First, thanks very much to the whole PS2 Dev Team for putting together an awesome game and for continuing to support it post-launch with some very important bug fixes, balance changes, and gameplay additions. I know we all appreciate your effort and commitment. In this thread I will attempt to defend the following ideas: 1. Vague information is better than nothing, but it leads to speculation and misinformation that negatively impacts a game's community. 2. Making specific data on game mechanics available to the community in a way accessible to all players encourages positive community discussion. It also helps the community identify bugs, gameplay imbalance, and other players abusing the game through hacking. 3. Intentionally depriving the community of game mechanics data with the intent of encouraging players to spend real money to gather that data on an individual basis is wrong and conflicts with the best interests of players. Acting against the best interest of the player is the same as acting against the best interest of the game. -- Today Planetside 2 received its first game update, the notes for which are available here: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/game-update-1.64525/ Here are some excerpts from those notes, followed by the questions a player might ask themselves after reading them: "The Gauss Compact S will now provide players the ability to aim down sights and strafe more accurately." How much more accurately? Does that mean you adjusted the crosshair/bullet strike location? Did you adjust the COF? "The TX2 Emperor should now provide the correct damage level to targets." What kind of damage was it doing before? What damage is it doing now? How much more powerful is it now than the last time I used it? "Aircraft and Phalanx Turret resistance to the following weapons has been reduced:" "Sunderer resistance to heavy machine guns has been increased." By how much? I didn't even know that certain vehicles/turrets HAD "resistance". Where can I find this data? What other vehicles have resistances to various other weapons? "will provide the best hip fire of this empires (sic) assault rifles" "medium-fast fire rate assault rifle has good hip fire and range limiting recoil" "a slow rate of fire but compensates with deadly accuracy" (...etc)... What does good/best mean in the context of the game? By how much/by what percentage? How much different can I expect it to be from last time? How will I know if the intended change is accurately reflected in the game? -- I could continue but I believe the point is made: these patch notes are vague and lack the detail necessary for players to make informed choices. Compare the Planetside 2 patch notes with the most recent patch notes for Eve Online, another popular online game: http://community.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp (Scroll down to the section marked "Ships" for the most relevant comparison to the level of detail that would be useful in Planetside 2.) Why are these details important to players? Let's consider the experience of a player completely new to PS2, and completely new to the FPS genre in general. They log in, grab a character, and obviously have an awesome time for a few hours. They start to develop an affinity for a specific class, and play that class more than the others. Over time they start to understand the types of in-game combat engagements that favor their chosen class and gameplay style, and they realize that they have other weapon options. They decide to take a look at what's available, and try to make the best of the "score bars" and brief informational blurbs to try to pick a new weapon. They happily plonk down 700SC for the new weapon, spend some certs on the customization options, and hit the battlefield excited as all hell. Unfortunately, they almost immediately realize they've made the wrong choice. Because they didn't have access to all the information about the weapon, they find that the recoil is still too high for them, the rate of fire too low, the COF too wide, whatever the case may be. And it's only a few seconds after that they realize they just wasted 700SC, and only a few seconds after THAT that they vow never to spend another dime on a SOE game. And that is bad for literally everybody in the supply chain - from SOE itself, to the Dev Team, to the community and forums, and especially to the individual player. The only way this could possibly have been prevented is if all of the information about their new weapon had been available to them at the time of purchase. What if, instead of using words like "good", "better", and "best", this player had had access to this information through an official channel such as the main website or even in-game?: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...ZOSWNaanFqSUVxLWc&f=true&noheader=true&gid=12 (Above links to a spreadsheet made available on www.reddit.com/r/planetside showing all weapon mechanics data.) -- I would like very much to believe that the argument SOE would make for the currently vague level of detail surrounding game mechanics is that, "Complex math and overly detailed mechanics will scare away casual gamers." We've all heard that argument before - I don't want that, and neither does SOE. But if that is their argument then I disagree. Another online game, World of Warcraft, has a very high level of data complexity available to players and (although it was not always this way) regularly includes specific game mechanics information in their patch notes. Having attained a subscriber base of over 11 million at one point, I think it would be hard to argue that this level of detail did not appeal to the "casual gamer". On the contrary, I believe that showing a world of complexity to casual gamers open their eyes to the wonderful and exciting possibilities available to them in a game, and encourages them to invest both time and (importantly for all of us) money in supporting that game. Unfortunately, the cynic in me suggests that SOE might like to deprive the player base of detailed information so that each of us would be forced to gather the detail individually. By this I mean, if I really wanted to know how each carbine in the game works, I'd have to buy them all. I appreciate that a weapon preview and testing window exists, but it feels just short enough to give you a taste without necessarily giving you all of the information you need to make an informed decision as a buyer. Consider that in Planetside 1, the VR simulator allowed you to try out every single weapon and vehicle loadout for however long one felt was necessary, for free? Is there a reason such a feature does not exist in Planetside 2, if that reason is not that SOE would like to suppress the availability of clear, detailed information about items that they are otherwise prepared to sell? -- I would like to conclude with the following thoughts: 1. I believe that the average gamer would like to have available, even if they don't use it, the maximum possible amount of data regarding gameplay mechanics. 2. I believe that SOE's failure to provide this data in a clear, universally available manner conflicts with the best interest of the Planetside 2 player base, and I believe that a failure to serve the player base will shorten the effective life of Planetside 2 as a revolutionary MMOFPS. 3. I want to financially support Planetside 2, and I want other people to support Planetside 2, but I believe myself and others will be discouraged from doing this if we do not understand the specific ways in which the game works and the way in which the game changes over time. -- Thank you for reading and I hope that these thoughts will provoke intelligent, respectful discussion that will encourage SOE to make more game data available, and to include more specific information in their future patch notes.
I unfortunately believe that this is probably true, but I am hoping to hear another reasoned argument to the contrary. Do you have any thoughts?
Solution: never spend a dime on an SOE game to begin with. That will always leave you in the black, no matter what.
This is an excellent post. I agree that raw data, as much of it as possible, should be available to the community. I also agree that providing a very detailed level of information about the game mechanics on a regular basis is healthy for online games. I played EVE online for over 5 years and often remarked about how much data the devs provided about the game. They even exposed an API so that the community can build tools around the game. This type of thing makes games really "sticky" and keeps people playing and paying longer. Granted SOE and CCP have different revenue models but I certainly hope that reduced information is not part of SOEs revenue model.
I don't want this and neither do you, trust me. We want to encourage people to be able to spend money, and enjoy doing it. That's what will keep the game alive and evolving. Yeah, I wanted to mention the API as one of the ways EVE stays "sticky" and keeps information in the hands of the players, but thought the post was long enough as it is. Good call. I believe SOE has some sort of API currently available (they use it to do character tracking on www.planetside-universe.com) and I know that they are going to have an "Armory" equivalent live for the web soon as well.
The Emperor was previously doing 112 damage, was then changed to do 167 but a bug caused it to do 0. Now it should be fixed.
Not relevant. See, their business model is like this: either you pay and get shafted, or you do not pay and do not get shafted. Thus, if you are worried about getting shafted - do not pay. If you are not worried about getting shafted - pay. Very simple.
Except if you don't pay, they shut the game down, and we all get shafted. So...how does that fit into your model?
Original poster I could not agree with you more, congratulations on a reasonable and well worded post. I hope SOE pay attention.
Run this script in the PlanetSide 2\Resources\Assets folder and you'll get a bunch of txt files in a folder named txt. You can import these txt files into Excel as data source with ^ as cell delimiter and it will create a nice table of all stats for you. The only thing missing is weapon names which you have to figure out by looking at magazine size etc.
By the way, I wholeheartedly agree that the in-game information on weapons is lacking. The bars are neither accurate nor do they tell the whole story and they don't allow comparison of weapons between different class either.
I second you OP. Give me more Data, please. I can deal with it. I do PnP - so I can talk spreadsheet. If people are mentally challenged by data, make it optional and just show them those frickin bars.
Vague patch notes only hurt their credibility. We already have most of the relevant data pulled directly from the game files, so there's no reason for them to leave out information. We still lack information on how attachments affect weapons, and that personally bugs me.
