Lets end the speculation, what did you like about PS1?

[SKYeXile]

So since most of the people at fan fair are saying the game is still in the development and planning stages, its probably rather useless to give feedback on what we really know no details on.

I thought it might be an idea to post as veteran players and Planetside fans what we loved about the original, why we played it, why still continue to play and what stopped us playing.


Planetside was the first 3d MMO I played, while I didn't play it at release due to having a terrible computer, once I started playing(Jan 2004), I could not stop. Planetside just seemed to capture this epic feeling of war as an individual player, while combining tactical elements of an RTS to commanders.

The things I loved about the game were its skilled based and level didn't mean much, it was classless and had 3 faction PvP. While the classless thing isn't so much of an issue, I always liked on planetside how if i wanted to I could play anything, over the years...well over my first year playing...i played infiltrator, max homo, Heavy infantry, before I took to the skies as a pilot all on the one character.

But unlike most MMO's out there, which I only learnt after I left planetside I liked how Planetside while it did certainly have group elements to it, you could play it solo and playing in the US late night timeslot, that was typically the case for me. I loved how in planetside I could be self sufficient, I could travel and kill stuff by myself via reaver, and when indoors I could repair and heal myself, not having to rely on some guy following me around with a beam shoved up my ass in modern team shooters like TF2 and Global Agenda. But I also liked when i played on weekends in a group, that even if everybody was pilot/HA/kilwhore(Which was always the case in FC at BR20) its no like..."oh we don't have a healer..or a tank...we cant do anything"(happens to me so often in something like WAR or WOW) its shit yea we got 5 people on, lets go kill some people.

I also liked the pace of Planetside, I missed most of the surgile era, i felt Planetside in 2004 had a good pace to combat, there was no bunny hopping or much.. like in halo or people bouncing of walls like in unreal, it was abit slower and tactical, it didn't have the fast TTK's of counterstrike, which I think was a good thing, planetside required a consistent aim to kill somebody, not a spray of random bullets and preying that 2 land for a kill. (I'm well aware of the irony of that statement saying it as a reaver pilot) planetside was a hybrid of tactical shooter and scifi shooters like unreal and quake. I loved it, and i think it was another thing that made planetside unique to every other game out there and is still something that makes it unique.

Planetside after 2004, while the 1v1 fighting stayed at the same pace, with the addition of more defensive units and BFR's i felt the overall advance and front of battles became stale, and was one of the reasons I left.

But what kept me playing Planetside? as mentioned I liked how i could play solo, or be that hero, 6 guys holding up in a CC? no problems, since I just looted a jackhammer. In any other MMO, you would be stunlocked and fucked on all while your target gets pumped with heals. While it was enjoyable to play it was obvious I continued to play because of planetsidestats.net, with its removal and the merger of Markov and Emerald, playing on 300ping, with no real goal insight gave me little reason to play bar the odd enjoyable night on the FC vent.

I don't hope for a clone of PS for PS2, that would be boring, but I hope they do attempt to capture the essence of the original we love so much.

[Bags]

I've played since July 2006 to late 2008, and between then and now I've played intermittently.

Loves:
-Pace of combat
-Persistence of the world
-Sheer magnitude of fights
-You can be effective in a big group or a small squad
-Horizontal power growth
-Ability to cert what you want (HA with tank, med with grenade launcher, pilot with hacking, etc)
-Command backpacks (idunno)
-Voice macros (useful and hilarious)
-Lack of iron sights, instant knife, built in sprint (pretty much anything COD-esque)
-Combat was a mix of scifi shooters and tactical shooters
-Combined arms
-The ability to scavenge weapons ammo and the like
-Grief system
-Land mines, spitfires
-Cloaking
-AMS tacticality(new word!)
-The radar
-Merits
-Lack of instances
-LACK OF PVE

Hates:
-15 minute hack timers
-Grenades
-Unimax
-Warping (bad net code in general)
-Ability of vehicles to camp doorways
-Most of the new CE
-Clunky UI
-Lack of incentives to be in an outfit
-Lack of shared xp for damaging enemies (encouraged holding out for last shot)
-The implementation of reviving (if they tap, no revive, difficulty of aiming revive)
-Orbital strike spam near the end of PS' life
-Lack of distinct bases / towers
-HART timer


I'm sure there's more but that's all that comes to mind atm. Bolded the most important (as some of my likes are already confirmed in PS2, such as persistent and large fights).

But unlike most MMO's out there, which I only learnt after I left planetside I liked how Planetside while it did certainly have group elements to it, you could play it solo and playing in the US late night timeslot, that was typically the case for me. I loved how in planetside I could be self sufficient, I could travel and kill stuff by myself via reaver, and when indoors I could repair and heal myself, not having to rely on some guy following me around with a beam shoved up my ass in modern team shooters like TF2 and Global Agenda. But I also liked when i played on weekends in a group, that even if everybody was pilot/HA/kilwhore(Which was always the case in FC at BR20) its no like..."oh we don't have a healer..or a tank...we cant do anything"(happens to me so often in something like WAR or WOW) its shit yea we got 5 people on, lets go kill some people.

This right here. I love that PS supports solo play, small group play, and large group play.

[morf]

Loves:
Massive combat

Hates:
Chinese players


What can I say? I'm not too picky.

[Zulthus]

Loves:
Massive combat

Hates:
Chinese players


What can I say? I'm not too picky.

Yup, right here

[DviddLeff]

The key features in my eyes are:

Massive combat with hundreds of players on each side in the same area.
New players able to stand toe to toe with veterans and have an equal chance of success if using the right equipment.
Option to fight as infantry, ground vehicles or aircraft in a variety of ways.
Reliance on other players to succeed due to limited individual roles.

While PS has lasted much longer than some MMO games in my opinion it was never a large scale success and I feel that this is due to a variety of factors namely:

Lack of potential player base; at release almost all MMO games were RPGs with quests and PS was radically different from them as it was an FPS (with the exception of World War 2 Online). This meant that it was really aiming for bored MMORPG players and FPS players that wanted larger battles and more persistence for their characters (now we see many FPS games having awards and unlocks for persistent characters).
Monthly fee; FPS players themselves had experienced Battlefield 1942 which probably was the most similar game to PS at its release. This was a game that had large fights (although only 64 players) yet there was no monthly fee. FPS players still are not used to paying monthly so subscriptions are going to be an issue until they are used to it. Ideally I would instigate new payment system.
Under par game mechanics: No headshots, poor flight physics and an odd recoil system all turned off many players at release as these were all features that Battlefield 1942, other FPS and flight games had perfected before Planetsides release. Note that since PS was released other games have used the same cone of fire system for recoil, so it is much less of an issue these days.
Poor post release development; Core Combat was simply not the urban combat many people expected, and BFRs could have been fantastic heavy tanks yet destroyed the game for many due to their shocking implementation and following year long beating with a nerf bat to get them to fit. Add to this a seemingly 4-6 month gap between game updates and the huge influx of hackers in recent years.
Poor graphics; while most people see past under par graphics (particularly in MMO games due to their massive nature) there are many who will not even attempt to play a game with poor graphics, especially FPS players.

[Forsaken One]

Loves
-Pace of combat
-Persistence of the world
-Sheer magnitude of fights
-You can be effective in a big group or a small squad or even as a sneaky lone wolf.
-Horizontal power growth
-Ability to cert what you want (HA with tank, med with grenade launcher, pilot with hacking, etc)
-Voice macros
-Combat was a mix of scifi shooters and tactical shooters
-Lack of iron sights (less ability for competitive monkeys to exploit them.)
-Lack of competitive stupidity overall. (not much bunny hopping, no headshoting, yet the better player won but again, not do to stupidity.)
-The ability to scavenge weapons ammo and the like
-Grief system
-Land mines, spitfires
-Cloaking
-AMS
-Merits
-Lack of instances
-Unimax, uniwhatever. (I liked that idea if you wanted to cert in something/style as a whole you got a discount.)
-No getting lamed by snipers, or at least it didn't feel like it was lame unlike most fps games today.
-Vehicle owning and control
-not having to "buy" my weapons or anything (at least more then once if you count the cert needed.). I seriously hate buying weapons/ammo/whatever. once I unlocked, earned, or otherwise got a gun/armor/whatever I demand the ability to keep in/never have to work for it again or farm or whatever. I don't mind trading cert points cause I keep those but if I had to re-earn the cert point every time I wanted to respec it I'd be pissed.

Hate.
-No built in ability to sprint. Was a pain in the ass if you got stranded, which I did get many times. (but you should have to holster your weapon to use it.)
-Radar. Its not just in this game. But I've grown to hate any and all "wall hacks" no matter what the reason is. I hate when someone knows I'm coming not by the sounds of my footsteps or that I triped an alarm but because they are following a dot or some BS that gives me away. I don't mind a warning alarm like " A enemy is in the base!" but they shouldn't know WHERE I am without scouting/patrolling/etc the area to find me visually.
-Lack of shared xp for damaging enemies







Key features. These are the main things that to me made Planetside, Planetside.

-Little to no "competitive" stupidity.
-Massive scale and it felt like a army on army war.
- #1+#2 which made it feel like a tactical army sim for the future. yet was fun and paced well. (armA are too slow this was just right.)
-Being able to be anything I wanted to be.
-Vehicle owning and control. The fact I own my vehicle and can lock people out and/or kick them out if I so wish to.
-The fact the game tended to be won more by intelligence then hand-eye.



Things I don't want to see in the game.
Headshots.
Any stupid movement bs. (bunny hopping/strafe jumping/etc. use cover and be still and shoot like a man.)
If there is jetpacks I don't want you to be able to fire a gun at all while flying.
Snipers useing cloak.
Being lamed by Snipers. This includes one shot kills or shit like quick scoping.


New things I'd like to see.
A true recon/scout type class. Would have true stealth/cloak unseeable unless they are close and you are looking at them, binoculars (maybe use these to mark spots where enemy's might be and what type. like BF but without the dot/whatever moving after they move. and this would be the only way and class to mark things.), a one shot kill knife, but NO guns or ranged attack at all. the knife would be a 1 second animation where the cloaker will be fully visible if from the back and 3 second if from the front. Once its over the enemy will be deheaded/unresable if no one saved him. The attack will also be a stealth kill and so only by your teammates awareness will they know.

more things for the Engie type player to build as a class thing. (aka not having to pay for them other then certs.) turrets. dynamic cover. (aka maybe something like a sand bag wall.) also things like a Minibase. (a small hut with a turret or something protecting it.) the minibase could serve some reason like cover, height (climbing up a few stairs to get on the roof.) maybe a heal/rearm station. (you won't be able to change anything from here as that might be OPed but just getting base ammo and health refilled.)

I'm a big fan of both stealth Spec ops (think splinter cell) that need to get close and personal and as a Engie I love being able to build stuff. In fact the Engie should have a whole combat engineering tree just for building stuff. and powering up /customizing stuff you can build.

[Gandhi]

It's a long list, and most of it was mentioned already so I'll just single out a few things to comment on.

The freedom to cert anything was great, so was the freedom to re-cert on a timer. Whenever I would get bored with a particular cert I'd just re-cert to something else and play that for a few days, no need to juggle characters.

The lack of "proper" hitboxes was great, especially the lack of head shots. It really took the focus away from the traditional twitch based shooting and moved it to teamwork. Aiming was still important, but you wouldn't just get rolled by someone with the free time to invest hundreds of hours into training reflexes. Likewise there's nothing I hate more than being one shotted by some scrub hiding in the bushes somewhere, realism be damned that kind of 'gameplay' adds absolutely nothing to the game. In short, the lack of hitboxes made the game more fun for everyone, and that's all that counts.

Scavenging weapons and hacking vehicles was one of my favorite parts. The assets from other factions were just rare enough to be fun any time you could get your hands on them. And there was nothing better than rolling into your base with a freshly hacked enemy tank. It all served to keep things interesting.

And I hope they keep the AMS system to control spawning. It really added an extra layer of strategy to the game, where the difference between saving or losing your base could rest on finding that AMS and destroying it.

I'm willing to give iron sights a shot, but personally I don't think it has a place in Planetside. Again it moves the game to this twitch based combat, and there's already plenty of other games offering that. Plus, what's the point in making it harder to see what you're aiming at whenever you want to go for precision shooting? It might make sense in a "realistic modern warfare" shooter, but Planetside is neither realistic nor a "modern warfare" shooter.

[CutterJohn]

Loves

Wide range of weapons and vehicles
huge fights
giant landscapes
threshers

Hates

Battle rank(cert point max is fine, just hate the grind for them)
Cramped base designs
Mortar bullets being fired from tanks
Weak weapons/slow ttks in general
Asymmetric empire weapons
vehicles that lacked any sort of shocks at all, making for a jumpy camera view and aim. VS BFR anyone? :(
hack timers
recert timers
mines