshot multiplier was at least reduced.

    I agree with reverting CIA and adding ISO, or decreasing prices revolving around that system.

    I feel the devs have the resources to finish or even develop new continents if they want to, as they've proved with all their new content. I would love to see Hossin finally completed, the new Esamir reverted, and I have to say I actually liked the OG indar map better with abandoned NS offices and Broken arch road. Seriously, the devs have the resources to do cool things, but in general the new content feels uninteresting, poorly implemented and boring. Would be nice if they spend more time making better revamps, well thought out changes. Instead devs waste resources. I agree, just bringing back the old maps would be better.

    And I made a special thread for the last point.
  19. UberNoob1337101

    I'll have to bump this. Sorry for the necro.
    • Up x 2
  20. T.A.94

    That NSO MBT bug is nothing in comparison of the other things you can do with it.