WHAT THE HELL

so ive played this game for years..took a break and came back a few days ago. WHAT THE HELL. DEATH CAM REALLY? All the time ive spent trying to find good hiding spots and flanking positions and you F it up with this stupid *** mechanic? Let me guess you want people to go and play ULTRA GAY ARENA? The fireing arc wasnt enough to give away the position..you had to up it one and be totally ********. No wonder why this game has no players. YOU ARE GAY!

Welcome to the nosKILL cam. Should have been for <BR20 only. It's all part of the elimination of the strategic in favor of the tactical (started with The Lattice long ago) - if the game slowly morphs into a hamburger-hill spawn-run-shoot-kill-die-lather-rinse-repeat sort of game (which is where it's heading), then the devs and the folks at the top can stop thinking about it. No more balance issue, no more meta-game, etc.

Remember, this is a freeRealms mod, not a game from the ground up. People keep referring to devs - there are none. There are modders, and there's a limited number of things they can do with this aging platform. The nosKILL cam is just another indication that they're in over their collective heads - it's easier to code up something that eliminates a game mechanic in favor of a few seconds of something pretty on the screen, instead of really working on the meta and the bugs.

its not their fault, they're running out of ideas of how to make the game worse,
they've added queues, they've nerfed everything fun,
they've allowed orbital strikes to ruin base fights, they've destroyed the faction balance,
they've even tried driving you away by spending all of your money on PSA in an attempt to kill the franchise!
so its getting tough for them to think up new ways to ruin the game!
Killcam was a natural next step!

I cannot agree with this enough. If they at least made it so that those indoors didn't take damage or get flung about at all, I would maybe be ok with it. I especially hate being in a MAX suit when an OS drops over a base, more so in biolab fights. In some cases, there's no where to go except to sit there and be forced to accept my fate.

People can argue that backing into a wall and constantly doing it helps, or going to spawn, or whatever silly ideas people have otherwise come up with in an attempt to disagree with me... but fact of the matter is, unless there's a MAX alert, you just lost 450 nanites unless a medic is actively around and even then, if they're willing to revive you. Even if there's a MAX alert, you still receive an unnecessary death. It shouldn't be happening.

The kill cam doesn't truly do much. It hurts Infils the most. I think people just want something to blame when they die. Here is what happened yesterday. Infiltrator sniping from a high far away place, getting tons of kills. I know where he is. I snipe there all the time. I snipe him, he dies. It wasnt due to the kill cam. Kill cam only benefits those who decide to view you as a threat and go after you. If you are sniping and you get counter sniped, who is to say that it is the kill cams fault that they knew you were there? How do you know that they didnt already know you were there and were getting ready to kill you? All I can say is that the death cam hasnt helped me much. If I get sniped, I already knew they were there or that I was about to get sniped.

Well staying in one spot for long isn't smart either. When it comes to death cam I don't really care cause I mostly do a2a. But the rare times I go on ground I guess it helps spot hackers? Well mainly those who go into walls and so on.

How HOW is the lattice system in any way stragetical? It was a clusterfk of ghostcaps and zergs thaf didnt need to do any planning and just had to crush anything in the direction they wanted to go to. There was no strategy or tactics. Attacking was all that mattered, and only large bases in favor of the defenders were worth defending at all.

The lattice system is far from perfect, but compared to the shtshow of the hex system its the crème de la crème of tactics and strategy.

I find it profoundly ironic that as somebody that sucks SO much at the game that you blame the game, the game balance, your hardware, your internet, your WLAN and most probably everything and everybody else for your suckage tell people that the ONLY reason they hate on the killcam is because they suck at the game.

It is not even that serious.... If you get killed by someone using the kill cam to find you, in my opinion, you suck.... If you cannot be bothered to move a foot from where you are standing after your easy kill, yes, die where you stand and get squatted on afterwards....

You are doing it again. Putting words out that I didn't type. I never said that they suck at the game. I say that when you die, you want someone or something to blame. That is especially true when you think you have done everything right. The Kill Cam is the easiest thing to blame. "They killed me cuz they knew were I was." No, they killed you because they got enough damage on you. It doesn't matter if the kill cam contributes to that or not. Please, stop putting words into my mouth. Also, I do not blame the game for me being bad at the game.

The Lattice system should be removed and opted in favor of no system. I think you should be able to take any base anywhere on the map, but you gotta do it strategically. You can only spawn in your bases, so if you lead a convoy all the way out towards their warpgate and try to take the base, you are screwed. It would still be smarter to take the surrounding bases, the ones closest to yours, but you can do other bases too. Plus, that encourages convoys, and I like that.

Listen.., Who cares if i suck or dont suck..thats not the point. The point is that it eliminates a great game play element. I remember wayyyy back in the day when all they had was the hit location indicator on the screen. Much more realistic. If i wanted to find someone who kept killing me i had to go and look for them..scout out an area..learn to look before i leap so to speak..be aware of my surroundings..learn how to pull vehicles..not to stand still.. know which ways to attack and defend positions and at which times. It was all about learning the game and the maps from time spent in the game!..not from some newb crutch kill cam!..and when i managed to find that one guy who kept killing me or find a great new spot that i could defend, it was awesome , it kept me learning. As far as having to relocate..NO ****..good players should hunt down or counter snipe anyways. Hell half the time you want them to come after you to see how many times you can kill them before you get taken out. Ill admit i love to snipe...and id bet i have some spots that not even some vets know about. Why not just give everyone the same gun and load out and have one map...LMFAO. The kill cam is just a lame mechanic..its not needed. We learn by doing. The rewards are greater.

Further more as far as blaming the kill cam for deaths. You are stupid if you think thats what people are ******** about.

you are and idiot. Thats not the point. No one is blaming the kill cam. THE POINT IS THEY NEED TO COME AND FIND ME AND FLUSH ME OUT! Thats a classic stealth gameplay element that is gone. Let me guess you are one of those guys that rolls aound in a group of like 10 Sundies. LOL. Shut mouth and get pack in your rolling carpet formation.

i agree, less effects more game

The problem is that you don't have to do it stragetically at all. All you need is a Flash or whatever and travel to the base, take the points and move on. This would mean that the counter to this is players continuously having to redeploy to the next base. Question is, what base is next? Perhaps the enemy just stuck around and is waiting to recap the points once you leave? Perhaps you'll kill them as they try to retake the points? Or you could already be halfway to the next base before they even arrive and the mapscreen doesn't update for another minute or two so you don't know if you can leave or not.

What you are proposing is a hyped up version of the old Hex system (also called adjacency system), where you could capture any territory adjacent to yours. The more Hex's you had next to the enemy territory the faster the capture would go. This encourage massive zerging on one hand, and the players who wanted to do more solo stuff would ghost-cap all over the place. It was hell to play defender as you would either fight an overpop or have to put down ghost-caps all over the continent, never knowing if an ally was already at the scene or that you might find 6 dudes ready to murder you the moment you arrive. There wasn't any strategy, and the only big fights happened when large facilities were the focal point.
The Lattice system is a million times better than the old Hex system, and your "capture anything" system would be even more horrendous, sorry.

You take a Flash to a base, take the points, and the people that can actually spawn there can do something about it. You have no idea what base is next. Thats the point. I understand the problems you are saying, but at the same time, you can't hold any of the bases you do capture. You are surrounded.

What youre suggesting has actually been done before.
But lets got back to Planetside 1 for a little Auraxis history.

In Planetside 1 the goal of the game was to take over enemy bases to gain access to the re-spawn matrix.
To do this you had to link the main computer at each base back to your empires main computer so that it could take ownership of the re-spawn system within that base, along with anciliaries like equipment terminals.
Each base was hard wired along a network of connecting nodes that lead back to each empires sanctuary, i.e. the lattice.
Think of it like landline phone lines, they communicate through wired connections.
So in order to get from sanctuary, A, to base C, you needed to capture base B
A_B_C
You could not jump to base C as the connection to C is blocked by base B being owned by another empire.


In Planetside 2 the goal of the game is the same (although the Lore isnt as well melted into the game as it was in its predecessor).
However, instead of hard wired connections the bases could communicate wirelessly with each empires main computer, you may notice satellite dishes and communications antennae at many bases, this was supposed to be what they were for, but many have been removed now.
At the start of BETA, when it was only Indar available, you could indeed hack any enemy hex you wanted, even the ones surrounding the enemy warpgate, at any time, connection or no connection.

What this produced was a series of either uncontested hacks, or whack-a-mole gameplay of running around resecuring bases infitrators had flipped and then either left or simply hide until you leave again.
It created a situation where fights were few and far between, i even remember reading a PC gamer magazine artice entitled something like 'Planetside 2, where are all the fights?'.
So the developers realised that despite this being a shooter, if you give people too much freedom theyll actually avoid fighting in favour of winning (confuses the hell out of me as i play for the big fights almost exclusively).
To remedy this they created the adjacency system, where you had to own a hex touching another in order to be able to attack it.
This somewhat remedied the problem, we no longer had whack-a-mole resecure marrathons, but we still had an issue of the outfits, mainly the large ones, avoiding each other or leaving a fight if the going got tough, as they had many options to do so.
Even with this change we were spending more time running around the map than actualy fighting.
There was of course also the consideration for overpop, if an overpop team has 12 bases to attack, theyll attack all of them at once leaving the enemy very little chance of a response.
If they only have 2, youve got more chance to funnel what forces you do have and attempt to at least slow down the overpop team.

So the developers in want of actual fighting in this shooter went back to the tried and tested method from planetside 1, the lattice.
And in my humble opinion of course, the game was much much better for it.

I was going to say something about the opposite effect this had, but Ive rambled on for far too long, my apologies.

TLDR: No lattice was tried before during the game development, how the game played wasnt in line with the developers vision for the game, it didnt work.

It isn't a fun experience for the defenders, and a single ghostcapper can keep multiple defenders busy. It is heavily slated in favor of attackers and while yes the base would be surrounded if it is captured you would need to expend multiple players to recap that base and stop the ghostcap of multiple other bases. Additionally there is little to no strategy required besides "drive around" for the attacker while the defender can't anticipate on what the attacker does (stay and ambush, move on, stick around and recap once you leave) so there is no strategy or tactics the defenders can employ to stop you. It lacks tactical options, it lacks stragetical options and it just ties the time and manpower of the defenders in a game already slated in favor of the attackers.

Besides ghostcapping the zerging is also a problem. Aside from fighting at larger bases zergs would actively avoid one another instead of attack. Every time a Zerg capped a base the Zerg would attack one to three bases around it. Any time the defenders would mount an effective defense (impossible if they attacked one base unless you had a Zerg or your own) then the attackers would simply redeploy to one of the other bases under attack where they would ineviteably be successful at attacking. Additionally from a Zerg several ghost-caps would spring up, spreading the forces of the defenders even more while a Zerg would rampage through their territory (and another Zerg of the opposition would do the same in their territory).
I don't see why this kind of behaviour should be enforced by going back to the Hex system or an hyped up version of it. Its not fun and does not bring any of the strategy or tactics that you hope to accomplish. I get what you are trying to achieve, but this is not the way to go about it. We already had this once and we saw how it went, it didn't work.

Just thought it was a funny coincidence how we both ended with the exact same line.

I believe you. What do you think should be tried?