What would YOU have changed about Planetside

[Ravaan]

This is a post for those that have not played Planetside in a while or NEVER have played it. What didn't you like about it? or how come it didn't appeal to you at all? Please list everything you didn't like or things you would have added (or even things you did like)


Now remember Planetside is supposed to be a MMOFPS, so please if you can don't say "i didn't like it because of the twitch based combat" - since thats what the whole combat system is based on.

thanks

[Frodric]

IN any FPS based game, granting abilities that scale in power based on levels is a slippery slope. PS took it way too far. An individual who tried the free trial could tell you for sure that a BR25 or 28 now has far too many advantages. Implants, Certs, gear types all add up to domination. Also network issues and the wide disparity in gear and Faction numbers make for uneven fights

[Tathaur]

I don't really see the problem with the levels in planetside. Once you reached BR 12 or so, you could use anything you needed for a good setup (eg, good grunt, good stealther, good armour driver, etc)... anything after that just added verstaility.

What would I have changed? I would never have added Core combat, or BFRs. Simple as that. Planetside about 4 months after release was bliss, the only problems were the fact that it was a tiny bit unbalanced.

[Wolf]

The only problem I had with it was it seemed so hard to learn how to play, they really just threw you in the world and wished you good luck.

The little action I saw during my free trail was fun though, and by little action I mean I'm pretty sure I only got two kills. The hardest part was keeping up with everyone becuase they'd know exactly what to do and just rush base to base, leaving me behind without a vehicle and no chance to catch up.

[Darkov]

Needed to be more user friendly for new comers.. needed more balance.

I don't mind BFRs, since their nerf anyways, but Core Combat sucks and always will suck.

What it has always needed more than anything is people who work together, a common goal is one thing, but as Wolf said, it's pretty common for people to be left behind and everyone makes their own way to objectives unless it's a tight outfit (which are rare).

[Zapp Branigan]

Personaly I'd like to see more battle island type coninents, maybe just troop only no vehicals of anykind or even only basic armor and weapons you can use uncerted.

I would also like to see the way exp is awarded so that it would divy up the exp you get based on how much of the total damage you did to the unit insted of all exp being given to the person with the killing blow. I hate have my kills poached.

[Nanaki]

From what it was when I left?

1: Remove Infiltrator Suit's ability to use Command Uplink - This forces CR5s, in order to do an OS, to actually put themselves in the line of fire, rather than being able to safely point, OS, and run away.
2: Reduce Mosquito's MG effectiveness - The Mosquito is supposed to be a scout craft, not the ultimate soloist's vehicle.
3: Increase Flight BFR Survivability - Flight BFRs feel like they will blow up if you look at it wrong. Perhaps removing the shield drain from jumping will help.
4: Improve Anti-Vehicular missile tracking - I found it WAY too easy, even in a Peregrine BFR, to dodge TR Anti-vehicular missiles.
5: Reduce Lancer's range (and possibly buff the damage and reduce the accuracy) - This forces people wanting vehicle kills to actually put themselves in the line of fire, rather than plinking away from well within friendly battlelines. The inaccuracy is to reduce it's effectiveness as an anti-MAX suit.
6: Reduce BFR Certification requirements. Remove Armored Assault 1 and 2 Certification requirements. A Certification requirement of 3 should be enough.
7: Increase the amount of time Modules last. Or give players a way to recharge them without having to go caving. I never liked caving, and only did it for the BFR Imprint.
8: Increase all ground vehicle HP (Including BFRs), maybe by about 1.5x. I find Ground Vehicles tend to die awfully fast and easy. This does nerf infantry, yes, but, IMO, I beleive it should be suicide to be fighting any armed vehicle out in the open on foot, alone, unless you have lots of cover and anti-armor weapons with you. It should not be possible to easily solo a fully manned vehicle.
9: A good suggestion I heard, was to add anti-personell guns similar to the deployed turret on the underbelly of the BFRs. This is to discourage people from trying to solo BFRs as a single person alone will be eaten alive by the defenses.

[Jaarx]

Remove BFRs - Totally ruined the whole ability of tanks
Change artillery - Make it so that each side had its own unique artillery platform, instead of that boring universal one that didn't look like it belonged in the Planetside universe
Make it harder to attain CR5 - At this point in the game, I bet that every other guy is CR5, making it so that Orbital Strikes are a regularly seen event
Rebuff the Lancer - Good god, I loved having two of these equipped. Not only did I look sexy with those huge cannons sticking off my back, they were awesome for sniping. Of course, since then they've nerfed its abilities to kill soldiers. I say bring that back. :P

Edit: One last thing:

Make the Core Combat cave thingies more attractive to players. The 3 or so times where I had an actual battle going it was AWESOME. You have no idea how cool it is to have urban environments in Planetside until you've experienced it. If they created more incentives, those places would be the bomb.

[sparkhazel]

Have always wanted to post on a topic like this, being a former hard core PS player...

1.) Scrap the BFR. Its a crappy vehicle, and ruined much of the grunt combat in this game. I'll go a step further and say they should scrap Core Combat all together. I've spent a lot of time in CC getting BFR cert, and IMO, its not a fun area at all.

2.) Require pilots to wear a flight suit that doesn't allow them to carry heavy weaponry, and that you can only pilot a ship in this armor, and no other armor. Flight suit should allow you to have a basic/medium assult weapon (one) maybe the space to carry some spare ammo/health pack/etc (I'd say slightly larger than the infiltrator), and have maybe 25-50 armor. Too many people use the Mosquito/Reaver/etc to kill troops, then jump out and land on the ground, whip out their chain gun or noobhammer and start toasting several folks before they themselves get killed. Mosquito is a recon vehicle and small assault aircraft, not a troop transport.

3.) I think someone touched on this already, but make OS's where you can't use them in the infiltrator suit.

4.) Take away 3rd person view as a troop. Too many times, people use this to exploit when troops are comming around hallways and see things they wouldn't be able to see normally without using that exploit. 3rd person is okay as a vehicle, since it helps piloting and makes it a bit easier, but other than that, no 3rd person when on the ground in MAX's or as a grunt.

5.) To go a step further on OS, make the cooldown much longer on it, too many times, it its abused by players over and over again, its rather lame.

I saw someone complaining about the Lancer, in which I respond, if they are going to nerf the Lancer, then while they are at it, take the auto lock off the TR's Anti-Vehicle and the remote missile off the NC anti-vehicle. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages.

6.) Make MAX's where you can't lock onto them with a anti-vehicle weapon. MAX's are exo-suits, but I wouldn't categorize them as vehilcular.

Those are my basic gripes that I can think of off the top of my head.

[CatharEQ]

Having just gotten back into the game recently, its pretty much the exact same game it used to be. BFRs are fairly uncommon these days. You will see one or two of them stomping around, but its not entire armies of them the way it used to be, and thanks to the buffing of hand held AV weapons, BFRs are prime targets and they get melted down FAST because of it. Not that a competent pilot can't do some damage with them, but they aren't any worse than a Vanguard these days.

What would have really helped the game out would have been to launch the Reserves program several years ago. If that had been started right as population began to slump, chances are the game wouldn't have been back burnered by SOE and Auraxis would still have battles on 5 or 6 continents at once, instead of just one or two. FPS kiddies don't want to pay for PlanetSide when they can go play Unreal Tournament for free. The only really "dynamic" factor about PS now is the sporadic events they do on the Battle Islands, most of which degenerate into a game of bumper cars in whatever vehicle they foolishly left available despite it being intended as a grunt battle.

As far as weapon imbalance whining goes - thats been around since the game started, and it will remain until it is finally closed down because the Vanu Sovereignty has taken their rightful ownership of the Auraxis, ending the war. (*cough* can you tell I play VS? :P)

The Lancer used to be akin to a complete sniper rifle, you could take down anything. Then they added a slower re-fire rate, longer reload time, bigger COF bloom, and if I'm not mistaken lowered the clip size down from its origonal 10 to the 6 it has today. Then they completely nerfed its damage, making it one of the most difficult to use AV weapons with the least bang for the skill you needed to wield it. Now that its a reasonable AV weapon again, its STILL the only faction AV weapon that requires direct aiming, leading targets, and to stay in the crouched position while used to have a prayer of hitting.

You can even take out aircraft reasonably easy with the Striker and the Phoenix. Lets see you do it with the Lancer with the same success rate.

[Zapp Branigan]

Back when I still played I still liked the lancer over the striker or phoenix since you could do more damage in a short frame of time. Yeah the lock on or steering ability is nice but they have a pause between moment of fire to impact where as with the lancer its almost instantaneous. So for me I had no problem waiting for a vehicle to present a good target before unloading a clip or two into them before they realized they were getting hit. If I had been using a phoenix I could only get in one hit due to the slow speed at which the round travels and the fact I have to reload between each shot and with the striker they would get a lock on warning and pull behind cover.

[sparkhazel]

My only thing I was pointing out was the fact that someone stated the Lancer is a easy weapon to use because you can fire it from a safe distance. Thing is, it may have distance, but it takes a level of skill to hit with it, and its damage vs. soldiers is non existant (which is good, it shouldn't be the end all sniper rifle/anti-vehicle weapon)

Thing I see more often than anything is how people use the Phoenix, they hide behind a wall or in a door safely inside base, then fire the missle out the door and steer it into troops/max's/vehicles without putting themselves in an ounce of danger. Not that I'm complaining about the AV differences, because I think they are fine as is, but I think if you are going to take the strong point away from a already nerfed item like the Lancer, might as well tone down the others as well, heck, if thats the case, just get rid of AV and make everyone use Decimators ;)

[Nanaki]

My only issue with the lancer was the ease that lancers could hit things. I was able to easily dodge TR missiles (never fought against NC ones, since I was NC) but it seems like no matter what I did, the VS Lancers were able to plink away at my shield and eventually my armor. Not to mention, even if Lancers do not do that well in terms of burst damage, they still do very high damage per minute. My BFR shields have never been brought down (or even threatened) by TR missiles, but when fighting Vanu I keep the heck away from Lancers. Zapp pretty much hit the head on the nail as to why Lancers are superior to NC/TR Missiles.

I was a BFR Pilot, and proud of it. My only issue with BFRs is that they require too much certification to be really attractive anymore. It was one thing if the BFR was very powerful and very hard to kill (like BFRs used to be), than the high cert requirement is understandable. Now, the high cert requirement is a joke. My only suggestion is to bring the BFR Certification requirement back to sane levels.

Now, BFRs are still great against tanks, but hideously weak against infantry. Luckily, I did not lose my BFR often, although I have gone as far as having to jump out of my BFR and slag people that kamikazed their mosquito into me, jumped out, and went under my shield with some AT weapon to shoot at my vulnerable BFR. Although, my Peregrine's survivability has also been determined by the skill of both my comrades and the gunner.


2.) Require pilots to wear a flight suit that doesn't allow them to carry heavy weaponry, and that you can only pilot a ship in this armor, and no other armor. Flight suit should allow you to have a basic/medium assult weapon (one) maybe the space to carry some spare ammo/health pack/etc (I'd say slightly larger than the infiltrator), and have maybe 25-50 armor. Too many people use the Mosquito/Reaver/etc to kill troops, then jump out and land on the ground, whip out their chain gun or noobhammer and start toasting several folks before they themselves get killed. Mosquito is a recon vehicle and small assault aircraft, not a troop transport.


Why create an entirely new armor when you can just restrict drivers/gunners from using certain weapon types while onboard. Restricting drivers/gunners from using heavy weapons, anti-tank weapons, and special weapons (Just Medium assault and Light Assault) should fix that problem just nice.

Although, I -do- agree that it is a problem. Pilots/Drivers shouldnt be able to set themselves up as heavy assault.


Scrap the BFR. Its a crappy vehicle, and ruined much of the grunt combat in this game.


The 'new' BFR actually now reinforces the grunt element of the game more than anything. BFRs are still extremely strong against tanks, but the grunts can either be a BFR's best friend, or worst enemy. My best moment in a BFR happened when I was well-supported by friendly NC infantry making sure to keep those pesky TR infantry zergs off my BFR. Without friendly infantry keeping enemy infantry off it, even a lowbie armed with nothing more than a suppressor can put a BFR out of buisiness (assuming the lowbie is smart). Just ambush it, go under it's shield, and put as many clips into the shield generator as you can before the BFR gets away and slags you. That alone forces the BFR pilot to go look for a repair station. Infantry equipped to destroy BFRs can actually solo them, just that most of the ones that have tried it so far have not been very bright at it (or were just not expecting me to jump out of my BFR and slag them with my gauss)

[CatharEQ]

The game apparently is being plagued by a really nasty graphics bug now... The lovely white texture bug. Being blamed on everything from graphics settings to graphics drivers, this bug can totally make the game un-playable. Sometimes it waits an hour to hit, sometimes it happens as soon as you log in. All of a sudden starting yesterday I've been getting this bug within 5 minutes of logging in despite having never experienced it before. Now I can't get the stupid thing to go away and it completely hard locks my computer requiring it to be powered down to restart.

Looks like no more PlanetSide for me until they get the bug fixed as none of the so called work arounds that have had only marginal success for certain video cards are working for me. The bug has even evidently been lurking around hitting random people over a LARGE range of video cards for over a year with no progress made on fixing it by the Devs.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps/posts/list.m?topic_id=800064994

If any of you know of a fix on an nVidia GeForce 6600 256mb card other than swaping out drivers (I've tried a wide array of older and the newest drivers with no dice) let me know.

[Nanaki]

Yeah, I couldnt play Planetside for more than 3 hours straight without it crashing on me, requiring a complete reboot. That is partially the reason why I gave up on PS after a month of playing it.

[CatharEQ]

heh I don't think I've ever broken 2 hours at once in PS, but I was getting locked up at 5 minutes, or less. Yet, recently as mysteriously as it started, its gone into happening randomly. Some days I can play as long as I want, other days I can't play at all. Fortunately I'm on the All Access Pass for the EQ II expansion which I've been playing on as well so I'm not totally out because of the PS problem... But I like having it to play while my Adventure Vitality builds back up on my Fae in EQ II. Its a shame I can't play it reliably anymore. If it keeps up I'm going back to the single subscription at the end of this billing cycle to save a few bucks.

[Larington]

1. Ensure that the game receives significant marketting efforts from release - The game was fairly new for its time, certainly in terms of near 500 players fighting on a single continent, and that potentially made it a flagship product.

2. Work with the playerbase at all stages, possibly even setup a special forum and award certain forumites who display intelligence and maturity with access to this forum and use them as a working group for discussing ideas that might not yet be ready or suitable for the bulk of the player base.

3. Implement a training system that not only has basic tutorials for how to play the game, but also a number of tutorials on how to be good at the game including such things as outflanking the enemy, holding fire in certain situations, elite cloaker strategies and so on.

4. Be wary of the risks of increasing the limit on battleranks, specifically, the addition of 3 extra certification points meant that there were a lot of extra plasma wielding thumper users on the battlefield (Amongst other things). I'm all for giving experienced veterans access to plenty of tools, but there has to be limits.

5. Put more emphasis on the conquest aspects of the game, I'd probably field ideas from the community on this. The point is, the game shouldn't just be about kills or merits because there are plenty of players intelligent enough to conclude that once you're max BR & CR theres not really much else to do.

6. Include more specialisation in certain cases... For instance, aircraft should either be relatively slow moving hover capable and use terrain and tactics to outwit and outfight the enemy and the faster aircraft should not be able to hover (Admittedly this introduces slight problems with instructing players on how to land the faster aircraft). Also, BFRs were a serious error in judgement for roughly this reason - They can be an anti-air platform, or anti-vehicular or anti-infantry, this versatility wouldn't be so bad, except they are also much better armoured than other units and don't even get me started on the flight variants.

7. On the subject of vehicles, I would've opted for more multi-crewed stuff where the crews work together, from a proper heavy tank with several gun ports each with its own crew member (Not to mention a gunship of some kind) to the equivalent of a flying fortress heavy bomber, not to mention the...

8. Inclusion of naval warfare, with naval vessels that can be used for spawning lighter vehicles (Up to assault buggies, maybe medium tanks) and infantry/MAXs, as well as destroyers, submarines and so on... It should be possible for infantrymen to move around on these ships even when they aren't deployed (In the case of 'landing craft') so you can have galaxy crews hot dropping onto destroyers with the aim of capturing them (Etc). Also infils could have great fun sneaking onto these vessels to sabotage weak points (Think of tri-weld points on the sabotage the ship mission in Deus Ex 1).

9. Ensure that the game is implemented with anti-cheats in mind, to possibly go to the extent of temporarily hiring in consultants and other experts to give advice on how to make it harder to 'break' the game right from the design phase through to continued development/maintanence. Possibly get the hacker (Thats hacker community, not malware) community involved somehow.

10. Ensure that the game is implemented so that its always relatively easy to change or adjust the content so that the team can spend more time thinking up what they can do and less time on how to do it. (This slightly competes with point 9, but oh well, balancing act and all that)

11. Ensure that development isn't rushed, as it'll inevitably upset the player base if their beautiful gameplay is damaged unnecesarily. For instance, the caves were actually quite a good idea, but it was a mistake to just have massive caves that were basically indoor continents, some of them should have consisted of several medium/small caves with plenty of large and small corridors to fight along - Some of my best, most fun cave fights have been in the entry corridors pushing out from an AMS.

12. Seriously consider whether third person was a good idea in the first place... Its sort of addictive and now that its in the game (And proving to be particularly detrimental to casual gamers) its nigh-on-impossible to change or remove it without the player base starting a riot and sending death threats to the lead developer (Yes, that happened once).

I'm sure theres other things, but I think thats quite an inclusive list!

<EDIT: There is one other thing...>

13. Address the issue of strafing... Now, the strafing itself isn't so bad, but it often combines with netcode to introduce over-strafe where the player has started strafing in the opposite direction but the server doesn't know this yet until it catches up. I'd probably experiment with a system where strafing the opposite direction first involves the avatar slowing down a little then speeding back up in the opposite direction so that the server has more time to catch up (I should emphasise, that the intention is to limit warping and assist casual gamers rather than to prevent strafing completely). I'd also make the corridors wider - The doors serve as nice choke points but corridor fighting is a pain when someone charges to the front and starts left-right strafing in front of 3 properly positioned defenders (Moving through their line of fire in the process, in fact, that issue would be explained in the how to be better at the game tutorials).

14. I'd also think seriously about the current system for commanding. Currently, theres always a risk that unpleasantness will be sparked by two commanders disagreeing, I've seen this extend out of the game and onto its forums, I've even stupidly got myself caught up in this some time ago. I'm of the opinion that broadcasting to a whole continent or all continents by any player should not be possible. Partly because players only interested in kills will rarely read or listen to an order to leave a fight, so it often causes some contention. Instead players/outfits would be encouraged to focus on keeping their own house in order, and provide the highest two ranks of outfits with access to a command channel used for letting eachother know what their doing (Though this does have the risk of an outfit being setup in order to spy on the oppositions commanders).