If you were head of DBG what would you do to bring back pop?

Cut all the cheesy crap out of the game. Seriously, cut the cheese.

One-hit sniping = gone
One-hit vehicle weapons on infantry = gone
HA Overshield = nerfed
ESF's and Liberators = toned WAY down
MAX units costing more than vehicles 10x their power = fixed
Bring back vehicle timers across the board. What point is a "resource" system if it doesn't actually cost you anything?

I would change from behind the scenes:

Fire GM Exerege: I do not play the game anymore simply because that GM threatened to ban me if I retaliate TK. The players I was tking killed me 6 out of my previous 7 deaths and sent countless harassment tells that I reported before I began to retaliate. The GM said those were all accidental and mine were clearly intentional. I then continued to play the game and was tked by the same players until I was forced to quit.

Fix the server issues: From what I have been told they run H1Z1 servers on the PS2 servers in order to cut costs. It really shows in the quality, the server quality basically peaked 8 months post-launch and have gone downhill ever since despite there being less players everyday.

Add in a Landmark style server that apparently allows you to cross servers on a whim. This way at 6 am eastern we could take our Emerald characters over to an EU server to see more than 100 players combined serverwide. I have never played Landmark and am solely repeating what I have read regarding how it works.

I would change in game:

The HA overshield
Making MAXs more expensive or weaker
Resource revamp to make them more valuable

game wise
- overhaul implants, remove all energy, grant max tier to everyone, grant cert returns for those with a lot of them saved up or a camo or something simple, these things are pretty fun and add a lot of elements to the game, but no one uses the damn things because therer is such a mountain in the way of their use on the regular.
- get the building system in, working and in a decent state (by industry standards, not SOE) not just the frame work, do a mini expansion type re-launch and give like a free week of membership xp to all returning accounts (give them a taste) announce it as "operation *expansion*" hype it on reddit, get ign to talk about it.
- get those battle islands in ASAP
- improve the mini-map, the full screen one isnt too bad but the mini map is stupidly cluttered and does nothing to help you navigate bases/buildings

- reduce prices across the board, add a veterans program, some sort of rewards or discount for accounts that have been around for years and have purchased a lot of items (encourages us to keep throwing our money at you in spite of how you've previously screwed us)
- give up on the idea of esports, if a small team wants to work on that as a side project let them.

from a community aspect
- form an advocates group, community elected players to represent each class, vehicle platform, etc some one to help filter the noise on the forums and reddit with an excellent knowledge of their field. this has worked amazingly in other MMO worlds in the past.


and most importantly some nice frank honesty about the state of things as seen from the devs perspective. letting the community turn on itself over balance changes isnt helping foster a community so while i understand the devs want feed back if they want to use the community to help balance things out we need to understand what their view point is.

there is no point in 30 page threads about the battlegoose having people fight over things, when the devs opinion is it is completely fine just ignore them ********. the devs may not like being the focus of that criticism but hey you are getting paid, by dodging it you just let your community eat its self.

do i see it happening, honestly no, but there is a reason i still check the forums every few weeks.

lol, wrel is right on with his laundry list of PS2 problems (btw, I've just started playing WarFrame, which he mentions... and he's right. The Dev are HIGHLY involved and producing new content and new alerts all the time. And, guess what? The community is MUCH happier than the PS2 community. I wonder why.... and WarFrame is a lot of fun... ninjas in space

However, wrel doesn't mention the biggest problem in PS2, which is that DBG doesn't care about the game, and spends no time on keeping it updated and keeping new content flowing. PS2 is basically abandonware, or benign neglectware compared to games like WarFrame

Battle islands.
Could also be reused as instanced outfit training facility/HQ.

Just for fun, comparison on steam. Warframe grows. PS2 had it's peak at release like 5x current pop.

Content is king. You must release content.

Maps , guns, cosmetics, new game mechanics, performance upgrades.

Then you advertise the living hell out of hit. Find some old movie stars willing to make a commercial for a couple grand and play it everywhere on the Internet and a couple of tv spots.

Sponsor a charity event and ask the big gamers and companies if they would like sponsor it too. And make it like for every player that is on for 4 hours a donation is made to some charity.

The possibilities are endless. But it takes investment from dbg to make that all happen.

February is the perfect time. You can make funny valentines commercials about giving dbg gift cards. And then get some high profile people to do some streaming for you. Meet the stars who play planet side.

The possibilities are endless, the first step is from mgmt to decide this game is worth that investment.

Really dbg either moves and does something maverick like investment firms do or let it rot in the vine shut it down and report it as a loss and move on.

Sniping has always been one hit.
Taking a tank round to the face has always been one hit.

If you remove headshotting with a sniper rifle, sniping will disappear. While that may be OK with you for whatever reason, it would be removing a core gameplay mechanic that exists in every FPS. And I like sniping to help me work on fine aim and leading.

Just ignore him, looking at any previous "discussions" we have had before should easily be enough proof as to the vanity of attempting a valid conversation. He is too deeply lost in his own bigotry and hypocrisy recognize his own insanity.

The most telling part is that, like any Free to Play title, Warframe had a rapid drop in numbers from its launch day but stabilized quickly and then started to climb again.

Planetside 2... didn't.


And I think anyone whose been around since launch could pull out their personal laundry list of why. I would personally place the largest scoop of the blame on the amount of time it took for any BALANCE changes to be implemented. Certainly, weekly (then monthly, then... maybe?) patching was nice when the gates opened - but it took several months to address balance concerns.

Ultimately, players don't care if a box at Indar Excavation is floating half a meter above the ground or that lightnings would randomly spin like UFOs and fly off to meet the needs of their people - if the core experience is fun, and they don't feel the odds are stacked against them.

Lol i'm not getting in the middle of the lover's spat between you two

I just don't want to see sniping disappear, since it's always been a part of RL and of games

Simple, scrap development of PS2. Start PS3 from the ground up and learn from the mistakes of both previous titles. Maybe make something like PS3 Arena for the console, because they cant handle more than 48v48 instanced game modes.

Huehuehue, it got your attention, didn't it?




Is ANYONE going to give their thoughts on my overly flamboyant rainbow comment?

I think its actually the lack of content and enthusiasm from Daybreak. I don't see the balance issues everyone claims PS2 has. In my 20 years of online gaming, everytime I've seen something get OP in a game, it gets used, overused, and abused. I don't see that in PS2.

Even the ZOE fiasco, I didn't see 70% VS numbers. Seriously, if something is as OP as everyone claims in these forums, you'd see numbers like that shift. Unless you want to explain to me that the average PS2 player is the symbol of gamer morality, sportsmanship, and fair play. But no, I don't see the FOTM crowds shifting back and forth. The highest percentage I've seen a faction have in Prime Time on a populated server (Briggs isn't populated), is 40-45%. That means 55-60% aren't using said system.

But if you play any other online game, MMO or not, and something turns OP.. then you'll see 70% or more shift to it until its nerfed. And the low shifts comparatively in PS2 can't be explained away by commitment. This frequently happens in MMOs too. In fact I dare say it happens more often.

Content is what PS2 needs. ANT's going to bring people in. But they shouldn't stop there. More stuff for the current vehicles. Like the Cloak Sunderer, Redeployment blocker, and so forth. Something like that should come out every 2 months at least.

I was speaking in relation to the drop, and failure at retention and rebound, at launch.

I've never personally felt the balance was that off - if you look through my post history you will even catch me saying I felt its been a better success than Planetside 1 was in that regard. Which is a line you won't hear me say often when comparing the two.

The problem is the psychology of it. For example at launch. The Liberator felt HORRENDOUSLY overpowered; and it stayed that way for half a year to a full year. Then it was kicked off its chair, and slowly propped up over time. Unfortunately, it wasn't any fun to play against - which means players were lost.

It doesn't matter that on the spreadsheets it was averaging a KPH or KPU equal to, say, a shotgun. The problem was that the community perceived it as overpowered, which ultimately means it wasn't fun to play against. And once the community picked up on it, it made every death to it that much worse. And for some players, it made every kill with it feel like "cheese".

So now you have a group of players psychologically alienating themselves from the game and other players. This leads to people quitting the game because it stops being fun.

This could have easily been addressed (and, quite frankly, is still a big problem) either by regular dev communication as to WHY they aren't adjusting it - Maybe the numbers don't back it up (show us the numbers), or maybe they want more data (tell us they want more data) - or by putting little ******** tweaks in every patch.

The APPEARANCE of attempting to balance goes a long way. They could adjust some factor by 2-3%, which is ultimately meaningless, but gives the appearance that they are working on it. And who knows, perhaps a few of those mini-changes and the problem gets sorted. If not, you can still continue to collect data for a bigger change.

Opposite is equally true in the aftermath of applying the "nerf hammer" and bringing something back out of the crater.

The fact remains the development teams cycle on this has been unforgivably slow. We go months and months without a word from the dev team when the community is frothing about something; which leads to loss players. When something gets 'hammered' and it was what a player enjoys? When they see there is no effort to make it "usable" again, you lose those players.

It isn't important that the community is ultimately a herd of cats. The community is what drives the playerbase; and they are the bottom line for the game being both successful and for being profitable.

make weapons lootable, forever ending the "OP" gun rants