Anyone else still here from Beta/Launch?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by TheBloodEagle, Aug 17, 2014.

  1. HadesR

    Been here since Beta and TBH I thought things were finally starting to come good ....


    Then the last patch happened

    The resource change has brought a lot of issues , both in terms of the meta of the game and in terms of performance .. The game just can not handle that many vehicles in such small area's ( can somewhat blame the lattice and cont locking for that to ) .. Last night my Nix's range was reduced to less than 250m since vehicles were de-rendering past that distance ...

    And the general performance took a downward spiral for many

    They really need to sort out the performance asap .. Because that if any one thing more than another will be the death Knell for Ps2 on the PC
  2. NinjaTurtle

    Been here since launch, played TR for a while before going with NC in December 2012
  3. Noppa

    From the start yeah, i don't really bother to the betas that much :)
  4. UberBonisseur

    Let me give some more insight, to remain constructive: It's legitimate to question the sanity of the design team. All along, there was a recurring theme of "reinventing the wheel". Bitter vets would say not learning from PS1, others would blame the F2P model. Let's get into specifics:

    -"Thousands of players"
    They first intended to have 2000 players on a continent; this was pure madness. It never worked. Or rather, it worked if people avoided eachother. Big fights had a 30m infantry render distance. Massive lag would happen if the fight escalated long enough, if you remember the famous "Spec Ops Training Camp" fight on Miller. It was so unplayable that SOE decided to sneakily reduce the cap to 1200 without telling anybody at PU01

    -"Bad base design"
    Another thing you've often heard about PS2 is "bad base design". Indar had about 70 bases (+ satellites) to support the "massive fights", however due to time constraints, all those bases were made of a small ammount of prefab buildings. Which led to a large ammount of "bad" bases.

    -"Lattice debacle"
    Okay so, you might argue, the Hex system sucked, and yeah, it was full of unexploited potential and something had to be done. But objectively speaking, Lattice might have been the worst thing to ever happen to PS2. Why ? The massive enterprise of "Latticing" all the existing continents + Hossin, remaking every single base, sometimes resulting in very minor improvements (only new Amerish marks a quality step up in terms of base design). As for the actual nature of the lattice itself, it's subjective, I prefered the concept of the Hex system, but the PS2 Lattice System" actually deserves it's initial late, "Rush lanes", due to a severe lack of complexity/depth.

    -"Optimization is a priority, now"
    Optimization patch came a year after the game was out. After 2 continents were remade (and they had to make a level design pass for extra optimization). And they knew it was terrible in Beta, but still lost a lot of customers that just couldn't run the game properly at launch. Too late.

    -Dumbing down
    When you look back at PS1, PS2 is literally a "dumbing down" of the franchise. There is overall much less content. There was just more things to do, deemed not worth of consideration by today's industry standards.

    -Metagame: where ?
    The infamous "We need a better metagame !" (or rather, we need meaning and a deeper strategic context) has been heard for two years now, and it has only gone downhill. One of the core, basic elements of what made Planetside 1 has been ignored since the beginning: Continents designed specifically for 3-ways, and two years later still no sight of continental lattice. Base benefits are meaningless, Resources are barely functional, and logistics nonexistant.



    Okay so, where am I going with this rant ? Is this another armchair game designer speaking ? Or am I speaking out of my ***, telling "this is how it should've been done" two years after the game came out ?
    Maybe, but all of the above can be argued with common sense


    Why 2000 players ? Why not start small and scale up to an acceptable performance level ? Scale up !
    Why 64km² continents with 80 bases ? Why not start with a few, balanced base designs and expand ? Scale up !
    Why release early then take the decision to freeze all content for a year when the game needed it the most for Lattice, with not attempt to fix the former system whatsoever in the first 6 months of release ?
    Why waiting 8 months for optimization ? Why not even considering an optimization level design pass before you already remade two continents ?


    As it stands, the game is so much less it could've been. With the experience learned from PS1, and the technology and budget for PS2, it could've been a massive hit, taking over the FPS genre by storm. But mismanagement, poor design decisions crippled the game from the get go.
    I've had my share of fun playing it with my Outfit. But if it weren't for those guys, I'd have switched to another game long ago. Now that my ENTIRE outfit is gone, there has not been enough meaningful content to keep me playing.

    Going to uninstall now.
    For quite a while I've been spending more time on forumside than the game itself. Farewell, my friends.
    • Up x 2
  5. Wecomeinpeace

    Been here since early beta, and i'm still here in mid beta.
    BOOYA, full body contact!

    Seriously though, the development of this game is probably one of the worst i have ever seen. Which is quite the accomplishment considering i followed and was involved in the development of pc games from early ninetees untill mid 2000s. There are definetely worse games out there and ofc i can't look inside SOE. But all the information i get makes me scratch my head and wonder how anyone involved could have thought that making a game this way would be a good idea. It is not. It's freaking horrible for anyone involved, be it dev or player.
    If this wouldn't be planetside i would have been running far, far away from this game a long time ago and warned everyone about it.

    But it's planetside, so i am willing to put up with the ******** just to see where they are eventually going with this. And probably then run far, far away from it and warn everyone about it. Or maybe not. Who can tell when you barely can guesstimate how the final game will look like. The same phase-one-side game mind you that expects its players to open the pockets wide, because we all surely trust SOE the game will eventually become the game we were told and looking forward to, right? Right?
    • Up x 1
  6. Sanguinary

    Been around since the end of Beta, and I must say, it's been a long and bumpy road.

    I can't say I like every change that's happened, but that's to be expected, but I will say this: Regardless of all the frustration, frame-rates, bugs and balances I can honestly say that I have enjoyed (and do enjoy) this game. It has things to offer that other games don't, it has lots of learning curves and I've met a lot of awesome people through it. I've taken one or two breaks over the past 2 years or so, but each time I would find myself invariably pulled back.

    I still think the state of balance is wonky, I dislike this massive aversion to splash damage that seems to be the trend - maybe they're trying to make the PS4 version not start out like the PC version did, I think Libs (like some other things) kind of received a carrot, followed by a large stick. I think the nanoweave change was great, and I think that having nanites as a resource has potential but needs tweaking/to see how the next phases turn out.

    Directives seem to be a good idea, people always seem to have a strange obsession with achievements as a form of psychological reward (I'm glad there's a more tangible aspect to them, otherwise it doesn't give much to work for). I'm interested to see how the Valk turns out, although again, it needs balancing.

    Basically there's a laundry list of things that could be improved upon, but at the end of it I, for the most part, enjoy this.

    Long and short, I'll stick it out, have fun and hope that things continue to improve.
  7. maxkeiser

    I'm still here from Beta (without any break).

    Not at all happy with what they've done to the alerts. Atm the alert part of the game is just dead to me, and many people in the outfit (also established, long-time players). There is no weight to them. Nobody cares.

    Bring back the old alerts - that would help quite a lot!


    (I also HATE the lattice, but that's a different story for another thread ...)
  8. Bankrotas

    Playing since launch. No particular issues bother me too much to care.

    I would drop all my hate and embrace shotgun as our faction train straight there... All hail Doublebarreled shotgun (and Sawed of version for LA :D )
  9. DoomFruit

    Joined in November 2012 with a Woodman NC, then quickly made myself a Lithcorp VS character (because lazors) and am still here. As far as I'm concerned, the worst change was the lattice system which removed all medium-scale strategy from the game. When that appeared, I quit in disgust for about 8 months to play Warframe... but came back later after seeing how Warframe is on a downward spiral. The gameplay in PS2 is still nice, but I'm not leading a platoon while we still have the lattice.
    • Up x 1
  10. user101

    Been since november 2012 game has gone down hill... they need to go back to hex. And put in the good physX again. When you go from 32 servers down to 5 in 2 years you business model is failing.

    SOE made more money than the PS3 & PS2 sales put together last year.. that will not happen this year at the rate they are loosing players..!
    • Up x 1
  11. Sulsa

    Here since December 2012.
    I see things every night that I play that makes me think 'wow this is awesome'.
    I still sometimes sit in base turrets, turn off the HUD and just watch the big fights. Still truly amazing.

    The changes don't really get me upset. They all seem to be done for a reason and I just adapt and play a different way for a while. I get the FPS drop firestorm and I had to stop playing for a while but they fixed it and I hope they continue making PS2 as good as they can.

    I still can't believe more people don't play...

    I will be here until the last server shuts down :D
  12. Metcal

    Here from the beginning.
    Overall like and enjoy the game.
    Development has been MUCH slower than I anticipated.
    If it wasn't for years of PS1 I might not have stuck it out.

    Generally happy tho, let's see what happens when PS4 version comes out.
    Not thinking a game can survive/thrive on 2 platforms, we'll see.
  13. JonboyX

    Been here since the Technical tests (pre Beta).

    I think the scope of the game has been hacked back massively to simplify it, but without a doubt it's a better game than it was in my opinion, and balance is generally good.

    Obviously there've been some gameplay decisions/changes that I don't think have added to the game (such as grenade and rocket ubiquity), but a lot of my views on the changes are just that: opinions, and for every choice I dislike no doubt some one else does.
  14. Arsonix

    Reporting in and glad to see half the community has dug their heels in regarding any change what so ever. Also glad to see my main server is slowly being taken over by Japanese people who I have no chance of ever defeating in a million years.
  15. DirArtillerySupport

    Been here since beta with no time off and this game is still the most intensive crash free game I've ever played. Not going to complain about anything because really...what's the point?
  16. Irathi

    Been playing since beta as well, I think the game has come a long way in the right direction.

    I think they've balanced infantry and Max game pretty well now. For vehicles vs infantry I think they've gone a bit too far and nerfed too much instead of giving infantry better alternatives than direct engagement. Vehicles could've been left as they were with great splash damage and 1hk, but it would've required some redesign of the maps - In particular the base layouts and how to get from base A to base B. The biggest yet needed change is indoor spawns with a mechanic outside that allows you to destroy it (like in PS1). I just hate having to lock down a spawnroom door with my prowler just because it is the only way to keep them from getting out.. Vehicle vs vehicle I find quite satifsying atm now that the harasser has been nerfed.

    -Just subbed for another year.
  17. Bonom Denej

    I discovered the game a little bit after launch, stayed up to BR10 or something but I stopped playing because I didn't have enough free time to invest into this game. I was going strong on StarCraft II at that time and working my way up to diamond ranking. I came back almost a year ago when I stopped playing StarCraft II and started from scratch with a VS character. I really liked this game when I tried it the first time and even almost a year after, I knew I would love it if I gave it some time. Now almost BR40, still loving this game. I'm even going to sub for the next 6 months (I couldn't do it earlier).

    I chose PS2 over StarCraft II because even if I play once or twice a week, I can still enjoy it a lot. At a somewhat high level, StarCraft II became way more intense in term of performance and I had to play almost everyday if I wanted to keep a good level. When I saw that I couldn't keep that rythme, I simply stopped playing.

    The only thing getting on top of PS2 for me right now is League of Legends because I'm playing it with my closest friends (which tried PS2 but overall didn't enjoy it as much as I did). If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be playing LoL.
  18. iccle

    Still here since tech test, frustrated at the lack of development progress I had expected a lot more 2 years in.

    Where are the functioning warpgates? Been 2 years since the 'temporary' warp terminals were added.
    • Up x 1
  19. Aegie

    Beta.

    Do not play nearly as much lately.
  20. Hicksimus

    Beta.

    Brought all my friends and they all left. Now I log in from time to time to check it out and my hopes were being raised for a bit.....but we're heading right back to square one rapidly. I don't foresee any of my friends returning, I have not seen any of them launch the game in steam in ages and I have no intention of spending money when I do play because PS2 is going nowhere.
    • Up x 2