PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation
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Old 2011-07-30, 01:07 AM   [Ignore Me] #12
Sirisian
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Re: The Issue of the 10%-20% Power Differentiation


No I understood exactly what you meant. It's the same argument others have made for balancing the upgrades. They want upgrades that do nothing in the long run. It's a tactic many people on these forums use to justify their reasoning. You might not even realize you're doing it. "Lets upgrades damage, but decrease accuracy" making it only good for close combat. I disagree with that strategy and I'm going to tell you why.

When someone upgrades something it should have a direct effect on the weapon with no weaknesses. I say this because if all weapons and vehicles in the game are like this then it specializes people immensely. Someone that upgrades the cannon on their tank to be say 50% better would have a very powerful tank. Someone that upgrades their armor by 50% would have a very strong tank. Upgrading flight maneuverability instead of weapons on a plane has the same effect. Someone might want to upgrade their Reaver rockets with awesome new rockets that are good against the ground units, but find themselves open to air attacks by more agile planes.

Now you're thinking "oh well players get farmed" when in fact they don't. You just need to use your imagination. For instance, I've never played Halo past the first one, but in the new ones they have a deployable shield that a player can use in as a quick defense against vehicles. BF2142 has a wall shield for this very reason to protect against attack when moving along open terrain. So players could specialize as infantry just as easily to protect themselves from vehicles. They could get smoke grenades to hide themselves, turrets, mines, to defend an area, and upgrade them all as specialized defenses.

However, this community is surprisingly stubborn to keeping the game 100% balanced for everyone and destroying what the skill tree specialization could allow. You're assuming new players would be scared away before being able to specialize I'm assuming? I agree that is scary proposition, but in the long term anyone sticking around would realize they'd be on par with anyone else after a while with the same opportunities.

(Note, I'm not a big fan of the delay in the skill-tree which I believe will cause the lag from beginner to BR20 do whatever player).

Last edited by Sirisian; 2011-07-30 at 01:10 AM.
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