Completely understand why new players quit early

I can see hit detect being a HUGE turn off for a new player coming to this game. After all, despite any other hype or w/e this game might have, its a shooter. And why do you play a shooter? Oh yeah, to shoot and kill Epeople. And when time after time, a new player, who is unaware or upgrades or the ongoing, questionable hit detect issues with this game, is dying, despite unloading half a clip or more into a single person, is going to get upset with the game and quit.

**** lol, I started 2 years ago, when hit detect was far more reliable and the game functioned better...ish....and on my first day I was like...fk this....and almost decided to quit myself. But figured, 1st day, im just a noob. But still, when in a shooter, all you do is die, its not fun. People do not find staring at the Respawn screen time after time after time fun.

And then, toss in the seemingly daunting cert screen, where it takes upwards of 200 certs to get your gun upgraded, when your making maybe 5 certs an hour cuz your dying left and right, it makes it all seem quite hopeless. It took me a good solid 4 days of playing to finally get my first 130 certs to get my Sight and a suppressor for my then, T9 CARV. I just had to get rid of that muzzle flash that was destroying my ability to track targets. After that single upgrade, my performance and enjoyment increased 100 fold.

It is nice that SoE has given us starter kits, with a few minor unlocks and stuff, but I think upon start up, we should be able to choose 1 single gun to upgrade with 2 free items. Cuz I really feel just a single upgrade, be it a sight, or ammo, or a grip, really helps guns be more competitive. I played with my Brother on this game for a bit and he said he cant stand Iron sights, so him grinding out the certs for an optic was kinda tricky, considering how he was having issues killing people using the Iron sights, so therefore certs flow slow....

Then in the case of the OP he said he was TR, I know when I first started as TR, NC were wiping the floor with me left, right and center. I came to dread the letter and number combination of: NC6 Gauss SAW, GD22S, AF19 Mercenary and NC14 Bolt Driver. It never seemed to matter what I did as my TR HA, I was just getting brutalized by the NC, which ultimately swayed my choice to go NC.......and likely thats why the NC is so full of scrubs, all the noobs play TR/VS and after getting porked by NC, they think, hell, thats my faction...switch and get murdered still lol...

And no Pikachu, this isnt my angry post =P

? I had a blast leveling my first two characters TR then NC and that was back after release when certs gain was a bit lower. This game ain't rocket science it's combined arms and you gotta take that in consideration when moving and shooting. At worst an advice for new players just stick with heavy assault until you certs up a lil bit the class and weapons of your choice.

Well, the game *is* frustrating to new players. They don't know what's going on, what the sweet spots are in bases and thus get killed over and over. I mean, I've been playing this game for two years and even I get frustrated sometimes at being killed over and over.

I simply cannot keep my friends playing this game as they all get frustrated, despite me telling them many times that they'd get the hang of it. I think a big factor is that the small bases are too small for the big fights that happen.

I think another issue with the game isn't the game's fault, but I will say that the game isn't as sociable as other games. Not only that but this game requires your 100% undivided attention...where as in other games like WoW, I spent a lot of time just being semi-afk in the capital cities talking to people.

Really, I think Planetside 2 is for a particular breed of player rather than for everyone. It takes a particular type of person to enjoy a game like this and it's often frustrating intricacies. It's pretty much a large game targeted at a large group, but it's primary player is probably just a niche gamer of sorts. At least the type who would be able to really enjoy this game.

Like personally, I really like Planetside 2 but I find I have to actually limit my gameplay to keep enjoying the game as well as just to do things in my life on my free time since the game demands enough time as it is given how simple it is. It's an FPS game...theres no way I can just walk away from the keyboard or afk and do something else. Just the way it is.

Either way, stating the social nature of the game might sound silly, but a lot of games succeed just because they do allow people to be very social. I played WoW for a long time, for instance, just because I was a part of a -great- guild with very, very funny people and we all had a blast. And while Planetside 2 does have that, I just feel Planetside 2 is just too difficult for a lot of people to get into to ever enjoy that kind of interaction.

Yeah well the encampment base design and the spawn boxes that can be shelled from afar definitely put off alot of players. Having cooler and more involving bases would add so much more to the game than anything else really.

I've been playing this game since beta, over two years now, and I still feel this way half the time (because I'm pretty scrubby at shooters in general). This is an extremely hostile game to new players. Part of that is just the shooter environment but not all of it is necessary.

Another thing is that it feels like Planetside 2 is offering up something for gamers while also shooting itself in the foot. Basically, Planetside 2 is an FPS game and a MMO which features fullblown PVP combat. Which I think is great. But one of the main things about it is the fact that...in order to progress higher, you have to ruin someone else's day. Some people can take an e-beating and shrug it off, but eventually it does wear away at people. Planetside 2 is really just the same as a hardcore PVP game like Darkfall or even akin to servers like Darktide in Asheron's Call where there is full pvp combat. The only difference between those games/servers and Planetside 2 is that...Planetside 2 is a FPS game and you can't take other people's **** when they die.

But really, Planetside 2 tries to market itself as Battlefield/CoD and does so as well through it's general aesthetics, but the reality is one where Planetside 2 is actually a very aggressive game. And the community is also a representation of this as well, as I feel Planetside 2 is probably one of the most toxic gaming communities I've ever encountered.

So, in a nutshell, Planetside 2 is a game were you have to go and ruin someone else's gameplay experience in order to further yourself. There is nothing else you can do in Planetside 2 other than fight other people. Which is fine to me. But I just feel that this as well as other things with Planetside 2 are pretty much reasons why Planetside 2 can't go very far. And while FPS games do get very far given that they are similar PS2, except in scale, those games are able to do so because they are structured to offer some kind of progression and/or closure. In Planetside 2, the war is never over. The fights always go on. There is never an 'end of match' resolution. Not even continent locking offers that.

So basically, things new players don't like:

1. Getting killed all the time
2. No resolution to conflicts (capturing a base is great, but there is no end to it)
3. It's a very steep upward hill climb, even if you're a subscriber. Just to unlock utility pouch 5 for engineer it's 3100 certs! Why play Planetside 2 when I can play something else which takes less time and is just as entertaining if not more entertaining? It's all relative to the person playing, true. But think about it.
4. The community

Like, think about #3 for a moment. Why play Planetside 2 when you go and buy battlefield 3 or 4 (I don't know which number is the latest one)? You go out, you buy the game, and to get everything in it it'll take you much less time. BF costs what, $60? I've spent probably $500-600 on Planetside 2...the only difference between the two is one is a sci-fi setting with larger maps/larger fights (which, mind you, sounds great but we all know by now it doesn't seem to be working very well in practice). And it'll take you less time in BF to get everything than it would in Planetside 2.

True, the reason why things take a while is because the game is F2P. Sure. But even with the subscription, it still feels like things come along slowly. I just don't know if the buck is worth the bang. But I guess it apparently was if I spent so much already.

Hope Koltyr helps people out :3

If you can't get any kills because you are new and can't handle the difficulty or don't have your second grenade clips or whatever, then just take a medic or engineer and rather work as a support unit.

I think every noobie should start as a medic or engineer, since healing classes are always quite easy to handle but still give a lot of xp. At least in a group, you just can stay in cover and still make good points.

Stuff like flying planes or whatever is rather for the more experienced players, imo, and it's absolutely good this way. Not everyone should be able to shine everywhere right from the start, imo.

I created a new character to test this and Ive been doing pretty well.. In saying that though im getting membership boost for extra certs. (did not use any of my NS weapons either).

As far as I could glean from it, it appeared to be mostly a falsely reported Latency or more importantly, interpolation which is hidden even deeper under multiple layers of obfuscation and also mostly controlled Server side unlike dedicated server games where the player can atleast adjust it in some very convoluted client CFG files...

Fixing this would be really difficult, but the ideal situation IMHO would be a GUI inside the Training Room with moving targets and a line of consoles that shows you your exact predicted difference in hitbox locations simulated agaisnt a 1ms LAN comparison. This would basically educate people on how the hit registry is currently being handled in their region and close the gap a tiny bit between skill levels.

This game does have an extremely steep learning curve compared to more traditional FPS games.

They need to do what they did with Planetside 1, and that is a training area where people are rewarded XP for completing tasks like vehicle obstacle courses, trying new weapons in VR, etc. and giving a few hundred certs as a reward. I think it would help player retention if new guys could buy a couple ranks of Nano, a 100 cert gun, etc. just by learning how to contribute.

Infantry isn't that expensive, especially because you don't need fully certed gear to be competitive
For example: You can cert out a HA completely for under 3k certs (it's the loadout I run on most of my alts and 90% of the time on my main => on my main I do have adre, but I'm too used to the resist style of play trying to force myself to adjust to adre )

• Resist: 1k
• 4 medkits (although I don't think a new player needs 4): 800
• ASC: 341
• Depending on VS or tr/nc: 105 or 340 for the gun
  • orion: foregrip, sight => 105
  • msw-r/gd-22: foregrip, sight, SPA => 340
• av nade (although you might want to run frag now): 100

Total: 2346/2581

Vehicles however I agree on, vehicles are way too expensive

General new player experience basically equals this:

1 - The Game is marketed awkwardly.

Sure, "Size does Matter" but just because you have more space with more players; doesn't mean things will suddenly work as they did before. To make matters worse, it markets the "Size does matter" to the larger crowd that plays "Small Scale FPS" ... That's kind've like selling an Apple that's really an Orange to a man who only eat's Tomatoes. The only similarity is that they are all Fruit...

2 - The Game makes a poor first impression.

While most of us who've been here long enough are of thicker cyber-skin; the simple fact is that the game is NOT smooth playing, is very buggy, has lag/latency and hit detection problems, has a cluttered and unyielding UI with a rather pointless tutorial. The VR is probably where all noobs should stay for while and is likely the best way to introduce them.

However, Instant Action-ing a newb into a fight where target's are not rendering until they are 15 meters away because the server cannot handle the population density and gets killed repeatedly, sees death screens with models that have no heads and no weapons but full health; strange debri collisions and NUMEROUS others ways you can die in the first 30 minutes of play leave a bad first impression that absolutely reeks of "This game seriously lacks polish".

3 - The Game has an Identity Crisis.

It can't figure out if it's a super scale COD or BF or if it's any thing related to original PS1 other than it's faction colors and otherwise, devoid Lore (that hardly exists in the game. Virtually all lore is to be obtained outside the game. Minor point, doesn't mean much).

There's no Meta; period. It's just a grind fest. Something that seems absolutely worthless if you spend you first 10 BRs simply dying because the only point of the game is to Reach BR100 - which will obviously require a lot more exposure to #1.

Not only does the game have no purpose, but it's current game state is about as void as CoD; and not surprisingly a lot of players who've played CoD are burnt on CoD too! It's just a grind fest! Hence why new CoDs every year... something that PS2 cannot provide and would even have too if it simply had enough meta to create depth that lasts.

4 - Incomplete Introduction.

A combining of having a bad tutorial and #3. The Tutorial goes over the basic controls and what happens when you take a point. Wow. That's it? It doesn't scream anything about how team work is name of the game; cooperative gameplay is how you survive or anything. Instead, you're on your own, you have access to these tools (of which you mainly grind for), WASD land click like any other FPS and that's it!

I remember trying the tutorial for the first time and I felt like it completely glazed over Planet Side's intent - re-affirming it's Identity Crisis.

Because there is no Meta; a tutorial which explains the game's PURPOSE cannot even happen anyway. The game can't explain it's "Rules of War" and train players from the get go that this is a massive scale multiplayer co-op PVP game in which you systematically fight over land and territory to beat another faction in an all out war through conquest. There's none of that. So the game feels empty once you join it, the tutorial; despite the devs putting in good effort to give us one to begin with? Doesn't prepare the newbies any more than the lack of one did in the past. All it does is teach you key strokes...

5 - Disproportionate Classes.

Players are pretty much forced to use either Engineers or Medics to gain certs at a decent rate only to spend the certs on a progression system that's very open (thus unguided, leading to a lot of spending mistakes) and very lateral and thus even AFTER you've bought something? it's hard to feel like you've earned anything that makes you better. New players may look at the MAX and feel that the Class they think they will best survive with, until they realize how gimped the intro-load out is. I was so pissed with the MAX when I was new that I simply never upgraded it for the longest time. I used to just ignore it.

And while I love to play a Class that provides Fire Support; it was impossible. There's no class that provides Fire Support that gains certs. I could get some Assists with my HA at range providing suppression fire but the Exp gain was abysmal. I switch to a Medic though and my kill rate goes up, AND I revive - my exp rate more than doubles. Fortunately, I don't mind playing the Medic but that doesn't mean every new guy does. I spend a lot of time simply spraying my green beam at bodies. It's extremely repetitive. It's not dynamic. And yet that's what every one tells new guys; "Play an Engi or Medi class to farm certs first". All classes should be on equal ground at start with the exception of the MAX. There should be no reason why players coming into the game are almost required to play a specific play style only; JUST the get by until they are BR25+. For many people; this being "forced" to play those classes JUST to get to the point where you can enjoy another after 25 BRs is a huge turn off.

6 - Misinterpreted Vehicle Warfare.

PS2s vehicles for new people are terrible; but they do work. However; most would assume that if they get into a tank? That they'd have a chance. It's deflating to many when they get C4d so easily. I don't have this problem but I know a lot of new guys who take it personally.

Also, a lot of new people are highly put off by the massive skill curve for flying. It's not "EZ to learn and Hard to Master" to most. This is really only amplified because there are the vets who've gotten very skilled at flying and literally make it look so damned easy to do; killing swaths of targets before going down. The skill gap for flying is quite large; and leads to intimidation.

And lastly, with the addition of Vehicles, a lot assume that combined Warfare is the name of the game (and likely may have joined planet side because of this) only to find that this is quite rare. You're either being armor Zerged, Lib Bombarded or there is simply no vehicles at all because bases are erected that prevent vehicles from engaging and blah blah blah.

Any body coming from Battle Field of SWBF will be slightly confused at how the vehicles in PS2 are treated. I know I was. I feel like everything I drive is paper... and that's because it has to be. Every member in their faction can pull an MBT - thus every vehicle in the game isn't special at all... just another way of doing the same thing - grinding.

7 - F2P means Inconvenient Design

The speed in which one levels, the cost of some items that are REQUIRED (like NW for ex) are as such that they seem purposed for causing the largest amount of impatience so that you're tempted to spend SC. Despite the frustration from the lag, latency, hit detection and bugs which can be written off as "Yeah, this is still a 2+ year old Beta" - the general inconvenience one experiences of having to upgrade tedious tiny parts all the time is infuriating. Such as, high velocity ammo! If a buy a gun that's the same caliber, WHY CANNOT I NOT USE HV AMMO ON THAT ONE TOO?? Why and the hell can I not transfer my sights from one gun to another? What is each rail different per design?

Oh you mean, AFTER I UPGRADE my Cert Farming noobie Medic by buying him/her NW, Medkits and all that crap; I have to virtually RE-BUY most of it for every other class?

What worse is that if you're finally caving in to buying SC for that new item; what's the risk? Well it's pretty high actually - anything you buy can be altered and changed at any time. And, in a game where it's a huge grind, people want the best a fastest way to get more certs to finally unlock the class they'd REALLY like to play. The Striker was a good example; ESPECIALLY when it was glitched and OP as hell a long time ago. People bought it so that they could easily get air kills to help their Cert Gains; only to have it nerfed into the ground and practically un-usable. Every item is subject to this, glitched, OP or not - making any purchase largely un-enjoyable and insecure. (to help mediate this, I constantly urged all my friends to NEVER buy any Item other than Camo - largely because I was an Idiot and repeated that very same Striker scenario I just described...).

I know over times things have gotten better; but about a year ago when I tried to get quite a few of my work buddies to player? This was the pretty much their detailed list of complaints.

For the most part, it was mine too; but I quite enjoyed my switch the medic and didn't find myself bothered much after that. However everything else on this list? I've heard repeatedly.

One of the biggest is how the game seemed so pointless and repetitive in the face of the discrepancy of in game performances. When you have 10 friends and it's blatantly obvious that all 10 game clients have drastically erratic program stability and performance NO MATTER the power of your system? It makes you (if your the one shafted with terrible performance) feel like SOE is against you. Take for example, my brother who used to have an AMD/ATI system. His system was A LOT more powerfull than mine. I have a 1st gen i7, 6 gigs of RAM and an old Nvidea 465; but I ran circles around his 12 gig RAM Bulldozer Octo-core with an ATI 7850.

If the game simply ran more fairly on more people's setups; that alone would drastically change gameplay.

Once that's done -

I really think a good intro tutorial along with a polish Meta Game (via the Phase 3 Resource Revamp completion) would help - A LOT.

And it's still possible that this will happen and I'll be the first to beg my friends to give PS2 another shot should that happen. But until then? I honestly understand their POV and i'd be accused of being a Sadist if I tried pressuring them to do this all over again.

Buahahahahaha

According to devs new players quit before BR 8. When they have less than 100 certs. And you want them to figure out to go to VS and play 1 of 6 classes to have fun?

This is funny.
Not expensive... You will reach BR 31 when you have 3000 certs. I make videos about this topic. Stop spreading rumours that certing stuff is cheap in this game,

This. As long as you have unlocked 1x scope and 1-2 levels of nanowave/med kit it is the same.
May be only HA preforms a bit better with full aderenaline/full nanowave.
I bet you were just plagued by ping/bad hit detection even if you haven't noticed it. The player skill is so much more important then the updates.

About the new players experience - it is Devs fault- they could make longer tutorial with different tasks where the new player can start certain class with more stuff then now after he choose it.
Lets say the new player choices in the quiz HA as starter class then he gets additional specific tutorial where when completed he can earn either combo of medkids/shield updates or AA rocketlauncher or second LMG or bunch of certs - around 500.

well hit detection does suck. but honestly i play new characters quite a bit, on different servers and whatnot. and i always put all my certs into my lib, so all my other vehicles, my infantry, and my MAX are stock. i might drop 30 certs or 100 certs here or there, but i'm not buying new weapons or investing heavily into traits/upgrades. engineer tool is the exception, i forgot because to me it just goes with the cost of the lib.

the point is i do just fine, even with stock equipment. i don't focus on TB kills at all when i fly, so often my flight k/d is less than 1 for a session, like, you know, i'll go 4 kills and 8 deaths in a 4 hour run, and my gunner will do like, a few hundred kills or whatever. so then after my gunner logs, or before they are online, i'll play in a pick up platoon and even though i'm pretty bad at ground i can still manage to clear like 1.6 k/d and make up for my losses piloting.

it could be my playstyle though. i'm not barging into 96+ infantry fights trying to square off against upgraded heavies. i usually just guard the sunderer, or move with a group and pick up kills and assists when i can. for example, playing dedicated AA when no one else will, usually nets more kills than deaths. also just lurking around the sunderer in a grinder MAX will get kills because people are constantly trying to run up with mines, float overhead with C4, or run people down in flashes.

i understand that new players usually just go balls deep in a 96+ and get farmed, but it doesn't have to be that way at all if you play smarter. in fact i remember at launch, it was way worse because rocketpods and zephyr libs were fully OP and dominated everything to the tune of 100s of kills per hour.

Excuse me, but where on Earth did you see an FPS game where a new player dont get automatically destroyed by everything?
The problem is that if you dont have VAST FPS experience in your PAST you will suck in any FPS game REGARDLESS of how many hours you spent playing your last raid-heavy mmo. This is just entirely different game. If you played CoD or battlefield to a large extent then it takes just couple of hours to feel comfortable. To be efficient you have to know base layouts, memorize all the sounds, callouts, be comfortable with your gun etc etc and that takes more than 2 hours of play.

tl;dr MMORPG pve people are frustrated that this is only pvp game and it takes time to learn to play, not mentioning there is no casual noob island.

The main problem for new players is the insanely low TTK, and the fact you only have one AV weapon at your disposal that does not require pulling a max or a vehicle. When I first started playing, The two primary frustrations that I had were the .5 seconds TTK, And the fact I had basically no way to kill a vehicle in a timely fashion.

The fact you also have no Anti Air outside of a station turret and a single max burster was also problematic. These are serious cert sinks to new players. Almost no player will realize that they need to invest into these systems as soon as possible.

What I would recommend is any player under BR20 that was killed by an air unit be shown a screen that basically says this "You were just killed by an Aerial Vehicle! Equip the (Insert faction AA launcher here) and defend yourself against them!" After this message, It will automatically be unlocked for them for free.

The thing about this game, you dont need to be certed in order to be competitive. Part of hte issue is the vastness of this game, so much to learn, and no good teacher to do so. This game is a series of learning it the hard way, and some sink, some swim....

The overall bonuses from NWA and that are not that great. They help but not so much that without them you cant win. Ive made 1st lvl NC with nothing other then NMG and the Gauss SAW and gone 35-3, just mowin fools down. I suppose there is a sense of security from getting all the unlocks. And of all the unlocks, the ones that seem to matter most are the gun unlocks. Getting the gun kitted the way you as a player feel comfortable...beyond that its just frosting on the cake.