PlanetSide 2?

[WendelI]

I've been an avid planetside player since the first one but i cant really say anything new that hasn't already been said by these fine gents. Ill just toss out a bit of getting started tips if you decide to dive in.

Choose your faction depending on preferred role and the nation vehicle.

The Terran have a great siegeing tank. Their weapons are easy to use and will win you most short to medium range combat scenarios. Their aircraft is great for hit and run tactics.

The conglomerate have a very strong Heavy vehicle that can stand some serious punishment and deals the most burst damage. Their guns are the hardest to use due to recoil but when your bullets hit Oh do they hit hard. Their aircraft slow but it packs serious burst damage with its mounted shotgun and rocket pods for land.

The Vanu have no bullet drop on their weaponry so long range engagements are their strengths. their tank is weaker in both dps and armor than the other two but it can strafe and has a turbo booster so its great if you can keep moving. Their aircraft is a great stalker and over all 1v1 dogfighter.

so if you like 1 hitting with your sniper rifle you should go conglomerate but if you like sniping from a mile away then you should thing vanu.

As of now Anti-air fire is a must have in ever squadron due to how well aircraft can tip battles in your favor. engies assults, maxes and the common pool tank have anti air capabilities that you should probably invest into at some point.

Also every faction has a gun that only the heavy assult can use that is unique to their faction. Vanu have a long range slow firing plasma canon, its for suppressive fire and all around being annoying. Terrans have a chaingun because that's how they solve problems, with more bullets. And conglomerate have the jack hammer, its just a big ass shotgun so if you're into that by all means.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

A lot of people say it's pay-to-win, but they're talking out of their ass. The cash shop is basically identical to TF2; you can unlock weapons with cash or certs and the weapons are all sidegrades, with one or two infamous exceptions like rocket pods. The reason it turns people off is because the cert prices for new weapons are often very high (~1000 certs) and cert gain is slowest when you're starting out. The thing is, there's always a set of weapons that are much cheaper (~100 certs) intended for new players. Paying money really just expedites the process.

Fair enough but then you've got stuff like the class upgrades. I hear they're not too substantial, but I can't shake the feeling that some guy can go tearing through packs of new players thanks to a health and ammo increase sort of thing.
Anyway how much do the class and vehicle upgrades affect the game? Everything else seems kickass (cept for the cert rate), but this seems a bit worrying. Less 'side'grades and more flat out +10% to this stat style upgrades.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Fair enough but then you've got stuff like the class upgrades. I hear they're not too substantial, but I can't shake the feeling that some guy can go tearing through packs of new players thanks to a health and ammo increase sort of thing.
Anyway how much do the class and vehicle upgrades affect the game? Everything else seems kickass (cept for the cert rate), but this seems a bit worrying. Less 'side'grades and more flat out +10% to this stat style upgrades.

You can't buy those. Any upgrade in the game that gives you a flat X% increase to any stat (health, shields, whatever) can only be unlocked with certifications, not cash.

You can buy boosters to increase the rate at which you gain XP, but not by much (20%-50%, I think), and the boost only increases the XP you do gain; it doesn't just grant you a chunk of XP. So you still need to be good at killing people to take advantage of the boost.

Planetside 2 is the worst FPS I have ever played.

That post was a big pack of horse shit. I mean that politely; it's possible that you're mistaken, rather than intentionally lying.

Basically, don't run around lone-wolf style (in a team game) as an infiltrator (an unpowered class that specialises in sniping) and try to kill people with your pistol (a sidearm that is weaker than all primary weapons). And when you get swatted like a goddamn fly, don't blame the game for it.

And, as I explained above, there is no way to pay for certs. All flat upgrades (increased health, shield regen, C4, etc.) can only be gained with certs - i.e. by playing the game. You can't buy them.

 

[Longstreet]

Got it, never played it.

The case with me is, downloaded it through steam, start it up. Then get a message that it is installing, few seconds later followed by a fuck you, do it yourself and it closes.


So yea.....

 

[Blunderboy]

I'm playing it. It's pretty impressive for FTP.
I'm still at that annoying stage where I die all the damn time though.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

It's probably the heaviest CPU reliant game I've seen in ages. Which means it really is poorly designed. Oh the game will run but it still is incredibly inefficient.

For some reason shadows fucking murder CPUs in this game. It's nice that they tell you whether you're CPU or GPU bound, though I wish they would give you a god damn ping readout on the score screen.

The entire point was that I was in a situation with a guaranteed advantage, I didn't only try it in this manner with the Infiltrator, I also tried similar tactics with the Heavy Assault with the overshield ability on, with the exact same result.
The result was guaranteed death against any member who had paid for content.

Consider the possibility that it's you. On mutiple levels. It's you doing the wrong thing (trying to go pistol-commando is just bad in general), it's you doing the wrong thing badly, it's you trying to do the right thing badly (if you really got right behind a non-MAX infantry with a heavy and unloaded on him, the only way for him to beat you is if you fuck up, basically), etc. This isn't a criticism of you; that's just basic inexperience. Starting out, I did plenty of things wrong and died a lot. I also killed people quite often, even people who had put more time and money into it than me. Now I've put in a decent pile of time (but still no money) and I do better though I still make mistakes and get killed, even by people less experienced than me from time to time.

The criticism of you here is that you're taking your limited experience and holding fast to a conclusion that does not necessarily follow. "I got killed a bunch by other people, therefore this game is pointless pay-to-win" is entirely unconvincing, even though both parts of that statement could be true. The testimony of any person is inherently limited. And it's totally cool if the game's not for you, but don't think for a second that your experience is The One Great Truth or some-such noise.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

This can happen a certain amount of times because of me, sure, but not every time, and it's a flawed argument anyway:
I have no need to try to put anybody off the game, as I'm not employed by SOE's competitors, so I have no reason to be biased, and I'm perfectly capable of judging when I have died through my own direct fault (picking the wrong fight, etc) my own fault indirectly (being in the wrong place) and the game mechanics themselves, I also have no reason to lie about it, or I'd be spouting made-up Kill/Death ratios and the like, but I'm not interested in E-Penis waving (if I was I'd go on Battlelog) I'm simply answering the OP's question.

Whelp, there's a giant "Abandon Ship!" sign if I've ever seen one.

Also, fuck The Crown.

 

[Beryl77]

I just play it occasionally. Sometimes a good experience, sometimes not so good. It has some balancing issues and unless you spent many hours a day, it does take quite a bit to get the certs for the things you want. Performance is also a problem, it's way to CPU heavy.
However, it's pretty awesome when there are many people attacking a place at once. When you see dozens of tanks and infantry all around storming a big place, the only word to describe it is epic. If big warfare like bf2 is your think, then you'll probably enjoy it despite some rather annoying issues.
One thing, when you learn to fly, make sure you learn how to land. So many people have died just because they couldn't land properly.

Also, fuck The Crown.

Amen. Many frustrating hours have been spent trying to get that place.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

Not only are you rude, you're also entirely wrong.

Well, it's hard to say something is horse shit politely. I didn't mean any personal offence. You just said a lot of stuff that wasn't right.

The entire point was that I was in a situation with a guaranteed advantage, I didn't only try it in this manner with the Infiltrator, I also tried similar tactics with the Heavy Assault with the overshield ability on, with the exact same result.

An infiltrator is not at an advantage in close quarters. They're mostly snipers. Until they recently added SMGs, infiltrators had no reliable close-quarters weapon. Saying you have a "guaranteed advantage" in that scenario is poppycock. I'm sorry.

I'm not sure what you mean by "similar tactics" as a heavy assault. If you meant sneaking up behind people and shooting them once in the head with your pistol, no fucking wonder you died. Use your goddamn LMG.

The result was guaranteed death against any member who had paid for content.
This tactic was used mostly as a test to be honest, after I'd noticed that every clearly upgraded character killed me absurdly quickly, and I'd also noticed that I'd not once been killed by someone with a starter gun, so it wasn't tried in isolation.

Everyone in Planetside dies absurdly quickly. All classes have 500 health and 500 shields. A bullet does anywhere from 100-225 damage, not counting modifiers for headshots and damage dropoff at range. That means you will die in five to ten bullets, always.

It does not take long to shoot ten bullets! It does not take much time at all. You will die very quickly in PS2; it's how they built the game. It has less to do with what weapon you're using and more to do with reflexes and good positioning, i.e. shooting people in the back very quickly.

As has been mentioned before, you can buy boosters to quickly gain certs, which gives a significant advantage in how many upgrades you can buy (Pay2Win) and you can buy guns directly for Station Cash which are more powerful than the starter guns (Pay2Win).

The boosters do nothing for you if you're already bad at the game, and the guns are all sidegrades. They trade off disadvantages for advantages in other areas.

For example, the MSW-R is a Terran Republic light machine gun available for the relatively cheap cost of 100 certs. It has a higher rate of fire and a much faster reload than most LMGs, and has access to the advanced laser sight upgrade that most other LMGs do not have. To compensate, it has half the ammunition capacity in the clip compared to the default CARV, and it is significant more inaccurate at longer ranges. It's a hipfire weapon intended to be used in close quarters.

The TMG-50, by comparison, is another LMG available for 500 certs. It has the highest damage per bullet of all the TR LMGs, the slowest fire rate, and a mid-range clip capacity of 75. It has access to the high velocity ammunition and advanced forward grip upgrades, which increase bullet veloicty and reduce horizontal recoil respectively. The TMG-50 is a long-range LMG, designed to be fired in short, accurate bursts that take advantage of the higher per-bullet damage and negates the slower fire rate.

Neither of these are more powerful than the CARV. They're more specialised. They give advantages in certain specific scenarios (close range, long range, burst fire, sustained fire) to fit a person's specific playstyle.

The most important point though (the one you missed entirely) was the fact that the game was not like this in beta, all guns were reasonably balanced, such that many opted to continue with starter guns and use the certs for other things, which is clearly not an option now. Add that to the fact that such situations where you are firing into the back of an enemy and are annihilated when he turns around with him taking very little damage did not occur in beta and you have a clear example of how the game has been engineered in final release to be Pay2Win.

Show me the patch notes. I was in the beta. This didn't happen.

It's irrelevant anyway, because the current state of the weapons is not as you describe. You can actually get the numbers out of the game files if you want to compare them, and if you did you'd find out that the difference between individual weapons is comparatively minor.

The largest difference between weapons is factional, i.e. between TR/VS/NC weapons. Even then, it's not nearly as major a factor as being good at the game, and even that isn't as important to success as good organisation at a platoon and outfit level.

Judging by your rude and rather touchy attitude, I'm going to assume that you have "paid to win" and you are now trying to justify it to yourself by insisting loudly and abrasively that everything is balanced and you haven't just bought an advantage.

No, I just get annoyed when I see people peddling bullshit.

I don't buy boosters. I purchased the MSW-R, the TMG-50, the CARV-S, the SMG-46, the TRAC-5 S, the M-77B, the Rotary and the Hellfire rocket pods all with certs. I am BR 56. I earn thirty to fifty certs an hour playing casually. I have spent a total of twenty-five dollars on this game during a triple station cash event, and I used it to buy camo and a smiley face hood ornament. All these people I see saying that it's impossible to get the weapons you want with certs, I am walking proof that they are talking shit.

I get the feeling none of this is going to get through to you, though, so I'll just have to settle for clearing the record for anyone else here reading this. Planetside 2 is not pay-to-win. The cash unlocks are cosmetics and sidegrades. The direct upgrades cannot be unlocked with cash. Those are the facts.