My BR1 friend experiences Planetside 2

My friend tried Planetside 2 for the first time with me (BR78). I showed him as much of the the game as I could and asked him what he thinks. My motivation is to know what the new player experience is like with a mentor.

Here's what we did...

Basics in VR
5 minute crash course, where I explained: continents, factions, capturing territory, classes, abilities, weapons, aiming, vehicles, certs and spawning. BR1: “That’s a lot of information. I’m not much of a shot.” He is clearly overwhelmed and it’s about to get a lot more intense.

We spawn in a massive fight at Regent Rock Garrison and I ask him to do whatever he wants for a few minutes. I followed him around not saying a word. This is what happened:
- My friend ran out to the balcony, got to the elevator and died to tank spam instantly. BR1: “What happened?”
- We did that again with the same results. BR1: “Ok...”
- He found a new route through the floor and jumps down to the ground from the 2nd level. Then we run besides C and are met with 10 or so enemy tanks. We last about 5 seconds. BR1: “I can’t separate allies from enemies. I’m so lost.”

Lesson 1: In Planetside 2 you die... a lot.

After that I had him go through my pre-planned introduction to different play styles described below. I picked these for various reasons: easy to do together, had a lesson in them, showcased different aspects of the game and so forth.

Sneaky tactics
Spawned as stalker cloak infiltrators, took a cloak flash and drove behind enemy lines to infiltrate a base. Flash proceeds to self destruct after a bump in the road at the halfway mark. My friend can’t react fast enough to get out. I’m met with multiple enemy tanks. I navigate through the tanks, get to the base and put down a beacon. BR1: "I can’t find you or the beacon on the map". Beacon gets destroyed as he searches. Next!

Lesson 2: It usually doesn’t work out as you planned.

Carmageddon
Spawned a bulldog harasser and had my friend gun for me. He spawns halfway across the continent as he couldn’t find the warp gate. Drive to pick him up and drive to a big infantry fight. BR1: "I can’t even see the enemy." It’s hard at night and I forgot the thermal optics. Friend proceeds to spam at the general direction of the enemy. 0 kills. We get chased down by a couple of lightnings and die. BR1: “That was fun, but I can’t hit anything.” Time to change the bulldog to a basilisk.

Lesson 3: More fun together.

Tanking
Drove an AT vanguard into a big tank battle. We push the enemy back to the base. I position the tank so that we have a small hole under a bridge that we can fire the enemy at. BR1: "There’s like 20 tanks there… Got one!" Friend proceeds to destroy few tanks and sundies with the AT Enforcer. BR1: “How do you know where I’m looking at as you keep telling me look left, look right”. I explain the tank icon on the right side of the screen. BR1: “Ok, that’s there.” We get flanked by enemy tanks and survive barely. BR1: “We are smoking a lot.” We push back the flank and I ask if he wants to go do something crazy with the tank. He’s more than willing, as I put it: “To significantly lower our life expectancy.”

We drive over a mountain to an +48 enemy vs enemy fight and crash the party. We proceed to destroy multiple lightnings and sunderers. BR1: “Why are they not attacking us? They have more tanks and more infantry?” I explain they are busy fighting each other. We run low on ammo, so... “For the glory” as we rush into the base and drive over an enemy lighting surrounded by 4 sundies, multiple tanks and infantry. BR1: “Wow!” as we blow up laughing.

Lesson 4: Take risks.

BR1: “We need another tank.” I explain the nanite resource system. BR1: “Makes sense you can’t pull them constantly.”

Liberating the skies
I have little to none experience with the liberator and I had my buddy gun with the shredder. We take a lot of flak from the get go. We attack and flee to repair continuously. My friend manages to destroy an enemy lib, but doesn’t notice it. I congratulate him. Afterwards we flank the enemy, single out a tank and I put one volley of tank buster on it and pull the nose up. BR1: "I can’t see him!" as we explode to a AT turret and enemy tank fire. I explain why it’s a bad idea for him to spawn an ESF straight to battle. I also tell about the new upcoming Valkyrie. He is excited. Taking a tour of the continents is going to be so much fun with the Valkyrie.

Lesson 5: Learn to fly first.

Large scale infantry battle
After that we went to a +48 defence battle and start pushing for point A. BR1: "Where is the A point and why is everyone standing in here?" I explain spawn room warriors… BR1: “That’s what I would have done.” We get closer, die, respawn, get closer, die and so on. Finally after a while we get on to the point. We start defending it as the enemy pours in. BR1: “There’s so many enemies and allies everywhere.” He’s having trouble choosing what to shoot at. BR1: “Hey someone revived me!” We get into a chaotic situation but manage to survive. Base defended. BR1: “There’s so much going on. It’s like a war. How do you even know what to do?” Just keep calm and get to the objective whatever it takes.

Lesson 6: Playing the objective is so much more fun.

Take the wheel
First we play hide and seek with a liberator in a basilisk harasser after a successful flank. This ends with us getting shot at by tank, harasser and the lib at the same time. Our best moment is when my friend is driving. He has problems adapting to the driving mechanics but can still follow a BR75 Harasser. We get into a great chase scene with the enemy as fly across Indar. Finally we destroy them. Then we make a mad dash against enemy forces and crash into a mana turret. BR1: “That was awesome!”

Lesson 7: Try different things. You never know what you like.

After the three hour gaming session I ask him what he thinks of Planetside 2. BR1: “There’s nothing like this in any other game. There’s so much happening that it takes a while to get used to. I got to see so much, thanks. It’s great! Let’s do this again.”

So, to sum it all up.

Planetside 2: "There’s nothing like it."

I just wonder, what if you don’t have a mentor with a well thought out plan for the start of your journey?


TL ; DR: My friend tried Planetside 2 for the first time with me (BR78) and this is what he had to say afterwards: "There’s nothing like it." Will it be like this for new players who have no mentor?

Many of whom turn away from planetside are generally never played FPS games or have played it so little that it doesnt matter.
Most of my friends who played fps exclusively through the years had no problem adapting to the game whatsoever. Its just the RPG crowd having most issues.


I agree tho. Having mentor system would really benefit this game in a long run.

The problem is a bit of a paradox in that no tutorial can ever give a newbie what they need (which is basically a mentor).

But equally the very fact that the game is so complex that is needs a mentor makes it a great game.

Really PS2 needs some sort of in-built mentoring system and probably a BR1 to BR15 automatic newbie outfit.

Interesting read, thank you
"I rarely stop to admire the beauty anymore". Some of us have been playing for so long that we take a lot of PS2 for granted. It's nice to get a sneak peak on how would the game feel if I'd have forgotten the last two years.

You can link my Game Guide to people like that. It contains lots of good stuff.
http://ps2guides.besaba.com/gameguide

Thanks for writing about this new player's experience.
Having 'no mentor' translates into 'not being in an outfit'. A good outfit will take care of beginners, set up training on a regular basis and teach them the do's and don'ts of this game.
But, how to choose the outfit? I think the upcoming mentor squads are a good idea to improve the new players experience. In a mentor squad you can find out whether their playstyle is what you like.
On the other hand - every new player has to read as much as possible. There is so much information around, why not take it? And if reading is outdated to some, go to YouTube. Wrel for example does a very good job with his tutorial videos.

Reading some sort of basic guide it's a must for any game.
I usually do read introductions guides when I'm going to play a new game, being it an FPS or a RPG.

Ofc reading and actually DO the fighting are completely different thing.
I remember it took me maybe a couple of days to truly get the grasp of the game back in beta, but I've years of FPS experience on my shoulders.

For someone with zero or limited FPS experince and no mentor, I think the game could be rather unpleasant (god, it's unpleasant for me from time to time lol). Imagine what would have happened if he had not you mentoring him. He would have just kept spawning at that tower to be blown to pieces by tank shells until he would have get bored and unistalled the game.

We do need a noob-friendly system. All I've seen lately on Miller are BR100 TRs
We need fresh meat!

I remember back in alpha, being experienced with dozens of hardcore-played FPS games, I was clueless like a baby when I first pop into the game. For about day or two, I had absolutely no idea what's going on.

When you are teaching new player, always ALWAYS A-L-W-A-Y-S tell him how to use minimap. Tell him what are the things on it. Tell him how to use it to an advantage and what he can do with it (H to enlarge, [ ] to zoom).
I have BR60 friend, who is a very good player, yet he still learned just recently what's the difference on the minimap between enemy "dot" and enemy recon sensor dart.

Tutorial should teach that to new players. That's an essential thing for all FPS games. It should also emphasis on spotting importance.

Excellent read, and well written, thanks.

I wish I could remember my BR1 > BR15 days, it was nearly a year ago now and my brain cells have been on the decline for some time.

I decided early on that I should find an Outfit, and I am still with that Outfit now. My Outfit were very helpful and spent a lot of time with me in the early days, even trying to get me to fly (I failed the final practical examination).

I would love to be a mentor for a new player... I think I would get a great deal of satisfaction from that, especially if the player goes on to enjoy the game in the long term. My only (major) problem is that my playstyle is somewhat limiting. I think a good mentor is someone who can do everything within the game, even if not at an expert level.

Alternatively, I suppose there could be mentors of specialised playstyles, which would suit peeps that wanted to develop a particular style once they have experienced all the various classes and vehicles.

That's one of the biggest problems with this game.

New players are completely confused, frustrated and farmed cannon fodder unless someone spoonfeeds them.

Few new players will have a high BR friend to guide them, few new players will join a good outfit.

SOE needs to make a much better tutorial, for a start.

Everyone is bound to get frustrated playing this game for their 1st 20hours till they start adapting and knowing who to shoot.





(off-topic)I was literally eating croissants and drinking coffee reading this , good morning read , kind sir.

Well written post.

The unfortunate truth is that most new players "learn" from the zerg and that is not a good thing.
They get thrown into a meatgrinder, get killed left and right, and become frustrated.
Then they look for places where their faction has a major advantage in units and stick to to that group/zerg.
They learn all the bad things like spawn camping and greediness over kills, and become more frustrated.
Eventually, they'll log off and never come back again.

Smart/experienced/patient players will adapt to the game, the majority won't...

Tutorials, guides, mentors, outfits etc. for beginners are absolutely necessary for this game.

When you say he was complaining about not knowing who to shoot.....

When i first started a friend told me to set friendly faction to blue (nc anyway) and to change all enemy units to red (i used the same red as TR for my VS tragets). Guess he can pick any colours he wants (but not squad colours), but two is better than one!

Not sure why but the third colour can really throw new players out.

Also, you most likley confused the crap outta him with that intro. Just tell him what classes do so he can pick a play style, dont start bothering him with how the map works and all that crap to start with. How to shoot, what classes do, and how to spawn at location thats all he needs on day 1.

Newbs need to be taught how to use the map to find a good fight. Just looking at the map I can tell whether the fight is a an enemy farm a friendly farm a fun fair fight, a ghostcap or a bunch of friendlies circle-jerking each other.
This is an essential skill to having a good time in this game, you arnt going to be guided into a fair and closed off arena and instant action is utterly useless.

As for not knowing what to shoot at, I remember having the same issues 2 years ago when i started. I think its a matter of so many different vehicle and infantry models, you just have to learn what they all are and what faction they belong too.

Remember if it's red or black shoot until it's dead

I took my friend, we both went LA and hid under the bridge from the Crown to TI Alloys, there we fought anyone who dares enter our domain, he loved it. The other new guys in the party went and died time and time and hated it though.

My experiences of beginning the game. No mentor. I can't remeber much so I'll point out the highlights

• instant action after tutorial: got killed by mana turret. Thought it targeted and shot enemies automatically.
• flying: crashed a few times, kept getting shot down by tomcats, destroyed some liberators because they are easy to hit and there were friendly air in the area.
• wandering around a lot. Don't know how the map worked so ran around for about 20 minutes looking for enemies, I was nowhere near the fight
• I wondered why there were about 5 spawn places called sunderer, and every time I spawn at Sunderer, everything looks different as though the place called Sunderer had moved
• Ideology: wander around and shoot anything that is enemy. No enemy = wander around some more
• started to get the hang of things around level 25~30. Only found out about SCUs and generators at ~40

And because I feel like putting it in:
I got my first auraxium few days ago. Br59, Trac 5 S, compensator, grenade launcher, HV ammo, 2x reflex. Still remember the days when grenade launcher killed people behind spawn shields...those were the days...sigh

Read the whole thing. Loved it and LOLed a few times.

"Seeing" something new with someone else's eyes is such a great reminder of days gone past. Thanks for writing it up

im a new player, got to br 11 TR after about 5-6 days... im coming from playin realistic fps like red orchestra 2 and only ever play things like bf 3 on hard core.. and i gotta say im loving it
although the combat is not realistic i feel it simulates an on going war like no other game. i have no clan mates yet i jump in a squad and start working like a team, ive seen no other game where random strangers work together so effectively, i think the way you join a fraction helps with this.
its also far more fun when you play for objectives, the whole strategic element really makes the game play more immersive, and i didnt find it to confusing although i had been learning about the game for a couple of weeks pror to playing ( i didnt think my system would handel it so didnt download but i was pleasantly surprised)

This, my Forumside Friends, is what I like to hear