Meh. Easy to say that now, could have just as easily been someone else instead. Not that I have particularly strong feelings towards Wrel in any direction.
He's the only one whose name people know so all the lemmings use him as a hate sink for whatever their pet grievances are.
He is the scapegoat, and you gotta admit when you see some of the stuff he does and the way he interacts with the community...often times he's just adding fuel to the fire. Ofc it's funny to exaggerate everything and hop on the meme train, blaming wrel for everything and anything. Wrel has done some good stuff I'm sure. I can't really think of anything meaningfully good he did while working as lead dev, but I'm sure someone will help me out. That said, he didn't steal all the hate/backlash he's getting. As much as it's been exaggerated, he's done many blunders which have pissed off more than a few within the community, many people actually left the game because of updates he (or at least it's presented this way) designed. We gotta be honest and say he hasn't impressed many people in a good way by going against what the community advised and pushing stupid stuff like firestorm or condensate nades that no one ever wanted in the game.
I don’t know if Wrel has had the creative freedom to bring the game to what it should be, everyone has a boss. There are also limits to a 8 year old engine, coding can be brutal. It takes money, resources and top programming talent to move forward, we don’t know yet with the new company acquisition if they intend to propel the game forward.
I believe it. It highly aggravates me when people are jerks to others they do not know when they do not deserve it. Even more so when they do not know the inner workings of a company, which is why I am very patient up to a point when it comes to errors, because I know games like this are low in the funding high in the leaching. Companies often put games like this in the "Whatever I get from it is Icing" pile. Bump, keep-up, bump, hacks, bump balance... I am happy they still listen, when they have the time.
Aye wrel ain't perfect (see my sig) but the bulk of why planetside isn't the way it should be is out of his control. And really... some memberships and purchases would give him more leverage. I mean how many years you gonna play this for free, folks.
I don't know who's to blame or what this game could had become with the resources and finances it has, but I wouldn't want to throw money into the bonfire after seeing what's been used for lately : PS arena, pocket OS and whatever, bastions, collossuses, the destruction of outfits by adding vertical access to pocket whatevers, storms, defacing of fun areas like The Crown's bridge, removal of biolabs, kiddie lore and repetitive missions and quests. Congratulations to the devs though for starting to address server performance, we all got older while we waited, and it's a little shimmer of hope at last.
I very much appreciated Wrel's videos in the early years of PS2 (pre 'employed by SOE/DBG/RPG' days) - totally obvious he loved the game. He always had a very balanced view on things - acknowledging the OPness of certain weapons or certain situations, surely a good egg to have on the team (which I presume is why he was employed - a smart move). I paid my membership diligently for years. More recently i've been wondering how much he is actually playing the game now - and even more interested in how much he is enjoying the game now. It can still be truly great - but so often utterly frustrating for a myriad of reasons. BUT all said and done, the man himself appears to be a very likeable and well meaning person - I personally have no antagonism for the guy...
I posted a few times in the last week about various things in the game being gone that were really enjoyable. My MAX charge ability was one such item. Thermal vision on my Sunderer. Biolabs (I loved a good biolab fight, just a total slugfest that could last for hours). Bases have less areas of cover now. The whole continent being on fire at once (or at least any front connected area). And now, it's a mechanical thing. Outfits take a base, move to another base. Get a bastion or OS and just obliterate the enemy (yes, Orbital Strike is far less unbalanced than MAX charge, Bastions are far less harmful to player enjoyment than MAX charge). Anyway, PS2 used to be really fun and now it....isn't. If the game was still enjoyable for me I'd play with or without the charge. I gave it a good try, got some kills, but it was a lot more sterile than I remember. The magic is gone for me. whether it's the stuff I mentioned above or just me having changed, this will be my last whiny post about the game. Thanks for letting me get in one more round folks. While the game at this stage is a shadow of the older experience, my most recent play reminded me just how awesome PS2 used to be.
you're not wrong, this is 99% of the times true. However, I discovered eventually that the magic is still there, you just gotta work a bit more for it. For example, I spend the morning in a recursion squad/platoon. The whole morning we were capturing/defending bases against immeasurable odds. Bold strategic moves, that often resulted in very meme behavior. I have that image of Lazarez holding a doorway with 1 medic against 50+ guys and completely shutting that entrance down. Or the point hold where NC got so made they had to rage nuke us and storm us from all sides with 4 - 1 pop. Moments like these throw me back to what the game felt like back in the day, and it really does boost my enjoyment. I'll admit though, it's very hard to have fun a lot of times, especially playing solo like I do.
