Planetside 2 Catch-All

My 4000 Station Cash is already gone.
The good news is that I'm back to what I had when I was playing Beta last plus a couple of other goodies ( 150mm Lib cannon, ground rockets for Scythe).

I have of course come to the conclusion that the 150mm cannon was a waste because even though I was in the second seat the lib was unlocked, the next person who got in went to the third seat.
I don't know what would happen if a third person tried, but damn I bought it so I could use it.

I was pretty excited at first to be caught up with a TR HFA offensive one of my first few times playing, but I realized that their recruit-spamming is just for mobilizing enough plebs for a Zerg army. And TR is the default, so there's that.

Ever notice the different music for the factions? The NC music has a pretty serious Firefly vibe, which comes as no surprise given the parallels.

Archangel wrote:

Ever notice the different music for the factions? The NC music has a pretty serious Firefly vibe, which comes as no surprise given the parallels.

Yeah, I like NC's music. Vanu is kind of Cylon-y/Battlestar Galactica-ish. I forgot what TR is like, orchestral, horns, patriotic I'm assuming.

I used the trial system to test out the Lasher for the first time today.

- The lasher fires energy orbs, the rate of fire is less than a rifle but the gun holds 75 rounds so you can keep up a withering barrage.
- The gun is very accurate even if you hold the trigger down. When you stand still the cone of fire is zero, even without using the iron sights.
- The orbs travel a lot slower than a bullet but they do splash damage whenever they hit something.
- The AoE radius is about one metre, you can easily hit people around corners and doorframes.
- The damage seems to chew things up pretty well. I'm not sure if the weapon purely does splash damage or if direct hits hurt more, I'll need someone's help to test that out.
- Compared to the other special heavy assault weapons the Lasher is the best all-around. Jackhammers win at point blank range being supershotguns, but anything farther than that and they become almost useless. The minichaingun wins at medium range but can't be used at long range because of the spread. The lasher can be used at all ranges, but the closer you get to the target the more the other two weapons out-DPS it.
- The lasher is a friendly fire NIGHTMARE. If you use one you pretty much need to run off solo because the slightest mistake when shooting will hurt you and everyone around you.

That is one thing that surprised me, I don't remember PS1 having friendly fire. Wasn't really an issue with me the other night except for getting killed a few times in enclosed spaces due to not wanting to kill a friendly.

Tamren wrote:

IMAGE(http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/921246653209024934/B083C00049B22C923B33698BE3FEF84AFEB7607E/)

My god...it's full of...targets.

Scythe with A2A missiles and turbo laser FTW. I've had some amazing fun with that combo in the last day or so.

Despite my reservations, I may try to jump through the hoops of joining QD. This game can be fun for a solo pilot, but it's definitely built around teamwork.

Coldstream wrote:

Despite my reservations, I may try to jump through the hoops of joining QD. This game can be fun for a solo pilot, but it's definitely built around teamwork.

Get in touch with a QD/GWJer member here, first, would be my recommendation. Their website isn't exactly clear, I scoured it last night looking for their recruiting procedure and didn't find the information I was looking for. So I hopped in PS2 and played while sitting in their teamspeak New User channel waiting for help. Tossed off a few in game tells, earned 20 certs and called it a night without getting a response ingame or in TS.

It's hard at night because the people that can invite you to the outfit are running the squad or the entire platoon.

On the QuantumDawn.com site they have a toolbar link (at the top) that says "Apply to Join Us!" It's pretty thorough. I didn't have any issues.

Edit: I also friended up a bunch of people. I will suffer a severe narcissistic injury if I don't get all of those requests approved.

I applied to Quantum Dawn yesterday. I had to use "Kodah" as a name because I already used "Bear".

I'm just not having a lot of fun playing NC. I'm so sick of struggling to hit the opposing faction with a weapon that jumps around like a jackrabbit. Using the VS heavy weapon I bet my K/D ratio has doubled or even tripled.

I had a nice conversation with Shin and got to play with QD for an hour or so last night. Seems like a good group of guys but the comms are a cluttered mess

I joined QD last night, it was really easy for me. My app on the website was approved instantly, and I only spent a few minutes in the new user chat before I was added to the outfit and joined a squad. It was a pretty fun experience actually, even though we were on the losing side of a big TR offensive for most of the time I was on. I'm pretty quiet usually and they didn't seem to mind, my play style is more suited to just following around the folks who know what they are doing.

I also bought one of the VS bolt action sniper rifles using station cash.. the V10 I think? I am starting to fall in love with sniping in this game, I think if I am not in a squad i'm gonna spend my time finding a place behind enemy lines and enjoy racking up some kills. I had a great time sitting in a hill behind a TR assault on a NC base. My only problem was running out of ammo!

For those in Quantum Dawn out main "Ops" Start at 3 EST. If you're around to play thats the time to do it. The other time is Wednesday at 7pm EST

I need some of you fine people to hook me up with some noob education!

I don't know the maps yet, and get a bit confused trying to follow/find my squad. Is there some visual cue I am missing that will help me pick out my squad out of the entire platoon? Just running towards green names doesn't really work.

On the topic of names, sometimes a squad/platoon member's name is green with a red outline. What does that mean?

Spotted enemies have the nice red-orange indicator above them, but I'm having a Female Doggo of a time making rapid friend or foe determinations on un-spotted ones at times. I've died several times because I wasn't sure if I was about to unload a magazine into a teammate while the enemy had no such confusion Is there something I'm missing that will make this easier, or do I just have to suffer through until I am able to discern the silhouettes better? (To my older and inexperienced eyes everyone other than Max units looks really similar, especially once you factor in all the camo colors that bugger up the purple/red/blue basics.)

Elycion wrote:

I need some of you fine people to hook me up with some noob education!

I don't know the maps yet, and get a bit confused trying to follow/find my squad. Is there some visual cue I am missing that will help me pick out my squad out of the entire platoon? Just running towards green names doesn't really work.

On the topic of names, sometimes a squad/platoon member's name is green with a red outline. What does that mean?

Spotted enemies have the nice red-orange indicator above them, but I'm having a Female Doggo of a time making rapid friend or foe determinations on un-spotted ones at times. I've died several times because I wasn't sure if I was about to unload a magazine into a teammate while the enemy had no such confusion Is there something I'm missing that will make this easier, or do I just have to suffer through until I am able to discern the silhouettes better? (To my older and inexperienced eyes everyone other than Max units looks really similar, especially once you factor in all the camo colors that bugger up the purple/red/blue basics.)

If you have the time, I will direct you to this tutorial page. Has tons of videos.

Elycion wrote:

I need some of you fine people to hook me up with some noob education!

I don't know the maps yet, and get a bit confused trying to follow/find my squad. Is there some visual cue I am missing that will help me pick out my squad out of the entire platoon? Just running towards green names doesn't really work.

On the topic of names, sometimes a squad/platoon member's name is green with a red outline. What does that mean?

Spotted enemies have the nice red-orange indicator above them, but I'm having a Female Doggo of a time making rapid friend or foe determinations on un-spotted ones at times. I've died several times because I wasn't sure if I was about to unload a magazine into a teammate while the enemy had no such confusion Is there something I'm missing that will make this easier, or do I just have to suffer through until I am able to discern the silhouettes better? (To my older and inexperienced eyes everyone other than Max units looks really similar, especially once you factor in all the camo colors that bugger up the purple/red/blue basics.)

As far as determining if someone is friend or foe, if they don't have a little blue arrow over their head consider them a target. If in doubt, mash Q. This doesn't work so well at long range (where FoF indicators seem to be flaky) or for vehicles (perhaps due to range.)

edit: To elaborate, sometimes you can even "spot" enemies you yourself might not be able to make out. If you suspect someone is standing in an area you can sometimes get away with scanning your recital over the area and tapping Q.

Coldstream wrote:

On the QuantumDawn.com site they have a toolbar link (at the top) that says "Apply to Join Us!" It's pretty thorough. I didn't have any issues.

Fun stuff, said link is mostly not showing up for me. Switching browsers, manually typing the URL, going to quantumdawn.com instead of quantumdawn.enjin.com, I'm only getting that link sometimes. Eh, working now or at least enough to get by. There was a reason I never got into building websites.

Well, first night with QD. Friendly group. Organisation was a bit rough. Not sure that splitting people up into infantry/vehicles/SpecOps works terribly well. As the Marines will tell you, for tactical operations, you really benefit from a mixed group. Still, was a good time overall.

TempestBlayze wrote:

If you have the time, I will direct you to this tutorial page. Has tons of videos.

Yeah, I'd watched all those previously and they had some nice information in them.

As I realized on my own tonight, my second question was the answer to my first. The outline around the names is color coded by squad. Apparently I'd always been in the green squad before and unless you're looking carefully it's hard to even notice the green outline around a green name. Overall I'd like it a lot better if SOE let you customize those colors.

I just tried the 20 shot automatic "scout rifle" for infiltrators. It's basically a 20 round assault rifle. Gives you much better mobile firepower now that they took shotguns away from cloakers. But you have to aim really well because you don't get many shots.

Watterson has been having a lot of stability problems. We should all make some NC alts on Connery.

Tamren wrote:

I just tried the 20 shot automatic "scout rifle" for infiltrators. It's basically a 20 round assault rifle. Gives you much better mobile firepower now that they took shotguns away from cloakers. But you have to aim really well because you don't get many shots.

Watterson has been having a lot of stability problems. We should all make some NC alts on Connery.

I tried the Nyx out so far. Really liked it a lot more than the Artemis which was more automatic. For my VS heavy, I tried the flare out and liked the damage and more control.

Joined up on as a Vanu on Waterson (name: Gunnner) and gave it a spin this evening. It was unrestricted pubbie chaos, but I still had a pretty good time. Next time up I'll see about making contact with you guys.

whats the deal with the whisper sound on QD TS?

ranalin wrote:

whats the deal with the whisper sound on QD TS?

You can just turn that off in the Settings menu.

ranalin wrote:

whats the deal with the whisper sound on QD TS?

That's a command whisper. It's usually in a separate channel so commanders and squad leaders can talk to each other but the way they have it set up in QD everyone hears it.

I already asked Shin about this and he said they tried it the other way and it was chaos.

Bear wrote:

I already asked Shin about this and he said they tried it the other way and it was chaos.

I think the way they're doing it is chaos, to the point where it's screwing up my enjoyment of the game when things get busy because TS3 never shuts the hell up.

Their command channel should be going to the various commanders, then each squad leader should relay whatever their squad needs to know. The way things are now communication within the squad is nearly impossible because there's a constant conversation going on in the command channel and you can't get a word in edgewise.

Elycion wrote:

I think the way they're doing it is chaos, to the point where it's screwing up my enjoyment of the game when things get busy because TS3 never shuts the hell up.

Their command channel should be going to the various commanders, then each squad leader should relay whatever their squad needs to know. The way things are now communication within the squad is nearly impossible because there's a constant conversation going on in the command channel and you can't get a word in edgewise.

To be fair, I think they're working through some growing pains with massive influx of new players. I think they're trying to get things sorted out. Shin referenced as much when I talked to him. Frankly, they'd be much better off going to what they call "battle comms" until they get it sorted out.

Having the commanders speak to each other in general TS chat makes it way too cluttered in my opinion.

Now that I've finally managed to dig up my old Station account, I'll probably end up rolling Vanu (Mattherson) with the Qt3 crowd.

If there's a GWJ contingent floating around, I'd love to have an alternative to swimming in the pubby pool.

Joined up with QD today. We had a good run pushing around the public zerg on indar. I spent some time as all the classes. Either I am a terrible sniper or the default weapon stinks. HA and L.A. were both fun. I found the jetpack to be a bit under-powered so some of my certs will likely go that way.

Any advice on early cert spending?

Am I the only one that's just not feeling the whole Vanu vibe? I'm trying to embrace the whole story but I'm really struggling. I like the guys in AD but sooooo much purple and soooooo much pew pew pew!

I want to just pitch this out there, in case you feel like considering it. My outfit is NC and we play on Connery (West Coast) because, hello: James Bond.

Anyway, there will be times when few people are on the primary GwJ server (or it's down), and then you'd be welcome to join us. I figure we could have a "confederation" of outfits spread across the servers.

I ran with some of you great guys a few days ago (though I still need to be added to QD as an outfit-member). Lots of fun being Vanu, and know that I'll jump in from time to time.

Anyway, if this sounds floatable, maybe we could revise the "Catch-all" source post to include some vital stats. I sure don't want to divert focus, I just want to make it clear that if you ever get the hankering for some NC fun, you could find a group of like-minded people with a good attitude.