You know what is killing PS2?It's not the lack of "newbie-friendly" things or complexity...

...but the game itself.
Simply put: PS2 is a "game of griefs" -- where players find ways or use ingame resources to take fully advantage of a certain situation. In other words... if there's a tank camping my spawn/cap point and I want to play infantry -- I can't. I'm forced to spawn a tank to deal with that specific situation. If I'm not skilled enough to deal with said tank -- I run out of nanites. I can't spawn tanks. I can't deal with that situation. Meaning that I have two options: either ignore its existance, die nonstop because of such until I have enough nanites to spawn another one or simply leave the game and stop playing.
Now, just imagine a newbie who doesn't have tools or alternatives to deal with said tank. And then he realizes he have to play the game for months nonstop to deal with this specific situation. S/he will just say "fug that" and play something else. Rather, pay for a "small scale, but optimized and competitive" game instead.
tl;dr: Read words in bold.
tl;dr;dr: Game encourages griefing/one-sided advantages. Players want freedom. Griefing = bad.

I think the wording you are looking for is that PS2 doesn't work well with hard counters. In which case I agree.

Nice seeing you in game BTW. Tried to raise this point few months ago and got roasted for it, mostly because of the noob tank mains :/

Also a shift away from KD would be nice. People camp the spawn even if they don't get XP from all the kills simply because it inflates their Epeen based on KD. Since KD is so easily farmed through the use of picking a fight and using a farmtool it screws the game over for all those players not in a position to farm.

Even the latest UT(3) did it better, and that's mostly a deathmatch shooter all about KD! Through the use of stats like damage done to a core, health regenerated, vehicles destroyed, flags captured, flags retrieved and even redeemer missiles shot down you had a lot more to boast about. "Hah! You have a low KD!", "Yeah, I also have 3x the flag captures because I take risks trying to capture them". You aren't punished for playing the game, rather have rewards and other statistics that provide you with a good feeling that you can show off.
And while many players claim to not care about KD and such, the effect of KD is incredibly strong and visible in the game. Have people boast about support ribbons, deployed Sunderer kills, MAX kills, vehicle kills, kills with inappropriate weapons (a pistol vs a MAX for example), assists per life (a 60% assist gives 60% of the current full kill XP, and assists would add this up. So two 70% assists would be worth 1.4 assists for that life) etc etc.

Or the game is just old. People get bored and want something new. I used to play a game called Renegade. There is still nothing like it out there and it's still insanely good, but as its been out so long it's not played much any more.
That is the real reason. Not all the stuff I've seen over the years that was killing the game. They've been saying that a year after conception, they've been saying stuff has been killing the game ever since, they've all been proven wrong. All things point to this simple psychology reason of people just moving on to other games, permanently or temporarily, but PS2 just gets less attention over time that way. There are ways to stop it, but what you're offering might help stave off dying a bit longer, it might do nothing, it might scare people away. In the end the game is slowly dying from player retention over so many years.

Too much vertical progression eventually kills PvP games and since balance issues have lead to in increasingly bloated arsenal of weapons, despite being sidegrades, makes new players feel left behind. Worse, some of the old weapons feel outdated and left behind while the new weapons clearly show they're running out of ideas by copying weapons across factions.

Though at the same time, a game without a clear sense of winning, i.e. there's next to no tracking of anything at all. We have to rely on websites to understand data and track alerts and we often have incomplete data at that. This is a travesty for a PvP game.

I want to see more leaderboards which focus on outfit and faction performance and influence, alert wins and other performance data. We shouldn't have to scour the web to find, often, incomplete data.

In addition to this, bring back seasons to PS2. When there is a definite goal people can play towards something and not feel weighted down by years of accumulated data (such as alerts or weapons which have been changed in fundamental ways). Progression is a very superficial way to keep people playing, giving them goals isn't. Just look at sports and how the beginning of a season can change the mentality in profound ways and contrast that to the end of the seasons... But it doesn't stop there, there are cups and tournaments to win additional prestige and glory. It HAS to be server specific though, if I am playing on Miller I do not give a crap about the other servers though I am not opposed for it to be a global tracker as well.

Give each server and their outfits an identity instead of viewing each other as faceless cert piñatas for the farm.

TL;DR: I want outfits to have their efforts rewarded, I want outfits to see who their main rivals are and with whom they've clashed with, I want leaderboards which focus on outfits/faction performance AND I wand individual boards because even though this game isn't solely based on the individual it is also not bad to cheer for exceptional talent. If you think all of this doesn't matter, well, people buy cosmetic items for real money just to stand out.

Here's a bunch of options
1) take my beloved C4
2) stop standing where the tank keeps shelling its HESH
3) pick a flash and a friend and blow it up
4) pick a friend and a tank and blow it up
5) pick a friend and a valkyrie, drop on it and blow it up
6) if the tank is able to confortably farm infantry with none countering it, that means the fight is almost over, and probably lost so just use the redeploy button that's there exactly to avoid fights you won't enjoy.

Logic? Sense?!

How very dare you!

I had a friend who started out the game and he complained of dying all the time.

There are Veteran players like myself who have been on since beta, who have amassed certifications and mastered some of the mechanics of the game. That means, the game is challenging, because there truly are some great players on all factions.

I watch population percentages on fights, when the numbers are heavily stacked against you, there are so many facets and choices you have rather than going head to head.

No one enjoys being spawn camped, but that element is in every FPS game, Daybreak is going to try a new spawn system. I can’t wait.

Get what you're saying, but the words 'starting' and 'dying a lot' should be represented in bold while downloading this game. Fact remains kd being a front and centre stat in a game with so many means of death is frankly idiot design 101

Whats killing planetside 2 is people who instead of trying to fight the tank just sit in the spawnroom because they are scared of hurting their precious KDR's

The vehicle spam in this game is very frustrating.

Its really un-fun.

People will tell you to just go c4 the tanks, but thats really only viable against bad tankers.

The good tankers will just kill you repeatedly.

They have radar and spitfire turrets and of course when you are floating through the air you are visible to any enemy infantry.

There are always any number of kobalt sundies and ants waiting to kill you so fast you cant even use a med kit.

The supposed counter to tanks which is air has been nerfed so many times i can no longer count.

Flak has been repeatedly buffed. Ants with rangers are now a match for a liberator. As are ranger harassers.

Guns like basilisks that used to have a low angle of attack can now shoot straight up.

It used to be you could only pull tanks at major bases, now they can be pulled almost anywhere.

Tanks used to cost more nanites and there were timers. Now there are no timers, tanks are pretty much always pullable because of ASP and easy nanites.

This is why i have suggested reducing damage by tanks to infantry so that it takes 3 body shots and 2 headshots to kill a planetman.

And also to reduce the infantry damage vs tanks so that heavies with rocket launchers cant pop out for .1 secs and fire a rocket at you and then hide.

C4 against tanks should require 4 bricks, or perhaps add a tamping mechanic where the C4 user has to sit for several seconds carefully placing the charge and shaping it rather than just dropping it from the sky.

It shouldn't be possible to repair a vehicle while its taking damage.

Make it so tanks can only be pulled from tech plants and warpgate.

Reduce kobalt damage.

Reduce flak range so that its useful for low flying aircraft who are doing a2g and not viable against high flying a2a aircraft and libs.

Also remove AB from aircraft with secondary weapons and put all AI noseguns as secondaries so that you cant equip an a2g nosegun and have AB.

Wrel might think vehicles farming infantry is a good idea, but ALL of the people i got to play this game quit because they got sick of the constant tank and sundy spam.

Oh yeah. Sundies should be available without guns for their current price. With guns they should cost 450 resources.

I'd be playing now but im sick of getting tank spammed on indar esamir and amersih so lately i only play hossin where its not nearly as bad.

Interesting thread.

PS2 has no endgame and no character progression.To keep players on the long term you should offer one or the other.

Taking out the endgame option (since PS2 runs 24/7 and there is no persistence in conquering a continent) the only thing left is character progression.

Unfortunately that option is also ruled out by the game mechanics, a BR1 can face 10 BR120 on his first session.

Now BR120 are deadly enough to newbies due to their base geometry knowledge, SA, positioning and weapons handling that adding some extra power or stamina would be overkill (it is already overkill now.

So there is nothing to keep a player logging in except killing and be killed. May not suit everyone ...

Remember back in the day people used to call Planetside 2 “the most savage game” to learn about. But now... meh not really, as long as you’ve had some other experience in gaming and are willing to die loads in your first 10 or so sessions you will be fine(also you kinda need someone to guide you)

Killing the enemy is now classed as griefing........

Did i click on spectrum (star citizen forum for anyone who doest know) by mistake?

This drivel is infectious it seems...i dont even....

i was in a nc squad the other day of about 12 people...... all they did was talk about how other factions had all the op weapons for over an hour at one point i left the sqaud because my friend stop libbing, i came back about 45 mins later and they were still talking about the same bs..... like go play the other factions then, you wil have nothing to complain or ***** about. i only wonder how many people lone wolf because of this and other similar squad talk. no one seemed to work together or waiting at spawn to go 3-4 strong together, idk...

There's a difference between getting killed in a equal scenario (infantry vs infantry, tank vs tank, etc) and dying because of some tank lobbing shells from 200m ~ 300m away from spawn/cap point as infantry.

Maybe you should read the whole thread again. I said infantry -- not C4 or flash. Even if you may say "but C4 belongs to infantry!" -- it's there, but it's not infantryplay, i.e shooting other infantry players in the face.

Well you're in luck, CoD and such have no vehicles.

Ps2 is rare for many of reasons one of which is combined arms. I prefer it that way personally. That said some more blind spots for hesh spammers would be nice.

Also making more clear sense to what that teleporter in the spawn does would help most people. I wonder how many people know about the tunnels in techs... the arrow doesn't help a lot.

All in all I don't consider camping spawn as griefing personally.

There's a difference between using small weapons (i.e common infantry weapons) to kill infantry and use tools meant to deter (or even kill) vehicles against infantry. If you shoot someone's face, a infantry enemy player, with a rocket launcher, as infantry -- you are committing grief, you are using a weapon meant to deter vehicles against infantry. At the same time, if you use a tank with the sole purpose to rain down tank shells on helpless infantry from far away -- you are committing a grief. You are taking advantage of no enemy tank nearby, or your tank squad or whatever to "farm" down infantry who can't do jack about it.
The point of this thread is to not condemn tanks, aircrafts and such -- but when those tools are used wrong. Or maybe I should say, on how the game encourages the player to use said tools with the intention to "farm" rather play their respective roles. "Why I should get my **** in there while I can lob explosives from far away inside my tank and get me some easy kills?It only takes me a tap of a button!".

Uh huh, guess I don't understand how killing someone in a online fps is griefing them. Now I know... I am a bully and should let them kill me.

If no one ever counters that tank you have an issue with then he will always be griefing by your logic. So it's his fault that another tank doesnt go and stop him there for he is taking advantage of a situation.