Planetside 2 vs Planetside 1

I imagine that with all the long treatises on Planetside design posted in the beta forums and here someone must have posted a detailed comparison of the two games, I'm interested in reading that to have a better understanding of both games. Does anyone have a link to a comparison?

I do understand that PS1, being a 9 years old game isn't something easy to compare to PS2 which has already changed a lot since it first went online.

In b4 the forum explodes over this topic.

The post directly below mine sums it up nicely.

The original Planetside was a much deeper game wrapped around a rather poor engine for FPS gameplay.

Bases had real depth to them (both structurally and mechanically).
Power vehicles such as MBTs required a lot of teamwork to function.
There were true support roles in the game such as ANT drivers and Lodestar pilots, able to influence the entire battle without being able to directly inflict harm on others.
There were no classes yet characters were far more defined in their roles due to the original certification system (before they raised the level cap).
Continental conquest and leadership structure gave the game an engaging metagame aspect for those who were interested in such things.
The lattice system gave the game an inherent flow to it and forced larged groups of players to actually engage eachother if they wanted to take territory. In addition, it gave spec-ops and small organized squads major, game changing objectives by being able to disconnect parts of the lattice from other parts.
Infiltrators were Infiltrators, not Snipers that can temporarily cloak.

I could write a book about how amazing the original Planetside 1 was, but I'll spare you.
The TL;DR would be:

Planetside 2 is superior visually, has better infantry gunplay, and has a superior aircraft flight model. In all other regards PS1 was a superior game. This will hopefully change in the future as SOE continues to develop PS2.

Planetside 1 is one of the best games i have every played (at least until BFR's were introduced and the population dropped). I have been looking forward to PS2 but after about 2 weeks my interest in the game has dropped off rapidly. It does not have any of the magic of ps1. It just looks prettier.

I hadn't anticipated this, no one posted a link yet... Anyway let's please try to keep it civil guys, so that something good comes out of this thread if no one has made a in-depth comparison.

I haven't seen a big comparison list, but just off the top of my head...

• TTKs:

Then = ~1.5 sec minimum with rifles, ~1 sec with miniguns/jackhammers/lashers: Now = .4-.5 minimum.
Considering average accuracy:
Then = ~3+ secs?: Now = 1.4-2 secs?

• Vehicles:

MBTs are required a dedicated gunner and dedicated driver. No resources, just cooldown (15 min.)

Fliers were all common pool:
Mosquito = light flyer, MG only.
Reaver = heavy flyer, dual MGs (no one used) and rocket pods.
"Dogfighting" involved circling each other in a strafing motion a firing away until one died.

Lightning then = crap cannon and MG.
Lighning now = crap cannon unless certed cannon, then mini MBT/skyguard.
Skyguard was a dedicated buggy in PS1.

• Certifications:

Certs in PS1 unlocked equipment, like an MBT, or the use of the sniper rifle, or medical applicator.
Now: Certs unlock only weapons, enhance everything else.

PS1 had a cert cap based on BR.
>Thus, soldiers "specialized" in a role or roles, and that character was only capable of using that equipment.
PS2 has an unlimited cert cap, so technically one can acquire every cert.
>Result is basic equipment/vehicles are not denied to the player, but they aren't as great as they could be either unless certed into.

• Inventory vs class:

Inventories allowed one to pick an armor type: cloak, vest (spawn,) medium, heavy, MAX. The first four had weapon slots of varying sizes to equip weaponry, and an inventory grid to store more weapons, ammo, and medical/repair supplies in.

Inventories allowed setups such as heavy + (weapon 1) + (weapon 2) + (support/sidarm 1) + (support/sidearm 2.) Sidearms slots often carried a medical applicator (could heal oneself with it) and repair gun (repaired own armor.) Any medium to large weapon could fit in the main weapon slots. Rifle and bazooka. Yes. Rifle and shotgun. Okay. Sniper rifle and sniper rifle? Sure, why not?

Class system ends universal soldier: can no longer carry self healing/repairing device + dedicated vehicle and infantry deterrents. Everyone must learn to rely on each other for healing, for dealing with vehicles, for sniping, etc. Whether or not this system actually encourages teamwork is up to the individual. PS1's system made lone wolfing super easy, but team oriented players still worked together.

PS1 features no customization of actual equipment: one just picked their equipment and fought. A cycler was always a cycler, a vanguard was always a vanguard. No camo, no changing of barrels, just cert, grab and go.

• Infantry mechanics:

No ADS. Closest we had was varying levels of zoom, 2x and 4x. Higher with a special implant/boost.

Instead of shields and health, we had armor and health. Armor had to be repaired as it took damage, but mitigated damage to health. Health always took damage if the damage was great enough to surpass the armor threshold. PS2, we essentially have 1000 hp, with 500 of it being regenerative. (Introducing the old school armor mechanic as a side grade to replace the shield might be a cool concept to explore.)

• Territory control:

A device called the REK was required to hack anything, and was the single most important piece of equipment in the game. Hacking a control console began turning the base on a 15 minute timer. Anyone sans the MAX could use the REK.

Bases had several stages: The wall and courtyard. The lobby/back door, then the raw innards of the base, often claustrophobic tubes for halls and a quagmire of storage rooms.

PS2 bases: Walls cover too great an expanse to properly defend against enemies such as LA, not to mention the vast multitude of entrances. The large structures are basically empty husks and/or glorified vehicle spawn pads. No one is required to hack a control point to take it, and only infiltrators can hack anything, but it's most just turrets and terminals.



PS2 is loads of fun, don't get me wrong, but as I play it, the more I realize following BF3 among other games as an example of how it should be done is only hurting the game.

For a more prevalent and forum loud issue, BF3 controls the number of vehicles in play on the map at any given moment, so other classes can remain viable and rely on the AV equipped classes to take those vehicles out. PS2's players can pull a vehicle on a whim, and there aren't nearly enough HA with effective AV weaponry to take them all on. It worked in PS1, but only because nearly everyone had AV/AA for their infantry unlocked and could equip it with any armor (except the infiltrator or MAX suit,) because the game was balanced with infantry combat capabilities as the focal point, rather than trying to make all three (infantry, tank, and air) balanced against each other in some sordid and miserably failed way.

I think PS2 must be set before PS1.

The bases were far better designed in PS1.
The MAX's were far better in PS1.
We actually learnt how to loot the enemy and use their weapons.
We had an AMS that could cloak.
There must be other stuff that i cant think of yet...

So my original line stands. Planetside 2 was set before Planetside 1. It's like a prequel.

I fully agree.

Off topic question, IF Planetside 1 goes FTP (drops the sub) how many people will go back to playing it I wonder?

I had completely forgotten about the lonestar. What a pig. Still the ability to lift and move heavy vehicles over a mountain range is pretty cool. Doing multi-lodestar drops was as much as the big multi-galaxy infantry drops.

Planetside 2 vs Planetside 1

Planetside 1, wins.

Fatality.

Even if it never went FTP I would still go back to it if it had a population. I do hope they open the gates some day though so more people could experience it. I had more fun in that one free month before beta started than I have ever had in PS2 from the duration of tech-test to present. And those battles weren't even close to the original 166 popcap battles.

Base design

Base design

Base design

These are my problems

You could do it in a game from early 2000's, but not in 2012? That's progress.

others summed up alot of it nicely, but some further things I think are of note. Excuse me if ramble on a bit

Certs unlocked equip sets so HA cert unlocked empire specific heavy assault weapons mcg/lasher/mcg. You only spawn your empires one, but you could loot others, I had lashers for hall fights, jackhemmer for real cqc and pheonix (nc fly b wire av weapon) in my locker

Hacking cert was not only for hacking terminals, but you could with adv. hacking hack enemy vehicals, as TR I was always cheering on outfit infils who brought us magriders on maps with alot of water (yes water you had to fight around, mags and threshers the vs mbt and assault buggy could hover over water) also sneaking up on a lazy tanker and jacking his tank was great

it wasnt just the flight mechanics and the fact almost everyone carried an av weapons (all empire specific av weapons worked on ground and air) that kept infantry from being farmed but real cover, check some videos and you will see bunkers set up on the roads in some locations, thier firing slit was smaller than a PS2 windo so it was dificult for a tank to get a round in, and it had another thing you will not find in PS2. a DOOR on its backside to keep tank shells out. the forests while built weirdly, with foliage so durable you could land a galaxy on the green foliage at the top of the trees, also gave infantry cover from above. the confined space between tree trunks made it an awful place to drive a tank if it was defended with inantry hiding behind many trees with rockets waiting on you to drive by...

Spawn rooms had no shields, but we underground only accessible by infantry/MAX suits, and you could destroy the tubes, time to spawm went for fastest to slowest Bases, then Towers, then AMSs.

The dropship abilities were secondary to the amazing ground/tank battles that would erupt when multiple factions had grounded Lodestars, imo.

Hey.. I rather liked my lightning, the damage was =[ but I still killed MBTs with it because somehow people cant seem to aim even a mag properly..

The broad strokes are the same (eternal war, respawning, nanites, moar bullets vs. hit harder vs. "versatility").

PS1 had slower combat overall in the vast majority of cases. And the relative handful of insta-gib weapons were concentrated in the NC's control, for the most part.

Empires had specific specialized tanks and buggies, at the start. All aircraft were common pool. Later, the Sunderer (at the time a big honkin Semi with two lightning cannons) and Deliverer (picture a current sunderer, capacity 5, amphibious) were given empire-specific tweaks.

Vehicles could be stolen by the enemy (if they specialized in it).

There was no class system. Instead, one chose his battlefield role by spending earned certification points which granted access to vehicles and equipment. One could periodically remove a chosen certification and spend the refunded points elsewhere, with a day-long timer between uses (so a complete respec of a developed character could take over a week to implement).

There was an inventory system, whose capacity was determined by which of four armor styles one was (certed for and) wearing. Weapons could be looted from the dead, provided one was fast enough to get to them before the backpacks despawned.

There were four standard base maps (well, four and change. The dropship center was an Interlink with a few tweaks). These maps were the same for every base in the game of that type. One tech plant only differed from the others in the orientation and terrrain in which it was placed. These bases provided minor benefits to the owners in the form of ability to pull heavy tanks, minor health increases, vehicle shields, passive radar, etc. Bases were linked to each other with the "lattice system", requiring a direct link from an owned base in order to initiate a capture attempt. All bases had a generator (which powered the turrets, IFF on doors, termnals, and spawn tubes) and a spawn room with 3 spawn tubes, lockers for stored equipment, and equipment terminals. Spawn tubes could be attacked and destroyed.

Additionally there were 3 standard tower maps. Towers were scattered all over the continents, but provided little benefit to the owning empire other than a spawn point and/or aircraft re-arm station. Generally, there were 2 towers near any individual base.

Most bases and all towers switched control by fighting to and accessing a control console, and then holding the point from a re-hace attempt for a set amount of time. Some had a capture-the-flag style LLU (lattice logic unit) that had to be taken via foot or ground vehicle to a linked base within a set time period in order to convert.

The game had 9 continents on release, and 3 "Sanctuary" islands, each with multiple warp gates to facilitate movement between them. Sanctuaries had spawn and virtual reality training facilities, as well as access to the drop-pod ship (HART), and three warp gates.With the first expansion, six "urban combat styled" cave systems were added, along with additional common-pool weaponry and vehicles. Shortly thereafter, one continent was split into three (four? I can't remember exactly) "battle islands" that were much smaller, and had gear and vehicle restrictions in place. When this happened, the developers changed the game setting from one planet with multiple continents, to multiple planets.

Planetside 1 had innovative game play, especially for its time and technology level, but suffered froma relatively steady population decline for a number of reasons, including the reluctance of much of the FPS community to pay a monthly subscription fee, debacles such as the BFR (officially Battle Frame Robotics, unoficially Big F****** Robots - think Mechwarrior) introduction, and a general panning of the Core Combat expansion as a whole.

The problem is PS1 vets are more inclined to enjoy the old school mechanics, where as the "new gen" players whom's first experience is PS2 and are coming for BF, CoD, etc might prefer PS2 overall. I'll be quite shocked if they prefer PS1.

PS1 is clunky and ugly, but it worked right up until the infantry game was destroyed by the then perceptively undestroyable BFRs. It was fun and popular because of it's infantry game. SOE can most definitely afford to take a few pages from PS1's book where appropriate and streamline them into PS2. We might not see the old inventory system as it was for example, but I can't imagine reducing classes to armor options, giving each one a set number of slot types* and unlocking weapons and tools to all "classes" would be too far from possible.

*Cloaker/very light = Cloak + 1 support + 1 main.
**LA/light = Jetpack + 1 support + 1 main.
Medic/medium = AoE heal + 2 support + 1 main.
HA/heavy = Nanomesh + 1 support + 2 main.

Engi would be wiped out. He doesn't have an armor specific ability. Turret, ammo box, and repair gun would fall into support slot, so "medics" would effectively become supports that could equip say, an ammo box, repair gun, and a carbine, rifle, LMG, rocket launcher (should be considered main,) or sniper rifle of their choosing. Handguns and anything else that fits in that slot would ALWAYS be a part of their kit. Bonus is that one can't heal oneself with the medical applicator, so heavies can't exactly heal themselves anyway, but they can heal others!

**Alternatively, the jetpack could be a support item, though in this instance it could also be used in conjunction with cloaking, or HA. Scary and exciting at the same time.

Right now, I could go for a new PS1 server. The meta-game in PS2 needs a lot of work.

I think that aside from the current TTK/Weapons style.. BF/CoD players would prefer the PS1 Bases, towers and lattice system.. as well as common pool aircraft, MAXs, and REKs..