What would happen if shields on Infantry got removed, just standard HP, with a buff

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by karlooo, Oct 4, 2022.

  1. karlooo

    What's the purpose of the shields that we have right now? It protects you from getting harassed, from getting your HP chipped off incrementally. So basically to make any difference you have to get in the enemies face and unload direct hits, like 10 bullets into them or else you essentially did nothing.
    But if you didn't have that shield anymore, it would allow for different strategies, open up something new.... So, what would happen if the shield got removed and infantry received an extra 1k HP so they would have 3k HP (And change nothing else to see the outcome)?

    The current gameplay is all about accuracy. And you may say that that is good as it rewards the players skill but I rly wouldn't simplify it to one element. There are more factors to skill, like practice, equipment and mentality.
    Practice - The amount of time you repeat the task.
    Equipment - Ranging from PC equipment to in game settings, equipment, upgrades.
    Mentality - The type of person.

    I was playing NC recently with almost everything default and for 5 minutes straight we were getting mowed down by VS. More than half of my teammates were new, but not terrible, they knew how to play the game. And on the other hand the VS players had high level characters.
    The VS players obviously had a lot of practice based on the weapon attachments and their playstyle.
    Equipment, maxed out implants, ASP, upgrades, armed with favorite weapons; yellow dot sight indicating they are trying to gain some sort of advantage, so for sure they as well altered their graphics settings to gain visual advantages. Mentality, for sure they took it seriously, may have put some effort into their PC setup as well (I don't even have a mouse pad lol)

    The NC players were skilled. They knew how to position themselves, knew how to accurately fire and play their class correctly but they didn't have the practice. They may have been looking for some class or role they enjoy and could specialize in, as they don't have the currency to buy everything. No Implants and no ASP.

    What I am trying to say is that the game doesn't really reward skill but more so, bias towards a certain audience.

    Here is a better symbolic example the devs have always missed... There have been many players on TR that requested a 200 damage weapon, even directly to the devs, I remember a request like that during some event I forgot what was it even about but I remember some outfits had a chance to give a suggestions to the devs but they declined that specific request.
    Basically what this is saying, that 200 dmg weapon request for TR, is not that the person actually wants a weapon like that but they are indirectly saying that there are people like them who don't rly have the mentality, don't enjoy getting forced into a face to face duel where the one with the best accuracy wins. And instead would just like to fire a big gun that deals damage, that simple.

    And if you removed the shield than that would be possible. It would open up room for different types of people with different mentalities. You would have the ones that like to duel close range and there would be others who just like shooting bullets and chipping off HP from their opponents. In League of Legends it's called poking.
  2. Somentine

    The purpose of shields is to stop exactly what you are suggesting, and what you suggest sounds pretty questionable and incredibly game changing.

    A real problem is how strong Medic's revive is with the current revive mechanics. Buff the HPS of healing tool but add heat, add a CD to revive, and allow revived players to be shot when in the waiting state that completely removes the body if they die in that state or within a few seconds.

    With that, the damage you deal actually matters and you don't get competitivePlanetSide.gif, and medics healing tool can actually be powerful.
  3. karlooo

    If I were the dev I would actually rename the infantry classes, like the combat medic to something else. Combat medic is a deceiving name. It is pretty much the standard infantry class, a rifleman class, equipped with a standard combat kit for that time... It's a pretty advanced time. A medical applicator that heals wounds why wouldn't this be given to everyone? It doesn't require much training.

    The riflemen would be the one who shapes the battle formation because of the healing if we had only regular HP....We would see the true potential of this class, and it would finally get nerfed because it's op as hell lol, like with your suggestions.
  4. OneShadowWarrior

    How about no….
  5. Mechwolf

    I'll list off some strategy changes.

    1. Longer ranged engagements
    People would definitely be trying for that "maybe" kill at longer ranges, as well as whittling opponents at further ranges to slow them down or even stop them in cover.

    2. Medics already have kill priority among skilled players, NOW they'd be public enemy no.1 always.

    3. Heal items would be essential on every class, always. It should probably just have it's own slot, and not be certed into because it would be a pay to win mechanic.

    4. the quick-heal stims would be the only choice if it still full-healed.

    5. Close quarter fights would definitely favor the team that pre-fired all their shots, and given the abundance of ammunition, pre-firing would quickly become the meta.

    6. If you weren't a medic, it would make more sense to use you as bait to farm medics, than rush you behind cover.
    • Up x 2
  6. Liewec123

    As others have said, medic would become the new HA,
    Is already competitive enough with carapace

    Also with medic being the new meta, point fights would be even more ridiculous than they already are,
    Endless rez nade spam.
    • Up x 1
  7. karlooo

    Yes that is the point. The medic would become the standard infantry soldier class.... It would ultimately need to be renamed and nerfed and reworked, which would be good cause our medic class is annoying anyways... And same could be done for the other classes, this would open up room for new ideas, a game changer.
  8. Mechwolf

    The shield for me holds significant importance when it comes to the "futuristic game" trope.

    But I also really like manual healing, I think this would be sweeping the rug from many existing players and taking shields out entirely (not as hard as the EOC update from Runescape), could be enough to where about maybe 1/5th of the playerbase couldn't take the change and quit.

    But let's "Planetside 3" this post, just speculate as to what could be added to a future game.

    So maybe instead of getting rid of shields entirely, we just add an extra layer of health to the game, 500 health, 500 Armor, 500 shields, and for however they add the heavy variant, 750 overshield.

    So let's say for a second, Planetside 3 starts off with a loot system similar to Planetside Arena (I never played Planetside Arena, just possibly saving devs some time). And within this loot system there would exist armor slots, some grenade variants, and maybe a similar loot system to Planetside 1's gun pickups, and maybe some stronger guns that you have to unlock in contested territories that can't restock ammunition... getting off topic.

    But with armor slots where you have to manually heal, engineers and medics could carry reserve armor slots you could drop for teammates, and maybe a similar implant system, changing your health pool to "80% shield, 80% armor, or 100% health"

    There could be ammunition changes to reflect different resistances, armor having a natural 20% resistance to small arms, but -20% to armor piercing rounds. Shields could have a -20% resistance to EMP rounds. I'm just spitballing when it comes to how all the math would work, but this would incentivise sticking together to mix ammunition types which... could technically improve cohesion.

    If you've noticed, in games with higher health pools, the meta becomes to stick together more often, which in games like this, could have a natural effect on how large scale battles work. Not to mention gives each player more durability, which makes them feel and technically be more useful on the battlefield per engagement.
  9. Demigan

    Yes, I too have learned how to smell the BR of my allies as they pass. Its an easy skill to master once you know how. This lets you make anecdotes about the BR of your allies!


    That aside, horrible idea. Imagine that any player has to find a medic after every. Single. Engagement. You are basically saying "hey everybody, the MAX gameplay of looking for someone else to heal you up is great! Lets have more of that!"

    What would this do? More power to Zergs where Medics are more easily available, less power to people going off the beaten path where Medics are less prevalent or not there at all. More power to cheap HE and other AOE weapon tactics. More people doing a waiting game rather than fighting game as they wait for healing.

    Screw that.
    • Up x 1
  10. Mechwolf

    I'm curious to what you'd think about a 3rd (middle) layer of armor
  11. Demigan

    The armor&ammo system doesnt seem that good to me, mainly the ammo.

    You cannot prepare for what armor/shield your enemy is wearing. You only know what they have once the engagement is over. Even if you can visually see what armor/shield they are wearing you still have one ammo choice and you might be screwed over for the simple reason of "I didnt bring the right ammo". You could argue "let people switch instantly to different ammo types" but that would still mean people can be screwed over (or given an unfair advantage) at the start of the engagement by something they could not predict.

    The extra cohesion would basically mean "zerg it" while no one needs to change their gameplay since even with a perfect mix of AP/EMP both AP and EMP users would still benefit from firing as they always did. Unless the wrong bullet choice means you can barely kill the opponent you would not need to hide away, but if you are screwed by the wrong bullet choice then you get gameplay where there is a chance you die to something you had no way of preparing for as its pure luck what your enemy is wearing.
  12. Mechwolf


    Yes, however even when they had the 20% damage reduction on nanoweave armor, THAT was for all of your shields as well as your health, and I could still outplay nanoweave. I've hardly switched off of advanced shield capacitor and refuse to do so for most fights, I like my uptime more than resistances.

    ...I also should have mentioned a variant that does more damage to just HP as well, although that was probably implied.
  13. Demigan

    Okay lets put it like this: what would it add to the game?

    Every infantry fight you do would basically be a 1/3rd chance of you having an advantage, no advantage or disadvantage without a way to prepare for it. The size of the difference just changes how much that random chance impacts the fight, ranging from "it barely changed the fight" to "I won/died/nothing changed because of it".

    I dont see it adding something useful or engaging for the players.
  14. Demigan

    @Mechwolf. Thinking about it some more, to make sure your system adds something you would need some way to make the choice matter for the player. So how about this:

    You can change your armor/shield/health choice any time quickly (maybe a radial menu?). After you do there is a 3* second cooldown before you can switch again.
    You can change your ammo type any time quickly, after you do there is a 3* second cooldown.

    When hitting an enemy, you get clear visual&sound feedback of what the enemy has active at that moment so you can switch.
    You have clear visual&sound feedback of what you are shooting.

    This would let players actively swap to try and get an advantage over the opponent. The problems would be both mechanical and balance related: the switching needs to be done almost instantly or in many closer ranged fights there's just no chance to make a meaningful choice (so how do you mechanically pick one quick enough) and the balance will likely be very narrow making the system either too influential (if at a disadvantage you are dead before you can make a choice) or not influential enough (why bother wasting brainpower to switch, just hit the bastard!). You need to hit the sweet spot inbetween where it gives you enough resistances to be a meaningful choice but not enough resistances to let the choice dominate the entire battle.

    *numbers are just randomly chosen.
  15. Mechwolf


    This could also add a step-up for recon spotting, letting your team know what armors they're using prior to engagement, and the ability to switch accordingly before fighting.

    Just the ability to switch ammo types could be implemented without switching armors, probably save the devs a headache too.

    Maybe adding underwater ammo types could benefit from this too, I'd put it a maximum of 2 different kinds of ammo types at a time...

    20% is NOT a game changing amount btw, it's like a 1 shot difference per health pool, and only benefits people who engage 1 at a time, the only people who could potentially benefit heavy would be the people who put in implants, so they'd have a 2-3 shot advantage against ammo types.

    There are plenty of other games that have a "random chance" of fighting somebody with a higher health pool btw, and it feels much more rewarding when you beat them. Technically this game already has it, in the form of Heavy Assault.
  16. AntDX316

    You wasted your time posting that. There is a carapace implant that does just that. People use it on Medic to self-heal. The way they have it with half shields half HP is how to do it. Medics and Base health regeneration modules are supposed to regenerate that.
    https://planetside.fandom.com/wiki/Implants/Carapace
  17. Botji

    Yeah going to have to put my vote on the "I dont really see how this would change anything for the better."

    Its not like the current system with health/shield is somehow causing issues that needs to be fixed. I would even go so far to say that the 'problem' of the game rewarding skill and experience is the one thing that has kept the game alive until now, through the good and the very bad times.

    If the game did not reward personal skill and experience the meme of PS2 being a dead game would be true because why the hell would anyone play this if that was not the case?

    The dream that removing shields and increasing health would somehow make chip damage viable isnt really based on anything than a guess/hope. The reality is much more probable to be that chip damage would be completely pointless, even more than now(shield takes a bit to recharge), as everyone would be Medic and thus able to negate any chip damage taken.

    Even if literally not everyone played Medic there would still be enough of them around that the lone HA peeking out from cover would still have half a dozen medics just beaming/AoE health into him as if they were Engineers repairing a MAX.

    Just imagine you are fighting a Carapace Medic in the current game, how effective would chip damage be against them?
    Completely pointless.