Greetings, TAW friends. All the time I hear, "ArchonX, you are such a magnificent bureaucrat but a terrible gamer. How can you talk to us about bringing glory and honor to TAW when you don't know which side of a gun shoots in any game you play?" All the time I hear this. Let me regale you with a tale from my youth, the one time in my life I was actually good at a video game.
The year was 2001. I was quite the EverQuest addict. And no, I wasn't that good at EverQuest. If time playing a game led to be having skill in it, I'd be able to beat Civilization 6 on something harder than "baby mode" as my game settings are described by Zenmire.
EverQuest was developed (or published) by Sony Online Entertainment, which also had a few other games, like Tanarus, PlanetSide, and the subject of this thread, Infantry Online. So you get an idea of what this game looks like, enjoy this picture. I hope you have a 4K monitor to soak up the magnificent graphics.
The above picture shows an OvD, a type of controlled scrimmage. In a normal game, there would be three times as many players, so it could get hectic. There were several modes of gameplay, but the one I gravitated towards was the greatest game ever conceived by humanity, Capture the Flag.
There were 7 distinct classes in the game. There was an Infantry, which was a generic foot soldier who could use a great assault rifle and the best armor. There was the Heavy Weapons, which had slightly less defensive capabilities but could use weapons containing rockets and other explosive funzies. There was an Infiltrator, who was exceptionally weak but could cloak themselves and use crowd control abilities to try to capture a flag and extricate quickly from a situation. There was a Jump Trooper, a hybrid class with less defense than an Infantry, less offense than a Heavy Weapons, but was highly mobile. Then there are the three support classes, Squad Leader, Medic, and Engineer.
I know what you're thinking - "ArchonX, you are such an amazing support main, an inspiration to all of TAW. Surely you were a support class!" This kind of thinking is understandable, but actually before I discovered El Dorado I was most often an Infiltrator because I enjoyed the gameplay.
One of the game mechanics is that each class had a different weight limit. This was most often set at 40 or 50 kg. Every piece of weaponry, armor, or ammo would contribute to this limit. Up until you reached your full limit, you could still freely move. As you exceeded it, you would become more and more encumbered until if it were exceeded by too much, you would be entirely immobile. This is relevant, or else why would I bring it up? I support conserving pixels by exercising brevity in online posts.
There were 4 different methods of conveyance available for classes that were eligible to use them. There was a jump pack, which was quite terrible and was only used by some Squad Leaders who wanted extra mobility in certain situations. There was a hoverboard, nearly doubling one's weight limit, which for practical reasons was almost exclusively used by Engineers, as the materials needed to create and repair turrets needed to be mined in-game and could be quite heavy. A Medic could also use it, if they were defending their base and were weighed down with healing supplies.
Then there were the two vehicles exclusive to a Jump Trooper. First was the death pack, which was a jump pack that shot lasers. That sounds fun, hmm? Who doesn't want to shoot lasers from their death pack? Well one of the game mechanics was that each player would have an HP pool, which operates as expected. The other is an Energy pool, which naturally regenerates. Having energy was needed for certain operations, like building turrets, teleporting, and it would also act as a dampening field against incoming damage.
If you had 500 energy and received a rocket propelled grenade to the face, it might do 12 damage or so. If at the time of the attack you had only 250 energy, it might end up doing 45 damage. It was essential to manage one's energy. As such, for a close-quarters fighter like a Jump Trooper, expending a great amount of energy through using a death pack's lasers was not effective or sustainable.
The last vehicle was the deathboard, also exclusive to the Jump Trooper. This board, the ride of choice for many a player, was faster and more maneuverable than a hoverboard. It had great synergy with a Jump Trooper's playstyle which was to get in, blow things up, maybe get a flag, and get out.
Given the restraints of this meta, I was a forgettable player, decisively mediocre. That is, until one day I had a revelation. What if a Jump Trooper used a hoverboard and instead of being able to carry 50kg, could carry 80kg? That is many more kg. I'd have to contact the local space agency to ask them to calculate just how much more kg that is, but even with that precise information out of reach, surely you can see there is a distinct difference.
Now, what is the point of having so much more weight capacity? Instead of carrying one rifle, I carried three. What is the point of this? Maybe stop asking so many questions and wait for me to finish telling the story. For each of the three rifles one possessed, they could also purchase rifle grenades, up to four for each one. I would buy three rifles, only use the best one for its rifley goodness, but also have 12 rifle grenades to spam at noobs who made the tragic error of existing near my present location.
Oh there were more weapons! I also had a mid-range sniper rifle, a grenade launcher with 50 grenades, 5 plasma mines, 5 AP mines, two energizers to restore energy, two stim packs to restore health, and a repulsor charge for a little bit of crowd control.
Now I hear the caterwauling from the peanut gallery, "Majestic ArchonX, there is no possible way you could exercise the necessary dexterity to truly have all of these weapons at your disposal!" Fortunately for you, I am accustomed to being challenged by knaves, so I will explain.
I type with relatively decent speed, usually maintaining around 70 WPM. I use a slightly modified version of proper typing posture, but for this game, where I needed access to so many keys, I did it the right way.
W, A, S, D were my movement keys. Q was for energizers, E was for stim packs. In case I lost so much energy that my armor generator turned off, F turned it back on. R dismounted, T recalled to the dropship, and U was my teleport. I was for Plasma Mines, P was AP Mines, O was my sniper rifle, K was my assault rifle, ; for grenades, L for my formidable 12 rifle grenades, and ' for my repulsor charge. It was intuitive, it was efficient, it was quite glorious.
Now I hear additional protestation, that yes I am a mobile turret platform, but that doesn't resolve the fact that my defense is still reduced compared to an Infantry. Well it is your lucky day, young grasshopper, as my increased weight limit provided a solution for that as well. There were three pieces of armor I could carry. It was undisputedly my best option for my main piece to be Drop Armor. For a shield generator, my choice was between PF Generator and IDF Generator. I'm still not incredibly knowledgeable about the difference, but basically PF Generator protects one's energy better and IDF Generator protects one's HP better. I chose PF, and you will see why. It was absolutely meta for the third piece of literally every class to be Suit SuperCharger, as it dramatically increased one's rate of energy regeneration.
Remember I told you that the damage you received from an attack was dependent on the amount of energy you had when you received the shot. Surely you remember this, unless you skimmed past that part and have arrived here without reading it. In that circumstance, I formally denounce you and admonish you to not be quite so much of a lazy and reread that part. Instead of SSC, I instead equipped the Heavy Powercell, which instead of improving my energy regeneration rate, added a very large pool of energy for me.
As a result, I could take a ridiculous amount of punishment prior to even registering significant damage. If I went into a base fresh, at full energy, I could take several shots before taking much damage, fire off some rifle grenades, maybe even shoot some regular grenades, lay some offensive mines like the troll I am, have a little bit of crowd control, and hopefully secure a flag and get out. I wasn't as fast a Jump Trooper with a deathboard, but I was still faster on my hoverboard than any foot soldier was. Besides I never did well with the deathboard, it moves too fast and I would get seasick.
When I first debuted this build, the incredible happened. I am 35 years old and to this day this is the greatest moment of my life. Because of the way my character reacted to damage and just refused to die, I was mistakenly banned for hacking. Literally banned for hacking for being 2 OP 4 U N me. I had a reputation in this game that I had been playing for many years, not only as someone who was not particularly skilled, but also as someone who would never hack. The moderators investigated my build and saw that its unorthodoxy had led to my superior performance in the fight in question. I was reinstated within a day.
I had great fun with this build for many years. I am still known in that game community for my winning personality, and as someone who was quite adept at trash talking. I have a reputation in TAW as someone who is not toxic, but that's really only because I am not good at any other game. If I were Top 500 at Overwatch or god forbid League of Legends, I'd be quickly drummed out of the clan for my affinity for excoriating downed opponents.
So when I implore TAW divisions to seek glory and honor, I draw on my experiences as a meta-breaking Jump Trooper who stole a Medic's hoverboard and rolled down the street at a snail's pace so I could shoot my 12 rifle grenades at any poor sap who made the tragic mistake of being in my general vicinity. Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
I do believe Infantry Online was resurrected by the community a few times, the most successful attempt being http://www.freeinfantry.com/ and there are some neat editing tools to make additional maps and things.
So maybe this could be used for a future TAW@WAR? ;)
Thank you for the TED talk, I enjoyed it very much...
Thank you for the magnificent nostalgia trip back to Planetside days, I fondly recall those heady days of games being in actual boxes as some of the true highlights, alongside the boxart and real, physical (and often thicc) manuals.
I'll go off on a trip down memory lane now of Tribes, Battlefield 1942, KKND and a bunch of others which are now beyond dust-covered and either a sparkle of what they once were, or truly dead.
Fantastic TED talk. I now feel as old as I am reflective!
what a post lol
Jmag can you imagine sometimes RD discord channels, if not I hope with this post you know :P