But why now? TR has had population on Waterson for months. There have been dozens of threads about it. We all know that Hamma plays there. Why does SOE continue to reinforce the population that is literally crushing the game out of the server? A few weeks ago Waterson was made recommended server for VS. The purple Zerg spread until they had pop at prime time for a week or so. Then eventually most of those new players for VS quit because they were still getting owned by the TR Zerg. It has gotten worse with the return of TotalBiscuit. Now VS is back to barely non-existent numbers during prime time. We just finished an all tech plant alert. They took one. Barely. With their entire population on one map. So I ask again, why does SOE continue to support the 800 lb gorilla? Is it healthy for the community?
Difficulty Ceiling: The worst thing a company can do is pick one player type to cater towards and simply ignore the other. Degrading the ace pilots experience and stripping away their abilities that make the game fun, and a challenge is a bad move. I am not an ace pilot but If a game is dumbed down too drastically then it looses its appeal once the newbies reach the lower skill ceiling. By having the ability to take Planetside 2 game play higher and to a more competitive level you increase the longevity of interest in the game. On Perceptions: The trick is allowing new players to jump into something and walk away with a positive experience. They don't necessarily have to win every engagement straight off against an ace pilot. However if they could fly from point A to point B easily. Or if they had a better understanding of their vehicle and more tools that can make their fights more interesting and survive longer then it would be different and the problem we have now would go away. A new pilot who could easily fly across the map, take out a turret, and get to his destination would have that belief that they COULD win. He or she would think they can fly just fine, and be more inclined to get back into the cockpit and figure out ways to improve when they did crash or die. Its like inception, once the idea THEY CAN FLY takes hold it grows. Right now newer pilots just get overwhelmed and give up. They believe they cannot win, and so they stop trying. I think allot of Tom's suggestions tonight will drastically help players get more comfortable in the air. The ESF has a population problem that Sony can solve without removing the reverse air from the game or butchering the ESF skill ceiling by taking away what makes it fun. On Skill: In cases where a player is truly UNABLE to fly having another unit as an option, that is much less difficult to control would be ideal to cater to lower skilled individuals. Please understand that I mean no offense to lower skilled individuals but we have to be honest. The grandfather or maybe someone who has some kinda debilitating condition in real life is not going to be an ace pilot. Or maybe someone very very young who lacks the mental ability to track targets and be as aware needs another option. There are also people with terrible latency and poor FPS that would love to fly, but they cannot do so effectively because their render distance and settings are lower.A helicopter is a beautiful idea which could solve all of these issues and make the game more fun. The Helicopter: Having more armor then an ESF the unit would need to be a little bit slower to allow the standard ESF the ability to escape engagements. Force the ESF to counter helicopters with hit and run tactics. Given how the ESF can roll and plummet at great speeds. The requirement for the helicopter to be right side up, would prevent it from chasing ESF's down too drastically. If an ESF pilot gets caught it would most likely be his own fault for selecting that location or refusing to bail or being poor at avoiding damage. Strategy: The helicopters could hang around friendly troops working much more closely with ground troops then other aircraft do. Helicopters could work in smaller teams, similar to how we see the harasser being used today. Ideally the helicopter would be more of a lower threat but also more consistent presence on the battle field. Similar to the flash, the helicopter offers a rumble seat for basic infantry players to ride in. This could be a sniper, or a heavy assault with a rocket launcher, or a light assault with a jetpack. A good way for a lower skilled individual (and the rest of us) to have fun with a friend in a more infantry based setting but mixing in some air elements. Giving the air arena a much needed injection of new combatants to play with while keeping those players nearby the ground combat they already love. Nothing the helicopters could do would be terribly new or game breaking. Any objectives they reach could be done with a cloaked flash or harasser already. This would just be more effective at filling that role then the wraith flash, but also expose the pilot and passenger to more risks. Essentially you have a flying unit, that allows one friendly (Non Max unit) to get some elevation. Firepower: #1 is a simple nose gun: This can only fire in the direction the helicopter is facing towards. In essence it is the anti-air deterrent, and used to defend themselves from ESF's, or to possibly pepper enemy infantry if the pilot is crazy enough to aim downwards at them, or fly low to get them in his sights. Nothing too terribly overpowered here just reward good leading and aiming skills. The idea is a steady precision based platform so the helicopter can set up and be a mobile defense for ground troops from air attacks and provide protection for allied sundies or bases. Unlike the ESF the helicopter could be geared to reward more of a calm approach to aiming and getting kills in a local area rather then the wicked spiral dances we see from the ESF that span multiple zones at higher speeds. # 2 is a lock on missile: A simple, slow moving lock on missile designed to take out base turrets, and be used as a deterrent to pester enemy tanks. For example the player might help protect an allied sunderer from an enemy harasser or tank. Given the risks the helicopter would be facing from both air, and ground targets, a slow moving, hard hitting projectile with a lock-on would be ideal. A very long reload timer for the next missile would also prevent spamming abuse and force the helicopter to move around and evade between shots . Because its a lock on, it should be easy enough for the lower skilled individuals to use the missile intelligently and contribute with it, but not overpower their enemies. Tune the damage to be a deterrent on the first hit, and possibly a kill on the second or third hit for basic un-certed or low armor vehicles. An un-certed harasser would have to hide behind cover and trick the third missile to avoid death. A stationary target like a turret being destroyed in two hits is fine. The occupant inside should be able to escape easily. Weaknesses: The helicopters primary weaknesses could be ambush from above by Liberators, or ESF. The helicopters blind spot should be upwards and behind them. Making it possible for the helicopter to be snuck up on if the pilot stays facing the same direction for too long. The helicopter should be fast enough when at top speed to be difficult to bomb. By no means should the helicopter be a sitting duck. Liberators would probably want to attack it from a higher altitude and get the jump on it when its stationary or slowly moving. Helicopters could be a lower flying unit and enjoy the support of allied troops who would be spotting for them and helping them be more aware of their surroundings. The ESF tactics for destroying helicopters would be a hit and run. Similar to what we already see. When dealing with ESF the helicopter should rotate to face them quickly getting sights on the ESF trying to aim them down. The ESF will be faster, and more agile, but the helicopter will turn quickly to face the danger, and be able to track the ESF reasonably well. In a perfect scenario the ESF will flank and ambush the helicopter for a kill. The flip side would be the helicopter is able to track the ESF and kill them if the pilot is sloppy or lingers too long for their kill. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maggie fantastic FNO. I LOVE the panel idea this was awesome. Id love to see what changes do end up taking place in future with the resource revamp coming up. I hope what I have suggested here is a demonstration of the positive attitude of your community wanting to encourage everyone who plays both new and veteran alike. Take what you want from it knowing it was written in a positive spirit with a focus of adding more to this wonderful game instead of taking fun parts away from it.
i was just watching FNO now, and i'm listening to this ESF panel and.. well, the problem i see is the problem i've mentioned in the past.. When you only talk to the top ranked, "best" pilots around, you are going to get the opinions of people who are really good and can do things more easily than other people, You are going to get people who (generally) approve of, and will suggest things that are easy for, or require a higher still level. These sorts of panels need at least one or two low skill/newbie pilots to give a better viewpoint for those, even if they are very skilled now, and can talk about how they weren't skilled at some point, and they can talk about how they weren't always this good, i'd like to hear from people with less skill and fewer certs now. How is the air game for low skilled pilots right now? What do they think? When you only talk to the best or highest rank people in a role, you're going to get a skewed response, even if they are trying their hardest to be fair and balanced about it all. It always pays to see things from both ends of the spectrum. Instead of hearing "What I think new players need" why can't you get some new or unskilled players and ask them, to their face, what they want and think and need? Why do we only talk to the "best" or highest rank players, why can't we talk to some newbs and get first hand experience? They should be on the panel too, right? Edit: is it just me or do a lot of these things sound like "one or one X will kill me" the coyotes lock on quickly and are murder on a lib.. but if you have an ESF or two with you, you ruin that ESF before it can kill the lib.. no problem right? So solo there is a problem but in a group (which is what the game is about) there isn't, isnt that the point?
Hamma's main character is Terran Republic (TR) on the Waterson server as stated on the show. We won't always play on the same server and or faction for Community Play Sessions. I was kind of learning on Hamma having more to say in this respect since he does not fly as often as the others.
Always good. I would just love to see a .. i guess.. newbie panel? I'd like to see a panel of people who are new to flying, or are "bad" at it, and see how the difference between the two panels comes out. What is the difference in opinion between the extremes of those who are good, and those who, well, aren't. What do the two groups want, and whats the difference between those two? Do the newbs and "poor" fliers want completely different things? Because, after all, its important to make sure everyone gets what they want, right? Having opinions from good players is, well, good.. Obviously, but people who aren't very good at flying probably want completely different things, and see things very differently. I'd just be very interested to see the difference in opinions between the two camps.
It was very fun running with you and FNO the other night Luperza, even if I had to roll TR... I missed most the discussion portion so I'll have to watch that. I don't know your opinion on the flying subject but to comment your generic post. You can't expect that and you shouldn't.... Simply put, this is Sony and they wouldn't be Sony if they were only trying to please one group. I'm not trying to pick an argument with you but profit is goin to care less about the difference between hardcore and casual gamers. Who's to say the "casuals" aren't spending more money than hardcore gamers? I'm not speaking for Sony as I can't but I see it as common sense and I may be wrong. It's a company and they have quotas to meet. Quotas can't be met with such a narrow mind, or how about, quotas can be raised with a more open mind... They aren't trying to please one group, they're gonna generalized anyone who downloads their game into one group, essentially FPS gamers, and please em' all.. This game is about to be on PS4 as F2P, they're well past dividing this game's fans into sub-groups... Not to put down fans who categorized themselves as hardcore gamers and being different than "casuals" but trust and believe Sony is trying to find that in-between to please all fans. Otherwise they wouldn't have people such as Luperza to read/analyze everyone's opinions on a subject of the game and show them to the decision makers. Opinions are being heard and I'm sure that's part the reason why the FNO discussion panel was introduced, to make opinions louder. It's a hot topic and I honestly don't even know the exact details but I know it's about skills between pilots and the bar that separates noobs from average and average from advanced pilots. Flying is ... AWKWARD for "noobs"... I'm sure Sony chose the best keybindings you can imagine but flying with a keyboard and mouse no matter the layout is awkward. I don't know whats going on with the (proposed?) changes to the reverse thrust but it shouldn't have nothing to do with helping new players because the issue new players have is flying comfortably in general, imo. As arrogant as dude ThundaHawke may seem, I think he made the best point when a new pilot asked him for help. He basically said, as with anything you have to practice in the field to become better. I interpreted it as practice on a live server against real enemies to become more comfortable with the flying mechanics. He then went on to say that the best way to do that was to continually make new characters after each death to avoid the resource drain and aircraft cooldown as your ensured to die pretty quickly your first few to 50 tries. His point was that it's too much hassle to get some legitimate practice in... And it is. That's unnecessary... I'm not for unbalanced pops either but I highly doubt that they selected TR to bring more TR to the server. I'm satisfied they chose Waterson period as it seems to be stabilizing if not dying down in total population. I'm all for Waterson promotion no matter how it comes. I'll say that NC Waterson could use a morale boost somehow because alot have turned into strictly cert farmers. Still, being showcased on FNO would only be a temp fix if one at all. Another thing is, I'm sure 90% of people watching FNO already have their main characters made. Besides, would you really want a new player to join your faction just because they seen other people playing it or would you rather have someone who would decide for themself join. Still and all, they didn't do it on purpose and I'm sure the effect was minor.
You just contradicted yourself in your own post. If you think that the things that Luperza says on SOE's official Planetside 2 web cast do not have an effect on the community, or are not an endorsement or advertising, then you have another think coming. This is how marketing works. Corporations spend billions, if not trillions of dollars on celebrity endorsements. There is no easier way to market a product than with a celebrity endorsement. Luperza is a celebrity. She was hired by SOE because of her exceptional skill at gaming which built her a unique reputation and celebrity in this community so that she could serve as the face of this product. I love this game. I think it is the greatest game ever made. And I, like most of us here, <3 Luperza. And I am not trying to take anything away from you or from her. If she wants to play with her friends, I do not want to stop her. However, I do not think that she realizes (and it is clear that you do not) her impact on the community. Check my stats. I haven't in a while but I am probably closing in on 3000 hours playing this game on Waterson. I play at all times throughout the day in different shifts. My other stats should tell you that I am not skilled enough to be effective as a solo artist. There are thousand, perhaps millions of players more skilled than I at this game. However, the epic scale offers me a unique chance to do what I do best. Leadership. Community. Strategy. I have built a community on Waterson from nothing. I play between 4 and 12 (or more hours a day). Perhaps excessive. Reserve your judgement because I don't care. But I can tell you in no uncertain terms that Luperza's endorsement HAS had an effect on the community. That dozens or hundreds of players have in fact rolled up on TR to play with her. Or because of her endorsement. Because for the first time TR has carried it's 10% population advantage to weekend prime time as a result of the advertizement and official SOE endorsement. This has harmed the community. Morale in NC and VS is at an all time low. Players that have mains as other factions have switched to running their TR alts full time because there is simply no way to combat the numbers when it gets to 10% deficits. Outside of prime time it is worse. 20%, even 30% population deficit to TR makes the game all but unplayable for the other factions. It will soon be unplayable for TR unless something is done to reverse the trend because they won't have anybody to play against.
When was the last community play session? How many have you done? And most importantly, why did you choose to do it now when the forums have been complaining about the TR overpopulation on Waterson for months? Why does TR Waterson need your endorsement at all? Why does Hamma?
Quoted for emphasis. Furthermore, focusing on these same players, outfits and factions that are already dominating is actively discouraging new players from playing and new outfits from growing.
I think it's just moronic that the servers aren't preventing a faction to have more than a set percentage of players logged on higher than another one. Just make it possible to log on with the same character on different servers for god's sake. At least then you're not forced to start over on another character. And PLEASE don't make the lock-on rocket launcher worse than they are PLEASE! It's already impossible enough as it is to do anything agaisnt a decent pilot in a 1 vs 1. It takes damn forever to lock them on and destroying a liberator with rockets takes more rockets than you can hold (maybe not if you have max munition packs agaisnt a lib without armor upgrades... maybe. Either way the liberator will have more than enough time to escape and repair or just kill you.) I'ts boring enough already that you can only scare away aircrafts with rocket launchers except in big AA groups. I know it becomes a MUCH different game when there are a lot of players but that's just because some people try to go into big fights with aircrafts and they're not organized. There's nothing surprising there about the fact that they get shot down easily. And when an aircraft is farther away, there's not really any need for longer lock-on, it already takes longer for the rocket to reach the aircraft and, chances are, the enemy will just turn around and evade it. It's not like they're intelligent heat-seeking missles. they quite easy to evade. I don't think it should be made even ahrder to destroy aircraft. Eventually the only players that are going to be left are the good ones because that's bound to happen over time. New players can just keep on training even though it's not necessarily easy. People can and will help them if they try to find teammates who do have experience with piloting.
Maybe that's something that should be talked about on FNOps? Personally I think that the server should only allow a certain percentage of a faction to be logged in at once. This way it still keeps things somewhat in check and gives the others somewhat a fighting chance.
I joined the show to be part of the show, had they been fighting NC I would have probably just hopped on my NC. I do that for a lot of streams from "celebrities" to random twitch streamers you've never heard of. I don't want to argue about the population effect Luperza has on the community, mainly because I have no clue as you don't... I would expect her fan base to join her as VS on Connery. I was speaking for FNO in general. I think you and your outfit was featured on there a few months back. Did your experience from the game show you a spike in NC after H4TZ was featured? I don't recall it... I would rather have a look at the data before passing judgement on the reason for population imbalance. I would start by looking at each faction's total active members from all servers. That would be a last hope solution mainly because of the negative effects it brings. Preventing players from playing with their outfit and friends is something that should be avoided.
I don't see what prevents you from asking your outfit to play on another server for a game or just to wait in the queue (Especially if you can play with the same character on different servers)
Astounding. Truly, terrifyingly astounding. You say in one sentence, I rolled TR to join the Let's Play Community event and in the next you deny that anyone joined to participate in the Let's Play Community event. How can you deny that the purpose of a community event of this kind is to drive players to join when you yourself have done exactly that? If you want to talk about FNO in general, then let's talk about FNO in general. If you want to talk about episode 29, then take it to that thread. Because statistically speaking it was the worst episode ever. Least number of views. Least advertised because we filled in at the last minute for somebody else who bailed. And because there was no content session. Further, it was not a Let's Play community event. It was an outfit spotlight. I am not against the idea of the Let's Play community events. I think they're a great idea. What I am arguing against is the choice of doing this Let's Play community event as TR on Waterson. If you haven't seen the threads complaining about the oppressive TR overpopulation on Waterson for the last few months than you have been purposefully avoiding them. The argument has been the same for months. "Oh stop posting world pop threads at off-peak times. Waterson is fine at peak time." Which may have been true, but a 30% deficit at any time is destructive to the community. And the time that TR has not had a crushing overpopulation has steadily declined for the past several months. In the past few weeks since TotalBiscuit's return the number of hours where things were relatively even has shrunk to about 2 or 4 hours. And now, for the first time, the overpopulation of 10% extended to prime time. On a Friday. And you expect me to believe that this had nothing to do with the FNO Let's Play community event for TR that just happened to coincide with this? I do not believe in coincidence sir. And your suggestion that this episode had nothing to do with Friday night's TR zerg is paramount to walking outside in a class 5 hurricane and saying, "it's not raining THAT hard."
If you want to talk about TotalBiscuit then take it to that thread /sarcasm.... It's all relative. I'm just not about to talk about someone who reads this and can't really put an opinion in because of their job status. In all those outfit spotlight segments, they always suggest viewers to get on and play with them... As well as recommending viewers to join said outfit which is essentially joining that highlighted outfit's faction. So yeah, I think FNO outfit spotlights would have a bigger impact on population distribution than the lets play segment. Yeah I don't read the rest of this forum anymore as it's too much work to weed out legit posts from ********, I'm sure you can understand. I don't know what you're going on about me playing with the lets play event. The whole one and a half squad disappeared the second Luperza got off and I got right back on my NC char, even the VS disappeared from the base we were attacking after she got off. If those 18 members created a 10% population advantage for TR during Friday prime time then I would worry more about the server as a whole dying instead of one faction, even if I thought the TR were the devil's minions. How about making your criticism more constructive.. How about you recommend them buy more billion if not trillion dollar likable celebrities that will strictly play NC. The concern of yours is admirable, how about putting H4TZ in the outfit spotlight queue again and put on the best show FNO has ever seen. You seem like a smart guy, I would love to hear your opinions on how to fix the TotalBiscuit issue or how to prevent another incident like that from happening.
