What are your thoughts on PlanetSide 2 now that you have played?

[texico]

What is that code about? Is that an open-access key to beta?

I didn't make much of an effort to enter Beta because I realized my laptop probably wasn't up to scratch when I entered PS1's free playtime and got lag, but that will change soon (hopefully in time for the game)!


I'm interested a lot in the changes. What did everyone make of the bigger changes from PS1? i.e the territory system, class system, Galaxy-AMS etc? What was the best change? what was the worst? That territory system looks like it's going to make some epic continent-level drama.


One of the things I was worried about was cross-continent battling and control of continents. Was only Indar available in beta btw? There might be a different dynamic once all the continents are playable at the same time. A big part of the tactical side of PS1 was the capturing and trading of continents which might be another change.

[Figment]

Will have to see what the hex system does, but for now what I see is massive logistical issues, the game being completely catered to massive size outfits or at the very least overzerging whatever resistance is present. Which is easy since the bases are too big to have the luxury of concentrating your efforts.

The specialty of certain highly organised, but small outfits being able to breach any given position with a swift concerted, precision strike effort is nullified by the fact you need to hold many points at once and even if you do hold those points it can be made pointless if you don't hold adjecent territory (even if you have firm control over the fast majority of the base, you will still lose it).

All in all, aside from the bad performance on a low end rig, I've not been having much fun so far. With a small outfit, it's pretty much impossible to make a difference unless you tower whore somewhere. Hence most spec ops teams that can't field more than 10 people at any given time have been very disappointed to say the least.

Tank combat is lame and incredibly shortlived due to the low TTK time and driver=gunner, making it pointless to bring a gunner. Travel times are very long due to lack of both fixed and mobile spawnpoints. Till the hex system at least the game has felt like one big "whack-a-mole", that made it impossible to coordinate.

The chat system is bogus, since anything that looks like broadcast, the only way to communicate with larger groups of players in the area, is actually a chat shared by ALL EMPIRES (/yell). >__>

Organization is therefore for now something only done within an outfit and up till now has been very arbitrary and mostly reactionary because - like in the PS1 beta - you could be attacked anywhere and thus no coherent fronts formed. Like then, the lack of coherent fronts and the lack of logistics means that fights are extremely shortlived. And if you lose, at least before they add more fixed spawnpoints to the outposts, you will be thrown back at least 7 hexes.

The Galaxy is unable to be used as a field spawnpoint unless you bring a zerg. People have to stay to guard the Galaxy and constantly repair it. Basically think "turret repair duty" after a base cap, forever, or your Galaxy will die. Apparently some people think that's fun or "organization"? I don't think so anyway.

Classes feel like straightjackets and don't allow a lot of creative combinations for creative attacks. Some bases can only be attacked with jet packs (no roads upward), but since medics don't have jetpacks, they can't follow in. Small teams and solists are especially hit hard by this because they can't compete with even slightly larger groups that can afford to bring medics. Especially 1337fits and smaller spec ops teams are hit very hard by the rigidity of the classes. Tbh, customization doesn't currently amount to more than changing the sight on your gun and gun type. Specialization is from my point of view pretty meaningless as everyone goes for the same low cost and high power options.

Specialising in mines for instance is bogus, because the bases are many times larger than a PS1 base, yet you get a 15th to a 20th of the amount of mines you could place in PS1. Meaning there's no way you can deny access to areas or setup effective CE'd zones with a few dedicated people.

Camping is also very common in this game with its low TTKs and for many, poor frame rate. Shields in place now don't actually stop people from camping.

Sneaky Ops are currently non-existent, partially because the certs aren't there, partially because there's very little you could do aside from killing and recon even if it was there. Ghosts on the other hand are overwhelmingly prevalent. If you enjoyed sneaking into a CC and capping it right under the noses of 20 nose-picking NC, TR or VS, forget it. The moment you come near a CC, it'll start flashing on everyone's interface.

Some bases can only be entered alternatively from Gal Drops by means of Teleporters. Fixed two-way travel teleporters that can't be killed and look exactly like a Spawntube, just with a firing squad waiting on either end by default. At least it's not plasma door spam, is it?

Spawn "generators" (Spawn Control Units) are placed in other buildings between 50 and 150m away and can typically only be reached by going outside. They take a lot of effort to kill (way too much for a small squad to do effectively), but at the same time, you get no warning when it's attacked, if it is destroyed you get no time to mount a secure session and basically if you're being attacked by a zerg and you're a small group, or there's a Liberator hovering over the base and you have to get outside, forget it. You're doomed.

End of fight.

Ends of fights often end well before they'd end in PS1, because there are no intermediate steps in a fight as the logistical support for that is just non-existent. It's not a matter of pushing people from the base to the CY, then passed the next hill and then to the next base, no, it's kill them once at your base and run them through their timed spawn on squad options, kill their gal and cap their one fixed spawns (auto-cap through base cap), then they're pretty much gone from your half of the map. It's always a long walk of 450-1000 meters to attack another point and that's just not doable. Galaxies are hardly maintained and even if they are they're at least 200+ meters away. Think trying to attack Nexus from beyond the hills with a footzerg.

Walls are also useless as everyone just drives around them. I've not seen a single base defense where walls were used to fire at opponents OUTSIDE of the walls. Not a single one (!).

It's currently very unlikely that you could win the continent, unless you have a huge pop advantage and suppress any ghosts continuously. We've done it on the EU2 server with NC when there were just around 40 people online, total.



All in all, the game has a lot to improve before I can give it even sufficient marks.

[raptorak]

I absolutely love this game, but I never played PS1 I'm afraid so I can imagine there are some things missing from the game that I would miss if I had.

Some things which slightly bother me:

1. I've been playing Tribes:Ascend for a while, a game that makes me rage because it is so dumbed down. When I saw the instant action button I was not pleased - I think "Instant Action" should be replaced by some kind of commander call-down where you can volunteer for a troop drop of some kind.

2. Assault rifles are cool, but could we have some kind of primary explosive weapon like a Spinfusor? Ok this isn't Tribes :P

3. Vehicle combat is a little lacking, I wish the game had more physics and ragdolls. The quads feel a little boxed into the ground, the planes should have some kind of Q/E roll function button rather than using the mouse to bank (maybe they do).

4. Some lack of physicality to the infantry. No chance of ragdolls? Blowing troops away with rocket launchers NEVER gets old. Imagine a huge explosion and the flying mess of ragdolls that could ensue with 1000 players - oh right, that is why they aren't in?

5. I feel points capture too fast, maybe they should require more than one person there? There should be a warning if you are being capped.

6. Destructible auto defense turrets might be a good idea for some more important bases.

I'm sure I will think of more issues later

[Valcron]

Classes do feel like a straight jacket, it's the one thing I absolutely despise in this version of Planetside, it really is absolutely terrible. Higby and the development team already said they're not changing it which is really disapointing.

Also, the Auraxium time sink is ridiculous, you will be forced into buying weapons with real money. Auraxium takes a really long time to recover.

[AThreatToYou]

The flow of combat is so radically different from PS1 and other big shooters... it does not seem fun. I'm going to hold out on playing until the territory control system is finalized.

[Boone]

Originally Posted by Valcron

The game is very simple- If you Love Call of Duty and Battlefield series you will love this game. If you LOVE planetside, you won't love this game- because it's NOT Planetside at all. It's fun to log on for a few minutes but gets terribly boring after a while. PS1 where are you?

insightful

[raptorak]

Have to agree not a fan of the class system either - such a yawn worthy mechanic - whatever happened to good old fashioned customizable loadouts?

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by Higby

Tell the world this. I think were doing something pretty unprescedented (and frankly a little of scary to a lot of people) with how open we've been and how closely we've worked with and integrated our community into this games development. Tell everyone it's what you want out of developers in the future and we (all of us gamers) may get it.

oh yes! it IS what we want! and thanks again for this great and new approach!
if planetside is as successful as it deserves, i am sure we will see this open and community-involving developement again. but higby and his team will stay the first who have dared to try this!

on topic:

the game feels great so far! there is a lot missing, but i am aware that this is early beta and things are in the pipeline.
the good old planetside feeling is somewhere in this game! found it some days ago, in a big battle where i was cleaning the sky with my max while a big tank column took the enemy base under fire and some engineers kept my my ammoreserve and armor high.

my main concern right now is the target recognition and the overall awareness. i never know where i am, i don´t even notice most enemys (and camo is not even in the game yet!!!) and due to the friendly-markers being so unreliable i never know if to shoot somebody or not.
and don´t ask me, where our squad is.

the visibility of most important things has to be revisited. squadmates onscreen, squadmates on map and targets/friendlies.

may sound negative, but since this is the only thing i don´t like in the game so far, it´s more of an award

i assume engineers will get more toys, otherwise add this to the requests
also, old requests stay alive... i will not drive a vanguard until i get the chance to have a dedicated gunner/driver setup! and it needs to be the standard setup. the standard as it is now may be a cert to please the lonewulfer kids who think they have to gun everything they bought.

[Aaron]

I have to agree with a lot of the concerns here. However, the devs are most likely reading it all as I speak. They're going to find a way to fix the these things.

The inventory system is something I brought up in one of my first threads in the official forums. The class system shocked me, but it is going to stay. Nonetheless, there's nothing saying an inventory can't make a comeback along side classes.

[ringring]

I'm liking it .... on the way to loving it!

I got a little despondant a few weeks ago. However, Smedley cheered me up no end with one little phase. He said that he agreed that (at the time) the game felt a little like BF on a larger map, he followed it up by saying that they don't want to make BF3MMO because they want to make the successor to planetside.

Fantastic!

Since then the devs have added a few patches which have really improved matters, and here I'm taking about the additional defences around Zurvan and the different capture mechanism. It may not be totally right yet but it has produced those intense extended battles that planetside was famous for.

Thank you - devs

Every other day there's a tweaks and additions as weapons are added in. I'm sure the devs are feeding stuff in slowly so they can assess balance issues.

My concern looking forward are in the developmewnt of additional continents. One continent will get old pretty quickly and the lateset hint was that there w0ould be only two for launch, which is bad news.

I look forward to multiple continents, with a sanctuary and without footholds (please) and with inter-continental strategy. When that's in we can call this the new planetside!

[goneglockin]

I got access to the beta the first day for vets. I think that was like a month ago.

I could only stand to play for a few hours the first week, a couple the second week- and I think it's been two weeks since I've even logged in at all.

The core gameplay is lacking. The game feels shallow and pointless. Smed says 90% of "stuff" isn't in... but what stuff is that? Is it stuff that's really going to change how the game plays and feels, or just fluff?

I don't believe him for a minute; especially if he's including all the pointless sidegrades and variants of equipment in his 90%...

Nope, to me, the core mechanics look mostly done and they are soooo uninteresting. So I've been playing Tribes: Ascend the last two weeks instead.

[OnexBigxHebrew]

Originally Posted by Valcron

The game is very simple- If you Love Call of Duty and Battlefield series you will love this game. If you LOVE planetside, you won't love this game- because it's NOT Planetside at all. It's fun to log on for a few minutes but gets terribly boring after a while. PS1 where are you?

How is the game in ANY way like call of duty? ADS? And frankly, the gameplay in BF3 outclasses this game in every way. (As it should - it doesn't have to sacrifice anything to be an MMO - not a gripe, just a fact).

Get off it. Call of Duty is a no-vehicle meth-head arena shooter.

Overall, my impression is that the game, on video, is insanely impressive in terms of scope and size.

Gameplay needs serious work. Vehicles, gunplay, everything, it's all slightly sub-par. I do, however, understand that this might not be possible to improve.

Also, incentives just aren't there. You get a big feeling of "What's it all for?". If I'm going to be putting up with half-baked gameplay, there has to be stronger MMO elements. All MMOs sacrifice gameplay for content. THere's a reason why elder scrolls online won't be anything like skyrim.

Part of the problem is with me - that I saw myself as more willing to spend the time online and get in with an outfit. Now that I've really shaken things out between school/work/fighting, I honestly can't see myself doing it - and for everyone not getting involved that way, the game is very hollow. The 15 minutes it takes for everyone to orgaize a galaxy drop is just too long for me. Again - my problem.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun, but the game has a way to go before I'm 'hooked'.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by OnexBigxHebrew

How is the game in ANY way like call of duty? ADS?

You misinterpreted him completely. He said CoD in combination with BF3.

Why? Because the base layout is very akin to a CoD map with a lot of small single or triple room buildings within a large map with BattleField style capture mechanics.

[RobUK]

I love the game and have had serious problems logging out and going to bed! I've been going in to work feeling half dead for the last 3 weeks. I look forward to the day when we can play the game for as long as we like, whenever we like.

For the last 9 years Planetside has always dominated my gaming time. Now Planetside 2 is doing the same thing. I'm one very happy gamer!

[typhaon]

It's awesome.

The amount of progress that has been made in just the short time from the tech test until now is impressive.