Kill Cams

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Accuser

I think we might all be working with different understandings of the words "killcam". It could be:
1. A replay of your death from the killer's perspective.
2. A view of your killer while you were dying from your perspective.
3. A 3rd person view of your killer -after- you died.
4. Something else?

I don't like 1 or 2, but they don't really give away much info. Number 3 gives away the killer's position but also what resources the enemy team has (or doesn't have) in that area. That's no good.

QFT.

1 would be relatively innocuous, and perhaps useful for newbies.
2 Would be fairly harmless, but wouldn't add much either.
3 is too much. Bad Company 2 uses that system (pretty sure that's the game I'm thinking of) and I can use it to find out who killed me, where they are, where they're going, and who else is in the area. That's bad enough for normal squads, but it would pretty much be the death of cloaking as a playstyle.

[DviddLeff]

While not game breaking, I do find kill cams annoying, and for tactical reasons; if someone has a great hidden firing position, you shouldn't be able to tell all your mates exactly where they are if you die without seeing them.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Accuser

I think we might all be working with different understandings of the words "killcam". It could be:
1. A replay of your death from the killer's perspective.
2. A view of your killer while you were dying from your perspective.
3. A 3rd person view of your killer -after- you died.
4. Something else?

I don't like 1 or 2, but they don't really give away much info. Number 3 gives away the killer's position but also what resources the enemy team has (or doesn't have) in that area. That's no good.

You're right. I was going under the assumption it would be like #1. I could certainly see how the other ones wouldn't really help a new player all that much.

IMHO a killcam should show you how you got killed, not just where exactly your killer was or what they look like. Not much point in that.

[IceyCold]

I personally HATE kill cams.

However, if it is a replay of your death from the killers Point of View, that actually would not be that bad. It would teach the victim a bit of what they did wrong and with the map being so big I imagine most of the time it would be very hard to find someone's location just based on the kill cam.

And I will give you one reason why it might be beneficial:

Hack detection.

If you get killed and then watch that kill through the killers view and see that they instantly popped to you in an obviously unrealistic manner or were watching you through a wall and popped out at just the right time; then it's pretty easy to know the person is doing something unusual.

I am willing to wait for beta and pass judgment then, but I don't really think we need them.

[Canaris]

Speaking as a sniper kill cams are the worse thing to add to a game, I do not want to see them added.

[Mirror]

Hopefully its an option that you can have on or off. I'd want a similar process to PS1 where you can still see whats happening so you can help your teammates and so you know when you are getting rez'd.

[Peacemaker]

This whole thing is totally NOT planetside. T-ray, Higby... I know you guys are trying to re-do planetside into a different game, but really fellas, Planetside 2 isn't going to BE planetside 2 if you don't carry some of the things from PS 1 over. Go play BFBC2, most of the good servers have kill cam DISABLED.

I know you guys are using popular ideas to make PS2 more popular, but we don't want Battlefield 4142 MMOFPS. We want Planetside. The game WILL be awsome if you hold to the roots of Planetside a little bit and market it. PS1 didn't work because of Marketing and Limited technology. By the time the technology came around the engine was too old to market it.

I have faith in you guys but PLEASE, stuff like kill cams screams at me that your just making BF/COD mmofps because these games rake in money. Trust that your product will rake in money with new ideas, not carbon copies. The masses may decide that they like different more than they like the next edition of Call of Duty. Infact if it comes too close to CoD or BF people may hate it because frankly a lot of gamers are getting sick of Modern Warfare "x".

[Gandhi]

I don't want to see killcams in PS2, that's all. And I'd also like to ask if any Planetside fans at SOE actually like the idea of killcams, or if it's something that's being put in because marketing wants to copy every single 'feature' from a relatively successful game because hey, it must mean everyone likes it.

All in all I'm excited for PS2, but some of the things I've heard are just disappointing. Especially when I remember some months ago the message from SOE was "We're making Planetside 2 for the fans of Planetside".

[Crator]

I would hope that SOE devs decision making is not based on what marketing thinks is good. These types of things should be left up to the devs, the people who have been doing it for a long time and know what they want throughout the entire system.

[Traak]

The best news is that such a thing exists. Know who will find it extremely useful, even if it doesn't survive beta? Or alpha?

The guys catching cheaters. How useful to be able to replay and see someone being hosed by a fully automatic Sweeper, multiple grenades at once from a Punisher, or whatever other cheats may have been utilized.

Being able to replay the death and see Mr. (cheat site).com zeroing in on and sniping a cloaker from a crevice on the opposite side of the planet will make catching cheaters that much more fun and proving it that much easier.

"Your account has been suspended. Attached is the video file of the last ten people you killed before being banned. Though SOE admires skilled players, the knife kills you were making on enemy tanks were considered outside the realm of sane reality"

Yeah, bring it. Though I don't want it to make it into the game, the fact they coded it can be highly useful.

[Mastachief]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

This is kind of stupid.

This.


Kill cams are for COD kiddies

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Peacemaker

This whole thing is totally NOT planetside.

I'd love to hear how you think a killcam is "NOT Planetside". Is it simply because some other game does it?
Is it that people are too candyass that they are scared the person they killed might be able to find out roughly where you were when you killed them?

You know whats "NOT Planetside"? Lobbies, non-persistance, no vehicles, no max units, no empire specific anything, less or more than 3 empires, non sci-fi...that kind of stuff.

Killcams are a good mechanic for helping new players quickly get over the huge learning curve that is an MMOFPS, and I didn't even think about it before, but yes it also is an excellent tool for players to self-regulate hack detection, which I would hope we'd all be in favor of.

[Zulthus]

New players can learn the game the right way without the crutch that is killcams. They did it in Planetside 1, and they can do it again in PSCOD:2. If you don't know how you got killed, you either weren't paying attention, you're really bad, or it was a skilled sniper. What kind of fun is being able to see exactly where the guy was who killed you? I'm not against killcams because it's "not planetside", but I am against them because they're stupid.

[Gandhi]

Originally Posted by Zulthus

New players can learn the game the right way without the crutch that is killcams. They did it in Planetside 1, and they can do it again in PSCOD:2. If you don't know how you got killed, you either weren't paying attention, you're really bad, or it was a skilled sniper. What kind of fun is being able to see exactly where the guy was who killed you? I'm not against killcams because it's "not planetside", but I am against them because they're stupid.

Not to mention it's totally useless as a learning tool when you're in the middle of a 300vs300vs300 battle. "Oh look, that guy in the middle of the 50 other guys was lucky enough to get the last shot on me"

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by Gandhi

Not to mention it's totally useless as a learning tool when you're in the middle of a 300vs300vs300 battle. "Oh look, that guy in the middle of the 50 other guys was lucky enough to get the last shot on me"

Yeah, exactly. Good point. It'll probably be more like 1000v1000v1000 anyway