Quit planetside 2 after 20 hours - or a look of a new player at the game

well, i guess ps2 does fail when it comes to letting players know which equipment they should get. there's loads of stuff available (lol @ those $20 guns), but fact of the matter is that a 250 cert weapon is pretty the best choice for every class at the moment, regardless of how much you're willing to spend. as you're vs, you should be familiar with these: serpent, hv45, pulsar c, sva88 (ok, it's 500 certs, but if you wanna go cheap you can get the pulsar lsw for 100). the point is that those price tags probably look bad, but at the moment getting a cert boost (500 sc) and then playing well will get you great loadouts in a matter of days. Just for reference, when boosted i can get around 100-150 certs per hour.

things look different when you wanna get into vehicles though.

I heard they're releasing a patch for battlefield 3 with Commander Mode and destructible buildings.

All you have to do is pay $60 for a new game, and $300 for the tablet thet will let you use Commander Mode.

You should totally do that, OP.

The only parts worth merit are the bit about metagame, currently, and the whole ESF secondary weapon thing.

Other than that, most of it obviously comes from a place of ignorance and being misinformed. As well as this topic being the typical veiled ultimatum disguised as feedback.

1. It's not pay to win, guns are mostly sidegrades and while it takes a while to get new stuff it's not necessary.

2. Game doesn't have a point, yet, continent locking is coming in fall which gives stuff a whole new meaning.

3. If your spawn camped, your better off leaving the base there's no point leaving the spawn room unless you aren't being bombarded with explosives.

Lastly I don't think you understand every game loses players slowly, bad games loses players fast.

So Yellowstar, I hope you take a chance to read the responses people are writing on this post before you completely up and leave PS2 for good.

You seem like a thoughtful gamer, the kind that we need more of in this game, so let me try and address some of your points in a serious and non-offensive fashion (unlike some of my fellow Auraxians here lol).

1. P2W: I would humbly disagree with you. Some of the best weapons in the game are the default ones. The Orion is one of the most popular LMG's and one of the best performing. The "God Saw" or Gauss Saw is equally revered. I find that many VS enjoy using their default weapons, and only buy new ones if they feel like changing up their gameplay. And to specifically address infiltrators, which I know a lot about - the default sniper VS rifle is actually quite good at what it does. But if you want to use a bolt action OHK weapon - it only costs 100 certs to get the XM98, and it performs quite well. That should only take you 1-2 hours. Max suits are expensive, cert and SC-wise in order to really **** out. But you certainly can take a vanilla max suit and get a lot of kills if you have good teamwork.

I do agree that for free players, the cert gain is a bit slow. I would not argue with a 25% bump in XP gain but at the same time, I understand why things are set up how they are and it doesn't bother me greatly. As I said, this game is really not P2W.

You are right about the ESF really needing certain weapons. At the same time, I think most pilots would say that they did not have a hard time earning those certs if they fly well. The best pilots depend more on their nose guns for A2A kills anyways.

2. Pointless: The idea is constant, never-ending battle. I would like to see cont locking, which is supposed to happen sometime once we get more continents. I think the real reason you feel this way is because you are not in an outfit. That is my biggest suggestion to you - if you are not in an outfit, you are not playing Planetside the way it was meant to be played. Period.

3. Spawn room warriors: I completely agree and think they should not reward XP for killing while in the spawn room. But to say this is a reason for quitting the game... nah. It is a bad mechanic, not game breaking.

4. Server pops: What server did you try out? Mattherson gets quite full, to the point of being laggy and having too many people online at once many weeknights during prime time. Other servers seem to be doing quite well too. If you shrank PS2 down to 2-3 servers, it'd be a lagfest 24/7 and you'd actually have people quit the game for real. Maybe in a few years when a lot of people have moved on, we can cut down to a few select servers.

PS2 is not dying. I think Hossin will give many players the new content they have been waiting for, and will boost population for a while. I also think you don't realize just how attention the SOE dev team is to our community, and how much they listen to our feedback. You probably missed the snaffoo over implants - lets just say that we got out the pitchforks and SOE backed down. You have no idea how much this game has changed and improved since release, and to quit after 20 hours with the belief that your complains will never be addressed - well I hope my response has given you a bit more perspective.

TLDR: Use the Orion, get the 100cert bolt action, join an outfit, and make sure you pick a good server (connery or mattherson in the US personally are my two suggestions). And JOIN AN OUTFIT!

Yes please.

From March, onwards, the number of people playing this game has been relatively level. As for the June-July drop?
Summer!
Plus that doesn't include SOE or Prosieben accounts, which do count for a large number of the playerbase.

If you couldn't find a super-massive fight, at any time of the day, on a lattice continent, then that's your own fault for not reading he map right.

Feel insignificant? Join an outfit that focuses on organised play.

You say that guns are too expensive and cert acquisition is too slow, then you use MAX as an example (which can be considered as the "hero" class in this game)? The default guns are MORE than capable at killing - I still use the default NC weapons for mid-range combat - the other guns unlockable guns for the non-MAX classes are just personal taste and arsenal diversity.

Yes I do agree that the game has flaws:
- The game needs more purpose, such as a resource restructuring more akin to PS1 (I've never played PS1, but a similar system would bring awesome meta-game to PS2!).
- A change to (forcefully) encourage people to stop sitting in spawn rooms and repel the attackers.
- Sunderers are too squishy and vulnerable to C4 & mines; galaxies are too disposable; and harassers are still ridiculously OP if they've got composite armour on.
- The NC is legitimately (albeit mildly) the least powerful faction, particularly our MAXes as their CQC TTK is negligible to other faction MAXes (and NC doesn't have mid/long range MAX weapons); and
- The TR is ALWAYS overpopulated on EU Miller.

But I think the developers know theses things already and hopefully, going by their current progress and direction with their patches, they have some sort of solutions up their sleeves for my issues with this game.

Otherwise, I'm still having a blast with it and my outfit.

it is Pay/Play to Win in that the most successful people in the game are capable of either Throwing Money at it or devoting Insane amounts of time to it. When you consider that the average player will have a 1-2 hour gaming session a day, you're looking at a 5-10 day cycle for them to obtain items just to maintain a competitive level against those that run either 5-7 hour game runs a day or 20-40 bucks on it.

P2W ultimately means that your community is polarized between who has the time or money to throw at the game and who doesn't. Be it Paying or Playing in excessive amounts, they are excelling far beyond the common player because of it... looking at games that do not have a P2W model, you'll find that the only difference between the player with 20 hours and the player with 200 hours is the amount of skill between the two.

Although this game has it's own launcher and you can opt to use it with-out going through steam, the statistics still show a common trend- there are players that are leaving the game. People may link you a chart which pools data from the API, but that chart is just as unreliable, if not more so. like it or not, Steam Stats are giving a rather clear representation of the games population health... dwindling. Because those are players probably didn't decided to stop going through steam.. they probably just decided to stop going, thus showing an ever growing decline in players. how much of the community that accounts for can be argued, but still, it is a part of the community that isn't coming back...

It wasn't a competition, but no you didn't win. What I was trying to get at by saying I am a Biologist is that I handle statistics on a daily basis and know what I'm talking about when it comes to stats.

Furthermore, the repeater has a faster TTK than the Commissioner that's a fact not an opinion:

Repeater RPM = 845

Bullet damage = 112

845/60 = 14.08

14.08 x 112 = 1576.96 DPS

Commissioner RPM = 170

Bullet damage = 450

170/60 = 2.83

2.83 x 450 = 1273 DPS

Simple math.

Also 9 out of the 10 people you know is not everyone lol.

Ehh, then every game known to existence is pay to win.
I put in more time in a game, I'll be better than most players.
That's the same with CS.. You put in very little effort, you will not be as good as players who spent more time on it.

And no, you do not have to pay a single cent on this game to be really good. You just have to put some effort into it. Like any other game out there.

So you play BF3 and you are complainning that PS2 is pointless? So, is there any point on capturing a flag on BF3? And rewards are not a good point for that, Im not the one that plays a game to count advantage on my friends because I have a high k/d.

Many of your points are wrong, although it shows something, that "psicology" can be stronger than critical sense. First, ppl always presume that the first weapon is the weakest and that the game has a progression and when they see other weapons for high costs the soon presume that the game is a p2w instead of criticaly analyse THE *** WEAPONS STATS. If you did that you would see that the first weapons are stronger than many other paid weapons. Now about the progression: its not because you dont have rewards or the buyable weapons are not stronger that you wont find any fun in this game. Lets be realistic and face the true: we log in to kill avatars, just that, the rest are just a bonus on our fun.

BUT... I have to agree that the game is dieing and something must be done.

If you think everyone is playing the game through Steam then im glad to see you gone.

I'll give you #3. New players hitting instant action and then getting camped from base to base by zergs spamming the spawns has probably turned more people off PS2 than anything ever will.

Your post brings up some valid points BUT you are wrong on the Pay2win point...Unless one is paying a hack service you aren't paying to win. The basic weapons are just fine and it is CERTS that are the real force multiplier.

I will say that the people who got me to play (as i am not an FPS type) don't play anymore, people I have got to try this, have stopped playing because it isn't all that fun. Today i had the option of playing but instead I played "Empire total war", The last Purchase I made is pre-ordering "Rome 2 total war" . I haven't bought any more SC and regret buying any in the first place. I recommend to people NOT to bother buying SC or investing too much time as it's no that good of a game..I do play via steam.

I agree with the 2nd post in this thread.

I initially installed via steam, when I did my first file validation and found that it breaks with a steam install I installed it without steam, thus steam is not seeing my usage.

You do know that the $7 pistol is EXACTLY the same as the $20 one right? They have the same stats just different default skins. Oh, and I just came back after a few months away, AND I use the steam version. So, +1 for me on both counts.

That's because you can download it from steam so it'll be open when you login that first time and anytime you open steam so it tracks the data, but it doesn't need steam open to play and as people see this they stop opening steam and so the play time on steam looks like it's going down. I see more people a night than those average figures say come on a month.

The game is dying. Nice try though.

While you could poke more holes in his rant than a sponge I stand by his steam pop decline statement to .. some extent. Steam represents a monolithic sample of gamers around the world, and therefore the numbers should be taken seriously.

Beyond that uptake of planetside 2 among friends is extremely limited, my insistence that they continue to play on results in anecdotes describing the experience as being akin to endless Battlefield style rage minus the vindication and euphoria from the rare epic moments.

Also the game looks like crap... even with a rig more than equipped to deal with it. If you disagree then go eat poop.

1. PFFFTT. Have you ever actually played a P2W game? They suck. They aren't fun. When you show me players who have bought guns dominating entire squads by themselves, I might agree with you. They are really expensive though. I just think they should make Certs and SC have a 1-1 ratio, ie 700 certs for the most expensive guns. Default Vanu guns are awesome, except the infiltrator one. I don't like semi-auto snipers.

2. It's a game. Games are pointless.

3. Yeah. I just want to see you not be able to shoot out, along with redesign the bases.

4. The servers can only support up to 2000 (only 2000) players per server. EVE has so little to it, it's basically fancy looking google docs. I'm pretty sure supporting players in an FPS game is somewhat harder than in EVE. The continent issue will be solved with continent locking.