Back after a long time off... a general overview.

So i took a long time off. Almost deleted the game out of sheer frustration at SOE too when I stopped playing, but lets not get into that.

So tonight I decide to give it another chance, thinking maybe, juuust maybe, the game is better now?

Holy @#$% was I ever wrong in thinking that.

This game is even more broken and is now WAY less fun than before i left. All I see are hackers and campers now, 4 million gunships cause apparently they are immune to stationary AA and Sunder fire. They can pretty much hover over you with impudence and unload, while you barely even scratch their paint.

The servers are a ghost town, and I refuse to even bother getting into the bugs, glitches and problems I encountered over and above the fact that I am missing items that I purchased, and am missing certs... oh and thanks for taking away so many of the hard earned skills I worked so hard to get for my character and no I am not talking about the stupid wipe of nano and return of those creds.

Last but not least, do you really think putting a nag image of upgrade on every damn screen is going to make people want to become members? NEWSFLASH: it doesn't. In fact it makes me want to delete the game and say goodbye to SOE for good. What little faith I had in SOE, and there was not much there believe me, is now completely gone.

I also see they replaced the word f you c k with higby and subbed HUEHUEHUE for lol or something etc... seriously.

Broken game, broken client, broken dev team, unable to fix things, but sure are good at collecting up premium sized paycheques... Team Sony.

Well yes the bugs we all know about, didn't need a return player to tell us that.

The rest: Woes of a bad player

The game is less fun balance and game play wise than it was early on even in beta. It still is a pretty good game for a free to play shooter at least for now. It does keep getting worse tho

Blame the criers for the nerfs. No more drama.

Blame game marketing for the rest. They soak a formula for everything its worth and the dump it for the next formula.

Lol, what? How was balance better in beta?

hmmm, thats funny. Ive had the exact opposite experience, not that i left because the game was bad before.


so what do you plan on playing instead?

The vehicle to infantry balance was better even before lock-ons were in. Max units were broken without a resource/cooldown at the time however, but even they felt weaker than they do now as they couldn't be revived if I remember right. Tanks were weaker against infantry which made fights more epic and less one hit kill tank shot spammy. The sky guard was actually effective in beta as well, provided you learned to use it in third person which was difficult but extremely rewarding. The result was a much better and less vehicle spammed battlefield. The capture mechanics were better balanced as well in attacker vs defender, as the attackers didn't usually have to beat their heads against a boring choke point. You could flip a base by capturing all the surrounding territory. You couldn't just turtle up as a defender in a biolab for example.

Oh yeah and spawn room shields were more balanced. Explosive damage went through them meaning you could actually punish the spawn room cowboys that got too close.

Oh, so you mean everything besides faction balance? Okay. You're still wrong.

First off, air was entirely unusable for most of beta. I was one of the few who kept at it, and about all I was good for was distracting flak and occasionally find a stray tank. Massed air was not much better. You can say that you prefer that, but as a game that includes air vehicles, no, balance for air was ******.

Second off, HE and explosives used to have a much larger explosive radius in general. HE spam is still a thing, but it used to be far worse, especially when taking on TR tank zergs.

Third off, the old capture mechanics were widely and rightfully panned, because no matter how much progress you made, first to 'fill the bar' wins, erasing all of your progress. This would lead to situations where the defense/offense loses at the last second because they lost the base next to them (thus lowering its influence) even though they had control of most of the base. Oh, and that platoons wouldn't fight each other, so much as capture in circles around each other. And yes, you could always turtle up in a biolab. You could cap all the bases around it, but you still had to capture the points inside the biolab.

And who else remembers when shotguns were introduced, and they were literally the only thing worth using in CQC, with an effective range out to 15-20m? The weapon flinch that made ADS nearly impossible? Only one big fight on the entire continent, and the owners of that base otherwise completely warpgated?

What you actually enjoyed about beta was the novelty of the game. Other than that, it was mechanically broken. The current balance isn't as good as it was just after the TR started getting their nerfs, but it is way, way, way better than it was through beta and the early months of the game.

I disagree. I never really had issues with HE tanks, flying aircraft or shotguns (other than infiltrators being able to use them, just like SMGs now). I did just fine with my rifles and carbines. You couldn't flip points back if your base was isolated. It would remain neutral or enemy no matter what until the base was no longer isolated. Often times it was done by a single infiltrator who's job was easier due to biolabs having more entrances at the time (the top/bottom portals weren't ownership specific, the bottom and top each had holes that could be entered by light assaults easily and any other class with a little work and/or a spawn galaxy). Defenders had to defend the actual points and not just the choke points. But what do I know, I only spent 10 days of play time in beta (more than I am proud to admit) but that is probably more time than you spent learning how to read minds right?

Well I never had problems defending biolabs back before hacksaws got nerfed. Or after hacksaws got nerfed. I have no recollection of them ever not being ridiculously defensible. I also think ghostcapping was a terrible mechanic for everyone involved. It wouldn't be so bad now with galaxy and sunderer spawning, but it still wouldn't fix all the other issues the hex system had.

Op is bad at the game, however the dev team not caring about the veterans is what made me turn away from the game completely.
Atleast EA doesnt do complete redesigns 1.5 years after the release which is common sense.

They were less defensible than they are now. The game has always been plagued with ghost capping, even now on the non-primary continents. No idea how to do it but it would be great to have a mechanic that encourages outfits and large groups to run into each other. Perhaps the mission system can be made to help guide outfits and roughly equally sized groups into each other to produce good fights. Would be nice to have more outfit pride and epeen in game to help fuel competition. Alerts kind of do it, but not so well as they are more of a 'everyone go here and the most pop wins' mechanic.

I do not like the lattice system because it often results in one side steam rolling the other.... again and again down the lattice due to the linear path. The out-popped side doesn't have many opportunities to try and split the attacking force by attacking other nearby areas. Would be nice to have more 'meta' and flexibility than the rigid lattice paths.

Planetside 1?

Yup ps2 is in a mess at the moment, will it ever get better? Only time will tell. I ain't holding my breath tho.

That's fair, but it is far less 'whack-a-mole' with the externals. Ghost capping is a given, but limiting the lanes makes it far more manageable. To keep it in check, it basically required about a squad of people devoted to just dealing with ghostcappers. That's a job nobody has ever really wanted to do. With the lattice, ghostcappers are at least pretty ineffective.

And that's the thing that people don't get about the 'metagame.' You actually are responsible for some of it yourself. Earlier today my outfit linked up with several others using custom channels, which gave us about three platoons to throw around. With that kind of force, we were able to leapfrog our way around Amerish, using the geography and enemy behavior to our advantage. For example, we threw a platoon at Auraxis Firearms Corps and continued the offensive despite being outpopped by about 5%, to give another platoon an easier cap at Tumas Tech Plant. It is often frustrating taking on a zerg you can't beat, but when you organize, you can raise your ability to play the field, and employ strategy, that thing that supposedly doesn't exist in this game. I love Planetside's metagame. There's just no hand-holding involved in it. Very few seem to be interested in that kind of competition.

Hackers? Never seen one...
Campers? There was a tendency on NC side to snipe, but I don't see much snipers now. No campers.
Have you even tried to pilot a gunship? Get one rocket at you and you better run away, because you will be dead before you turn around.
Servers ghost town? Rly? Are we talking about the same game? I took this video yesterday:

I do agree that the nerfers, have had way to much say and Higs has made the game more open to Cod players from an infantry perspective.

This was the best game by far for me, but its has smouldered down to a point I cancelled my membership and only play now and then but get so bored as the servers are not as full as they once were and the TR have just been hammered.

Striker, it needed it, but certain guns didn't. Their is very little TR have that is worth while and puts us at a disadvantage in most 1v1's. Take in mind the server lag and the poor hit detection ( let alone the recoil ), rof is quite pointless when half of what your shooting has no effect.

When the next "big" update comes out, with more NERFS and some balancing I shall revaluate the state of play, but until then I will have more fun sticking fingers in my eyes.