PS2 from a Milsim/PS1 Vet/Beta Vets POV and the major reason the game took such a dive.

Alright, People who say the steam graph is not an accurate representation, Its a large scale statistic. Though its not all the players in the game, The graph shows a clear, rapid decline in the number of players over time. Denying that players are leaving is just ignorant. you can clearly see the change in scale if you have been playing since beta. SOE have to act on it in one way or another. Either in the form of advertisement/marketing or fixing problems the player has with the game.

Resources have never worked and will never work as intended, they punish the loosing side making it harder to get them back.
NTU was constant, you could only own one base but you'd still be able to spawn the same number of tanks out of it so long as the supply lines kept up. Essentially the resource system was an attempt to limit vehicle spam once they replaced the old cert system (which was amazingly well designed) with the failure of a system in PS2 (everyone has everything, one man army it is)

OMGCANTWAITFORCRYBABYSLIKETHISTOLEAVE,NICEWHILETHREADITSPEOPLELIKEYOUTHATAREKILLINGTHEGAME
Erm, sorry i was in character for a preveious, actualy somewhat nice post... but these threads are always gonna attract the ps2 trolls.

that must be why PS1 managed to retain so many of it's players ... oh wait it didn't

What?? As a Muslim player?

Its probably a typo of Mil Sim, as in Military Simulator. Which I think is a silly term anyways, as there is so often a ton of goofiness to be found in such games that makes calling it that a joke really. Let me know when when one of the those games called Mil Sim has a **** your pants in combat because you are going to die maggot mechanic and I might be convinced its actually a simulation of being in military combat

I think he's calling you a terrorist

hey hey Milsims are much more realistic than normal FPS games... in the same way that Mario Kart is more realistic than PacMan

Here's a better Steam Graph:
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=218230q202970q220240

Obviously Call of Duty Black Ops II and Far Cry 3 were failures on the verge of dying. They absolutely must be, according to the OP, since the curves show the same trends.

Or could it be that you only thought you understood the data you were looking at? I can understand why you didn't bother finding out if you were right, wrong, or crazy. If you just assumed the graph meant something -- and specifically, what you wanted it to mean -- you could carry on with your plan to write your little Hobbit's tale. And that was good enough for you. Who needs that pesky reality butting in and ruining a good story?

Ahem. View and be enlightened, my son. Drink deeply from the waters of reality, and know ye that yonder curve doth curve for all games. 'Tis normal. It's not a sign of anything, lad, 'cept for bein' business as usual.
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=218230q202970q220240

No.
PS2 is a game without a goal.

Pretty much everyone agreed that in PS1, Sanc locking was the goal.
The end of the game. There just wasn't a "You win/lose" screen.

The PS2 equivalent would be what, getting the 3 continental benefits ?
It's hardly the case, the very fast flow plays against it, getting a benefit not being synonym to holding a continent, and maps are not linked to one another (which makes them, well, maps, not a world).


Capturing continents would be winning battles, Sanc locking would be winning the War.
On this regard, PS2 only feels like battles, and no war.

When did I ever say that it isnt a normal trend? Although Black Ops is a bad example because the majority of players are on console anyways.

Still, I fail to see your counter argument. Do you think Planetside 2 is loosing too much population?

Its always what you make of the game. Obviously you can also jerk around in a milsim and do unrealistic stuff within the engine limits, but the foundation of Milsims is usually a more slow paced, realism oriented experience than you get from other MMS.

Tell me again how any 9 year old game manages to keep a steady playerbase. Expecially an MMO where changes are made all the time.

Its such an useless argument to keep pointing out that PS1 lost its playerbase because there were many reasons for it, you cannot just point at it and say it failed.

Again, as a comparison, Project Reality once had a mighty playerbase of about 2k-3k players, but it slowly began to die as well. These days populations are around 300-400 players per day, but its enough and a nice and cozy little community where most players know eachother. Just because pop limits are low doesnt mean the game failed. It just finally found its devoted fanbase and weeded out all the people that didnt like it.

Good read! I like the PR reference, I've been playing that on and off for years and honestly there just isn't anything like it. I wish they would just make BF2 free already so people could enjoy that amazing mod, and see what a real FPS is supposed to be like.

(Actually reminded me I need to dig up my cd-key and put it on my new machine!)

Almost all games go down after release. There are very few exceptions.

As for strategy there's plenty around if you roll with a large outfit. The problem is, you need numbers to make combined arms operations work. There's a misconception that some people have that a large outfit just leads to larger zergs, but in truth a well organised ones acts as a force multiplier to all non-outfit members around and are able to defeat larger forces through better communication and strategy.

IMO the real problem comes in the resource model. At the moment the only drawback of being in a tank vs not being in a tank is the fact you can only spawn a tank in certain places. The resource model simply isn't restrictive enough and only kicks in once a faction is pretty much nailed back in their warp gate.

Eh? You should never expect to.

As a doctor with a degree in forumology, I can clearly see from this graph (from my -expert- interpretation that has no flaws) that Planetside 2 is roughly twice as successful as Black Ops II. As CoD is one of the most successful franchises in gaming, I can only conclude that PS2 is the best game to be released in the history of humanity.

Quickly, spread the news about it across the forums like wildfire without taking time to engage in further study to find any missing information (this graph shows the full story) or inaccuracies (which don't exist) in my analysis!

Unwitting support is often the most delicious variety. Thank you for making and supporting my point.

That graph is stupid.

Have some common sense and stop twisting the stats to your favour. The PlanetSide 2 graph follows the EXACT same pattern as every other major release.

http://steamgraph.net/index.php?act...990q730q209870&from=1340146800000&to=End Time

The ONLY problem population wise in this game is that there is too many servers.
There are issues with the game, but they will be fixed gradually over the next few months.

Sadly, I utterly agree with all this. But seriously, what do you expect from a game where the predominate number of players are kids? There are a few outfits that don't conform to this image, but for the 98% you are entirely correct.

The devs have a terrible problem on their hands.. I think that most of the market for shooters is in the 20 year old and below age bracket. And I'd just bet a majority are under 16. There is a reason that the COD/BF games are so popular. At the end of the day SOE must look to their profits.. and that means respecting that market, no matter how much a smaller group of us crave a deeper team experience that punishes the run-and-gun style.

PS1/PS2 are in a wierd place shooter wise. They do reward good teamwork to outfits that do that, but there are plenty of kids complaining about the results of better teamwork.. and you have to keep enough of them around to pay the bills if you are SOE. I'm guessing you can't subsist if only adults are playing your shooter, given current market dynamics (I may be wrong.. I don't know precise stats.. this is just my take on what I see). To me its classic 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'.

For myself, I've just come to accept that PS2 will never be the game you describe. I *think* its possible for an outfit to be put together that approaches things more as you describe, but I haven't found one yet that wasn't overrun by the inexperienced kids that don't even know the concept of fire lanes, flank security, organized breaches, etc (I was involved yesterday with a breech where the leader just said 'charge', and everyone got massacred because of overlapping areas of responsibility where many folks just couldn't fire without TKing.. I tried to get the guy to listen, but didn't work.. and this is in one of the more organized outfits in PS2). Given that reality, asking for good combined arms knowledge is asking a LOT.

of course pop doesn't matter for a tiny community made game mod... unfortunately it DOES for any game that is run by a business... and from a business point of view I certainly can point at PS1 and say it failed... Population is of extreme importance especialy to straight PVP games designed aroud LARGE scale battles like PS1 and PS2 are... the current over-saturated MMO market doesn't take failures like PS1 or SWG like it use to... they just toss them aside and release another game... PS1 only did decent when it came out because it was unique and the MMO market was small and yet they still managed to fail and then trash it even more to the point even most Vets who herald the game as the best ever made refuse to spend the 50 cents a day to sub and play... if you tried that today it would never even make it out of the gate

you really need to stop trying to compare any decent size game that is produced by a buisness to Project Reality as that is nothing more than a mod made by players in their spare time and designed for a tiny niche group of another game's playerbase... none of the same rules apply