May 28, 2003 - The idea of PlanetSide has always appealed to me. A war being fought over a world where players work together to overcome the evil of the other side, whatever that other side may be. The opportunity for tactical decision making, the emergence of leaders to organize offensive and defensive maneuvers, and the pure fun of an action and skill based massively multiplayer game. Sony Online was hoping to offer just that when PlanetSide was released last week. After getting into the game a bit, chatting with players, and trying to pick some fights, it's apparent that some of the players are certainly having a blast. I however, am not. Not quite yet anyway.
PlanetSide takes place on a planet far away from Earth. After being marooned thanks to a worm hole that decided to close after tons of people had made their way through to the other side, rebellions began and three sides came out with sufficient power to try and carve their own niche on the planet Auraxis. The carving is just turning out to be a very violent matter. So now these three factions, the Terran Republic, Vanu Sovereignty, and New Conglomerate fight over the planet by fighting over bases scattered across the 10 continents and three faction sanctuary islands. If you want to know more about this, we have previews that go in more depth.
The game does a lot of things right. Three different sides battling over multiple control points and continents has a lot of potential, especially when a lot of people are battling it out at the same time over the same little piece of land. So far I've seen battles with what must have been close to a hundred people around a base. You might think that this could be a bit chaotic and unorganized and you'd probably be right.
At the same time, this level of disorganization depends entirely on the people that are playing. I've noticed some very organized squads at this point that will drop from a Galaxy transport ship onto the top of an outpost and within a matter of a couple of minutes secure the area, destroy any regeneration pods so reinforcements can't spawn in the base, and set up automated defense turrets with a hack and capture following very closely. And when you see a couple of squads working together in concert to do something like this, it really is almost like an army simulation of some sort. Everybody has a job and does it.
But if you don't have these disciplined gamers playing together, the battles can dissolve into mass chaos with troops running willy nilly all over the place getting nothing done and losing every fight against more organized enemies. It seems that battles don't just request teamwork, they demand it. While I personally like the teamwork approach (playing with an organized team is always more fun) the scope and number of friendly troops that can move into the area make it nearly impossible to control at times. It's easy to get confused when your own friendly troops (not involved in your particular squad) begin to run around getting in your way, mucking up your organization. It's also very easy to get confused when first beginning to play the game.
Some of this confusion is due to the interface, which can be large and confusing at times. The box comes with a cheat sheet keyboard map, but you'll still have to spend some time familiarizing yourself with the controls, especially when it comes to communication, which is the most important part to any part of the game. Typing everything you want to say in is really hard to do when in the middle of a huge firefight. So using either the keystroke voice chat has to be done, much like it was in Tribes 2. The route to saying what you want to say will take some time to figure out and remember because there are just so many things to say. I recommend, if you have the Internet connection and gear for it, is hooking up the voice-over-Internet option. After playing in one group with this, as you'll hear in the videos, it makes all the difference in organizing your squad and getting them to places they need to be. Even if it's only the squad leader with this function, it'll make your experience more enjoyable.
Now the big problem with any of this, and I know not everybody seems to be having these problems, is performance. Anybody who plays FPSs will know that tagging a moving target is really, really hard when you're getting lag and heavy chop. I have been having enormous problems with this. Much of the time, PlanetSide has been unplayable for me. The videos we have for you today will give you a little glimpse into my frustration ( I did try to get the smoothest videos of the bunch). Not being able to move for two or three seconds at a time makes shooting things difficult. And sadly, when these big battles start shaping up is when the chop starts rising. Some of the time, the first shot from my enemy will freeze my screen, leaving me vulnerable and then dead. Now before all of you start writing in with your complaints how your machine is running PlanetSide at easily 50-60 frames per second, let me make it clear that I have only played this on one mid-range machine at 800x600 at this point. I'm going to put some more time on a better machine and see how much difference this makes.
My second big gripe is one that I don't think is going to be able to be fixed. The maps are enormous. Too enormous. My entire squad was forced to start running from base to base after our Galaxy pilot left simply because none of us had the credentials to drive any vehicles that could get a bunch of us somewhere fast. Running around for 20 minutes only to find that the base you ran to is totally done being captured is not my idea of fun. Once I get enough points to upgrade my credentials to include personal transportation, I'll be a little happier, but there still doesn't seem to be any huge reason to have continents that big, especially when the landscapes are really not that interesting or used for anything but running across. I have yet to see a battle in these huge expanses in between bases, mainly because nobody wants to chance having to respawn and start the long trek again.
There's certainly more to see and do before I can make a final verdict about this game, but from what I've seen so far, PlanetSide has the potential to be something good. But as with most other MMOs, this will almost totally be a result of the community and the constant updates that persistent world games promise. Look back in a bit for a full review after we've had the chance to really get immersed in the community and check out how the game runs on different computers.
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2003-05-29, 10:35 AM
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