So I've been seeing a lot of "they should've done Y" and "why the hell did they do X", and it got me to wondering if there could ever be a PS2 that satisfied people more than the current one. I'd like to hear what people think the ideal Planetside 2 would be like. So picture yourself as the lead developer of Planetside 2. You're on the verge of launching beta. What is Planetside 2 like? ("NERF THE X!" and "IT WOULDN'T SUCK!" need not comment.)
PS1 with PS2's infantry gunplay and graphics =better vehicle gameplay =better bases =better metagame =bigger continents =more vehicles =more continents =more diverse continents =more diverse gameplay =more diverse vehicle and infantry weapons =underground caverns =battles in water/air/ground (yes we had water.!) =battles that actually meant something the only thing wrong with PS1 was outdated graphics and infantry gameplay done
The issue is, people don't know what they want. The game is really fine, the main issue people have is they don't group. Many people who played the original PS1 probably played Everquest. Coming directly from EQ to PS1 meant many had a grouping mindset. That mindset has faded for many people or never developed in the first place. If you ever join one of those squads or platoons that is constantly moving from base to base taking them or fending off with a shock defense. You'll see what I mean. All that stuff that you see people complain about on the forums disappears, you don't even pay attention to it. Its either a non-issue for you, or you just don't have time to really get into worrying about it. But there is ONE thing I would change. Server clustering. Landmark style. In Landmark they have servers and continents like PS2. They just have alot more of them. They also have a Warpgate like structure called a Spire.. well warpgates could be called spire-like structures since they originated in EQ.. but that's beside the point. These spires allow you to switch continents, just like warpgates. But they also allow you to switch servers. So instead of four Continents to play on. You'd have four x 5 servers. Connery, Emerald, and so on would still exist. But only as a name in a list. So if Indar-Connery is captured, you could simply travel to Indar-Emerad, or Hossin-Connery, or whatever. And just like Landmark, there would still be EU based servers, they would just have the option to play on other servers too and vice versa. So without merging servers, we all get 5 times the people to play with, WITHOUT merging servers and WITHOUT destroying the small fights. Of course queues would keep things even for the heavily populated continents as normal. And there'd probably be like 5-6 or more continents capped at the same time. They would have to reduce or cap (I prefer cap) the bonuses so they don't stack ridiculously. And this would solve ALOT of the population issues. Because world wide at any given time, the factions are roughly equal. But across servers, they aren't. Combined into one pool... they'll be equal, or closer to being equal. Unlocking continents would be done per server. This way the EU or AU server can't be locked out entirely. There will always be at least 1 or 2 continents open per server. This way people worried about their ping can play where its best for them. Only difference here is you'd have orbital strike spam from a dude you can't find on a hilltop, vs vehicles that you can more easily spot and hit. The reason why PS1 looked so good is because of your rose colored nostalgia goggles. That and everyone had to Pay to Play. Sorry to say, but when everyone's paying, the quality of the average player goes up. And when the quality goes up, the group/team mentality is more evident which means better group fights, and better fights for everyone overall. Its much more fun to fight team vs team than zerg vs zerg. Think I'm wrong? Go play PS1 right now. It plays JUST like PS2 minus the graphics. It is now the opposite of what you think you want. Its the players that make the two games the way they are now, not the games themselves.
This. Unfortunately, most of the time, players are more interested in raging and nutcracking over the pointless gun stats than gameplay mechanics that would have a real chance of changing this game for the better.
orbital strikes were rare and its not just rose colored nostalgia glasses as ps1 got all the things right that ps2 got wrong i dont have a problem with the people in ps2 or ps1 - i do think ps2 is just not as good as ps1 because they just copied battlefield and made the game smaller than ps1 you doubt there were more vehicles? or better vehicle gameplay? separate driver/gunner solves a lot of gameplay issues we have right now in ps2 what about continents? do we have as many as ps1? are they as diverse as ps1 was? you think having all the bases so close together is actually good in ps2? or that the base design is better in ps2? bases like the ones in ps1 again solves lots of problems we have in ps2 what about metagame and intercontinental lattice? do you remember how cool it was finishing off a continent then rolling out from the homecont with a bajillion galaxys? watching the rain of infantry drop from the skies onto that first base? people dont do that in ps2 because the intercontinental gameplay sucks when you can just redeploy anywhere at anytime theres a million reasons ps1 is better than ps2 - none of it had to do with the players
If you think I'm wrong, download Planetside 1 and play it. Right now. Its up, and there are people playing it. But they are playing it just like they do PS2. Is it horrible? No, its just not the 'glory' days that people claim. Just EQ isn't, people just don't like to group in 2015 like they did before 2005. I don't believe vehicles are a problem in PS2. I've played many games with gunners and drivers in different roles and games where there is only a driver, and others you can't exit the vehicle. Its all about the same. Again rose colored goggles. Seriously go play PS1. Some bases you can snipe people sitting in the next base over. Travel times are quicker on average in PS2 than they are in PS1 because the vehicles are quicker. Try this in PS2, go on foot from your warpgate to the Crown on Indar. Now login and do the same to the middle of a map on PS1. Meta-game is still there. It falls on to the players to make it happen. The rain of infantry from the skies, thats an organized effort. Organization CANNOT be codded in. It can't. There's no amount of IF THAN ELSE statements that will organized the players. Look at World of Warcraft for example. In 2004 and 2005, there was NO elements in the game outside the /pvp command that made people fight between Terran Mill and Southshore. But they did it. Why? Because they wanted to. And that battle could last DAYS. There was no reward for it, no incentive. Nothing like that, the players just made it happen. People want to do two things, you just got to admit to that. Those two things are: 1. They want certs, why? They don't know, they just know or think they need to farm them. 2. Follow someone. Problem is, they are following someone who is also looking to follow someone. This is the zerg. Why was PS1 better in those regards? 1. People didn't farm certs, they just got them while they played. Iridar suggested this in another thread this week. He said you didn't need to claim certs every day on a character you're not playing. You simply just need to play it, and the certs autogranted are just a bonus, nothing more. There's some merit to that. You don't need to farm certs, you'll get them by just playing. My squad does this. We don't get on to farm certs, we get on to play. We spend our certs before or after our play sessions, not during. 2. Leadership and groups. As I said before, team vs team is a helluva lot more fun than zerg vs zerg. And it has the bonus of solving your meta-game issue. Again my squad does this. We play how we want. Its not always in the interest of the zerg, its not always about getting certs. But finding something we want to do and doing it. Funny thing is, even with its light hearted nature at times, we've been the cause of capturing entire continents and winning alerts doing that. Amazing what a little teamwork and cooperation can do.
Unfortunately, everyone wants a different ideal for PS2. Whether its balance related, mechanic related, game speed etc, people are gonna disagree about it. The most common ideal seems to be a modernized PS1. Ideally, my version of PS2 would have had a lot more development time before release. Game wise, I would have kept a lot of the old things from PS1 that worked, scrapped the ones that didn't, and added the modern mechanics such as general physics and better behind the scenes stuff. I kinda like the damage model we see in war thunder tanks, where tanks have critical weakpoints and you can fail to penetrate on some areas or if you hit at an odd angle. A system like that would be cool in PS2, assuming it wouldn't be a massive server power drain. Overall, I think PS2 would have been better had it been released a few years later to let hardware catch up to its demands. Give it some graphical updates (I mean, its not like the GPU is overused at the moment) to make it look pretty and boom, looks great. However it is doing pretty good for being a bit more than two years old and it still looks great.
before we start i want to say i actually do play ps1 - not as much as ps2 because of the population but i play it HOW they play it isnt a problem - i have no issues with how people play ps1 or ps2 vehicles are MORE FUN in ps1 because of the separate driver/gunner and although i dont have any issues with them (look at my vehicle stats - i love vehicles) other people do sniping from the next base over isnt an issue with either game - i dont know why you even brought it up the second part is flat out false - i dont have the time atm but i can guarantee it will take longer to run to honsi from cyssor warpgate than it will take to run from one warpgate on indar to crown how about you walk from one outpost/base to the next one and the one after that etc in ps1 and in ps2 and see what the average travel time is between them sure there is a limited metagame and lots of organization in ps2 but gameplay mechanics like redeploy and short distances between bases detracts from it why jump in a sunderer from base to base when you can just redeploy? why get a vehicle from base to base when you can just walk it? why do a gal drop when they are used more as an air gunship than a transportation device its the GAMEPLAY MECHANICS that stop people from using vehicles as transport and distance between bases that also stops it i do see these things happen in ps2 though when in squads in a good outfit but in ps1 everyone did it not just organized squads - it wasnt organization it was the gameplay mechanics that made people want to pull transport and just pick up randoms or get a gunner (or be a gunner) for their tank etc etc etc also i actually see more organization in ps2 than i did in ps1 - ps1 was "hey lets fight at this base thats had a fight for a long time cause you get lots of points for it" so imo they did farm certs by fighting at the longest base fights all the time but i have no problem with that like i dont have a problem with people farming certs in ps2 there was just as much zerging in ps1 as there is in ps2 - once you got points for the base cap EVERYONE rolled out and hammered the next base in the lattice, which again i dont have a problem with this in ps1 or ps2 i dont know about WOW as i never played it - i played ps1 right up until ps2 released and not much else and from the moment i started playing ps2 i knew it wasnt as good - the only thing keeping me away from ps1 and keeping me on ps2 is population 1 is wrong people farmed points (for certs) ALL THE TIME in ps1 - as i said people would fight at the longest base battles for the most points 2 have you seen server smash? or farmers league? - more organization there than anything i have ever seen in ps1, heck even just everyday ops is more organized than pretty much all the teamwork in ps1 ps1 teamplay consisted of "lets jump in a galaxy and drop on this base - everyone meet at the warpgate" or "everyone get a max and maxcrash the backdoor" or similar your problem is you have rose colored glasses for the teamwork in ps1 which honestly wasnt as good as you get in ps2 but you seem to be blind to all the great mechanics and systems the game had over ps2 every system and game mechanic was just better in ps1 - hence why i want ps2 gunplay and graphics but everything else ps1 did better
I really think you missed my point. You have to understand, when I state something as an example, it doesn't mean its a problem. I'm not like the other zerglings in this forum. So go back and reread what I said with that in mind. I'm not going to sit here in an offtopic discussion about sniping or vehicle balance. Sorry.
its pretty simple really the question was "what does the perfect ps2 look like" my answer was "ps1 with the gunplay and graphics from ps2" you disagreed and thought i was looking at ps1 through rose colored glasses because it was the organization and teamplay that made ps1 good not the game mechanics which i disagreed with because the organization and teamwork is better in ps2 than ps1 - it was the GAME MECHANICS and SYSTEMS in ps1 which is what i think would make ps2 better (still ontopic) why are you still talking about sniping? thats the most off topic thing about this conversation and you started it?!?!? what is it supposed to be an example of? not distance because i was talking about average distance between bases and not the occational base that is close in ps1 (with the exception of the base outpost which you need to be close) on AVERAGE the bases are further apart in ps1, the distances are more varied but they are rarely close i also never mentioned anything about vehicle balance but i did talk about vehicle mechanics and systems - like having vehicles be used more for transport and separate driver/gunners none of which are balance issues but are game mechanics and systems which is ONTOPIC because i think they will improve ps2
I could and likely have, written a book on how I think PS2 shoulda been done. MOre limits on kit options more limits on vehicle purchasing, longer timers, the like Tougher vehicles front on, deadlier guns, but weak in the side and rear. Vehicles being rarer overall, but alot more powerful Logistics system, where a base only has a certain # of respawns and resupplies, then a supply truck must deliver more or it falls Sundys as well only get a limited number of spawns and supplies. Sundies become important to guard as not everyone can pull one, as part of the limited vehicles and longer CDs system Iwould put in.\ Strict faction trait system. No GD7Fs, TMG50s, Flares. Kits would be limited more so then now. No C4 packing medics, no ROcket launcher Heavy assaults,...classes would be alot more defined in role. HA: Heavy Anti Infantry class, Engi: Anti Vehicle specilist. Medic, healing and support guys, LA: Flanker fly boy, the fun, tricksy class. Infils; Snipers, back line dirty work guys, blowing up ants, hacking terminals and the like. Doing all sorts of annoying ****. Vehicle crewman, only guy who can drive. Less bases, but the few we would have would actually truly represent a military installation, turrets, buildings set up to look like a base, not like a big bang theory dropped some stuff in a crater. Deep, multi layer base attacks. No Lattice and Cont locking.....atleast not until the game had like 15 continents.... To stop ghost capping, make it like BF2: Project reality: It takes so long to cap solo that you literally really cant. Or like PS1, LLU that needs to be moved back to the previous base, and solo, that is incredibly not worth it. Or other various features to make Ghost capping not at all feasible. Maybe if its not contested, as in, no enemy in it, you cant even begin to cap it. BUt that seems a bit extreme.
I would have gone with a slower TTK considering the massive number of players and the constant Hit detection and latency issues the game suffers from. MOAR Conts! A true lattice/warp system and the ability to WARP through the WARP GATES instead of them just being staging areas. ( is it too hard to make a very small cont for all 3 factions and just host it on one server that we call a Sanctuary to stage assaults from?
