Reasons why your friends won't play Planetside 2

[Rivenshield]

/senior level technical writer rant mode engaged

How about the ongoing pathetic utter lack of a USER'S GUIDE? Newbies are just dumped headlong into this huge, complex environment with all the maps and filters and hotkeys and incomprehensible this and sensory-overload that. Videos and help files and such that interrupt your workflow -- in this case your gameplay -- aren't even a poor second. They might as well be nonexistent.

You need something thin and floppy and profusely illustrated that you can set next to your keyboard and refer to while you're working/playing/whatever. We need a .PDF you can download and print out, devs. Without it, you're stuck with the brazen it out and/or apprenticeship methods of learning the new enterprise software app, which is all PS2 *is.* And that turns off new users. In the commercial workplace, good active-voice user-friendly plain-English reference guides can cut the attrition rate of new hires in half within 90 days. I'm willing to bet the same dynamic will hold true here -- that you will swiftly double the number of new players who stick around.

YOU CANNOT SHIP PRODUCT WITHOUT F*CKING DOCUMENTATION. Whoever thought this would be okay or even workable should be flogged. Remedy this as swiftly as possible, kthxbye.

[AThreatToYou]

>Reasons why ALL of my friends can't play PlanetSide 2:

They do not own a computer with a discrete video card or even an adequate power supply for one, in addition to owning PCs with sub-par processors.

[WorldOfForms]

I have 2 friends I convinced to try PS2. Both quit after one play session. They both said it was too confusing to find a fight and took too long to get to a fight.

They both like round-based shooters. Basically, they both said the game was boring because there was way too much downtime. I tried to explain to them the various ways to get to fights quickly, but the bottom line is that the average FPS player wants instant action, and PS2 doesn't provide it in any convenient, clear manner.

Nothing in the game explains how to get to the fight, or even where the right fight is. You can look on the map for explosions or use Instant Action, but as everybody knows, you can just as easily end up at a base where you're horribly outnumbered.

Great, so the devs are introducing friendly positions on the map, 5 months after release.

[OCNSethy]

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

/senior level technical writer rant mode engaged

How about the ongoing pathetic utter lack of a USER'S GUIDE? Newbies are just dumped headlong into this huge, complex environment with all the maps and filters and hotkeys and incomprehensible this and sensory-overload that.

~snip~.

YOU CANNOT SHIP PRODUCT WITHOUT F*CKING DOCUMENTATION. Whoever thought this would be okay or even workable should be flogged. Remedy this as swiftly as possible, kthxbye.

So much this. Good post Rivenshield

I play most days and Im still finding stuff that I didnt know. If it wasnt for Derp guides and Youtube, I'd stll be flailing around and probably would have quite by now.

[camycamera]

the no.1 reason my RL friends cant play is because their PC's are utter shit.

[almalino]

My friends do not play PS2 beacause they do not play computer games. At all

They go fishing, they met each other, they have social life. Damn them

[Emperor Newt]

Some of the stuff I can remember while talking to people that stopped playing
(in no form of order):

- No idea what to do as the game tells them nothing about it. Someone told me that he had a better experience getting into EVE then into PS2. Let that sink for a moment...
- Some argued that while the gameplay is fun the game feels pointless. It's promoted as a game with a "persistent world" but they were unable to find that and the game does not give the same amount of "gratification" a random round-based arena shooter does.
- Prices in the item shop look like p2w (although they are not, but one sidegrade that costs like 4 times the amount of another doesn't look convincing to them, no matter how much you argue against it. Also balancing of new and old weapons hasn't been spot on in the past and there still are issues)
- Prices seemed to high. Of sc and certs alike. With inf progression requiring a lot of certs and weapons. Also they did not feel that they make enough progress in their sparse time to enjoy it on a level to make them put more time or even money into it (should be better now with the xp changes, but those people are already gone)
- Problems finding decent fights in which they feel that they actually contributed and not were there by accident while an outfit or the zerg did the job
- Performance issues

I think that's about it. At least what I can remember.

[almalino]

I remember when I first time started PS2 and was running around in circles like an idiot without any clue where to go next and what to do.

But people were telling that PS2 is like BF2142 and I kept playing and learning. After several months of game play I understand the majority of game play but still there are things I do not know or have not tried yet.

Is it like BF2142? Kind of though I still think many things in BF2142 were better implemented. But it is a modern shooter and I play it every weekend and I enjoy it a lot (if I find a good fight in a good squad).

[Mietz]

I'll quote myself and the reasons my outfit up and quit a few months ago:

Now, most of them had their own take on what made them not want to log on anymore, but some reasons were frequently brought up.
Here are the 5 most frequently mentioned reasons in the order of most frequent to least frequent:

- Lack of global objectives and incentive/meaning to the fight (all of them were not interested in KD or XP)
- Forced constant class switching and lack of identity (they didn't feel specialized or personally useful and resented to be forced into roles they didn't like/want on a moments notice. This included one mention of AA and two mention of piloting aircraft)
- Abundance of vehicles and explosives (they felt that the amount of vehicles, this included aircraft, on the battlefield was detrimental to their experience and that the consequence was an abundance of explosives; grenade and HA missile spam was mentioned twice and C4 once)
- Performance, exploits and bugs (hackers were not mentioned, but shield-distance exploit, render-bombing, c4 glitching, was)
- Too steep cert prices or too slow cert gain / overpriced item store (mentioned was the price of infantry weapons as well as lack of visual and gameplay variety in said weapons)

[moonshake]

Originally Posted by Sonny

Either:

2. The game is far too overwhelming on first login - they don't know what's going on and it's not explained to them what they have to do. Get frustrated and leave.

Sonny

This is exactly what happened the first time I played and exactly the reason I kept coming back. I liked the challenge of having to figure it out. And 180 or so hours later, almost exclusively as infantry, I still get frustrated. I just recently tried flying and I am just awful. But I will keep plugging away at it because again, i like the challenge.

[Rahabib]

my friends just have issues with FPS genre in general. One said that the game had no point other than to kill people - which is valid.

[Kerrec]

I introduced my friend to this game, and he still plays when he can.

Sure, he had no clue what was going on the first times. But he didn't just quit... he asked questions.

My friend and I are in our mid 30's and have been playing games our whole lives. We look at the "gimme gimme gimme, NOW!" attitude that modern gamers have and get all depressed.

I can't believe people are complaining that cert cost and cert gain doesn't allow them to get what they want as fast as they want it. I'm just about done certing out my Combat Medic. Maxed out Revive gun, maxed out AoE heal, maxed out Flak armor, non-stock gun bought with certs and certed out for the role, revive grenades and I'm about 150 certs away from getting my 2nd C4. All done without boosts. What am I going to cert after my medic is decked out? Another gun? Why bother?

I suppose I'll switch to another class and start certing it up. So I'll be playing that class instead of my fully decked out Medic because progression is half the addiction these games offer. But if cert gain was increased, I'd be maxing out my characters faster, removing half the motivation for playing games in the first place. If cert gain was increased, I'd probably be done maxing out everything by now, and I'd be tempted by other games, eventually causing me to leave PS2 behind for greener pastures.

[Rolfski]

People not buying desktops anymore and having shitty PC's is an increasing problem for games like this.

The vast majority, not unlike most peoples friends, buys notebooks/ tablets with build-in GPU's nowadays that are more than enough for their casual gaming needs.

Even if you can get them remotely interested in a game like PS2, there's no way they will buy a gaming rig for that.

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by bpostal

Enjoy your empty servers because people are either not signing up in the first place, or are quitting a week or two afterwards.

Silly gits, we need the 'nubs' because those are the people who are going to A: give us targets and B: get more people in with their experiences. If their experiences are shit then not only will they not play but they'll tell other people to not play. Sooner or later everyone is telling everyone else to not play PS2, for a multitude of reasons. Many of which don't hold water (or don't after they've been addressed)

So encourage new players, listen to their bitches (or at least pretend to) and give them a hand getting into the game. I've seen empty ass servers, I've been on the test server. It's desolate and horrible. I'll be damned if that's the future of Planetside I want to see.

Come on in you new mother fuckers. The water's fine.

This kind of worries me, PS2 was designed to attract a the next generation of FPS gamers, as well as bring back some of the old one's. I dont see alot of the new FPS gamers hanging around, but I still see alot of the old PS gamers still gaming. But here is the shocker, alot of the old gamers complained about the set up of PS2, didnt like alot of things about it, the cert system, the cookie cutter classes, base design, MBT set up, weapons, and so on. So when all these next generation gamers go off to play BF4 or CoD 16 (or what ever number its up to) we old timers are gonna be stuck with a PS2 designed for them and not us.

[OpolE]

Doesn't run well.

Waste of time and no desirable outcome