Curious about something

What is the point of planetside 2? I'm not trying to troll or anything, but I'm pretty curious.

I'm level 11, so I'm still on the starting map. But it seems like a bunch of nonsensical running around doing literally the same thing over and over again. Last night I was playing and we had defended a part of our map, but the moment we successfully defended it they started taking it over again. and over and over and over again. What's the point? The whole gang turf concept seems pretty cool but they can just take over the spots again easily.

I also saw a tutorial that said taking over certain parts of the map guaranteed bonuses but I don't see any at all.

Not sure what the point of most of these classes/vehicles are, considering to win the game you have to be in a building in which case a tank/sniper/aircraft can't do battle with you anyway. And anyone that is in either of those isn't helping the team out....so.....

Except I guess the sniper class does have one amazingly overpowered perk. Infinite cloak and just pop out and shoot someone two or three times with your pistol and recloak.

Not sure I quite understand how this game works. A lot of oddly placed mechanics and balancing issues

I'm on ps4 of course.

We are farmers. Bum ba dum dum bum bum bum.

i dont see what these posts have to do with anything.

First part, the base bonuses, they are a little obscure but if you know where to look then you can find them. When you own AMP Stations, Turrets Auto-Repair and have massively increased overheats, meaning you can fire for a good 4 times longer before overheating. Bio-Lab ownership grants you a strong passive healing effect, that can bring you to full in about 15 seconds. Tech Plant, the most obvious, is required to pull your faction's Main Battle Tank. Otherwise you must pull from your Warpgate.


Second, open world. I guess if you come from the arena based shooters such as BF or TF2 or CoD, then it might be hard to adjust, but it's kind of the point that you can always take the facility back. The war is infinite and unending.


Third, the farm factor. You are quite correct, this is a major problem is PS2. But, as we speak the devs are indeed adding content that will promote player-facilitated Metagame such as the ability to construct fortifications, as well as base capture mechanics in the future. General game dynamic changes will help the overall flow of the gameplay.

Okay, that makes sense. But a lot of these extra features seem to beat around the bush. There's huge battles outside sometimes, but the only way to win the game is inside, making all these other features pointless.

I get the open world setting, and sometimes I hate it. I pushed instant action once and I was 1,200 away from any actual objective and had to wait for the instant action cooldown. Then, getting around the map can be a pain because it costs a lot of currency to spawn a vehicle that'll likely get destroyed instantly.

Yeah, it seems as if there needs to be more tailored to capturing points, and maybe even gameplay that isn't centered around just capturing points. It's either you spawn directly on the objectives and just go capture them while fighting a little bit or running forever to capture an enemy base, die in a couple bullets once you're done running for a few minutes. Rinse and repeat. There doesn't seem to be very many ways to go about winning a battle. Just get inside a building and lock down a point.

And yes, farming is absolutely annoying in this game. Took me a while to figure out some of the farming styles but once I did, by far the scout class infinite cloak is the most overpowered crap ever.

Does anything change once you get to actual continents? Or is it roughly the same as the tutorial continent?

At its most base level... the point is to shoot the other people and kill them before they kill you.

Next layer are control points at bases. You fight for control of those... by killing people at them. These are called objectives and there are other kinds of objectives like vehicle shield generators, spawn control unites (SCU), etc. etc.

Layer on bases and the "lattice" These are the lines drawn between the bases on the map. A dotted line from base to the next means you can POSSIBLY attack that next base. You can only attack that next base if the base you own at the one end of that link is secure; meaning all control points are under your control AND there is no active timer counting. So what you were experiencing was actually a highly contested base; it was NOT secured. Just because you kill some dudes and take control of an objective doesn't mean you win. You need to push out and find where they are coming from and destroy their spawn point. Then you can push out from that base with vehicles and attack the next base.

Another layer are facilities. These are massive bases that have more meaning beyond 'we own this, yay!' This is what Gundem was explaining above. "When you own Amp Stations, Turrets Auto-Repair and have massively increased overheats, meaning you can fire for a good 4 times longer before overheating. Bio-Lab ownership grants you a strong passive healing effect, that can bring you to full in about 15 seconds. Tech Plant, the most obvious, is required to pull your faction's Main Battle Tank. Otherwise you must pull from your Warpgate."

Now we have Victory Points on top of that. ON the map screen roll over the VP score board at the top. Your faction needs to achieve those things to earn points and "win" the continent (called locking). Once you lock a continent you get a sweet bonus for your entire faction as long as that continent is locked in your factions name.

Don't trust instant action, even sometimes would change your continent. Open the map first and then press I. If you don't like what you see press U. If you can't find a good spawn and the good one doesn't have spawn got to a base that has air terminal and spawn a valkery, it's the cheapest among aircrafts.

Infils not OP, you just found your forté. Or maybe not, I'm still finding a more efficent counter against invisible quadbikes.

I'll walk through each point and help.

Those big, outside, battles are usually NOT pointless. Every good attack requires multiple Sunderers and/or Galaxies for attackers to spawn on. Ideally you have ally vehciles on the ground and in the air protecting them. Why? Because you can be sure the defenders are patrolling around with vehicles looking to destroy your spawn point. That's far from pointless.

STOP running to bases! Hit "U" key to Undeploy and find a new spot to deploy. Maybe it's even on a different continnent. Get used to redeploying a lot for many reasons but basically when the fight sucks or you're stranded in the middle of nowhere... Undeploy and redeploy.

Instead of running to bases you should be pulling vehicles. You see your teamates doing it right? Then you see those big vehicles fights? Again that's not pointless; that's part of the fight for the next base or the defense of the base you just left! It's integral and quite important.

So you loose a vehicle; no big deal. Stop buying expensive ones if you're always out of resources. The Flash and Harasser are quite cheap. The Harasser is actually much faster than the Flash, more durable, and has a turbo built in... I'd recommend that. Saftey in numbers... stick with your allies and their vehicles... get a gunner on your Harasser. You'll get better and you vehicles will last longer.

Are you playing on Koltyr? If I had to guess I'd say yes... and the battle flow there is... stupid. You pretty much circle jerk the center 3 bases, nobody ever makes it out to the large facilities near the warpgates, and I could totally see how you feel this way. Maybe you've already out grown Koltyr and it's time for the big boy party?

Also I recommend jumping in OTHER peoples vehicles. Look for dudes with NICE vehicles... camo, decals, upgraded guns, etc. It's likely they are a veteran player, you'll last longer, and have more fun. If they kick you out... it's nothing personal; just jump in another vehicle.

You'll learn a lot about surviving in vehicles, rack up a ton of XP for assists, kill shares, and some of your own kills. Be sure to tell your driver you're new and to be patient. They might kick you out but I've found most drivers are cool with it as long as they know. They will be more patient and more specific about what they want you to do instead assuming you know what to do.

It's about farming mostly certs for lots of people. Others it's about owning. And others it's about dying.

Indeed the bonuses are pretty negligible, but it's not really as simple as that. The problem is that often the faction with the greatest population will tend to steamroll everyone else, and having bonuses based on capuring facilities or continents amplifies that. If you outnumber your foes, and then get 50% off your MBT, and then got something crazy like +10% armor for vehicles because you owned a tech plant(meaning another entire AP round or rocket launcher hit to kill you), your foes wouldn't stand a chance. DBG is working on improving continent bonuses to make more subtle benefits that don't give too significant advantages to the side that's simply blessed with higher population.

Actual continents are massive compared to to Koltyr. I'm talking 10x as big. Plus, you are far more likely to face zergs, the pet name for practice of swamping underpopulated forces in overwhelming numbers. If you can learn to parasite these zergs you can make quite a few certs pretty quickly, but it took me quite a while and a lot of frustration to learn it. For your sake, if you reach a fight where you don't last more then 20 seconds outside the spawnroom for at least 3 lives in a row, your facing a zerg and should find another fight.

Yea, the spawn system is bad. Devs acknowledge that, devs be workin on that. Just be cautious about Instant Action, make sure it doesn't take you somewhere that you are vastly out-populated or there's no fight in the first place.

Also, what faction are you playing? A lot of game dynamic changes depending on what faction you are fighting. For example, The Vanu Sovereignty(The spandex dudes) have a lot of very long rang AV. Anti-material snipers that can peg your tank from 1000 meters away. They aren't very strong along, but once enough people get together they can lock down large plains quite easily. When facing the VS, you have to avoid large, open spaces, and NEVER deploy Sunderers in line of sight to a spawnroom(As a general rule of thumb, that should be avoided regardless of faction).

And while we're here, vehicles. Yeah, they are currently pretty underpowered against Infantry. This was the work of our previous Overlords, SOE. But before they were nerfed into oblivion, a single HE MBT could clear out the mid-floor of a tower in a single shot, so things weren't much better either. Our hope is that DBG fixes some of the vehicle problems once the construction system, aka the ANT(Advanced Nanite Transport) is on live. But currently, vehicles either need to stay in a group, farm bases that have low population, or flank behind large tank zergs with stealth and assassinate other tanks from behind.

One thing that helps significantly is to get a secondary gunner. MBT secondaries are stronger then the primaries purposely in an attempt to encourage players to run 2/2 MBT's rather then just spawn a tank and start shelling a base with HE. For any MBT AV, you absolutely need a secondary gunner at least, and then you'll also need an AP Primary.


For point capture, yes, it's yet another one of PS2's problems. But DBG is also working on improving base design. This will also be assisted by the addition of ANTS, as then players will be able to fortify points manually, thus adding a layer of depth to the currently rather desolate base design. They have also dabbled into PS1 style capture mechanics. PS1 had mechanics like CTF, where you had to bring a capture node from the enemy base to your base a number of times to capture it. Fun stuff like that.

Plus, with the addition of ANT's, we'll likely be seeing the heralded Resource Revamp, where the Nanites you use to spawn vehicles and infantry utilities are harvested from the ground via ANT's, which then have to be protected until they can deposit their quarry. If you don't protect your ANTS, you get no resources. And then likewise, you can send strike teams to take out the enemy ANTS, thus depriving them of vehicles or consumables.

Finally, Infiltrators, the name of the class you were refering to that has the cloak. A couple notes about that.

First, the infiltrator does not have "invisibility" per say. depending on your movement state and distance from target, the cloak has a shimmer effect that ranges from nearly imperceptible to highly visible. Only when you are crouched still are you the least visible, and even then you aren't completely so.

You seem to be quite frustrated about the cloak, so let me tell you now, it will not be the same outside Koltyr. Players such as myself can see the slightest shimmer of the cloak in the corner of our eye, and we know the signs of an infiltrator, thus allowing us to know when to look. Plus, there is an attachment to most weapons called the "Darklight Flashlight". This utility illuminates cloaked infiltrators with a faction specific outline, rendering your position known instantly. These will be very common on the normal continents, especially if you start going on a longer killstreak as an Infiltrator. Here is a good video demonstrating how more skilled players can find Infiltrators, courtesy of Iridar51:

Yes, PS2 has quite a myriad of issues right now. It is unfortunate, but the vast majority of these were inherited from lazy development on SOE's part. DBG is doing what they can to fix it atm, but they have vastly reduced manpower or funding compared compared to most development teams, so there's a limit to what they can produce. Stick with us and you'll hopefully find PS2 to be a one-of-a-kind experience!

I love having newbies to teach the way of the Magrider, but I might get pissed off pretty fast when you try and go ham on the first Vanguard you see when I'm in the middle of flanking an NC zerg! But if you ask, I can tell you that we are running a stealth build and to only fire on what I designate. Then you might even see how awesome stealth vehicles are

same point as any FPS... kill the other guy, cap the flag...
how many times do you play the same map in any other FPS?


(except in PS2 you can be outnumbered by 40%... lol, i was in a 98-2% battle today. i was in the 98%, but it was still boring)

wall o' text award ! congrats !

To have fun. That can mean whatever you want it to mean.

If you think having the highest KDR you can muster is 'fun' then aim to have the highest KDR you can.
If you think pushing the objective and capping bases is 'fun' then set yourself an objective and try to accomplish it.
If you think culling enemy numbers with HE armor or a zephyr lib is 'fun' then do that.
If you think trolling your enemy with an LA or infil is 'fun' then do that.
If you think the challenge of completing directives is 'fun' then do that.
If you think that having a harasser race from one base to another is 'fun' then do that.
If you think 1v1 ESF combat using nosegun only is fun then do that.
If you think spamming A2A missiles is 'fun' do that.

If you can't think of anything in the game that is 'fun' for you, maybe the game just isn't for you and you should try another game.

Theoretically, in large numbers -- for continent locking turf war matters. You have to learn how to break zergs, stop spawning close, and wreck vehicle convoys on the big continents. Koltyr is actually a poor representation of the game at large -- it's more CoD style get used to the basic combat stuff.

I understand a lot more about the game now thanks to the posts above, so I appreciate it guys.

But, for the style of game it is, I'd like to see my efforts manifested in a rewarding way. I had no idea there were even perks until I watched a video and even after that someone on these boards had to explain it because I still knew of nothing.

Killing a lot of players isn't really great in this game because you die so easily. It's not like you can get into a huge gunfight and just plow through everyone. You've got maybe 5 guys per life and you're done. So the things I do for my chosen alliance I'd like to see manifested in some rewarding manner.

Plus, fighting at the same base for like 2+ hours gets kind of boring especially when it's often times not going in your favor.

The reason he asks is because PS2 has no closure. What makes a win feel like a win is the fact that there is an end after which you are forced to not play anymore or at least feel that your efforts don't matter anymore. That's how any competition works. Arena game victory feels like a victory because the game ends at a certain point. PS2 does not, and therefore there is little feel of win. Also the fact that whatever base you took can be taken a second later as the OP mentioned. Your accomplishment isn't guaranteed to last for some minimum time.

The devs have yet after 3 years managed to figure out how to give tanks a purpose. Currently they have little to do but farm. When people play the game it's meant to be played in something called ServerSmash, tanks have no use.

A Viper Lightning on point is pretty damn useful.

Yes I know that's know how tanks are supposed to be used, but it obviously works