First things first, this is in my opinion that finest digital warfare I've ever played, and I've played a fair bit including the original game. I've no problem with any aspect of the actual gameplay, it all works pretty well even though there's always room for improvement - hell I chose NC with the original because they were losing at the point when I joined and I'd always rather have an uphill struggle. My approach in that discussion would be to only rebalance anything that is really out of whack - if some players want to play on the winning team, so be it, I'm quite happy to be a little underpowered providing my faction is still mostly competitive. There is however a fundamental problem with the game that is the same as in the original, and was the reason I unsubscribed at the time. Futility. Every night there's massive blood shed in various battles across the continent. You make a little progress, you get pushed back, the base you took 30 minutes ago is now falling to another faction, you fall back and defend, you get pushed back, you advance again. All jolly good fun in itself, but after a while the question starts cropping up with increasing frequency, "what's the point?" In the original game you'd spend an evening conquering and locking a continent only to check the site the following morning to find it had been retaken by half a dozen lads overnight. What was the point of the all the effort put into the fight for the result to be reversed so easily? Your urge here may be to make a comparison with Call of Duty or Starcraft, however both those games have a win condition at which point the game is over and it starts again. Think of it like a game of football (or any sport) - both sides have to try and win the game within a predetermined time, after which a winner is declared and they look forward to the next match. Planetside does not have a win condition, and is perhaps the only competitive game not to do so. Would you play a basketball game that never ended? Sure you might for a short time, but then you'd probably go and do something else. So, how do you rectify this? How, with little effort, do you add purpose and reverse this futility? My suggestion would be to add a prize. SOE will, undoubtedly, add new vehicles and content over time. In the case of the former all three factions will gain access to these at the same time - but do they need to? What if the "winning" faction at the end of a period of play got access early (I'd suggest a month to make it truly valuable, but a week would do). Wouldn't this overpower a faction who had already won? Potentially, but I imagine many of the new vehicles coming would merely be variety adds rather than killers. However in order to make this truly work you need another mechanic to be brought in. Politics. No war ever started without a political reason, why should this one be any different? Let's firstly allow factions to ally with one another temporarily. With more factions this would be more interesting, but even with three it would mean a two-on-one scenario to give the "losers" the ability to put on over on the winners. You could scale this treaty system as well - non-aggression (factions don't have access to each others' facilities), military agreement (can use opposing team bases to rearm), alliance (can use all facilities) and whatever lies between. You could caveat such agreements with a bodycount - if faction A kills more than x faction B members in a given time the treaty is void. In order for this to work you'd need political leaders of each factions, who would be voted for on a regular (monthly?) basis by faction members. I could go a lot deeper down the rabbit hole on how that might pan out, but as a flavour of this thinking - you could add capture mechanics (taking opposing leaders hostage), finance mechanics (x% share of earned resources go towards faction building... something. Maybe the win mechanic?) What if these resources were a currency that the faction leaders could trade for factionwide benefits? I don't want to be captured! Don't run for office then. There will be players out there happy to be denied regular gameplay for a leadership role in a faction. So what would this win mechanic be? As hinted above, you could simply have the faction who earned the most resources win the race to the next tech unlock, or you could do it by percentage time share of territory control. One thing I would do on that front is to change how easy it is to take control of an area; right now a facility can change hands every 10 minutes, adding to the notion of futility - what if, after capturing a base and holding it for an hour it was locked for takeover for 12 hours? That'd make holding a facility as important as taking it, bringing me to my final point. Why isn't there an XP bonus for repelling an attack? You gain a sizable bonus for attacking, why not for defending? If the defense bonus was inline the changes in ownership would happen far less regularly as some groups may be more inclined to dig in than simply motor to the next capturable objective. TL;DR : (Also to summarise) - Planetside is a game you cannot win. Ever. It is utterly futile, and eventually the great gameplay just becomes repetitive as there's no point to it. I've suggested a few solutions to this above which are well worth reading.
wow go back to cod then, see alot of people complaining the game is dull, thats their no story, or PVE. I dont get it, its a MMOFPS, not a MMOFPSRPG. Did you come to PS2 to see dungeons and a epic story line and spend your time killing 10x "Diseased Archanids" to get 5x "Vile serum" to coat your lvl 50 "Archanid Chest plate armor"??? This is a FPS, like BF3, like COD, just bigger and more epic. Is there a point to COD/BF3 other then getting the best score and ranked on the leaderboards? No, atleast in PS2 compared to other FPS their is a point to the game other then stroking your own ego on a leaderboard. Why complain, this isnt WoW or EQ2, no story to follow, no PVE. Now grab a rifle soldier and get in the war! P.S. Sorry just seen people constantly saying their is no story or content or the game is dull, and im wondering what AD or friend told them something other then epic battles, base capturing and continent conquering. credit to ShakareeNC @op me and the true planetside 1 players that know this game can only be 1 way,will always fight with you with threads like these,we will be here a long time.”
I agree with your post. However, sometimes i've been fighting with my outfit for two hours to capture one base. Then we continue to lose it 30 min. later. I think this game is one of the best i've ever played (coming from 10 years of Battlefield). But I also think, if a faction takes the whole map, I think a nice cert. bonus, or a 20% XP bonus towards cert., would be very nice. For example, the NC take the continent=500 cert. points to every player in that faction. Then, the continent resets at square one and we all do it again...like a game of chess. Check mate!!!
If you want to be taken seriously at all, two things. First, don't have an account name that is a string of numbers. Second, don't be an ***. You either failed to read his post, or willfully ignored the content of it. Add this to your less than stellar responses in other threads, and you're looking more and more like a dedicated troll. As for the OP, he has a point.
Life is futile. In the grand scheme of things. What's the point of it all? It's what you make of it. My goal is accomplishing objectives I've set for myself. This gets way more fun when it's outfit tactics rather than zerg vs zerg. Enemy outfits often have objectives and tactics and frustrating both is a larger accomplishment than simply beating down the enemy through attrition. You get more XP killing folks in the defense. And better fights, usually. Some people are addicted to capping, I've noticed that in some public squads I've joined. The Squad literal is moving on to the next conquest while the facility is being recapped behind us. I don't even know. Though I'd really love getting mucho XP for rescuing a major facility when it was 95% capped by the enemy... done that 3 times now. Heh.
I think this is a pretty well-written post, and I definitely see where you're coming from. Part of the problem is that this is just a fundemental "flaw" of the genre. It's very hard to make persistent PvP mean something over long periods of time. You can certainly do things that help, but at the end of the day it's a neverending confict. Victory is never permanent, and often progress is shortlived. It's just the nature of this type of game. It was the same way with World War II Online, which was (as far as I know) the only other true MMOFPS out there besides PS1/PS2. It definitely has to be a struggle from a design standpoint. That said, you give some decent ideas, and I do think PS1 did this much better with continent locks and the sanctuary system. You may not have been rewarded with shinies, but you got to see your progress. Your faction "owned" that continent, at least until a major push could be made by another faction, which could take weeks to actually happen after the initial conquering. WWII OL also did it better with victory conditions -- there was an end-goal in that game, and that was to conquer everything. Yes, after one side won, it would reset days later, but at least the macro victory was built into the game. The devs would write fake newspaper articles and everything about it, it was pretty neat. Either way, I'd rather they find ways to do it besides throwing carrots at people -- it's entirely possible. I'm also sure this is something that is part of their long-term development plans. They would be daft not to consider this an issue in the long-term. For the first few months, it shouldn't be a big deal, but it will be a problem once the novelty wears off.
For how long are you going to copy-paste this post ? Can't you say anything constructive by yourself (apparently no, considering your posting history) ? Are you his "smurf" ?
Epic battles it certainly has - if you missed the first line I pointed out that this was, for me, the greatest digital warfare ever. But there comes a point where you're taking Freyr back for the 3rd time in an evening, the 20th time that week where you ask yourself why you're bothering other than to gain a bit of XP and a few more certs. Certainly the act of taking the base is going to be entertaining, but there's no real purpose to it. The problem is that the game is futile, no winners, no loser, no opportunity to laud it over the peons you just conquered it's just non-stop fighting, no reason to fight except for fighting's sake. This might be enough to keep you and other "true planetside 1 players" entertained but to me it just feels increasingly pointless. By introducing a win mechanic of any kind you simply make the experience better. The epic battles still exist, as will the base capturing and continent conquering but there'll be an end result to aim for.
Ye. This whole "Why do I even do this?" makes it a problem. I am at the point where I just don't care about capping anymore, except to get a quick amount of Certs. I log in for a bit, kill enemies, log off again. Not even slightly interested in who holds what continent. There isn't even a point to holding them in the current state. Same goes with all the other stuff in the gameplay right now. It all seems very much like the Designers stopped halfway with their ideas. There is very little unique feel and visual design to weapons and factions, the attempts at faction diversity are actually hurting the games balance in the current state and their "metagame" is neither deep nor complex. If this wasn't a MMOFPS carried by the players dropping 100+ out of Galaxies and such, it would be a terrible shooter.
Remind me, what was the point of BF1942, BF2 again? Every night we fought on the bloodied soil of Europe, The Middle East etc and then the next night we had to do it all over again.
Well you could win the match and then it was over. The match is never over in planetside and it can't be won.
Look at it like chess - all games end either in victory, loss or stalemate. Stalemate is declared because there is no value in continuing as neither side can win the game. Planetside exists in permanent, constant stalemate.
Couple of things I've found that you can do to slow or stop some of the base flipping. 1.) Stop following the zerg. Join up with an outfit that does other things then running front line attacks. 2.) Interdiction can be fun. Get behind the enemy and stop the flow of materials to the front. 3.) Harass the enemy. Get an AMS, park it our of the way and raise some hell. 4.) Join an OUTFIT that has there own goals and that doesn't follow the zerg. 5.) Stay away from the zerg. This game is what you make it. It can be exciting and fun or boring and tedious, it's entirely up to you.
The win condition in CoD-games is that when one of the teams exceeds a certain limit in either points or kills, the round ends, usually meaning a switch to the next map as well. I think of Planetside 2 bases as a string of maps. You fight in the specific area until a limit is reached (either you/enemy captures the base, or loses all spawn points in the area) after which the battle is over and moves on. Even the scoreboard uses this system, only counting stats for that specific base and that specific battle which (I assume) it decides as concluded when there are only X amount of enemies left in the area. While I agree that there should be a limit as to how soon a facility can be recaptures, 12 hours is way too long. This would cause massive problems. Let's have an example; NC somehow manages to capture Amerish despite their general incompetence, capturing all bases apart from warpgates in just a few hours. Now then, the continent is locked down for 12 hours because VS nor TR can capture the bases, even if they pushed NC past them. Because of this, VS and TR players start flooding the other 2 continents. Pretty soon VS will dominate Esamir because that's how the map is designed. After this you have players from all 3 continents flooding Indar, causing massive battles worthy of crashing the server. However, if by some miracle one of the factions still manages to push the others to their warpgates, this server is done. There will be no more fighting for 9-12 hours, because every single base has been captured within that time. After this initial point the battles will simply be a matter of pushing the other factions to their warpgates because bases can be captured only twice per day, causing zergs to easily capture bases without even needing to defend them afterwards. This would empower zergs beyond incredible. Also, it would severely reduce the amount of XP rewards players get from captured bases, since there would be waaaayyy fewer bases being captured daily. Personally, I think the lock time should be 45-60 minutes at most. There is. Instead of a single chunk of XP, you get a percentual bonus to everything you do. For the small, one cap point size bases you get 5% defence bonus. For the medium, 3 cap point bases you get 10%. For the large facilities you get 15%. These affect all gained XP, including kills, repairs, heals, revives, assists, killstreaks, everything.
This is the one things that annoy me actually. You expend 1 hour attacking a tech plant, then "wow, we did this, didn't?". After 5 minutes, the tech plant is desert of allies and you watch enemies coming from every side. Then you think "where's my army? I'm sure I wasn't alone here!". Defense need some type of reward, higher than capture, what will make you "protect your people" before try expand your geographic area. Like me (and the OP), we have players who loves fight for your nation/faction, but SOE need to see that the majority of players is playing just a common FPS, hunting score and points. Without an incentive, ppl still will leave 1 minute after capture the base.
This game is all twitch shooter with a healthy dose of zerg rush. No skill involved. I'll give the flyers kudo's though, as the flight system is absolutely awful in this game...
So you mean like WWIIOnline? Sorry couldnt resist. This was a problem in WWIIOL, the breakfast club as we called them. The bunch of people who logged on to a server during its off peak hours to "ninja" cap everything then log off before the peak hours. I am sure SOE didnt plan on this being an issue, but there are some people in the US, EU, or in Aussyland/PacRim who dont play during their timezones peak hours. Its frustrating to see everything you or a few outfits have worked for get crushed in a few hours overnight, by a few people who didnt have to do the work you all did to do it. But I also find that fun. No point in taking something and winning, then sitting there with no one to fight because the otherside logged off.
