Problems with PlanetSide 2 as I see them.

No, they haven't.

The only mechanic that encourages this behavior is inside the players head. Otherwise the K/D mechanic in PS2 is simply a figure displayed on two UI screens. Both of which can be combated as i've said, by the tactical use of a dead bee and bluetack. Nor is it much of a core mechanic when its a state you could potentially figure out yourself.

In short, K/D is not to blame, people are to blame for being obessed about K/D really, that simple.

If you'd given more attention to the issue of cert-rewards to killing in say the context of lib biolab pad bombing and other assholish behavior, you might have had a point. But trying to blame planetside for the mentality of the FPS gamer in 2013 is pretty meh.

Again I also content that your analysis of 'the problems' as I seem them, but far too much emphasis on 'mechanics' like K/D that barely even exist in game, whilst remaining completely mute on serious issues like performance that are effecting the game in causing servers to be seriously underpopulated.

In short. Sorry, but no. Simply coming back into the thread now and saying 'well its clear, the issues have been discussed in detail'. Does not correct the clear deficiencies in the original analysis.

I don't care about my character dying whether it is or is not thrown in my face. Nor do I consider it a measure of anyone's skill. Is my common sense different from yours?

Lol 1.3? Bad... My KDR is 0.51... please don't even say it's bad it's amazing.

I won't comment point by point and just say that some of the comments I fully agree with, too much spam of too many things, this game died the moment it was launch.

The reason why I don't give a crap about KDR is that I refuse to do the thing that will assure me KDR, I refuse to spam stuff, I refuse to jump in a plane and kill massive amount of infantry which strangely enough will bring me almost the exact same exp if I reverse and inf kills planes without pilot death cause we all know that a plane and a grunt are worth exactly the same in real life.

See this is exactly what put the nail in the coffin in Airside 2 is that the exp is all gained now and continues to be gained by zepher spammers. Why did we see level 60's just a few weeks after the game went live, cause of air clearly cause of air.

I'm a grunt, I gave up on the game being interesting, I just play it to pass time now, I will whine a lot at times cause of the hacking problem but even that I do less and less and bother reporting less and less now cause I know that prolly half the people that kills me were hackers.

I'm support, anti-air, anti-ground and this destroys all hope for me to ever progress much in this game as we know that support is exactly what is farmed in this game, so I am the farmee.

Here's the problems as I see them.

1) Need to get this game playable properly in big battles on a wider range of machines, this is the biggest problem by a country mile - what is currently occupying SoE's time.
2) Needs to be some sort of metagame that actually gives a point to caping objectives in a wider narrative of the game. - Presumably also high on the list.
3) Balance issues, that need careful consideration and small changes over time. Libs currently too strong, infantry defense of a lot of bases currently too difficult. For example. Though I suggest minor tweaks over time are the best way to deal with this.


Otherwise, MMO early in its development cycle. Can't really expect it to have years worth of content from the get go. More vehicles, weapons and such hopefully are coming. But they seem not to need to be a priority in order to keep the game vibrant and funzies.

I think here's a good compromise to the KDR issue:

1) Remove it from the tab stats page. Stop tracking deaths openly, but still track them behind the scenes.
2) Keep the KDR in the regular stats page, but still do not track deaths openly.
3) Only update the KDR when the player logs off.

This would mean that the KDR stat is still tracked for people to see it, but it will not be updated in realtime and would require people to manually track their deaths if they want to see it for a current session (which they could do anyway).

I've read through every point in this post and wholly agree with each and every one.
I wanted to draw attention to the vehicle issue the most. As they are a defining charateristic of the game, balancing these will be very challenging. I don't think that the player base would wither up and due if spawning a vehicle meant a little more. It should be a more significant event. Especially concerning the larger more devastating vehicles.
Resources simply don't matter very much. When I log on, of course, I have plenty. By the time I exaust a bucket, I go infantry in the region that produces my desired resource for 20 minutes, then spawn another vehicle.

In the very off-chance that there is a developer is reading this post I really want you to know that making broad changes to this game that creates a team play environment will be welcome. I don't want to participate in TDM style game-play, and that's why I choose this game. I like missions, objectives and supporting. There's a reason that I'm having ramen for lunch, and it's not because I like ramen. It's because I like PS2 and am investing in the game's future. Let's work together to brighten it up. Thanks for reading.

I'm not sure that this is the issue Slink. Hiding the stats won't change the fact that the primary method for achieving cert points is killing. PS2 can't be what it wants to be if a death match is more profitable for cert gain than team tactical play.

Again we are talking about a proposal that could be defeated by the use of a abacus and simply mental arithmetic, if one was so inclined.

Because thats the real issue. People are inclined to obsessed about how many times they have killed people / how many times they have died.

The game in reality pays lip service to it.

If people need to collect the data themselves or not be cognizant of it, to improve the game. That's the game mechanics fault, because?

Not picking you you mate, just saying. My dead bee bluetack proposal would allow the developers to focus on actual problems like the engine being hideously un-optimized for most peoples equipment.

Engi's repping Max's in CQC situations is the best consistent certwhoring in game, flowed by Medics mass rezing.

The real balance issue atm in Cert gain is lib use, but that they need to be balanced is banally obvious at this point.

But this remains a completely diffrent issue from K/D. Dying penalizes cert gain, not one iota. In fact, suicide bombing with C4/Mines is a fairly good cert gain strategy.

How has it been covered, because you say so ?

No i haven't read the entire thread as i said in my first post but what empirical evidence do you have except your own opinion.

Well, my opinion is that if you removed kdr stats today, you would see little to no improvement. Would people be more willing to charge to their death ? Perhaps, the ones caring about kdr would. But everyone would still spam zephers and HE because that would still net the most certs for the least effort. Same with ghost capping, it gives certs for driving around and thats why people do it, not because there's noone there to kill them.

Or how do you explain the crown ? People charge it over and over dying every minute almost. But it's still constantly in conflict. Why ? Because it nets most xp/hour (except biolab and old tech meatgrinders. which also prove my point). Best way to boost the kdr is not to kill more but to die less. You don't go to the crown for that.

Like i already said, only way kdr becomes more important to the majority of people is when they don't need xp anymore. Like cod. And noone is close to getting there yet.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/remove-kdr-it-has-no-place-in-ps2.76019/

So yeah, KDR has no place and should be removed. Is it the sole cause of problems? Nope! Thankfully I covered a lot of them but some people seem to be hung up on the KDR part only.

You may be a Terran swine, but you are indeed right! The Vanu Sovereignty has your back comrade.

/signed

This game for me, is becoming very repetitive. I just see no fun in capping a base, then recapping the same base 5 min later. There is no frontline, and like the OP has stated, no reason to defend. There is just no point in saying "good job guys!" Zerg will just cap it back in 10 min. Very fustrating, and i feel im just running around the map with my head cut off capping bases with no enemies in them.

I feel like this is the only truly important post on these boards.

/Signed

As a KDR *****, and very successful solo-farmist (rarely have any help from engineers or medics) I have to agree with these points, right now all I do is farm, I consistently kill to the point of having to pull out my knife due to running out of all forms of ammo, if I were to focus on something tactically relevant, or take my time healing or repairing other players, I would be wasting my time and certs.

Guess who made a lot of those posts throughout tech test and beta, BuzzCutPsycho. I like your enthusiasm but these issues have persisted throughout the entirety of beta and we have commented on them every time. What is more to the point is that we are forced to bring up these issues we thought were addressed several times before they actually get fixed. Right now the only thing hurting this game are the developers who cannot see what is in front of them and just what they want to "create." Hate to say it, developers should be here to make this game better and make this game survive, not just what they want or what they think looks pretty.

/Singed.. er... wait wrong game.
/Signed.

It wasn't just BCP. There were several other people both on these forums and PSU who had brought up these issues.

The issue there doesn't seem like KDR, but rather that certs are far easier to get by killing people during double XP than they are by completing objectives.

Solution: Increase the amount that you get for team actions (dropping ammo, healing, capturing points) to the level that it is during the double XP events, and lower the kill XP to about 50-75% of what it is during normal XP. Tie the incentive to kill enemies into the overall battle to capture a hex; the bigger the battle for the base, the higher the XP given when the hex flips.

I know what some people are saying, if a person obsesses over their KDR then that is what they choose to do, and it's not the game developers fault. However, even the developers on PS2 team thinks KDR is all that matters. Do you think rezing people with your medic, or repairing armor with your engineer goes towards raising anyone's stats for the leaderboard?

The game should reward small units for defending a base against superior numbers of enemies, but it doesn't. Which is why people just follow the 100 person zerg, many of them hanging out in their aircraft, collecting cap points from deserted enemy bases, while 90% of the people are not contributing anything to the effort. So I do see the merit in rewarding players for taking out enemy players, at least they are doing something, other then waiting in the galaxy or sunderer for the base to flip.