[Long thread] How I stopped worrying and (almost) stopped playing instead

[hereweare]

First off all to make some things clear: I still like PS2 and I think it has a huge potential. But I have come to a point where I currently don’t enjoy the game to a point where I deem it worthy much of my time. This here are at least SOME of my reason why. I will surely have missed some. Also I doubt that you will find anything new but I thought it might be good for the game if people actually wrote down why they stopped playing if they do. Maybe it can help to make the game better. I actually think it would be way better to ask people why they quit the game, instead of why they are still playing.
Also English is not my native tongue, so please keep that in mind before trying to decipher sentences which are unclear. If there are questions you are free to ask, I will try to answer.
Also the text has gone through several iterations so there might be passages which are not perfectly connected. Sorry about that.

Some of you might also disagree with some of my points. Well, feel free to do so. It’s my personal opinion and you can have your own. It won’t change my mind. This is how I perceive the game and what problems I have with it and which problems I think it has. Not all of these points are reason which made me quit (except maybe once a week when my outfit runs special events). I chose them because either I think they need to be addressed or I think they have not been mentioned enough.

Please excuse me for not using my real account. I still have an account here but I don’t want people to track me down and value my opinion on my K/D score/min or whatever. And we all know that people will. So please excuse me for not going down that road.

------------------

I started playing PS2 during beta and have since then played for about 160 hours so far and put roughly 60USD into it. I play on a big sever which does not have any issues with a lack of players and play in a medium sized outfit. We usually bring about two to three squads, on our fixed outfit nights about 1,5 to 2 platoons. I primarily play infantry and some ground vehicles, most time played is in my Lightning. I do not fly, although I have pods and AA missiles unlocked. It’s just found it to be not my style and not to my liking. A lot of the time I play dedicated AA roles, as these are often widely lacking on the field.
In my outfit I have spent some time training new players and talking to players who decided to drop the game. Also I tried to convince friends and acquaintances from my previous gaming days to play the game. I will refer to what they had to say at a few occasions.

I will NOT talk about stuff like “metagame” and all the other bugbears everybody has. Those are too obvious and this post will already be long enough, even without them. So I spare you most of the repetition of things we have already beaten to death. But also don’t expect a thread filled with novelties and ingenious insights. I just want to touch a few points that get on my nerves repeatedly and also some of the stuff I noticed while talking to outfit members and friends. Especially those who did NOT decide to continue playing.


The biggest issue for me is that infantry combat is no longer fun when the numbers of people on the field increase. I highly enjoy the game when it’s our platoon against another. But once the numbers increase the infantry game turns into a big clusterfuck with everyone being everywhere and absolutely no flow to it. Which brings me to one of the overall problems of the game: the flow of battle. There is none. With the base design defense becomes a pain in the ass to do. It takes the defender way more planning and setup (and therefore time) to set up a defense as it takes the attacker to attack. Just snipe the turrets with tanks, drive sundis with LAs to the walls and you are in. The primary level of defense in the game is pretty much useless. I imagine a good defense like layers of an onion you have to peel until you get to the core, but in this game the onion is already smashed, leaving nothing to peel. The new spawn room designs and tunnels helped a bit, but they do in no way prevent spawn camping and other cheesy tactics mentioned months ago and still viable in the game (sundis in tech labs for example). Especially on many outposts the redesign of the spawn buildings did not help at all since they are located in positions which can be easily spamed by tanks and/or air. It doesn’t matter how many shields your building has if it can get shelled by tanks from positions they cannot be hit in or are harder to hit then the spawn building is. Don’t get me wrong, spawn buildings should not be strongholds but they should give defenders the possibility to break out and resecure the capture point.
Also the new “lattice 2.0” system is a nice addition and I think that it will improve the game. But the major problem with base design will still be there. Without a redesign and relocation of many buildings many of the bases and outposts will remain to be boring. The lattice system will help, but it won’t be a fix.

The next point would most likely be overall feel of infantry and their choices in battle. Currently, outside of biolabs and some other facilities I feel like infantry is lacking in this game. In most places outside the two mentioned infantry is very often the “try to do more damage then you take before you respawn” game instead of being useful in a tactical manner. When you are actually able to get into positions where infantry-only fights are happening it’s a lot of fun.
But there are too few places to allow good infantry engagements without vehicles to interfere OR to interfere on an even level. Terrain is rarely built in a way where it gives equal opportunities to every kind of playstyle. Of course not all the terrain needs to be and can be designed in that way. Amerish will always favor air vehicles but these places (where terrain design is balanced) are actually pretty hard to find. There are plenty of pretty spots, no doubt about that, but that’s the least thing I could care about as long as they interfere with gameplay. Think of it as with a RTS map. It can be as eye-candy as it possibly can be. Nobody will play it unless it has an overall good map layout. And I think PS2 has some issues in this area, making the game less enjoyable when “stuck” in those areas.
Regarding infantry gameplay I also think another problem is the huge amount of aoe damage, which makes flak armor almost mandatory. Although aoe was toned down, there are still very little areas where not taking flak armor makes sense. It’s still almost mandatory. And without enough cover, combined with little health infantry is almost doomed to want to fight anywhere except places where vehicles cannot go to. Of course one might argue it’s good because infantry doesn’t cost resources and is unable to be removed from the field. But very often you feel like you have no other choice then getting into a vehicle to fight back. And then what follows are the huge tanks zergs we see in the game. The combined arms warfare is very often lacking. I really don’t know how to fix this. I think more cover would be a good start. Also fixing infantry shields would an idea. The current refill times of shields are a joke. Together with the little cover it forces infantry to fight very passively, being unable to do a charge at enemy positions without getting horribly murdered, so they are hiding behind rocks instead waiting eagerly for the next HE to take some portions of the health away. With better shields and more cover people would actually be able to get close to a facility without driving a sundi next to the walls. Also tanks being used as artillery (and real artillery guns seem to be coming in the near future) is a pain in the ass to deal with. Especially when you are cut off from MBTs, as MBTs are stronger Lightnings now.

Also I think there is still a mismatch in infantry vs air gameplay. I cannot really put my finger on it but it might be related to the limited av options infantry has from the start. Turrets are nice but they get sniped pretty easily and fast. Usually this is one of the first things a tank driver does when approaching a base. Getting the turrets back up is possible, but not in all bases/outposts. In some places destroyed turrets remain destroyed until the fight is over. Then we have lock-on launchers. The problem with those is hat: one on it’s own is pretty much useless. Several of them can work, but require team work. A load of them kills almost everything. And I think this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Because it leads to the problem that lock-on launchers are absent outside of outfits and one of the reasons why many players perceive ESFs to be op. Using a lock-on rocket launcher is not easy and the weapon itself is hidden behind a payment wall. A fresh user won’t hit much with it until he was able to practice a lot. If their first impression is not impressive enough, they simply will no longer care about the weapon. They can be everything from up to op, just depending on how many of them there are. And that’s bad because it makes the weapon “un-fun” for almost everybody. For one on the using, for the other on the recieving side. They are not fun to use (ecept for an outfit standing on a cliff, and even then it’s more cheap then fun) and are not fun to be shot from.

Which leaves AA mostly down to the max which (imho) currently is the best AA in the game. Two bursters (or enough makes with one) can at least keep ESFs somewhat at bay. The same amount of AA launchers can’t as they are unable to hit air reliably enough. Also the skyguard is a joke, it’s still almost impossible to hit anything with it that isn’t damn close to you. For a dedicated anti air vehicle it’s doing a very bad job. And that’s why you see it very rarely. There is a large mismatch between the strength of aa options.
And this leads to a problem: the “casual” deems air to strong. Is it? I don’t think so. But the overall casual player does not have enough tools at his hand to have the impression that he is able to fight back. Less in av, more in aa. I don’t know how to fix this. Maybe give HAs the AA lock on launcher for free and nerf it a bit in strength but make it hit more reliably. Or give people free skyguards. I don’t know but the overall feel drives people towards using vehicles and air instead of playing as infantry. And I think this is what actually matters and makes the game less fun for people wanting to play infantry. They feel like they absolutely have to play vehicles if they want to make a difference. Which they don’t but to be effective as infantry takes way more coordination, effort and personal skill then driving with a vehicle zerg. I think there is a mismatch in player perception of the game when it comes to large numbers. And as the ad tells us: the game is all about numbers.

Also the delicate topic of ESFs is something I want to touch. Everybody who reads the official forums or talks to new players will always hear that ESFs are op. No matter how much balancing has gone into them the issue is still there. For one I think it’s because of the issue mentioned above. Also I think it’s because the ESFs were designed outside of the rest of the PS2 design philosophy. For comparisons sake let’s just pretend that Libs are MBTs of the sky. They are slow, hit hard but require several people to unfold their true potential. So let’s assume ESFs are the Lightnings of the sky. A one crewed vehicle which has to specialize in what it want’s to do. Noticed something there? ESFs don’t need to specialize much. They have nose guns, pods and countermeasures always at their disposal. Especially since the AA missile nerf there (again) is pretty much no use in not taking rocket pods. With your nose gun you are also able to dogfight, take on ground targets, and you still have flares and afterburners. The ESF is built as a flying swiss army knife. It can run setups which are decent to good against almost everything it can possibly encounter. And although I know I am not going to make many friends with this I think that this is what makes Air/AA balance so hard in this game. You need to give (to not say: force) pilots to choose their options. And make their choice matter. Currently the system of outfitting an ESF is shallow and leads to a lot of complaints. Hell, alone dedicated AI and AV rocket pods would already help. But yet “HEAT” rocket pods (with a huge ammo count, to add to the issues) are the only ones in existence.
Which brings me to another point: the very often shallow point of choosing vehicle loadouts. The game is basically build around the philosophy that there is a weapon which takes the middle ground and two which take the dedicated “anti” roles. The problem here is that due to low TTK there is very often no use in taking the dedicated guns, except for your second MBT gunner. With being unable to refit a vehicle once spawned it is always better to go with the “HEAT” solution except when you exactly now what you are going up against. And even then it’s debatable to use AV weapons because you will run into infantry at some point. With the HE nerf it became pretty much useless. The problem here is that AV and HE weapons are for one not good enough counters. The difference in TTK/shots to kill to HEAT is not worth losing the ability to fight anything else (although HE AV damage is still decent). They might seem better on paper to fill the role, but in a game which is so largely constructed around numbers, in most of the cases it does not matter if it takes you four or five shots. It’s more important to be able to adopt to the situation. The weapon design largely looks nice on paper, but once it’s tested in a gameplay environment it falls short and makes a lot of options in the shop a useless money sink. Intended or not, it’s not an enjoyable experience for someone spending cash there. It got somewhat better with the VR but still I think the issue should be addressed. I have plenty of weapons sitting in my account which I will most likely never use again. Simply because I had to figure this out by myself and though counters actually where significant counters.

[cut due to post limitations]