Planetside 2 Catch-All

I'm not a fan of Buzz. But, I did agree with many of his points.

I fear that Planetside 1 may have been a lucky stroke of genius and that the later updates to Planetside 1 and the attempts to streamline Planetside 2 are not building on the sandbox, but trying to create a different game.

I'm still irritated that the developers strayed from their "no one shot one kill" and "no indirect fire" edicts of the original game.

I do enjoy running with my outfit and killing lots of bad dudes. I just don't know how long I can keep playing a giant game of PvP instead of a giant game of moving a map.

BadMojo wrote:

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/i...

Not sure if this has been posted.

That is a great post! Nice to have someone getting down and dirty with the issues. I really don't play enough to have a sense as to WHY a lot of my play sessions aren't fun (and I think partly I'm just bad), but to have him point out the uselessness of defending, the emphasis on farming, etc.

My biggest PS2 gripe, though: it doesn't make good use of my time. I spend much of my time (and I've got maybe 30 minutes every couple of nights to dedicate to PS2) trying to find a good fight. It feels like I'm either entering a lopsided battle, or one that's just about to finish by the time I arrive. And when the battle is finished, there is no clear way of knowing where to go next. So even if I've just finished up a really fun 10 minute attack on Tech Plant, there's that gnawing worry that the rest of my play time will be spent meandering.

When GWJers are playing, though, it's much more fun. Wish there was an easier way to join your squads other than using Vent. I'm still not very comfortable using voice chat...

So I'll keep playing, but I'm definitely not as hot on it as I was initially.

As I understand it, if you are in an outfit, you can filter the social screen to show outfit groups that are not full. That way you can join outfit squads quickly. That's what I do with my outfit.

I also find that running in an organized outfit that's large helps make sure you are where the fight is.

BadMojo wrote:

As I understand it, if you are in an outfit, you can filter the social screen to show outfit groups that are not full. That way you can join outfit squads quickly. That's what I do with my outfit.

I also find that running in an organized outfit that's large helps make sure you are where the fight is.

Yeah! I recently joined the GWJ Outfit, so hopefully that'll make the GWJ Squad show up when I "filter by friends". Prior to joining the Outift it would never show the Squad my friends were in - I'm guessing because it was private? Hence why I had to jump on Vent and plead and beg to be added (jk).

BadMojo wrote:

I'm not a fan of Buzz. But, I did agree with many of his points.

This is my feeling as well. I don't care much for Buzz as a person, but he has a lot of in-game experience, and I think he's completely correct about the effect the K/D ratios have on the game. Sure, tracking kills competitively is one way to incentivize combat, but that makes it susceptible to the "pay to win" problem--the high-kill weapons are almost universally locked behind the pay wall.

I don't even think kills should grant xp.

I think at the point you remove kill xp, you probably have to rework the whole reward and character advancement system, which I doubt they would do outside of a major rework of the whole game or expansion.

BadMojo wrote:

I don't even think kills should grant xp.

Now that would be really bold. Although that would make any engagement outside of a base sort of useless. Skirmishing would also be pointless. I'd just love to see how the game would change with that.

Edit: Oh I don't think they'd do it, it just be real interesting to see if they did. I really wish the beta was longer and they had some time to do a few crazy experiments. Turn off xp for kills, make cap times crazy long or short, etc

See what happens and take the best bits. The beta seemed rushed at the end, and it felt like they really needed to get it out the door no matter what. Meaning we are probable not going to see anything but bug fixes for a while.

If they make those flying air craft carriers a reality I'll forgive them for pretty much anything though.

I distinctly remember reading the patch notes and seeing that they removed dumb-fire from all lockon rocket launchers. Supposedly this would stop you from firing the launcher until you get full missile lock. Except now I own both of them and that's not true at all. I can fire the rocket whenever I want, lockon or no lockon. The only real difference is that the rocket is much slower and has more of an arc. But that doesn't really matter much if you are just shotgunning the rocket at point blank range.

master0 wrote:

If they make those flying air craft carriers a reality I'll forgive them for pretty much anything though.

Here's a thought: what if you only got XP for kills while on defense?

Itsatrap wrote:

Here's a thought: what if you only got XP for kills while on defense?

I think that could work if they lowered the points for kills a lot and upgraded the values for base captures massively. The more I think about it the more ideas come to mind. I really hope someone makes a low res version of this so some crazy experimentation could occur. Not likely though.

Another thing I'd love is if the territory control was a bit more dynamic. Say deploying a sunderer starts pushing your color on the map. That way we could see clear battle lines and such. I'd love to be able to look at the map and actually know what's going. Right now it's a bit more guessing unless a real big battle is happening.

Also doing crazy thing with supply would be cool. Say you can't change classes or get vehicles if you are cutoff. Or you can't rearm and you spawn timer doubles or triples. That would add a whole lot more strategy to the game. Couple that with the dynamic territory control and you'd have something great.

PS1 had logistics in a way. Base's ran off a battery and you had to charge it with these vehicles called ANTs. It was basically a tiny Volkswagen beetle with solar panels on it that acted like a fuel truck. You charge up the battery at any warpgate and discharge it by a special collector. Every base had one, if it ran out of charge the base would lose power to everything. This put sieges on a timer because you could literally starve out the defenders. It also made galaxy hotdrops more valuable because back then they could carry light vehicles (including ANTs).

Tamren wrote:

PS1 had logistics in a way. Base's ran off a battery and you had to charge it with these vehicles called ANTs. It was basically a tiny Volkswagen beetle with solar panels on it that acted like a fuel truck. You charge up the battery at any warpgate and discharge it by a special collector. Every base had one, if it ran out of charge the base would lose power to everything. This put sieges on a timer because you could literally starve out the defenders. It also made galaxy hotdrops more valuable because back then they could carry light vehicles (including ANTs).

Yeah from everything I've read about ps1 it definitely seem to have more depth. While ps2 seems to be a lot easier to play and have less issues and free. Ps2 still seems to have a nonexistent metagame. I have never once had to care about supplies, influence, or battle lines. It has decent tactical thinking but not much else.

Makes me curious about the next big update or any expansion they are doing. I'd hope they would add interesting things like above, but I have a sneaking suspicion they just add way more stuff that will look cool, but won't change the overall dynamic of the game.

The two things I have heard about, navel combat and flying air craft carriers, sound really cool but don't change the game that much.

I can think of a few ways to mix things up. Esamir is pretty flat and boring right now compared to Indar. But they could add something like VERY powerful wind that constantly blows and changes direction. Powerful enough that it blows projectiles off course and nothing smaller than a galaxy can fly.

EDIT: I got a friend request from someone named KrennVonSalzburge. Is that one of you guys?

Tamren wrote:

I got a friend request from someone named KrennVonSalzburge. Is that one of you guys?

I got one as well. I assumed it was a goodjer and accepted the request.

What are your impressions on the different factions?

I started this a week ago and picked TR, like most other new players I assume. So far, it's been like playing Battlefield on a bad day, every day.

I have 10 hours in just over a week now and every fight I've been in has us badly outnumbered on aircraft and vehicles. So far I've haven't sunk any money in weapons yet because I'm not sure if I want to pay for spawn camping. The two side continents rarely have any TR players and the borders are pushed up against the warpgate. Indar's doing ok but that seems to be because we regularly have twice the soldiers in every fight - yet at best come out even...

I'd like to try swapping servers or factions but would hate to lose the cert points (rank 10). So, is this typical - is TR really just a pain to play as?

Ah yeah, our server is the same. TR is badly outnumbered. Probably cause they're fascists. Vanu has the cool gear and NC fights for "freedom!!!" (in Braveheart voice). Still, my friends picked TR and I do like underdogs.

It's pretty sad though when Vanu regularly hits 40% population and TR has hit as low as 25%. I'm not sure the experience incentives are enough to even it out and we're pretty much limited to only fighting on Indar.

Doug wrote:

What are your impressions on the different factions?

I started this a week ago and picked TR, like most other new players I assume. So far, it's been like playing Battlefield on a bad day, every day.

I have 10 hours in just over a week now and every fight I've been in has us badly outnumbered on aircraft and vehicles. So far I've haven't sunk any money in weapons yet because I'm not sure if I want to pay for spawn camping. The two side continents rarely have any TR players and the borders are pushed up against the warpgate. Indar's doing ok but that seems to be because we regularly have twice the soldiers in every fight - yet at best come out even...

I'd like to try swapping servers or factions but would hate to lose the cert points (rank 10). So, is this typical - is TR really just a pain to play as?

It really depends on the server. I think on waterson the server most of us use it seems like TR is the majority. I've come to like the Vanu (which most of us are), especially the hover tanks. That being said it can be really hard to find a decent fight depending on the situation. Joining a group is the best bet, usually you can find a few of us on vent. Also rank is mostly meaningless, its the cert points that are useful. If your only rank 10 you could probable regain that pretty quick.

Otherwise all three sides are the same, save for a few minor differences.

Edit: Now that I think about it our server had that whole leaders event, and totalbiscuit was the leader for the TR. That probable explains why we have so many TR now.

Definitely mostly TR and VS on my server, thus my perpetual underdog status. TR are a massive swarm of angry red bees.

So it depends on the server.

They definitely need to change how continent population works. No one side should ever have more then 50% of the population on a continent. I've seen 75% TR on some days. Of course if they did inforce this a good chunk of the player base would revolt.

So server-dependant then. Swapping won't have any luck.

It seems like the best fights so far are medium density ones - 10-15 guys a side fighting over a small point. It's really hard to find those though and then you think, why not just play battlefield?

Anyways, I played another hour this morning and spent some points on squad leader abilities - it improved things a little once I was encouraging people to spawn on top of me.

Anyone had any luck making a light assault work? It's a silly amount of fun zipping around the map but you can't do a whole lot once you get there.

Try defending the Crown on Indar. When it's in dispute, it's a 200-man meat grinder.

Or look at the map and toggle the "enemy activity" overlay. Look for the red ones. Also, try to pick a continent where the populations/territories are roughly balanced.

You can always create a test character on another server and poke around for a bit. My main character is actually the third one I created. I made it to levels 6 and 5 in two others before settling into this one.

Doug wrote:

So server-dependant then. Swapping won't have any luck.

It seems like the best fights so far are medium density ones - 10-15 guys a side fighting over a small point. It's really hard to find those though and then you think, why not just play battlefield?

Anyways, I played another hour this morning and spent some points on squad leader abilities - it improved things a little once I was encouraging people to spawn on top of me.

Anyone had any luck making a light assault work? It's a silly amount of fun zipping around the map but you can't do a whole lot once you get there.

It's basically made for getting up where people don't think to look. In a one on one fight, you're probably not going to be super successful. But firing down from the top of a building means that the other guy is going to look in eight different directions before he thinks, "up."

kazooka wrote:
Doug wrote:

So server-dependant then. Swapping won't have any luck.

It seems like the best fights so far are medium density ones - 10-15 guys a side fighting over a small point. It's really hard to find those though and then you think, why not just play battlefield?

Anyways, I played another hour this morning and spent some points on squad leader abilities - it improved things a little once I was encouraging people to spawn on top of me.

Anyone had any luck making a light assault work? It's a silly amount of fun zipping around the map but you can't do a whole lot once you get there.

It's basically made for getting up where people don't think to look. In a one on one fight, you're probably not going to be super successful. But firing down from the top of a building means that the other guy is going to look in eight different directions before he thinks, "up."

Yeah if you know a few good high points you can basically slaughter people with impunity. I got a K/D ratio of 6 doing that once. Then your real problem is running out of ammo. It's my favorite class. The best fights are real big ones between evenly matched groups. No other game has something like that. Those can be tough to find but with the map you can usually find a decent one.

Also to the group I was just playing with and we were having mike troubles. That was at least partially my fault. Seems like my mike is dead, not sure how but it just stopped working.

kazooka wrote:
Doug wrote:

So server-dependant then. Swapping won't have any luck.

It seems like the best fights so far are medium density ones - 10-15 guys a side fighting over a small point. It's really hard to find those though and then you think, why not just play battlefield?

Anyways, I played another hour this morning and spent some points on squad leader abilities - it improved things a little once I was encouraging people to spawn on top of me.

Anyone had any luck making a light assault work? It's a silly amount of fun zipping around the map but you can't do a whole lot once you get there.

It's basically made for getting up where people don't think to look. In a one on one fight, you're probably not going to be super successful. But firing down from the top of a building means that the other guy is going to look in eight different directions before he thinks, "up."

Yeah if you know a few good high points you can basically slaughter people with impunity. I got a K/D ratio of 6 doing that once. Then your real problem is running out of ammo. It's my favorite class. The best fights are real big ones between evenly matched groups. No other game has something like that. Those can be tough to find but with the map you can usually find a decent one.

Also to the group I was just playing with and we were having mike troubles. That was at least partially my fault. Seems like my mike is dead, not sure how but it just stopped working.

master0 wrote:

Yeah from everything I've read about ps1 it definitely seem to have more depth.

I actually think PS1 was a much simpler game. But it was more sand-box-y than PS2.

BadMojo wrote:
master0 wrote:

Yeah from everything I've read about ps1 it definitely seem to have more depth.

I actually think PS1 was a much simpler game. But it was more sand-box-y than PS2.

Never actually played ps1 so I can't say. Also I got a new mike with a camera even, so it's all good now.

Light Assault is a blast. As far as 1on1, I generally win and LA, Eng, and Medic all have more or less the same weapons.

Yeah, Waterson is mostly TR, which is kind of okay by me. I don't think I like fighting NC. I could be wrong but I think I die more or they just piss me off more and I look at red and gray so much that NC uniforms often look like friendlies.

master0 wrote:

They definitely need to change how continent population works. No one side should ever have more then 50% of the population on a continent. I've seen 75% TR on some days.

Where are you getting continent population numbers? When I go to the map and click on the continents, the numbers always correlate to the amount of the map owned by that faction, not the pop.

There is a little drop menu by the population bars. You can change it to show global server population, per-continent faction population, and % of territory controlled.