The Speed of Combat

Peacemaker · 2011-01-28, 12:39 AM

I feel this is something that was very important for Planetside and is equally if not more important to Planetside:Next/2 (Further to be called N/2). I imagine some people may be wondering what I mean. Let me compare some games to give you an idea of "The Speed of Combat"

Battlefield Series to Call of Duty Series (MP only)

Battlefield is a game where if you stop and look around you, you can see tactics unfold. You can see an enemy flanking you. You can figure out that theres a gunship in the area before he kills you. You have time to look for a launcher to take it out. When the fighting gets up close, you die. You die fast. You respawn within 30 seconds - 1 minute of the action most of the time. Death sucks, its down time, you have to start over somewhere the enemy knows is a good chance of you being, and is probably watching. Life spans in this game ON FOOT as well as in a vehicle are possible to last half an hour. Its not incredibly difficult to hit a target at range in this game, but it is harder than being up close where the speed is very fast.

Call of Duty on the other hand is Run, shoot at bad guy, die. Respawn die within 1 minute be respawned again. The pace is incredibly fast. Speed is almost always very high. There is no stopping, there is no setting up in a tactical position with a group, if you do, its just you or one other guy, usually to die soon. You dont hold a building that over looks a bridge like you do in Battlefield, you run in and look for people to kill while you glance out the windows to see for targets of opportunity. You may die 5 times in a 20 minute round and have done well.

Planetside

Planetsides Speed of Combat was even slower than Battlefields. You didn't want to die, because if you died you have to walk across the sniper infested no mans land between the tower and your objective, or the AMS. Respawning could take 30 seconds sometimes. Vehicles lost had timers. Just like in battlefield you can think about what your doing, what your squad is doing, what the enemy squad could be doing, and use tactics. Flanking worked. Stormtroopers attacking from the air worked. Vehicle and infantry integration worked.

Close combat was slightly slower than Battlefields and I feel it was just about perfect. Choke points existed, 5 guys could hold off 15 at the back door of a base. The enemy didn't run so fast and strafe back and forth so fast you couldn't hit him. They had to STOP to fire their weapons. You couldn't fire accurately on the move, and I think that above everything is most important here. The only thing I don't think was so good with all of this was sniper rifles, when you moved them the COF bloomed out too much, making shots on moving targets harder as you had to aim infront of them, stop moving your mouse, and wait for the cursor to settle, and they cross the magic leading point and you fire. I think if they had halfed the "Moving gun COF" it woulda been perfect.

I really hope they get this right. The Speed of Combat in PS was near on perfect. This is one of the things SOE needs to nail with a laser guided hammer if they want N/2 to be a hit. Especially with the old community.

Comments?

Grimster · 2011-01-28, 01:51 AM

Well I agree with you those parts were perfect about Planetside. I hope that SOE manages to capture that feeling and sense of atmosphere you have in the old game.

I also loved how organised squads would benefit your side against a side that were not organised.

Insinfinity · 2011-01-28, 02:10 AM

I think you're spot on.

I used the same example to describe it to someone who hasn't played Planetside before. I own the latest versions of Battlefield BC2 and Call of Duty. I always end up going back to Battlefield because even though the Call of duty games are good, in the long I find them unrewarding and a bit boring.

I've been thinking since the announcement and I cant really pin point anything drastic they should change. If anything I think they should reboot it back to the original weapons and vehicles (pre bfr and core) and strongly consider if the community needs or wants additional stuff in the future, update the graphics a bit but leave them scalable so it can run on older machines and increase the pop caps and stability with new server tech.

Im sure everyone who used to play PS will be falling over them selves to come back then, and they will bringing a new generation of players with them.

Sifer2 · 2011-01-28, 04:28 AM

Well if they just recreate it without adding much there is no reason to believe it wont do just as poorly as it did before. Unless Next is free to play or something.

I believe Peacemaker is right that the pace of Planetside was interesting/tactical an appeals to many people. But as he points out also death was painful an perhaps too cumbersome at times. Which probably also turned away a lot of people. So its an area that actually could be improved.

It's hard to make any suggestions though until they give real info an what the game is about.

Tikuto · 2011-01-28, 04:40 AM

Medics. Their role could be greatly refined for just to sustain battles.
Medics could give the 'downed' player a disposable item for them to use on themselves instead of having the Medic poke an item in you waiting to be shot. This disposable item gives the 'downed' player their own timing and instancey of revival with a hazey adrenaline-like visual effect.

The ammunition charges for this disposal item is used it two ways:

It is administered on 'live' players. (Medic runs around poking people)
It is dispensed to 'downed' players. (Medic runs around throwing injectors to people)

Some vehicles or weapons may completely obliterate players denying any revival.

This ought to greatly reduce that lengthy speed of battle.

BlazingSun · 2011-01-28, 08:08 AM

Personally I would like to see a slight increase in the 'Speed of Combat' as you put it.

Slightly faster time to kill especially in Infantry combat

Faster respawn!

Faster revive of fallen soldiers.

If there will be stamina system again, it has to refill much faster than it did before - just beeing able to walk around is lame (don't implement things like Personal shield though)

To keep things balanced:

No instant kill weapons/grenades/rockets for Infantry.

Better (smaller) hitboxes of characters and a better crosshair.

More cover and less plain open field.

In addition, I would really like to see a sprint ability, like in Battlefield for every soldier! If you think about it, the time it took you to get back into action in Planetside was just too long. I'd prefer some more action this time around.

PS: No more 15 minute hack timers for normal bases. What a waste of time that is, to sit around for so long!

Edit: PPS: on a second thought: maybe the hack timer should change, depending if there are enemies still in the base or not ... if the spawnroom is still intact or not. No enemies in the base = faster hack timer. Maybe have a little control console in the spawnroom: when the base gets hacked and there are defenders in the spawnroom, an advanced hacker can slow the hack timer down by hacking that console. From 10-15 or 5-15 minutes.

Hamma · 2011-01-28, 10:34 AM

I always felt PS's combat speed was perfect as well. But the death timers could be a drag often times.

While we are on this discussion, Smed himself commented on this in his blog:

Planetside had a lot of really great things about it, but it also had some frustrating things. The whole Sanctuary concept is something that slowed things down too much. We also didn't get people back into the action quickly enough.

http://john-smedley.livejournal.com/833.html

This makes me think they have other ideas this time around as far as getting people into battle quicker. The recent Galaxy news may also support this comment.

2coolforu · 2011-01-28, 10:35 AM

Main things

TTK (Time to kill)

Time to kill was fine, it was a large amount compared to a game like Call of Duty where its something like 0.25 seconds for some of the guns. For close range HA it rested around 1.2 seconds however with medikits this generally rose to around 1.5 ish.

However in Call Of Duty you are fighting 2 or 3 people one on one at most, not 200 man fragfests. If you make the TTK twitch style then people will just get fed up of dying constantly. The TTK needs to be relatively high so that people can manouver under fire and not just instantly die, the TTK was that high so that you could enter a battle and not just feel like you achieved nothing when you get instagibbed, it's also the reason why alot of instagib weapons were hated. Keep the TTK the same, if the battles are going to get bigger then lower damage degredation with range. Guns become peashooters at long range, perhaps if this wasn't present people would be happier.

Call of Duty style vs Planetside style

Ok, I've never been a fan of Call of Duty, the only ones I liked are 2 and 4, even then 'liked' is pushing it. They are fun to blow off steam but they don't require any depth or major skill and are plagued by balance issues. We don't want planetside to be full of instakill grenades and rocket launchers. The reason Call Of Duty is so popular, especially among the consoles, is because there isn't that much skill involved, there is some on the PC but on Xbox 360 your weapon/perk choice has far much more effect.

One of my favourite things about planetside was that the devs had the balls to make rockets worthless against infantry and grenades only moderately damage. Why are these brilliant ideas you may ask? Because they stopped people killwhoring AV on infantry for cheap instakills and made grenades actually fill the role they are made for Clearing rooms. Here I can believe realism should be sacrificied for balance, rockets would never be deployed at close range against infantry because they are expensive assets for dealing with armor, with Planetside's system people saved their AV for vehicles and MAX's and used their guns for infantry combat, it was a welcome relief from grenadespam games. Grenades were also good, they were used to stop people from holding entrenched positions which is their role IRL and they were effective at this job, the 30 odd HP damage they would do to the rexo gave you the edge and prevented corner humping, if they were made to do too much damage people would just use them instead of guns, E.G. CALL OF DUTY.

Cone of Fire
The cone of fire system was a very good idea, this should be kept in the game. It made tactics key and also made the various sandbags/crates placed around useful, people would crouch and fire from covered positions and it made battles good. It also added a major skill of Planetside which was recoil control, it's also key to maintaining large battles because if everyone has pinpoint accurate laserpointer guns then it would simply be impossible to advance because you'd get mowed down as soon as you left cover. The CoF system should definately make a return.

Respawn Time
Respawn time was fine, if you didn't constantly die it was around 3 seconds at a good base. 15-20 seconds at an AMS, 5-10 seconds at an un-bonused base. If you can't wait 3-15 seconds then you are playing the wrong game. The timers in Planetside, be they hack, respawn or vehicle timers were the pacing of the battle. They prevented everything becoming to chaotic and too crowded. If respawn timers are too high then attacking becomes to easy, bases lose their advantage over forward respawn points and attacking the interior of a base would be impossible. It would also diminish already underused roles like advanced medic.

Leave the respawn as is.

More cover in fields is a good idea though, with the better, newer technology how about adding some thick undergrowth to sneak through? We have an alien world, how about some Pandora style Jungle? I'd love to see a Mountainous landzone, seeing as we can now have far more detail how about the swamps of Hossin get decorated with weeds and marshland so special forces teams can wade through it concealed to their waists? That would be BAD-ASS.

Or what about some silent attack Dinghy's? Like a PBX or something, then add in more rivers. They would be friggin awesome for silent attacks! Or perhaps we could have frogmen, or some kind of Force Recon divers for sneaky sneaky into enemy riverside bases/ports!

Bags · 2011-01-28, 11:13 AM

The speed of combat is fine as is. Only tweak I wouldn't mind is slightly faster respawn timers.

Also, maybe give everyone access to a no weapon, no mowing power ATV.

Gogita · 2011-01-28, 11:28 AM

I really liked the pace of Planetside, more slow, tactic based instead of fast reaction skill based.
As Peacemaker stated very well, Planetside is not BF or CoD, both much faster shooters. Imagine if the TTK of Planetside would be the same in as in CoD, imagine trying getting in a well defended back door.... Or one skilled person taking down a group of 5 people. This is not something that should occur in Planetside. If you want it to be as CoD or BF, then play those games! No, the "slow" killing in Planetside is the right way of how it should be in a game as in Planetside.

About the respawn times, they are fine in my opinion. If it was made faster, taking over towers or bases will be too frustrating I think. It would be nice if SOE can experiment with different times during the beta to see what is the perfect amount of seconds.
One thing that I would change, is the penalty on the respawn. I think they should change the respawn penalty system in such a way, so when you die in the first 5 seconds after you respawn, there should not a penalty. One of the things that frustrated me A LOT was when I just spawned at an AMS, and half a second later, it's OS'd, which gives me an extra 10 seconds of respawn...

Bags · 2011-01-28, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by Gogita

One thing that I would change, is the penalty on the respawn. I think they should change the respawn penalty system in such a way, so when you die in the first 5 seconds after you respawn, there should not the a penalty. One of the things that frustrated me A LOT was when I just spawned at an AMS, and half a second later, it's OS'd, which gives me an extra 10 seconds of respawn...

This. Nothing more annoying than dying the second you respawn and then getting a huge respawn penalty.

Peacemaker · 2011-01-28, 05:26 PM

Its annoying but it prevents you from spilling out of the spawn tubes every 3 seconds when weve left one up so you cant spawn at a different spot.

Sorry DOOD. But its gotta stay. Im glad everyone feels for the most part the same. I think the respawn timers were just fine. If it aint broke dont fix it. Making them shorter could make attacking hard as hell.

Edit: Although attacking was too easy. TBH I think they should better flexible spawn timers. For example, 100 TR defend against 50 NC. NC spawn times are faster. But for 150 attackers vs 100 defenders spawn times should be normal (IRL 4 men are required for every 1 enemy to assault a defended position, bunker, house, super fortress... it matters not) 250 attackers to 100 defenders should make a faster defender spawn time. Spawn times should not be increased because of population only by frequency of death (IN AVERAGE, NOT JUST THE PAST THREE DEATHS) If your dumb enough to spawn out of a camped tube ten times your spawn time should increase. But if you run out the door all the way to the back door and get shot in the face twice, your respawn rate should not significantly change. If you make spawning slower because there is more of your team then people will get mad they are waiting 35 seconds to spawn. This makes defending a little easier, with "more" men to throw at the attacking enemy. Fastest spawn time 7.5 seconds, stock 15%, and someone with an average life spawn of 1 minute for the past 10 lives should be somewhere around 30.

Bags · 2011-01-28, 06:36 PM

Originally Posted by Peacemaker

Its annoying but it prevents you from spilling out of the spawn tubes every 3 seconds when weve left one up so you cant spawn at a different spot.

Sorry DOOD. But its gotta stay. Im glad everyone feels for the most part the same. I think the respawn timers were just fine. If it aint broke dont fix it. Making them shorter could make attacking hard as hell.

So they shouldn't fix spawning at an ams and instantly dying adding a timer because if given the option idiots will keep respawning in a tube that's being camped?

The logic some people use is mind boggling.

Peacemaker · 2011-01-29, 09:32 AM

If your an attacker and your killing people as they spawn, and they spawn 2 - 5 seconds after you kill them you CANNOT keep up if theres alot of them. If there is no penalty for these defenders to spawn into death, then they will do it untill they have retaken the spawn room or the attackers blow the tubes. The rate of spawn will be too high. I do not understand why you think this is illogical. Sorry AMS's arnt supposed to respawn you in 5 - 10 seconds. They are mobile spawn points and should have disadvantages over normal spawns. One of them is longer spawn times, and the possibility you could spawn while the AMS is getting raped by a group of prowlers.

Gogita · 2011-01-29, 10:05 AM

Originally Posted by Peacemaker

If your an attacker and your killing people as they spawn, and they spawn 2 - 5 seconds after you kill them you CANNOT keep up if theres alot of them. If there is no penalty for these defenders to spawn into death, then they will do it untill they have retaken the spawn room or the attackers blow the tubes. The rate of spawn will be too high. I do not understand why you think this is illogical. Sorry AMS's arnt supposed to respawn you in 5 - 10 seconds. They are mobile spawn points and should have disadvantages over normal spawns. One of them is longer spawn times, and the possibility you could spawn while the AMS is getting raped by a group of prowlers.

I can see more or less what your argument is, but I think there is a simple solution for this:
Make it that if you die within the first 5 seconds after spawning you do not get any penalty, but if you die again within the next 5 seconds in your next spawn, the penalty will hold.
The first time that the person dies instantly will make sure that that person knows that the spawn location is certain death and if he wants to spawn there again, it's at his own risk.

EDIT:
One thing that all the sudden popped up in my head is the way how penalties were given (could be wrong, please correct me then). As far as I know a penalty is given if you die twice or more in a row if you do not kill anyone, no matter the time span in between. So even if the last time you died was 15 minutes or more ago, just because you didn't make any kill in that timespan, you get a penalty due to "frequent" deaths.

I think the death penalty system should be something like this:
-Died within 5 seconds after you spawn?
-Previous death also within 5 seconds? Penalty on top of your previous spawn time.
-Previous death not within 5 seconds? No penalty
-Died between 5 seconds and 10 minutes after you spawn? Penalty on top of your previous spawn time.
Died after more than 10 minutes after you spawn? No penalty

I'm not 100% sure yet if 10 minutes is too long or too short, but this can be beta tested of course.

What do you guys think?