News: Higby Outlines this Months Patch - Page 9

Maidere · 2013-01-09, 05:38 PM

Changes are pretty damn good, except SMG's, not sure the game needs them now.
If they will deploy patches like this once a month it will be realy nice and the game will be ready for launch in 4-6 months. The problem is, they allready launched it. Objectively it will have too small active playerbase in a half of a year, so they will have to re-launch it.

Drakkonan · 2013-01-09, 05:52 PM

As Higby stated, it looks like they went after the low hanging fruit first, which is why I found it surprising that they're implementing dynamic xp so quickly. I just hope they realize it's going to need tuning, and continually modify values based on player abuse and trends.

And I'll repost my official forum response....since the goal of these posts is to get dev attention and thus, changes:

"UI changes to emphasize score per minute as a primary metric of player comparison"

I was really afraid of this. SPM works as a session stat, because you remember how you played in any given session, but as a persistent stat, over the life of a player, in a non-round-based game it serves absolutely no purpose. We shouldn't be driven to get straight to the fight to boost our SPM when staying in the sanctuary longer to form up with our outfits would actually be more effective. Just face it; There's no stats that accurately measure effectiveness. Just list them all (including SPM, if you'd like), and don't give precedence to any of them.

Overall though. I'm very impressed. I didn't think they were paying attention to the colorblind complaints, but I see they're making dynamic minimap colors. I'm not colorblind, but bravo and delta colors need to be changed.

Graywolves · 2013-01-09, 06:15 PM

I think it's mostly a step in the right direction.

Invulnerability shouldn't apply to someone revived in the field. Even just a 1/4 of a second is enough time to run back to cover if the Medic revives from around the corner.

GLaDOS · 2013-01-09, 06:29 PM

I like this, a lot. The invulnerability after spawning is a bit worrisome, as it could be pretty awful if implemented wrong, but it could also be great if implemented right. I think I would prefer if dynamic XP for kills was not only based on kills, but also support actions, but this is definitely a huge step in the right direction. It would be pretty great if they could eventually give S-AMS destruction dynamic XP, so you get a whole shitton for blowing up the Sundy that's been supporting the enemy push for hours, as opposed to camping it.

Figment · 2013-01-09, 08:09 PM

Well James, they did lose a lot of goodwill and trust from people with high expectations such as ours. They did launch early, they are stubborn on key things at times, but at least there is still movement.

But what I'm seeing is the only game that could potentialy one day be as good as ps1. The devs from my perspective are still learning what makes strategy mmofps games tick. It is a lot more complex to get this right than make a run of the mill mmo like a RPG.

It is why I'm cynical, critical and try to be as patient as I can be despite of my disppointment. If they aren't going to learn from us? Who then? The majority of new players can't and won't have the references for ideas and worked out improvements of ideas based on experience with similar things.

If all ps1 vets leave, who will stand on the bow of the ship, warning them for icebergs in the mist?

They are nice people and willing to learn. Question for them is, who can they trust, when?

They should get a military architect to give them some historic military architecture lessons though have a look at the outposts. That would be money well spend as they would get a lot of experience and ideas out of it.

I mean come on, most worked on games like everquest and free realms. Completely different type of thinking. They may have played some ps1, but even 7 year players sometimes didn't know left from right.

I do reserve the right to call specific parts of their creation utter crap, but at least I'll say why, what they can do to improve on it because just saying it is bad doesn't help speed up trial and error designing (which is largely what PS2 is doing). I can't fault them for at least trying. I just hope they recognise who to listen to out of all the people. Even so, I will compliment them on having the balls to admit players may know better and are using their feedback - even if they don't know which ones all the time.

p0intman · 2013-01-09, 08:17 PM

Originally Posted by Figment

They should get a military architect to give them some historic military architecture lessons though have a look at the outposts. That would be money well spend as they would get a lot of experience and ideas out of it.

No, they should instead be given a lesson by a historian to inform them how geology informed war time policy of nations in the past, and how it shaped history of the world. THEN architecture.

I'm tempted to make the next thing on just that: geology and how PS1 maps actually were useful in comparison. or maybe ill use a map of europe.

Wahooo · 2013-01-09, 08:59 PM

Originally Posted by Figment

If all ps1 vets leave, who will stand on the bow of the ship, warning them for icebergs in the mist?

What fucking good does that do when they still wait to run into the iceberg before they acknowledge there is actually ice in the fucking water?

maradine · 2013-01-09, 09:20 PM

Did you miss the part where the rest of the issues, including the metagame, are still being worked on? Or the part about how this is what they could reasonably enumerate for the time frame?

Do you want us to go forward, or would you just like to get off the boat now? No one will judge you.

Wahooo · 2013-01-10, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by maradine

Did you miss the part where the rest of the issues, including the metagame, are still being worked on? Or the part about how this is what they could reasonably enumerate for the time frame?

Do you want us to go forward, or would you just like to get off the boat now? No one will judge you.

The amount of work that still needs to be done is way more than they seem to be considering.

The way I see this game is like this:
SOE built us a house. They let us help in the design and building some. The poured a very nice foundation and started framing the house. We had concerns about where they were putting the rooms and the hall ways and we saw issues that would develop in the house if the continued on with the floor plan we saw in front of us.
then SOE said "House is complete enough you can move in. Don't worry about the landscaping or the paint on the walls and the cabinets we'll be working on those as the game progresses.
We said 'wow' I didn't know we were ready to move in.... "Wait what are you talking about fixing the landscaping and the paint... there is no fucking roof?!?!? And you still have this completely fucked up floor plan?!?!"

So yeah this patch is a good step in the right direction. But there is A LOT of work to be done yet.

Figment · 2013-01-10, 02:45 AM

Originally Posted by Wahooo

What fucking good does that do when they still wait to run into the iceberg before they acknowledge there is actually ice in the fucking water?

That is the frustrating trial and error bit: we warn them, they go see if it is an iceberg or a clear route. Then we go "told you so... Now back up, take a sharp turn starboard and then take this route", largely because all the time the status quo and some people at the far back of the ship who can't see ahead, go "I'm confident that wasn't an iceberg, we think the quickest route is straight ahead because we trust our captains know best", mostly because they are either profiting from selling lifeboat tickets (thinking they sell cruise tickets), or having first class enjoyment at the expense of the second and third class passengers who have no entertainment facilities or can't find it on there decks, often because they are too mesmarized and impressed by the size of the cruise ship (sure the facilities are somewhere, they just havn't found it yet). Meanwhile each iceberg rammed leads to more lifeboats being launched.

mbarrett · 2013-01-10, 03:15 AM

It's nice to know things are getting sorted , how ever in my eyes it's not good enough , how about giving us some originality back , squad/platoon i wan't to be able to see my whole platoon rather that just my squad , I wan't to seen the old grief system come back , I wan't to see cr1-cr5 come back as i think this game needs it , Proper CE like x 20 mines x 10 spitts x 10 motion sensors , to me this game is not worth the time as i feel its not planetside , sony fucked planetside up , Infact they done a better job fucking up the sequel than sony done fucking up the original game

EVILoHOMER · 2013-01-10, 03:33 AM

Until they put the underslung MCG back in I'm not coming back.

PredatorFour · 2013-01-10, 04:32 AM

People banging on about "meta game this ..." "meta game that...." "oh wait for the metaaaaa" are forgetting that it will still be shit if they don`t sort out the basics and get the game right. Like base design .. air overkill ....lack of infantry game etc..

ChrisLand · 2013-01-10, 05:23 AM

Just wanna point this out:

http://www.soe.com/status/

Population is still a major issue and no planned changes to it (aka server merges) in the patch. Transfer tokens are not enough imo.

Hyncharas · 2013-01-10, 06:02 AM

Nice to know that spawn rooms are getting some improvements. 3-node tower outposts are probably the worst, given you're not afforded the same chances to pick off the enemy outside, compared to spawns with an exit on the same floor.

Though I didn't see my lengthy post addressed on XP balancing for defending empires, hopefully that will make an appearance in the six-month plans.