Haven't played PS since June 2003, worth picking up again?

[Breydel]

Lately I got bored of games like DAoC and Horizons and even though I quit PS in June 2003 I did enjoy the couple weeks in beta & retail I played. One of the main reasons I left was because the game got quite boring and I didn't see much of an end-game purpose in it all.

Well, now about 8 months later I wonder if Planetside is worth picking up again, even if it would be just for a couple of months. Has the gameplay changed much since Summer 2K3 or is it all basically still the same? Also, am I going to need to buy that CC expansion or can I be competitive without it as well?

As for servers, as a European I used to have major lag on Werner but a much better connection to the US East coast servers. Is this already fixed or is it still recommended for Europeans to play on the East cost server? And do guilds still recruit new players? I expect everyone to be BR20/CR5 by now so I'll definately be behind on that aspect.

[skater_d]

it would be very worth it esp. with the upcoming changes.

[dscytherulez]

Yes.

[Rbstr]

Yes the new thing coming are gona make the Game much more interesting.

The game has changed alot.

Some Euro peopl have better on the eastcost server(the consolidated the two) some have it better on Werner, pick the one with the lowest ping

Not everyone is br20 cr5, there are still quite a few newbs running around

[Krinsath]

To elaborate a bit further, here's the things that have gone on of major interest (I forget the state of the game in June, forgive me if you already know some of this):

1) Logic Lattice Units...this is basically almost a "capture the flag" form of base captures, where after hacking the base, you have 15 minutes to get this "token" from the enemy base to a friendly one. While it sounds kind of hokey on the surface, it really does change the gameplay as a base can be captured in under 5 minutes, which can make an offensive really roll across the continent.

2) Liberator bomber...good as a bomber, also good as a gunship with it's cannon. Also usable as a SpecOps craft as it carries three people.

3) Skyguard Anti-Aircraft - this murders aircraft if it gets it's sights on them. Nasty, nasty weapon.

4) Lodestar - Galaxy-sized aircraft that can transport the large vehicles (AMS, Battle Tanks, Sunderer, anything). Also will repair/rearm vehicles when landed.

5) Core Combat - a very interesting expansion. SOE shot themselves in the foot by presenting it as something it wasn't. It's not "urban combat"...but it's not bad either. They'll be making some improvements in the next few weeks that are supposed to enhance CC to make it more desirable, and from the sounds of it, they might actually be successful.

6) Capitol Buildings coming in a few weeks. All new gameplay. One base on the continent will be the "Capitol" and the empire that controls it has "dominion" over the continent and troops in sanctuary can use the sanc warp gates to go to any gate on that continent...yummy. The capitol has a force dome that keeps out the enemy that will not go down until they control 3 of 4 "sub-capitols"...so it's going to be a lot more of an effort to take a continent now. In the coming months, there will actually be all new base designs for Captiols, but for the time being they're just using existing bases so the gameplay makes it out there.

7) Package certs. Now instead of having to cert everything individually, there are vehicle "packages"...for instance, the Reaver cert now includes the Mosquito cert as well (Mosq available separately still). Light Scout includes both the Lightning and the Harasser. Uni-MAX gives you all three MAX suits for 5 certs. Opens up a few more possibilities.

8) Ammo changes. Shotguns are now 16 per box. AV ammo per box was tripled. Sniper ammo doubled.

9) HA is closer to balanced than ever before...not that it says much, but it is. The Lasher may actually have the upper hand in this category now.

10) Vehicles have twice the armor that they used to. They still aren't invincible, but they don't die quite as easily (unless you get swarmed by the now omni-present AV).

11) Decimator moved from SA to AV.

12) Facility Link Benefits - all bases provide some sort of bonus through the lattice and that link can be broken by hacking the base or destroying its generator. This leads to behind the lines operatives trying to disrupt these benefits and making the battle on the frontlines easier (I was involved in such an operation last night on forseral...took down Caer's gen and helped destroy 4 Vanu CC mods...TR ended up winning that fight).

That's the highlights. You don't NEED to buy CC to be competitive, as I own CC and very rarely use the weapons/vehicles from it...but the modules (which you do not need CC to benefit from) are immensely powerful. For instance, with the shield module, unless they air drop, the enemy cannot get tanks inside the base. The Pain Module hurts any enemy in the spawn room or the generator...making it a nasty mod. Those benefits are shared through the lattice, so there is a sharp increase in SpecOp teams. The HA weapon is fun (lightning gun), the Spiker is the infiltrator's best friend, the Flail (artillery) is an absolute monster. The Switchblade (ATV) is really fun to drive around and the Router adds a new dynamic in tactics with the ability to teleport troops. Right now, I'd say buying CC is a crap shoot...maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't. After they get the Capitol improvements in, it may be worth more.

[Rbstr]

^ wow well said

[SpunkJackel]

Come on back, the new changes should tide you over for at least another month or two.

But remeber at it's core Planetside has not changed too much and it is still the same game you played before, so while the changes are sweet. If you were bored once, you will become bored again.

[321]

Yeah it is. LLU is really cool and there are a lot of cool things that are coming soon like outfit base ownership and stuff.

[Breydel]

Thanks for the replies & nice list there Krinsath. Apart from the Skyguard, none of that was in when I left the game. :)

These changes do sound interesting. BTW I just reinstalled that 7 day trial (had it still on my HD) and after messing around in the VR training areas for exp points I saw the CC weapons + vehicles are added to the demo version too now (which explains the 30+ minute patcher download after installing it :p). Does CC come for free if you download the trial version and start paying for that later? Or did they just add the new weapons/vehicles to the demo too? From the VR room, I wasn't too impressed with the 3 new vehicles but it was nice to drive around my good ol' vanguard again. :)

[TheN00b]

Nope, CC claims the title of Most Worthless Expansion Ever any way you look at it :( .

[Cease]

Thanks for the info Krinsath, I just happened to have logged onto these boards for the first time in several months to ask the same question Breydel did. And I stopped PS just before CC came out. I never got bored with PS really. I just float from genre to genre. I've been getting back into FPS gaming again, and was curious about the state of PS. And its good news to hear I don't really need to the expansion to still compete.

Definately going to fire up PS again.

[Kaymon]

Well... we're still here, if that tells you anything. ;)

[Hayoo]

13) Remember that Platoons were added to the game as well.

14) Air Towers can also repair and rearm aircraft, making these towers extremely valuable.

Also, new things the Devs are adding in the next few patches.

Broadcast Warpgates: Ability to warp through a Sanctuary gate to any gate on a continent you have control over.

Mosquitos will be able to keep their radar on at 100% speed to do scouting passes. Crouched or walking troops will be invisible to radar.

Developers have confirmed finally that they are working on Post-BR20 ranks and Elite Cert abilities.

You can find most of these in In Development or Testing sections.

[Krinsath]

Yes, forgot those fairly major improvements...mainly because I don't use them very often ;) Platoons are VERY cool when they work right. A maximum of 30 people all in one group (XP is only shared among the individual squads) is great fun. We had a Prowler convoy going with platoons and TeamSpeak last night...just doing that is tremndously fun....come on, you know there's that gut-wrenching excitement of hearing "MAX on the hill!" *thump*thump*BOOM!*BOOM!* "Not anymore..." :D

Unfortunately, Outfit Base Ownership has been tabled for the time being. They're not doing away with the idea, but it's being put off for the capitols and post-BR20 abilities.

They were also working on quarterly campaigns where after 3 months the stats of everyone would be recorded in a "Fame and Glory" type thing...just so the new people have a chance of seeing their name in lights on the websites (as the Day 1 people will always dominate the killboards simply because they've been here longest).

Spork has also been promising us some sort of out of game improvement but he won't (can't) tell us what. We're hoping for more detailed stats on My Planetside...similar to what you get in-game with the breakdown of what types of armor and vehicles...maybe to the point of what you killed with what weapon (to settle who's brought down the most Galaxies with a Beamer)...but if you browse the OF, most people would be happy with an edit button (the main reason I post here ;)).

I highly recommend downloading and listening to the AGN broadcasts of "Ask The Devs!" that are in the download section here. It's almost an hour of pure Dev grilling goodness where they actually give an idea of what's going on....plus the commercials that they play during the breaks are hilarious....

"You boys is crazy..." - I love that ad Hamma/Marsman! Who thought of it?

[Sploogey]

Lately I got bored of games like DAoC and Horizons and even though I quit PS in June 2003 I did enjoy the couple weeks in beta & retail I played. One of the main reasons I left was because the game got quite boring and I didn't see much of an end-game purpose in it all.

Well, now about 8 months later I wonder if Planetside is worth picking up again, even if it would be just for a couple of months. Has the gameplay changed much since Summer 2K3 or is it all basically still the same? Also, am I going to need to buy that CC expansion or can I be competitive without it as well?

As for servers, as a European I used to have major lag on Werner but a much better connection to the US East coast servers. Is this already fixed or is it still recommended for Europeans to play on the East cost server? And do guilds still recruit new players? I expect everyone to be BR20/CR5 by now so I'll definately be behind on that aspect.

1. i hadnt played since about June 2003 also and i reactivated my acc about 1 month ago. EXP is slow and the fights r still massive and its fun to play. they have raised the bar ALOT since u last played...remember 5k hacks u can forget them the usual hack XP is from 50-1500. ive seen it go a bit above that but not much
2. there is alot of low BR ppl still out there so u wont really be behind
3. outfits will recruit u dont worry...just try to contact someone u used to know in that outfit and ask them to get the leader to re invite u. if u go on Emerald and on the Vanu Soverienty i can get the leader to invite u to one of the top Outfits called Central Spike...Just add me to ur friends list (my char name is Splooogey, 3 o's remember that) and send me a /tell some time...only if u want to


Not everyone is br20 cr5, there are still quite a few newbs running around

some of them rnt n00bs...they just wanted to start over

[Hayoo]

15) Also Plasma does accumulated damage - multiple hits with Plasma will build upon eachother for quick kills (I never use fragment grenades anymore).

16) The Lightning had its guns added to a top-mounted swivel turret after July, right?

17) Enemy density indicators on the global maps tell you how large a force is at each base: Large Enemy Force = 30, Huge = about 45, and Massive = about 60.

18) 20mm and 12mm were made more deadly

19) Advanced Medics got the ability to see fallen troops on the mini-map.

20) Dual-Pounder is getting switched over to Anti-Vehicle and Dual-Cycler switched to Anti-Infantry (was this mentioned earlier?)

21) Oh yeah, you get about 3x as much XP for a kill than before (as such they nerfed the Base Cap xp to compensate, so in theory you have to work harder to get CR).

22) At times you will hear multiple calls to Destroy the Medical Terminals. :) It's kindof a joke, they weren't buffed since you last played.

23) Base turrets were made more deadly, but with vehicles getting armor buff, it almost evens out. People still call for improvements (Spork or Smoke brought up the idea of barrel-type swapping again on Ask the Devs, so there's still hope).

24) Rexo armor got a recent buff: the armor absorbs more damage now before your health starts taking hits.

25) There are repair and rearm silos in each base courtyard but they only work if you're linked to a Dropship Center (part of Facility Link Benefits mentioned earlier).

26) Bunkers still suck. LOL! (But the devs promised they have ways to fix that)

27) You have to drop your Boomer detonators if you want to set them off with a Jammer grenade.

28) Deliverers got a water-speed increase.

And lots more stuff I can't think of at the moment.

Upcoming:

Galaxy gets a boost in speed.

Advanced Targeting will no longer drain stamina.

Mines are getting a boost in damage.

Combat Engineers will be getting a deployables UI eventually.

Grenades will now come as a 3-grenade clip.

[Biohazzard56]

Its a whole new game, its very much worth coming back to

[Breydel]

Just completed the VR training completely for the training exp and ooh boy, what on earth happened to my favorite lightning. :( I'm not sure if it's now best to use it in 1st or 3rd person view. That skyguard flak ROF is extremely cool though, and the vehicle doesn't seem to look as ugly anymore either, was it slightly remodelled?

Played for a short while too (NC on Werner) and it was quite fun. As always in Planetside, standing around the HART waiting for the timer to invite promptly got me a guild & group invitation. :)

[Rbstr]

Yes some of them started over but there have been a few totaly new players lately

Then new lighting is easy to controle after you practice a little bit, its also much better now