"WAR FOR WAR SAKE"

What was the point of BF1942/BF2 again? Fighting on the SAME SMALL MAPS for 5+ yrs??

It's not a matter of stats, it's a matter of having a goal and a closure. Give a player creative tools and no particular goal and you have a sandbox like minecraft - but this isn't that type of game. The only creative activity we can do is arrange Vanu bodies to spell out profanity when seen from the air. (edit: or into a phallic shape)

Open sandboxes work in games where there's lots of creative and expressive tools - like Eve Online. Naturally the depth of that game is way beyond PS2, which is a focused core shooter. The game mechanics are very limited and limiting compared to general sandbox games in terms of types ofplayer interaction and leaving a lasting mark, however unlike games that follow the standard FPS flow of gameplay, the game itself has no particular goal to reach and little depth to explore. Here's your gun, shoot the guys with the other uniform, have fun.

Most gamers are familiar with the Bartle test - it's a theory on player motivations and lists 4 basic types of players who want different things from a game. What type of player you are depends on what person you are.



PS2 currently caters almost exclusively to killers..

The other element is closure. FPS games always had an element of closure imposed by the game mechanic itself - a game over screen rating player performance compared to others. It sums up and closes the activity of playing the game. It provides a neat end to the match. This is when players are most likely to leave the match. Even though stats are tracked regardless of when a player quits, players quit the game the most during the scoreboard, not during the game.

It's because the match formula provides a very neat emotional rollercoaster that most people enjoy. I'll use BF3 as an example, but this applies to every other match-based game as well.

- Warmup (exposition) - the players arrange themselves, choose classes, go to their positions, start capping nearby bases or whatnot. No enemy contact.
- Regular action (rising action) - the players continue fighting for the goal
- Endgame (climax) - the victory condition is near, tension rises, all players start pushing harder or rushing
- End game (resolution) - players are rated, winning side is rewarded with a message

This corresponds to the structure of a novel, with rising action followed by a climax and resolution. We like that model the best. It prevents the http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Zeigarnik_Effect, our minds mark the task as complete and resolved.

PS2 has no closure. Unlike FPS games there is no "match over" event. Unlike massive sandbox MMOs there is no player-driven closure either. The world of PS2 is volatile, bases and continents change colors like traffic lights. Even the continent capture - a significant occasion for players - has all the excitement and fanfare of an excel spreadsheet. A message changes on the map screen. It's a constant, never-ending grind.

Typed from my mom's basement and I refuse to bathe.

When you cap a continent it should lock it from the other factions for a certain amount of time. In that amount of time you would have to take over the other continents. When you capture them all, all the people on that empire would get a ton of xp. Not only would this give you and bigger incentive it would also slowly funnel all people till huge battles are taking place on the last continent.

I'll agree that PS 2 has no closure or match over event. The nearest event is the popup that comes up when you cap a biolab or something. Would you really want something like that in PS 2 however?

Picture this. Everyone spawn at the warp gate. Ok guys, lets go get XYZ Biolab. Everyone gets their classes, tanks, aircraft whatever. We head out and after a long battle take the base. The second it becomes ours, we get a huge screen that says CONGRATS and here are your stats. Now everyone respawns instantly back at your warpgate. Remember it's "match over and closure" you want. Now you can hang around the warp gate, spend some certs, brag about your stats, do whatever. Pretty much the same as you do in other FPS games. Match ends, and you play with your classes, check your stats and trash talk the lobby.

This is whats done in most of the other FPS games. If you want things like that, then go play other fps games. Go play CoD, play a 10 mins match, get your hey it's over well done congrats, check your stats. Then go play the same stupid tiny little map again, against the same 6 people you just played and have fun. If your playing PS 2 and you take my Biolab and want to take a few victory laps and talk about how many headshots your had or your kdr, be my guest. I'll be out taking a couple of your other bases, or busy wrecking the generators so I can have my lab back.

This is a fast paced never ending game. I'm sorry you feel the need for closure, but you not going to find it here. I'm not trying to be rude or sarcastic, sorry if it comes across that way. But here in PS 2 your reward for a long hard fought skin of your teeth victory is that you get to mount up and head right back into battle. If you wanna chill out in the Biolab after taking it from me and check your stats or whatever, cool with me. But don't be surprised if my knife finds your back while your off in "closure" land. I'm sneaking around and I want my base back.

For now I'd settle for a chart for displaying how many times each factions capped an entire continent or all three.

PS2 isn't Quake Arena and the formula for properly handling the endgame, metagame and pacing will be appropriately different.

Again, this isn't Q3A and the formula is different. The question you need to ask is what constitutes a victory in PS2, what is the functional equivalent of winning a match. If you're saying it's winning a biolab fight, which is wrong, you get a stupid result, like yours.

Frankly we don't really have a good answer to that yet, it's pretty much a placeholder. PS2 is currently the equivalent of a neverending q3 match.

This is another problem - bases are not defensible. You need an equal number of defenders, sometimes greater, to effectively defend a facility. This contributes to the arcade-y feel of the game. SOE is terrified of experimenting with map design.

So whats the problem with just fixing the scoreboard so it actually works? What's the problem with making the leaderboard work again? What's with everyone telling me score doesn't matter?

If it doesn't matter why is it there at all? Why aren't there statistics about which factions / outfits captured the most hexes / continents? Why can't we see that info? Why can't we see cumulative resource gain next to that, to compare total resource gain between factions over X amount of time? Why can't we see how many vehicles have been pulled / destroyed per continent / per hex in the last 24 hours? Why can't we see how often a hex has been flipped in the last 24 hours?

It might not matter to you, but this sort of information can give players goals as well as giving more intrinsic stats about different trends in different areas of the game. These sorts of trends will also promote players / outfits to metagame.

Right now all I can see is my KDR, certs, EXP, and which color a hex is at this particular point in time, as well as some vague and often inaccurate information about enemy locations. It's not a lot to go on.

if ps2 was an ut2004 onslaugh mod in a bigger scale, it would be awesome. Sadly, soe didn't succeed to make a game even half good as a mod of a game that have eight years.

Now this I can totally agree with.

Plus it would give us solid data we would use to blackmail and extort the devs to nerf the VS. Hooray!

The issue is "missing endgame". PS2 is devoid of any and all forms of end game or game objectives.
The fact that the maps are designed in a manner to avoid choke points and the creation of well defend-able areas just adds to the issue since the entire game gets reduced into the "quake" and "unreal tournament" style w+m1 mindless shooting zone.

I agree with you that the devs need to come up with something soon, or their game wont hold together on the long run, f2p or not.

Your grammar is atrocious.

They just forgot too release the game with a metagame, that can happen to everyone.

The original concept for PS1 was to have Sanctuary Strikes if you were able to lockdown one factions three "home" warpgates.

This was never implemented for various reasons and PS2 has no sanctuaries anymore, but the idea is still a possible winner.

Also PS1 had these "home" continents, the fun was kicking the enemy scum out of your back yard or invading theirs, with three generic continents, there is no concept of ownership and no point in the conflict.