A Month of Planetside

Recently i decided to sub to the first game and see where the roots of this game came from. I plan this thread to show what planetside is like to someone that joined in on the sequel. Obviously the servers will be pretty close to empty so it wont be 100% of what the game was like in its hay-day. I plan to give an update each day of my experience until my one month subscription ends.

Day 1
I began my journey into the first game earlier today. I chose the only true choice of freedom for my faction and got started. I spawned on sanctuary and decided to do the tutorial, using the equipment terminals until i came to a little fault in the road. It asked me to use the instant action or the HART. Being to lazy to walk i decided to go the Instant action route and opened the menu and hit the option. The result was very discouraging. I wasn't dropped into the middle of nowhere, action long gone. instead it told me there wasn't action, anywhere, and to try when there was something going on. I then tried the /who command and was further discouraged. I was alone. It wasn't just ghost town it was town-long-since-crumpled-to-dust-and-long-forgotten. From there i used the Hart and dropped onto Amerish where we had only one base, but at least it wasn't fully locked. I continued to take the next base (i forget its name) and waited for the cap to complete. I then started towards then next base (techplant i think) and i saw something awesome, someone else in a galaxy gunship descended from the sky and landed next to me waiting for me to get in. I went to get my REK from my wraith trunk and went back to him, but he was already flying away. I called out to jumper2123 (The pilot) but he seemed not to notice. I quickly hopped on my wraith to chase him down. i met him at the next base but the defenses of the dirty TR weren't so happy to see something alive for once so the wall turrets were busy gunning him down. He noticed me and landed so i could hop in, but by then we had half health. He quickly flew up and i started to fire on the turrets but he crashed into a satellite thing and we died. I respawned at the closest tower but there was no sign of him. i then started back up with capping the base with no opposition this time until i was disconnected from the server. Once i returned and the cap finished I reconstructed at sanctuary. I looked at the certs, sold my harasser cert for the infiltration suit and then went off to the VR. I messed around with weapons and vehicles for a while and got to battle rank 4 in the end, so i finally had certs to spend. i put them into hacking and advanced hacking after selling the reinforced exo suit. I went back to capping but this base was a bit different. instead of a timer a flag called the LLU was spawned and i had 15 mins to get it back to a close friendly base. I scrambled around a bit to find it and then charged to the base as time ticked by. once i reached my friendly base i ran around endlessly looking for where to put the damn thing, then realized i might have to put it in the facility hack thing, and then ran around endlessly to find it. with 5 mins on the clock i finally finished the cap and went to the next base (another damn LLU resulting in a similar experience). I worked my way around the map until i capped the center, having multiple disconnects and laggy bits all the way. None of it seemed to give experience so i couldn't get anything new but oh well. I eventually hopped off Amerish now under my control.

So far in comparison with planetside 2 it has depth that has no one there to enjoy it. instead of spawning whatever you please you have to cert into it, instead of walking into a base you need to REK the outer doors and REK any important inside doors, turrets would defend themselvs or just shoot you out of the sky.

Ill add on with tomorrows experience, i realize that somedays may be filled with nothing but unintresting ghost capping, so instead ill just update with anything important or just say it was a capping day.

You'd probably be better off watching videos of what Planetside 1 used to be.
While you can still pick up the mechanics from playing it solo, you aren't going to understand how things like vehicle timers/health played out against widespread enemy AV weapons.

This missing stings, greatly.

The more widespread AV weapons become, the better vehicles can become....

We just need to make sure that this does not boil to "C4, and strikers for all."

Base capture XP was dynamic in PS1 (it wasn't in beta, but was changed to tone down zergs circling eachother on conts capping empty bases).

Using a hack'n'hold base as an example:
Base hack timer: 15 minutes
The capture XP system looked at how many defenders there were in the sphere of influence (SOI: the colored circle surrounding the base) for the 15 minutes before the hack was initiated, and the 15 minutes of the actual hack. The amount of experience you earned for capturing the base was dependent upon the amount of defenders over that 30 minutes. So... 0 defenders = 0 capture experience.

Yes I probably would be better off watching videos because then id actually see fighting, but i still feel like i should at least play it for on month to see the base mechanics. A LOT of people say it was fundamentally a better game then PS2, but whenever the question should i resub comes up the answer I've seen usually is 'eh its a ghost town' which isn't wrong from my short experience. Which makes it seem like either people are just but off by the lack of people and dont join, thus furthering the problem, or it seems like its not as good as everyone says which isnt the case to me. In Planetside 2 i now see what it was meant to be, but got changed in the wrong direction. Planetside 1 gives you customization of your loadout to a great degree while planetside 2 gives you a class system that requires less dedication to fufill a role. Sure that second burster arm makes you better at keeping the skys clear, but you can still do it with the one.

(Other then that im doing it just incase if they make the first game f2p there might be goodies for those with accounts made before hand )
(also sorry if my thoughts seem all over the place, ive never been good at staying on track while writing anything)
-edit: Thanks blueskies for telling me how the base capture works, hopefully ill run into someone sometime

Day 2
Amerish was still under the control of the NC and i decided to head to Ishundar. i was immediately faced with opposition at the first base by the first tr i had seen, rimk2tr (not spelled exactly, forgot how it was spelled). This game is clearly not one to run and gun. Our first engagement he shredded me to pieces with a chaingun, and then he only needed spitfires to keep me out. A couple blocked the back door, more blocked the two shielded areas and i couldn't get in without being turned into blue infiltrator goop. I asked him how to get those turrets and he replied with get an ant and meet me at ikanam. I decided to go along with it and met him there with a fully charged ant, he destroyed thing and told me to start powering refilling ntus at 50%. eventually i got to br 5 and he started doing the same thing at cetan. Unfortunately a VS, hippodt, decided to join in on the fun with his reaver. He destroyed my ant while i was repowering cetan and eventually the base neutralized. After a bit the tr disappeared, but another nc had joined by the name of Doctor Whose. The vanu hacked into cetan and we tried to fight him of but he was prepared. I foolishly walked into a mine and my new ally was shredded by the vanu wielding a chaingun. Eventually the vanu left (after many failed attemps to kill him) and we took the base back. I soon left and later started playing PS2, but i didnt stay long and went back to PS1. This time i went to oshur and started taking bases on extinction. Once again i was meet with TR opposition. Henryscat gunned me down as i tried to take the second base on extinction using a mosquito. I decided id fall back and play defense this time and i found a couple friendly faces. Jumper2123 and natil05 were there making defense an easy task. After a bit of back and forth fighting with the awesome mr.henryscat i got another disconnect from the server forcing me out, when i came back the others had left. I tried to play PS2 again but found myself wanting to go back, so i did. This time i went to Esamir and meet up with natil once agian. Eventually we capped Esamir completly, meanwhile having a nice chat with another nc by the name of killlerb ,and went on to ishundar and capped the first base with no opposition and around her i decided to hop off for the night.

Bit more exciting tonight, if only the amount of people playing would keep growing.

paragraphs.

Zheepers

b-b-b-b-but i like my walls of text D:

Careful. Too much action and it might get too exciting to play anymore.

It's cool of you to actually try to understand where some of the vet arguments come from. Most of the time anything we suggest is dismissed outright. Hopefully you can see how the different systems worked with each other to make a deep and fun game despite the low populations.

Todays session was much shorter
Day 3
I began by getting an ant and refilling some of the bases on ishundar that were running low. Aside from a random mosquito pilot flying by noone was on. After and incredibly painful cross country trip over ishundar to refill some bases (******* chasms and mountains) Doctor Whose returned again and we went to esamir. I refilled mani then he meet up with me there and he showed me the AMS and we later drove to the capitol, eisa. Along the way i asked him random questions that popped into my head.

Were bunkers useful?
Depends if there were snipers
Whats that thing around Eisa?
Its the shield, all capitols have one, youd have to take the bases connected to eisa to get it down.
What happens if a continent gets locked but there are still enemys?
Dont really remeber, i think theyd stay until they died then respawn at sanc

Afterwards we went to ceryshen and went to a base and started messing around with the punishers. We destroied the generator and he got killed by his own plasma nade, said how the plasma spam was always one of the worst parts of planetside and after some more tom follary in the TR base he soon left. Afterwards i took a couple outposts around the map and then left as well.

The biggest thing ive noticed aside from good base design is good map design coupled with the bases. Eisa in particular seems like it would have made some epic last stand fights. In PS2 i dont see it being possible because there are to many bases, if one is made as a defensible base but also on defensible terrain (Crown *cough cough*) attackers will have suffered to much casualties fighting over the meaningless bases the connects the big ones so if a base was well made it would rarely swap hands. Just my two cents i guess

Q. In ps1 can you go to a locked continent?
A. Yes, there is nothing stopping, apart from possible enemies of course.

Q. How do you hack a base on a locked continent?
A. You can't. Or rather like all bases to hack them you need a link to a base your empire already owns. For a locked continent that link extends from one continent to another. Look at Anu or Dagda on Forseral - there is a link that goes to a warpgate, that link extends to anthor warpgate on another continent and from that warpgate to another base and if you own that base you can hack the conntected base on Forseral.

There is another way to hack a base on a locked continent and that is to drain it and I believe you taken part in doing that already.

PS I would really hope that this is the kind of 'continent locking' we get on PS2 and not a timer.

The capitol shield explanation is inaccurate. The faction currently holding the capitol has to have fewer links (4 bases link into each capitol) than the assaulting team for the shield to go down. So if the TR own the capitol and VS and TR each have 1 of the linking bases and the NC has the other two then the shield is down, but only the NC would be able to move in and hack the capitol from the TR. The TR could put the shield back up (and thus end the hack) by a straight secure at the capitol, or by taking one of the linked bases from the VS or NC.

When you cap a continent (owning all the bases), all the bases and towers flip to your color. The enemy units stay where they are, but they have to rehack any towers they want to hold. Many times an underpopped faction would hold an important tower and be a huge nuisance to the enemy factions.

Also, generator holds and other small scale strategic sabotage was prevalent in PS1. With the lattice, empires could only pull MBT and "tech" if they were connected to a tech plant. It was a common occurrence for a small yet organized team to infiltrate an enemy tech plant (or any base that would cut the link from the tech plant and the battlefront) and knock out the generator. Sometimes it would be a simple situation where you knock out the gen and leave - in your low pop situations you experience now, this is what I would recommend. Others, back where people actually logged in, would require the squad to stay and defend the generator from being repaired for as long as possible.

My experience in PS1 was great, and I think PS2 will get there, but it will take time for the meta game to develop.

Oh the nostalgia.. :') I think it's awesome you're going the extra mile to experience the game's core mechanics, also thanks for posting your experiences, good reads and neat seeing PS2 players views on it.

I think thats something Higby and Smed should do as well ... I doubt they spent much time actually playing tbh.

Agree, back when the hype of PS2 started rising and PS became somewhat active again, I think I've only seen Higby once or twice, have a screenie of him in the field too!

Its great that you vets are here enjoying the thread and sharing old tactics, the more i see of PS1 the more disappointed i am of PS2 but as timantium said it probably will get there, but slowly. Perhaps someday we'll even be allowed to swim .

Then there are some of us that look back at PS1 and think of some of these very same concepts as just clunky or flawed. REKs would be great as a tool for all classes in PS2. Right now, only the infil really covers the role of the REK, and for what it's worth, with no doors and no control consoles to hack, we'd just be bringing them back for the equipment and vehicle terminals. In regards to doors, I'm not even confident they'd amount to much importance with the current base lay outs to start, plus we have more than enough synching issues as is with just bullets connecting. I don't need to be shot through a closed door again.

The old cert system, depending on how you looked at it, forced players into a specific role for that single character, encouraging the rolling of alts. Everyone's Cycler was the exact same. Everyone's Vanguard was the exact same. One based to have some of the basics we're afforded in PS2. What Planetside 2 could have taken from PS1 was allowing everyone to take up every basic role like it does now, but the cert points would be limited, so that while Joe #1 specialized into being a medic and heavy assault, he could never match up to Joe #2 in the role of being an engi and tank driver, though Joe #1 would still have to option to suit up as an engi and roll a tank. But we're really late for that.

PS2 might benefit from a hybrid model in terms of armors and classes. No inventory system, but the old slot sizes would definitely fit comfortably in place of the current class mechanics. Jetpacks might have to equip and function as a tool however to make it work. Infil: 1 rifle slot, 1 tool slot. AoE heal (medium 1 rifle, 2 tools. HA shield: 2 rifles, 1 tools.

Definitely more armor and multi-crew options for tanks, though one needn't look back on PS1 for that. I say options, because people do enjoy their one-man tanks, and multi-crews can handle so much more as everyone has their own job to focus on. Single-crew tanks tend to be forced to stop to fire, or risk running into/off something.

As much as it pains me to say it, the old hack and hold system was probably the best. Tying the SCU into the base cap might make a battle's final moments more intense, if storming the spawn room didn't do that already. It wasn't a matter of turning the point and only reverting progress by 2% like we see with the current system, but reverting all progress. It made the miracle save possible, and placed a greater emphasis on guarding the capture point for the invaders. In short, the old PS1 hack-n-hold system made for Planetside moment potential, and let's face it... no matter the system put in place, if the invader completely flushes out the defense, they'll be sitting around anyway. Doesn't matter how the system itself works, that's just what it boils down to.

Great reads

Your posts make planetside sound like a survival horror genre game...

Maybe the devs need to put some zombies in and just let it play out like DayZ.

**** i loved Planetside. Now, I love PS2