Planetside 2 is suffering from an identity crisis! Here's why!

Going to try and keep this short and sweet. Screw that, this is a giant mish mash of text and pictures, you have been warned.

I've played this game since Beta in September, and since launch I slowly noticed a problem, but didn't quite know how to say it. Well now I do.

In a video game, or any piece of media, there's usually a tone going on. This helps you understand what the atmosphere of the game/media is.

Allow me to show some examples below...





Love it or hate it. This is Team Fortress 2. Right away, it is clear that this game is cartoon with physically exaggerated character models and guns, and a cartoony theme overalll. This is the type of game that does well with virtual hats and other silly items. Those items fit the tone, and actually make it a cooler game!

Now another example



Battlefield 4.

Again, love it or hate it, there is one undeniable fact about it. This game presents itself very clearly. Just from looking at this image, I can tell that this game has a bit of seriousness to it, however the bright orange contrast reveals the crazy hollywood style action in this game. Sure, you can't tell much from this picture, but it's well known that Battlefield 4 presents a serious but not quite believable movie stunt style action game with fast paced action.

Now, the game we've all been waiting for. Planetside 2



From this image, I get an idea of a game that has giant epic battles. The 3 factions are clearly represented. I actually start to think that (dare I compare this to BF4 and commit such blasphemy?) this will have some high end action like BF4 while presenting itself a little seriously. The colors stick out more, and there's a cool sci fi theme going on, and it's clearly an intense and fun looking battle here.

Hell, look at the official CGI trailer for Planetside 2 if you want to see what I'm talking about.

Now during alpha and beta, things looked a bit clear. This tone was presented, I could actually understand the mood of this world of Auraxis I played in.

But beta ended, and of course live happened...



Oh... Ohhhh.....

I honestly have no idea what the tone of this game is anymore. Allow me to finish this with a couple of pics and words..



Oh wow, this is interesting! I like the sci fi look and think that this game will be enjoyable!



Wait a second, what the hell is this? I am so confused! I thought this game was a serious action packed sci fi game, but now there's a plane covered in neon? What is going on? This game's art style is so damn conflicting!
What in the hell is a smed buck?

AGAIN:



Wow, these shadows and realistic art style are presenting to me a futuristic interesting world, with cool transport vehicles. I think I am interested in this game, and might start to play and Invest MONEY into it.



What... What is this?? I am confused and I am No longer intersted in investing MONEY into this.


TL;DR: In case you didn't notice or I failed to explain this, the point I'm driving across is that PS2 is a confusing visual mess. I'm NOT saying that "I ONLY WANT GRITTY HARDCORE GAMES, NO FUN ALLOWED" I'm saying that it's okay to have funny hats and crap, BUT FUNNY HATS AND CRAP MUST FIT INTO YOUR GAME'S TONE.

When you present a game with a self conflicted visual art style (A futuristic massive game with random neon crap and rainbow decals not to mention this god forsaken abomination...



..then people will become a little confused what the tone is and will be less likely to be interested (or invested) in your game.

/rant over

Thank you for reading this. I hope you liked it.. Because it took me more time than I wanted to invest in a forum post..

I've been rocking an abstract purple pattern since launch. Don't know what you're on about.

Did you read the entire post?

Regardless, my point is that the game is visually confusing. You have a realistic looking seriously cool Sci-fi atmosphere, that is suddenly attached with neon coated, gold plated, giraffe camo wearing type of style. Overall, it contradicts itself, and looks extremely confusing.

The confusing tone is what I'm going on about

I'm a futuristic soldier and I look fabulous...Do you have any problem with that, Sweetheart?

Yup. I even made a post on an internet forum about it..

I disagree but your presentation deserves a thumbs up.

Totally with you until the blasphemy of the tactical horn. I hope you burn in vanu purgatory.

On a serious note, this game doesnt have an identity crisis because ots serious tone combined with its customizable helmets and camo. Its confused because of its intense battle theme and large CA battles, when in fact the game is a VERY shallow example of any CA combat, and its battles tend to be a spam fest as opposed to actual LARGE BATTLES.

I suppose gameplay could be considered another reason for the tone, but my main problem was the visual style of the game. Serious looking design and overall atmosphere clash with bright colored neon and gold plated armor. And yes the tactical horn... =)

Slow down there venture capitalist. Don't want to risk -100% ROI.

Very nice. But they had to make money somewhere, maybe they could have done without the silly lights and the "**** my ride" type stuff.

This. A thousand times this. The game isn't suffering for its aesthetics, it's suffering because of poor implementation

Good points.

I agree, in another few months its just going to be TeamFortressside 2 full of silly colours random hats and flashing lights with noobs TKing everyone because there are so many common pool camos you cant tell friend from foe anymore.

I made sure to use the underline, italics, bold, and a color code to make sure that certain people *cough* *cough* SOE *cough* would be able to see my point..

Many a TF2 player will argue that with you...

In any case, I feel it's getting hard to tell what you're shooting at, which is important because you need to know if it's going to cloak, shield or jetpack up and C4 you.

We haven't exactly gotten to the point of TF2 yet.

Planetside is F2P, they need to sell stuff to keep the game afloat.

I really have no issue with anything they've sold. If somebody wants to use £10 to trick out their sunderer and support SoE at the same time I'm all for it.

The reason they have all that crap was to keep the game F2P instead of making it subscription like the first game because they wanted to attract regular FPS players and not just MMO players and vets from the first game.

The pictures made me laugh. Great work. This forum needs morw fun pictures. Im fine with some of the stuff like chassis glow (which is way too weak btw ) but the maniac helmets and rainbow decals and most artistic camos I could go without. :L Skull helmets rarely looks any good. Terran MAX is an exception.

The lumifiber just doesnt look good (real) enough. Just looks like full saturation colored stripes on the model except when the moving glow spot comes.

The palm tree camo looks rather good if youre not paying too much attention to see that the green patches are actually palm things.

strange, all I see is shooters.

Kidding. I think hardware limitations are to blame.

I know they can't be removed now, but boy am I sick of the Kray-Z Klownz running around with hockey masks and deliberately stupid looking colors on their outfits.