Problems with PlanetSide 2 as I see them.

I sent a private message to RadarX about that, hoping he'll pass it along. I also posted it on the forums.

If you're interested Riven, this is my own thought process on the marketing plan SoE has implemented and how that new player barrier can be alleviated.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-dhpHA30UtQX244Y0EtcllpN0U/edit?pli=1

I agree completely, if they lower weapon prices to something reasonable (0.50-3.00 range) then people would feel less reluctant when they go to buy weapons, and would have a reason to buy the more situational stuff as well.

Also, OP I will love you forever if we get these changes in. We need more team play promotion.

A perfectly formulated post that outlines the core flaws of Planetside 2.

Really human race, how old are you? You look 94 and sound like 5.

None of this matters until you present solutions that will improve the game while making it produce more money. Simple as that. Devs love the game? Haha, yeah, I love my clients too. Every time they write me a check I simply adore them. Will also go on every available record known to man stating that. Won't go Friday-night-out with them though.

Can the game be both good and financial sucess? Sure. It's a bit more complicated than throwing in few blanket fixes that gets minority of a minority all wet. Here, I'll describe an ideal PS2 customer; creates an account, plays few days, realizes s/he needs to spend about the price of a triple A game to get any enjoyment out of it, does so, plays for couple more weeks, *s off for couple of months and then comes back to repeat the process. Harsh? You bet, it's called capitalism.

Lots and lots of people playing F2P game does not guarantee its sucess. It guarantees high maintainance costs, large GM crews working odd (and usually costlier) hours, big pipeline fees, expensive hardware, etc. People spending money makes game sucessful. Lots and lots of people spending money in particular.

SOE has a business to run. Whether they make it or break it is their problem. They're around for quite some time now, I guess they had to do few things right. Will they do that here? Who cares. If they do, we'll have a game to enjoy and if they don't somebody else will. Again, capitalism.

Everybody wants to have KDR removed, everybody screams how unimportant it is, how everyone they know agrees with that ... bloody hell, then simply ignore it? Oh I see, it's Columbian cartels' fault you have coke addiction, isn't it?

Surely it's possible that we could get those bases back at some point. I agree, it doesn't make sense that bases are the infantry deathtraps that they are now.

A lot of what BuzzcutPsycho is outlining in his post could be solved by going back to designs like that. Vehicles would still be important with bases like that too; after all, once the shields go down...

Fattie brings up some good points I suppose, but tragically it's too late. This game has already hemorrhaged the majority of it's playerbase due to piss poor design and dev abandonment for the holidays, and won't get it back. The next few months will be quite telling...does SOE care to retain PS2's small playerbase or was this just an engine test for Everquest Next? We shall see.

Everyone should just stand in the middle of the map firing their guns into the air with ammo packs everywhere. Oh, the glory that will be had.

OP did say a lot of good things

some rambling thoughts:

* HE is way OP atm... It destroys inf far too easily and is still too good against armour.
* Air/Land/Inf resources are currently meaningless. Today for the first time ever I didnt have enough points, but only because we were basically warp locked for an hour or so. Spending the points should mean something. Respawn timers also... Currently these resources are pointless as the limit is never reached
* Buildings acting as 'incubators'... or pinatas. How do you stop that without removing the ability for inf to move in and out, like the LA?
* capping times and defendable bases... yes, yes all good points
* global items unlocked with cert points would be good, i got C4 on my LA why do i have to buy it all again... 700 certs :S. The cert farm is a little boring also, probably because of non global items

and more

I do think with a lot of little adjustments though many of the issued would be solved

Daily bump, for when SoE get off their fat ******* lazy *** and fix the dying game

/signed

Except from the full health revive I agree with all you points.

I would counter that the placement of structures does matter in a big way. While what you have said is valid it isnt anything to do with why I placed the structures where I did. Placing the structure on the high ground means that a) defenders have the high ground and therefore a natural advantage and b) attackers cant just sit round the base and shoot into it from a elevated position. This dramatically increases the survivability of the defence. That is one of the main reasons why the crown is dependable due to it completely dominating the high ground without any hills overlooking. Case in point if you look in real life castles are always built on the high ground as it adds to the defensive mechanisms of the structure. But I do agree placement and even the way in which spawn rooms work do need a massive overhaul.
FF

That earlier base design with the TR looked great. Sadly they won't have the resources or even the inclination to overhaul the terrible base designs we currently have.

That's not enough. Players should have to buy a cert with a finite but refundable resource in order to even spawn each vehicle. ES vehicles should cost more. Common pool vehicles should cost less. Less-powerful common pool vehicles like the Flash should be very cheap.

Before SOE intentionally broke the PS1 cert system, it was great, and I don't know why its original form wasn't used for PS2 when the opportunity presented itself.

OP... you annoy the ever-loving crap outta me, but damned if you ain't right.

Bump = OP knows what he is talking about, and I hope that SoE can get on it.

A few more things to add on to Buzz's otherwise good post:

- IA is broken, along with the deploy system in general. I'd rather see the Redeploy button put on a cooldown timer, but then allow me to spawn at ANY facility we own on that continent instead of the six or seven closest plus all deployed Sunderers. Having to chain-suicide or chain-redeploy across the continent to get to a fight is ridiculous.

And here's an example of how good Instant Action works. This morning I saw a hotdrop button on the Terran BL-4 Crash Site. I checked the map..."NO ACTIVITY". Yet there was the deploy button. So I hotdropped, and sure enough, no TR around. I took C, I took B, I took A, then I went and hid up on the roof--I didn't even lay down mines to protect the points because I had tank mines instead of Betties. I sat there. NC owned the facility, I got 700 xp, and a massive "WTF" for why that deserted facility had a deploy button on it. SOE, your Instant Action system is worthless except if I either want to deploy onto a deserted base, or into a tech plant on top of 60 enemies.

- I agree with the ideas about restricting vehicles to certs, in fact I was very surprised that I could spawn any vehicle at any point as a BR 1 when I first got into the beta. I remember in PS1 when it took me for-freaking-ever to get the certs up to spawn a Flash and a Marauder. Now are they going to do this? My prediction is no. Modern twitch gamers are simply not going to stand for having to grind to get a vehicle. They'll grind for camos (hell, they'll cheat like crazy for camos, there's constant news about that in the Blops2 community), they'll grind for prestiges, but they won't grind for vehicles. However, I did think the PS1 cert grind was far, far too slow. I played fairly hardcore for the first few months the game was out and never got past about BR 7.

- The new player experience MUST be improved. SOE, what you've got now is inexcusable. There is zero call for taking a new player and simply flinging them out into the void (usually by hotdropping them into an indefensible area surrounded by enemies so they get instagibbed) with no explanation of the minimap, no way to familiarize themselves with the HUD or controls, no time to set their sensitivities or change their class. Had I not been a PS1 veteran, and had I not had a couple months in the beta to feel my way around, I would have uninstalled this game after the first hour and not looked back.

- The vehicle/infantry imbalance in general and base design. It is simply too easy to camp bases of all size. The VS on Mattherson have it to an art form now...I counted four bases simultaneously one night where the spawns were precamped by Mags and Libs before a single infantry showed up to stand on the point. Base capture must be slowed down, and slowed down in a way that allows the defenders to at least make an attempt to push back the attackers. I understand that there's a point where you just have to give up and fall back and I'm fine with that. But when five Liberators move into position over a base that's a good kilometer BEHIND the front and just sit there waiting for defenders falling back to spawn in so they can shoot them the second they run out? That will ruin your game. One guy on a point shouldn't be able to flip a small outpost in 2 minutes, I don't care how many tanks and gunships are hovering about. MAKE the attackers bring infantry.

This game is astonishing when it works. And some of my occasional negativity about it is probably occasioned by the fact that I am truly awful at it and can't win a 1v1 CQB fight to save my life unless my opponent is legally blind, AFK, AND has the reflexes of a three-toed sloth on Quaaludes. But even a "bad" like me can have a lot of fun here (when I'm not throwing my mouse across the room because I just lost another fight to a VS that I had the jump on)...IF these structural problems are fixed. Otherwise, there's not much point.

They don't need to overhaul them particularly. Just stick a few dirty great vehicle shields over the top of some of the bases (with the generators on the inside) and get rid of a lot of windows.

As for resources my solution would be to make your resource gain every 5 mins depend on the amount of territory you own on all 3 continents. Then make each continent uniquely spawn one resource, e.g. only territory on Indar gains you aircrafdt resources.

Don't have any territory on Esamir? No tanks for you. No territory on Amerish? Say bye bye to grenades and maxes.

And of course everyone would start defending their territory like mad if it meant they would have no access to particular resource types.

While I disagree with some minor points, I must admit that if all these changes were implemented, the game would be far better. It's important to remember though, that they're making the game the mindless FPS drones want, and gradually developing it into a 'good' game (more like the original). For that reason, I highly doubt any change in stats will occur outside of the mere addition of more. CoD fans want KDR and the development team wants them playing.

I should also mention that I liked how you didn't mention a score/hour stat like so many people have recently. This game doesn't work with any stat/time because it's not round-based. There's too much downtime (especially if you're in an outfit), for stat/time to have any significance. The only real solution is to just give us all the stats, and list them with none taking precedence until we find a metric that accurately measures effectiveness. Assuming that metric's some obscure formula that takes months to discover, they can make it public, and call it something like 'skill' ala Battlefield 3.

Have any designers commented on this yet?

I am the Outfit Leader of one of the outfits that squares off against BCP and TE on a regular basis.

I find it funny how peoples hatred of the man (BCP) blinds them to the fact that his analysis is pretty much dead on and would improve the game for everyone. This attitude that someone is not allowed to point out the realities of what is good bad and ugly with PS2 unless they meet some level of moral authority is ridiculous. BCP exploits the game mechanics that work, therefore he knows whats wrong and what needs to be fixed. Personally I admire the fact he is willing to take the time to post it in such excruciatingly precise detail instead of just continuing to abuse the mechanics of the game speaks volumes about his integrity and interest in having a good game.

That said, I found all the ideas he put forward worthy of SOE's attention.

My personal grind is with vehicle spam. This post nailed it:

Perhaps some vehicles should simply be off limits unless someone is wiling to invest in them significantly. What if there was a "noob level" of ESF for example with extremely low levels of performance which would give a person a "taste" of what its like to fly a standard ESF but to get the standard ESF you had to spend a TON of certs/SC?

Another thing which would be a great change is resource pools which prevent vehicle zerg spamming - there should be some kind of penalty to doing that, or at least restrictions on doing it - in its current form the game does feel alot like:

Spawn vehicle, farm infantry. Repeat.

Yet EVE is the only MMO known to man which grows year over year, so maybe there is something to that.