So when I made that marketing thread. On these forums it was fine. Went okay. However on Reddit, I was 1vs20'ing them, as for a debate. Their main liked reply was about " Player Retention ". So for the sake of 2 threads. Player retention is a different topic, than advertising is. " People join this game all the time, devs have stats proving this, yet they don't stay " or someone said, something similar. I however still agree, that asking popular mmorpg youtube channels to review PS2 or humorous game video editors, is best. Since this topic is Player Retention & not how to Add Player Base. Then why do players, not stay? I find that a odd question, I'm pretty sure half or more haven't tried PS2, who do play Battle Royal games. Pretty much the trolls on Reddit, have all these balance in game related reasons, for why players don't retain. Yet most of their balance inquiries are biased, based on what these reddit'ers want to be fixed. Nearly unrelated to the main topic. As if new players are fixated on class or item balance, they aren't. After all the biased technical balance talk gets thrown out to the trash. The only good point these reddit'ers had was " Vets / Pros kill noobs too often, so that's why new players aren't hanging around for more ". Which is true, because I tried to get my ex gf to play this game & she immediatly got stomped, tho she's not a fps player, so even Guild Wars 2 pvp was too hard for her at times. Yet GW2 she managed. Yet that just explains that PS2 is too hard for someone who's never played fps games. How about people who've already played fps games prior. Which any fps is hard if you haven't played them often before. Their theory for Player Retention that got mega upvoted, while my entire 4 hour typed thread got mega downvoted. Most of them salty, that I said the other games on this list, of all mmorpg & fps games out, were overrated. All of them were. Reason for PS2 to highlight itself, when everything out is overrated & PS2 is always underrated. Anyhow, Redditors, were probably fans of all the games I bashed or judged. So they bashed my thread in return. Not true PS2 main's, those redditor's. Debunk their theory? Well they have 2 points. 1 being " Zergs ". & The other being " Lots of deaths ". Zergs were only a issue prior to the NSO update, now on Connery at least, we mostly always have 30 - 36% per faction, all day. Usually. So it's even now. If it's even, zergs don't matter as much as they use to. Sure 1 region may get out-popped. However overall, map wise, its even enough. Point 2 they had, was " Lots of deaths " or " Pros verse Noobs ". As as reason for no player retention. Or the Redditors main reason, to downvote my thread a ton. This theory I found stupid. Like, don't other fps games not have pros too? Yeah PS2 your going to die a lot, tho the ress timer is 10 sec for sunder spawns, or less if medic revives. What if a pro kills a noob in Warzone? is that noob going to quit Warzone over it? I don't understand the logic, of this theory. If I join a Battle Royal game. Don't I have to join a lobby, spawn in a lobby, wait, sit in a plane, wait, jump, parachute, grab gear, wait, run around, grab gear, then potentially get shot & die. Lose the gulag match to a pro. Then have to re join another lobby?? How long did that take? Up to 20 minutes for 1 death of a experience run, that got the new player zero kills. Meanwhile in PS2, ye you may die to vets a lot, tho you ress 10 seconds later. No downtown, no lobbies, no parachute, no gear grab, no longer wait times, no 1 death & your out. So yes Halo Infinite has pros killing new players right now. Sniping them, while jump padding. Every fps game does. So Yes you die a lot in PS2, but you also Revive, faster than most battle royal games. Vets kill new players in every game. Forum'ers act like only in PS2, that happens. People right now are saying Halo Infinite leagues or ranks, means nothing. I'm sure the new player experience, is always a work in progress. I know it's not super friendly, to try to get into this game. However people are acting as if dieing in other fps games, means quitters as well? All the hype trains have hit a dead end & now nothing is left to review. Anyone else have theories on player retention? How to retain players? (Theories, that aren't your bias examples of things you want, balanced or fixed in the game itself) Is retention more valuable than popular youtuber's / rainbow marketing, game reviewes, or joke editors? (I believe 400k to 10 million yt views, would help this game better)
Which is good and bad at the same time. Respawning/reviving faster doesn't matter if it means the new players gonna die 200 times a minute accomplishing nothing. It's also not so much an issue of dying but how they die. Clientside allows for funny things to happen more often then not, like dying instantly or even dying behind cover. Plus there's the issue of vehicle balance and infiltrators, which are 2 things every new player I've gotten to play the game complained about. They step out the spawn they're insta killed by something they can't see, be it an infil or a tank from 300m away. Or better yet, they get destroyed by the perfectly balanced a2g. Then the noob finally learns how to pull a vehicle/max and gets wrecked because it's not fully certed - but the new player doesn't always realize that. So they think people are cheating or just too good/advanced for them to ever catch up and either quit or play infil. In most games even if they do get dunked on by a vet, the player feels they had a chance to fight back, or at least realizes their mistake. Here the player can start shooting first, and still the player he's shooting at can turn around and kill them instantly with a pistol before he even loses a health bar. That sort of stuff is demoralizing to a lot of players because they don't understand their mistake (or why their mistake cost them so much) and because of that feel they don't stand a chance playing the game. And then there's the fact the game is pretty buggy and doesn't perform as well as modern games. Graphics look outdated, yet run the game on anything other than low and it's pretty much a death sentence for your frame rate. On top of that you can still fall under the map, get drastic fps drops in certain areas, sound bugs out after like 30 minutes and each update practically destroys the game for a week. People aren't really used to dealing with such unpolished games, which is one of the big reasons the new bf launch failed. Even that would be somewhat ok if most the fights weren't zergs or ghostcaps. Another big issue that new players have complained to me about is the spawn system. They don't really understand where they've spawned, and most of the time they either got to attack/defend against a giant zerg of players which won't even let them out the spawn, or a small group of super skilled players who will near instantly mutilate anyone that comes near them. Or they're the ones zerging, and have nothing to do other than talk or mess around with the platoon/outfit they're with. Most of the fights just aren't fun, even for vets. Just imagine how bad they are for noobs. A big issue is dealing with the cheese, since those who crutch on it obviously don't want to see their playstyles nerfed/removed. I'd also advocate to tune hs multiplier based on the weapon, so we don't have 1hk sniper rifles or pistols, and people can't tear your head off with an smg, etc. Yeah we wanna reward skill, but there's no need to half the ttk imo. We could just add stuff like medkit/consumables regen per x amount of hs kills, ammo regeneration, faster shield recharge rate, etc. Stuff that doesn't really impact the 1v1 so much, but give the skilled player more opportunity to continue their streak. Ofc we still would have hs multipliers, but they should be tuned a bit so people have some chance to react to being shot at, and don't feel so much like they got the short end of the clientside. Then there's cleaning up all the bugs and improving performance, though at this point of the game's life I doubt that's even possible, and it's obviously not going to be very cost effective. That leaves improving battleflow and the quality of fights, which should be a priority since they added the "temporary" lattice system and hossin construcion sites. Improving that would have a high impact on the game's player retention new and old, and benefit nearly everyone playing the game currently.
Did you review or edit any of this or did you just mash this out in one pass and post without proof reading? If you want people to read what you write and give thoughtful replies than you have to be concise. That, and for the love of all things holy please learn how to structure a sentence.
some people just get plain bored and go to look for another game take my two lads, for instance, both in their mid thirties they are constantly trying out new stuff every now and then, a game they have previously played releases a big patch with lots of new stuff and they will jump back to that for a time, then, get bored not everyone can stick with the same game, year in, year out, and Planetside 2 has been going for a long time, in gaming terms all the other stuff mentioned here are personal gripes I still feel that, as a new player, I found Planetside 2 much easier to get my feet under the table that other first person shooters I tried
I would list those problems as main issues: - Messed up Shootermechanics People with experience in FPS games will expect something like Battlefield when starting the game, instead the weapons behave like in Halo, Quake or any other arena shooter when it comes to damage and combat range. On the other side, Arena shooter players will find that the gun handling is in strong contrast to the Battlefield esque environment with the limited movement and the several people shooting back. The lack of accuracy on most guns doesn't help anybody. The game is focused on duels while providing no chance for a duel in big fights. In short: It's not the slightest intuitive to pick up for most people. Weapons in games like Borderlands, Quake, ArmA or Battlefield are easier to adapt to than what PS2 does. - Messed up balance New players will run into cloaked stuff (Infiltrators and flashes) quite often, and when they find out that the only counter is a broken flashlight (a.k.a the "Shoot me sign") they won't be motivated to continue after getting killed over and over again by enemies that can't possibly be fought back. When facing vehicles the natural choice is to grab a rocket/missile launcher - to bad that those don't do a lot and often lead to the own death instead. Bad times on top of all of that if the first faction they pick is the TR, thanks to their trait of high RoF and the strongest horizontal recoil. New players will get slaughtered by the higher DMG of NC weapons with their more controlable recoil or die constantly to the VS guns with their better precision. - Messed up META strategies The only real way battles go are easy to sum up: Do the zerg/getting zerg, spawncamping, rushing in with masses of Infiltrators or MAXes. There is no real tactic possible (see points above), and therefor it feels like 18th century line infantry simulator rather than futuristic warfare. - Messed up optimization The game was designed for strong, single core CPUs back then. They tried to fix that with an upgrade in 2018, making the engine more suitable for quadcore systems. It still depends on strong power for each individual core to run fluid, which isn't the purpose of multicore systems.
Also it's low pop rn, and we're stuck on Hossin with only one lattice open atm. Everyone is killing the spawns, so there's no chance for a fight to start. This causes most people that aren't defending nasons to either switch to that faction or log off, further preventing any attempt for a fight to start. And before that there was 1 gal, 1 reaver and 2 libs killing every single spawn on Indar, although since the map was half open there was some delay for them to circle back and repeat at the same fight. Pretty much everyone pulled AA after that and a I saw one reaver and one lib go down, the lib almost got away but froze or glitched at the last sec and died. Anyways the gal didn't and one of the libs die for those 45 minutes and completely sabotaged most fights there as well. It's this kinda stuff that occurs daily which is frustrating for new players especially. A gal plows through 5 skyguards, 2 bases turrets, ranger harassers and buses and a ton of aa launchers yet manages to kill all the vehicles and escape without even smoking. Only one base on the map and spawns get instantly destroyed as soon as they approach it. No fight whatsoever. Where's the fun?
Overcommitting to one lane is only a problem if your flank is getting pushed. Due to 3 factions, this isn't always the case. It's quite often that one faction is getting hammered, especially with alert mechanics. For your next statement I disagree with, it doesn't matter how much you die, and downtime isn't ad big if a deal as you think it is. The problem is how effective you feel, and whether or not you felt like there was competition. Zergs are part of the problem, but I think the headshot or go home mechanic combined with the janky movement meta is mostly to blame. The nanoweave nerf had the right intentions, but it was poorly implemented. Headshots need to have a consistent 2x multiplier, bringing this game to industry standard. And janky movement needs to be addressed, especially when you consider how latency can be abused. No matchmaker compounds this problem.
1) Dying instantly happens in many other fps games. Many other games have snipers. Or Halo Infinite has 1 shot vehicles. & No you don't always know where the rpg bolt flew from. Counter Strike Snipers. Valorant. Warzone has fast kill time & snipers. Jump pad 1 hits. Never tried Fortnite enough times, to know if that has fast deaths. Have played Path Of Exile & people talk about getting nearly 1 hit too, by boss monsters, with no kill log telling you how you died. WoW retail has 1 hits. & WoW Classic has averagely 2 to 6 hit tko. Lots of games have fast kill time. Lots of games don't show you good enough, how you got killed. You may also get shot while parachuting down, during a Battle Royal game, before you even started. Do they quit the game after that happened a few times, when they 1st started playing? No, those games have huge numbers. For probably the same reason, Raid Shadow Legends, has huge numbers, as sad as that is, or lame. Fortnite at one time, was probably promoted the same way Raid SL was, then Warzone happened from people wanting a modern Fortnite. Without building? 2) Bugs? I never noticed bugs. The only bug I have after 4 years of playing, is my harasser shop logo doesn't show 99/100 of the times. My other vehicles logo shows. Just not the main vehicle I use. Other players see it, I don't. Other than that I don't notice bugs. The tilt bug barely ever happens & is easily adjusted. Getting shot 1 foot after running behind a wall, after the guy was already shooting you for 90% of the run, isn't a big deal. If you die at the last second, from some lag, when you believed you ran away behind a wall. Yet you still die. Either way, that's fine. Other than that, I've had zero bugs? & I play on laptop. With a desktop pc I'd notice even less bugs, maybe my logo would work then. & pleasant added fps. 2) Low Graphics? Halo Infinite didn't have " better graphics " maybe it's story mode does. Tho it's multiplayer didn't. Also people aren't saying they are impressed with BF2042's visuals. If anything they make meme's of how bad these new games were. Being released too early. Most of these new games, have way more bugs than PS2 does, so idk why even mention bugs for this new year. PS2 has less than any new fps game out there, doesn't it? PS2 has possibility to upgrade its graphics, after finding methods to gain new player base. Also besides the point, millions of people just got done play testing or playing a lot of Classic WoW. Classic WoW wasn't known for its graphics. Its a game good to play more easily on low to medium specs. So a mmorpg a 800$ laptop is able to play, essentially. How much is PS4 or Xbox? (I'm not a console player). Google says they are 400$ to 800$. So a 800$ laptop is the highest you would pay for the newest console out for 2022. Aka, PS2 is playable on a 800$ laptop. Not everyone has some brick breaking pc, ready to play New World on & hope it doesn't fry. Path of Exile has people debating it's graphics. Path of Exile is a amazing game to compare Planetside 2 with. POE is releasing POE 2, which is more like an expansion. Both games were released at 2011. Both games have fluctuating players. Both games are free. Both games have a cash shop. The difference is obviously the genre. Tho besides that, is that POE has 400,000 views from Lazy Peon & another 400,000 views from a Asmongold review. So it's gained an international playerbase. On topic, POE has similar graphic debates, pros / cons for a 2011 game. Thus POE 2 serves to update the graphics. Besides graphic debates, it still have a active player base. 3) New players need a way to go to the front line better, instant deploy sometimes drops you off at a empty base ( I know why it does that, to avoid zerg / yet the noob still needs a way find the front line after they are dropped at a empty base. Or maybe a bonus tutorial, when they are on the real battlefield, telling them how to get a sunder / avoid enemy tanks. Hmm, or upgraded mentor ui program. I'd be down to help low levels learn the game, if the mentor system was better somehow. I guess I'll help low lvls. 4) Hossin. AA LIB pro ruined the hour? I fought a AA lib pro during morning hours, with 1 ranger sunder turret & a few infantry with lockons. It warded him enough. Yours must have been more extreme pro than that then. ESF? Tho ye the lib still kill a few of my busses. We still managed to warpgate the NC & hide some bus. Hossin has a appeal problem, its the least appealing planet (yet I still like the swamp tree theme, just the other planets are ranked higher for most people). So without having to spend money editing the map (besides Nasons, nasons need to be like nuked or removed lol. Hossin's middle should just be 2 empty barren regions. So ye besides Nasons, no map editing needed. Give Hossin a random event 24/7 for Hossin only. Only Hossin has a random event every alert. Only Hossin needs a random event. They've had a sky pilot event before. Something like that, for the ground. 5) Theirs strategies if you have a outfit more so, & some bolstering is a option when solo, or for pub platoons. If you want to play stategy LT, then ye, you'll probably need a outfit. I have solo outfit. If your solo, then ye the limit is telling others to medic or max crash, or sunder. If the game had more players, their would be more types of outfits out there, other than region farmer outfits only. Not every strategy has to be aimed at winning alerts. Just 4 fun. 6) Effective? A new player is easily a medic, they are reviving that's effective. They may die, than get revived, sure. A new player won't be effective, if the die in a Valorant match & have to wait 2 min for the match to be over. 7) Dueling. Yes Warzone has probably better dueling. Tho they still have simply fast kill time. Most of the duels end in 2 seconds. So it's only slightly better if anything. Also watching people jump crouch slide, on live stream, gives viewers boat sickness, that's a dumb way to move faster. Not even realistic movement, to move faster. Halo has dueling, it's good. Again only slightly better if anything. Tho dueling is like 2vs2 or 3vs3.. for Warzone usually.. that's lame... I've tuned into Warzone girl streamers for over a year now. Or guy streamers too. Everytime they stream, it's only a 2vs2 or 3vs3 fight. Never more, never a battlefield fight, just a 2vs2. So is " slightly better " aim turning. Worth only having a 2vs2 repeatedly, on a shrinking map, for a match based lobby game, with less progression? I mean, hmm. Streamers haven't gave me enough reason to download it again. Also the " loot " BR games find, maybe at 1st the idea of finding loot in boxes or in buildings sounds legit. Tho overtime, these pros on streamers. Go through loot in a building, like its some grind task to get over with. They find their loot super fast & pan to what they want. Tho it's more like some unnecessary macro to them these days, than " oh wow I found loot ". The idea of battle royal was stupid to begin with, when PS2 was already out. BR, is like saying, " Oh BR is better than a match based lobby game, like counter strike " Yet why not make the map bigger than that? Why shrink it? Why? It's tough playing your 100th Halo Infinite multiplayer match, to only unlock some goofy skins for your helmet. Is slightly better dueling, worth that? These games are overrated. Fun for a few months, while PS2 has a few years worth being underrated. 8) synkotron, has a good reply. Yes people play new games. Yet most people have that 1 game, they return to playing, after trying out " new stuff ". Theirs also many people who've never tried this game, at all. The audience of those who may like this game & never tried it. Isn't only FPS players. I'm sure 80% of mmorpg pvp players, were also Counter Strike players at one point. So 80% of mmorpg pvp players are also valid. They don't need pve content either or quest / dungeons / to like the idea of a lvling system. I've played PS2, tried other games, played WoW Classic for 1 year or less, then returned to PS2, played Path of Exile recently for 4 months, & returned to PS2. Played Halo Infinite multiplayer & returned to PS2. 1 to 8 are replies.
This game should be as of now or a few years prior, been entirely 100% as successful as WoW Classic use to be. Or at least half that player base. Also a good observation. Is that 80% of the time you tune to a New World streamer. The New World, streamer is using a " range " weapon. Most of the time, most people in New World are using their Range weapon, more than their melee weapon. & they find the quests boring for NW. So wth? why not just play PS2 then. Literally PS2 could add 3 basic melee swing attacks & it'd be New Worlds pvp, but better. Because most streamers for New World, use like 2 basic melee skills & then go back to shooting their musket gun or bow, with the aimer for the other 80% of the time, while dodging other people shooting you with a musket or bow. It's 3/4th's of a damn wannabe fps mmorpg. Yet people won't give PS2 a try. Obviously WoW Classic got its initial wave of millions of players in the beginning mainly. Yet still this game, has better balance of classes, than WoW Classic does. People left WoW Classic because the devs did nothing to improve or balance the game, yet made people pay 15 dollars per month. BG AV when alliance lost 99% of games, people left. The pvpers all left. The PVE'rs stayed for another 6 months to 1 year, till the bots flooded the maps. Than the pve'rs left. Retail pvp'ers left from 1 shots. WoW Classic pvpers left from unbalanced factionvsfaction battlegrounds map road layout. Final Fantasy online has bad pvp. New World is mostly a fps game pretending to be a mmorpg. They literally roll in to use melee for 4 seconds, than dodge away to use range aim'ing again. For 90% of the class specs. As a PS2 knifer who also uses pistol equally, New World is lame. Also too much harvesting, boring to watch on stream. Path of Exile has no pvp either, that players like at least. Trying to say with all of this. Mmorpg's don't really have a good pvp game to play, at all, not at all, not the slightest. Not even remotely. So they aren't playing anything really, or a few went back to the new classic wow server, reluctantly. It's true not all pvpers are fps players, tho with a progression system waves at their face, they're likely to give it a try, with the right review 1st. Also they don't have alternatives, they have nothing new or old to try. Perhaps PS2 needs a new popular pvp trailer. What are the player numbers, of active players, per day, per popular game? I was trying to find Warzone's numbers, per day. As PS2 seems to have like only a few hundred per server per day. Hopefully a thousand on the weekends, for PS2, per server eventually (333vs333vs333 would be good). All these pages mentioning " active player numbers, per day / month ", these google links seem like propaganda / PR pages. So Idk how you get the right numbers. Every page has diff numbers listed. So I'd trust the lowest number given. Meaning, Warzone is listed to have 250,000 players per day, who know if that's true. Final Fantasy has 3 mill per month. New World has some weird numbers listed, some say 800,000 play per month, some say less, some pages say a ton more. I'd say the lower number is right. As many people left New World. Fortnite 8 mill per month, players? Who knows. Seems like less would play Fortnite for 2021. You know Final Fantasy only got popular recently from game channels on youtube. Now they are sold out. Before WoW exodus & new gamer reviews, it wasn't popular. PS2 should have 100,000 player or more, it's at least that good of a game. I believe its as good as Warzone, where it is loses slightly in duels, it makes up for in progression & bigger fights / maps. On paper, it make sense. As for advertising, that's tough to figure out.
I think Planetside is too much of a niché to gain more than the average 4.000 players. They reached the 10.000 player mark when the first Covid lockdown happened, and fell back to old numbers very quickly. Insurgency Sandstorm (B2P) and Heroes and Generals (F2P) have around the same playercount as Planetside. The thing is that the game breaks conventional shooter designs, mainly with the rather dissapointing weapon handling in contrast to the overall tone. I play FPS games of all kinds since 20 years now, and even with all that experience it's very hard to understand what the game actually requires to get a decent K/D (besides using the obvious OP toys)
A things stand what separate noob from vet is a question of who can better exploit the latency issue. Therein lies our (lack of retention) issue.
This is a pretty straight forward philosophy when creating games. If the game difficulty curve is too steep, new players will not stick around. Pretty simple. People, at large, do not play games that have no signs of winning, give, or progress. Respectively, people also will grow bored of games that are too easy and not a challenge. The difference is -- it's easier to make a game more challenging once there's a player base than it is to keep new players involved with a lower learning curve. Make sense? The curve isn't exactly a bell, however a shark fin. Regardless, companies owe it to their shareholders and the larger player base to make the game more enjoyable and thus increase profits. Long term customers are the golden standard, but not when their demands decrease the initial intake of new players (customers). Otherwise, the game has no longevity due to attrition rate exceeding the recruitment rate. This is a basic rule on any organization or system.
Here's the thing about Warzone...It's played by a bunch of Casuals/Tryhards at the sametime, meaning I can run to other casuals as well and have fun and even win a battle Royale.....There is so many casuals in Warzone that is really easy to run into people that you own or have good fights with. Same goes with Halo...Lots of Casuals/Tryhards playing at the same time, casuals can run into people their own level and have fun. Planetside 2 is different....The player base is small, and if a vet owns a n00b, he will own them for a while, specially if they have good camping spot + medkits/etc...........That is mentally scarring for a new players, seeing vets camp a point, and just seeing them instaheal right after they kill em.....Is a very hopeless situation for them. So yeah you might spawn ASAP, but who cares if you accept the revive and die ASAP....Or if you spawn, run to the point to die ASAP again. At least in battle Royales, there is the whole building up phase, so even if you survive 10 minutes to die ASAP....That building/survival phase was still something, there was HOPE.........In Planetside 2 is literally spawn/die for many n00bs endlessly, that is a way worse experience, there hope is quickly destroyed. It's already easy for Vets to own n00bs....Medkits just makes way way easier, so that's a start get rid of medkits, it will help new players fight vets.
Okay granted, Reddit is fixated on crap that stopped being the biggest factor a LONG time ago. But have you ever heard the phrase "Too many Wolves, not enough Sheep" in regards to MMORPG's? Especially PvP ones? How far back does your experience with RPGs actually go? ...this isn't about Counterstrike and all of it's clones because this isn't properly supported to be a lobby FPS game with gunplay to match. It's practically bordering on X-Com in some of its "first person shooting" engagements depending on the accuracy stats of one faction against another, the "zoning" of who has the doorway and who doesn't, the Interpolation and timing of model visibility and ways it can be further manipulated for a half-a-second advantage. ...and of course the experience to actually leverage all of those factors at the same time through Muscle-memory like "Salty Vets" always seem to do (one way, or another....) I think once you accept that underlying issue...you understand why it's not getting truckloads of crossover from Apex / ForkKnife / Warzone / RB-siege
If you want to know why new players leave the game you need ask them why they left (maybe with a survey). Alternatively you can check the stats and try to figure out what they experienced during the initial play time and figure out how was their experience.
