Planetside 2: First Impressions?

[Aaron88]

First off, im a Planetside fan, always have been since its inception and i still am today.

However, i do feel that despite the hard work and dedicated man hours put into the game, it is a step back in some sense for the franchise.
For a start Planetside (original) had far more vehicles (Post C.C add on), all designed to do a different job on the battlefield. My personal favorite was the Flail - a self propelled artillery peice something that is missing from PS2 (...no, not /i/that/i/ PS2 - Planetside Two). What about the Wasp? Skyguard, B.F.R, A.M.S or A.N.T? Yes i realise that A.N.T's aren't needed any more, but why? I found escorting A.N.T convoys to warp gates to gather resources to keep bases running some of the most enjoyable times in Planetside. It added another dimention to the game - and another way of gaining XP. Same with the Wasp - the introduction of the Interceptor class airship/plane/whatever. It added variety to an otherwise paltry diet of Reavers and Mosquitos. I don't really understand why they've not just thrown in those Vehicles to bring us back to the standard of game Planetside (Original) was.

I know there will be a dozen people or so thinking, "This guys an idiot, they are probably bringing them out in an expansion." To which i would say, why would they not put them in at the start, then come up with completely new vehicles afterwards? Just smacks of laziness to me. I understand the need to generate money from a F2P game, but they've got the store and GC and premium membership and all that creamy good stuff. Why not, when aiming to be the best FPS (and following on from the best FPS game ever made btw ;-D ) game in the world right now and throw them in. Then bring us something really fresh in an expansion pack which you'd have to pay for (and to which i wouldn't grumble). Anyway, thats me done about vehicles.

Another thing that irritates me is PS2's rather troublesome level of optimisation. I understand that some people really want to be physically turned on by the scenery of a game and i understand that....i think. But if developers keep going that way, then they are severely limiting their audience, and therefore limiting our enjoyment. PC gaming can not exactly be considered comparitivley as popular as console gaming these days, and now most PC's are used primarily for accessing ebay, sending emails and, lets be frank, porn. Ipads, consoles, mobile phones and tablets are already taking population from the PC market, so whats the point in bascially shutting out those that cannot muster 4GB of RAM, 1GB of dedicated video memory and operating on a 64 bit operating system? It ultimately means that there will be less longevity in the population of the game, which is sad, as i saw the original game go that way. On a personal level, i couldn't give two monkeys about the graphics of a game, i'd still be playing AoE: Rise of Rome, Freelancer, GunZ: The Duel and probably the original Planetside - if there were enough people to play them with.

Completely on the other hand. I LOVE the game, despite it kicks me out every half hour because i am one of those poor creatures running a 32bit operating system (though all my other sys requirements are okay). The fact that i log back in time after time after being kicked is probably a greater statement than anything i could subsequently write about the game.

However since i love the sound of my own keys being stroked (settle down people) what i will quickly say is....

- Damage system is far better than the original, the use of more than one hitbox was a great way to go, the ammount of damage one can sustain before succumbing is fantastic - much better than the original (it was like everyone was James Bond - no matter how many times you tried to kill them...you failed. Only to see them run off with the love of your life...wait wrong forum)
- Graphics are better. Thumbs up. ha.
- F2P - fantastic! Just hope it doesnt become P2W if you catch my drift.

Its a worthy addition to the original, but im not entirely sure i should be happy with just, "Worthy." I wanted the game to blow the top off my petty little mind like it did in the original, i so wanted Sony to be the one, to deliver the most amazing FPS experience ever... and they have to a point. But only to a point.

TLR

Bad:
- Needs the Vehicles added post Core Combat expansion pack for the original game - make money from fresh ideas, not recycled ones.
- Better or further optimisation for lower end PCs.
- Sort out the lag (tough one for them i know, thats why i didnt rant about it above - because it was a Rant!)
- No tutorial or training area or firing range. (I could rant for day about them so just gave them a wide birth)

Good:
- Free to play (F2P)
- Incredible experience, definately the best FPS out there.
- They brought back Planetside


Cheers,
Aaron

 

[Lawyer105]

I played through most of the closed beta and, although the game is relatively good, in my opinion it's just lacking that something that made Planetside 1 so utterly awesome. In Planetside 1, going "Oh f^%$, I've got to be at work in 15 minutes!!!" was a more-common-than-I-like-to-admit occurrence. In Planetside 2, after about 2 hours, I'm just looking for an excuse to log off.

I can't even pinpoint the problem, but I think it had something to do with investment. In Planetside 1, I cared whether we won a base or not. In Planetside 2, even with the new continents, the lack of a lattice system (or equivalent) just means stuff is endlessly flip-flopping back and forth. It really feels like no actions have purpose or consequence, whereas in PS1, once you took a couple of bases you could lock ("own") the continent and push on to another one.

In addition, I'm concerned about the pay-to-win issue. I know that pretty much everything that you can buy can be unlocked ingame, however, anybody that puts some money in is basically going to be ahead forever. This is a much bigger problem in the beginning, when people who've spent money (and therefore have more health, slightly better guns, real sights, health kits etc.) are going to utterly wipe the floor with anybody that's starting out and therefore doesn't have those things. And, in order to encourage people to buy stuff, SOE have made the rate at which you can unlock stuff without paying prohibitively slow, so that only makes the situation worse.

Unfortunately, the prices they charge are far too high for me to even consider spending money. Even if you ignore the poorly designed foreign exchange system (that puts the "almighty dollar" up on a pedestal and basically screws anybody not using USD), it can cost up to a dollar to purchase a single gun. Of the 6-odd available to each of the 6 character classes. And another 3-5 dollars to purchase upgrades like sights for that gun. And that gun is only unlocked ON THAT SERVER, FOR THAT CHARACTER, FOR THAT CLASS. Seriously... WTF?! Maybe that would make sense in some other FPS, where you only play one or two classes. Planetside is about versatility. IF the whole fight is indoors, you probably don't want to be playing a sniper. Switching classes (or loadouts in PS1) was an integral part of the gameplay, and they've made that utterly impossible.

So yeah... PS2 isn't bad. But I'm not convinced that it should have been marketted as Planetside, and I am certainly not going to be spending any money (or any significant amount of time) playing it.

 

[Windcaler]

Why do you need 60fps to be competitive? Is there some sound reasoning and factual information behind that statement?

No I cant explain it factually because theres no way to measure how smooth a game feels to me but Ill still explain where Im coming from anyway

FPS is Frames per second or to put it in laymans terms how smoothly the game runs. Most console games are optimized to have around 30 fps and for some reason I cant understand some games even cap the fps at 30 when they come to PC (why developers want their game to run less smoothly is such an alien concept I just cant comprehend it).

30 fps is the bare minimum a game needs to run without feeling choppy. However for FPS in particular 60 is often the real goal and whats considered essential for competitive play in most FPS games competitive scene. Its been that way for competitive scenes as long as I can remember. Its not just what other people say either. I did this test way back when the 60+ fps debate came out with Quake. At the time my machine ran at over 60 fps but I used a program to cap the framerate at 30. The results were pretty cut and dry when I was able to perform much better at a 60 fps rate

 

[Elyxard]

As someone who downloaded it completely on a whim, not having even heard of planetside before and not even played all that many FPS's in the first place, I've mostly enjoyed my experience so far.

As a kid, I always dreamed of full legions of troops in an all out online multiplayer brawl being possible, and it's really cool to see it actually become reality. I've had a number of very awesome encounters that were like nothing else before it.

That said, it's certainly not perfect, and what they hope to achieve probably isn't even possible yet with our current internet infrastructure. They really need to get the tutorial stuff sorted out though, you don't want to lose players before they can even figure out their game.

It's definitely a product that they should have sat on for just a couple more months to iron out the details. Releasing in November against a ton of big name competition really doesn't serve them any good.

 

[Triforceformer]

I was a beta tester, so here's my opinion in a list.

-Gunplay is horribly bare bones. Aside from the Jump Jets on Light Assault, there was nothing that gave me any impression of uniqueness from the gameplay.
-Progression rate is absolutely abysmal, even after they made it 4x faster.
-All the bases are copy-pasted and not particularly interesting.
-Resource system is inconsequential, as holding a fair amount of territory will always keep you maxed out.
-Tanks, tanks everywhere.
-There are almost no inherent differences between factions. NC hit a little harder, TR fire a little faster, and Vanu's guns just kind of suck and are hitscan. That's it.
-No personality to the game. They're in space in the future, and the devs desperately cling to the "Straight-Faced 'War is Hell' can't have any levity" tone of FPS.
-Taking a page from BF3's book, vehicles like the Sunderer have to have their most basic utilities (Mobile Spawn point) that make them worth spawning be grinded out. The same goes for every ground vehicle, where I have to unlock the FUCKING turbo-boost.
-The game hides behind its scale like a security blanket. In practice it comes down to you playing a mediocre Battlefield knockoff where there are even longer progression grinds, loading replaced with travel time and all the maps are the fucking same.

 

[shintakie10]

My only real complaint at this point is that base defenses are fuckin useless. Like...completely useless. Its pathetically easy to avoid the abysmal firin arc of the antiground turrets to the point that they might as well not even be there. Then you have the really shitty AA turrets that spray bullets everywhere like a flak cannon but the bullets have to actually hit to do damage unlike a flak cannon. On top of that base defenses are absolutely atrocious damage wise. Why does it take 2 direct hits from a stationary slow ass movin cannon to kill a single infantry? How are you actually supposed to defend your base from aircraft drops when it takes 4 of them poundin into a single transport to put a dent into it?

Aside from that though I enjoy it.

Granted I've only sunk maybe 10 hours into it, so its possible I don't have the full view of whats goin on.

 

[Scow2]

-snip-

From my experience in Planetside, the removal of BFRs and Flails is the biggest improvement over Planetside 1. Good riddance.

However, there are some changes I think were big missteps... like letting the Tank Driver also be the Tank Gunner. In the original Planetside, if you wanted to be a one-man Tank driver, you got the shitty little lightning that went down easily to enemy fire, while the MBTs were reserved for someone who had at least one competent buddy.

 

[Lawyer105]

From my experience in Planetside, the removal of BFRs and Flails is the biggest improvement over Planetside 1. Good riddance.

I'm not sure I agree here. I always considered Flails to be free XP. As soon as you see killspam from a Flail, my outfit used to spawn to the nearest base, grab Reavers and race to see who could kill the Flail first.

BFR's were slightly more annoying, but they were also generally cannon fodder. Grab a Phantasm or a Galaxy and drop half a squad on them with Deci's. Lulz were had and hate tells were received. Or you could grab two Libs or a Gal Gunship and make them cry.

Flails and BFR's only really impacted on those playing solo or without a decent outfit. For everybody else, they were mostly just minor distractions.

Also, the cooldown on the BFR (at least until near the end of the game when they pretty much made it irrelevant) meant that BFR's were never as much of a threat as a decently crewed MBT.

However, there are some changes I think were big missteps... like letting the Tank Driver also be the Tank Gunner. In the original Planetside, if you wanted to be a one-man Tank driver, you got the shitty little lightning that went down easily to enemy fire, while the MBTs were reserved for someone who had at least one competent buddy.

Here I agree with you completely. I hate the Battlefield wannabe solo tanks. It completely deviates from the teamwork aspects of Planetside that I loved the most.

Personally I was a ridiculously awesome tank driver. Not the best gunner in the world, but when driving I could move at full speed while evading most incoming fire, use terrain to maintain a minimal hull-down target profile and avoid hitting too many major attitude changes in order to provide a stable firing platform for my gunner. You simply can't do that sort of thing if you're trying to look at 130^ to your direction of travel in order to shoot at something yourself.

 

[PH3NOmenon]

Slightly off-topic, but I thought "spunkgargleweewee" was mostly referring the ridiculous and totalitarian handholding in MMS, not the actual gunplay? Might just be me getting old though.


My first impression: it's okay. I wish they'd spent even more time on the engine and servers, because on my decent rig I sometimes still get framerate freezes which don't feel like lag but straight up graphics issues.

Compared to the original PS, the resource/cooldown system works great. You can do everything from the start instead of having to cert before you can get a vehicle, which is great. Also, the resource system is capped low enough that you never have to save up for anything, but are instead incouraged to spend resources where you can.

The payment model is a bit meh. Some guns are indreibly expensive, so you'll have to pony up some dough. Which is fine, but the way they're trying to "force" you into a monthly payment is less pleasant. I wish that they'd take a more GW2 approach, with just station cash and no silly monthly plans. Or something like Tribes2, where a single purchase gets you "membership" for life plus some cash to spend. As it stands now I'll likely never spend a dime, even though I like the game and kind of want to spend a dime.



In short: it's fine, could've been better, will get a bit better as time goes on and stuff gets ironed out most likely, but at the same time will probably not be good enough to be called great.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Played about a half hour today. Maining a combat medic in the Vanu.

My only gripe is the choppy framerate. If I have more than 30 people in view, it's really choppy and hard to move and shoot. Oh and I have trouble telling friend from foe sometimes.

Aside from that I like. I enjoy running around healing and rezzign people to keep an assault's momentum going. I even landed a kill or two. I actually feel like I'm participating in a large scale assault, like my healing actually means something.

I'm probably gonna play this casually from time to time. Not sure if I'll play this or Tribes more often.

 

[Lawyer105]

The payment model is a bit meh. Some guns are indreibly expensive, so you'll have to pony up some dough. Which is fine, but the way they're trying to "force" you into a monthly payment is less pleasant. I wish that they'd take a more GW2 approach, with just station cash and no silly monthly plans. Or something like Tribes2, where a single purchase gets you "membership" for life plus some cash to spend. As it stands now I'll likely never spend a dime, even though I like the game and kind of want to spend a dime.

I'm having this problem too. I want to support them, because I know that it's only likely to really become worthy of the Planetside name if it makes enough money to justify at least a year's worth of updates, improvements and patches (as opposed to just surviving and scraping by).

However, with the payment model being what it is, I just can't justify spending money on it because the return rate seems so low. I had a similar problem with ME3 MP. I'd have liked to support it, but since you could easily spend £15-£20 without actually unlocking a single new item or upgrade (because of their stupid lottery system) the returns just seemed too low.

I'd way rather have a monthly sub or something than the current model.

 

[Aaron88]

However, there are some changes I think were big missteps... like letting the Tank Driver also be the Tank Gunner. In the original Planetside, if you wanted to be a one-man Tank driver, you got the shitty little lightning that went down easily to enemy fire, while the MBTs were reserved for someone who had at least one competent buddy.

Interesting response. I thought BFR's were, in my personal opinion, a good addition to the battlefield, if only for aesthetics and variance in terms of war materiél (sp?) (i remember being a cloaker and using my pistol to render one immobile through their weak spot which was fun) and though i never used one myself i could see the need for, as the lawyer says "Solo" players to feel like they could have an impact on the battle.

I have to agree with you completely on the Tank driving/gunning thing too. Im not much of a vehicle user (for all my gripes) aside from the Flash (biker style gangs on flashes are a fun way to play Planetside) but it points to the fact that i think the series is slowly being dumbed down, like many other gaming franchises such as CoD (Post United Offensive expansion). Its a shame, though it wont stop me playing.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read my post too.

Cheers,

Aaron