[Stardouser]

This talk of infantry-centric has given me an idea. And I KNOW you are all going to hate on it, and Elfailo is going to come into the thread and say it's a terrible idea and say I am a terrible terrible person for suggesting it. And it's slightly not focused on the main point of the the thread. But.

Higbee talks about "Variety is good". And Mechzz points out that some people will think they are signing up for an infantry-centric game, and I believe that CoD and some BF3 players will want to MAKE it into an infantry-centric game without caring about people who like vehicle play. Now, I admit, Category 1, SOME people just don't want vehicles to be overpowered...like Figment. But Category 2, SOME people want vehicles to be target practice, or they don't even like the idea of vehicles. These I will call CoD-like players. I believe that people who want vehicles to be nothing more than target practice with more hit points, or who won't even PLAY the game because of vehicles, are a BAD influence on the game and need to be segregated from the main Planetside 2 population.

The question is, how do you segregate these people from the main PS2 population without driving them off completely? We still want them to play so the game can succeed financially and reward SOE for giving us all the dream game we've been wanting, right?

So. I suggest that SOE consider what I will call infantry only servers. Mechzz said he considers infantry only to be ground vehicles and 1 man fighters. I won't go that far, instead, I suggest that there be one or more servers which only have Infantry, quad bikes, and Sunderers and Galaxy Transports that have been specially modified for use on a server where there are no bombers, tanks, etc(whether this means less hit points Sunderers and Galaxies, or whatever it means). The reason to have quad bikes, sund/galaxy is simple, you cannot have a game world this big with NO transport. But this takes away tank/air rape and gives the CoD players a place to go. An infantry only server could also have different spawn times and other adjustments.

Now. You guys are already flaming me at this point, so I should say what the benefits are of having a few infantry only servers. If the players who want extreme infantry superiority are in the general population, they will constantly lobby for vehicle nerfs and make a general nuisance of themselves. I don't mean the ones of you guys who want infantry AA to be able to 1 on 1 with an aircraft; no, CoD-like players will be WORSE than that. And so, providing infantry only servers where these players can congregate and be contained will do much to improve the harmony of the overall Auraxis community. It will be easier for them to choose an infantry-centric server than to lobby for vehicle nerfs. And it would save greatly on forum arguments after release, because the availability of infantry-centric servers would also make whining about vehicles seem silly.

And, there is precedent for this. I have only played Everquest out of all the SOE MMORPGs, but Everquest always provided PvP servers. Right now there's only one, but in the golden era, EQ had Rallos, Tallon, Vallon, and Sullon. They EVEN had a temporary PvP server, called Discord, in honor of the upcoming Gates of Discord expansion,where PvP death was permanent. So, SOE is NO STRANGER to providing specialized servers designed to a specific purpose. And I can confirm to you that the 4 PvP servers, during EQ's golden era, definitely did serve as a magnet to attract the scum and villainy of the EQ playerbase. I know, because I was a proud Rallos player from 1999 to 2004.

And Planetside 2 should have a much larger population than PS1 did, so the idea that infantry only servers will take too many people away from the proper game itself doesn't seem valid.

Flame on.