Less and less and less players give a damn about the bases and map.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Zizoubaba, Sep 20, 2019.

  1. Zizoubaba

    It's come to a point now where I'm tempted to say "no one gives a ****". That isn't entirely true, there's still some players here and there who enjoy the battle for territory and locking continent.

    As an illustration, here's a screenshot that proves it. FYI, especially on Esamir, but also on other maps, usually outside of prime time, this happens ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY.


    [IMG]


    EVERYONE on the map, or almost everyone, is heading to that biolab. Even NC who has the southern warpgate.

    No one could care less about the map, about taking bases, about fighting for domination and so on, no one cares anymore.

    I imagine the devs, with the attitude that I've come to recognise, and hate, will say "oh but you see, it is the players, it is the players who want this", but let me set you straight.

    It is the DEVS who make players interested in content, or not, don't turn things around thats the whole point of being a dev in the first place, thats your ***** job.

    In short, the HUGE majority of players are treating PS2 as an arena game / never ending MOBA.

    It wasn't always like this, I've played this game for years, and these kinds of players used to be a minority.
    • Up x 2
  2. chamks

    i think that for the objective metta to work it should be played with 2k people on the map... with such low population the game becomes a deathmatch
    • Up x 4
  3. SteelMantis

    It wasn't always like this?

    Cause it used to be at the Crown.:D
    • Up x 6
  4. Zizoubaba



    Hah yeah I remember, basically, "whoever owned the Crown lost the Alert" hah.

    And yeah, it was always like this, but most players, most squads and outfits, played to conquer territory and win Alerts etc. Players who didn't care existed, but they were not the majority and/or it was a temporary thing like everyone now and then doesn't have time or whatever.

    Now it's the opposite ; "most" players don't care, those that do are in a minority..
  5. OgreMarkX

    So, here's the thing...the thing that DBG not only misses, but has actually DESIGNED AGAINST....

    Players play Planetside 2 for the BIG FIGHTS.

    The maps, the meta, the objectives, etc...are a distant second.

    Players want to FIGHT. They want interesting gear, roles and team play. They want to contribute to the fight.

    But what does DBG do? They focus on more maps, they make the fight spawn system ANNOYING to "encourage less big fights". They are apparently spending dev time on....get this...a map THAT ISN'T EVEN RELATED TO FIGHTING. I kid you not...

    Understanding HOW and WHY customers use your products SHOULD drive design and implementation. But not at DBG in relation to Planetside.

    Ever since release in 2012, SOE/DBG has been trying to reverse course to turn Planetside into a Twitch/MLG small squad game. Hence PS:A. Vets will remember Matt Higby stating: "The future of Planetside is in MLG".

    Uh huh, how is that working out.

    <Mr Peabody get in his time machine>
    <sets dial to April 22, 1985, the day before New Coke hit the market>
    Coca Cola CEO: "This is gunna be BIG! Big I tell you! Tomorrow we release NEW COKE!"
    Coca Cola Sycophant VP: "Yes siree! Our customers are gunna love it!
    Coca Cola Monetization Expert: "I guarantee this will work. Guarantee it. See? I sport a goatee. It means I am deadly in my job!"
    <One day passes>
    New Coca Cola tanks.

    [Suprised Pickachu face from the future]
    • Up x 4
  6. Nalianna

    Well I don't know if this is related but I'm getting sick of the fact that whenever I'm on, the VS don't seem to be interested in winning control of a disputed facility, unless they are already winning. They run away! I'm so sick of being the last one left trying to defend a facility when it started off with about equal numbers. If they think they're not going to win they just skarper. Of course this could just be a VS thing...
  7. MonnyMoony

    Planetside is an objective based game, but it's rewards are mostly based around getting kills, that is your fundamental problem. The objective based rewards just aren't worth bothering with.

    You get the same reward for defending an entire base as you do for getting a couple of easy kills. You get perhaps 30 XP for taking out a spawn beacon than can turn the entire tide of a battle, yet get three times that for swatting a BR10 noob who can redeploy in under 10 seconds.

    People will often leave Sundies and spawn beacons alone because they can get far more XP farming the planetmans that come out of it, than for taking the spawn point out. They'll often ignore a base that is being back capped cutting off the base they are at plus a load of additional territory, simply because they are in a good farm (I have seen so many alerts lost this way).

    The best way to modify people's behaviour is to rework the XP system. Reduce the reward for kills (which mean very little in a game where people can instantly redeploy) and give larger rewards for objective based gameplay.
    • Up x 7
  8. PlanetBound

    Winning an alert is one objective out of several hundred. If the only objective was to win the alert, more people would be playing toward winning.
  9. CazaCaza

    Agreed

    Yeah sure bio labs are good for grinding out directives but we need to step out of that grind thats not what the game was about. Daybreak has made the biolab that way introducing the router system straight to the biolab theses no fun, pulling sundys and using the landing pads was funner because u actually had to do something.

    I remember the massive battles we had long ago and the hard grind we had to go through to actually get there, park sundy, and capture the points. Now its just pull gal, load it up, drop, capture base move on or sundy easy, one light assualt with c4 done fight killed. this happens all the time on connery (not sure about everywhere else) leaving a 1-12 vs 24-48 pop and then the team doesnt even bother to push back again ( just redeploy somewhere else)

    What we need is leaders from all the factions to join together and actually make these things happen. Its been ages since i last saw any sort of community run activity and when they are run its just one faction, so NC just runs around with 30 tanks and no one stops them. What happened to the sundy balls ? Harasser races? Battles between bases? Tank vs tank? Big terrain battles with lasers everwhere?
    And why am i seeing PL's leading from the warpgate?

    Game was fun and tbh i log on most days hoping for good ol battle like that only to be disappointed. Daybreak has abandoned us they dont and WONT listen to us its up to us the players to make it fun again
    • Up x 3
  10. Zizoubaba

    Well I'm ******* hating the game right now, I'm really hating it.

    At prime time, when most of the outfits are active and do their special ops thing or whatever, it can be fun, but outside of that, it's mindless, absolute ******* minndless stuff.

    Out of all that SOE built, all the balancing, all the content, nothing is left, the only thing left now is KD stats, thats it. That is literally it.
    • Up x 1
  11. JudgeNu

    It isnt Arena mentality.
    It is farming kills/certs etc.
    I love the persistent battlefield mode of this game. I have only experienced it on one other game, The Secret World.
    Persistent battlefield, 3 Factions.
    The common factor is Faction stacking. When good meta is involved players stack on one faction and destroy the meta.
    No one logs in to get destroyed.
    You increase the rewards for cont lock? Then you get stacking.
    When the meta lacks you get directive/certs farming.
    As time goes on you get more solo players and newbies.
    You cant really blame the Devs. They go where the money is. They have to.
    There are a few decisions made by devs from the start that have slowly rotted the game in the ways i described above.
    It still a great game to play despite its faults.

    I have relegated my gameplay to "it doesnt matter what base we fight on, as long as there is a fight"
    I am a gungho player and get killed often trying the impossible mission.
    The longer you play the more you understand the battles.
    Sometimes its meta sometimes its the farm meta

    My Two Cents
    • Up x 2
  12. Zizoubaba



    I like and agree with much of what you wrote, but not that bit.

    There's 3 reasons for that, 3 angles;

    1. go where the money is

    All the companies in the world that have ever existed and exist today, (obviously with a couple exceptions) share that same objective; making money. Yet they don't all produce the same thing in the same way, and, for example in the gaming industry, some come up with some exceptional games while others only ever make mediocre stuff.

    In the world of online games, same thing. I'll quit with the DBG bashing but I bet you know where I was going with this.


    2. It's not about the money (money, money :p)

    Very often (impossible to get stats on this) huge wordl wide successes were made by people who didn't put money first, who instead did what they did because they loved it and that's what they were good at. Obviously they like the others need the money, but it wasn't the prime concern.

    I could provide a ton of examples for this citing artists, composers, but to be relevant (in the gaming industry) companies like Bioware who, you'll notice, once they were bought by EA Games never again produced anything quite so unique and creative as what they had produced before.


    3. talent

    Imagine your parents ask you to host a birthday party for your kid sister. All her friends show up. As the host, it's down to you how the party will go, you might organise some games, set up a dance area, whatever, you might not do anything at all and let them do whatever the hell they like.

    But at the end of the day, just like the devs with their game, it is you, the host, that will make those kids have a good time or not. And if they think the party sucks, and they are bored, it isn't their fault, it would be your fault.
  13. Durwyn

    I feel like the only thing Devs can do at this point and without too much cost, is to destroy the Mani biolab.
    Replace it with a destroyed biolab open air/vehicle with a single point and make it a 6mins cap

    Now this would be interesting!

    This base always becomes a population problem (sucking everyone inside it, and the rest of map becomes a nomanlands) but if we can make its flow better (like the base changes owner more often) it wouldn't be such an issue
  14. Zizoubaba

    It'(s very often the Biolab, I mean if a fight starts in a biolab, usually outside of prime time but sometimes even during prime time, it's a death trap, it's a population soaker, almost instanly, BANG you get 100 players doing nothing, except shooting at each other.

    Which ... is fine, until EVERYONE is doing it outside of prime time when the continent pop is much lower..

    So I see why you say what you say, and I think you're partially right. However what i've come to realise, is that even if there are no biolab fights, this happens very often anyway, in whatever base, including bases that are cut off.

    I could -and already have many times- write a wall of text on the subject but I'll just add one thing, just one argument :


    It wasn't always like this.

    What changed? The players? Uh huh, the new generation has a different way of playing? A new attitude? Maybe, a little, but for the most part, players of PS2 in 2013 were the same as today.

    So what changed?

    The game changed, little by little, over hte years, DBG introduced concepts that help develop and maintain this type of gameplay, rather than provide objective oriented content. Again, I could write a wall of text, but just one example to finish this off ;

    the latest "sub-Alert" MAX RUSH GET AS MANY KILLS AS YOU CAN event, which simply couldn't more illustrate this since the event rewards mindless killing for 20 minutes or so.
  15. IVANPIDORVAN

    Why should i care?
  16. Zizoubaba


    I don't know, you tell me!
  17. IVANPIDORVAN

  18. Zizoubaba

    Not sure about it, but I think we've had this conversation before. It rings a bell anyway.


    Long story short :

    2012->2015 : map control > good fight
    2015->2019 : more and more good fight > map control

    players after 2015 are not different to after 2012....

    ____

    Bonus ;

    The grind, in pretty much any MMO, is never an end, it is a means to an end. Today in PS2, there is no end, there is only grind.
  19. Trigga

    Absolute crap.

    Id actualy argue that people like you are the reason this game now only has people like you.
    Youve managed to make every endeavour other than your own personal objective into a villainous activity, and in doing so have chased away people who actualy play the game as intended.

    Cutting out 2/3 of the game and playing on 5% of its area is not 'having a good fight' its playing another game inside planetside, namely call of duty.
    And im completely serious, if you want infantry only on a small map (which is exactly what you just said) then go play COD, it has a million times more responsive gameplay, 1000 times less lagging / hitching, less cheaters, more reliable hit detection, balanced teams, and better balanced weapons.
    If COD isnt your thing theres a plethora of small scale FPS games out there, youre quite literally spoilt for choice in this respect.
    But eh, instead of doing that you could always attempt to ruin a unique game, and belittle its playerbase because you dont understand the gameplay and / or arent capable of handling it.

    And no, bio labs arnt the epitamy of fun, what they are is a farm, lots of kills for your latest directive achievement.
    Thats all the people who remain seem to care about, personal goals and gains, because the devs concentrate on those in a team based game.
    Its the most boring way of playing planetside.



    TLDR: Selfish narrow minded players have ruined the community and chased away the actual players.
    • Up x 2
  20. Johannes Kaiser

    Conquest is important. Directives are just nice to do while one's at it. At least imo.
    Tanks/Air only become a problem in disproportionate numbers (meaning they are there in such a quantity the other team would have to divert too many people to dispose of them and lose the base simply because of that; this does include an ESF flying into a 2v2 fight.)