Planetside 2 is Hypocritical.

Actually, this game caters to the casuals. Why do you think there's lock ons for air? Because casuals. And that's just one example (albeit the easiest one). This game is far from catering to elites. If it was, it would be a way better game right now.

"catering" is direct changes or indirect changes.

That's pretty harsh, man. Especially considering that all of these qualities are subjective.

PS2 isn't perfect, sure, and it may not live up to the expectations that players get from some of the marketing materials, but marketing departments do that all the time. Now on to addressing your specific complaints.

1. Obviously, this is only my opinion, but I consider PS2 to be a big scale game for an FPS. I don't really see how having too many bases would make PS2 less of a big scale game. I'm bot really sure what you want in the game to make it big scale.

2. Some of the fights I've been in easily deserve to be called "large scale". There's also that thing where PS2 set the new world record. Again, I'm a little unclear how longer effective ranges would cause the fights to be larger scale other than the distances involved.

3. Actually, I agree with you on this one. The only type of vehicle in this game where the faction specific traits really shine through are MBTs. I understand why the developers did this, I just wish they didn't have to.

4. *shrug* Not really sure how you expect to capture a base without infantry. And it's not like the developers can practically implement destructible structures. Again, not sure what you're asking for here.

Direct change-> Adding lock-ons to cater to casuals that can't be bothered to learn to fly.

I think your focusing on 1 issue that bothers you personally, rather than the big picture.

It caters (or at least tries to cater) to both. And there are some fairly good reasons for this.

What I am trying to say is that theres a group trying to keep a "status quo" and make it something only they enjoy.

Good vid, and I'm not denying both sides are catered to.

I can't be bothered to list a billion examples. And this is an easy one.

Big scale game: how having less bases would make the scale bigger? The only thing I agree on is territory means nothing: it has no impact on resources and bases benefits are totally negligible. But this has nothing to do with the scale.

Large scale warfare: personally I disagree. Many weapons kill very quickly, and we have some long range options that work pretty well. The only thing that has been nerfed in the last 2 years is vehicles lethality, but this has been more than balanced by the removal of the aquisition cooldown. You say there are today there are as many vehicles as before the resources revamp. Maybe it's true, but the big difference is without cooldown the vehicles flow never stops, and there is no way to limit enemy resources aquisition. Current situation was supposed to be transitory and instead we're stuck in this **** since more than 1 year.

Conflict of 3 unique factions: players never cared about the background so much and devs have always wanted to leave it in the background. It was the same in PS1. We have WC flush horn... do you really think background matters?

Comined arms: you always complain about tanks being UP. That's ridicolous: tanks weapons are surely not realistic, but tanks are the best farming weapon of this game. Nothing makes my KDR take off like a Lightning run and guess why? Because infantry is defenseless when I spam my C75 Viper, and thanks to Autorepair and Fire Suppression I can receive tons of rockets but still I farm them all. WIth EOD HUD I never drive on landmines and because of the resources system I can sit in my tank all day without downtimes.
The "elites" thing is totally pointless to me.

Yes. But this is more or less correct. The base idea is true. Taking the lock ons for example. The problem is that there is NO better option no matter your skill level. Because no matter how good you are, you'd always do better with them. It's not like the extra afterburner would ever out-weight even by a little bit, the lock ons no matter your skill level.

In the same idea, in call of duty with the noob tube. For instance in the one they showed right there (mw2). The noob tube was the best option no matter what. All it required was to build around it a bit, and you'd have an un-avoidable death ball that you could lob at incredible speed. It also couldn't hurt you up close. The only place where it could loose to bullets was hardcore mode. But it usually only mean't both players died (the only advantage of bullets being they could penetrate objects).

It shouldn't be a linear thing, but if to use their diagram, skill F is 50x harder than skill A. It should indeed be better. Not 50x better, but better by a small margin. This is simply not the case, and that's why it's problematic.

I've played games that catered to both. Hekk, in the same game serie, they did the same.
If you ever played gunz 1, that's completely around skill play. Skills > anything else. So yes, the playerbase declined after a while (though honestly, it lasted longer than planetside 2). And it left a small amount of high skilled players with a near impossible wall for new players. Gunz 2 did the opposite. Now, no matter how good you were, it would't change a thing. Kind of like playing tic-tac-toe. Once you know the trick, you win. If both players know it, it just ties all the time. And it's not really deep.

As it is right now, this game is cathering mostly towards casuals. And the problem is that skill A is still drasticaly better than skill F that's 50x harder to do.

Don't look at it from a players perspective or a personal perspective.

1. It's up to the players to put value on a base. The old Crown didn't provide much benefit on paper but players preferred to lose the rest of the continent than lose The Crown. The attempts by the devs to add value have been disastrous, just look at Hossin and the half-price MAX suits.

2. Any game that has capture points is going to revolve around CQC. This game is still full of insta-kill weapons and the ubiquity of snipers is a big part of what makes long range fights rare.

3. Don't care about the lore at this point, there are so many more pressing items.

4. The game didn't "bend over" to infantry players until it had lost a huge portion of it's population. A small number of players sitting in vehicles and AOE spamming players wasn't good for business and despite the moaning about "combined arms" it wasn't good gameplay either.

Because vehicle combat in Planetside 2 is boring and many people avoid it if they can. It's like an arcade game but without any semblance of fun or unpredictability. You and other players that have so much invested in it may think it's the best thing ever but I've played a bunch of vehicle-centric games and PS2's vehicle game has no serious appeal for me.

In WW2online for example I could pull a tank, spend a few minutes flanking and lay waste to several tanks before they could react if I needed to. If you had good aim you were rewarded both long and close, in some cases your lone tank could be the deciding factor in a battle. The air was even better because if you could handle your machine you fight and dominate even when outnumbered. Here if I flank a mass of armor Planetside 2 I'm a momentary annoyance and when flying I'm met with lock-ons.

The only exceptions are the harasser and flash because they have to be driven at their limits to be useful and so it's usually a white-knuckle experience and fun.

Now, how would your argument be if you took a step back and didn't make it personal?

Big scale game: Agree that the base count has more to do with quantity over quality and many are there just to slow the progress of an invading forces. The battles always feel more epic if individual bases are more spread out and fighting extends more into the surrounding area. "We need to redploy to the other side of the map to fight 50 people in a tiny room exactly same as the tiny room we were just fighting in before." Not epic. "We have been holding our position north of the base for 20 minutes but look at the map our center line has just broken we need to regroup or be outflanked." Epic.

Large Scale Warfare?: The problem is not that weapons are balanced to much for close range as much as longer range is not preferred because standing out in the open leads you to die randomly more. Most people in the open just hide behind rocks I guess. And close range weapons often have more range than you would expect. You know, even things like snipers, you get tired of sniping when realise that a good player just has to twitch left and right to make headshots hard while they just destroy you at long range with their Orion.

It is also easy to snipe infantry at max range with a tank if they stand still especially in places where there isn't a large amount of ground cover. But the single worst things against infantry in the open are the base anti tank turrets and engineer anti vehicle turrets.

Conflict of 3(technically 4 counting NS) unique factions?: I do think that the launch of the game where they had no lore but just hyped up the empire "rivalry" so much left a bit of a toxic after-taste to the community. What is really missing though is some mechanic to kick a third faction out of a battle for a continent so you can move past a three way and get an empire v empire battle going. Believe that this would be the capturing the warpgate mechanic over the current alert domination mechanic.

Combined Arms?: The main problem is that there are few objectives for vehicle play over farming infantry kills and the nature of the maps also doesn't always give them the space. Like flak positions large enough to defend infantry in a pop capped continent will make most of the map a no fly zone and leave pilots with almost nothing to do.

How does that compare to the current population ?

ie: Are less people pulling the same amount of vehicles ?

And links to the current and post RR figures would be nice

I know you're talking about Tomcats in that sentence (at least I'm pretty sure you are), but it made me realize there isn't a reliable high-skill AA weapon for infantry except the Lancer. (I say "reliable" because dumb fire rockets' slow velocity leaves a lot to chance when shooting at airborn targets from any significant distance.)

I wonder if instanced arena-shooter version of Planetside which could support up to 300 players would be more successful than current open-world version.

Natural Selection 2 is an example of game catering to elites by having incredibly high skill ceiling. It seems that end result of that is low player retention rate because most players aren't willing to go through torment of constantly getting rekt by overskilled vets.

Starcraft is a good example of competitive game with high skill ceiling but with matchmaker system which pairs up players with similar skill level. Planetside on the other hand has no such matchmaking system due to its open-world nature.

I would love new ways to expand on the wide-open scale of Planet-Side. Right now the only combat that is truly defined is close-to medium range. It would be nice to have an alert that only activates the major bases on a continent so we could have more battles in-between them.

I see so many views on this thread.

Why are you all not speaking up or posting?