We're checking out Planetside 2 for our next "Things You Would Change With..." feature, the free to play first person shooter MMO set in an open futuristic war zone where three factions vie for control of key territories by capturing bases in a land vs land vs air battle. The game is extremely exciting and very action packed, with features to drop players right in the middle of battle finding action is pretty easy, however there are quite a few growing problems with the game that we love to see addressed and so here are our problems and solutions:
New Players vs Experienced Players
New players have a real hard time in the game. With most MMOs that have some form of level or ranking system is that typically all the higher levels are segregated from the lower levels to offer up a fighting chance and fun to new players; whether tiered level range battlegrounds or "Pro" only events. As Planetside 2 is an open world it means that new and more experienced players alike are thrown together in the same warzones, and as the game has been out a few years it means that Battle Rank 1 player stepping into the game is going to be up against Battle Rank 100 players quite often and whilst there's a CHANCE a low BR can take out a high BR, it's not that common. We like that everyone is together, we don't feel levels should be segregated, we do however feel that new players logging in the game to simply get steamrolled over and over is extremely off putting. What we'd suggest is a single smaller continent for players under BR10 where they can have their own mini-war whilst they get used to the game and are playing against other appropriately ranked players. When they hit BR10 then they're told they're ready to move on to the real battle and sent to the main continents, or alternatively they can choose to join them freely when they want to if they want to join other high rank players and friends. To further help new players we’d also suggest the following...
Interactive Tutorial
New players don't understand all the concepts of the game and the normal tutorial is quite poor. Players joining Planetside 2 for the first time and expecting your typical Battlefield 3 style FPS are in for a rude awakening, the game is considerably more involved with the various classes, vehicles and the mechanics behind base capture. It can honestly be quite overwhelming just exactly what it is you’re supposed to do. What we'd love to see is a more interactive/progressive tutorial that updates as players find themselves in different areas, for example if they are within the vicinity of a base/point being captured by the enemy then an NPC window of a Commander pops up explaining to the soldier what is currently happening, how the point capture works and what they can do about it. Similarly if they find themselves in a base they are trying to take that has shield generators then the tutorial NPC can guide them to the generators and explained what they need to do to turn them off. When looking for a battle and looking to respawn somewhere if there is a Sunderer available then the NPC Commander might pop up saying "Hey, it looks like one of our troops has managed to deploy a Sunderer near the enemy, you can use these to instantly enter the battle instead of having to redeploy to one of our bases; useful for when we're pushing into the enemy territory. You can even try and do your part and requisition a Sunderer yourself and try to drive one to an alternate drop in location."
Virtual Flight Training
Flying is quite hard to get into and daunting for a lot of players. A lot of players really like the idea of playing Tom Cruise in Top Gun, flying between rocky canyons at breakneck speeds and buzzing the enemy towers peppering their defences with blaster fire. Unfortunately for most are soon as they get into their aircraft for the first time they generally don't last all that long in the air, either accident the crashing themselves due to not being able to control or getting gunned down by the enemy if they are near contested territory. It takes a certain determination to keep pushing past that early-stage of being bad at flying to start getting better, it costs a lot and takes time to get back up in the air and into the battle and so a lot of players simply give up on it. Would love to see a VR Training system where a player can simply load up a selection of aircraft and fly around and unpopulated map, perhaps with static ground targets, that they can log into freely and experience flying, crashing and jumping straight back into the seat so that they can at least learn the basics of flight and then try to master air to ground and air to air combat outside of the simulator.
Sub-Objectives
The game gets a little tedious with the same base capture mechanic. Or in other words, it lacks a metagame. Once you have caught a few bases with your faction then, aside from the huge epic struggles that every so often take place, the game start to feel the same the longer you play it. What would be interesting are smaller sub objectives reserved to Squads, allowing smaller teams of two or more players so that players can actually feel like they're contributing more to the overallwar effort instead of being one of the hundreds in the faction pushing the same point at the same time. Squad based objectives could allow players to tackle smaller outposts whilst the main bulk of an army focuses on large base objectives, these outposts could be resource mines that allow a small influx of resource points to the players in the surrounding territories, or could shut down power to shields temporarily in the larger bases. How about opposing missions where one faction is tasked with driving a Sunderer from one point to another with cargo and when triggered it prompts opposing missions for the enemy factions to take out the Sunderer. Or what about when a player has racked up a long kill streak they suddenly get a bounty on their head? The original Planetside offered a capture-the-flag style mechanic where players had to transport modules to achieve objectives; we'd love to see something like this.
New Class: Squad Leader
The game needs more tools for leading so that players actually want to do it. Aside from larger guilds as often as not players don't make pick up Squads and work with other players due the pointlessness of trying to organize players that don't want to be organized (that and the in game voice comms suck). We'd love to see a new Squad Leader class that for the most part is a non-combat role, instead they get a variety of tools to use with members of a Squad including more visual waypoints, a more detailed map of internal structures and even the possibility of an overhead drone that can do a scan of the area and show up players and enemies heat signatures nearby. Guiding them through a base to take out the heath shield so that they can then get a scan of the area, let their squad know how many enemies are in the next room, etc. would add a real sense of direction and objective focused cooperative gameplay.
These are some of the things that we would change about Planetside 2, but what do you think? What would you change about this game? Would you add anything else to the list? We await your opinions! Let us know!!!!!
Deja tu comentario
You must be logged in to post a comment.