PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - Planetside 2 Needs Prone
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Old 2012-06-10, 03:42 PM   [Ignore Me] #793
Khrusky
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Re: Planetside 2 Needs Prone


Originally Posted by Retaliation View Post
Proneponents was a self indulgent pun.


First of all prone is a defensive posture by nature. To attack you have to advance. To advance you have to be able to move at a decent pace. Often crouch is at a borderline useful speed for crouching, so to keep crouch useful prone has to offer benefits other than moving. Harder to hit and better accuracy are no brainer bonuses. Planetside is also a game of maneuver however, so it has to be able to compete with moving targets (staying still becomes a death sentence).
This is probably why people don't want prone. Since movement is your best defence and TTK is hopefully going to be high enough to react to sudden threats, the target will likely just exploit the prone guy's immobility and kill him.
So for prone to be useful it has to have a reason to be used. Maybe where there's no cover, but engineers have deployable cover. Corner ambushing could be a good one, but there's really no difference between standing there as the whole point is to kill the guy before he can kill you. You would have to make prone players significantly harder to dislodge to make up for the inability to move.

Secondly there's a bit of gaming psychology here. Decent players who camp aren't really an issue. They're camping for a sound strategic reason, but in my experience in RTS, FPS, TPS when you don't know what to do there are two strong impulses. Bumrushing is one, standing still is the other. Since Bumrushing inevitably leads to death, if they don't learn how to attack they'll just sit. Even when no one is attacking. Even when there's an enemy push on the other side of the map. Prone then becomes an obvious choice. If you're not going to move why stand? They're getting an advantage without even putting any thought in it. This is a case of keeping something out of the hands of good players to prevent a stale metagame. It's the same reason why expanding is rewarded so hard in RTS, a fact that I doubt resident starcraft fanatic Matt Higby let slip by.
Oh. Is it a reference I'm not getting?

Are you arguing that prone isn't useful? It seems counter-intuitive but it's what your argument seems to suggest. I will respond as if it is.
Prone is just another trade-off, like they've been going on about on the cert topic. Less mobility for more accuracy and smaller front hit box. Prone can be used very effectively to ensure that they can't be killed too easily while sniping by the people they're trying to snipe. That's just one example. It has simple counters though, so it it just a trade-off rather than a straight advantage. Prone isn't - and shouldn't be considered - useful indoors.

Again, what I said before: if the guy wasn't going to move before, how does the game become staler because instead of standing still he's sitting?
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