One month after unsubscribing, looking back over my shoulder to PS

[sommy911]

I agree with everything you said. I quit playing around June 20th or so when my free subscription ended. The reason I quit wasn't so much the bugs but it was the gameplay. Capture a base, hack the console, wait for hack to go through, then move on. It just gets boring. The only reason I came back to the forums was to see what was going on in the game. It doesn't look good. A lot of people have the same feelings that I have. A great concept and a great design but one huge gameplay flaw. Oh well, time to move on.

[Bismarck]

You hang on to a game for one month then give up???? No wonder you didn't like it! Well the bugs are getting fixed monday (crosses fingers) and they're updating 2 guns and 1 vehicle. Then we have platoons, loadstar and a whole buncha other crap. As for your gameplay flaw. It is FAR more complex than any other FPS, ever. In every single FPS you have one, and only one goal, kill. How is base capture different from killing??? Plus you can kill AND capture in PS.

Your complete and total lack of intelligence and through-thinking is amazing to me.

[teratravp]

I agree with you breydel, in fact I was only in beta and have never played retail because I saw the problems in beta and wasn't about to subscribe to a game that was still technically and even sadder... gameplaywise not finished. It's mostly hardcore people here so you won't see that much agreement but check any place that's not a PS fansite and this game has already gone in and out of the lives of most people who bought it.

The only reason I stick around is cause what this game had in greater quantities then anything else was potential... but now being realistic the timeline for them to really take the game where most people would want it at launch is a few years, and so their subscriber base is going to keep falling off because who wants to stick around and do nothing, not to mention pay for it, while a game is still in development. I was hoping they'd get the right idea over these last 6 months through beta and launch and really move affirmatively toward the more complex and rewarding not to mention lasting game people are looking for... but let's be honest all they've done since launch is add two vehicles. are any of the other changes anything more then patch note filler really? the core game hasn't even been scratched and that's why I say it would be years at this point if ever the game becomes the game most people would want to play.

[Bismarck]

You expect a complete re-vamp of a game 2 months after release?

[Tubblers]

What the hell is wrong with all these whiners!? I thought the jackhammer nerfing thing was bad but shit! Where the hell do you get off at mocking a game that is a friggin pioneer in it's field? If the other game companies see these forums they'll say "Oh fudge doodles! Stop the presses guys. Look at what this good-hearted douche bag sent us. It says that PS is bad and nobody likes it. Well, guess that's that for MMOFPS games.". It's depressing to see all these people who give up after a month. Why? Are you giving excuses to not pay for an "undeveloped" game but the real reason is because you went broke after that night at the gay bar? PS is a great step forward in the gaming industry, and all these toad-fuckers can say is that they didn't add platoons? Ok Tom Clancy, go jack off to Rainbow 6.

[Arthell]

Whenever a new MMOG comes out that has alot of hype people try it. Alot of the people who try it dont like it after the free month, find it boring after a couple, etc. Some of those people will start whining and crying about it (majority of the 'goodbye' posts) then start ranting that its a dieing game just because they dont like it.

Personally, i beleive PS is a great game that will appeal to alot of the right type of people, but wont to alot of others, such as the people making posts about why they have to pay-to-play, etc.

[Hexen]

PlanetSide:

Get Squad. Attack base. Wait for Hack. Move On. Repeat until bored.

EverQuest:

Get Group. Kill Mob. Wait. Repeat until maximum level or bored.

DAOC:

Get Group. Kill Mob. Wait. Repat until maximum level.
Then Get Army. Kill Players or Attack Keeps. Repeat until bored.

See a pattern forming here?

All of these kinds of games are repetitive, especially EverQuest. Community keeps them alive. Personally, I know that the only reason anyone would still be playing EverQuest is due to addiction, the game really has nothing to keep it going if you think about it. DAOC is similar to EQ, but has the extra RvR aspect to it give it a slightly longer shelf-life.

PS is different in design, but still basically the same. In the end, the only reasons people will continue to play are the same reasons as any other game: Addiction and Community.

I left EverQuest when I realised how dull it was, because I could never find a nice guild. I stayed in DAOC a much longer time because there were loads of friendly people, but as the high-level community got overrun with all the newbies who caught up, it got crowded and dull, so I left. I played UO for a damn long time too, if only due to the fact that I was Clanmaster of a great clan for a

And probably the best example I have. Battlefield 1942. I would have stopped playing this a year ago, the only thing that keeps me playing is my clan. Coz my clan rocks.

Nuff said

[Milenko]

Actually Hexen thats true sorta, I use to play EQ alot I made it to lvl 52 then the game started to get boring thats when I quit, I wasn't addictted. When I did quit though I just thought everyone esle was addicted and blah blah.

But yea I know the game really does nothin for me, but its fun wait...so maybe it does do something for me... Anyways its a fun game for me still and won't quit till I get bored. Maybe instead of hacking a base and sitting there (which is boring, don't know why people do it just for exp) Go on to another base and whoop some ass before the noob zerg gets there. Only time planetside bores me is when I can't get a squad or anything or theres no big fights, which is usually happening if you play at all in the mourning.

[Airlift]

My opinion is that Breydel made this masturbatory thread so he could justify his departure to himself. Aside from that, I fail to see the value in it. We didn't care that you quit in the first place, but I have to tell you that the lack of your monthly fee does not make PS a dead horse. Nor do all the amuzing [sic] goodbye threads from other people who found that this wasn't the game for them. Try being a little less self-important.

[Crono]

Originally posted by Airlift
My opinion is that Breydel made this masturbatory thread so he could justify his departure to himself. Aside from that, I fail to see the value in it. We didn't care that you quit in the first place, but I have to tell you that the lack of your monthly fee does not make PS a dead horse. Nor do all the amuzing [sic] goodbye threads from other people who found that this wasn't the game for them. Try being a little less self-important.

[Lonehunter]

To all you people who quit the game becouse of no "content"

Log back on to PS on send me a tell, I am Cifer. I am a Captain in my outfit and I will invite you. If I'm not on-line than try Homie or LTRazakLT. We are highly organized and very fun. We are just now starting new divisions for the Generals to lead. Mobile Infantry, Aviation, Infiltrators, Support, and Tank (Which I might be the General for) Mobile Infantry is a division of special and heavy assault soldiers with deliverer transport. Infiltrators are wraith required and are used to get behind the enemies lines. The Tank division is full of Prowler and Lightning drivers, preferably with Repair. Aviation is the same thing but with reavers and mosquitoes. Support is a little more technical. This division will be required to commence in ANT runs, troop transport via Gal, tower hopping, and use of the Lodestar when it is added. We stop recruiting in the beginning of August. We also believe that typing is OUT! We encourage all outfit members to get a mic, but it is not required. I'M TRYING TO SAVE YOU "QUITERS"! Just give it a shot.

[Revolver]

You people complain that SOE is being lazy, yet when they do patch, the list of things is usually huge. And each of those things took alot of work to implement. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs have alot of work waiting for them each day they show up.

[Breydel]

Wow, lots of replies. Lemme go through em.

You say PS lacks content. PS has an equal number of guns and vehicals as anyother game out there.

On the FPS side, PlanetSide isn't lacking. You are right, there are enough weapons and vehicles in the game. On the MMO side however, it is lagging BIG time. There is nothing persistant in PlanetSide at the moment. It's just a shooter where you can play with more people than usual.

I think your over dramatizing the fact that the devs are taking it slow, you forget they just spent 3 years making a game for you with little or no sleep! Give the guys a break!

I'm paying $13/month for a product, why should I care how much sleep the devs had? Suppose you buy a brand new car, the suspension is broken. Would you want to hear the car salesman come up with excuses about how the mechanics had to work so hard that they made an error on the car? I don't think so. You bought a car, you want it to be fully functional. You care jack about who made the car, what you care about is the end product you bought, that nice car.

The fact that when the game launched there were still many bugs brings me back to my opinoin that the launch should have been delayed sometime. It was evidant in beta that there were many bugs still needing to be fixed.

Agreed.

I want to get in and kill people, I wanted to do that in DAOC but it was too slow to do.. wait 15 minutes on a pad zone, get zerged or whatnot zone back if no rezzers.. blah blah. It got boring till Mordred came out but still there were some problems... no one wanted to 1 on 1 my Warden. Do they have housing there yet? I havn't checked.

Housing is already out yes. DAoC and PS are 2 very different games and of course a shooter is much more fast paced than an RPG, some people like the one, others the other, I happen to like both genres. What they do have in common though is the MMO part, and there is DAoC miles ahead on PlanetSide. As I said above PS is just fine on the FPS side, they just need to add a LOT more for the MMO side to justify the $13/month. What do you have now extra over a classic shooter? You can fight with a couple more people. But not much more because either it starts getting laggy or else the continent is locked. They advertize PS as "...wage war with thousands of other players...." it's pure BS because at a few hundred players the continent is capped already.

But initially Mythic struggled much like SOE seems to be doing with PS. Shortly after DAoC was released patches came pretty slow. Early patches did more damage than good much like PS patches seem to do. Mythic needed more people for the job that was required. They needed better programmers. They eventually got them. Then DAoC really improved and progressed from there.

Very nice reply Cease. I also get the feeling PS is understaffed and they can't keep up fixing bugs. I was playing DAoC from patch 1.36 on somewhere in November 2001 and IMO it wasn't as bad as PS is now. Sure there were class imbalances and what not but the very basic thing - being able to log on and play - is something that is missing a lot more in PS than it was back then in DAoC. Also don't forget that SoE is already a huge company, Mythic Entertainment started really small. One would think you can expect from a big budget company a lot more professionalism than from a small starting company.

I am glad I cancelled my account since I felt paying for the state of PS wasn't worth the money, and it also lacked a lot of end game content since capping bases over and over and over again starts to get boring fast. Yes I have tried other empires on other servers as well, but in the end they play just the same as well. Just some different equipment. I wish empires were a LOT more diversified from each other. Imagine Starcraft at this scale, one Terran race, one Protoss, heck add even the Zerg. Now THAT would be a game with 3 different races instead of copying over 90% from the first empire and twink a little here and there. Am I asking too much? For the pioneer MMOFPS perhaps, but in future I do hope games like this would see the daylight. Can you imagine Starcraft or Age of Empires in a MMOFPS setting? It would be superb!

Dude if you quit Planetside then why you even bothering comming to the forums? Obviously you didn't like the game for whatever reasons, but you still come back because? You must still want to play or something, why would you even care if people are quiting or staying?

Well there are a few reasons. As I said I think PlanetSide is still way too buggy to play, too laggy, the servers have too many problems and then there is the lack of real purpose to fight on a persistant world. But like so many others have said, PlanetSide has huge potential, only that potential isn't in game yet. So that's why I occasionally check back to see how the game has evolved. I did get a very nice taste of the MMOFPS genre but I think PS as it stands today is just a poor implementation. Again, on the FPS side, no complaining. But on the MMO side, barely any content.
Then another reason is that I'm skilling up an armorcrafter & tailor in DAoC now so I do have a lot of time to hang out on forums.

They have there main site right up there to show any updates going on I don't think you need to ask any questions about "how the game has envolved"

If I have to judge on the PS main mage about the content that's added to the game in the last month then I would say the dev team is a 2 man team that does PlanetSide as a part time job.

Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. lots and lots of people online, all shooting at each other. what more do you honestly want? how much 'content' does your average counter strike server have?

This is the standard reply I have seen from a lot of people. You are the type of player that never played an MMORPG, only shooters. Yes, if you are coming from Doom via Quake, Unreal and Half-Life to PlanetSide then I can imagine it looks very nice in the beginning. But you really should check out an MMORPG game to see what exactly the MMO part means. Compare DAoC (MMORPG) with Baldur's gate (RPG) for example. Then compare PlanetSide (MMOFPS) with Half-Life (FPS). Then you will understand what I mean when I say the end game lacks content.

PS has so much action. It's intense. Of all the 10 times I've played EQ and DAoC where so stoopid.

Well remember that I also got burned out with DAoC and I totally completely loved PS the first week in beta. Why? Well you hit the nail on the head, the intense continuing action. I really needed a break from DAoC back then. But after a few weeks I started to realize I liked PS just because it has FPS elements in it. After I got tired of PS I didn't go straight back to DAoC yet, played SoF 2 for a while as well (note that this was even while my free PS month was running and I barely played the game anymore). If you are totally into action, an RPG isn't your type (or perhaps a hack & slash game like Diablo II is but I don't consider that an RPG - it's way too limited).

I am not saying DAoC is tons better than PlanetSide, the game have nothing in common apart from the fact that they are both MMO games. They are just 2 different games. I just happen to enjoy a lot of different genres, mainly FPS, RPG and RTS. If you are a die hard FPS fan then please don't even try DAOC since it will be a disappointment.

Just a FYI - the games I'm looking forward to now are Half Life 2 (FPS), DAoC expansion pack (MMORPG), World of Warcraft (MMORPG) and the "bargain price edition" of Warcraft 3 bundled with Frozen Throne expansion (RTS). Just shows how much I bunny hop from one game genre to another.

[Happy lil Elf]

no more flames. This guy makes good points about the game that we all know about.

I'm calling bullshit on that one. He didn't make one point about the game. All he did was complain about the customer service, that apparently promises were broken (and then failed to give any examples), praise Mythic for their service (which I'm still laughing about), and make a guess about where PS will be in a year. How exactly is that making points about the game we all know about?

[SumYungGui]

This is the standard reply I have seen from a lot of people. You are the type of player that never played an MMORPG, only shooters. Yes, if you are coming from Doom via Quake, Unreal and Half-Life to PlanetSide then I can imagine it looks very nice in the beginning. But you really should check out an MMORPG game to see what exactly the MMO part means. Compare DAoC (MMORPG) with Baldur's gate (RPG) for example. Then compare PlanetSide (MMOFPS) with Half-Life (FPS). Then you will understand what I mean when I say the end game lacks content.

gross generalizations much?

UO, if it weren't for Publish 16 I'd say meet me on Atlantic. Richard Cypher [Shadow Tamers of Sosaria], GM Tamer/Vet/Mage. I even manage to get a house at the god awful prices they charged. only took them HOW LONG to figure out something like malas to fix the problem? quit that game when they released power scrolls. game was already hurting from power hour, catering to the munchkins and power gamers with greater than 100% in a skill was just stupid.

DAoC, Seredith Ironheart, Morgan le Fay, Hibernia. 42 Shield hero. there's always another imbecilic spear hero around the next corner, it's the smart heros that play shield/weapon heros and actually spec shields for MOB hunting. got tired of the non-stop level grind.

Baldur's Gate, ya know I never actually did beat that game. can't imagine why. regardless I still know alot about that game. I have my hard back AD&D Player's Handbook on the shelf next to me. 3rd edition has some good points, but all in all I still find D&D in general lacking. I'll stick with Shadowrun, much better back story and atmosphere.

now answer my question. how much 'end game content' does your average counter strike server have? if that's the kind of gameplay you're looking for, keep moving. because this is an MMOFPS, not an MMORPG, or even an RPG.