As feared, the PS4 launch was almost a total disaster

Oh man, I was prepared for a rocky launch, but not this. If any dev reads this, I hope there is something useful to glean from all this, if there is any way you aren't aware of the issues.

So I've been playing on PC since beta. Hadn't played PS4 yet, but my friends wanted to do it, so I got the game and we all joined in. Somehow, after an hour + of poking at the game, we manage to get our squad into combat. An hour +. Here is what happened:

- Logged into Koltyr. Ever avatar is warping around like crazy.

- Managed to invite by buddies into my friends list. Then tried to invite to squad via friends list. Nothing happens. I invite friends by typing their names in individually (with a virtual keyboard, ugh). SOME friends get the invites, some do not.

- Everybody logs in and out of the game multiple times trying to get the squad system to recognize us. Each time you get auto squadded, so you have to leave that squad every time you log in. Still is not working. We decide to abandon Koltyr since avatars are still warping like crazy.

- We try to warp to regular continents. Some people are able to warp to some continents, but not others. The game does not say why. One person cannot warp anywhere. He is so mad after an hour of this crap that he leaves the game.

- Somehow, after logging out and back in, and trying to warp to all kinds of continents, the squad leader manages to get on a continent, and then we are able to squad deploy on him. This is the ONLY way we could all get on the same continent. Note: these continents were NOT full because different people could warp to different continents.

- Finally, we all get to Amerish, we all get into my Sunderer (which I had to scramble to unlock at BR 5 before my friends logged on, otherwise we would have NO way of sticking together), we drive out of the warpgate.... and Amerish gets locked. Everyone has no idea what is going on, but luckily I was there to explain. I'm sure they would have quit otherwise.

- Everyone regroups to Esamir, and finally we start getting into some fights. I would say this was 1.5 hours after first logging into the game.

- The game is actually fun! When it's working. I even got used to the super clunky controller and started to get headshots (but not at range, ugh).

- The UI is a laggy, buggy mess. Press the touch pad and you have to wait like FOUR SECONDS before the map comes up. Sometimes, you interact with an equip terminal and nothing happens, so you walk away and ten seconds later the menu appears. The map is super chunky and laggy, and so poorly designed it is almost impossible to coordinate plans. This is due to:

- When you are on the spawn screen, you literally cannot scroll the map. Your view is locked to a facility, and you flip through available facilities via R1 and L1. THERE IS NO WAY TO KNOW WHERE ON THE CONTINENT A FACILITY IS. I cannot emphasize how broken this is. At one point, we wanted to relocate to the southeastern part of Esamir. So we all hit redeploy and then had no idea if any of the facilities we could spawn at were in the southeast of Esamir. We would have to memorize the name and location of every facility for this to work.

- There is no way on the global map to look at other continents! Wondering if there is a good fight on Idar? Tough luck! You have to WARP there first!

- Two of us got a bug where our friends list became permanently overlaid on the screen, covering our reticle and making play impossible. Logging out and logging back in did NOT fix the issue (seriously). We had to completely close the game down.

- After having to log out for an issue, and no longer being in squad, that person could no longer receive squad invites. We had to disband the squad multiple times and reinvite everyone.

I can't even imagine how many people tried to get through all of these hoops and just gave up, like my one friend.

Ayone who was around for the Trials of Obi-Wan release saw this comming.
It may be interesting for people to read up on SOE history and how they usually run games. Its going to prevent a lot of future dissapointment.

I mean sure, DBG may change things, but it doesent hurt to be prepared.
Lets hope they dont keep up SOEs (very) predictable pattern:

-Release new innovative game
-Development promises
-Milk game with "great deals"
-Stop communicating with your players
-Slow down development
-Random changes that nobody wants, likes or needs
-Start working on a new game
-Milk the old one dry
-Release new game
-Offer super amazing deals in old game
-Shut down old game
Repeat

Oh, also, the control scheme isn't even fully explained in game.

How do you throw a grenade? Doesn't tell you. I had to look it up online.

One good thing about BR unlocks, I must say, is the total lack of MAXes and MBTs and Liberators currently. Very newbie friendly. I like those components of the game, but I was surprised at how fun it was to NOT deal with them.

At least the Destiny DLC fiasco has made people more forgiving of anything that isn't Destiny for the next couple of days.

All of these points are spot on. You saved me time TC now I guess we wait til servers are back up.

Why is it that I cant get my friends to join on the starting continent?

EDIT: Spelling

Finally someone who isnt trying to sugar coat this shambles

Took my friends about 30mins to make a squad together. Half the times they wouldn't even recieve the invite. They probably all would've quit if I wasn't online with them. After I got everything organized and got us into a couple of fights they thourougly enjoyed the game. Also why doesn't the friendlist ingame automatically add people on your PSN friendlist?

Don't fret... it will all be polished and fixed in time for the XBox release ..

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/3az2lv/congrats_on_a_seemingly_successful_launch_on_ps4/

Koltyr is a pop capped instance. So if the particular instance of Koltyr is full, your friends will log into a different instance of it. I forgot this when I was playing, and finally figured it out when one friend said he was outside the spawn building and we couldn't see him.

Not as bad of a disaster as AC UNITY CO-OP wait one sec oh darn it CE-34878-0 experience they provided.

It's hackers...

.... That sounds like a great success considering they only divertet basically all resources from PC and left everything in "Phase I"

Now that explains alot, thank you. Ill have to recruit my friends again once servers are back up and explain this to them.

Wait, what, the ps4 version is supposed to be our super popular savior. This sounds worse than the PC release. What are the populations like? Back in 2012 the 13 PC servers were overflowing during the first days.

Bit early to judge I believe ... Since the servers have been down more than up .

PS4 launched with 2 American and 2 European servers. During the afternoon of launch day, both NA servers were Low (I can't see the Euro server pops). By early evening both NA servers were High, and they opened up 2 more NA servers. I think the night ended with no more servers being opened up. I will check back again today to see how pops are doing.

This sounds pretty terrible.

Yeah but I am sure that Xbone launch will be smooth as silk

I'd like to think that was joking, but........

The way I see it if they're having problems with ps4 which is a better system and can handle graphics and traffic. I hate to think what xbox one is going to go thru .
Has said is spot on regarding condition of servers and game. What worse is already some of my friends have given up on it in less than 2 days . A combination of glitchy server frozen screen and tk trolls. Also they experience a hell of alot of spawn camping since the game pretty much encourage players just to push respawn . So if that sundy or spawn room is camped your pretty much screwed since most of them don't know to spawn elsewhere in another base.