When was the game at its best state?

Think back over the years. The good and bad things that have come and changed. When was it the best do you think? Can you find some particular time you want to go back too? Can you see through possible nostalgia? I try to think back of the game in periods, like ages and see. I started playing 2 days after release and I try to remember.

Late 2012
Game is released and is filled with problems. Lots of bugs, imbalance, performance issues. Notorious amounts of crashes. There were 14 servers with lots of population which quickly plummited. Looking at steam player graph, at release it was like 6x the current populations. I buy a bunch of weapons, hawk first to deal with pesky ESF. Turns out G2A MLs are underpowered junk. Magriders dominates tank battles and people say rocket pods destroys everything with ease. Hacksaw MAXes mows down everything in close battles. Prowlers annihilates infantry with their 1000 splash damage. MAX AV weapons are very underpowered, falcons being clearly the best of the 3, and pounders nobody thinks of. Tanks uses HEAT cannons because AP doesn't have lower STK.

Early 2013
Many performance issues has been fixed. At first Indar is the only continent people play on, or even know Exists. Then in feb comes the first server merge. LithCorp (my server), Mallory, Jaeger, Genudine are removed. Poplutation density is now good. I explore the mysterious Esamir and it becomes my favorite. I like the game much now.

Spring 2013
Bases gets a big revamp with a lot more cover and better spawn rooms. The great splash damage nerf comes which makes popularity of zepher and HE weapons plummet. ESMLs arrives with lots of issues. Non-rendering phoenix missiles kills infantry who dont even know they can shoot it down. This causes outrage and after a week its nerfed. Render bug lasts for months. The camera is also buggy. Striker has some bugs but I dont remember its performance. The general consensus was that the game was better without the ESMLs. The MAX update arrives, including the big shotgun nerf and addition of new MAX AV weapons. Vanu hates the vortex. NC loves the raven but enemies complains about the 2hk. TR likes the fracture but not nearly as much as NC likes their thing. Nc and vanu hates fractures 3hk. Harrasers arrives and causes huge problems. MAX ES abilities arrives and just as predicted, lockdown is useless and hated by its users while ZOE is very overpowered and causes huge problems. Lattice arrives after lots of waiting as a solution to ghost capping. It leads to very mixed reactions even though it was so much wanted. Tanks gets armor buff which indirectly buffs AP cannons, which now becomes the new norm. Still I enjoy the game, in fact I think this was when I had the most fun.

Summer 2013
Populations starts declining. No one plays Amerish. Striker and AV mana turret are very overpowered, partially becUse not rendering missiles that goes through terrain and has huge range. This might have been for a while, I dont remember when it first came. I think Esamir updated arrived now. It was very looked forward to but the reactions were overwhelmingly negative.

Autumn 2013
Its Indarside because of low populations. Dont remember the status of striker zoe and av mana turret. Content production is stagnated due to OMFG. Its a gloomy period. I think omfg1 arrives at the end of it.

Winter late 2013
People like omfg1 much. A few says it had the opposite effect. Omg2 comes in the package of a huge balance patch consisting of tons of nerfs. Fracture, striker, vulcan, raven, marauder, ZOE (maybe), comet gets hit hard and their popularity plummets.

Winter early 2014
Populations are going up and people can play outside Indar again, on Esamir that is. Severs now starts the long time of having problems. Huge ping issues, hit detection, hitching and such. Briggs has it so bad that SOE gives free membership to players to compensate for a few months. The invulnerability bug comes, causing big issues, especially with liberators. Liberator update arrives causing huge controversy. The vehicle was considered a masochistic third leg before but now that is flipped, partially because of the increased popularity changing the game in a way people aren't used too. Now they have to see liberators to be as dangerous as MBT. People are very disappointed with the lack of buffs for zepher and vektor and to a lesser extent shredder and they laugh at spur and duster. The previously laughed at and never seen shredder suddenly rivals the dalton in popularity despite no buffs, mainly because of dalton splash damage nerf. People hate shredder and screams for nerf. The liberator armor buffs are later undone and all belly guns receives big nerfs, partially in order to try to make duster more attractive. Liberator goes back to it's former level of usefulness and populaity, at best.

This was the best of times - just right after OMFG1. OMG2 or whatever nonsense you want to call it basically cut all the fun out of the game. That was the beginning of the end for me. I actually enjoyed the period leading up to OMFG1 as well, because the game was free of meddling balance patches and other stupid nonsense - it was what it was and wasn't messed with constantly.

That big balance patch also undid most of the optimizations they achieved with OMFG1, breaking things all over again, that they had just fixed! Ugh!

If you noticed and remember - people came back after OMFG1, but by March or so they really started messing the game up so badly again, and you had yet more server merges to follow because a lot of people left the game and pops were badly hit.

The game was never more FUN than it was in that period leading up to OMFG1 and before OMG2!

Back when we had Indarside, vehicles that killed infantry, a good resource system that was linked to territory, big meaningful fights for alerts, and those large *** galaxy crashes to warp gate on Mattherson after winning an alert.

Beta

Spring 2014
Don't remember much. Infiltrator update comes with lots of disappointment over the new rifles, they are unicorns till this day, with railjack being the most popular. Amerish updates comes which is greeted with lots of joy, people love it and suddenly Amerish becomes a popular continent for the first time.

Summer 2014
Populations has declined again. SOE manages to push out an unfinished Hossin after all with continent lock. Sadly the expectation of ICL and BA aren't included which causes which disappointment. Hossin gets mixed opinions due to fog level, terrain and number of bases. Continent locking gets lots of heated debate as expected but has the effect of increasing population density making all continents get equal attention. Indarsiders hates it. Medic updates arrives with little new stuff. TR likes their new AR while vanu and NC says little of theirs. The shield devices never gets much popularity. USA East coast servers have their second merge, Mattherson and Watersson turns into Emerald, people love the higher population density.

Autumn 2014
Don't remember much. People don't like the halloween thing. Directives arrive with mixed reactions. Some likes the grinding motivation while others things it's a waste of time and that the grinding makes the game worse. EU servers gets their second merge. Ceres and Woodman are removed. Population density is great. First version of resource revamp comes, which is an overwhelming disappointment. Most people think it makes the game far worse.

Winter 2014
Can hardly think of anything. Auto-turrets arrive with mostly indifference as reaction, same for 1HK knives.

When it was Planetside 1 Just before the release of BFRs

The time around post-launch. dec 2012-march 2013. That was the time when everybody played to win and the game was fresh. It was all downhill from there. The first nail in the coffin was the MLG hype of summer '13. The next nail in the coffin was lattice and alerts, then it was OMFG after that. A long while after that, the cont locking/hossin/outfit caps update went live, and revitalized things a little bit, but it definitely didn't last.

OMFG1 was definitively the highlight of ps2's current lifespan, but i would say january / christmas after release was nice too.

Time when i was enjoying the game most was from all the TR ******** getting nerfed into the ground in OMFG2 until "Phase 1" of the so-called Resource Revamp came along and made playing MAX less of a tactical decision and more of an enforced state of being.

I still refuse to play until they get on with the next part of the revamp..

Whatever patch it was before they removed jumping ADS and in the process nerfed my favorite class into the ground.

Beyond that, the recent patch that made the Flash vastly more pleasant to drive.

Between OMFG 1 and OMFG 2 when the game finally felt like something worthy of being released... before they screwed everything once more and the game started feeling like a beta once more and getting worse as time passes.

Meh I can't think of a point when it was really good. I started playing last fall, so maybe it was better before then? I will say that the client right now is the most stable it has ever been for me. No more CTDs, no more hitching. The lag is bad though, and I'm hitting pings around 180 during big battles for some reason.

This game could be so good, but it's like the devs are just not interested in improving it at all. They are busy adding more trivial junk and side-grade weapons, instead of fixing the core issues with the gameplay.

From OMFG1, OMFG2 up until ESF update / end of Janurary 2014 was the best state in my opinion - performance wise was good, game generally more balanced, population increase following OMFG. I wish we could go back to that game state. After that began scores of bugs, worsening performance - that has stuck around for 2014.

Hossin and Directives I feel are the best of 2014 - much of the rest is marginal and not really added to the overall game, or even subtracted from it - e.g resource update.

I remember when the game constantly crashed to desktop because of Nvidia drivers or for no reason at all. This game always had fun times, but something was always wrong with it at all times.

Now we wait for 2015, where ZOE will finally become useful and VS weapons look DIFFERENT AND have actual traits!

when it was going to be planetside next (an update to planetside 1)
or beta ps2 was also good but ps next would have been better
early 2012 wasnt as fun as beta but was more fun than what we have

basically everything just got worse and worse since planetside next
all the constant nerfing of everything is making the game less enjoyable

best times ? every zerg dies at the crown

VS is the only faction that has a trait, actually.

at any point before the lattice system.

Any time the servers are up...