Top cause of players leaving PS2 (2014) - Page 2

War Barney · 2014-07-28, 06:50 AM

Aye I think the buff was so that nanoweave didn't affect head shots as if you had full level nanoweave a head shot wouldn't OHK you, so it wasn't a buff to snipers so much as a nerf to nanoweave, thus why its probably the least used skill now, surviving a extra bullet in close range was never really that great it was useful to let you survive snipers.

Now flak is the best option for survivability at all times, theres never ending explosions from tanks, nades, air and traps while nanoweave will let you survive 1 perhaps 2 more shots. They really need to either buff nanoweave or nerf ALL explosives, cos right now I honestly can't ever see myself using nanoweave again.

Rahabib · 2014-07-28, 10:58 AM

I havent left completely, but I rarely login. The top reason for me has nothing to do with that list - its boredom. The only reason to login is to grind out a few more levels. Theres no "winners," no real competition or competitive aspect like other old games like CS have. Theres no real persistence, taking a base really doesn't do anything for your team, yourself, or your faction. Locking a continent is a bandaid and doesn't do much but steamroll other teams with bogus bonuses to heap on the likely already over pop empire and remove choice.

The game needs a certain "quest" aspect to it. Something meaningful that adds a level of strategy to the game. Whether you take a bio or amp station, it doen't really matter. But if resources meant something, and were tied to types of bases, then making a choice for territory would add a level of fun to the game that will evolve the game into something more than just a TDM.

Anyway, I keep holding out hope, but until the game has something more to offer than just unlocking stuff, its going to be boring.

War Barney · 2014-07-28, 01:55 PM

True a reason to fight is very lacking, I thought locking would do it but it still doesn't feel like a worthy goal, most of the time because its not a very interesting bonus (though its a stupid one that gives a bonus to the winning side) and locks tend to happen while 1 side zergs with 60% pop.

HereticusXZ · 2014-07-28, 04:40 PM

The win condition or victory is completely irrelevant, even unnecessary, There's no reason whatsoever to win the war. The only thing you need is the "fight" itself and seeing as it's a video game it benefits no one if the war ends because of a win condition.

The "Top Cause" of players leaving if you want to attribute it to anything is the lack of content to busy yourself with.

You enter a fight and hold the objective. During this process you get XP by killing in the most efficient or effective method possible, Rinse and repeat. (This is where the hate is mistakenly directed at Liberators and needs to instead be focused at the broken Vehicle system in general, Or the hate against Snipers instead needing to be directed at PS2's lack of properly understanding the application of Long. Medium, and Short Range combat ) The game needs to get away from a XP incentive and reward contributions like Squad/Platoon leading, the Mission System needs to finished.

Continent locking and Continent bonuses in there current form are sufficient and serve the intended purpose. But considering the large time gap between these events, It's not enough to hold your attention.

The new Directive system being introduced (Achievements by any other name) is beneficial to the health of the game but ultimately serves as a temporary bandied solution seeing as its just polishing the Auraxium system that we already have, so outside of Aesthetics it's nothing new.

The eventual Ants and Resource system will provide logistical mindset type players with something to do and cater to a wider audience then just the action rambo inspired players.

With all that said, Strictly in my personnel opinion if I had to name -one- thing that needs to be done to improve the experience and expand the games health, Thus retaining player attention, is redo the Vehicle system entirely. Vehicles right now are only cardboard boxes that give the player a extra HP bar. What vehicles need to do is properly behave and perform like a vehicle with moving parts.

Ideally I'd like to see the vehicle system that's in War Thunder: Ground Forces or Red Orchestra 2 where you have hard-points over health bars.

Another thing that could be done to improve the health of the game and retain players is implement the base-modules of PS1 as part of the Outfit Capture system. Put a control console in a Facilities spawn room that is only accessible to the Outfit Officers of the Outfit who last conquered the facility.

Outfit Officers could use this control terminal to switch out base turrets or move generators to different structures at the cost of Certs, This way every Facility becomes to a degree a unique experience. Outfits could decide if they want to put all AA turrets onto a Tower, or we could see more use out of the rare Anti-Infantry turret.

I dare say to even allow Outfits to modify Phalanx guns with zoom optics or Thermal optics.

[End Rant]

Chefkoch · 2014-07-28, 05:53 PM

I Agree, base mods would be cool together with real sanctuarys !! Personally the biggest flaw is the respaw aka teleport redeploy system. You can travel way to fast around conts.. thats why ppl can avaoid fights so easily

War Barney · 2014-07-28, 06:28 PM

A major improvement would be a LOT more detailed commands for platoon leaders, all you have right now is waypoints, smoke and the attack/defend icon. This makes being a leader a thankless chore, you end up making less exp and spending your whole time on the map managing numbers (as instant redeploy means there are no tactics, just numbers management).

It would be nice to see more commands and abilities for leaders, perhaps an artillery bombardment somewhere they can use once an hour or something (just an example, not a good one at that..). Basically leading needs to have depth, right now it has non.

Mietz · 2014-07-28, 08:14 PM

Originally Posted by KesTro

Are you talking during Beta times or something? Because I can remember one shot headhsotting peopel as the NC infil with the stock Bolt Action since Nov 20. O.o

The NC sniper was the only that could do it from all the stock snipers, later when alt snipers were introduced the NC one still was the only one that could do it.

Then they introduced cross faction bolt actions that could do it.
Now every sniper hits the same to the head. (now every sniper has a 2-2.1 headshot multiplier, before the semi-autos had i think 1.5, but i would need to check and cant be bothered, please someone confirm)

Predictably the VS snipers rule now since they have no bullet drop and the bolt actions all had them.

BlaxicanX · 2014-07-28, 09:18 PM

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Sure. Using your own definition of the the word source, list as many possible 'sources' - that you can think of on top of your head - that can satisfy your question.

I'll pick the correct one from your list.

I ask because this seems less like "these are the reasons players are leaving the game" and more like "these are things that I don't like about the game but if I present them as more than just my personal opinion people will be less inclined to question them."

So I'll just ask you again. Do you have any data that would distinguish these grievances as being more than just your personal issues with the game?

- - - - -

As far as the current discussion, I think there's a difference between why people are bitching about the game versus why people are leaving the game. People complain about the game for a myriad of reasons- the game is not perfect and its issues are many- however, there is no game, especially competitive games, where that isn't the case.

The reason for why people are leaving the game in droves is the same reason for why people always leave popular MMO's in droves... because there isn't new content. People get tired of doing the same shit every day, and Planetside 2 is set up in such a way that it really emphasizes how much of a grind every game session is. On a macro level you quite literally do the same thing, with the same general goal every single day. That's true for most MMO's, however it tends to be hidden from the player longer by virtue of giving him a constant sense of accomplishment- in most cases, this sense of accomplishment is gained from completing quests. Meet the NPC, get a plot blurb from him explaining why the quest is important within the context of the universe, do the quest, meet the boss NPC who talks shit to you and kill him, then go back to the first NPC, get an earful about how your actions have made the world a better place, and collect your XP/gift reward. The objective of the quest, along with its locale and the NPC's within them almost always deviate somewhat- you don't often do the exact same quest twice, and you rarely fight the same enemies twice. In fact, as you level up you can even go back to told areas or do old quests and casually destroy enemy NPC's that you once found challenging, physically displaying to you how much your character has grown.

All of these things together give the illusion to the player that he's doing a variety of things that all contribute toward some final success, or destination.

In PS2, by comparison, it's never explained why these bases are important, and we can't even infer why they're important because the benefits of owning most of them are literally non-existent. So there's no real practical benefit of owning a base, and there's no in-universe implication that the bases are important either. That's a strike. Next, as capturing a base is basically our "quest", with each base being its own quest, there is no variety in our quests. Our objective is always the same, "kill everybody inside of it and hold onto the point until the base is yours", and our enemies are always the same. They may act different, since they're People and People can use different tactics, but the types of enemies are always the same. There is never a chance that we might fight a giant robot, or a weird monster, or something unique. It's always going to be predominantly chumps with guns, supported by tanks and planes, and they and their bullets always come in one of two color schemes. No variation-that's strike two. Strike three is that after completing a quest, we're given some exp, a 5 second voice over telling us good job, and we're then pointed in the direction of the next quest, which is exactly the same as the quest we just completed- with the exact same objective and the exact same enemies, perhaps just behaving a little differently. It's the same fucking quest, and you realize that, woah: it doesn't matter how many quests I complete. There will always be another quest to complete after it, and that quest will always be the same quest I just completed.

For some people, that's not game-breaking. I myself still play the game almost every day, and have been for almost two years now. But for looooots of people, that shit gets old eventually, and so they get bored and leave the game.

This isn't an issue exclusive to Planetside 2, in fact it's a common issue for most MMO's. The problem is that you feel it more with Planetside 2 because the game is exclusively a shared experience. In WoW, where you can only have X amount of people in a raid, or you can only have X amount of people in a PvP match at one time, there is no difference between 50,000 players in the game and 10,000 players. You interact with NPC's 90% of the time anyway. But in a game like Planetside 2, where are there no NPC's, and the only way the game can engage you, in any way shape or form, is via human players, it becomes very noticeable when the population dips and rises. Bases are either devoid of enemies and your time is spent capping empty buildings, or your faction is out-popped and you're getting reamed at every turn. Both capping empty base after empty base and getting pushed back by enemy zergs in battle after battle highlight to the player just ultimately pointless and repetitive this game is. It's only when we're in the middle of a good fight do we temporarily forget how ultimately meaningless the battle actually is.

So with that being the case, the game direly needs to do two things: A) it needs to compensate for the lowered population. This means it needs to merge servers (which it's already done), and cut out half the fucking irrelevant bases so that the already reduced player base isn't stretched so thinly across a continent, and B) it needs to focus on retaining what player base it still has, and the only way to do that is to improve the game's ability to hide the realization that you're basically doing the same thing over and over again. MMO's do this by providing fresh content- giving the illusion that there's always "something to new to do", and by making everything you do seem like an achievement and a progression. Alerts and continent-locking have done a lot to give us that latter feeling, but it's not enough. And the other half of the equation, new content, is sorely missing in this game. I understand that the PS2 dev team is undermanned, and I understand that it takes time to make new vehicles and new continents, but there comes a point where one has to simply realize that the video game industry is an extremely competitive environment, and gamers don't care about developmental problems. They're fickle people, and will jump ship to any game that looks more promising.

Baneblade · 2014-07-28, 09:25 PM

The problem with the Lib was never the ability to deal damage, nor the ability to take damage. It always has been, and still is, the ability to fly it like its an ESF. Same with the Galaxy.

KesTro · 2014-07-29, 12:58 AM

Originally Posted by Mietz

The NC sniper was the only that could do it from all the stock snipers, later when alt snipers were introduced the NC one still was the only one that could do it.

Then they introduced cross faction bolt actions that could do it.
Now every sniper hits the same to the head. (now every sniper has a 2-2.1 headshot multiplier, before the semi-autos had i think 1.5, but i would need to check and cant be bothered, please someone confirm)

Predictably the VS snipers rule now since they have no bullet drop and the bolt actions all had them.

The VS snipers do have bullet drop last I checked. The only one that doesn't is the one they all hate, their new one the Phaseshift. And when I speak of sniping I am usually only referring to bolt actions as the Semi-Autos I see as more of a support weapon than anything. Back to the Phaseshift though I actually really love this gun because of the zero bullet drop and higher skill cap. The lack of bullet drop makes it have the slowest velocity (Percieved, perhaps statistically too.) to compensate and if you miss your headshot you can finish 'em up with the Semi-Auto shot, just have to learn to lead your targets properly and gauge distance based on how large people appear.

War Barney · 2014-07-29, 04:17 AM

Originally Posted by Baneblade

The problem with the Lib was never the ability to deal damage, nor the ability to take damage. It always has been, and still is, the ability to fly it like its an ESF. Same with the Galaxy.

Hmmm this is actually true, in real life bombers are slow lumbering things that get protected by fighters, in planetside 2 as you said Gals and libs can very quickly get out of range of anti-air, especially if they fly at the sky ceiling.

That is part of the problem with libs/gals.. they don't need teamwork they just come in solo get 20-30 kills, then come back again.

Gatekeeper · 2014-07-29, 05:10 AM

I agree - the fact that powerful vehicles in PS2 don't require much teamwork is a key problem with the game design IMO. Clearly SOE wanted the game to appeal to more casual players (which, honestly, I appreciate to some extent) and hence we get MBTs without dedicated drivers, Lib-gunners jumping from belly to tail gun and back and Libs that can dogfight (or roll in place and have their belly-gunner one-shot fighters...).

As a lone-wolf type of player, I do appreciate that not everything in PS2 requires teamwork and I can still make an impact on my own - but I'd be happy to see a return to PS1's teamwork ideals for the more powerful vehicles.

Boildown · 2014-07-29, 01:05 PM

I actually agree with everything the OP said, including the comments about VS redeployside, and the hypothesized thought process directing SoE's hand.

Mordelicius · 2014-07-31, 04:42 AM

Originally Posted by BlaxicanX

I ask because this seems less like "these are the reasons players are leaving the game" and more like "these are things that I don't like about the game but if I present them as more than just my personal opinion people will be less inclined to question them."

So I'll just ask you again. Do you have any data that would distinguish these grievances as being more than just your personal issues with the game?

Who said these are just 'personal issues' with the game? Saying it is a personal issues means I stand to benefit the most if these things are fixed.

Can you name from any of the 5 points I made where I can stand to benefit from more than any other players if they are to be fixed/remedied/avoided? And what are these benefits?

My points are about balancing:
- Gameplay (1&2)
- Battle flow (4)
- Lane flow (5)
- Server pop, faction pop stability (3)
And none of it is selfish, self-centered, self-serving. So your premise are all wrong.

Secondly, sure. Again I repeat, using your definition of data, can you make a list of examples of 'data' - that would differentiate them from these perceived (in your words) 'personal issues with the game'?

I'll pick the correct answer from your list.

Mordelicius · 2014-07-31, 05:05 AM

Originally Posted by HereticusXZ

IMO This list doesn't have much (if any) merit to it. It sounds like personnel grudges and not hard data.

In my post (point #5), I described a phenomenon in Emerald Indar:

New Lanes = Undefended base.
Undefended bases + Redeployside = factions (especially VS ) mass redeploying to steal a base. Then they use their superior VS Suppression weapons to stop you from getting to the points. If they fail, they just disappear in a wink (literally). They then wait and look for the next 'target'. This happens on and on and on. Is this a good battleflow?

This result in lack of fights that make the current Indar Emerald insufferable. Indar hasnt' been this bad post-lattice, outside of WDS events.

Now, can the PS2 Dev graphs and charts and red-dots-on map explain and transmit this phenomenon? Do they track these player movements chronologically? In able to make sense of this phenomenon, order of action, reaction and effect has to be known. This can only be understood while playing the game.

They can graph and plot all they want. These dots have no real-time date or order or contextual message that can convey this phenomenon is even affecting gameflow.

Lastly, if their faulty interpretation of gameplay through graphs made them create these new lanes in the first place, then how can they figure out this change was bad or flawed?