Our concerns made it to PCGamer.com

[Germanius]

Good thing. Achtung, (watch out) SOE!

[IronMole]

SOE didn't listen back then, what makes you think they will now?

THEY HAVE NOT LEARNED!

[Electrofreak]

I may not be a fan of BuzzCut, but I've been pushing for the return of dynamic XP and he mentioned it in his post as well:

Originally Posted by BuzzCutPsycho

The solution to this problem comes straight from Planetside 1; in Planetside 1, your XP gain for
a capture was based upon how much fighting was on that base. If it was a heavily contested base,
the reward scaled appropriately to reflect that. If the base was empty, the reward for the capture
was insignificant. Basically, you were rewarded for taking risks. High risks held the promise
of high rewards and encouraged players to always move towards the areas with the heaviest
fighting.

[thegreekboy]

Originally Posted by Crator

Change rate in beta was way to slow imo. Only 3 months for beta, a "true" beta where player feedback (a lot of it, almost too much for just 3 months) was given and listened to.

Although a lot was listened to they just didn't have time to try everything.
I don't think devs could have kept up, technically, making so many changes in just 3 months. It was hard to get them to budge on the G-AMS ordeal too. That was the biggest one. Beta should have been much longer!

Sony is multiple millions of dollars in debt. I guarantee that the suits went down to them and said something along the lines of "Release before the end of the year or you can kiss your funding goodbye"

[GLaDOS]

Originally Posted by Electrofreak

I may not be a fan of BuzzCut, but I've been pushing for the return of dynamic XP and he mentioned it in his post as well:

I'm not sure if you saw it, but someone tweeted that post of his to Higby (I think on the 31st) and he replied, saying there would be (something like) "major changes to the reward system." I was going to make a thread about it, as people hadn't seemed to have noticed it, but I can't figure out how to "embed" the tweets in a post like I've seen.

Edit: Well, I figured out how to link it, at least. Twitter is damn confusing, or maybe I'm just stupid.

Second edit: Well, I guess linking it embedded it, somehow. I give up.

[Sturmhardt]

Great, thanks, I hope they get a patch out soon... I'm getting tired of the 1 month old bugs like bugged sunderers, mass freezes etc...

[Electrofreak]

Originally Posted by GLaDOS

I'm not sure if you saw it, but someone tweeted that post of his to Higby (I think on the 31st) and he replied, saying there would be (something like) "major changes to the reward system." I was going to make a thread about it, as people hadn't seemed to have noticed it, but I can't figure out how to "embed" the tweets in a post like I've seen.

Edit: Well, I figured out how to link it, at least. Twitter is damn confusing, or maybe I'm just stupid.

Second edit: Well, I guess linking it embedded it, somehow. I give up.

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/285949826498170880

Awesome, thanks for that. On the downside, I was posting about dynamic XP back in first-round beta (the thread is gone due to the beta forums being nuked but the text is virtually identical to the link in my signature) but I suspect that Buzz is going to get credit for the idea now.

/sigh

c'est la vie...

[Shenyen]

Originally Posted by Vashyo

http://steamgraph.net/index.php?acti...=1357250400000

Sadly if you've monitored steam statistics on player numbers at all, the peak player count has effectively halved since launch weeks. Most of my friends don't play anymore either, sigh...

Duh, see this:

Originally Posted by Highstall

Look, all the "OMG - people are LEEAAAVING" hysteria on the forums is completely misplaced. You are looking at the steamgraphs - so, do some comparisons. Here - I'll do some for you:
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?acti...=1357279200000

This thing you're seeing - where people pile in early and then dive out just as quick? That happens to every game, in even greater percentages than PS2 is seeing.

Finally someone who is not going "The sky is falling" and posts a reasonable and researched post on this topic.

Originally Posted by Beerbeer

Kind of a pathetic comparison if you ask me, especially considering planetside 2 is the only free to play game amongst the three shown, which makes it even worse, but thanks for sharing that.

F2P-games require not investment before you can play them, all you need is to create an account and download the game.

On a single afternon, you can try out 10 different F2P games.

Regular games cost 50+ Dollars or more, so you have to think what you want to play, while you can try out PS2 and if you don_like it - you haven't lost anything.

A decrease in the playerbase after the release is normal, ESPECIALLY for F2P games, because most of the players aren't invested in them as much as with a normal game they paid lots of money for.

Yes, Planetside 2 requires a quite larger playerbase to have fun - but they will merge some servers when that time comes.

Unlike you, they understood that many players will try out the game and some won't like it and leave the game - that's why names are unique across all servers, so that it would be easy to merge servers.

Something else you forget in your Sky-Falling-Sermon: Christmas!

Yup, some people will have more time to play but LOTS of people have other, better things to do than play a game - they have to visit their families, dress up as Santa for their children etc... And of course, they maybe also got some presents, like new games they would like to play for a while.

Do you know why SOE gave us Double Exp for over a week?

Because they wanted to give us a present?

NO!

Because they knew that server populations would decrease over the holidays and to keep the game more playable, they gave an incentive to all those nerdy guys that were torn between playing Far Cry 3, visiting their parents and playing Planetside 2 to choose Planetside.

"Hm, do i want to play Far Cry 3 or do i want to get the most out of the double exp in PS2? - Hm, Far Cry will still be here next month, Double Exp won't, so i'll choose PS2"...

[Vashyo]

Originally Posted by Highstall

Look, all the "OMG - people are LEEAAAVING" hysteria on the forums is completely misplaced. You are looking at the steamgraphs - so, do some comparisons. Here - I'll do some for you:
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?acti...=1357279200000

This thing you're seeing - where people pile in early and then dive out just as quick? That happens to every game, in even greater percentages than PS2 is seeing. People are actually responding really well to Planetside - and if they keep improving it over the months, you will start to see something like Torchlight 2 is experiencing - where the numbers actually start to creep back up as it increases the community over time.

Just because the passionate few in the forums rip their hair out and argue ceaselessly over game problems - that pretty much par for any forum these days. In fact, the louder the forums sound, the more people care. That's a good thing.

Borderlands and torchilight 2 get massive battles like in PS2? :P

We have way less people playing when you compare to the max server cap, those two other games don't need more people.

Woodman I can't even wage war anywhere else but in the middle of indar, crown. Otherwise I have to run around huge massive continents of emptiness or fight 1 vs 20 against the stack ghost cappers.


So now we have about 10,000-13,000 people playing at peak times on steam + non steam players divided by continents divided by servers how many people do you have left once the population filters into a smaller and smaller group

I haven't had to wait in line to join a continent since...day 2 of launch

"Size allways matters" my ass. I get just as big 32vs32 battles in BF3 and it's much more focused and it isn't tank/airplane spam.


We'll see what they do in the future, I hope they fix it and improve, but as of now they handled everything poorly. The game was launched not as a true sequel to planetside, but as another game for the BF3 crowd. I don't blame em, if I got money for making games even I would have focused on the big crowds instead of my games fanbase.

Originally Posted by Shenyen

Duh, see this:



Finally someone who is not going "The sky is falling" and posts a reasonable and researched post on this topic.




F2P-games require not investment before you can play them, all you need is to create an account and download the game.

On a single afternon, you can try out 10 different F2P games.

Regular games cost 50+ Dollars or more, so you have to think what you want to play, while you can try out PS2 and if you don_like it - you haven't lost anything.

A decrease in the playerbase after the release is normal, ESPECIALLY for F2P games, because most of the players aren't invested in them as much as with a normal game they paid lots of money for.

Yes, Planetside 2 requires a quite larger playerbase to have fun - but they will merge some servers when that time comes.

Unlike you, they understood that many players will try out the game and some won't like it and leave the game - that's why names are unique across all servers, so that it would be easy to merge servers.

Something else you forget in your Sky-Falling-Sermon: Christmas!

Yup, some people will have more time to play but LOTS of people have other, better things to do than play a game - they have to visit their families, dress up as Santa for their children etc... And of course, they maybe also got some presents, like new games they would like to play for a while.

Do you know why SOE gave us Double Exp for over a week?

Because they wanted to give us a present?

NO!

Because they knew that server populations would decrease over the holidays and to keep the game more playable, they gave an incentive to all those nerdy guys that were torn between playing Far Cry 3, visiting their parents and playing Planetside 2 to choose Planetside.

"Hm, do i want to play Far Cry 3 or do i want to get the most out of the double exp in PS2? - Hm, Far Cry will still be here next month, Double Exp won't, so i'll choose PS2"...

Double XP didn't bring in anymore players than we normally have the numbers dropped anyway if you checked the chart at all, so I'd say most people just don't like the game enough or are too bored to even play when they most benefit.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by thegreekboy

Sony is multiple millions of dollars in debt. I guarantee that the suits went down to them and said something along the lines of "Release before the end of the year or you can kiss your funding goodbye"

No doubt about that. Smed even Tweeted about this before release saying they signed a contract to release when they did. In the same Tweet he stated they wouldn't release if it wasn't ready but that is a broad statement open to interpretation.

[infinite loop]

Steam statistics are irrelevant. If you are on this forum you probably either played PS1 or care about the franchise. How many of us are in outfits and/or have friends that have stopped playing? This is not about the normal drop you see in F2P games, it is PS vets and outfits leaving in droves. The evidence is all over the place and if you don't see it you're in denial.

[Highstall]

Originally Posted by infinite loop

Steam statistics are irrelevant. If you are on this forum you probably either played PS1 or care about the franchise. How many of us are in outfits and/or have friends that have stopped playing? This is not about the normal drop you see in F2P games, it is PS vets and outfits leaving in droves. The evidence is all over the place and if you don't see it you're in denial.

I'm sorry to keep dropping reality - but, there are some things everyone here would do well to keep in mind.

1. Planetside 1 vets (which I agree- most everyone on this forum probably is) just aren't very numerous. Planetside 2 will in no way live or die from their support (or lack thereof.)

2. All games drop in population after the initial excitement of release. This is common in both paid-for, and free-to-play games. The community will have to be built over a long period of time.

3. As an example, League of Legends - arguably the crushing win story of F2P games - did not have a giant community on its release in late 2009. It took them years to build up their current player base, and that entire time the forums were packed with people bemoaning it's death, the exodus of all the players, and the massive problems of bugs and imbalance. Just like here.

4. The fact that they haven't rolled out any huge features in the few months after release is irrelevant. The fact that they haven't made any huge balance adjustments is irrelevant. What will keep PS2 strong over the long term are exactly the sorts of things that people in this forum don't care about: referral rewards, facebook promotions, and a healthy advertising budget. This whole roping in of internet celebrities to wage war is interesting - I haven't seen that tried before, but it's a clever attempt to keep building a community.

5. It also would really help to find a way to add some sort of spectator support, and/or find ways to pit outfits or squads off in competitive play.

I know none of that is super electrifying, and I know that everyone wants big amazing things dropped every week. But if we're talking about the long term health of the game, so far everything looks great. The game works - they have giant wars of hundreds of people and (for the most part) it really works, and responds well. It's a minor technological miracle. Let's be happy about all the amazing things we already have. The long term status of the game is directed by a different set of goals and standards than most people here seem to even be aware of.

[Legolas]

Originally Posted by Highstall

1. Planetside 1 vets (which I agree- most everyone on this forum probably is) just aren't very numerous. Planetside 2 will in no way live or die from their support (or lack thereof.)

I think you would be surprised how many there are, relative to the active population. Once the core of a game leaves, it usually is not long before everyone else does too. They are the first to come, and the last to leave. This has happened in SOE other online games. They never learn.

3. As an example, League of Legends - arguably the crushing win story of F2P games - did not have a giant community on its release in late 2009. It took them years to build up their current player base, and that entire time the forums were packed with people bemoaning it's death, the exodus of all the players, and the massive problems of bugs and imbalance. Just like here.

PS2 won't have time to build up a playerbase if it doesn't fix the main game breaking problems with it like spawn camping, vehicles and population imbalances.

4. The fact that they haven't rolled out any huge features in the few months after release is irrelevant. The fact that they haven't made any huge balance adjustments is irrelevant. What will keep PS2 strong over the long term are exactly the sorts of things that people in this forum don't care about: referral rewards, facebook promotions, and a healthy advertising budget. This whole roping in of internet celebrities to wage war is interesting - I haven't seen that tried before, but it's a clever attempt to keep building a community.

Translation:

Things that don't matter:
- Meta-game.
- New user experience.
- Comprehensible GUI.
- Overabundance of servers.
- Critical gameplay mistakes that affect both old and new users alike.

Things that do matter:
- Referral rewards.
- Facefuck promos.
- Ephemeral youtube "personalities".

Wat.

I know none of that is super electrifying, and I know that everyone wants big amazing things dropped every week. But if we're talking about the long term health of the game, so far everything looks great. The game works - they have giant wars of hundreds of people and (for the most part) it really works, and responds well. It's a minor technological miracle. Let's be happy about all the amazing things we already have.

Just keep lying to yourself then, but don't expect anyone with a clue about the game to agree. I don't like your out-of-touch and patronizing tone in this last paragraph either, by the way.

Indeed.

[Shenyen]

According to Wikipedia, Planetside 1 had a subscriptions peak of 75.000 players in 2003 with around 20.000 players in 2007.

20.000 players (You know, those that are the last to leave, according to your post) are NOTHING, that is laughable...

I doubt that there have been more than 200.000 players over all all time in total, even that is a very small number in comparison to Battlefield or Call of Duty.

I have no idea about the real sales numbers, but i don't think that it is overestimated if i say that Call of Duty still sells more than 20.000 units per day per game, a year after its release.

So ten days of CoD-BO2 sales in november of 2013 will still be more than 10 years of Planetside 1 sales.

Forget about the Planetside 1crowd, they mean absolutely nothing to the success of a game with a budget like Planetside 2.

This game has lots of features of Planetside 1 because some of them worked very well and it uses the same setting and brand, because SOE owns them (and creating a new franchise always takes much more effort and is more prone to being a failure), not because attracting the PS1 players would make PS2 a financial success.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Shenyen

This game has lots of features of Planetside 1 because some of them worked very well and it uses the same setting and brand, because SOE owns them (and creating a new franchise always takes much more effort and is more prone to being a failure), not because attracting the PS1 players would make PS2 a financial success.

Why is it being argued that what PS1 players think would make the game better is ONLY to attract PS1 players? That's an asinine line of thinking.

PS2 has lots of features of Planetside 1? I wouldn't say that is true. Did you even play PS1?