Sinking feeling in your heart?

[Sighpolice]

Sup,

Anybody else get that massive sinking feeling in their hearts whenever you hear some news straight from the press about PS2? I know what that feeling is, and I have an idea that most of us feel it too.

Is it excitement? Possibly. The new PlanetSide does indeed look pretty, and shiny and glossy and up to scratch with "modern graphics." but the more I tell myself that, the more I know that graphics do not matter. I wouldn't play my little pony even if the graphics were so advanced you could touch the horses. We all played (and still play!) PlanetSide first time around not for the graphics.. It was for the gameplay.

But the feeling.. it grows even more and harvests itself when you hear information about "Customised weapon sights" (red dot sights, acog sights etc.) and "The play style is a lot like Bad Company 2" and you try to en-vision them in the perfect PlanetSide world, does that sort of stuff belong there? Yes, everyone using the gauss/cycler/pulsar had the same "sights" but it didn't that mean that you were hindered by it or that it was the end of the world. It probably made it better actually for balancing purposes, whenever you saw an NC with a gauss you knew exactly what you were up against, now with all the sights the tactics have changed and you'll never know what advantage they have over your sight?

It saddens me to say that the feeling I have is one of disappointment and worry. The more I hear about PlanetSide 2 the more I worry that it won't be a true sequel.. With the gameplay more like BFBC2 fights won't last longer than an hour.. even for a base.. The way people get back into the action faster with "squad spawning".. Is that really PlanetSide? Yes its from a drop pod, you have to spec into it and such but.. really? Wasn't adv medic enough?

I quite liked the stalemates, purely because you could fight over a bridge for hours.. Are we going to be waving goodbye to these sorts of fights because 10 mosquito's raped the tanks on your side with an over-powered upgrade?

Also, Lets not forget.. that this SoE team is also the team that introduced BFR's, which was one of the main reasons players quit. Who's to say they aren't similar surprises in the works for future patches? If this is the same team that did that, then who knows what could be coming.

Jetpacks? Is this for PlanetSide? Maybe its good for tribes and section 8, but for pro-longed 3 hour fights over 10 meters, do Jetpacks fit into this scenario?Doesn't it make walls useless as base defences? Who remembers making your way out of the base, running across the CY to the stairs that lead up to the wall and being cut to pieces by a AI VS Max who jump jetted over the wall. Wouldn't it make these sort of situations a routine thing?

Headshots would be good if it were sniper/pistol only.. but is that what people want? Do we want 13 year old CoD players dictating what PlanetSide veterans receive from PlanetSide 2? Most of them were probably 5 when PlanetSide came out.

I hate to put a downer on everyone's day.. but I cannot be the only person with that sinking feeling in my heart. Maybe I am, Maybe I've been diagnosed with Cynicism like that episode in south park (Stan.) But I have to air my opinion, as it is one that grows more or less every "news update".

[ringring]

I never like bridge fights and I am puzzled that other seemed to do. Kinda like a fetish I suppose.

otoh I quite like tower fights, whether defending or attacking and attacking interfarms, at least from the point where we have the CY.

So, it takes all sorts....

If the devs create a bridge for bridge fights as they say they are going to do, for goodness sake do not make it like the bridge between Tore and Lesa!

[LZachariah]

I think this game is going to be amazing. Even the blunder of including BFR's obviously doesn't outweigh all the amazing achievements Planetside brought to the FPS world. And this game will be refined with 8 more years of experience about what makes an excellent MMO and FPS game.

The sinking feeling in my heart is that only my closest friends and relatives are going to know I exist once this game goes live. And many of them will be playing online with me.

~Zachariah

[Coreldan]

My only concern is the cheaters as the game will be F2P.

Other than that, I feel SoE will pull this off well. They have shown so much promise and communication to the fanbase.

[Chug]

Hi all,

I sympathise with Sighpolice's pov.

for me, PS was the best internets game I've ever played - Eve a close second.

Being part of a (usually) effective team in a larger conflict on a semi-persistent world where battles matter.

Please make the conflict larger, make the world more persistent, make the battles matter more.

That is what matters

The rest, not so much.

cheers

P.S Nordic Assault, if any of you are still out there...

[basti]

The Team working on PS2 isnt the team that introduced BFRs, maybe a few of those guys are actually part of that new team. And i know thats coming, its what WE want! Ever hared of the "3 years plan"?
Squad spawning is not the primary way for respawning, but rather a tool to get you to your squad quickly (it may not be used at all within enemy territory!).
I ignore the Jetpack part. Because there are no jetpacks. There are Jumpjets.
You also didnt got the memo on the Hitbox stuff. Its hard to headshot snipe someone, and the extra damage from headshots within close range combat can be tuned till it fits. Called Balancing, ever heard of it?



Really mate, its Cynicism, nothing else. You are afraid of change, for a good reason. You fear that what made planetside great for you wont be part of Planetside 2.

But really, think carefully, what was it that first hooked you up to planetside? Was it the lack of hitboxes, the lack of BFRs and the lack of Jumpjets on Light Infantary?
Or was it the massive war raging 24/7?

We both know the answer.

[Shogun]

i´ve got some fear, too.

it´s like bags said. i am afraid to lose the features i loved so dearly on ps1, but also i know that a lot of new features will compensate for that.
and how great the screenshots look now, is a very very sweet bonus.
nobody was drawn into planetside for the graphics, but a lot of potential players didn´t try the game because the graphics were so bad. and i am sure all those lost players would have started to love the game if they even had tried it.

the biggest threat to ps2 are cheaters and hackers, in my opinion!
i am still not happy with the f2p decision. every online game has cheaters, especially shooters. and not being able to ban them will create a very big challange to the devs!
if the game stands up to our expectations, it would break my heart to see it die to exploiting morons.

[Raymac]

There is nothing wrong with having some trepidation at this point. Frankly, the one thing we really know for sure about Planetside 2 is that it will look amazing.

But will it lag like a slideshow? Will the ping be so bad you get hit 5 minutes after someone shoots at you? Will there be rampant cheating? Will it just be a constant zergfest with people spawning right on top of each other? Will the weapons not feel right? Will it be a balance nightmare? Will it blue screen of death every 2 minutes? Will there be a total lack of teamwork since everybody will play solo?

There are still a ton of questions about the game, and the only thing we have at this point is faith. And it's faith not so much in SOE as a company, but it's in the people who make this brand new Forgelight engine, it's in the development team who are designing and testing the game.

We won't really know the answer to the above questions until we get to try the game next year, but personally I have faith that this dev team will get this one right. It may be because I'm just a total fanboi, but I believe they are going to get this right because they have to. SOE has put alot of chips on the table to develop this game, and the developers have been extremely vocal with the community and seem to be saying many of the right things.

We can get into debating some of the finer points, hell this forum is filled with that. But looking at the big picture, I have faith that this will be a great game. As T-Ray said, long before we saw how beautiful this game would be, "We got this."

[Xyntech]

The only fear I have is that the game will get shit on after launch. I'm loving, or at least okay with, everything I've seen and heard so far.

Some of the changes, like jump jetting MAXes, will be missed. Other changes, like mandatory 2 man MBT's, I don't prefer. None if it sounds outright bad to me though. I can understand where the devs are coming from and I think the gameplay will still be fine.

I just don't want SOE to pump out a great game, probably better than the first Planetside, and then let it suffer Planetsides fate all over again. I want those massive battles to rage on for the next ten years.

F2P and that 3 year plan are keeping me hopeful on that front.

The way some people talk about PS2 not being "true Planetside" makes me laugh. We've only had one entry in the series so far. Games evolve. A clone of a game isn't a sequel, it's an expansion pack... That's the kind of shit that Call of Duty pulls. It's true that you can lose the spirit of a game with just one sequel, but Planetsides heart and soul looks intact to me in PS2. It's still going to be more like the original Planetside than it will be like any other game, and in all the most important ways.

Not every PS1 fan is going to like PS2 though. The changes will just be too much for some. I hope those numbers are small though, since the community is pretty awesome and I'd hope that as many of those vets as possible are able to enjoy falling in love with Planetside all over again.

[Aractain]

My fear, like others it seems, is if SOE don't get the game to feel right. The mixture of vehicles and infantry, objective types, simplified gameplay. Things like that which can only be found after significant playtesting and speak to the quality and experience of the designers to engineer the game in the right way.

[LZachariah]

Basti put it extremely well. And so did a few others here, including Xyntech (DAMN i love that signature image).

I think that all will be well.

~Zachariah

[Crator]

Don't forget guys, some of the PS2 development team members were also in the PS1 dev team... I have no doubt they will try and rekindle the PS1 feeling in PS2...

[Nephilimuk]

wait for the game to come out and if you don't like it don't play - simple.

Understand your passion though and those old memories most of us have are good. Still no good judging the cake till its cooked.

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Nephilimuk

wait for the game to come out and if you don't like it don't play - simple.

Understand your passion though and those old memories most of us have are good. Still no good judging the cake till its cooked.

I think that's the reason some people kinda worry though. If it turns out that PS2's gameplay sucks, it's not like we can just put it down and go play the other big MMOFPS because there is really nothing quite like Planetside.

That's why I'm so excited about this game, and I'm following the development closer than I've ever followed any game or movie before. If this fails, then it may be years before another game even remotely similar gets made. So for a fan, the stakes are higher than just the next flavor of the month MMORPG or Call of Duty.

Like you said, can't judge the cake until it's done, but the kitchen is smelling really good right now. mmmmmm caaaaake.

[BuzzCutPsycho]

Given SoE's track record the OP has a very real reason to be worried/skeptical of the game. I'm not too worried though about them saying the fighting is similar to modern shooters such as CoD and BF especially since PS1's infantry fighting was an abysmal joke.

Any game where a "good" player learned how to abuse A/D and crouching to cause their character to warp is the sign of poor shooter mechanics. PS1 as a shooter was a terrible game even for it's time but made up for it in it's large scale team play focus. The moment that began to erode is when the game went down into the shitter. This was PRE-BFR mind you.