I actually really hope MLG hits this game soon.

And you might ask why? Why would i want some small group of elitists dictating what tactics should be used and what's balanced and what's not?

The Planetside 2 playerbase is very focused on balance atm and all factions agree that things from other factions are not balanced at all. TR is claimed to have overpowered anti-vehicle and air capabilities, VS has MAXes that are to strong and NC as a faction needs a revamp. We commonly agree that SOE has a hard time making things balanced, going as far as claiming they favour a certain faction.

It seems that MLG will solve these problems, giving the power to balance to a group of very competitive players with a clear mind who SOE has to listen to. That is of course, if this game's ever able to hit MLG.

So, what do you guys think about Planetside 2 MLG, will it make things finally balanced?

Or they might just ignore any problems and give everyone NS weaponry for the matches.

Nanite system mines? Nanite system MBT's and ESF's? It sure would take away a fun part of this game away. Would they take away any and every faction trait for the sake of balance?

I don't know because atm they don't seem very good at the balancing part .. Don't get me wrong I do agree that hopefully MLG will highlight any issues the game has so the Dev's can't ignore them.

I can imagine viewers quickly turning off when a fight has turned into watching paint dry due to limitless revives etc

NS weapons are really competitive though. Their only flaw is low DPS after all. I imagine at most we'll see the empire basics in an MLG match, though for what it's worth, the tournaments will set up the rules of what is or isn't allowed, not SOE. Preferably, SOE doesn't give a $#!% about balancing around MLG though: their game needs to focus on the big picture. It's okay to make continents for smaller matches though: those can be worked into the main game just fine with some tweaking.

**** mlg. worthless and irrelevant. keep that **** out of this game.

MLP cannot wrap its head around vehicles and most (if not all) games with an MLP cult end up nerfing vehicles into oblivion.

Might explain the state of the vehicle game, come to think of it.

Planetside 2 is not a competitive/MLG/e-sport game at its core. There is really no way to change this without completely redesigning what PS2 is.

• Large team sizes are a big disadvantage
  • It's harder for teams to organize themselves.
  • It results in a stagnant competitive scene. (In a game where you only need to find ~5 ambitious, skilled players to have a good shot at winning, you can disrupt the scene. In PS2 teams are much larger and so you'd mostly just see stagnation if a competitive scene ever tried to happen.)
  • It's harder to spectate.
  • Truly stand-out players have a hard time being noticed.
  • But since big fights are what Planetside is, you can't exactly design your way around this...
• Weak level design
  • There are no bases in PS2 which are nice, balanced, and tactical. This means competitive matches have had to create arbitrary scoring systems to figure out who the winner is.
  • Competitive scene or no, Planetside 2 would benefit from better base design where...
    • ...hard spawns are always distant from objectives (ideally where both hard spawns are equidistant from the objectives which capture the base)
    • ...vehicle terminals are always close to hard spawns (and they're more frequently, or always, tank/air capable.)
    • ...soft spawns can be deployed near objectives to exert more pressure on them, but there shouldn't be locations which are too defensive for sunderers to be deployed and it shouldn't be possible to deploy directly on the point.
    • ...insides of bases favor infantry (assuming vehicles are able to influence the fight at all,) but outside of a base favors vehicles (less undrivable terrain; sparse to moderate cover.)
    • ...the base scales with any number of players, rather than breaking when too many or too few players spawn there (Bio Labs' invincible zerg defense.)
    • Basically with this type of balanced layout, every fight has a surrounding outside ring of vehicles trying to out-flank the other team and kill their soft spawns, while the inner battle is largely infantry. Furthermore spawning right near the objective isn't guaranteed just because you're the defender, which means you have to be just as tactical as the opposing empire in order to win the capture.

I would love to see an MLG attitude towards balancing, since that will make PS2 far more fun, tactical, and deep. However I have zero hopes for there ever really being a competitive scene. If there was, it would be with smaller teams and therefore not really be about what Planetside's unique selling point is all about: epic warfare.

So it feels like they shouldn't even bother with MLG stuff (apart from the attitude towards balance) and should instead go all-in on epic warfare. Implement methods of balancing global population and WDS scoring. Then create reward systems which better measure and reward your personal contribution towards territory gains, to pull the metagame back down to an individual player level.

This game is not ready for MLG.
Its not optimized, its not well populated, ADS mechanics need improvement, balance could use improvement, there are no viable game systems for spectating beyond the dev camera and there are only 3 or 4 potential MLG teams and there is no way a viable league could be created.

It wont happen anytime soon, if ever.

PS2 is not a competitive game. Just keep esport and mlg out of this game.

LoL didn't start out where it is now.

LoL had years of Dota to step up from, and was much larger after a year and much closer to professional play than where PS2 is after 1 year.

PS2 is perpetually buried in the twitch game listings. League of legends? PS2 will be lucky if it reaches SMITE's viewership levels.

I know of at least one player who has enjoyed testing a Dev Cam - their viewing of the battles gave them great enjoyment.

It can work - and will be made to work. A belief of anything else demonstrates a lack of imagination.

Rather than focusing on a few individuals, you will see people assign character to groups and platoons.

Within those groups and platoons, characters will always be defined - by the players and the public.

Some folks seem to be building up an idea based on previous experiences- rather than realising what can be.

LoL did not gain its popularity until a couple years after its release. Most people hadn't heard of it or didn't care about it in 2009 and 2010. Dota was still the big game then.

It's probably also worthy of note the LoL has done so well because Riot pushed esports for it.

Aye, you throw enough money at something, you'll find ways of making it stick.

If someone can't see the various elements ripe for the picking within PS2 then..

League has done for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it runs smoothly playing on computers made of balsa-wood and duct tape running adobe air. League was doing very after its first population wise. The east coast PS2 servers get about 1000-1200 players during prime time, and can go as low as 100 players during off peak.

You can already look at some of the more competitive things going on and see some of these issue fairly clearly.

Also, API data.

What is it with this crowd? It is like watching a bunch of bible thumpers try to reason why the world is only a few thousand years old.

MLG was/is nothing but an advertising vehicle for this game, after the recent layoffs do you actually think they have the resources to make this happen with players currently clamoring for more content, maps and meta? even if they do manage to cook something up it will no longer be planetside as we know it, just like how Nascars arent really stock cars, it'll be all NS weapons with the different factions skins most likely. Who needs MLG anyways, we already have a player organised community clash scene right now. Personally I think we can do without the toxic baggage that comes along with everything MLG touches.

But everyone at the MLG forums is so excited about this!

Wow. Zoidbergenstein and a guy named scramble.....