Why is Planetside 2 losing so many players?

At the risk of stating the obvious you need to impress new players and obviously the game is a shocking meatgrinder for new players. This turns one strength (free to play) into a liability. If you buy a game for $50 then you'll give it the good ol' college so you feel like you haven't wasted your money.

If its free, you download, log in, get vaporised by a Liberator 15 times in a row, log off and delete from hard drive. You've got no reason to be invested in the game. No value hooks like a pay-to-play MMO.

Well unlie a P2P peopel can dip in an out of the game as they want.

Its a fair bet the game is going to go on like this for ages. Dedicated base of Outfit players and soloers, bumped up by waves of people 'checking it out/checking it out again' every major patch. Each time some of 'checkers' will get more involved and start playing regularly in one of the two previous categories. Most gamers being a fickle lot will get bored and leave untill they sort out in order of seveity

1) Performance on medium to low kit needs to get a lot better, then probs some extra fupuses on high end stuff.
2) Needs to be a metagame to get involved in, to take it beyond being a giant ww1 murder simulator
3) More general content, vehicles, guns (actually distinct ones) contents that sorta jazz.

Most of the complains about balance towards Air and Vehicles, look like there going to be addressed. the crash exploit bug that was KILLING THE GAME (people would not shut up about it doing so) is now fixed. But the three 'biggies' will take time, as their are slowly filled in, you'll find the player base gradually growing.

Moreover 1-3 have been acknowledged time and time again by SoE staff as defficencies and statements to the effect of 'we are working on it' have been issued a number of times. Most of the complaining on this forum, espeically over the actual week between christmas and new year was just... so entilited. you've also had plenty of people take legit issues and then start crusdades to try drum up support to hold SoE to ransom to Mary sue to the game to their specifications. So far,its been ignored thank god.

I think they are derping in a few respects (not allowing free character transfer as and when you want it is probs going to result in empty servers). But by and large they have a solid product that is one of few games on the market with a totally distinct USP and are recovering quite nicely from a shakey start.

But hey, let the chorus of 'game is faiiiiiiiiillllllliiiinnnnnnggg!' start up again before I ruin this thread with mah reesunin.

Its not people leaving its people launching the game through their hack rather than steam

Just because a minority of players are sticking with the game doesn't mean it's not 'failing'. All depends on how you want to define it.

By some of the definitions of success being used by some of you, every game is a success, because a few people played it and had fun, and everyone else are just whiners. All of the 'failed' games out there didn't actually fail, because the definition of success is so broad that failure is impossible.

Tell me, what other game out there has forums with countless threads asking, "Where are the battles?", or, "I can't find the fights?", or, "Where is everybody?", "My faction just capped an entire continent uncontested, where is the enemy"?

The "whining" is for good reason. A game that has (or had) massive potential, is falling way, way short. When I first checked this game out, I actually expected it to be similar to battlefield but on giant maps. Really. That's what I was expecting and looked forward to it, however.....even though it is similar to that, it has shortcomings that the other games don't have, which makes BF/COD more attractive. For me, it does not play as well as BF/COD and is not near as much fun.

Nice way to keep your goal posts flexible at the on set there. Why not define 'fail' whilst your at it.

And yet severs play on,

The problem as i've said, and I think this is the one real threat they have, is that as things stand about 3 servers at critical mass. With others becoming ghost towns, People have started staying away because a server has got quieter, in millers case we are seeing migration to miller in massive amounts.

If they just allowed people to change server as they wished, this problem magically goes away as people react to lag/ques on one particular server and spread out.

Also the forum is hardly an objective measurement, even if it was we are talking dozens of people making 'I hatez gaem' threads per day, thats what 50 people a day leaving, I'd wager there were as many new players joining.

But don't confuse me for someone who's uncritical of PS2. I just find it odd the people who comes on here just to allmost with a smug air, gloat over how the game is failing. When, what this could possibly achieve appears nill and what evidence they are holding onto seems at best extremely anecdotal.

It is going through the standard problems that come with any engine launch really.

Ok.. so.. what does presenting the game in a bad light achieve exactly, showing SoE's moral failure to them, inspiring a competator to reach the games potential.


This is how I see it: so the game was rushed to market. Industry standard these days. Given the project is no less than 2000 people per map pew pewing at each other. Its a hugely complex program. Furthermore, They are doing a descent enough job, given the evidence of the last three days to rectify that (im also going to go on record saying, it looks like I was right about people working over Christmas given the memory leak is now fixed). With a fairly massive patch on the way to address most of the problems in terms of core gameplay.

Yes it needs metagame and more optimization, as i've voiced in dozens and dozens of threads now.

But is there anything else like it on the market, no. Why? A lot of its problems come from trying to do a Modern FPS MMO, namely the massive battles that make it cool tend to be giant mangets for small imbalance issues looking like otherones, bug exploting, CPU melting and so on and so on.

I wouldn't expect anything else like it on the market for a while, if the game fails, maybe never.

That's the same with every new game. I was new when I played PS2, but that never happened to me, straight away 3.85 kd , I'm still learning the bases/maps but that will come in time. Like said every game struggles to impress allot of new players, but how the game pans out in the long term is the key.

I was just trying to help. Ain't my fault if you take it that way.

Because its boring?

The short answer is that it was launched prematurely to cash in on the holiday season.

The "Battlefield series" concept does not work for an mmofps with such huge maps and you see the result. You need a good metagame and tactical/strategical content. Battlefield maps are tiny in comparison and actually Planetside 2 has too much of the Battlefield content and not enough from Planetside 1 or other strategical FPS. In Battlefield you can win a round, but at the end players are running in circles aswell, since the maps are that small and the rounds are short people notice such an issue way less. The time people invest in an mmofps is much higher aswell, therefore they get bored quick if the game has no substance.

I think one issue that compounds matters is that the current empire with the most balance issues are NC and they're what many noobs will assume are 'the good guys', so they log on and take a Vanguard or Reaver for a spin and instantly get shafted; or go into an infantry fight, get the drop on a TR or VS, expect a clean kill but end up dead. After a lot of clueless wandering, spawning in the middle of nowhere, getting spawn killed and deaths that feel unfair they log off and uninstall.

It'd be real interesting to know how many accounts have made 1 NC character and logged off never to be seen again before reaching BR5.

Given the amount of random death in PS2, for you to come in instantly to the game with a 3.85 KD means you are either a ridiculously good FPS player with insane reflexes or you've lived in a Liberator since starting. Either way, your game experience is not representative of the experience of most new players. PS2 doesn't have a learning curve it has an EVE-like learning cliff. We can argue good/bad in regards to that but simple reality is that it will put off new players.

Sometimes a game loses population, sometimes it gains. I truly think that after this Jan. 30th update we'll see a spike in player-base, both from a lot of players returning and new ones brought into the fold by friends.

And to the guy who commented on the free-2-play model leaving less incentive to play long-term, you should really check out Team Fortress 2's numbers. Prior to F2P, they were lucky to crack 25,000 players online on steam. After, playerbase was regularly double that, spiking occasionally to over 100,000.

A lot of people, including those that use steam regularly, simply are unaware of the game. PS2 hasn't had the advertising chops of World of Tanks or WoW, so I can understand the initial drop-off since it has been struggling to find newer players. Think I might invest some money into it tonight, these guys certainly deserve it. Had more fun on here than I ever did on Call of Duty. Only thing it is missing is a more advanced point-defense system like TF2 has with their engis, enable players to develop a more solid defensive strategy than simply mass and counter-zerg. That and artillery...and bombers...and naval combat...an urban continent perhaps? Oh yeah, and the potential of it is amazing too!

Well, it is subjective, is it not?

It would help immensely, and myself and many others have been begging for this ever since pops. dropped off. I have said that failure to merge servers is their single biggest mistake since release. F2p or not, just like in retail, it is much easier to hold onto a customer, or potential customer, than it is to lose them and try to bribe them to come back.

It doesn't need to be objective; it is immensely valuable just the way it is. The complaints lodged on these forums are vastly different than the complaints I've seen on other gaming forums. In addition to nerf/buff and bug complaints, there are complaints covering all of the other gameplay, map, metagame and mechanic aspects. This is not just another gaming forum filled with whiners. This game has issues across the spectrum.

Well, that's just the way it goes. It's easy to fall into the "I told you so" mindset, especially when you've warned against the negative impact of certain ideas, and then watch as they are implemented and fail exactly as you predicted.

I have fantasized about a game like this for a very long time. Now that it's here, I've tried it, and quit. Yes, it's revolutionary, and complex, and needs time to fix, but presently it still has too many issues and population problems that it is not fun for me. They are continuing to work on it, but I am still not seeing any announcements with real meat in them, the meat that I'm looking for. There are some things that should have been in the game from the start of beta, let alone 6 months after release.

Assuming they merge servers and the remaining ones stay at high pop. all the time, how long can a player play a game that has no real objectives, no win condition, no tangible gains from conquests, no global scoreboard, and no real awards (a la BF/COD)? I tried it for 3 months and was bored out of my mind. The only thing that kept me going that long was the cert grind, but I couldn't even stomache the 2nd round of double xp.

The sad thing is, that many of the things being asked for will have absolutely no effect on those who say they are "just playing for fun", and don't care what the weapons and gameplay are. It will enhance the game for many, and will not negatively impact the game for the rest. It's a win-win situation if SOE can just get on the ball and put these ideas into play.

Finally, there's a few handfuls or more of f2p's out there. If the definition of 'success' is that people played it for awhile, then they've all been successes, but if everything is a success, then how do you know when one has failed?

That would be very interesting to know. You know, it might actually help if SOE states more clearly on the character screen what the benefits are of each faction, the differences, pros and cons, etc. Maybe even let you cycle through weapon and vehicle lists, or even play test everything in a training ground, before choosing a character. I know a training area has been suggested by many.

That is hilarious! lol

Nice post above hehehhehe.

Why people leave? Half of them must be naive...
- It's F2P but I don't earn certifications fast enough to buy everything in 2 months... Hmmm is Sony logo a red cross?
- I don't want to enter a vehicle but I want to own them all, alone, whatever infantry class I play!
- There are updates everyday but there were none during 2 weeks at Christmas season!

The other half is much more constructive in its posts. Now I can be wrong in the proportion of each population

Why is this game losing people? Easy.

1. Free-to-play, People will look at it, and uninstall it after a few hours of gameplay finding that the game isn't for them.
2. Even though this game is based on an MMO always going war. There is absolutely no reward for winning fights, You'll push the lines, go to sleep, wake up, and your line is back where it was the day before, and the day before that. It gets boring after a while.
3. New Games are coming out, People want to play other new games than sticking to an old game.
4. Very little to no content besides the endless Cert grinding.
5. SoE's Focus isn't set on the heart of core players, but appealing to masses, Just like every other F2P game does.
6. (minor) The Air to Air combat is absolutely garbage. This game's "Dogfighting" is comprised of two ESFs meeting and just going around at 10-20 speed flipping around killing. The Skybox is set to 1000m which blows hard in Indar, because Vanu/NC average territory is 500+ meters high already. It just absolutely blows compared to any other air to air combat games. Sad thing is that the devs want this to be a huge hit as well.

Well its relative to a set of conditions. Very few things if anything are entirely dependent on the opinions and states of the subject (subjetive). People have this habit of thinking every single opinion and value judgement comes down to subjectivity, really doesn't.

If you could define some criteria by which we could assess if this game was failing or not we could go from there.

Hopefully they'll see wisdom on this , I presume however, even if they loose couple of servers and merge a couple more, you'll still have a critical mass of people paying subs and buying stuff from the shop.

Why, the uniqueness of its USP, if it had competitors even over the horizon i'd be more worried. Nothing is going to come out this year that even attempts to come close to 2000 people per map.

Really.. because I've seen it before, even more vitroloic too. The NS2 forum is a good example.

A lot of the complaints are simply people trying to mary sue the game to their spesificiations. People are upset it has vehicles at all, because they don't like vehicles, you get people complaining that people moaning about air are

The problem with arguging to the forum as some collective body of opinion is how cacophonous it is, how little consensus there is.

Its hardly helpful though is it?

given the meta game clearly needs a lot of thought, and a fair bit of creativity. What annouccement can you expect bar 'we are working on it'?

Here's my opinion. While PS2's premise is good, it doesn't have the means of carrying it out. A massive war with all it implies requires things like strategy, logistics, orders and whatnot, or is meaningless.

It's true that the game is also a sandbox, so it's the player's responsibility to be doing these kind of things, but in any case the game doesn't promote them. It's difficult to establish a player driven metagame when even the UI for strategic movement is below basic and there's no real incentive to do so.

The core of the problem is that the game isn't actually about a war; it's an overly complex deathmatch game, where the maps are the bases. Notice how the bases are actually deathmatch maps, deigned in a way to provide multiple and unpredictable ways of advance and not as defensible positions; their purpose is to be a scenario, not an outpost. The obvious problem is that by the game's very nature, these death matches are going to be unbalanced, in numbers or the presence of units like vehicles or planes. You can drop into an amp station defense and, if the stars are aligned, have an actually fun and balanced fight but 9 times out of 10 one side will be hopelessly outnumbered and overrun.

This could be tolerable if owning or not the base had any actual meaning, but it doesn't; an hour later a lone guy in a flash can recap the lost territory, and losing it isn't actually important in any way. So a player has a choice: he can log into PS2 and have a good deathmatch fight once in a while, or log into, say, Team Fortress 2 and have that fight right now.