Yes. There are people from other continents as well. If host is in USA, then everyone from Europe will have a bad time, since it takes time for signal to travel. People from far away usually have red bar (or those who got both low upload and download speeds). Another thing we noticed while testing is that you can have low upload speed and a lot of download speed. In that case bar will show green, but since your upload speed is low, you'll still be laggy for others. The part of the code, that should deal with lagging isn't really working in SM, so we get multiplayer as bad as it is. Even with computers worth 2000 euros and 100/100 internet the game still won't be lag free. Tested both at home and at Dreamhack LAN. It is as if the game is getting worse and worse on it's own somehow. Probably got something to do with it not being optimized. Khm khm... Sorry for the rant. So to get back to the thread theme I'll agree with Razruk: A great point. Cover and defence should give people a chance to survive. With assault's mobility being on that level, there won't be much point in cover.
Eww..... Azure Twilight........ Hate that group. AND YOU SHOULD NEVER. Not ONCE! EVER say any large player group should have more say than anyone else. That can be VERY VERY bad. For example, say DA ever had a chance to change anything in planetside 2. You wouldn't want that at all. Then in a later post you mention AOD. DEAR GOD WHY MAN!? Do you not know of their terrible reputation!?
Must agree with Cypher here - I'm not a part of any competetive gaming league at all, and I don't really care for it - I don't see how it helps the competetive scene to have the say, tho. For a competetive scene to settle, the game must, as in all things, be fun, which means that the game must have some sort of base gameplay that everyone can play and have fun with. What's really important is that the extra dimension for competetive play is there, too. With the current quick gameplay, the competetive dimension will be the people who can use the fast gameplay better and have computers who can keep up with their own reactions. With a slower gameplay, the competetive dimension would be squad synergy, with every player having gear and skills designed to take on specific situations and complement each other well. What do we want for this game? I have Team Fortress 2 for the former, so I'd much like this to be more like the latter.
Personal grievances aside, their positive impact on the games they take part in cannot be refuted by personal dislike of a communities players, as one of the more open communities & information sharing groups, Azure Twilight made some pretty thorough posts on the PS2 forums aimed at balance & the overall meta and was one of the most popular VS outfits and even more so in Planetside 1 when they were one of the only groups that stuck around post-Battle Frame Robotics to offer balance suggestions, I didn't personally play with any of the outfits listed (bar AOD), merely mentioned them for their impact. It can be very bad, if you listen to large groups whose userbase consist of players who have little knowledge of the game, just like it can be very good if you listen to skilled, competitive groups with a vested interest in keeping the game fair and it's up to the devs to decide who is a good choice to listen to. Again, never did I suggest that you should only listen to one community, merely that there should be more emphasis on the discussions had between the competitive communities with large playercounts than should be given to a random player who came to the forums to complain, statistics should also always be a factor but priority when it comes to communicating the balance of certain weapons should most definitely be directed toward people who seemingly play the game as a form of occupation. I've never had any issues with AOD and have played with many of their members over the years, whether it be in Moviebattles 2 whereby I was offered advice & information on the mechanics of the game or on Planetside 2 where they compiled detailed statistical information on certain weapons and the most effective way for certain weapons to be used, it's completely possible that the people you met however were a few bad apples unfortunately. If you've got any personal grievances with any competitive community that's down to you and I won't disagree that there are a fair few communities that consider themselves competitive that are really just looking to make whatever they play overpowered but there's also plenty of dedicated, large & experienced communities who dedicate their full time to the games they play and offer any knowledge they put together to the wider community & the devs. When I say competitive, I'm not talking E-"Sports", I'm talking about the communities that dedicate themselves to victory in-game through fair means and organized tactics, the people who become intimately familiar with the game's mechanics, weaponry, equipment and vehicles and offer their knowledge to the community & devs as a whole in the form of guides & video tutorials. I have no interest in seeing an E-"Sports" scene develop for EC, it practically killed Planetside 2 due to the lack of updates when the dev team focused on getting MLG to make it a competitive game, I'm saying competitive in the sense that they actively compete with both, communities from their own faction and other factions and with fair means to dominate the faction leaderboards through their knowledge of game mechanics & strategy. I'd like to see Squad Synergy be very important as well; no point having weapon choices if certain weapons perform above and beyond the other choices but I really do hope that Behaviour learns to ignore people who have obviously just come off the game after being outplayed to complain about something being overpowered when it really isn't.
Sorry don't like quoting huge walls of text. My experience with AOD is quite the bad one. Especially in Planetside 2. Besides being constantly teamkilled (nearly every time I was teamkilled it was by an AOD member) they absolutely refused to coordinate their platoons which cost us winning many many alerts. I find that there is little difference between their group and unorganized players. Hell the group I was in (VG) occasionally hijacked their squads in order to help TR be just a little more organized because their leaders never did actually lead. I also have several qualms about other large outfits another one being DA. Those guys impose KD limitations in a game that is supposed to be about capturing outposts. Never mind their super elitist arrogant attitude. I don't know. I think having the developer listen to the playerbase as a whole is better than just listening to a couple groups since they have quite the different outlook on things than the average non-group player.
I don't understand this fixation on giving competitive players a priority when discussing balance issues, they can be just as vocal and biased as crazy forumites*. If there's one thing that leaves a nasty aftertaste it's systematically giving privileges to one part of a community. That is why a TOTALLY random selection of players is the only fair direction to go when asking for feedback on balance issues. *: That's just like saying that X% of a population should not be allowed to vote because they didn't study law.
They can be but often aren't, many communities that dedicate themselves to these types of games have a vested interest in keeping them alive in order to extend the playtime they get out of them, this directly relates to attempting to keep an unbiased opinion and trying to review every piece of kit in the game in order to offer an informed opinion to the developers as to the place of certain weapons or armour in the overall balance of the game. Feel free to offer some examples of communities that have shown themselves to be as vocal and biased as ill-informed casual players on an MMO, there's no doubt some of them on the internet but almost every competitive community that survives past a month has realized that in order for them to attract players they must achieve victory through skill & tactics, not exploitation of overpowered equipment and can only sustain themselves as a group by having the game they play last for a long time, which gives them a vested interest in keeping it alive and balanced. Anyway, nowhere did I suggest that the decision making process should be exclusively given to the competitive community, I've only ever stated that that they should be given the first say and priority when it comes to these decisions. I also never stated that forum users as a whole should be ignored, just that people who have little playtime, little knowledge of game mechanics and are generally ignorant of the overall balance (casual players) as a whole who simply come onto the forums to complain about balance shouldn't be given the time of day while people who have proven that they know what they are talking about should be given more priority to be heard. Remember, we're talking about internet spacemen, not real life politics and there are many good reasons why the general public should be allowed to vote rather than just a select few just as there are good reasons why a game, for fun, should be balanced according to the most knowledgeable. Someone who makes something they do into a professional activity and dedicates themselves to something will always be more knowledgeable and more trust-worthy than someone who plays a game casually without studying the mechanics, nothing is wrong with either but people should realize that if they know practically nothing about the game, their opinion is worth little to actual balance discussions and is best kept in casual conversation rather than an actual debate.
No matter how often I reread it, your message still seems to be that developers should listen to competitive, dedicated, elite gamers more than they should listen to casual gamers when it comes to balance issues, simply because they're better. That's just something that I fundamentally disagree with. We're all customers and we all want to have fun.
since the vast majority of players will of course be "casual" players and the whole point is to make them open their wallets and give bE cash ... then their opinions count, I'm not and never will be in favour of any "elitist" minority claiming they deserve to be listened to more then anyone else
