Planetside 2 - new players leaving

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by karlooo, Dec 24, 2019.

  1. karlooo

    The devs keep on talking about this issue and how they want to fix it, so I'll mention how I see this problem from my view.
    Recently someone I know tried this game for the first time and he hated it!

    This new player experience is comparable to an unbalanced MOBA game. Imagine just starting the game lv 1 and for your first game you get matched up with platinum ranked players on both enemy and allied team.
    Simply what's going to happen is you will get constantly decimated, cluelessly running around, and your teammates will flame you for not playing correctly (Planetside 2 squads).
    ___________________________________________

    Getting destroyed by someone experienced is not the problem.
    Everyone when they get into a new game is clueless. We need someone to explain the mechanics to us.
    Best way to understand the game, in game is with your team (squads) and not just any team like the devs did where you auto join some useless squad which does nothing....New players need a real squad, with an experienced leader that vocally tells his team what to do, someone they can follow and learn from (Which Eu servers lack cause of language).

    This is where the real problem lies.
    The devs may not realize this but the real gameplay has a repelling effect on new players. It's simply just a non stop spam and rush (it's not fun). It's all about time and you need to get to the objective immediately. You die, spawn immediately and die again, to push the enemy back in any way possible. It's impossible to strategize in these clusterfuk battles, you need to do this.
    Once you are done at this one fight you again need to rush out and go to the next objective by spawning, and if you don't do this you get flamed by your leader, which is not very welcoming to a new player too.
    It's not the leaders fault, all he is doing is going by the meta the devs created.
    We are losing this base, press u and spawn there, now spawn here, spawn there....All of this is unenjoyable and doesn't really gain interest for the players to stay, like who wants to do this?



    Another problem is with what Planetside 2 advertises. People mostly come here for the open world, the graphics, the large battles.
    Well most of this is a lie and over time the players realize they didn't sign up for this.

    Open world....what type of open world when all you do is press u to redeploy and go to the base your leader tells you to. It's literately the waiting room in a call of duty game waiting for the leader to choose the map...we finished 'Crossfire' lets now play on the map 'strike'.
    What's the difference? All you do is play in that one spot your leader tells you to and you never go outside.

    Graphics....well once I get into the real game my fps seems to drop. Once I lower the graphics everything is much more visible.

    Big fights....by big fights players imagined an extensive open world battle. Not some 50 players players stuck inside this one building, a complete clusterfuk fight for this one zone, this is not what people have in mind when they imagine a big fight.


    Planetside 2 should modify its meta with what it advertises. Doesn't have enough players for it? Merge the servers or watch the population slowly decline.
    • Up x 5
  2. DarkStarAnubis

    DBG has simply to understand why with limitless sea/air/land warfare opportunities spread over terrain like jungle, swamps, desert, forests, ice fields,... players end up fighting for hours in a small, confined, urban area without vehicles and with fixed spawn points and narrow fighting lanes (Biolab), the closest equivalent to an old quake map.
    • Up x 2
  3. OgreMarkX

    One of the main problems with the New Player Experience is largely out of DBG's hands. This is the problem of PS2 players who exploit the game engine and think themselves good players.

    You know the type. I see them mostly on VS on Connery (I am sure some TR players do it but I only play TR so never see it).

    They abuse the crouch aspect, they abuse the movement aspect, they lessen their hit box in that way. They use any and all exploits. Their goal is high KDR and they never stop to think the effect they have on new players or the game eperience in general.

    They then float to different games and do the same, ruin the player base, and all the while thinking themselves as ... l33t.

    You will, however, NEVER see them play games where they have to play on an even playing field. And when their exploits are redefined as hacks and are bannable, or their exploits are fixed, they declare they are tired of the game and quit.

    To end this post I'd like to say hello to Sir Cereal Box and Transgressor, each formerly of Recursion [00] on NC Connery.

    I'd also like to say hello to former DBG Dev Drew, who often "played" on VS Connery.

    Happy Exploitationmas to All!
    • Up x 4
  4. InexoraVC

    Yes, you're absolutely correct. I have tired of deploying on a new base every 3...5 mins and left outfit. Squad gameplay is a variation of a CoD gameplay. Now I'm mostly flying ESF.
    Big Fighs are stuck in a tiny areas and looks like CoD TDM matches. That is why many players like Biolabs - they have the same experience in similar gameplay.
    • Up x 1
  5. iPug

    As a new player, one of things I find most irksome is how small the worlds (continents) really are and I think it also causes that clustering of facilities where you're always engaged in close-quarters combat (always fighting inside buildings). There are two other problems I see with it. One, it makes it less engaging for aircraft to go at it with each other (besides the awful joystick support and ever annoying pitch/down issues with the flight controls). Two, the other problem is that ground vehicles rarely engage in wide open fields or terrain, it's always close-quarters combat.

    The other issue you addressed for new players leaving and going up against high ranking players. One way to stop the massive slaughter of new players and causing them to quit is to put an ENY or restriction on the continent with the most high-ranked players, limit the type of weapons they can carry until the population balances out. This would also end the issue of having to wait in line forever (even as an all-access member). Put in additional costs for high damage weapons. I never see a high battle rank person ever use a lower-end weapon, it's always a mid-to-high end range weapon (mostly higher end).
  6. ican'taim

    Remove headshot multipliers. This isn't CoD, so why are they here?

    The weapons you start with are actually the best. Also aim for the head, as headshots are enormously powerful.
    BTW I am a new-ish player as well and have not bought any additonal guns (the nsx-p tengu came from a promocode) so I'm on the same playing field as you.
    • Up x 1
  7. iller


    Here's the problem: Truly understanding the core gameplay loop has NOTHING to do with the kinds of strategy elements that people are all told to think matters in this game. People 99% mis-understand what the actual Learning Curve is that exists in PS2

    It is primarily about understanding poor TTK balancing piled upon BAD Netcode. ... and then simply exploiting the hell out of that one massive oversight. IOW: You always stay just 1/2 a TTK ahead of whoever is behind the next piece of Geometry. ...you don't run beyond that corner, you walk/strafe, angle-snap right to their Head, and then ADS while firing -- because on their screen, it's exactly like you haven't even appeared yet because the speed of light literally means that the Roudtrip Latency/Tickrate/Cache-Bottleneck can guarantee you up to 180ms + 200ms (human reaction time) in some cases of FREE DAMAGE before before their counter response even reaches the Server.


    The real learning curve is all hitbox manipulation and lag exploitation. Which is the absolute last thing actually communicated to most players. It's only after they've exhausted all of those other things you mentioned in that long, long Original Post you made that they begin to realize none of it really helps them in the core gunplay. Thats when the veterans eventually end up in a competitive Outfit that drills them on attuning all of their habits and cognitive dissonance towards abusing the one thing that was never addressed or expanded upon in all this game's lifespan:

    It's lagwizrd-incentivizing Headgank Crit multipliers VS. the FACT that it's all running on way less responsive MMORPG server architecture
    • Up x 2
  8. OneShadowWarrior

    Heavy Assault was once the premier class, once they nerfed the shields there went the damage absorber, to add more insult nanoweave which no longer protected against headshots for all classes, add overkill on headshots. It opened the floodgates to the exploiting fanboys with one hit kill weapons and further camping continued in mass with bigger outfits using vehicles throwing projectiles from sky or land with no ability to fight back let alone react, add the insult to injury with shoddy base designs and horrible spawn rooms.

    It’s not Planetside, but Campside.

    Your spawn camped or dead before you can react when your outnumbered. The Veterans just don’t stick around to fight their ways thru pointless fights and now try to force players to fight their fight and a distance they can control.

    In the original Planetside infiltrators did not have access to sniper rifles or submachineguns but could hack vehicles and carry combat engineer stuff, engineers could lay down 20+ mines, 5+ spifire turrets, rocklett rifle was available to classes except infil, even the max suits the Starfire for VS which had jump jets and Sparrow for NC had lockon anti air, TR had there Strikers that also locked on to max suits everyone knew Flak was garbage in the original PS. Vehicles were throw away items, when they gave them to much power with no defense leads to camping.
    • Up x 1
  9. Greech

    As a new player myself (My account is old but I didnt play PS2 very long at all) I can vouch for most of the feelings already mentioned by the above posts.

    I've been angry, shocked, and in total disbelief that I emptied 30 rounds into that guy and he turns around only to one shot me. I understand latency issues and have been on both sides of that scenario over the years.

    With that said, I am currently BR:37 and still lose probably 60% of 1v1 fights. I enjoy the vehicle aspect of the game and try to keep my pixelated rear parked in a seat as much as possible. I have however learned, mostly the hard way of the lanes and typical paths taken. The angles I am shot from sometimes amaze me.

    What keeps me playing if I get beat down so much? Learning. I have no desire to be the best at this or any other game, but I do respect the ones who take the time to learn an expansive game such as PS2. Its a fun game even playing solo if you can get over the whole CoD culture where only your KDR matters.
    • Up x 1
  10. AllRoundGoodGuy

    Being an avid MOBA player I 100% get this hahahahahahahaha. The issue is though that these games have detection systems to put players in lobbies of their skill bracket after some calibration. Planetside 2 does not use any lobby system, and as such, it happens pretty much as you say. I think the mentor idea is good on paper, but I honestly think this isn't a problem DBG can solve by itself. The players need to pitch in and make it a better experience.
  11. iller

    Disagree.

    It is definitely a problem that a very capable Programmer could solve entirely on their own. ...provided that they could move beyond the thinking you just demonstrated that "ELO Brackets" can only exist in "phased" or instanced Lobby-like settings.

    The poster right above the post I'm quoting, ...demonstrated it already in discussing Vehicles. Prior to C.A.I., the Vehicle meta was one such "bracket" that players with poorer Latency or underpowered CPU Cache speeds could remain in, effectively "smurfing" in a bracket with lower TTK's. You wouldn't get nearly the same Directives progress sitting in a MBT gunner seat or being the Liberator pilot, but you would have a lot more control over how "at risk" you were to the sudden appearance of the local OverFed Jungler around the next corner; instakilling you with his 0.75 AD movement Prestige-Directive bullet hose.

    The problem that we had, is that the Devs looked at this natural "Bracketing" players sorted themselves into, and said "Well we're just going to take away the Smurfing element because our DATAMINING is telling us to." They didn't even give it a second's worth of thought as to WHY players were sorting themselves into these ELO brackets of less Reward to overall assume less Risk and a lot more DownTime.

    They CAN do this directly with the actual Gunplay. And they can even do it in ways that 90% disincentivizes Lagswtiching too. ... the main issue is that, if they do it with POOR Messaging, it will just be seen as the latest round of TTK nerfs that went over so extremely poorly with Battlefield 5 the past quarter. ...which the BF5 devs totally DESERVE because they did it in such a hamfisted way.


    If anyone doubts this reality, I'd be happy to go into more details, I just don't want to append it to this already-lengthy response
    • Up x 1
  12. Xipoid1

    For the LAG in the game I almost never play infantry and if yes, normally infiltrator. There no point in being infantry. Infantry get killed in no time. Due to the lag it seems that peeps shoot through the walls.
    Normally I play tank only. In a tank there is more time to respond and lag is not so relevant. Although 3 seconds for deploy and un-deploy or not be able to heal a tank due to LAG hurts as well.
    New players in the tank is sometimes annoying. They don't know how to use a gun (e.g. shooting AA at infantry at 100+ meters) and with all the random shooting, they get unwanted attention of others (e.g shooting at liberators whenever they see one) or if they try to shoot air, miss experience to hit anything (which isn't a problem by itself, but I probably loose my tank).
  13. AllRoundGoodGuy

    I'd like said details. Details make (almost) everything better. I like thinking about opposing viewpoints. In the example you gave being a gunner, while less risky, doesn't really teach you about playing infantry (Except maybe how to avoid a tank.) So once they decide to try infantryside the same problem arises, they are matched up against a bunch of salty vets, with none of the "skillz" to compete fairly.

    You say there is a way to fix this, but I cannot see a way to programmatically make it so that new players do not run into the issue of instantly being matched up against high level players, be it in tanks or on foot or in the air. I guess they tried with koltr (hope I spelled it right), but in that case they are trying to separate the newbs from the vets, a "lobby" system. Granted, I believe there are changes that can be done to definitely level the playing field *cough* esf *cough* but I believe the core problem will exist.
  14. Vanguard540

    I'm playing with my friends, we're veterans.
    My girlfriend recently joined us on the game. She's a low BR player. She's having fun manning a turret from vehicles.
    But when it comes to infantry (that she wants to play), she's getting crazy pissed. Sometimes I have to pinch my nosestrills on teamspeak because she's so mad and I don't want her to hear me laughing.
    She explains me that she feels useless. She would like to help, she says she's slowing us down.

    Everybody wants to be the hero, everybody wants to save the day and be surrounded by thankful people.

    But this is planetside 2. You could say it's war, but it's worse than that. Every other player is a rabid beast willing to kill as much as possible. And most of the time that beast drinks energy drinks and carries an LMG.

    So yeah as a new player well the 99.5% of the other players jump at you, slaughter you and T-bag your smoking corpse.
    And imagine this gets over and over and over.

    You have no pleasure, you are frustrated, you feel bad. Of course you're not gonna stay.

    In 2014 I was so bad at the game I had to play stalker only and slowly crouch to enemy vehicle terminals to headshot a guy repeatedly with the beamer. I would aim at them to practice then uncloak and shoot when they were no longer moving. Then I slowly started to shoot them while they were moving straight. Etc. till I could be confident enough to play normally. But I had the patience for this. Because I'm somewhat autistic and stubborn. Normal people don't go through this and just play something else.

    Why do people leave?

    Nothing to practice aiming with increasing difficulty. (Why did CoD worked as a multiplayer shooter? It had a solo campaign too).
    Not feeling rewarded when playing (no pleasure, unless rare kills on vets)
    No game rewards grind is too long from nowadays standards.
    No daily/weekly missions : give 15 crates of ammo, revive 15 people, etc. Reward : 50 certs / cosmetics

    Many here are playing with recursion, recursion is a life changer. How many of us suddenly rejoice when we hear ragequit or pizza delivery, sharpshooter etc.

    When a noob dies a lot, audio message to cheer him up should proc and offer alternate objectives such as backline objectives : repair a max, play as a medic or something that could be really important right now, protect a sunderer for 5 min to get a reward. If sunderer doesn't blow up you get a decal, 50 certs etc.

    When your kids are learning to ride a bike you cheer them up when they do good, you don't ******* swing a baseball bat up their face.

    At the moment the game is only swining the bat.
    • Up x 3
  15. iller

    You just answered your own request *(or Doubts in this case)...

    The more technical explanation though at least starts with the correct groups of players actually playing together. As in, PROXIMITY > ALL. The problem is that Wrel has only attempted to address this social issue with meaningless flavor text (directives) and Arbitrary map spawning rules that have somehow caused even more n00b-slaughter farms than they've prevented.

    But,

    You already know another core component to this: that's Information. The UI covets it and only relinquishes it easily to multitasking Robots who would be equally suited to multiboxing in Dwarf fortress. So the first step is bringing in as many Quality of Life improvements to the U.I. (while in a mentor Squad) as possible... just straight up rip off Apex Legends' U.I. team functions if they have to and then add even more "communication shortcut" simplifications ....to the point that the new player almost never has to look down at their minimap ... But don't give that information just anywhere, only provide it when they're IN PROXIMITY to other squad members playing an Intel class (LA or Infil). ...Maybe even provide wireframe-color based threat-assessment (assuming a Squad lead is in proximity too) on enemies coming towards them based on that enemy's current Accuracy percentage and KPM .


    Second:

    Headshot crits are too punishing for new players to contend with. One could argue they're really only a mechanic that's "fair" to the top 2% of the install base (or 20% of the active players currently remaining). But that doesn't mean I'm advocating to remove them... They ARE needed for specialty weapons like the Crossbow, long range Snipers, Clip pistols, and scout rifles. But every other weapon in the game is an Automatic of some kind ... or is a very Front loaded Shotgun/Revolver side arm. None of those weapons should ever just have unconditional Headshot Criticals that completely ignore Nanoweave also.

    This is where the details get a bit Code-Heavy.... but again, it should always be factored upon by only providing the remedy when they're IN PROXIMITY to other squad members playing a survival themed role like Medic or MAX unit. And this is a fairly "light touch" proposal, bear in mind. It would simply boil down to: How much REASONABLE reaction time was the player given to react to the enemy's cone of aim being on them? ...this entire system already exists by the way in 2 mechanics, the spotting system of course, and the Player's gun Vector model information that's constantly relayed to other clients:
    1. If a Snappy-aim salty VET is popping around corners and is only giving his targets half a second notice before 4 LMG rounds go straight into their dome...
    2. ...then the minor code tweaks I'm proposing would simply measure the difference between the point that his client draws line of sight and/or firing cone radius with approximate "bead" on that player...
    3. ...to the clocked milliseconds that the target's client measures that salty Vet's gun model vector intersecting with their own head vector.
    4. From there, you have INFORMATION that you can then do things with... such as provide Head Crit resistance to the target for that brief interval we just measured where the Server lag, Tick rate, roundtrip Latency, garbage IP routing tables, and possibly even more garbage AMD chipsets are still catching up just to try and register the fact that the salty Vet has just popped around that corner...
    5. ...and it's NOW TIME (for the target) TO RUN and get help from squad nearby members (as opposed to dying instantly like they currently do)
    .

    There's of course options having to do with maybe their shields or reloading intervals that could be linked to Engineers and Heavies in their squad that they are also in proximity to. There could also be similar Quality of life Benefits for them being in proximity to Fireteam leads and Squad leads. Point is: lobbies have the same goal, but we don't actually have to segregate players from eachother to make some big gains in Equity here for newer players... At least when it comes to not constantly feeling so overwhelmed by how much geometry exploitation and raw information they have to process all at once from half a dozen different locations on the screen space & audio cues

    .

    TL;DR summary: Regardless of BR levels, the following "light bulbs" would flick on in new players' minds:
    • Infil newbs would go: "Man, I can't aim this sniper rifle for sh** to stop people from rushing into that building, but at least when I stay with my squad and put down darts, they can see the little radar blips in 3D that are coming around the corner to get them and that at least gives us all a fighting chance".
    • LA newbs would say: "Boy I don't know the layout of this base AT ALL, but I notice when I spot a real tough guy, the rest of my squad immediately gangs up on him now and that's Awesome!"
    • Someone who was told to go medic might realize: "Well I sure don't have enough certs to buy rez nades and belt OR get that Medical Applicator to level 6.... but my Squad mates DO seem to survive being shot at a lot more when I'm near them and that's good enough to keep me playing this weird class"
    • An NC newb in a max suit would be like: Oof! There's no way I'll get the 4000 certs I need to make this tin can into something that can fight those big Lobster guys at range, but as long as I stay alive longer near the front lines, so does my team and that's cool.
  16. ColdBackHAND

    I added my comments above. But your closing statement says we need more population. You've been talking about have it needs less. I'm drunk right now. Whats your excuse.
  17. HelioUSP

    This is actually very simple.

    First, turn Battle-eye back on ffs. This one alone will draw people in/back.
    Second, reduce all explosive damage to infantry by 50%.
    Third, increase the time from uncloak-to-fire back to original levels for the diaper class.
  18. Towie

    Battleye is a bit of a mystery - sometimes it starts (as in 'Starting Battleye Service' message), most of the time it doesn't. Possibly related to the licensing / payment for using BE (which is another mystery - licensing costs aren't published - so maybe DBG are trying to cut corners by only starting the service on certain users ? Who knows).

    Whatever. All we can say for certain is - it really (REALLY) isn't working. Cheating is at epidemic proportions and has been for months - the reason why I cancelled my membership - and will be the ultimate reason for PS2's demise, despite being an astonishing game in so many respects.
    • Up x 1
  19. iller

    It never really did anything except give John Smedley a false sense of smugness everytime it banned a super Blatant scriptkid who was using the FREE "hacks" programs or trying to use CheatEngine incorrectly. (LOL that **** was SUPER EFFECTIVE in DCUO if you just messed with the Interp a little bit, you could become invsible or bug your melee hitbox underneath the ground, I got videos of it somewhere)

    Otherwise, the slightly more subtle cheaters were playing for YEARS without being banned once.

    .

    I kept telling them... the real solution was to provide the players themselves a Demo Playback format like Source Engine games all have. (...only viewable offline of course to prevent "ghosting" during live play)
    • Up x 1
  20. Tozze101

    The main problem i had when i first joined this game was the multiple deaths i had. Yes i was not the best with aiming and had yet to figure out the latency problem this game has. What really put me off was the bombardment of every base i was in. You could not step outside and cap that objective the leader was yelling about. You got 5m outside and suddenly died to a tankshell or missile from aircrafts.

    Then i got told i get better if i die alot. I'll learn from my experience. All i learned was that staying in the spawnroom was safer then listening to orders. At the time i was in ELME and it was fun at times as we did galaxy drops etc. I then joined BHO and i got to lead my first squad. We held a base alone for 2 hours against a platoon trying to cap it. They could not use vehicles so it was all about getting our infantry to the right positions and hold on against the horde of soldiers pouring in. We celebrated every time we pushed them back and for a short moment the game was good.

    Then we got called to a base assault with the rest of the platoon. For an hour we drove around in vehicles bombarding spawnrooms so our troops could cap the points. During that hour half my squad left. We tried going on foot but mostly it was like ghostcapping. The only time we saw any action was when a couple of harassers drove up and took out alot of our tanks. Harassers which i think should be nerfed in hitpoints or be more vulnerable to tankshells btw.

    I love the big battles to this day but whenever we get to a base the gameplay gets boring. Yes you can run around and chase those infils that run out but why? I can live with the latency, the occasional lag etc but not the bad gameplay.

    Edit: Oh and the sudden rise in hackers is really killing the game. They fly around underneath the map and take out entire tank platoons or just clear points for their faction. Some of them even admit to hacking in chat and multiple people report them but they are still around. 2 weeks ago a hacker was reported by probably 100 people but today i saw him again flying around in a mosquito under the map