Is Planetside 2 being released too soon?

[PredatorFour]

What happened to the `propper Beta` promised for this game anyway? and we get a 3 month beta?

[Fear The Amish]

its a F2P title they need to ship it early to start collecting some money and will continue to update game to get in everything that isnt 100% essential to basic game mechanics. So keep an eye out i beat outside of amerish release almost all of the updates until launch will be optimization and bug fixes.

[Nolerhn]

My initial reaction was that it's being pushed out too soon, but then I thought about it. The team is highly talented. I think they can do it. This dev team has had the best developer to fan interaction I've ever seen, and even John Smedley, the president of SOE regularly responds to fans questions and comments.

Now, my main fear is the map, THE MAP. When I look at the map, I have a hard time figuring out what the heck is going on. I can't seem to find what base/hex needs reinforcements, where big fights are. Being able to get a rough estimate of how many enemies/allies there are at a hex would be fantastic. Maybe it's just me, but as far as that goes are hotspots, which, when investigating a hotspot, I could go to one and there would no longer be a fight or a small skirmish.

To me, weapon balance and cert balance can come after launch, but a core function such as the map I strongly feel should be fully implemented before the game goes live.

[EVILoHOMER]

Yup and it could be highly damaging to the future of this game, SOE know better than most first impressions matter, all their games have launched badly and never recovered. Planetside suffered though due to resources being taken away from it and thrown on SWG and EQ2.

SOE have done a good job so far, I just don't get why they'd throw it all away, they need to fix the meta game before they launch and I don't see it happening before launch. If the game launches with the current performance issues then again it'll tank......

I would have thought they'd do an open beta first.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

I would have thought they'd do an open beta first.

We have been in open beta ever since the NDA was lifted.

[Crator]

Negative, open beta = no cost to play and anyone and everyone can get in. It's essentially the same thing as F2P. If they were going to do an open beta I'd imagine it would entail allowing the general public to create an account but informing everyone that character wipes can still happen. They could even let people use SC but when wipes occur refund the SC. They won't do that though. Too complicated. They just going to launch the game.

Account creation open to general public.

[Figment]

True true. Public beta then. Would be better to call it an open beta at launch then.

[dethred]

Hurry! Everyone! Worry heavily about the state of the game during the Unfinished Beta Development phase. Go!

[Hamma]

There won't be a traditional open beta. Their main goal is Performance followed up by improving the meta game. When is an MMO ever "Done" when it's released. This one is more done than many I've been a part of

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Hamma

There won't be a traditional open beta. Their main goal is Performance followed up by improving the meta game. When is an MMO ever "Done" when it's released. This one is more done than many I've been a part of

I must admit I am impressed by the number of bugs (lack of) and number of CTD (lack of).

However, we do know that when they do a the weekly patch the game becomes unstable and performance drops. Even so, they do correct these things pretty quickly.

No, the thing I am concerned about is the meta-game combined with the new continent. After it goes in how long will we have to test it out and then how long will be needed to fix up any issues and retest?

[Bocheezu]

Originally Posted by Malorn

So the real question I would ask is - what do you think is ship critical that you fear wont be ready by 11/20?

For me personally, there are precisely two things that must be fixed. Everything else is sort of cosmetic for the most part.

1. My CTDs have gone up. Something to do with zooming in/switching weapons. Maybe Crow/Skep-related, because I bought that thing and I was crashing every 15 mins or so, although I crashed while in Burster yesterday as well.

Sometimes it's not a straight CTD, either, it's a sudden heavy drop in FPS that causes all the buildings and players to disappear. Sometimes this will cause me to CTD, sometimes not.

That in and of itself is not terrible. That coupled with spawning at the warpgate AND losing your 400 resource Sundy just makes me irate. I can corpse flop with /suicide back to where I want to go; I can not re-buy my Sundy.

2. Fix the gravlifts at the warpgate towers. They are backwards; up goes down and down goes up. This should take all of 5 seconds. This is a small thing for me that makes the game look poorly made. There are many other things that make it look poorly made (LAs hiding in biolab walls, etc.), but this one is very obvious and very easy to fix.

[SkyRaid]

I'm excited for PS2 but I have a concern that without proper stress testing and a bit more polish, this could be a horrible launch. Not saying the game itself will be bad but...Long log in ques and poor server side support could be damaging. Who knows, maybe they are ready and just need the short term cash grab to complete what they have in the pipeline.

[Sifer2]

Originally Posted by Figment

True true. Public beta then. Would be better to call it an open beta at launch then.

Yeah if they did that then they could still wipe progress. But instead were going to be stuck with a lot of certs an stuff that probably needs to be removed or revamped honestly. Instead people will buy it then demand SOE make it good cause they payed for it.

[Illtempered]

If they give us at least 4 more maps, develop the meta-game(which is non-existent atm), and work out the major bugs I'll be happy. I prefer Planetside's method of inventory, and dislike the railroading the class system does, but with all the different things you can cert, that will be remedied a little.

Oh, I also don't want to be confused about the payment system, and always be wondering how much of an advantage, those paying more, are enjoying. I preferred one flat sub-rate, and enjoying the fact that we were all basically playing on the same level, third-party cheaters aside.

Edit to say: I just read they're only launching with three maps. If so, that's unfortunate. Better get to it....