[Suggestion] Faction Diversity is Dying. It Must Be Saved.

The reason faction diversity dies is because no one likes asymmetric balance. A faction surpassing the others in an area = nerf squad come out.

However, like all nerf squads, they are made of the scrubs who wouldn't win anyway.

Anywho yes faction diversity will never exist because it actually requires time and effort to do. The new Max weapons for example. WHO GIVES A RIP ABOUT NEW SKINS!?!? DBG a will not spend time on worthwhile content because they want a quick buck. If this game is still active on PC next year, it will be a completely new player base involved.

Actually I and many other were overjoyed to see the maxes are getting new weapon designs. This is good in a couple ways:
1. People can actually see what your loadout is just by looking.
2. It shows that effort was actually put into a weapon, Its not just a carbon copy with a few numbers moved around.

We could have all the exact same thing and people would still call for nerfs. Do you want to know what would be next if all the weapons would be perfectly balanced? "Oh! They get to be on the south side of the map.. They have a techplant right next to their warp gate. OP NERF."

People are going to complain no matter what you do. But at least this way it looks great on the eyes and will make the game look like it was worked on for more than a year.

Trying to save what little asymmetry PS2 ever had? Man, good luck preserving what was never there.

You want asymmetry? Go play Natural Selection 2. PS2 lost any semblance of asymmetry when they "rebalanced" weapons by making them boring homogenized copies of each other.

I would love to play an interesting game where each faction had strengths and weaknesses, but I don't think the developers have ever been up to the challenge of balancing it.

Good luck though.

Yea great cosmetics...

Bloody hell mate there are far more important things they could be working on (which if any they haven't told us about) but no they want to remodel a few guns. WHICH btw is taking far too long to complete anyway. How many are they doing? Why do skins matter right now?

What you describe about seeing what they are using too isnt a good thing. It's just another crutch. "Oh look he is using mercies, he has decent range on them, better be more careful!"

What your saying about bases already exists. Look at under Northern warpgate in the best one. Why does no one complain? Cause WGs rotate.

1) Performance
2) Resource Revamp

These things are far more important than some random cosmetic no one has asked for or (apparently barring your friends) cares about.

The game is dying. Performance is shot unless you play from NA everyone else is getting the shaft. One day the flag ship server (Emerald) will be the only one.

Let me break your entire argument then. What you are complaining about is a coding/developer problem. Remodeling the weapons is ART TEAM RELATED. Two completely different departments. Currently, The developers are working on coding planetside for the PS4. The Art Team has nothing to do with the resource revamp or performance, Thats the developers area.

Why the hell can people not grasp that the Art Team has ZERO CONTROL over things like the Resource Revamp, Network coding, or General Game performance... Even if the art team was to stop completely on making things look better, Do you think that would make the game run any better? No. Because thats not their department. Thats a developer area.

lol my friend you have broken nothing. If this thread was about department responsibility, then yes, you would break my argument. As it is, this thread is about faction diversity.

Faction diversity as you talked about in the original post takes more than some cosmetic changes, right? (Yes it does, if your confused).

My argument was that, as you say, coding is what needs attention right now. Faction diversity is a tertiary target after my points (1) and (2).

A game can look as pretty as it wants. If it don't work smoothly, ain't nobody gunna play it.

To rebalance the weapons and systems, yes that would take coding development. One of the things you were complaining about

is that the art team is not working on balance, but instead remodeling weapons. Foxiruis's reply did indeed break your argument on that subject.

Which is what I said in my post if you don't cut it into pieces and out of context. If we were arguing about which team does what then yes he proved me wrong (boo-hoo).

Again the thread is about faction diversity dying. I said cosmetics arnt going to change that and they have more pressing issues to deal with.

In fact thinking about it, even cosmetics require coding in order for it to work in game e.g spin when being fired etc. Again not important for many players. Even looking at the cosmetics, except the Vanu one, they look like they took 10 minutes to design. No disrespect to the artists but I was pretty underwhelmed by the NC/TR max weapons.

1) Performance
2) Resource Revamp (finish)

Current faction diversity:
MBT
ESF
Different colors
Weapon design
Heavy gun
Max guns
About one/two weapons in each catagory
Cosmetics
MAX ability

Oh yeah, and TK's in NC, nice people in TR, and very silent VS

I dont understand how you expect the art team to help increase performance, so what are they to do but produce more models and such for the guns? Also if i am mis-representing your arguement, can you clarify exactly what your point is?

if only people could understand best balance = rock / paper / scissor
keeps the game fresh by having variety of encounters. theres no point for 3 factions. there is practically no difference.

With the changes to the MAX weapons looks, maybe other guns that look the same will get a pass.

BTW you should also check out this thread:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2v01wn/planetside_2_encyclopedia_of_broken_dreams/

I think they should give the NS vehicle weapons a faction specific cosmetic or even bullet animation outside of just color of bullet.

You know... I've been thinking... folks have been pointing to PS1 as having good faction flavor and diversity, but I also think that one of the biggest reasons that didn't seem to be as much an issue as on PS2 is because in PS1 you could loot corpses.

Like that chaingun? Snipe the guy and take it! Want a Phoenix launcher of your very own? Line that NC's head up in the sights of your tank's main gun, and your very own Phoenix launcher is just one click away!

That required an entire inventory system. I doubt they will rework the entire game over a looting system. They just need to bring back the faction diversity Planetside 1 had.

And for the love of god and all that is holy, We have so many likes and views, But not a single dev will post. You know.. even a simple "hey, We have noticed this and are looking into it" would make my year....

Yeah, you're probably right. I doubt they'd go to the trouble of implementing an inventory system this late in. It's like somewhere along the line somebody decided to almost wilfully ignore the lessons learned during the development of the original Planetside.

As for developer response, apparently you need to have at least 16 pages' worth of posts on something REALLY important... like whether or not some LMGs should have a 0.75x ADS movement modifier. (Yeah, I'm pretty p***ed off about that.)

Completely agree OP.

When a Vanu kills me with a NS carbine or a Commish, I feel sad...

When a Vanu kills me I want to hear pew pew and see the disco lights.

I still feel that we need more design work on the infantry weapons that share the same weapon model. More moving parts, More sexy lights. Make my guns feel advanced!

NO THE THREAD IS DEAD! REVIVE THREAD REVIVE! DAMMIT TRAY WHY DID YOU LEAVE! WHAT HAPPEN TO THOSE HARRASERS YOU SHOWCASED!? WHAT HAPPEN TO THESE!?!?!

I would kill for those.. To finally have more hover vehicles on VS? Maybe I would actually feel like my faction made alien tech... This post has reached a point to where the system does not even notify me anymore when people respond to it. Not sure if this is dev related or not.

What amazes me most is that its gotten this big, And not a single damn staff post to even acknowledge its existence.