Poll: The Planetside 2 Beta!

[Callex]

With the NDA lifted, we can finally talk about the Planetside 2 beta! Are there any other escapians in the beta? What factions are you all playing?

I've really enjoyed the beta so far. Yes, performance is an ongoing issue but the weekly patches are constantly upping those framerates. I'm hovering around the 15-20 fps level at the moment, which is a marked improvement over the 5-10fps I was pulling not two weeks ago. As a Vanu player the most recent patch has been particularly nice, bringing our weapons and equipment up to speed with the other factions.

For those not in the beta: It's very much a technical/WIP beta. They're changing weapons, mechanics and terrain layout every week. SOE have been incredibly active on the beta forum, with many of the actual development team creating threads to discuss features they're working on directly with the players. PS2 is looking like it will be a serious contender in the MMO world.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Still waiting to get in. All I ever got was a stress test invite. Poo to stress tests.

I'm very curious about the game though. It's on my radar, even if I hate the aesthetic.

 

[Lawyer105]

To be honest, it's currently missing that special something that made PS1 so awesome.

I was utterly and totally amped to get into the beta, but after a couple of days it's just meh... can't be bothered.

Performance, balance etc. issues aside (it IS a beta, after all), the game as a whole just feels blah to me.

TTK is far too low for such a large-scale tactical game. When it can take 2-3 minutes (sometimes as long as 5) to get into combat (depending on logistics and other factors) a 1.5s TTK is FAR TOO LOW. Also, the level of logistical support is clearly underdeveloped (whose genius idea was it to replace AMS's with obvious-Galaxy-is-obvious anyway!).

They seem to have gone out of their way to reduce interdependence. Sure, the class system is a nice idea to promote teamwork, but even that seems to have been designed to allow lone-wolfing. Add in all the one-man tanks, easily available medkits etc. and there's basically no reason to have anybody else around ever, except as bullet sponges.

The design of the resouce system is also poorly thought out. Having the vehicles etc. require resources to spawn, and having the grenades, class tools and unlocks/upgrades require resources to purchase, and then locking those resources into territory control simply means that everybody jumps ship to the winning side. It's not all that uncommon to have one empire (whichever one currently has the most territory) jumping up to 60% server pop, leaving the other two empires with 15-25% each and camped in their warpgate while the "winning" side sits around collecting their upgrades.

Thus far, it's basically looking like an attempt to make a persistent, large-scale BF3, rather than a new Planetside, reimagined or not.

I'll wait and see how it turns out, but with the current development direction, I can easily see myself playing Mass Effect 3 for a second time (shock, horror!) than bothering to play PS2.

 

[Lawyer105]

[double post - please delete]