Hi,
I'd first like to say that I'm very pleased to see a company taking on the ambitious endeavor of creating another MMOFPS - one of the best additions to the online world of gaming. As a long time PlanetSide fan and player I've been looking for something similar I can sink my teeth into, and this seems right up my alley. The screenshots looks great, the key features(being able to go inside every building for instance) all sound amazing, and so far I'm very optimistic. Let's just hope the controls do the game justice. All can be lost in a game good without good game mechanics for the FPS players(take Face of Mankind as an example).
That said, best of luck to the team! I will be closely following this game and hoping the best for release.
Now that I'm done sucking up I'd also like to add some constructive criticism regarding headshots.
I very strongly disagree with headshots for a simple logical reason: survivability. I hate to compare LoD to PS because I'm sure you guys hear it all the time but nevertheless PS is a great game with some very good ideas that can be borrowed or made better.
One thing that was strong within the minds of the devs for PS(Planetside) was not being able to one hit kill someone(save tanks shooting infantry, or boomers, etc...). This includes no headshots and not being able to snipe someone while they are driving a vehicle. Why is this important? And why not include more realism?
Realism often works well in theory, but sometimes doesn't translate well to games(WW2 Online had wonderful large scale maps but this made is almost too big and driving places took forever; Gotta have a healthy balance of boring and fun elements in place). Excluding realism, in the sense of no one hit kills(e.g. headshots), allows a player to live longer and this is one very strong point of PlaneStide.
No other FPS allows you the possibility of living for so damn long, and quite frankly one of the coolest experiences while playing a FPS game is living without dieing for an hour. The average lifespan in most FPS game is what? - 30 seconds to a minute? Greater survivability allows the player to feel even more immersed into his or her environment, ironically in turn making it feel more realistic and quite simply, more fun(who likes dieing anyway?). People won't walk/drive 5 miles only to get sniped the second the exit their vehicle, and considering the massive open terrain I think this is a very critical aspect that could make or break gameplay. Taking a sniper shot - even to the head, save bare minimum armor if that's even in game - would in theory hurt dramatically but not kill, requiring even more skill for the sniper class, setting them apart from others players, the way it should be(all too often sniping is easy in FPS games and I never understood that.)
In general this makes infantry-to-infantry combat tougher(anyone who has had played PS knows it takes some time and skill to be a deadly killer...except with a jackhammer of course, lol), but this has the effect of creating a steeper learning curve which can only add to the replay-ability factor.
I would strongly urge the Dev team to reevaluate whether including headshots is a necessary element that will increase user enjoyment or whether it will be a nuisance that takes away from what it really means to play a MMOFPS and not simply a FPS like Bad Company 2(great game btw): that key element being a persistent world with a higher degree of survivability allowing the possibility to live very long.
