News: Matt Higby doing a Q&A at reddit! - Page 32

Bags · 2011-09-01, 02:57 PM

Originally Posted by Crator

LOL, grunting is a role? :P

Someone has to make the noises.

Shogun · 2011-09-01, 03:08 PM

grunting actually is the main role in a lot of shooters. in ps1 there are several different "grunt roles" heavy assault being one of them. but in ps1 its possible to combine grunt roles with supporter roles and thats what the devs want to change for ps2.

i guess they have to put in this limit because there is no cap on character progression and without these new limitations we will have the same situation we have now with the br40s.

Crator · 2011-09-01, 03:18 PM

Grunt is such a general term. Perhaps you mean, ground troops = grunt but those aren't roles necessarily. Those terms could be used to categorize roles into different groups.

Graywolves · 2011-09-01, 03:53 PM

For all we know the Medical Applicator is going to be replaced with the Med Box from the battlefield games. If Infantry still has armor value I'd want to repair and heal as one role, needing two people to get yourself back to full fighting strength just seems rediculous. Maybe a Medic/Engineer skill will allow you to also heal/repair a little.

And hey look I'm on the front page!!!! Sweet!

Why did I use the spam emote? Because I love it and used to have my own spam section in my outfit's forums.

DOUBLEXBAUGH · 2011-09-01, 04:54 PM

Way back when BR 20 was the cap I could Rexo/HA/AV/Adv Hack/Engy and then had a choice between med or skeet (I chose skeet). Then when it got bumped to BR 23 (24 and 25 didn't give cert points), I could use both skeet and med (tho I chose to keep using kits and went with reaver/fury).

So your "1 man army" certs have been there since day 1, it wasn't a problem till BR 40 when everyone had everything.

I really hope I can get into beta to see if this will be worth it or not, cause the more I hear about this game the less I like it. I played Planetside because I liked Planetside, I don't want Battlefield: Auraxis.

p0intman · 2011-09-01, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by DOUBLEXBAUGH

Way back when BR 20 was the cap I could Rexo/HA/AV/Adv Hack/Engy and then had a choice between med or skeet (I chose skeet). Then when it got bumped to BR 23 (24 and 25 didn't give cert points), I could use both skeet and med (tho I chose to keep using kits and went with reaver/fury).

So your "1 man army" certs have been there since day 1, it wasn't a problem till BR 40 when everyone had everything.

I really hope I can get into beta to see if this will be worth it or not, cause the more I hear about this game the less I like it. I played Planetside because I liked Planetside, I don't want Battlefield: Auraxis.

I agree here.

Mastachief · 2011-09-01, 05:52 PM

Originally Posted by DOUBLEXBAUGH

Way back when BR 20 was the cap I could Rexo/HA/AV/Adv Hack/Engy and then had a choice between med or skeet (I chose skeet). Then when it got bumped to BR 23 (24 and 25 didn't give cert points), I could use both skeet and med (tho I chose to keep using kits and went with reaver/fury).

So your "1 man army" certs have been there since day 1, it wasn't a problem till BR 40 when everyone had everything.

I really hope I can get into beta to see if this will be worth it or not, cause the more I hear about this game the less I like it. I played Planetside because I liked Planetside, I don't want Battlefield: Auraxis.

I echo your feelings

Crator · 2011-09-01, 06:00 PM

....

Talek Krell · 2011-09-01, 06:07 PM

Originally Posted by Bags

PS: I always run with friends so where does this devaluation of teamwork come into play?

There's a subtle but important difference between working with other people and working around other people. Teamwork, specialization, and codependency in PS1 offered no significant advantages over using cut and paste generalist infantry. It was probably worse if anything, which seems to be what they're trying to change.

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

The instant vehicle boarding is going to create problems..... but at the same time, i'm personally gonna abuse the shit out of it.

I'm going to abuse the ever loving shit out of this system so badly that they'll have to put the animations back in. >_>

Raymac · 2011-09-01, 06:24 PM

Originally Posted by DOUBLEXBAUGH

Way back when BR 20 was the cap I could Rexo/HA/AV/Adv Hack/Engy and then had a choice between med or skeet (I chose skeet). Then when it got bumped to BR 23 (24 and 25 didn't give cert points), I could use both skeet and med (tho I chose to keep using kits and went with reaver/fury).

So your "1 man army" certs have been there since day 1, it wasn't a problem till BR 40 when everyone had everything.

I really hope I can get into beta to see if this will be worth it or not, cause the more I hear about this game the less I like it. I played Planetside because I liked Planetside, I don't want Battlefield: Auraxis.

Maybe I'm wrong, and I am one of the few that have an issue with a bunch of 1-man-armies running around, or perhaps I'm the only one that even thinks the Eng/Med/AV/HA Tower of Doom Special is even a "1 man army".

It does kind of sound like you guys are saying "It wasn't a problem when I was doing it, but now that everyone else can, it sucks." But I'm probably misinterpreting that too.

p0intman · 2011-09-01, 06:50 PM

Originally Posted by Raymac

Maybe I'm wrong, and I am one of the few that have an issue with a bunch of 1-man-armies running around, or perhaps I'm the only one that even thinks the Eng/Med/AV/HA Tower of Doom Special is even a "1 man army".

It does kind of sound like you guys are saying "It wasn't a problem when I was doing it, but now that everyone else can, it sucks." But I'm probably misinterpreting that too.

what we're saying, is that when br20 was max... it was still possible without being OP.

now that everyone can theoretically build up to doing everything (theres a difference, mind you, in that there used to be a tradeoff even if you dont think so) and thats why it sucks.

my br20 build was ma/sa/adv hack/adv med/skeeter/engineering/rexo or something like that, i forget. and that was fine, because i was able to mostly be on my own when none of my outfit were on, and i was still able to contribute to a larger group when they were on.

but now that im br31 i have..
ma/sa/expert hack/adv med/ce/skeeter/rexo (free!)/cloaking/scatmax/flamethrowerlol

Now I can still work with my outfit, but I don't need to... because outside of rolling armor, I'm basically a one person assault team.

do you see the difference?

it doesnt NEED fixing, if br20 is the cap. Because then, everyone can build up to that, and it'll still be basically balanced fine.

oh, and i basically can't regard the people who are complaining about 1 person armies as being knowledgeable, because if you were of decent battlerank you'd understand the mechanics and have fought enough to understand why br20 is fine as it was.

Crator · 2011-09-01, 07:09 PM

I think, if no med cert for all classes doesn't work in beta, then just change it. Let's just wait and see on this one, no?

Redshift · 2011-09-01, 07:11 PM

i don't count med/eng/HA/AV as a one man army, imho that is a standard grunt, like others have said br20 or even br 25 didn't make you a super soldier, you just had the basic grunting skills and 3 points to play with.

I count the current game as having super soldiers where we all have rexo for free can get advmed CE HA AV some hacking a bit of SA and maybe a few vehicles chucked on top.

I do worry about the role of the bog standard grunt in PS2 because it look like they're just going to be a MAX with no armour.
I also hope they've come up with some way better idea's for handling Med and Eng, because if it works in the same way it does now, i.e point app wait 10 secs on each player not only will the Med's and Eng's find that dull but there's no way it would work

Erendil · 2011-09-01, 07:22 PM

EDIT: Heh I see a few people beat me to the reply so a lot of this is just a repeat of what Redshift/p0intman said. I'm leaving my post intact here tho in the hopes Matt Higby might actually come across it...

Originally Posted by Raymac

Maybe I'm wrong, and I am one of the few that have an issue with a bunch of 1-man-armies running around, or perhaps I'm the only one that even thinks the Eng/Med/AV/HA Tower of Doom Special is even a "1 man army".

It does kind of sound like you guys are saying "It wasn't a problem when I was doing it, but now that everyone else can, it sucks." But I'm probably misinterpreting that too.

Yes, you are wrong.

j/k ....

Seriously though, Self-sufficiency != one-man army.

The term "one-man army" didn't really start getting used in PS1 until after they raised the BR cap above 20. The general consensus that I remember reading on SOE's forums has always been that the versatility provided by BR20 was perfectly acceptable to most of the playerbase that posted there. It was enough to give a soldier more than one role they could play on the battlefield at a given time, but not the best of every role possibly allowed w/in the game mechanics. For example, IIRC before they raised the BR cap to 23, BR20 still gave you 23 certs. With 23 certs my usual setup was something like this:

MA 3
AV 3
RExo 3
Eng 3
Adv Hacking 5
Lightning 3 (I think it cost 3 back then)
AMS 2
ATV 1

As you can see, I have 1 fast response vehicle (ATV), 1 combat vehicle (Lightning), AMS, and an MA/AV/Rexo loadout that could repair himself and hack terms. But in doing so I had to give up HA, and had to rely on medkits for healing. I was self-sufficient, but didn't have the absolute best of everything for the job. This IMO is NOT a 1-man-army.

A 1-man-army is someone who flies into an enemy base in a mossie w/ his Agile/HA loadout, drops on the vterm to hack out and AMS, deploys the AMS in the cy, lays CE around it, switches to cloaker to sneak into the base, slaps a virus on the main term, sneaks into spawns and hacks out an AI MAX to kill any softies there, switches to AV MAX once it's clear to take down the tubes, switches again to an HA/Deci/Rexo loadout before the term hack expires, heals himself as needed, runs down to the CC and slaps on a hack, and then guards said hack.

That's 32 certs worth of action right there, 34 if they also have Reaver, and 36 if they could also rez their comrades. THAT is a 1-man army, because he always seems to have access to the best tool available for the job at hand. And that's not possible with a BR20-level of versatility.

I have to say though I'm feeling some pretty strong reservations about the PS2 class system as I understand it. Yes, being able to perform all roles at once is a bad idea. But being limited to just 1 single role is just as bad. It sounds to me like they might be making their class system too role-specific and not flexible enough. But given the huge size of the maps and the variety of different opponent classes we'll be fighting (Softies/MAXes/Ground vehicles/Air) there has to be at least a little versatility and self-sufficiency in a given loadout because there isn't always going to be a handy term nearby to swap out to a different loadout if you need to.

If the class system is so confining that I can't have access to an infantry loadout that can attack all enemy targets with at least some measure of success, and let me have some minimal way to heal and repair myself, I'm going to have serious objections. MA/AV/Rexo/Eng/Medkits IMO is not a one-man-army, and not game-breaking in the least.

Bags · 2011-09-01, 09:14 PM

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

There's a subtle but important difference between working with other people and working around other people. Teamwork, specialization, and codependency in PS1 offered no significant advantages over using cut and paste generalist infantry. It was probably worse if anything, which seems to be what they're trying to change.

Wait, having an adv hacker or adv med gave no advantage over everyone running around with the grunt loadout?

You can claim my form of teamwork isn't teamwork all you want; but that doesn't make it true. Regardless, forcing teamwork by crippling everyone is boring. I don't want everyone to be able to do everything, but being limited to only ONE thing at a time seems very tiring.