State of PlanetSide

[Gabsux]

I enjoy playing PS, but I would like to point out two major faults with it.

Fault one is the pricing. Is this game worth $13 a month? Its gonna depend on your utility curve. I don�t mind throwing $13 away per month, but we certainly don�t get $13 worth of value per month. I remember back in the day when we would go out to the computer store. We would buy a game and expect it to work properly. We would pay a one-time fee to purchase this game and receive the value of playing the game. Now, we pay a one-time fee to purchase the game and another monthly fee to play the game. Even though we pay all of these fees, the games now are infinitely more unstable. As a gaming community, we allow this to happen by throwing away our monthly fee�err paying our monthly fee. I gladly pay this fee, so please feel free to call me a hypocrite.

Fault two is that it is hard to find a good fight. I think its fair to say that it can take a quite awhile to find a good spot where the action is exciting and the sides are even enough to have the exciting fighting continue. If one side outnumbers the other side too much, the outnumbered side usually leaves. And capturing empty bases is tons of enjoyment =P.

I hear everyone say that SWG has taken away the players for planetside. However, I personally don�t know one person who has left planetside to play SGW. I came to this game with about 15-20 friends to start an outfit. Between the two reasons that I listed, along with fairly high computer requirements, the remaining list of players is down to 4. They went back to SB, EQ, tribes 2, and counterstrike.

Personally, I like this game. I think it is visually appealing. I really enjoy the lasher, lancer, and the phoenix (this is the best weapon to use while intoxicated hands down!). The MMO part�I could live without. The game is basically squad versus squad, or maybe platoon versus platoon. I think it would be a better game if it were just a 30 vs. 30 vs. 30 game. Hanging around waiting for bases to capture is meaningless and mind numbing, IMO. I will continue to play until I find something better as long as looking for good fights doesn�t get too long.

[Vis Armata]

Imbalance the game in favor of defense, take out that lattice system and we've got a fine, stable game.

Personally, getting into an outfit has made the game better than I thought possible, and I feel privileged to play with a fine group of guys.

[MrVulcan]

I agree with many of the points that Gabsux has made.

What did happen to expecting a game to work well right out of the box? What other industry on earth could ever hope to keep costemers if they were not delivering in a timly fassion, and what other industry could hope to survive if they kept having their service cut off to their costemers (crashes-server & user side)

Yesterday I was playing and there was 1 dot on, you couldnt find a fight no matter how hard you tried, 3 people took an entire cont w/o seeing ANY enm forces (im sure the other 3 people playing were prob on a different cont wondering where we were too )

It is as simple as this, they are not delivering in a timly manner. A new vech should take about 2-3 days to create from the ground up, new weapons about the same. Every base defence weve ever wanted, perhaps a week or 2 at most. These are not unrealistic numbers, I am a programer, and have modded several games, I know that I used to be able to add a new weapon in a game *once I got the model* in a couple days work working myself, and they have a teem of people working on it, there is no reason they arent adding a weekly vechicle/or/weapon, no reason at all.

Also, we are now falling below the min population to play this game. Things like the example above are happening time and itme again due to people leaving. And I too do not belive SWG took them, I dont know anyone who went to swg myself, but I do know several that went back to UT2003.

The end result is this, if they dont deliver on a more timely mannor very soon, the world population will fall to a point of completely unplayable levels sooner than I want to belive.
Already I am seeing Markov maxing out at 3 dots the other day (3 dots!) and the less people in game, the more people that will leave due to being unable to find good battles.

Now I do enjoy this game, and im not going anywhere, however I belive that if they dont do something fast, they could very well lose the game within 4 months time. (and adding 1 more vech wont do it )

[Hertston]

Excellent game. Needs some work still, but it's early days, and I certainly be sticking around a while.

The most needed (and simplest) changes IMHO are in the XP system... there has to be some real incentive to both gain and hold territory. XP for a successful defense should be as rewarding for a successful attack. I say "territory" for a reason too.. get the map divided up into chunks to capture, and lets see some more hills/bridge/plains (mass armour ? ) battles rather than just base-base-base-base. Why not some cities too ? Nothing too ambitious but, something a bit different.

In the slightly longer term, the other thing I'd really like to see is "aircraft" modelling improved. The current set-up (400m ceiling ? 200 kph speeds ? no loop ? no roll ?) is just kiddie-crap. I'm not asking for "Warbirds", but maybe something a bit more realistic is in order ? Why not make them sub-orbital too.. that would be an interesting challenge and would really sort out the pilots from the part-timer flyers.

[Happy lil Elf]

I like it but I think it's missing the one thing that's kept games like Tribes alive for this long: Competition.

What I and I'm sure many others who come from competition backgrounds would love to see is the outfit competitions. Something like TWL but with SOE backing it. I personally know a lot of people who left PS to go to games like Tribes 2 and RtCW: ET because there is competition there. And not the kind of competition where the more you play and the more people you have in your outfit the better you do.

[Trance]

I also agree with Gabsux. The $13/month seems high for what PS offers. But PS has only been available for a couple of months and is still going though growing pains. Who knows... maybe with new features introduced in a few more months the players will come back.

I've been hearing about people leaving PS for other FPS games, but didn't really believe it. But I have been noticing that the T2 servers are becoming more populated again.

[kidriot]

3 cheers for outfit competitions

bring this and im a loyal subscriber. as it is, when WoW or Homeworld 2 or any other decent game comes out, I'm done with PS.

[starrider]

Originally posted by {BOHICA}Navaron
K, I'll reply, cause Hamma loves it when I do.

This game is good. It's not worth 13 dollars a month. People are going to start leaving in flocks. There aren't enough updates. The community communication is lacking. Many people find the game boring. The community is all that is holding this game together, there are many other games that are more fun and are free or don't have a monthly fee.

yes thats pretty much how i feel, i played fer like 5 hours a day fer a month then it was like, why? personaly unless they put stuff in that actually shows that the planet isnt just bases towers, and bridges, and give you something to fight for more than the bit they give you in the manual then i think PS is fighting a loseing battle.

[skater_d]

its awesome id like to play it for a long time to come.

[Navaron]

Just compare fun levels

Wolfenstein ET vs PS

Both have 5 "maps/bases" WFET actually has 6

PS is 50 bucks then 13 bucks a month. WFET is Free, and Free.

WFET has battles of 30vs30. PS is CAPABLE of 100vs 100 vs 100 battles, but the largest I've seen has been under 100 total.

They both have classes.

PS has vehicles.

PS has you bastards, and that's the only reason I still play.

[Hamma]

PS is an MMO, no game can compare to that, you can bring up the amount of maps, the price, etc etc.

Nothing beats the fact that you are free in PS to go wherever you want, the game doesent reset every 15m.