Developer Thread: QoL Changes

Feature: Centralized vehicle health bars

Reason: I would like centralized hud mode to display a vehicle health bar somewhere. The current one needs to stay where it is for gunners and passengers and such but as Zoidburg says why not both.

Link: N/A

Feature: Text chat notification

Reason: When I lead squads I never notice the text chat, and when I use text chat nobody sees it. A unobtrusive notification would be nice.

Link: N/A

Feature/Bug:
Vehicular rear seat repair-rate-nerf reversion

Reason:
The Harasser is in a fairly tolerable place at the moment. With the massive nerf to survivability, the rear-seat repair rate nerf no longer feels necessary. In addition to harasser - this nerf effects Flashes (And I imagine Valkyries as well)
One of my favorite activities for my Scout radar flash, is to park it in a building near the front lines, drop ammo, and hop on the rear seat / repair allied maxes ducking in and out of cover. Ever since the harasser nerf, this has been non-viable, due to the glacial repair rate.


Feature/Bug:
Brake light toggle


Reason:
Stopping my vehicle at night, only for my brake lights to provide twin beacons to enemy armor / infantry / C4 faeries / carnivorous Auraxian flora is frustrating. There is a workaround for this (Alt tab, without focus, brake lights turn off automatically) but tabbing in and out rapidly is almost as annoying. If I have stealth armor, engine noise and brake lights are twin flares that pinpoint my position without the need for anyone to look at their radar. For the certs i've spent on stealth, i'd really like to have some actual stealth.

Feature:
An indicator on a gunners/passengers HUD if the vehicle they are in is stealthed.
Maybe even a small one on the minimap symbol (like the + and ||| for repair/ammo sundies).

Reason:
Maybe people will stop shooting my steath-vannies kobalt at ESF near render distance.
And maybe people will stop standing on top of my stealth-spawn-sundy lobbing 'nixes at enemy spawnrooms.
(A man can dream, can't he?)

Feature: Make it so that drifter jumpjets slowly increase your height, not decrease it. You'll ascend very slowly, so they will not at all replace regular jump jets, but this way, if you try to get from one cliff to the other where they're both at the same height, you're 100% sure that you'll make it to the other side. Also, make it so that drifters boost your movement speed to 120%-130% and try to fix the "get-stuck-on-every-small-rock-and-pebble" problem that drifters suffer from.

Reason: Drifters are probably one of the most unused pieces of equipment in this game. Unless you're being a c4 fairy, there's almost no reason whatsoever to use them, and in most cases they don't even do what they should do. By this I mean crossing large gaps in the terrain and moving around faster.

Bug: Friendly players being unrevivable for no apparent reason, even if their body is still there. I've also seen it happen quite a few times where I'd try to revive a friendly for 10 seconds from all different directions, only to have another medic come in and pick him up without a problem.

Reason: As a medic it's fairly annoying when you're trying to do your job but you can't due to a bug. The bugged person also doesn't realize that he is bugged and will therefor come to forumside and start crying out that medics never revive him and that they only use the class for the AR's. I don't think I have to explain why this is a bad thing.

Feature: All aircraft should have flares as a standard item which uses ammo to allow the pilot to fire flares as needed but must be refilled at ammo spots. Certifications can increase the number of uses.

Reason: Flares are a standard equipment on even modern day aircraft. Allow the pilot to use them as needed, with limits, to counter the large number of lock on launchers.

Feature: All ground vehicles should have smoke launchers as standard equipment which uses ammo to allow the driver to pop smoke as need but must be refueled at ammo spots. Certifications can increase the number of uses.

Reason: Modern day vehicles have smoke launchers as standard equipment, some even with anti-personnel capabilities. This would allow drivers to use as needed with limits against the large number of lock on launchers.

Feature: Give all ground vehicles back up cameras. A narrow view black and white camera that just shows the area directly behind your vehicle.

Reason: Since we are forcing players to be driver/gunners/commanders, give drivers a tool for at least some situational awareness so you can back up without smashing into small rocks or twigs that stop even the mightiest MBT. Make the view narrow enough that it doesn't give an advantage against infantry sneaking up behind the vehicle.

Feature: Give a squad/platoon leader to set a waypoint by simply putting his cursor on an objective or a point of ground and hitting a key.

Reason: Allow squad leaders to lead by allowing them to set objectives for his squad to deal with ever changing threats and issues on the battlefield. Hitting ALT and searching the tiny minimap for the spot you would LIKE to place a marker completely takes the SL out of the battle and distracts his awareness. A SL would simply look at a thread, declare the threat and it should instantly pop up on the hud's of his squad.

Feature: Artillery strikes. Give Platoon leaders the ability to call in small artillery strikes to break stale mates or reverse tactical setbacks. Certifications could determine size of the strike and the cooldown timer of the ability. Leader can only call the strike on areas he can directly view. Must be level based and high certification cost. Skill would be required by the user as projecting where the strike occurs, there would be a delay, sometimes not insignificant, when the strike would occur. Player must decide if the strike is Counter Battery, High Explosive, Anti-Armor or Smoke. Counter Battery strikes would increase the cool down timer of any other player in the vicinity and/or add a delay in the time it takes for the enemy strike to occur.

Reason: Artillery is part of warfare, yet we have none. These would be small strikes, probably maximum 50 meters across, that would hit ANYONE in the strike zone. A PLATOON LEADER SKILL. Appropriate counters to the skill add entire new level of game and mini game.

Feature: Infiltrator love. All doorways into areas of security should have a shield door. Each side of the door has a control panel. Control panels are hacked by infiltrators to allow access to rooms. Doors have three states, friendly, enemy and neutral. Doors match color of the faction that own the door and block the fire of all factions not matching the color. Successful hacking, which takes time, allows the door to become neutral. Neutral doors block ALL fire but allow players to pass. A second hacking allows the door to change to the color of the hacking infiltrator.

Reason: Give the infiltrators an up front role. Needing to protect he infiltrator while he hacks the door to a shield generator gives tons of tactical options to both defender and attacker.

Feature: Too easy to redeploy in the game. Remove all but major station redeployment. All troops should have to be transported from large facilities or warp gates by in game transport. Spawning at AMS should only be allowed if you die withing a certain distance of deployed AMS and/or the local facility spawn room. Once you GET to the location, you can continue to spawn there. Get rid of Galaxy Deployment as well.

Reason: An entire level of game has disappeared in Planetside. With the ability to instantly deploy to any location has given large outfits the ability to absolutely control battle without effort. An entire level of gaming is being missed out on with this mechanic. The logistics and the ability to interdict troops moving to the point of contact be it from air or the ground has been lost. Huge battles wold occur when friendly forces try to reinforce besieged forces and the enemy attempts to lock them out. Tank battles would occur when armored columns move to position to stop reinforcing ground troops from moving in. As it stand, one side keeps redeploying onto spawn locations and the other keeps redeploying in the spawn room.

Feature:Small unit actions. Allow small units and outfits to carryout sabotage and interdiction missions actions behind enemy lines. With the spawn limitations mentioned above, small units could have a big impact indirectly on battle. Don't allow the capture of facilities behind lines, but he interruption of the flow of nanites by allowing sabotageof base facilities. The facilities would be 'owned' for the purpose of alerts but could block or reduce supply of nanites to the front lines thereby making a huge impact on the front line.

Reason: This gives the small units something to do. While the large outfits slug it out for front line ownership of facilities, small units could be stopping reinforcements and causing havoc behind the lines by interrupting nanite flow. This would create a game for small units, where they constantly fight to maintain continuity behind their own lines and gives a reason for units to move to areas behind the lines.

Feature: Allow infiltrators to uses skill sets to accomplish the above mentioned game play. Infiltrators get an entirely new purpose to be playing behind enemy lines. This could be an entire level of espionage and counter espionage.

Reason: Gives the infiltrator an entire purpose to the game.

Feature: Spawn tanks and sunders only at major facilities.

Reason: Tanks have been continually nerfed in order to make up for their numbers. Tanks only spawning at major facilities and warp gates forces players to move tanks to the combat zone. This opens up an actual reason for tank warfare and aircraft interdiction runs. Players would have to form up armored columns with troop transport and move troops to point of battle. This gives players the incentive and ability to move opposing armor to spot and stop these movements. An entire level of battle, including mostly vehicles, now occurs outside of capture points. Tanks have a role other than camping spawn room doors.

Feature: HUD indicator showing active mines.

Reason: Classes need to know if their mines/C4 are still active a small graphical indicator showing active mines would be appreciated.

Feature: Remove head slot of MANA turret. Make shield vulnerable to EMP grenade.

Reason: Seriously, who would invent something like that? Make the shield inclusive so that it covers the head slot. Make the vision of the engineer distorted from looking through the energy shield. Make the EMP grenade drop the shield for a period of time. BAM, another use for EMP grenades and another tool for the infiltrator.

Feature: Make MAX's shut down and reboot after being hit by an EMP grenade.

Reason: Give the infiltrator a tool to at least escape a MAX. A new MAX armor type could be added, EMP shielded armor. Max gives up extra kinetic, blast or healing armor to protect against EMP. Another new use for the infiltrator!

Feature: Make rocket launcher a PRIMARY weapon. No more three weapon slots for the heavy.

Reason: Heavy assault would now have to choose a role. Carry a big LMG for anti-infantry role, or select a rocket launcher for anti-armor/anti-air/anti-MAX roles. This would limit the jack-of-all-trades that HA currently occupy. They could still carry a side arm and you could increase the potency of launchers a bit.

Feature: Give MAX suits some vision upgrades.

Reason: High tech suit should have some options of night, thermal or zoom views.

Feature: Allow more mobility to all classes and ground vehicles climbing hills.

Reason: I understand focusing the fight, but it also limits tactical decisions and forms what are quite literally boring lanes of death. Allow players to actually maneuver on the ground. Some of the most memorable fights I've ever had were in Beta when tanks could climb hills better and units could attack from unexpected angles.

1) Feature: Remove upside down damage for vehicles.

Reason: It's a hate worthy feature that only makes the game worse. Adding frustration. A flipped vehicle is not lost, with team mates and some terrain they can be pushed up right again.

Link: N/A

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2) Feature: Make flash able to turn itself back up after being flipped.

Reason: Not being able to do it is annoying as heck. Not to mention that this feature was actually there in the early days of the game. The flash would do it automatically.

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3) Feature: Show territory populations on minimap.

Reason: It makes the player always aware of state of the battle. Not having to put up the map screen.



Link: N/A

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4) Feature: Revert Amerish timezone to that of the other continents.

Reason: It removes the issue of some people having day when others have night.

Link: N/A

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5) Feature: Show icon above name tag for friendlies when they ask for help/repair/heal/ammo.

Reason: It can be hard to know who is asking for support, especially when they ask for help. An icon above the tag showing a wrech or bullets or such would be a quick way for team mates to know where the one asking for support is.

Link: N/A

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6) Feature: Don't show hints like "press e to access terminal" outside the radius of which it's possible to access the object.

Reason: It's only annoyance to have this message not match the radius. It makes you wonder if it's lag or you're not close enough.

Link: N/A

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7) Feature: Don't show "press e to enter vehicle" unless there's an actually available seat.

Reason: It removes the annoyance of running towards a seemingly open vehicle only to find out that it's squad locked or the available seat is the driver seat. It confuses new players also.

Link: N/A

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8) Feature: Show deployable items like mines and C4 on HUD.

Reason: So that players don't have to guess weather their deployable is destroyed or not. Knowing if it's ok to place a new one or if it will replace an existing one.

Link: N/A

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9) Feature: Add a tooltip somewhere that phoenix missiles can be shot down by bullets.

Reason: This is a vital part of defending and using the phoenix. There is no info in the game informing players that this is possible.

Link: N/A

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10) Feature: Add to the weapon tool tips or stats that the damage listed is against infantry. That AV weapons do more damage against vehicles.

Reason: Currently many new players don't know that certain weapons like lancer or phoenix are good weapons because they only see the low infantry damage listed. They think phoenix does 750 damage listed against vehicles rather than the ~2000 it actually does.

Link: N/A

11) Feature: Make all small plants passable by big vehicles. Things like those yellow flowers on Hossin. Currently they are like road blocks.

Reason: Because it's annoying to have a big vehicle being blocked by what looks like a soft plant. Especially considering that there are small trees on Indar which can be passed through with big vehicles as one would expect.

FEATURE : Humbly ask you make it so we can decide which side of our vehicles we exit from.

REASON: Makes it easier to orientate ourselves In hectic situations e.g Jumping out of sundy to deal with last second C4 attack,Using vehicle as cover while repairing or escaping

When buying a cosmetic item I don't want to see what it looks like on a basic model. If I'm buying a MAX helmet then I want to see how it looks with my Ogre armor instead of just seeing the helmet on a stock MAX frame.

Feature: Select secondary gun w/stalker cloak

Reason: Muscle memory tends to make me select my primary weapon when using stalker cloak. Would like it to bring up my secondary. The disclaimer on the screen is fine but would still like for it to make the switch for me saving valuable seconds in a fire fight.

Feature: Listen to SkepticJerry.

Reason: His ideas are great.

Feature: Adding more respawn time and removing some spawns

Reason: So people start using their brains and stop kamikazing all the time, it will also make people think more, which is good considering the current lifespan in this game.

Feature: Improvements to Headlights
Reason: Headlights are completely wasted in this game, back in beta they had a purpose but now they don't, improvements are necessary in order for them to be useful again.
#1: Increase Range.
Reason: Most headlights do not reach more than about 5 meters in front of their vehicles. They will need extra range if you actually bring back dark nights, like everyone wants
#2: Increase Width.
Reason: Headlights do not just go straight in front of the vehicle, they go to the side, the lightning is the only vehicle whose lights actually go to the side.

Silly Upgrades: Just some silly things that are either cosmetic, or will not really have much of an effect.
#1: Darklight Headlights.
Reason: I actually know a bunch of people who thought this is a good idea to add a 100 cert upgrade for headlights. With the new building type on Hossin, the construction site buildings, people could bring Harassers up to the point room to scan for infils
#2: Colored Headlights.
Reason: You all ready have lumifiber, now give headlights different colors for some sc
#3: Brightness.
Reason: People who have better rigs tend to get blinded by flashlights, so why not add a 100 cert upgrade to increase headlights to blinding level

Another that I just remembered last night while trying to keep some small fights going:

Feature: Always let you spawn at the last faction owned hardpoint base you last spawned at no matter where you died.

Reason: When you go back to a base you own to pull a vehicle to bring to the base where the fight is at, if you die on the border of the "fight" hex and any other hex than the one you spawned at you end up getting stuck to a new lattice lane. Meaning you can't spawn back to the fight or the base you just tried to pull a bus from.

It's super frustrating to go back to get a logistics bus, take a wide path to avoid having it spotted/killed, die anyways, and then be kicked out of the fight until you redeploy hop back to where you just spawned at, or waste more nanites to fly. The fact that death is not the most annoying part of this process of failing to reinforce a fight should be a big concern.

Feature: Minimal UI - use the deadzone that is the gun/arm/hands,

Reason: You can't see any relevant information there (the worlds, players, etc) Guns take a huge space on the screen and coupled with the current UI there is huge UI noise and clutter on small screens. So move things like health/shields/ammo to gun/arm and just keep the minimap.

Feature - Make centralized UI bars less glossy and obtrusive.
Reason - Currently they add useless clutter on the already cluttered screen. They should be light and functional.

Feature - Add a HUD icon for ESFs (possibly other aircraft) that visibly (IE with a nice big glowy icon) indicates whether you're in jet mode or hover mode. Visible on both 1st and 3rd person.
Reason - Would greatly help dogfights from the cockpit and most importantly Scythe players who are forced to look for unreliable contrails to tell their current flight mode, this is especially damaging to newbies who expect to see physical thrusters.

Feature - Create different, distinctive and more noticeable warning sounds for getting locked on from the ground or from the air. Ground lock could be low pitch and air lock high pitch, the sound could beep in a random pattern when the lock is not yet complete, play continuously (solid beeeeeep) when the lock is complete, and beep like it does now when a missile has been fired.
Reason - Would greatly help to more readily tell when you are being locked and from where, especially for newbies.

Feature - If a missile is chasing you, show a red indicator on the screen pointing to the direction it's coming from. Could reuse engagement radar code.
Reason - Same as previous.

Feature - Make VS aircraft HUDs green/teal instead of light blue.
Reason - Currently the light blue HUDs and crosshairs on VS aircraft can be almost invisible against the light blue sky of the day. This is annoying as hell, especially if you are fighting other aircraft.

Bug - Repair Tool generating heat if LMB is held when not repairing anything.
Reason - It feels stupid and makes repairing MAXes a chore.

Bug - ESF cockpit screens displaying nothing but static. (Happens in Scythe, untested with others).
Reason - This is much worse than the AB indicator invisibility bug, because there is no way to fix it even if you get out, change class and get back in. You are forced to spawn a new vehicle.
Link - http://i.imgur.com/FRg7VCd.jpg

Feature/Bug: Forgot one more and believe it hasn't been mentioned yet... Can we please give SL or PLs ability to draw on the map? It would greatly help with unit coherency and also herding new players. If you're worried about it being annoying set a slider that allows people to change the opacity of the SL's marks on the map.

Reason: Should be obvious, I believe this was also implemented in PS1 but I'm not sure.

Two more I just thought of.

Feature: Display battle rank in game alongside name, instead of or alongside the title.

Reason: Battle rank is usually a decent way to determine how experienced a player is, which would allow players to have a better idea of the types of players around them, or especially who is getting into your vehicles.

Feature: Per seat vehicle locking.

Reason: Many times in order to get my squad members into the gunner seats of my vehicles, who are the only people I trust there, I have to kick every pub player out, then they can switch, then let them back in. Instead, allow us to lock just the gunner seats. Same for an MBT, where only squad members can get into the gunner seat but no one but yourself can get in the driver's seat.

Feature: The Vanu Magrider hovers.... how come the Vanu Flash can't? Same for the Sundy and Harassser

Reason: a little cosmetic separation of the faction vehicles... eye candy makes the game more enjoyable, keep their handling, just cosmetic changes


Feature: Galaxies and Liberators.. all have the exact same wing configuration. Why? TR have canard wings,
NC can have swept back or Delta wings, and Vanu can have double tail instead of single tail. Same for the Valkyrie..
give one a delta, another swept back, the other stays as is.

Reason: see above, simple separation of faction specific vehicles, easy to program, it's just cosmetic, not changing any flight characteristics..


Feature: increase the size of Anti Tank mines, and lower their DPS

Reason: they are too tiny, maybe increase their size by 15%, lower their DPS by 10% It should take more than 2 tiny postage stamps to take out a lightning or sundy.. set them on fire, maybe, but not outright blow them up.


Feature: decrease the DPS of C-4

Reason: it should take more bricks of C-4 to destroy a lightning, sundy or mbt, or even phalanx turrets.. all these vehicles can take multiple rounds of AP,... but they can't survive these tiny C-4 bricks?


Feature: increase the speed of all vehicles, ground and air, by 10%, for all levels.

Reason: they are all too slow.. could make for very interesting new dynamics.. or it could do nothing, but still feels better than they do now. (probably would have to improve the Flash handling prior to this, or the Flash will increase 'death by pebble in the road')

FEATURE: Create a Vehicle Forum...

Reason: wait, what? Oh, yeah, we had one of those.. could you please ask your webmaster to install a Vehicle Forum button?

Link: oh well, there once was a vehicle forum, but now I can't even link to that anymore... how difficult could it be to bring it back?

Feature: "Medic in route" indicator

Pretty straight forward request, I would like to have the ability to let an ally know that I'm on my way to Rez/heal them. I've been having fun running around healing anything and everything on a character I just made, but I've noticed that more than once I've risked life and limb sprinting my way across the battlefield to my fallen comrade just to have them respawn at a different location as I arrive. It would be cool if I could flag a fallen ally and let them know I'm on my way to get them back on their feet. Maybe an indicator on the death screen similar to what they see when they're being rezzed. I've tried the "Offer healing" option you get when you hold Q, but it doesn't seem like my allies ever notice.

When you use the q menu, your icon on the minimap turns to the "+" used for the medic, and flashes, same thing for repairs and asking for rides, maybe what it needs is for that notification to be more prominent, though that might get annoying for some people.