Attitudes.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Attitudes. A lot of people on these forums have an attitude to the game and the developers that is really not in any way productive, helpful or useful to anyone. Examples?

"Game is dead."
"SOE suck!"
"Moneygrabbing idiots."
"Game is dying."
"Only an idiot would pay for X."
"Y game is better."
"Z ruins the game." (I made a whole post about that one)
"I don't care about the game any more."
"I QUIT!"

Okay, so, you people know who you are. You know if you've said one of these things in the distant or recent past. You are not helping. You are not helping at all...

Saying the game is dead or dying will only serve to reduce other people's will to play.

Saying SOE suck will only serve to demotivate the people who are working on this game. Do you have any idea how rubbish it is when you're working your balls off to deliver a product which is a damned sight better than most other things on the market, and sits in a niche that no other product fills, only to have entitled, self righteous aaayyy holes badmouth your work? Just sit and think about it...

Moneygrabbers? Sure - like every other professional in the world. people need to pay the bills. If they don't sell their product, they lose their jobs.

Look... you guys wouldn't be offering criticism if you didn't care in some way about the game. You wouldn't bother saying this stuff if you honestly had other better things to do and spend your money on. There is no point in offering criticism for something you do not care about.

So rather than using these tired old phrases which drag the place down, how about trying to really interrogate what needs to be done to make the game better. I don't mean yelling at developers or being angry, or saying stuff sucks - because that doesn't get anything done... I mean making genuine, helpful suggestions for improvements. Climb off the high horse, stop pretending you don't care, stop pretending you've quit playing... play the game, and CALMLY suggest what needs work.

You don't need to yell, you don't need to scream, you don't need to be dramatic about it. Just stay cool, discuss - don't argue, and stop slinging insults at the devs.

It's really unfortunate, but gamers are probably the single most obnoxious audience for an artform that Ive ever seen. they expect so much and are downright vicious when it is not delivered in exactly the way they specified. they refuse to let artists create the work the artists want to make. You don't walk up to a painter and say "I hate it, make all the orange tones blue instead, and stop painting stupid ships omg" because they'd laugh in your face. But if you go up to a game developer and say "your game is a heap of junk I hate it, make it like this" people, including the games industry, seem to think this is perfecly acceptable behaviour. That's gotta change, and you're the people who're gonna change it. Lets start being nice to artists - particularly artists who're making art we can enjoy for free.

Well said!

Thank you for all you do SOE.

Not quite this. I was more referring to treating these developers as people and artists, making productive suggestions... Rather than blindly thanking them for "everything they do, yo.", as that's rather vague and wafty. Be more definite. Tell them what you like and why. Tell them what you find a little sub-par and suggest a way of changing it that might work.

Thanking someone for some abstract thing or other doesn't get stuff done... You don't have to be sychophantic in order to be helpful or a decent human. Just being respectful and treating humans like humans is enough.

Sorry dude but the people you're trying to reach don't give a damn about a post like this. You're just preaching to the choir.

Instructions not clear, sitting on ikea office chair. Not liking it, but it was only like $15 so I can't complain.

Meh, not very many people understand game development and even fewer understand MMO development. The uniqueness and complexity of the task of designing and maintaining an MMOFPS is astonishing. This is what allows me to easily forgive bugs and glitches, even those that hang around for too long or are game breaking. The fact that something like this is playable is pretty crazy, and I don't think SOE plans on stopping development and support for Planetside any time soon. The way I see it, its a game I enjoy, have gotten 400+ hours out of, and still play even after getting 2 cases of burnout.

People just like to be negative. "gaem is ded" appears in every game's steam forums at least once. Hell, some of the most active games like TF2 get "gaem is ded" or whatever because of EOTL/Refined Prices/Yadadadada. I don't the game is dying at any rate to be alarmed at, and I see it surviving two more years at the very least.

Maybe don't release a game in beta and then spend 2 1/2 years not doing anything with it other than making it a tdm in tiny maps in a big map with advanced unbalanced farming methods with hats and t shirts being considered a major update?

And the diehards should avoid using the successor of chess analogy, that is real inflammatory.

Early release games promise so much and deliver so little, they are the diseased core of the gaming industry and funny how it has only been for about 5 years yet has now become acceptable.

Once it used to be patches, this then led to DLC being used to release content that should have been in the release game and allowing it also to be charged for. Now you can buy a game and it doesn't even exist, using Star Citizen as the extreme example.

That is where the vitriol comes from, what this game promised 3 years ago and what it still is now.

You carry on defending it and funding it, good luck to you.

Personally my interest is in finding out when they eventually throw the towel in as they will have to having failed miserably to deliver what they have promised for such a long time.

And where did that road map go?

The main reason people don't spend a lot of time fully elaborating on their opinion is because, simply put, they have no desire to do so and it's much quicker to throw out a one liner than explain their frustrations. I mean we have probably one of the most ripe communities for negativity known to existence. It's a F2P, meaning anyone can chime in their 2 cents serious or not (meaning high amounts of trolling). It's massive multiplayer, meaning there's going to be boatloads of people to whine about something. It's competitive, and it's always much easier to scapegoat "op weapon!" or "h4x0rz!" or "laaaaag!" than accept someone else was just better at you or simply got the jump on you at the right time. Now in asymmetrical balancing and you get whines about how X faction is better than Y as icing on the cake. This game was practically bred to have the worst community imaginable.

However, there is also a more important part of the people with these attitudes who simply have gotten tired of repeatedly explaining their positions and why things are bad and potential ways to fix them and seeing nothing done about those things over two years. While I'm 100% sure SOE is listening and will likely skim through this thread for points of discussion we've also reached a point where most of this feedback is pretty much read and then ignored. Occasionally Reddit or Twitter or once a year a developer will grace the game forums with their presence they'll say, "Oh we totally understand, we totally agree with what you're saying!" but months later nothing actually comes out of it. Yet this is largely become meaningless at this stage. Understanding the problem and even agreeing with the problem may net SOE some points with the population but also by doing nothing about those problems years on in the game will not only remove any points gained by also start putting you in the negative. No one wants to waste 5, 10, 30, 60, or hours of their time on something that's simply going to be ignored when it's far easier to get to the heart of the matter, "SOE is a bunch of moneygrubbing bastards who are killing their game!" and move on.

This is the intent of such statements actually - to warn/discourage others from spending money on a game that's slowly dying due to the ineptness of the developers.

And as I've said previously - until SOE actually loses people like Higby and Smed, this game is forever going to be on a slow death spiral.

There might be other talented and good guys at SOE, some of them have moved on already, because their management stifles their own ability to express their art. Until you cut off the cancer at the top, ie. the leadership vacuum - nothing will really change.

For the most part, the rise in animosity is a gradual process.

Things go out on test server and players point out the flaws and bugs right away. Often SOE does nothing - doesn't even respond despite asking for feedback.

Flaws and bugs make it to live. Players complain a little louder. Again, poor SOE response (not that they have to respond, but silence is silence).

Flaws and bugs start to compile over time. Anger is now expressed more vociferously. Good solutions/fixes are expressed by players. More SOE silence. More player frustration.

Instead of fixing bugs, SOE adds content for monetization. Complaints about money-grubbing emerge.

I think better communication from SOE would go a long way. Look at Smed's recent post on Reddit. Very civil conversation. Players are expressing a positive attitude and are trying to help SOE because they know SOE is listening and showing that they are trying to improve the state of the game. Players understand the motivation of the devs and get a sense of what is being worked on and also why other fixes/additions are being pushed back.

And so it begins....

People are entitled to their opinions. I believe that what needs to change is civility of how the information is expressed. You can hate on the game for its flaws all you want but the game is functioning as it is supposed to when you have a farmfest. In fact that's a good portion of the game play, as intended.

Maybe they just need more time... Planetside 1 was up(I mean before it died out) for 10 years and I honestly doubt if anyone remembers it's early days (2 years after relase?), certainly not alpha or beta... Planetside 2 is much more sophisticated in terms of coding because it has some crazy features not seen anywhere else... Have you ever seen a game with Doppler effect? Probably no, but even if you did it certainly wasn't an MMO. Planetside 2 has Doppler effect and many more things (especially visible on higher graphical settings) which prove that SOE really aimed high with this title...So many little details that were implemented so early... I don't know whether or not this game will ever get close to the popularity of PS1 but I know for sure SOE tried really hard...and I hope they will keep trying.

Look PS2 is already better than PS1 in many things (other than shiny graphics, really impressive for an MMO [especially an MMOFPS])
-PS1 had NO HEADSHOTS. I mean wtf, an FPS without headshots? PS2 has this.
-PS1 had less abilities. Basicaly only stealth and MAX kind of aegis shield.
-PS1 had much, much less weapons (like A WHOLE LOT less)
-PS1 had no (absolutely no) weapon customization. You couldn't even change the optics.
-PS1 airgame was non-existant. You could only yaw and pitch, NO ROLL. Basically a 1v1 air fight was like flying in circles for an ethernity and hope for a teammate to arrive before you die of age.
-PS1 had less ES stuff
-Terrain in PS1 looked awful and provided too little cover (IMHO). PS2 terrain is extremely sophisticated compared to it's precedessor
-It wasn't free to play (until it died). You can play PS2 completely free if you want.

Yeah I know someone could point out many things at which PS1 was better but just try to be positive.... Hopefuly the game will keep on developing and will one day fullfill the demands of the community...

Forums are poison. True for every single game out there.

Find the most popular game on the internet, the one with "overwhelmingly positive" reviews, find their forums and you'll find plenty of people there doing nothing but complaining and saying how the devs are terrible and the company is crap.

all we need - more posts from developers about what's going on.

People payed into and played the game, unfinished as it were(and is!), for 2 years- and all we get is a lousy port to PS4?

All that cash money put into porting the game could have been used to expand the base game. Two years and we still cannot attack warp gates or mount any structured attack that impacts the gameplay.

Zerg to win. There are no force equalizers, the larger force simply rolls over a base, or farms it as they wish. The bases and maps are not evolved enough to allow dynamic defense or attack.

PC players get nothing out of the port- we go along with the gamble that maybe the ps4 version will be successful. ... and if it tanks, then bye bye planetside.

It's easy to imagine people resenting that the game could die a swift death for something that was not asked for or anywhere near ready to be attempted.

i disagree. I'm not going to praise people who can't produce quality product, i will not support financially people who can't produce quality product.

Lets get fact straight:
1) SOE communicates with players more on twitter and reddit vs official forums.
2) there is no meaningful QA. Every patch brings more bugs than it addresses (look at the last one)
3) the game is how old? the game is in what state?

Conclusion: this team is incompetent. They may be good developers and programmer individually, but they are either lacking resources, motivation, systems, techniques, or whatever else. It's not my problem that they can't do their job and they should not expect to be paid if they can't produce a game that is fun and is not bugged like PS2.

They should either get their act together or kill the game. I'm sore SONY Corp doesn't want to run an operation that doesn't make any meaningful profits, yet breeds poor reputation for Sony Online Entertainment and SONY in general.

There is a reason why these attitudes in particular stand out.

If all said painter painted was three legged Donkeys, then he should expect questions and maybe criticism about the location of the 4th leg ... And sometimes even suggestions that his Donkey's would be better with that extra limb ..

I support this Thread. Too many little crybabies and petty little people are on this thing bein beeches. Man up. respect the Devs. Its not easy to do what they do. help build the game not break it by crying foul because you lost. Selfishness makes unbalanced games. This game is about #livedierepeat aka do it and try again if you fail. Everyone wants a 4th AI faction/NPC that comes around just so everyone else that isnt shooting each other can have some 'fun' shooting a dumb common enemy. To me this game is like a sexy female. looks nice, everyone wants some of that and thinks it is fun, til they get it..., then everyone realizes 'oh i've been there done that, shot em in the *** a few times.. that sexy is more annoyin now.. i think i'm tired seein that clown camping the hill and rocks..

Your Gaming experience is as good as you make it. If you are not creative, then you will be bored to **** in this game. I've killed you guys hundreds of thousands of times and i'm not bored. Why? because I play variation inside of variation. I'm not afraid to try weird exceptional sheet. If you camp that hill I will roadkill you, stomp you, fly my jet into you, sneak up on you and knife you, skydive like a Space marine bloodraven and chainblade you in half, climb the mountain the hard way and do it again... I just mentioned every other way except jumping in a friggin tank and shooting from the other hill. YOU are the game. Sony Just makes you play under their name. They are doin their Job.

Maybe they could make more "impactsite" areas in the maps cause Glaciers exist, underground Tunnels, and catacombs and caves. also The beach would be great... a huge lake that has pits of doom mazed about its shallow areas. I could go on and on. I would love to battle on a mountain with flash only sized roads and trees and death drops that was properly executed like a real environment would look like, not just all ROCKS and Snow... and flat... Make it really look like a mountain...THATS what the game is lacking. Superb environments between bases and extreme usage of the height roof and underground maps.. Tilted bases even, Tower stacked bases to make a 20 story tower maybe.. Something exceptional that deviates away from planetside 2 -years old.

Fortunately the forum represents a small minority of the actual playerbase, the ones that login and don't really care about the forums, twitter, twitch, reddit & youtube etc.. The average player logs in to have fun on their own or with buddies and the game gives that. The reason most people complain is actually because they love the game and see its potential and probably are the hardcore fanbase of the game. The thing with planetside 2 is that its very unique and there is no other comparison MMO FPS like it on the market so people are pretty much forced to come back or continue playing at some point.

I kind of think of it as an ex girlfriend, you really had a good time together but it was a love hate relationship and some points you could of killed her. Even though you might have a new girlfriend you always go back to her in times of need for that "fix" that your current girlfriend just cant give you no matter how hard she tries. You also see that your ex girlfriend has huge potential and is actually becoming more beautiful with each update, but then she smacks you in the face and you hate her again for a few weeks, days - months etc..But you will always come back.