SOE have always been reactive not proactive.

[Mastachief]

Originally Posted by Beerbeer

I have a question to the alpha testers: why didn't any of you speak up sooner about the vehicle/spawn camping?

Since the beginning of tech test we have raged about vehicle spawn camp, little to nothing has been done accept:

~Make it slightly hard is a few places to hit the doors with direct shells

~Make it so the explosion splash of shells does not go through the shields.

Also PS2 does not have a "extreme learning curve" it requires thought yes and perhaps the current pc gamers are not used to having to apply brain power to computer games but it is certainly not extreme.

[psijaka]

I actually like to plunge into a game with an extreme learning curve; gives me something to get my teeth into, and part of the pleasure is learning new strategies/maps/mechanics. What is wrong with people; don't they like a challenge to keep them interested?

Disagree with the OP, sounds just like a whine. Sure, there are problems in the game; spawn camping, infantry/vehicle/air balance, but there is also such huge potential; enough to keep me interested for years.

[Rolfski]

OMG, I can't believe how such an unconstructive first post has escalated to the same tiring discussion again.
It's like listening to this crackled, old, needle skipping record again and again.
Amazing that the devs even cared to respond to this.

[Electrofreak]

Tears in this thread are ridiculous. SOE is doing a damn sight better job of listening to the community and making changes than most developers do, short of maybe CCP, and they learned the hard way.

PS2 will never be PS1. I'm a PS1 vet and a huge fan of the game, but it's not the same game as PS2. There's things I would love to see in PS2 as well, such as the lattice system, dynamic XP gain, some additional vehicle content etc, and perhaps there's things I want that I'll never see, however it doesn't mean I'm going to hate the game or that it'll fail.

There was something about PS1 that PS2 certainly lacks (mostly metagame), but it's also only been a few weeks since PS2 launched. There's plenty of time for PS2 to grow and evolve into the kind of game PS1 was.

So seriously, the crying needs to stop and it needs to be replaced by constructive feedback. What don't you like, why don't you like it, and what you propose as a solution. If you can't be bothered to do that, then you're just whining and you should just go play something else.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Electrofreak

PS2 will never be PS1. I'm a PS1 vet and a huge fan of the game, but it's not the same game as PS2. There's things I would love to see in PS2 as well, such as the lattice system, dynamic XP gain, some additional vehicle content etc, and perhaps there's things I want that I'll never see, however it doesn't mean I'm going to hate the game or that it'll fail.

There was something about PS1 that PS2 certainly lacks (mostly metagame), but it's also only been a few weeks since PS2 launched. There's plenty of time for PS2 to grow and evolve into the kind of game PS1 was.

So seriously, the crying needs to stop and it needs to be replaced by constructive feedback. What don't you like, why don't you like it, and what you propose as a solution. If you can't be bothered to do that, then you're just whining and you should just go play something else.

PS2 isn't PS1. Of course it isn't. It is however the same genre which means similarities are common. The only reason I feel people make this statement is to appease the people who do not know how the mechanics worked in PS1 and how to relate them to PS2. IMO, both games are very relatable, and should be.

I also don't understand why a lot of feedback is considered crying or whining. Not everyone is knowledgeable enough to suggest resolutions to some of the issues they face. They can however express what they don't like or understand. In fact, I think the best thing folks can do is simply describe their beef with whatever they feel is wrong so that devs can gather everyone's thoughts and mesh it together with a plan they, the devs, come up with. SOE devs haven't given the players enough info about overall plans or design direction to make informed decisions on how fixes to the problems in the game should be implemented. Therefore many of the suggestions made by the players are simply speculation. Yes, some of them are well thought out and perhaps even the devs nit-pick at some of them to mesh with their own plans. Players need to understand this.

Also, the feeling I get about dev direction for PS2 is that they are taking things slow in regards to how they add intricacies in the game. Analyzing raw data that the game gives them alongside player feedback.

[Beerbeer]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

Since the beginning of tech test we have raged about vehicle spawn camp, little to nothing has been done accept:

~Make it slightly hard is a few places to hit the doors with direct shells

~Make it so the explosion splash of shells does not go through the shields.

Also PS2 does not have a "extreme learning curve" it requires thought yes and perhaps the current pc gamers are not used to having to apply brain power to computer games but it is certainly not extreme.

Well, it's unfortunate they didn't listen to you guys in regards to this.

Also, we're not geniuses by any sense of the word, but the biggest issues with the learning curve are (from what I queried):

1. Not very intuitive
2. Nothing is explained very well, the descriptions, map symbols, icons and symbols while playing and generally confusing menu system
3. No idea what to do or generally where you're supposed to go (again, not apparent to the virgin eyes)
4. Clueless on game mechanics, including base capture and other interactive things like generators, what they do and how exactly to destroy them. Lol, I still see people rocket these things and use the repair tool before it's actually destroyed. The interact button on the generators doesn't pop up until you're right on top of it and even when it does, that lame white text often gets washed out in the background or appears on strange areas of your monitor. This is easily fixable. Make the interact button appear sooner and change the text color, position and size so it's apparent.

Just little, simple things, that makes things more apparent and user friendly would go a long, long way. It's all overwhelming at first and IS a turn off from what I gathered. Not everyone has the same level of patience or fortitude to play through these things.

And not everyone is willing to ask for help, especially the average FPS player. Some of my steam friends just said they didn't like it, while I'm pretty sure they were just discouraged and didn't want to admit it.

Bottom line (since maybe money talks), these are all potential, long-term paying customers that didn't get out of the starting gate.

[ringring]

I've resisted posting in this thread so far but I just have to

I think Opole's original post is completely wrong.

I'll bow to no one in my love of PS1, including caves (I could take or leave BFR's, I didn't mind them one way or another).

However, the team have produced a great game in PS2.

I've thought that I would get bored in PS2 and that what I'd need to stop that happening would be a full on inter-continental meta game (with cr5's) and the question has been what will happen first; boredom or the 'big' game.

Well, I'm not bored yet. I'm having fun and I know a lot of my outfit are having fun too. I don't know when we'll get the big game but I'm betting I'll still be playing way past the time when we do.

Of course I have reservations, for example the 'new player experience' is one that nearly everyone mentions. But, imho, SOE have a hit on their hands.

[EisenKreutzer]

Am I the only one who loves the game?

[AThreatToYou]

Originally Posted by EisenKreutzer

Am I the only one who loves the game?

No, I love it too! I'm worried for the future though!

[CidHighwind]

Originally Posted by T-Ray

Reactive as in, we see what the fans like and we make changes accordingly..yes, thats us. You presume that we know exactly what the people want at all times. Sadly, this is not the case. We do our best, and will continue, to interact with the community to find out the best course of action for our game. Do you really want us to be mass scale? Do you think DICE actually cares what you think? What about EA? All signs point to no. SOE cares what the players think, we want you to have a great time playing our games. I'm really sorry you don't believe in our potential and I wish you the best in finding a company that you can interact with directly like you can with SOE. Every opinion counts, including yours.

And THIS is why I plan on sticking with SOE. Because they listen. Even to the negatives.

[Xeb]

Many of the game's mechanics were changed massively during beta, look back at the E3 videos and you'll see how much the capture mechanics have changed, they were aiming for something simple but it ended up being rubbish so they changed many times to the system we have now(which was pretty late in the beta tbh). They lost themselves in trying to create a capture mechanics that works in such open bases that also makes the unhappy testing community happy and it seems we have ended up with system that kind of works but with all the shields and gens all over the place its no wonder new players don't understand any of it.

But that aside, the devs have been good to beta testers, we got the AMS back, base walls, single point capture system, base benefits, A "front line" outpost hacking system. They weren't planned to be in PS2 but we got them by giving feedback...

To me SOE don't look like the game killers they used to be... but tbh I'm just happy we haven't ended up with an "instanced based mini-game" that we could have got

[SolLeks]

Originally Posted by T-Ray

I'm really sorry you don't believe in our potential and I wish you the best in finding a company that you can interact with directly like you can with SOE. Every opinion counts, including yours.

I defiantly see this and like it a lot.

I am a alpha tester for HiRez, I also can and do talk to the CEO of that company (Erez) but they tend to not listen to the testers all that much. sometimes they do but a lot of the things that have gone wrong with global agenda and Tribes:Ascend where voiced in alpha. I did not test smite so they may have changed and I am w8ing on GA2 to see what happens there....

Even though I don't talk directly with the devs, you can tell they are listing biased on the changes made, but they don't seem to be really giving in to everything the player base brings up either(a good thing).

[Dragonskin]

I think it's kinda a funny title for a thread. How do you proactively make a game? How do you look for and change areas of the game before you get feedback? I am sure they do try to be proactive to a degree, but how do you know how the change will be received by the customers and fans.

If you said that SOE was not reactive then we would have issues.. that would be they trully don't care about their customers.

Does SOE make changes that are drastic.. yea, they have over the years.. sometimes killing the game completely.. like SWG. However, I am impressed at the level of community interaction that the devs for this game have shown us. Not all games SOE makes have the same devs. Unfortunately I do think the game was rushed and its hurting Planetside 2, but it is something they can over come.. as long as they keep being reactive to feedback and making quality changes that improve the game.

For the record.. I have played EQ, EQ2, Vanguard, DCUO and now PS2 by SOE. PS2 has way more Dev interaction than I remember from EQ2, Vanguard, and DCUO... never beta'd EQ.

[Rasgriz]

"Reactive as in, we see what the fans like and we make changes accordingly..yes, thats us. You presume that we know exactly what the people want at all times. Sadly, this is not the case. We do our best, and will continue, to interact with the community to find out the best course of action for our game. Do you really want us to be mass scale? Do you think DICE actually cares what you think? What about EA? All signs point to no. SOE cares what the players think, we want you to have a great time playing our games. I'm really sorry you don't believe in our potential and I wish you the best in finding a company that you can interact with directly like you can with SOE. Every opinion counts, including yours."

Reactive as in you saw people liked WoW so you turned Star Wars Galaxies into a WoW clone and lost 80% of your player base in two weeks.

People who leave probably will not come back, even if the situation gets better, the past has shown us this.

People do not want game clones, they want new and engaging content brought to them into a non redundant way.

There is alot of Bf3/CoD influence in PS2.

I love PS1 and I would like PS2 to have the magic that it does...before it is too late.

[Mathematics]

Originally Posted by OpolE

Time to stop believing in SOE and all of their games. They won't get mass scale and they wont be popular in years to come.

And even though I want to go back to Planetside 1. Can you imagine how amazing it would have been if it had the right development and team behind it? One of the best games even with SOE management. Just imagine.

Fixed.