Friendly fire, problem or not?

[Krawanan]

Hey guys,

I think that friendly fire is a great addition to the game, since it makes it alot more real, and you have to be carefull where you shoot.

But i also have a few concerns about this.

How can you see if someone is on your empire in night time? From close it would be pretty easy, but if he's like 200 meters away you see him as an enemy, if FF would be off, you would find out soon enough ofcourse, but it is not.

And my biggest concern:
TROLLS

Aren't there going to be people who like hate an empire and then make a character on that empire just to team kill? Or just trolls who will do this for no reason.

Does anyone share those concerns with me? Or is there already a solution for this? And how did this work out in Planetside 1 ?

[Whip Nailed it]

i don't think so

team killing normally happens when ppl are after vehicles etc, but spawning your own vehicle should help prevent this

[Sirisian]

There will be a grief system. It stops players from killing friendlies or not watching their fire. Worked in Planetside 1. Many people have explained methods for exponential grief for new accounts, but it sounds like the devs already have it all figured out.

[Otleaz]

No matter how bad the griefing is in a game, it is worth it to have friendly fire.

Friendly fire is core to having a good game.

[proxy]

FF ON is a requirement for my playing this game.

I also don't like 3D spotting but what do you do?

[Krawanan]

There will be a grief system. It stops players from killing friendlies or not watching their fire. Worked in Planetside 1. Many people have explained methods for exponential grief for new accounts, but it sounds like the devs already have it all figured out.

How does this grief system actually work(sorry never played PS1)

[MasterCalaelen]

PlanetSide 1 also had friendly fire, which is a must in order to prevent people from blindly firing at anything that moves. The grief system will prevent any serious abuse of friendly fire, though in all my years playing PlanetSide I've never experienced any serious issues with people team-killing or otherwise griefing.

[Baneblade]

FF must be in. There are times when you just have to TK someone.

As for night time... there is a thing called positive identification. If you fire on a friendly, you not only get the grief and hate tell, but you reveal yourself to the actual enemy and get wtfpwned.

If you can't tell if someone is an enemy, hold your fire.

Radar might reveal friendly units.

[MasterCalaelen]

How does this grief system actually work(sorry never played PS1)

Damaging friendly assets (team members, vehicles or equipment affiliated with your Empire) caused you to get grief points. At certain set levels you would receive penalties, such as not being able to fire your weapons or vehicles you are operating having their maximum speed reduced. If you continued to gain grief points even with weapons locked, you would eventually get banned.

The grief system did have it's flaws though, as teammembers hitting you while they were driving a vehicle would cause you grief points and bailing from a vehicle that than continued and hit a friendly asset also caused you grief points.

[Krawanan]

PlanetSide 1 also had friendly fire, which is a must in order to prevent people from blindly firing at anything that moves. The grief system will prevent any serious abuse of friendly fire, though in all my years playing PlanetSide I've never experienced any serious issues with people team-killing or otherwise griefing.

Yeah i understand, but remember, planetside 1 was pretty much a cult game with a really nice and tight community.

Planetside 2 is going to be F2P and will probably have a wider variety of players. which could also contain cod/bf3 players. And tehy sure love to TK if they get bored

[Dreamcast]

The Grief system needs to be tweak...Why?


Low TTK...People die super fast.



So if they have the grief system of now....I can kill like 50 people before I get lock.



If they adjusted for Planetside 2......Well it could be a problem since I can get locked too fast....since people die really fast so putting a bomb in the wrong place could mean Lock.

[Krawanan]

Damaging friendly assets (team members, vehicles or equipment affiliated with your Empire) caused you to get grief points. At certain set levels you would receive penalties, such as not being able to fire your weapons or vehicles you are operating having their maximum speed reduced. If you continued to gain grief points even with weapons locked, you would eventually get banned.

The grief system did have it's flaws though, as teammembers hitting you while they were driving a vehicle would cause you grief points and bailing from a vehicle that than continued and hit a friendly asset also caused you grief points.

Ok that's clear, but what if like after two years of playing you had killed like 2 team members by accident each month, and also did some friendly damage by accident each month too. Wouldn't you have alot of grief points then which you don't really deserve since it were all just accidents?

[MasterCalaelen]

Ok that's clear, but what if like after two years of playing you had killed like 2 team members by accident each month, and also did some friendly damage by accident each month too. Wouldn't you have alot of grief points then which you don't really deserve since it were all just accidents?

Apologies, I forgot to mention that grief points would slowly dissipate over time, so if you accidently obtained some grief points, they would go away if you played carefully for a day or so.

The harsher penalties such as weapons lock also do not occur from damaging or killing a few soldiers, you would need to purposely be damaging friendliess exessively in order to hit such levels of grief.

[Krawanan]

Apologies, I forgot to mention that grief points would slowly dissipate over time, so if you accidently obtained some grief points, they would go away if you played carefully for a day or so.

The harsher penalties such as weapons lock also do not occur from damaging or killing a few soldiers, you would need to purposely be damaging friendliess exessively in order to hit such levels of grief.

Ok that sounds pretty good, my concerns are alot less now

[HenchAnt]

Ok that's clear, but what if like after two years of playing you had killed like 2 team members by accident each month, and also did some friendly damage by accident each month too. Wouldn't you have alot of grief points then which you don't really deserve since it were all just accidents?

Grief points decrease slowly over time. So going on a rampage with a grenade launcher gets you grief locked pretty fast, while hitting/ramming a friendly now and then stays unpunished.

For a better description check the Planetside Universe wiki on Grief (http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Grief). :)

[maddoggg]

I completely understand your concerns OP.
Beeing someone who plays fps games for over 10 years now,i know how problematic friendly fire can be on a public game,because public games always have atleast a few n00bs/trolls in them.
Dont get me rong,i dont hate ff,i love it as a feature when it's in competitive play,but in public play it's just not working.

I think many ps1 veterans dont realize just how big of a problem this can be,because the grief sistem use to work well in ps1(from what i heard).

But to play ps1 you need to have subscribtion,you need to pay real money for each account.
If you get banned you loose REAL money,
In ps2 however if you get banned it would take you like 5 mins to make a new account and keep on trolling.

Not to mention the fact that the gaming community in general have changed DRASTICLY since 2003.
Back than most gamers were nice and the trolls were the minority.
Now days with all the casualization and n00bification of games,there just numerous n00bs and trolls out there who would tk just for the "lolz".

[super pretendo]

absolutely, friendly fire makes you consider your fire, especially AoE. Without it it will just be a spamfest

[Baneblade]

Last I checked, you lose 100 Grief points an hour. They are acquired exponentially. If you have zero and mow someone accidentally, you might get 10, if you have 500 and you mow someone, you might get 100. The higher you get the quicker they come.

[GreatMazinkaise]

Back than most gamers were nice and the trolls were the minority.

You've got to be shitting me...

Friendly Fire is in place to decrease AoE spam. Grieflocking makes it difficult to continue to TK beyond a certain point. If you've got to make a new account every half hour so that you can TK with stock kit you're eventually going to get bored.

[Krawanan]

Why has this been moved to new player questions :P i have been following PS2 for a long time, and this was just a concern of mine.

since planetside 2 will be F2P and it would be really easy to just make a new acc when you're banned

[Kezz]

Why has this been moved to new player questions :P i have been following PS2 for a long time, and this was just a concern of mine.

since planetside 2 will be F2P and it would be really easy to just make a new acc when you're banned

Are there really fuckwits out there who'll make new email accounts and game accounts and change their ISP regularly (to stop IP address tracking) and their network card and other system details (to stop configuration tracking) just so they can get killed the moment it's obvious they're griefing (another advantage of the grief system/FF - you can make a point. Pointedly. And the Grief system will forgive you if it's only occasional), and get banned every half an hour? The gene pool needs some bleach. Truly.

[Sirisian]

Why has this been moved to new player questions :P i have been following PS2 for a long time, and this was just a concern of mine.
I asked them to move it since we've previously discussed this (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=38734). It's been brought up in threads numerous times in relation to F2P and the the number of players.

Also it seemed like you were completely unaware that Planetside 1 had friendly fire, and thus were raising a new player question on how Planetside might handle this situation.

The bigger answer though is there will be a grief system, but the devs will probably be watching closely to make sure things go alright. The concept of "trolls" was something in PS1 also.

[Kashis]

Hey guys,

I think that friendly fire is a great addition to the game, since it makes it alot more real, and you have to be carefull where you shoot.

But i also have a few concerns about this.

How can you see if someone is on your empire in night time? From close it would be pretty easy, but if he's like 200 meters away you see him as an enemy, if FF would be off, you would find out soon enough ofcourse, but it is not.

And my biggest concern:
TROLLS

Aren't there going to be people who like hate an empire and then make a character on that empire just to team kill? Or just trolls who will do this for no reason.

Does anyone share those concerns with me? Or is there already a solution for this? And how did this work out in Planetside 1 ?

check your map before you shoot. lalala window lickers for the win.

[shadowsfm]

still waiting for them to add the feature that changes the color of the cross hair depending on who you target, friendly or enemy

[Baneblade]

still waiting for them to add the feature that changes the color of the cross hair depending on who you target, friendly or enemy

no No NO.

This is as good as cheating, being able to IFF someone outside of your visual range needs to die with PS1.

[Krawanan]

I asked them to move it since we've previously discussed this (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=38734). It's been brought up in threads numerous times in relation to F2P and the the number of players.

Also it seemed like you were completely unaware that Planetside 1 had friendly fire, and thus were raising a new player question on how Planetside might handle this situation.

The bigger answer though is there will be a grief system, but the devs will probably be watching closely to make sure things go alright. The concept of "trolls" was something in PS1 also.

Ok , i understand.

but i was aware of the fact that ps1 had FF.
because at the end of the post i asked how the friendly fire worked out in planetside 1

no No NO.

This is as good as cheating, being able to IFF someone outside of your visual range needs to die with PS1.

True

But maybe they could add this but only have it work on like 40-50 meters away from you.

[Monsta]

no No NO.

This is as good as cheating, being able to IFF someone outside of your visual range needs to die with PS1.

yes Yes YES.

If I am correct over 90% of all modern FPS shooters have this function. Including a crosshair blink, a friendly fired bullet sound and friendly player feedback ("Do I look like a Strogg!?"). This has absolutely nothing to do with cheating.

I personally wish to see that I can manually set my own crosshair color, and maybe have some variations of crosshairs visuals to choose. In overall, crosshairs are extremely overrated. All you need is 1 tiny pink dot in the center of you screen to go pro.

[Baneblade]

yes Yes YES.

If I am correct over 90% of all modern FPS shooters have this function. Including a crosshair blink, a friendly fired bullet sound and friendly player feedback ("Do I look like a Strogg!?"). This has absolutely nothing to do with cheating.

I personally wish to see that I can manually set my own crosshair color, and maybe have some variations of crosshairs visuals to choose. In overall, crosshairs are extremely overrated. All you need is 1 tiny pink dot in the center of you screen to go pro.

Why don't we just add in targeting reticles around all players while we are at it. There is a point at which information becomes too available. The only thing we should have are visual and names, but the radar will almost certainly show friendlies as well. We don't need more IFF tools than that.

[Doxy]

Guess beta will tell if PS2 TK system is working or not.

[shadowsfm]

how about a cert that all noobs should buy that they can easily replace with something more powerful (like a scope) once they become more comfortable with recognizing who is friend and foe

[Boomhowser]

Problem with friendly fire in PS1 wasnt the occasional person killing you it was when you were laying down suppresive fire with your thumpers and rockets and always some eager soldier jumping into the explosions.. boy that could really rack up your points

[Kran De Loy]

Preferably there would be system where if a person is consistently getting hit by FF they will be penalized as well (of course it would take a while for this to kick in so that it would take a few dozen people to really trigger it happening.)

[The Loverator]

Friendly Fire is GOOD and okay.

Because i really like the realistic Aspect. Planetside 2 needs to be at least this bit realistic.
And People will not be able to shoot like Imbeciles between their Comrades.



But i also have a few concerns about this.

How can you see if someone is on your empire in night time?



Hope for a nice Interface,
or be prepared to shoot a few Comrades accidentally. xP


And my biggest concern:
TROLLS



I myself consider myself a TROLL by at least a Part of myself, (lawl "three" "myself's" =PPP x3 )

'cause when i see some unfunny Person walking around in "Pink" or Stuff or trying to
make his Uniform/Armor as ugly/provocative as possible in Order to "troll People",

i guess i will not always be able to prevent myself from betraying such Person's.
And Sorry to say, but: Some of these "MegamanX/Gundam"-Design's are HORRIBLY g**.
They look indeed so unstandable stupid that there is only one Solution...


I have to avoid seeing these Players. Moving around, from the Front, anyway,
just that i can somehow prevent to look as their "Faction-shameful" Appearance.

If not ... ... ... i may end up shooting these unfunny People, even if i end up with
Punishments/Penaltys from the Game like Loss of EXP or Ressources or what's'o'ever.


But maybe i am thinking to much and will easily be able to ignore such Players.
Or: Even be able to report them, "IF" they are really doing nothing but try to annoy
People.

I don't want to criticize Planetside 2 for something so external as Looks, but...
... ... really. Some "Things" or Designs you can put on Armor's, are just disgusting. :rolleyes: :D

[Kezz]

no No NO.

This is as good as cheating, being able to IFF someone outside of your visual range needs to die with PS1.
Poppycock. Your monitor is never going to be as good as looking at a real world. Assists like that compensate for the imperfections of the displayed world. When every monitor is 16x the resolution of today's LCD screens, you can start to think about making players rely on the pure representation of the world without assists.

Not to mention that IFF tech is something that will find its place on the hi-tek battlefield. And if it's in-game, it offers opportunities for people to cert and carry gear for spoofing it.

[ChipMHazard]

Guess beta will tell if PS2 TK system is working or not.

Hopefully so, of course they would need thousands of external testers to properly test it... "Wink wink, nudge nudge"

[Karrade]

Guess beta will tell if PS2 TK system is working or not.

Not unless the devs say to a handful of players, we want you to try and TK, and try and get around the system. Make multi accounts, try to push the system, do everything a person just looking to TK/grief would do.

They'd be very wise to do this actually, label the player TKTester so everyone knows what is going on, and do limited test runs of their system. - This will save them a lot of grief at release.

Yeah i understand, but remember, planetside 1 was pretty much a cult game with a really nice and tight community.

Planetside 2 is going to be F2P and will probably have a wider variety of players. which could also contain cod/bf3 players. And tehy sure love to TK if they get bored

At its release there were plenty of tk'ers about, just like any game ;), only later did it get the cult status. I say plenty, not plenty but enough to notice is a better way of saying it. You'd often see people get into fights while waiting for a capture for instance.

[Figment]

People who collect grief points are idiots with no self control.


If you get more than 50 grief points a day, there's something seriously wrong with your aim and self-discipline.

[Baneblade]

People who collect grief points are idiots with no self control.


If you get more than 50 grief points a day, there's something seriously wrong with your aim and self-discipline.

Hey now, I manage to get a lot more than that from people insisting on testing collision mechanics with me.

[VaderShake]

Damaging friendly assets (team members, vehicles or equipment affiliated with your Empire) caused you to get grief points. At certain set levels you would receive penalties, such as not being able to fire your weapons or vehicles you are operating having their maximum speed reduced. If you continued to gain grief points even with weapons locked, you would eventually get banned.

The grief system did have it's flaws though, as teammembers hitting you while they were driving a vehicle would cause you grief points and bailing from a vehicle that than continued and hit a friendly asset also caused you grief points.

How persistant was the griefing system in PS1? Did points total up and eventually you were banned or were their averages that you had to stay below? If there are averages I could understand that but from what you describe it seems like points keep adding up until your banned?

Im not sure I am a fan of a "system" determining if your a team killer or not? Some times things happen, stray bullets/vehicle fire, blind corneres, un-intended collisions, I don't know how a system would be able to decern from friendly fire and stupidity by someone running infront of your gun when your already engaged and you getting penalized for it.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of friendly fire in FPS to be sure I just think to have a sysyem that potentially lacks commons sense penalize people seems a bit counter what PS2 seems to be all about, people working together.

I guess it's something new to expirience, whens the beta again??? Grrr...haha.

[Blue Sam]

How persistant was the griefing system in PS1? Did points total up and eventually you were banned or were their averages that you had to stay below? If there are averages I could understand that but from what you describe it seems like points keep adding up until your banned?

The more you killed friendlies, the higher your multiplier went. Then, when you stopped killing friendlies, both the multiplier and the grief points declined over time.

Im not sure I am a fan of a "system" determining if your a team killer or not? Some times things happen, stray bullets/vehicle fire, blind corneres, un-intended collisions, I don't know how a system would be able to decern from friendly fire and stupidity by someone running infront of your gun when your already engaged and you getting penalized for it.

You didn't get any actual penalty (besides a message in the corner telling you that killing friendlies is bad) until you got up to ridiculously high numbers of grief points. We're not talking a couple of people jumping in front of your tank here, we're talking wiping out a significant proportion of the friendly force. You might be able to get it accidentally by dropping an orbital strike on a base just as a large friendly outfit max crashed it, but that's about it.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of friendly fire in FPS to be sure I just think to have a sysyem that lacks commons sense penalize people seems a bit counter what PS2 seems to be all about, people working together.

Hope I've cleared it up a bit there.

[VaderShake]

The more you killed friendlies, the higher your multiplier went. Then, when you stopped killing friendlies, both the multiplier and the grief points declined over time.



You didn't get any actual penalty (besides a message in the corner telling you that killing friendlies is bad) until you got up to ridiculously high numbers of grief points. We're not talking a couple of people jumping in front of your tank here, we're talking wiping out a significant proportion of the friendly force. You might be able to get it accidentally by dropping an orbital strike on a base just as a large friendly outfit max crashed it, but that's about it.



Hope I've cleared it up a bit there.

Yes, very much so, thank you. What you described makes a ton more sense. It should be interesting to see where the thresholds are though, when I see the damage a bomber can do then think about an arrant bombing run and how many friendlies could be wiped out with a slip of the finger.:(

[Blue Sam]

Yes, very much so, thank you. What you described makes a ton more sense. It should be interesting to see where the thresholds are though, when I see the damage a bomber can do then think about an arrant bombing run and how many friendlies could be wiped out with a slip of the finger.:(

For reference, here (http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Grief)'s the thresholds for PS1.

[Figment]

Hey now, I manage to get a lot more than that from people insisting on testing collision mechanics with me.

Impressive, I drive vehicles all day in PS1 and never hit friendlies.

[GreatMazinkaise]

Impressive, I drive vehicles all day in PS1 and never hit friendlies.

Yeah, but when you're fighting the godawful netcode you can get hit by/or hit friendlies that aren't actually on your screen.

[Rago]

I really like FF, most of the Time were i play FPS i select Servers WITH FF.
Its Just the Better overall Gaming Experience, the Griefpoint Systems seems Fair enough to me.

It´s Good and Works in Many Games.

If someones so stupid to Block you Way, just stop Shooting ;)

[Wahooo]

Yeah, but when you're fighting the godawful netcode you can get hit by/or hit friendlies that aren't actually on your screen.

This is exactly why the PS1 grief system is so good. Because accidents happen and a few accidents every once in a while will not really punish you. 200 grief after a play session is not unreasonable ... 10 times where I normally am but still not unreasonable. If you are pushing weapons lock regularly there is only one direction blame should go.

PS1 grief system punishes careless play and out right douchebaggery while allowing for accidents and the occasional revenge TK. I just hope PS2 has a similarly balanced system. Yes it could be improved but it works as intended. And yes I will be testing it out in PS2 just to see.

[Monsta]

Why don't we just add in targeting reticles around all players while we are at it. There is a point at which information becomes too available. The only thing we should have are visual and names, but the radar will almost certainly show friendlies as well. We don't need more IFF tools than that.


You don't get it. The higher the alert of you shooting your own medic, the beter you try to be accurate on your aim and which target to shoot. Giving an alert is an reaction on an action. These extra's are a pointer who to keep shooting after you trigger your finger, not before.

The real question is how much damage friendly fire should it do? Exactly the same? Like catching a missile or sniper (head)shot on an enemy target is an instant kill, or in case of friendly fire it only does 75% damage, so a change is given to forgive your stupid ass team mate wearing in the same red/gray outfit and get out of the action for a few seconds to heal your self? What do you think its fair?

unfunny Person walking around in "Pink" or Stuff or trying to make his Uniform/Armor as ugly/provocative as possible in Order to "troll People"

I'm feeling quite confident in telling myself that game devs and designers won't introduce something silly like that. But to be honest, I think the zebra and other animal textures are already silly enough.. I mean... comon.. dressing up in a max suite is already noticeable enough, even if you would give it the invisible mode.

[MCYRook]

Not unless the devs say to a handful of players, we want you to try and TK, and try and get around the system. Make multi accounts, try to push the system, do everything a person just looking to TK/grief would do.
That is actually a very wise thing to do for Beta.

IMO the PS1 grief system worked excellently overall, with only a few weak points. It managed a well-working balance to on the one hand not weapon-lock players for accidental friendly fire, and on the other hand prevent malicious TKers from TKing more than a short duration. It will need some tweaking to accomodate for PS2, but in general I can't think of a better concept.

What I am concerned about for PS2 is griefers just switching to a new account once they have gotten one account locked or suspended. I'm curious how the devs are going to keep that in check. Should absolutely betatest that.

[Baneblade]

Impressive, I drive vehicles all day in PS1 and never hit friendlies.

95% of my play time is in a vehicle. I get run into all the same. Maybe once or twice is a collision my fault. Lightnings are the worst offenders... mainly because they aren't watching.

Yeah, but when you're fighting the godawful netcode you can get hit by/or hit friendlies that aren't actually on your screen.

That too... I telefragged an Enforcer with a BFR yesterday, entirely out of my control. Earned 350 Grief.

[GoldDragon]

Yeah i understand, but remember, planetside 1 was pretty much a cult game with a really nice and tight community.

Planetside 2 is going to be F2P and will probably have a wider variety of players. which could also contain cod/bf3 players. And tehy sure love to TK if they get bored

Just sayin', but if there are any original PS vets involved in any way, which there will be plenty of, I can almost guarantee they (along with the devs) will be helping police the griefers.

Example: Even in PS1, there are dicks right? Well, if that dummy shoots the wrong guy for the wrong reason he could have anywhere from 2-3 guys up to an entire platoon hunting him down to keep him off their teammate. I'm willing to bet this level of dedication to your unit is going to find it's way into any outfit with original Vets in them.

[BillyBob]

Hey guys,

I think that friendly fire is a great addition to the game, since it makes it alot more real, and you have to be carefull where you shoot.

But i also have a few concerns about this.

How can you see if someone is on your empire in night time? From close it would be pretty easy, but if he's like 200 meters away you see him as an enemy, if FF would be off, you would find out soon enough ofcourse, but it is not.

IMO, nighttime identification just makes the game that much more interesting, intense and challenging.

Not only does it motivate the use of any nightvision optics or common lights, but it also encourages successful friend-or-foe recognition based on silhouette etc.


And my biggest concern:
TROLLS

Aren't there going to be people who like hate an empire and then make a character on that empire just to team kill? Or just trolls who will do this for no reason.

Does anyone share those concerns with me? Or is there already a solution for this? And how did this work out in Planetside 1 ?

We know there will be a (anti) grief-system implemented in PS2. Hopefully it will be competent enough to prevent repeated teamkills and the type of exploits that you mention.

Oh, and regarding Friendly Fire...IMO it's an absolute must in PS2. If it's implemented in any other way, then it should be based on server (i.e. having specific servers with FF set to off).

/BB