Attention All Forum Users: Bringing Order to the PlanetSide 2 Forums

Bringing order to the forums seems a very terran thing to do ;-)

Jokes aside, I welcome this drive. Too many threads have been hijacked and to much irrelevant and offensive nonsense has been spouted.

If you care... there's not much showing for it.

I understand it's difficult to respond to all threads being made, but there are several complaints and issues, that have been stated, and complained about many times over the last couple of months.

They aren't being adressed, or they are being pushed forward so far that people just can't be bothered waiting around for it.

There is little to no explanation why these issues haven't been solved already, why certain descisions have been made, or what drives the developers to implement changes, if they get listed in the patch notes at all.

The OMFG project is being sold to us, the PC users, as a project for upgrading our game, while it is clear that it was needed to be able to have it run on the Playstation 4. If this wasn't the case, optimisation could have done together with update/balance patches.

This community, holds alot of passionate and dedicated players, with alot of love for the game, but your mission towards getting this game launched on the Playstation 4 platform, is costing you members.

You can't deprive an entire community of paying customers of new content and expect them not to become angry about it, and eventually give up.

There used to be a time where game companies, like SoE was a company that made games, for gamers, out of love for games.

Over the last year, I realize that SoE is a company that seems to make games, for gamers out of love for $$$... and sugarcoats in in a layer of bovine extrement to keep the PC crowd happy.

I can see why you feel as if you're being treated as a redheaded stepchild compared to the PS4, but you have to realize that the PS4 is a larger (and probably more profitable) market. If they don't succeed there, then chances are this game will be shut down.

Because these times making games is not about making games out of passion for games anymore.

I'm fully aware of what's going on, but I personally am very much disgusted by it. I also believe Planetside 2 is fully capable of making a profit if it stayed exclusively to the PC, but not to the enourmous ammounts they can get on Playstation 4.

Gaming has become an industry to make as much as money out of a project as possible, and then scrap it for the next project once profits are decreasing.

SoE has done this before with SWG. They will do it again to Planetside 2.

Already it's been announced that they've cut staff because they'll be aiming at future projects. All that is left for them is to get this launched on the PS4, after which we have no one telling us they'll keep development going.

Indeed, once OMFG is done, and Planetside 2 is launched on Playstation 4, either it becomes a big hit they can keep "milking" for cash (which I don't expect because of FPS of this magnitude always being something PC), or it will be abandoned because it won't meet the ammount of profit that the board likes to see filling their pockets.

This all could be over before the 2nd quarter of 2014 where we'll get another announcement that development for Planetside 2 will be considere "finished", and that they'll commit to EQ. (the next big $$ making project)

"We do care" is not stating what exactly it is they care about. Politically correct nonsense that can be translated in many ways, without taking a solid stance.

I will be back somewhere in July 2014 to tell everyone here "I told you so", if not sooner.

Totally agree, bring chaos to order.

I was expecting an MWO style overreaction from moderation.

So i'm glad that didnt happen at least.


as for pc/ps4. did they say anything about whether or not we'll be able to play with ps4 users? (A really really bad idea)

That's true, but then if you look at the kind of questions asked in the first 10 pages, they tend to be one of 3 types of question:

1. Why doesn't my college grade laptop/10 year old desktop play this game on "Ultra".
2. What should I upgrade next.
3. Genuine support question that's not been answered 20 times in the previous 2 pages.

For the 3rd type of question I agree we should have more official involvement, for the rest, it is a waste of SOE's paid staff answering things people could and indeed should work out for themselves if only they looked at the Recommended Requirements list.

As it stands, I like to think the Tech. Support forum has some highly experienced contributors (TheAppl3, BlackDove, etc.) who are able to provide assistance to fellow users, to this end, I fail to see with the exception of the rare "why has X stopped working in game?" (which one could argue is a Bug Report not a Tech Support issue, as the problem is not with the user machine but the SOE held profile) where SOE could offer a higher profile.

In the instance of this forum section, I'd suggest the lack of visible SOE involvement is more due to the fact it is not usually needed.

Dear SOE Team, is it possible to create a sub-forum for mapdesign suggestions / bugreports? I think threads like this one get lost way to fast and somehow nearly nobody seems to care about map suggestions. :S

I've been avoiding Forumside mainly because of the constant bickering of nerf this, nerf that, buff this, buff that, and over all childish whining by people that want a push button to win because they can't think outside of the box or find another solution. I play all three empires, I have my views on which is easier or harder to play, be it weapons, vehicles, and/or player base. I'm a planetside 1 vet from may of 2003 and up, I have been through the same forumside bickering before, so I know whats up.

Another reason I avoid the forums is because of the lack of response from the Dev's and Community relations reps. However, I will come here to voice my opinion and concerns when I feel there is an issue, and even come to the forums to look up subjects that may pertain to me such as finding a solution to an issue or seeing if others are also having an issue that hasn't been resolved. Why? in hope that perhaps someone higher up IS looking and listening to us an can help up find answers.

Something I would like to see is a specific forum area here that is made specifically for nerf/buff threads. Honestly, the other areas of the forum could do without those thread post mixed in. This would allow players to express their grievances, suggestions, and complaints and discuss (flame war) about the buff/nerf's that they feel are needed. It would also allow devs and reps to easily find these postings and make a better educated view and decision on what is being requested for buff'ing/nerf'ing.

I enjoy Planetside 2. I was looking forward to it ever since John talked to me in person at fan fair 2009 and even promised me no BFR's in Planetside 2 (And I will hold SOE to that promise). I got a year's worth sub for the game, even bought the 1 year anniversary bundle and have spent hundreds on Station cash, all in support of a game I love and believe in. I enjoyed the OMFG dev videos and felt it was a big leap in the right direction of relations between company and customers. I understand that a lot goes into making and supporting these games, and I feel that the majority of players also know and understand this, but sadly it is the loud minority that is seen more often than not who are unappreciative of the hard work and dedication. Perhaps it is the kadedness of having so many other companies and dev's spit on and ignore the player base that has caused bitterness and suspicion by gamers towards companies and dev's, that cause so much hate and conspiracy that we see in these forums. Regardless, I know better and just go with the flow and keep an eye and ear open for what is to come and how things are going.

One last thing I would like to say is that I am very thankful for the vast reduction in hacker/cheaters in the game. Though they do pop up from time to time, I am glad to see that GM's are doing their job to quell the hackers as quickly as they can, and as fairly as possible. I understand there are times when it may seem like someone is hacking when really it is just a glitch or other issue client side. I have seen such things and can tell the difference between hacker and just a glitch, also I do try to get confirmation from others who have been affected. Though my experience has only been on Connery server, I will say thanks for doing an awesome job.

We are changing quite a few things on the forums and that is one of them.

BUT! Just so you know, in the time being, you can sort on the right hand side by "Last Message". That's how I, personally, check up on the latest posted bugs and send them over to Dev/QA.

This is a long time dream of mine, but would it ever be possible to have a separate 'Guides' Subforum/section to the GP forum where the OP could be edited if the thread creator thought it necessary?

As it stands any decent or useful guides for new players and long standing players usually gets bogged down in everything else, this coupled with the fact that there's a 30 minute edit time-lock means that the OP for a guide will never be able to be updated by the thread creator when their guide get's outdated.

These issues have stopped me and probably many other users from creating guides for our fellow players. I'm not too particularly bothered that there's an edit timer for the other parts of the forum. But without the ability to freely edit the OP for 'Guide' threads, then there's just no point to having them, or the use of the [GUIDE] tag.

PS2 can be a really confusing game for new players and there can be a steep learning curve even from people that are used to FPS games. This coupled with the amount of sometimes game changing updates that are introduced into game on a frequent basis, means that there is a real need for good guides to help players get accustomed to the game and enjoy their time playing.

I dunno. I thought the "What does each Faction Taste like" thread the other day informative and relevant to my interests.

I like the FAQ idea. I'll try to draft something up in regards to that, especially with things like Dev AMAs.

I totally agree with this........ Thank you

A 'safe place'. I knew it, the 'safe space' PC robots have landed.

Time to go. Read this while it's hot as it will likely be censored for not being 'constructive'.

Specific Moderation Complaint.

-Edited as it should be brought to forum-admin@soe.sony.com - Piestro

Now I feel silly for spending 5 seconds scrolling to the bottom and using the thread display options button each time

Walls o' text inc!

If you're frustrated you should express that frustration, that's important information. That type of feedback helps us know where we need to improve. We would rather hear "You are doing this wrong for reasons A, B, C, and D" every time than "Yay". Detailed reasons, and constructive (if negative) feedback is vital. It's all getting your message across in an effective way. Saying "I hate you guys" isn't feedback, saying "I am angry that you have made change x for reason y and think solution z would be better" is much more effective. The rules are there to promote effective feedback so we understand exactly what is frustrating you.

Unfortunately this isn't a Dev issue at all, it's a legal and marketing and business type issue. Still we can bring that feedback to the appropriate parties and possibly find some creative solutions.

We actually have a system sorta like this in place. If you are unhappy with a moderator action, think they made a mistake, or want to discuss the matter further we have the forum-admin@soe.sony.com email address. We at that address have much more time to investigate problems that have arisen and provide direction for the moderation staff. That's my gig for a substantial portion of the day.

More subforums can be valuable, but also runs the danger of reducing the impact of customer discussion in a variety of ways. This is a really complicated subject that I'm happy to natter on about for hours, but the tricks are to 1) maintain adequate density of posting (so that people see threads and they aren't buried in obscure subforums) and 2) reduce the potential for the same subject to be cross posted over and over. In general we try to keep the number of forums to the absolute minimum for a variety of reasons, but I'll talk to Luperza and we can consider doing an audit of forum usage and determining if the variety and number of posts can support more subforums and what those would be.

I personally like the idea of a guides forum, as long as we have sufficient content. We can unlock the editing timer in specific forums as well so that would be appropriate there. I'll talk to Luperza and see what she thinks.

In most of our forums we don't allow people to call for nerfs at all, because invariably it leads to bickering. The fact that we do allow them on PS2 demonstrates why this policy was put into effect. Making a big change in policy abruptly however has its own problems.

We've done this in the past, but it's really challenging. There are legal requirements out the wazoo, and there are serious quality issues that can arise. I really appreciate our former volunteer moderators but launching a program like that requires an enormous amount of work and resources on our side, so much so that the proposed gains are often negated. It's something we do discuss from time to time internally about restarting, but it would require the right window where we could devote the appropriate resources. We'll keep it in mind.

We're not interested in deleting posts that aren't suck ups. That would be a pretty useless forum. This forum is the largest source of information we have about player wants, and needs. It is the core of our feedback cycle. We actually write reports every week that are delivered to all levels of people here at SOE (up to and including the executive level) with your actual words. Heck, we delete posts that are (to use your words) "suck ups" because they violate the rules. The positivity or negativity is irrelevant to moderation, only the rules matter in that regard.

If you believe something has been removed incorrectly for trolling (or any other reason) bring it to our attention. forum-admin@soe.sony.com. Any rule can be misinterpreted, and mistakes can be rectified.

I quick checked your record, you should email forum-admin@soe.sony.com and discuss some of what you have issue with. I think there might have been a problem with one previous moderation action. Discussing this on the open forums isn't the right way to resolve it however, since our policy is to protect customer privacy in these incidents.

I'm in the process of looking into your account as well, and will discuss this further in email.

I think people are upset because they like the game and want it to be better. No one gets mad about things in games they don't care about.

Mods can make mistakes. It's the forum admin's job to correct these mistakes. Discussing moderation is usually not allowed on the forums because it's nothing but he said/she said arguments that we will not verify, but in this one thread/context it's semi-permissible.

This is something we've been discussing internally for months, and has nothing to do with PS4. It's not a conspiracy, there doesn't need to be one. The forums just could use improvement. I suspect that with the launch of Planetside 2 on PS4 will require some extra resources on the forums because many console players are less familiar with forum interaction than PC players. That's something to worry about at the appropriate time though.

The mods are accountable, they have to answer to forum admin. If they let personal matters influence their decisions then they are let go and we get new mods. If people talk positively about a political party then they are in violation of the forum guidelines, since the forum guidelines don't allow political discussion. Lack of good moderation ruins more forums than bad moderation does.

Making changes, testing said changes, and making a build almost always takes longer than a day. This suggests the changes were not motivated by the reddit thread.

I played NC in the original Planetside. Then I worked in Community for years and years. Now I play Terrans. I do love order.

Edit: Another specific moderation complaint. Again, send an email to forum-admin@soe.sony.com -Piestro

Bring it to forum-admin@soe.sony.com. No point in discussing it on the open forums.