Marketing studies are hugely expensive! And this is free (though it obviously reflects only my individual opinion, there's probably a good chance that quite a few players feel the same way but say nothing) I don't play so often and for so long as before anymore because of my polystyle. I know tons of people love to play PS2 no matter what is going on in the map, for them, it's about having a nice fight in a nice base, not about winning the fight and keeping the base. To me, that's absolutely fine, however it's not how I play, I play to win, I play to defend and fight for my faction and I play and make even a lot of effort to contribute so as to maybe help my faction start an alert and win it, or prevent someone else from winning the alert. I like to think that that is how PS2 was actually "supposed" to be played, though even though I think it's true, I realise it's kind of arrogant to make such a claim. Still, it's what I believe. Otherwise why have all these objectives in the first place? Anyway, I love PS2 when I can do this, I ******* HATE IT when I can't, and lately, it's been impossible. What I mean is when your faction has 25% underpop, that the map is the colour of another faction who has 50% or more and when every single base you go to is one a one sided fight and it is clear that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. This is why the distinction I made earlier is important, those players just looking for a good fight couldn't care less about this, even though I suspect it would be more difficult for them to find a good fight in these conditions, but for players like me, it's literally game breaking. You can fight and defend against all odds like a brave hero, get farmed over and over again and tell yourself that losing is how you learn, but after a while, it gets really old really fast. So if you're not swapping factions (like me) the only thing left to do is just give up and do something else. And this is what I do, and the point of this post is basically to say "hey, I love this game but I can't play it in these conditions". It's not a goodbye post, because I keep coming back to PS2, but at the end of the day, I play less and less, and less often. So if during brainstorming the DB team is looking at the numbers and asking themselves why they are dropping, I'm not saying this is why, but I am saying that this might explain some of it.
The game is dying because it was always too big for its britches, and the overall design was FUBARed from the word "go." No self respecting FPS developer would have made the heavy assault the way it is next to all the other classes. No self respecting FPS developer would put one-hit kill sniper rifles exclusively in the hands of a guy only slightly (and situationally) more fragile than the other classes but can also go invisible. No self respecting developer would have flight controls as backwards as they are in PS2. Or create the bases/outposts the way they did... Or even allowed half the camos that are in game (seriously, giraffe should have never been faction neutral, nor valentines.) But these are all design mistakes. HUGE mistakes in most cases, but things that could be fixed (if anyone still playing gave a real damn anyway, those that did already left.) No, the BIGGEST issue with Planetside is literally that, BIG. There is apparently such a thing as too many players. Every fight is a coin toss whether or not the numbers will stay relatively even for any length of time. A 50/50 pop balance fight is incredible. But skew it even 45/55 and it starts leaning in one side's favor pretty noticeably. Some areas that imbalance ends the fight immediately, other areas the lower pop can hold on. But no area will survive a 40/60 ratio. That's a done deal. And because relocation is so easy, logistics just isn't a thing, and there's really no method of forcing people to commit to a fight or keep them out of it besides continent wide population control. So what is frequently experienced is a nice even fight, then all of a sudden a third of your guys leave for somewhere else with no warning, or likewise a portion of the enemy team drops out, or either side gets a platoon worth of reinforcements and now the fight's over. The flow is erratic and unpredictable, making for an inconsistent and frustrating experience. One could literally go a whole day and potentially never see a good fight for more than 10 minutes at a time. Every other hour. After enough times of this and dealing with bad design philosophy on top of that, people are naturally going to go to more consistent (and sensibly designed) PvP experiences like Battlefield/Battlefront for their large scale combined arms combat, or just slink back to single player games. Currently, Angels Fall First makes a better Planetside than Planetside. It's sad, but I think if we get a Planetside 3, it would be better served dealing with smaller land masses and more limited (128v128 some such) player counts.
Game had incredible potential at first, lots of hype, lots of fixes and promises of tweaks. None of that happened. They didn't listen to the players. Then they became DBGs. I've never-ever seen so much wasted potential in a game before.
This game is amazing. But snipers do suck. Too easy for cheating noobs to kill people with aimbots. Always some level 9 guy who kills you repeatedly any time you stick your nose out from any point, then its time to log out.
Easy solution really... Play smarter. It's that simple. I know plenty of outfits that hold bases against double numbers, I know plenty vehicle crews that singlehandedly stops large numbers of armor alone or drops all spawn points in blisteringly short time... just by playing smart and off course be VERY good at what they do.
Ps. Being outpopped is a god damn privilege. Farming huge bulks of XP/CERTS while grinding them down and slowing Or stopping the enemy progress is hugely satisfying. Oh...and the rage tells.... God I love them
