[Suggestion] Begin Working on ANT Modules for Sunderers

The only thing that will make ants interesting if they blow up like a nuclear bomb when they are full of energy and destroyed.

More than 1 vehicle = too much work and SOE cant get money by selling guns to ANT. 1 NS vehicle for medium transport and ANT = can sell guns, spend more time in vehicle (more reasons to buy camo), and less work to do (we need phase 2 really soon). ES transports are too much work, hell to balance and we'll end up getting shotgun, anchored and charge up transports.

Would be spectacular but abusable. Would be fun to see whole army, running away from 1 ANT, though.

How did you get info about their loadout? Viper is popular gun. And for taxi I see to much fighting lightnings.

Fighting with fast and low-profile tank serves same purpose as with MBT, just adapted to situation/style. Who are you to decide that we should not adapt to tank fights? How happen you dont protest against amount of similar infantry guns we use?

Colonel already answered that, can only back his sensible posts up.

Then maybe you shouldnt put it in list of valid transports. Though I support idea of cloaked valk.

Vehicle with light armor and 1 light gun is not combat oriented, its logistic carrier with basic self-defence potential. Having 1 vehicle to every unique role is you very-very personal preference, just as using lightning instead of MBT. Clash of roles exists only in your head, it does no real harm to game. Players ask for new vehicle because sundy is not good for long transportation and too tanky for moving battery.

Despite bases being too close, we still have flashes and passenger sits in sundy/gal and its hard to believe but players use them. Cant see any problem with having more variety.

If they make new truck for ant, resources are already spent. Making multi-purpose deliverer just allow to get more from same resources.

Its agile all-terrain half-sized sunderer. And i dont see a problem with 1 light gun, just to not be free exp for any random ESF. Cant wait to see someone besides you, fighting so dangerously OP suggestion.

yes, we all lie about doing ant runs because nothing turns a woman on more.............

there are no miners in EVE you're saying? you really have no concept of how to ADD to your credibility do you?

[/quote]You seriously going to argue against simulator progress?[/quote]'simulator' in it's loosest possible term. it's not progress if it makes things worse as this patch proves in some ways, more rubber banding, rocket went right through me the other day.
the game struggles as it is with what its already sending, sending more data, (ie which gear i'm in along with all the usual speed/direction data) without optimizing the game wont help anything. PS2 is the biggest fps as it is, it can't also be a complex 'simulator'(as close to a real thing as possible) in terms of each and every vehicle. i so wish the tech existed to do this, but at the moment it doesn't.
i'm not against progress, but there's no point having unrealistic expectations.

ANT can be battle island's feature.
Source http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/.../PlanetSide-2-Whats-Next-for-PlanetSide2.html

Well I'd hope they'll be on BI... but if this means they wont be on continents, I can hear a storm coming

About the ANT, Higby just talked to Angry Joe and said that making a new vehicle model for the ANT would take 6 months but making a modification for the sunderer would take 3 weeks. That's why they do the later.

1. how is it unfortunate for me or indeed matter to me that you have no more say in this game than i do?
2.(a)indeed. and (b)there's that 'exaggeration' again. 'faulty' is not synonymous with 'enjoyment', you don't like doing them, we get it. that doesn't mean its faulty or broken.......... i don't like tea, tea isn't 'faulty' though.
3.4 WHOLE likes!!!!!!

6 people liked that.
'liking' isn't just indicative of the truth or intelligent well thought out arguments. possibly derision too.

tbh we want different games, PS was never about k/d or avg certs per min to put in my sig, or the 'oh so deep' number of buttons i could press at any given time.
i can remember whole battles from PS1, (specific ant runs too) but none from any other FPS except maybe ARMA1-3/dayz, because what you consider 'deep' is what i was playing when quake 1 came out and is mind numbingly tedious now............ to me, i don't think every game should be made for me either. be nice to have just one.

i'm certainly no expert but if i can make something that looks mostly like a car in 1 day, professionals should take far far less than 6 months.

Well shallow games with fewer button presses exist, so play Progress Quest if you have an aversion to game depth. Just don't push for shallow mechanics in PS2 is all I'm saying.

You're the one claiming the popularity of an idea should have bearing over whether it's implemented. Not me. So next consider that before you making a post that makes a very valid point that popularity doesn't mean anything, and bad ideas are still bad ideas.

Its like they have only 1 coder, who works at 10 things simultaneously, and 1 part-time designer.

depth isn't about button presses, or this

is a deep game in your opinion...............

i never claimed it to be super popular, just not as unpopular as you're lying about.

You don't seem to understand game depth at all, to make that statement. Game depth is essentially a measure of how long it takes to master a game -- which implies it comes from the amount of skill that matters.

Your first ANT run in PS1 was basically just as fast as your thousandth ANT run. Skill didn't matter.

You achieve that depth by first admitting the thing is shallow and needs more factors involved where player skill can shine through. And it helps to understand that a purely PVE activity is never going to be as dynamic and stay as fresh as a PVP activity. You can make PVE activities which are fun for a while, but it's not like you enjoyed killing the same mobs in WOW forever. Eventually the fact that they always reacted exactly the same caused it to be boring and tedious.

Which calls to mind the fun hacking in Dystopia (HL2 mod) as a support activity where you'd set up at a terminal and hack into places to unlock doors and disable turrets for your teammates, while combatting enemy hackers. Given PS1 had a pretty strong hacking theme, one of the more interesting of those 100+ ideas of implementing logistics would be for it to be controlled entirely through cyberspace and you enable/disable the flow of nanites while actually fighting against other hacker players.

Clearly if we're simply looking to maximize APM (Actions Per Minute), we should give all the classes access to jump packs.

Then we should reduce all the classes down to four general weight classes, Light, Medium, Heavy, and Assault, and allow you to stick primary weapons in ALL your slots if you feel like it. The classes would be differentiated by HP/shield strength/inventory slots (heavier=more) and acceleration/fuel efficiency (heavier=less). There'll be maybe one, two weapons tops restricted to Light (sniper rifle) or Assault (handheld Bulldog).

Then tweak the engine to deliberately replicate Quake-style bunny-hopping, which when combined with the jet packs could be used to "ski" along sloping terrain.

Wait, this all sounds familiar and it's not what we're looking for in PS2 at all.

This may come as a surprise to some people, but APM is not the end-all be-all of "depth". In a really deep game, sometimes you've just got to stop and think.

Exactly. Playing chess or trying to figure out the stock market is many times deeper than the run-n-gun "tactics" of PS2, but both are abysmally slower compared to PS2.

whatever. you don't understand some people like different things, notice i didn't say 'seems' because you just don't.

for you. people still play WoW.

now thats actually quite good and has the potential of depth.............. why didn't you suggest that instead of gears?

Borrow that Jeep from H1Z1 then. They take too long to do anything in this game except making more cash shop items it seems.

I didn't quite get the reason why we need ANTs in PS2 in the first place. In PS1 their "sole" purpose was to provide an alternative way to end an indoor base battle. If the defender couldn't refill the NTU reserves by driving an ANT to the base then the NTU would run out and the base would turn neutral which rendered the spawn tubes inoperative.

Have you ever been in a situation in PS2 where a single battle has lasted "too long"? I can't say I have, so why exactly would SOE want to waste their limited resources for introducing useless ANTs to the game? For me this sounds like a truly pointless idea. Maybe someone can enlighten me.

People supporting PS1 style ANTs (mandatory shallow gameplay) are the ones who don't understand that people like different things. ANTs were not an optional thing -- you pulled them, or the base was lost.

I've stated several times that I'm fine with ANTs being shallow as long as they're irrelevant. Which means I'm fine with people enjoying different things as long as their different thing isn't forced upon me. I play PS2 for its depth, not so I can waste 10 minutes blandly driving around the countryside.

You don't get it.

PVP games remain fresh because of players interacting with one another. PVE games remain fresh via new content.

During periods where WOW hasn't released new content in a while, player dropoff increases significantly. This is because PVE content is essentially a series of puzzles to solve, and once you solve them there's nothing interesting left to master and things quickly become boring (because the core of what makes games fun is our brains delight in learning, and gameplay is basically pre-packaged to be interesting bits of learning. When the learning stops, so does the fun. Which is why you no longer play Tic-Tac-Toe. It's solved, so it's boring. (Koster, 2004))

PS2 is not going to release an ANT-runners of Draenor expansion a year from now. Making an ANT run for Base A will always be exactly the same. Without special gameplay mechanics making it deeper, it'll be shallow on day 1. With those mechanics, it'll remain deeper longer, but as a PVE activity it's unlikely to remain interesting forever. (Which is why more creative methods which involve some form of PVP are far better solutions.)

So ANTs are a little like if WOW tried to release with only one monster type, and no additional content. It wouldn't have even remained interesting a full week before it died.

Other posters were dragging conversation back into the gutter by defending PS1 ANTs, which prevented us from agreeing PS1 ANTs were shallow (which would've allowed conversation to evolve to the hundreds of deeper implementations of logistics gameplay which could exist.) When someone has a mindset that a shallow thing is acceptable, I felt it wise to baby-step out of that shallowness with ANT manual transmissions (which are a step upgrade over PS1 ANTs.) Players tend to be incapable of making the mental jump to understand anything they haven't experienced firsthand.

Part of the problem is that anything involving a driveable vehicle makes you go PTSD mode and start screaming "PS1 ANTS!". We're talking about PS2 ANTs. PS2 ANTs could potentially be more nimble, versatile vehicles than PS1 ANTs were, but I believe it would benefit the game to still have them driveable because that would allow the players to find creative uses for them. After all, that extra mobility and versatility doesn't do you any good if you can't get behind the wheel to take advantage of it.

Driving a logistics vehicle is not PvE. You're still interacting with other players, it's just that your objective is to keep allies alive instead of make enemies dead.

Additionally, driving ANTs is not "mandatory" any more than pulling Sunderers, MBTs, and air support are "mandatory". Sure somebody has to do it, but it doesn't have to be you. Having a logistics vehicle adds to the overall game, it doesn't make the rest of the game disappear in a puff of smoke.

Will your zerg be absolutely boned if it doesn't have any air support and the enemy does? Yes. Does this mean that I have to pull air even though I hate PS2's flight model? No. I just toss out into /re "We could really use some air support", and sure enough a few minutes later the sky is usually swarming with sky knights.

If the sky knights don't show up, well then that zerg is clearly boned and I make a tactical retreat rather than continuing to charge into a one-sided air farm.

ANTs are the same way. If a base is running out of resources just toss into /re "We're running low on nanites, need supplies." Or go on /orders with "X base running out of nanites, need help." There's a pretty good chance someone will show up with an ANT once it has been brought to their attention, so long as doing an ANT run gets you decent EXP.

And if they don't? Redeploy to another base instead of continuing to charge into a one-sided farm. If you are running out of resources and the enemy is not, that means the enemy is out-playing your side because they get their supplies the same way you do. Teamwork is OP.

That said, I do wish I had more tools for calling in different types of air support missions and rewarding pilots for answering my calls for help (though in the way I'm already rewarding them by telling them where to find stuff to kill).

Yes. Never played at Quartz Ridge-Indar Excavation? Or Allatum, when it's 10 territories cut off and still can't be capped because the fight that started 9 hours ago is still going on inside?

Any tower base can get into this situation (for example I've seen hours-long stalemates at Saerro and Bastion as well), and if you manage to cut that kind of base off it should mean something.