A few questions and thoughts.

[Piper]

I'm sure most if not all of the questions I'll raise have been asked/answered elsewhere but er....meh. I've been doing some lazy research, PS1 being probably the finest computer game I've ever played, full stop. Played from a month after launch till around the time Super soldiers got patched in in er....07? That was the final straw of idiocy in "development" for me, the final polish that had turned the gem into a turd. Whoever thought that giving some players essentially x10 the health of others in an FPS was a good thing was/is a total muppet. T'was a distinctly average FPS player in PS1, but a pretty good team/map player. Enjoyed the anti-zerg game of first response and opening cont's, played in small but tight outfits and had a penchant for gimpy weapons like dual Suppressors and the Radiator.

My research stems primarily from watching yootoob vid's which can give you very different impressions of the game, watching the E3 T'biscuit feed I felt I barely recognized PS at all. Something about the look of it didn't feel at all right. But today I found a feed of a dev' playing in a smaller scale but more open map fight and it looked so much better. This video actually.


TwitchTV feed

The pace and tactics being used are much more reminiscent of PS1 than the random zerging I saw in the E3 feeds.

Anyhoo. Few questions, am grateful for anyone who can be arsed to respond and knows the answers.

1/ Grief points? Friendly fire is rightly in, but I've seen no mention at all about these. Are they in? They really do need to be, or perhaps a penalty to re-spawn timer for excessive friendly fire. A resource penalty incurred or something maybe?

2/ Fourth Empiring? Please tell me that's not in, that they are making folks pick one empire for their account? Worst patch ever in PS1 history was allowing empire switching.

3/ Hate tells? I've seen that there is a chat box and it seems to have a few channels, but are they allowing tells to enemy empire players?

4/ Use of alts? Alt's seem a bit moot in this, can unlock everything on one character in time, might as well focus on just one. In Br20 PS1 (less so Br25) it was fun to have a couple of characters, or more, but don't see the point in PS2 as I understand the leveling process.

5/ LLU's? I've heard they're looking at more than just capture points, something gen like that might not be generators, but I quite liked LLU's for a bit of variation.

There are others, but forgotten 'em, will post back if they pop back into brain cell.

Plenty of sensible decisions being taken in the dev' of this one, like no third person, but other things I'm personally less happy with, like the absence of AMS's and ANT's. The later I feel could have been a good way to expand the resource aspect of the game, some facilities producing resources, others that consume them and it would be upto empires to arrange safe transport.

Roll on my beta key, soon please!

[golfmasta34]

1. They're gonna be in at launch. As to what they will do and how many you need, I think they still haven't given concrete answers on that.

2. One character per server. So, one empire per server.

3. I'm pretty sure you can /tell the other side, not sure on this one, sorry.

4. Like above, it's one character per server I believe.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by golfmasta34

1. They're gonna be in at launch. As to what they will do and how many you need, I think they still haven't given concrete answers on that.

2. One character per server. So, one empire per server.

3. I'm pretty sure you can /tell the other side, not sure on this one, sorry.

4. Like above, it's one character per server I believe.

Thanks, appreciated.

Interesting on the one character per server. What about people, in a household say, who share an account then? I assume we're going to be paying to buy the game initially correct? They'll have to play on other servers or buy two game boxes at launch?

Without a sub' system and free to play people will fourth empire anyway I guess, but perhaps we'll see less of it and more empire "pride" again. Like PS1 was in the first er....eight months, was totally different then if you ask me.

[BlueSkies]

Originally Posted by Piper

I assume we're going to be paying to buy the game initially correct?

From the talk thus far, you assume incorrectly.

[SFJake]

Less empire pride, more "let me try what I want", please. I hate this faction royalty crap, and I'm not sure how the flood of people will react to this, but I'd bet they will massively not care about it. Its just a game. Sorry, its literally my biggest problem with the game and its community. Its like a bunch of fanatics standing in the way of a game.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by BlueSkies

From the talk thus far, you assume incorrectly.

Hmm.....

Well, fourth empiring will be done very easily then. Ho-hum.

That's an oddthing to find out as well, would have expected some box receipts for them to bank towards the initial dev' cost. Going to be putting a lot of strain on micro-transation system (hate 'em, prefer sub's personally) that isn't pay to win by desire, but if it doesn't generate the income on just "fluff"....hmm....worrying.

Still, thanks again for info'. Should just throw myself at these forums and do a ton of reading and catch up.

[BlueSkies]

Originally Posted by Piper

Hmm.....

Well, fourth empiring will be done very easily then. Ho-hum.

That's an oddthing to find out as well, would have expected some box receipts for them to bank towards the initial dev' cost. Going to be putting a lot of strain on micro-transation system (hate 'em, prefer sub's personally) that isn't pay to win by desire, but if it doesn't generate the income on just "fluff"....hmm....worrying.

Still, thanks again for info'. Should just throw myself at these forums and do a ton of reading and catch up.

Its not just fluff. There are basically three categories of items you can purchase:

Fluff: cash only
Direct Power: resources only
Side grades (different weapons, attachments, etc): cash or resources

Also, they will have a "membership" that you can pay for (though they haven't decided yet what that will give you).

[Piper]

Originally Posted by SFJake

Less empire pride, more "let me try what I want", please. I hate this faction royalty crap, and I'm not sure how the flood of people will react to this, but I'd bet they will massively not care about it. Its just a game. Sorry, its literally my biggest problem with the game and its community. Its like a bunch of fanatics standing in the way of a game.

All I can say to that is to ask if you played PS1 before and after the server merge patch?

Being on a team, that is to say, being fixed to a team dramatically alters the way people feel and play. Team sports, by way of comparison, don't swap players between the teams at half time for a good reason generally.

To have three separate, distinct communities in what was good natured competition rather than one homogeneous blob of players who didn't give a crap how any given side was doing at any given moment and constantly wondering if their team mates were just going to switch to the "winning" side at the drop of a hat was, to me, worth far more than being able to play with a few bits of empire kit on the same server.

Worst, patch, ever.

Originally Posted by BlueSkies

Its not just fluff. There are basically three categories of items you can purchase:

Fluff: cash only
Direct Power: resources only
Side grades (different weapons, attachments, etc): cash or resources

Also, they will have a "membership" that you can pay for (though they haven't decided yet what that will give you).

Ah, so there will be a sub' option of some sort too. Good, right, thanks. More things I hadn't found out till now.

I know you buy resources and XP boosters, but in theory it's not "pay to win" in the regard that everything you can get via the store you can get in game, given enough time, without the store? At least in terms of non fluff?

Though, that side grade category there has me a bit concerned. But at what point they might cross whatever line to raise income, who knows.

Oh yeah, another one. Sanctuaries?

They're, from what I can see, very keen to eliminate PS1's apparently "awful" moments of "downtime". Some of it to be fair, ok, like fifteen minutes worth of ghost holding a CC could get a bit old. HART waiting, meh, whatever, never bothered me too much.

Downtime was always a chance to chew the fat on teamspeak with your outfit mates really.

But er....Sanc's er...not heard anything about them, are we getting them and their VR testing areas? With all the possible weapon variants and mod's I'm seeing could be nice.

Not to mention using them as "secret" staging areas for cont' opening. Mind you I gather you're never really "booted" from a con't and sanc locked in PS2, ergo no need for a Sanc'? Though, frankly, with just three cont's at launch reading the global map isn't going to take much smarts.

[BlueSkies]

They seem pretty adamant about avoiding "pay to win". Hopefully, they will hold to it.

As for sanctuaries and VR, nope. We have the footholds on each cont instead. The only thing about sanctuaries that I will miss is the ANT demolition derbies on top of the HART building when you got sanc locked.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by BlueSkies

They seem pretty adamant about avoiding "pay to win". Hopefully, they will hold to it.

As for sanctuaries and VR, nope. We have the footholds on each cont instead. The only thing about sanctuaries that I will miss is the ANT demolition derbies on top of the HART building when you got sanc locked.

Right, thanks again.

The overall level of strategic elements of the game at the global map level concerns me a bit. The few early game, 04 I think was Werners first for the VS, global dom' map occurrences really did require quite a lot of thought, gambling and general luck about what the other two empires were doing as much as what yours was to pull off. Well that an old uncle enrico doing some number crunching for us all.

With just three cont's, that aren't lattice linked....meh. Room to improve for them I feel on that front.

I'll miss ANT's full stop, I'm guessing they got too many complaints from some quarters for them to repeat them in PS2. Which well...it was actually fun to get an ANT (usually took multiples in short sucession, the first three through six being CE'ed/OS'ed) into a totally CY zerged base, though I guess, sustaining what was already a six hour Interlink farm for even longer isn't that great in hindsight.

[BlueSkies]

The continental strategy will be different, obviously, and seems to revolve around controlling resources. Unfortunately, I don't believe their current design affords inter-continental strategy as the resource game is cont specific, you don't gain resources from other conts. If they gave you like... 10-20% of the resource gain from the other 2 conts, that might provide enough of an incentive for players to actually care about what is happening on a global level... but I don't know. The meta game is going to need a lot of fleshing out, and understandably, thats a bit easier to do once you have lots of players in beta and can see what works and what doesn't.

I remember Higby saying they don't like the idea of areas becoming unplayable, so cont locking is out (which is probably for the best with only 3 at launch, maybe bring it in later).

[Piper]

Originally Posted by BlueSkies

thats a bit easier to do once you have lots of players in beta and can see what works and what doesn't.

I remember Higby saying they don't like the idea of areas becoming unplayable, so cont locking is out (which is probably for the best with only 3 at launch, maybe bring it in later).

Yup on the first bit, I'll be hammering out the test feed back/bug reports as much as my fingers can bare it frankly.

9 Cont's+Lattice (not counting cave links) had positives and negatives of course, I again personally much enjoyed being a map bore. Predicting what the other empires would be upto before they did it. But the lattice just meant you had "unplayable" areas, but they were just areas you could not worry about for a while.

However the lattice also brought you ghost hacking and ghost securing. Something few if any of us enjoyed if I recall. Which might not even be a thing of the past in PS2 with back hacking of facilities in the hexs from what I can see. Just on a cont' level.

Boils down to population I guess, 2k of people per cont' certainly sounds impressive, but for me I'd perhaps like to see 6k of people with more options to stretch themselves and spread smaller fights and that require gambles on population placement. Sanc' locking of an empire was a bit of a "nasty" objective for the meta game, but it was required to pull off the less nasty one of global dom' ultimately. There seems to be no actual BIG objective for an empire to aim at so far in PS2?

Population again, better to fill some cont's and see how bad the inevitable population drop off will be as the game ages than spread us too thin I guess.

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by SFJake

Less empire pride, more "let me try what I want", please. I hate this faction royalty crap, and I'm not sure how the flood of people will react to this, but I'd bet they will massively not care about it. Its just a game. Sorry, its literally my biggest problem with the game and its community. Its like a bunch of fanatics standing in the way of a game.

I think you've got the wrong game here with that mentality. But you wouldn't understand that.

But honestly, if you want to try another faction, go to another server. It isn't hard.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by Zulthus

I think you've got the wrong game here with that mentality. But you wouldn't understand that.

But honestly, if you want to try another faction, go to another server. It isn't hard.

It worked back in 03/04 before the US merge. We EU'ers used to make events out of US server invasions (the Halibuts outfit) just to play different empires.

That's reminded me of another question I think I know the answer too but I'll ask it anyway.

6/ Looting and player corpses? As far as I can see there isn't any. Which is a bit meh. Were times when you were that low on ammo you went scav'ing, or you just saved up a ton of [insert favourite empire gun]s in your locker for later.

Not to mention having a good giggle at the person you just offed that had no Med packs/EMP's in their loadout.

Another Ho-Hum thing for me, but if it's the way they've gone it's the way they've gone.

[Bags]

You can fourth empire very easily with 2+ accounts.