Top 3 problems that you have with this game.

Its too fast I'm nearly done already and i'm no where near as high up the board as others.

#1: Incomplete/misleading infomation regarding cert choices and weapon puchases.

A good example is MAX armor slot upgrades. One is 1/2/3/4/5% small arms resist and the other is 5/10/15/20/25% explosion resistance. Let's ignore for a second that the explosion resistance costs about half the certs that small arms resist does and just look at the two in a vaccuum. Some have guesstimated that the MAX may have a default 80% small arms resist, and there is no blatant evidence to dismiss it. If that is the case, then 1/2/3/4/5% bullet resistance is identical to 5/10/15/20/25% explosion resistance. If the MAX has none, or any less than 80%, the explosion resist is up to 5x better. Nobody knows though since the info is incomplete.

The "bars" listed on weapons in the shop are confusing and often completely inaccurate. No need to go into any special detail here, this much is obvious.

Many weapons(all MAX weapons, Shotguns, MCG, probably Lasher) completely hide the CoF while still being subjected to it. With shotguns this causes a hilarious issue where you will be aiming straight forward and your spray of pellets will fly off at a 45 degree angle away from the direction your barrel is pointing, and you have no clue why. Slug ammo on Scattercannons is another fun one where you can't even tell what the area your slugs will hit is.

#2: Incomplete metagame.

Right now we have no real point or purpose beyond gaining certs and continent control bonuses. Continent control bonuses are mostly out of any one outfit's control, so you'll often see one base deep in a faction's territory controlled by a different faction so that outfit can maximize cert gain by farming upset zerglings who can't pull MBTs from outside their warpgate.

So far they seem to be trying to make these bases less and less defendable, but I think a better option would be to add incentive to proper gameplay rather than farming kills. Maybe they need to put a nice fat exp bonus on taking control of a continent from another faction, maybe an +exp bonus instead of -resource costs, better incentive to fight on continents where you are severely outnumbered(rather than on servers where you are outnumbered), and so on.

#3: Optimization
Everyone is having trouble here, supposed to be something big coming in January for this, we'll see where it goes.

Nice thread, hopefully it stays on topic and it's something the dev team can look at. Here are mine, and I love this game & will continue to play it. I believe the base foundation of this game is very good, it's one of a kind. It just needs to be expanded upon and have some issues dealt with.


1. /regional chat keeps breaking. On some days /re will work, on most days it doesn't. /re chat is very very important to the game as it's currently the ONLY inter-faction communication people have universally. Without it, the game feels disconnected to the world, you can't communicate to your faction without using /yell which is cross faction. Without it, many who are used to MMO's feel lonely because people just don't talk much at all, even strategy wise or where to go after a certain base is capped. I see majority of the people still running without a squad or outfit, and I understand the game wants people to use squads & outfits. But the point is most people don't use them, so therefore the squad chat and outfit chat is useless to majority of the players.

The /re chat needs to be fixed and it needs to work at all time. It should be a faction only chat that works for people around the region, this will really help with inter-faction communication, and it would help people feel they are a part of the battle, a part of the game. If I could make a suggestion is to create this channel by default a /1, because MMO players, as well as many FPS games anymore, use /1 as the default general chat. Most people will not know the command /re, and most have a hard time finding out what chat channels there are ingame. The /re chat is a perfect candidate as a general chat in this game because it's not world wide, it's not cross continents, therefore people don't have to see the spam from others while being in a different part of the world. Also while you're at it, allow people to leave this channel if they so choose to. This to me is one of the top issues because it causes people to feel disconnected from the game. The more people feel disconnected, the less they are interested in playing and participating in the battles, or knowing what the heck is going on. This cause more people to leave and not play as much than you may think. This is a MMOFPS, right now it lacks the MMO feel and you will want to correct it.


2. Population imbalance, it's a big problem. There's nothing that'll make a player feel useless quicker than being zerged constantly by a bigger faction. I'm lucky my server (Genudine) isn't as out of whack as some other servers, but the VS on our server has grown and they have been outnumbering us out on the battlefield on a consistently daily basis. NC used to have a population advantage past midnight, but these days VS retains that pop advantage past midnight. I've heard people's chatter ingame, many on the NC side feel they are getting beatdown by superior numbers and it's not fun when that happens all the time. I know other servers have a greater pop difference so I can only imagine what it's like for them.

I played Dark Age of Camelot, a game launched in 2003 that created the Realm vs Realm faction gameplay in the MMO genre. They also had 3 factions (Albion, Midgard, Hibernia), and Albion at the time was always the higher populated faction. So this isn't something new I haven't seen. The game did offer bonuses to the lesser populated faction, by ways of increased exp, increased realm point gains (pvp points), and small increased damage output for the lesser factions. This game will need something that's along the lines of bonuses for the lesser populated faction, more bonuses than what you are offering currently.

Another thing that helps is the design of the bases. In DAOC the fortresses were designed so that the lesser factions could defend against a zerg if they played it out properly, the design of the castles made it so sheer number would not always overwhelm the lesser pop factions. There were stairways that attackers had to go up, places where defenders had a chance against a greater number (think spartans in 300). There were also a "last stand" Lord room where defenders could put up a last stand defense, and sometimes, with a good counter flank on the outside and a good last stand defense, overcome a greater zerg. I feel this is where Planetside 2 falls short. Tech Plant was designed to be a counter-zerg facility, one of the two counter-zerg facilities ingame (bio labs is the other). You guys changed tech plant to now be a new amp station without the outer wall & shield. This allows the zerg to rollover defenders like it's nothing, just like most of the bases ingame.

My suggestion is to offer greater bonuses to the lesser populated factions. Then to redesign some bases so they can be defended against a zerg. If people always get rolled over, people will stop defending, and eventually give up playing. This happened in DAOC initially, before Mythic redesigned the fortresses and tweaked with balance. People need to have a chance to defend otherwise it's pointless. Check out some of the maps in Battlefield 3 or BC2, there are some that have been very competitive for both attackers and defenders. Don't be afraid to take ideas from successful games because that's the point right, you want your game to be successful as well.


3. Lack of endgame - I know endgame is a MMO thing, but since you want to advertise this as a MMOFPS and want to attract the MMO crowd, you need to think about an endgame gameplay. Something that gives people a reason to turn the maps their color. In DAOC people took fortresses so the relic gates would open, and you get a shot at the other realm's relic which gave 10% added damage bonus. Nobody wanted to lose that 10% damage bonus so they defended the relics. In Warhammer Online, people turned the forts so they get to have a chance at raiding the other faction's main city. In both games you had to turn a specific number of fortresses, in a specific order, before they get a shot at the endgame content. And by the way the endgame content should be one of the hardest things to accomplish ingame, so don't make it a cakewalk. So think about long term when creating endgame content in this game. You can easily make all these facility captures meaningful besides just resources and small bonuses. People like to have a reason to spend all these time turning the bases. And without the opposing factions caring about them, and without the opposing factions having a chance to defend them, you end up with empty base captures....which is possibly the most boring thing in a FPS game. You want WAR, you want to create the feeling of a constant ongoing war. You want things to shift, story to change, and you want people to actually want to defend for their faction.

Render distance
Optimization
Conquest system (more maps) where you really get pushed of a continent...
+
couple of bugs

1. Optimization
2. Meta Game
3. reasonable cash shop

Optimization should be done in Beta, Meta Game should be the thing they are working on since Release and a reasonable Cash Shop would be the logical outcome if 1. and 2. were done properly.
Maybe they spend to much time on the Engine or they had other Problems and were forced to change their Master Plan, anyway it's a big muddle rightnow ^^
I noticed It is pointless to get upset about , they do their things and it looks like a lot of peoples already paid for it. (probably because of the big Hype)
However i can not imagine that peoples pay twice for it , specialy after the last slip up (Horns for 7$ etc)

This is why i hate f2p.

You let all the deadbeat adults on gov money and children into the game and they start complaining about how outrageous it is to ask them to spend $5 or $10 on the game. Then they complain how the game isnt easy and simple enough for them. Heaven forbid you paid for your entertainment and it took you more than a couple weeks to max out on progression.

Enjoy the game others pay for so you can play for free or move on. No one wants to hear your suggestion on making it better either, if people wanted to hear how the unemployed or children would make a game they would pay you to do it.

1: my team shooting me to get ammo. more than once enough to kill me or get me killed just after my shields got dropped by friendly fire.
2: afk's at cap points. Im standing at a cap point and 5 other friendlies standing around afk. Enemy comes in kills me first then all the friendlies, or goes for one of them first and I am the only one that reacts.

3: the zerg. I want even battles. one sided matches suck.

1. The amount of whining a certain faction do.

2. The fact that it seems to have paid off, and what that will mean when the other factions realise how easy it is to get changes

3. Being expected to pay for a horn. Having a basic free horn and fancy ones which cost is one thing, but giving me nothing?

Client/Server Performance
No need to repeat everything that has been said about this.

Bloated Certs
"Handling" and "speed" are two separate vehicle certifications instead of being one "performance" certification. Additional armor is divided into three (top, sides, front) instead of one armor buff cert. Weapon attachments are not interchangeable. Suit enhancements, medkits, grenades, explosives, so on and so forth must be purchased separately for each class. This makes progressing anything in this game feel like the typical MMO grind. It also forces players to stay with one class, because all the rest have to start without the bells and whistles. Condense the vehicle certs and make any item usable by multiple classes a universal cert purchased only once.

Three Empires, Three Continents, Zero Foresight
The last four times I've logged on it's been each empire zerging its own continent for AFK base caps. Take out or add a continent to force us into conflict and make resource acquisition based on worldwide territory to make offensives into captured continents more manageable.

1. Balance (specifically between infantry across factions and across infantry roles within the same faction)
Engineers need love, Maxes need buffed (for everyone). And then fix the cross faction issues.

2. Resource irrelevance. Resources flow to frequently and too easily, turn them down to encourage non-vehicle side.
Also INCREASE all grenades to 100 resupply cost. They're too cheap. Also Health kits to 100. Encourage friendly medics to exist.

3. TK System. Damage to friendlies happens. But kills don't always have to. For every friendly YOU KILL inside of 30 minutes reduce cert gain rate by 5% for 1 hour to a maximum of 50%. Not effect on friendly damage. Also does not apply if the friendly you KILLED suffered 50% or more damage from an enemy or series of enemy sources.

1. Cheaters

2. Rendering distance

3. Folks lagging while dogfighting.

1) Rendering - severely ruining the gameplay. Can't see anything in air/ground vehicles. Go infantry - still can't see the players....

2) Mechanics - population balance, incentives, bonuses. Very high incentive to attack, none to defend - base layout and bonuses, make it you attack empty bases and you can't defend with so few people, because everyone bails and goes attacking some remote base = base race with no normal fighting. Often can't use /region talk, so no way of communicating...

3) Lack of real purpose - why should I take the bases? They don't matter....

Excluding possible cheats because I've only seen one possible cheat since launch, and I believe devs are every bit as eager to crush them as we are. Petition them, but know that it is out of your hands.

As a dedicated TR MAX

1) C4. Flak armour seems to have no effect on it, it can be thrown and seems to instakill.
2) NC Scat MAXes are too efficient at killing other MAXes.
3) No lock down or capacitor ala PS1.
3a) No alternate fire for TR AV MAX.

1. A convincing incentive to defend conquered territory.
2. Somehow make it easier to work together as a squad, to stay together.
3. Prevent the vast majority of players from one faction only spawning on one continent (e.g., TR on Indar).

1. The zerg
2. Faction imbalances
3. No incentive to defend bases (I prefer defense to offense typically.)

1 driver/gunner issue in tanks

2 base design - too much "open" in pretty much all the bases

3 (lack of) meta game


has everyone forgotten about separate driver/gunner vehicles?!?!?!? i dont think i saw that once so far

1. Ugly blue/yellow stripes all over my armor/weapons/vehicles.
2. No way to test certification upgrades before buying them, and then no way to reset them if I don't like them.
3. Faction Balance.