Can somebody explain why, in the history of dbg Planetside 2, the most effort was put underwater?

Look at this...So many details and items created for this only...The effects underwater as well are actually improved and better than on ground, for example the projectile impacts.

I don't get it. Why would somebody have the drive to develop underwater mechanics for just 1 map which is evidently starting to be the most disliked map. And why did they think people would enjoy fighting underwater?

What about the Bastion, why was that even created? Remember when it got added a lot of people believed it was a stepping stone towards space battle development. Why did the devs rather put effort in developing fights on water, underwater (which are evidently empty, no interest) rather than a map solely created for space battles? Fighting for some asteroid with valuable resources or whatever makes sense with the PS2 story, I didn't read it in detail. Breaching space ships, space stations with infantry.

It would be much easier to design the map, performance would be super (BTW on Oshur my fps drops by 30), new mechanisms could be added for the spacecrafts, which may also be used for ground battle maps, ground vehicles.
Like it's so exiting just to think about it, what can be done. Instead we get to fight in the pool with water guns, that's what the devs are working on.

agree with all that you have said there. i know i will not go to Oshur....i would rather fight on Hossin than go to Oshur.
and i like many others, do not like Hossin....but it is better than playing on the water world Oshur.
space battles would and could have been awesome. Oshur was/is a waste of time, and not what we actually wanted in the game.

First and foremost, as a PS1 Veteran I can tell you first hand that many continents had water sources. Including lakes, rivers, bay areas and open ocean.

These were all part of the original Planetside experience, and has only been recently added - many years after its prime. Because geography and the watersphere go hand-in-hand. You all should be offering praise to Daybreak for actually achieving to expand upon natural environmental design that Sony failed to do in the first place.

The problem is a playerbase filled with cynicism whom find far greater entertainment sitting at a killfarm than participating in conflict in the open environment. Because in PS1, we actually had to fight across open terrain to get anywhere.

What's become of PS2? People just redeploy across the map now and pop up from a spawn tube. And with such convenience came the massive cost of lazyness. The only entertainment value people have is immediately spawning at a fight already in progress at a base, and anything "in between" is a waste of time.

These are community outlook issues.

Ironically, the people who complain about Oshur almost always fail to elaborate precisely what it is about the continent that upsets them and how to fix it.

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As for the comment about "asteroid combat"... Are you sure about that?



Because I can personally tell you that I was already there in a very similar environment and most people considered it a hassle.

I'm fine with water fights, if they add more kelp for cover, they are fascinating fights. Yet these fights still don't happen enough or anymore. They only happened the first week of when the new links for Oshur were released. Tho since then the water fights have stopped entirely. As seaports are still skipped too often & also people don't want to use the silly galaxies to deploy. People want to use sunderers. So really Oshur should rid of these reasons to have to use deployable galaxies & just make sunderers able to sink underwater or some other method to spawn underwater without galaxies.

Def most people under lvl br 80 aren't gonna randomly pull a moduled spawn galaxy. & ye these " space battles " or " underwater fights " all need more caverns, tunnels, caves, cover, more kelp, more coral, more objects that vary the terrain. Too plain so far. 10 kelp plants per underwater fight isn't enough, how about 40 kelp forest plants per underwater region.

Added water mechanics at a cost of performance, -30fps for me on Oshur, or maybe it's just the map design, too many items. I still find the water mechanic lackluster because it's like as if it doesn't exist, it's not an obstacle or challenge. You drive over it, under it with any vehicle, hold w, don't even need to operate anything before entering (for example raising a trim board at the front, opening and preparing the water jet, amphibious tanks can use tracks for propulsion. That's why I mentioned the space battles, cause for larger ships you'd likely need to control certain components and have a crew, and that may be also used for ground vehicles, controlling certain components, not necessarily the ones I mentioned but something else)

Other than visual I have no idea what purpose it holds in game.

Cynical is a perfect way of describing a portion of the player base.
It's so true how the only form of entertainment we have right now is just spawning in a fight.
I believe redeploying ruined the games potential, like if there was no redeploying the game would have had more players.

For example in multiple games similar to this one, I have seen some people there that have flying as a hobby. They have a flight stick maybe it's their profession or interest but that's all they do in some war simulator games. Possibly they enjoy role playing and being unique. (In PS2 the flight controls would need to be changed, doubt devs could do that)
So lets say somebody would need to relocate their soldiers and vehicles from the NC front to VS, they would contact a squad that operates these massive air transports by voice or message, I am very sure there would be people that would enjoy doing that, and out of fantasy, possibly they drop them off on a player made FOB for protection while mobilizing the army, maybe it has some skyshield system that destroys incoming projectiles.

What I am trying to say by these concepts is that if there were no redeploys in Planetside 2, the game would slow down and it would open up space for more roles, specializations people could choose from, bringing in more types of players.

Currently game is biased towards a certain audience. And I don't understand why it's so concentrated on them because redeploying makes this game too repetitive, rapid and eventually they get burned out and leave.

Considering the pace and intensity of infantry gameplay in PS2 at times, many players at this point have often chosen to forgo graphics altogether. I play PS2 on low settings with lighting and shadows at a minimum or completely off. I have personally found that shadows have the most significant impact on performance.

Also if you look up PS2 videos, you'll probably see an alarming amount of gamers playing on low graphics for highest performance. This is more common than you'd imagine. It also makes it easier to see your targets in poor lighting.

I would highly suggest that you reconsider sacrificing your graphic settings for improved frames and performance. Or, if you have an older computer, you might consider trying to get a new rig or upgrading your system to operate on solid state drives. Upgrading to SSD's was single-handedly the most important upgrade I ever did for my computer.

I am simply explaining that the topic of "graphics" in PS2 is trivial. If you have high graphics and low framerate then you will always suffer against highly competitive players, especially during infantry combat.

Planetside was never truly "realistic" as it has always been futuristic. Do not to overthink it.

If anything, you should develop the outlook that you can do things in PS2 that would otherwise be impossible in other games. Such as aircraft plunging below the surface of water. No other game does that which I know of. And that's what makes PS2 different and unique.

Nanites. Am I right?

(NOTE: I believe you mean a "bow plane" when you are referring to a "trim board". These are traditionally located on the front of an amphibious vehicle to prevent it from nose-diving into the water. It also helps deflect water away from the driver or going over the top of the vehicle.)

There's plenty of reason for water to exist on a continent. Water is a natural environmental feature. And it should've been integrated into the game since its original launch day. That's Sony's fault.

The thing is, Oshur was the first continent to showcase it. I want you to remember this. Oshur was the first continent in PS2 to ever delve into the prospect of including water as part of gameplay, rather than just being an environmental hazard.

And once again, I'll remind all critics that water was present in Planetside 1. It was also an environmental challenge to get across it. Which often resulted in intense bridge battles that would sometimes last for hours just to reach another base.

The inclusion of water as an environmental challenge is to return Planetside back to its roots. And Daybreak did a good thing by doing so, despite how most of the community needlessly bemoans it.

And one day, I'd like to actually have an earnest conversation about the topic.

This is just how the modern society is, and how people interact on the internet these days. Regrettable, but that's just how it is.

However, I will remind everyone that Daybreak has done more for PS2 in recent years in terms of content than what Sony ever would've done. And everyone reading this better remember, PS2 is still getting patches and content updates to this day after almost 10 years.

There's games out there, such as Team Fortress 2, that hadn't received an update in years at one point. And TF2 is younger than PS2 for crying out loud!

I understand that my comment regarding the state of the game and how easy it is to respawn around the map has damaged the "flow" of environmental combat to a certain degree. But that isn't the only factor. It also has to do with how the lattice system works and the community itself.

Simply put... It's a can of worms that I'm not going to open up or try to address in this thread. Because it would take a drastic and monumental amount of alterations to "fix" it. And even then, the players would have to adjust to such changes.

You cannot give players a highly lenient system and then suddenly take it away...

It's like giving someone a motorized scooter and rather than walking around, their muscles begin to atrophy from lack of use. And after the atrophy sets in, you cannot simply take the scooter away. The convenience is there to facilitate ease of gameplay. Because in this day and age, the community won't "toughen up" to overcome harder hurdles. Most players will just quit the game and play something else.

That's just how people are these days.

Well, if you look at the battle royale playerbase, you'll notice a lot of hot droppers... who practically stare at loading screens 4x longer than playing the game, and they somehow enjoy that...

Maybe it WOULD make more sense to put some more space in between spawns at bases, but give the logistical vehicles more power, or at least more hp and a higher redeploy radius to make up for it...

I don't expect DBG to be like "oh yeah, let's just change the dynamic of the game because of a forum post" but y'all are right about redeploy being more of a nuisance... maybe prioritizing big bases as all the hard spawns in the game, and then buffing sunderer/lodestar utility and health.

From my understanding, the reason why redeployside came back, was to reduce strain on servers, so maybe just having less hardspawns in the game would reduce strain on servers too.

Sounds like a great speech for Planetside 3. JS.

I personally like simple graphics much more than detailed. But the issue here is that without good lighting the game looks absolutely repulsive, unbearable to look at because something is wrong with the textures, colors and picture in general. The lighting is what saves it. Planetside 1 graphics from 2003 are more appealing than Planetside 2's with the lower settings.

I have always wanted the devs to lower the details and try standardizing the graphics to where there aren't any advantages gained with lower settings and the difference is not as extreme. So there will be little to no reason to changing it.

When they introduced the new team, the graphics designer I though that they were going to remake the 3D models including community ones, so that there are minimal details in shapes, and make it so texture's resolution on each model matches visually, do their best to improve the game's performance and while doing so play around with in game graphics settings to see what will make it look best. Basically clean it up but no, instead they were working on Sanctuary which causes my computer to explode -60 fps, testing the games capabilities I guess, and then decide to implement a base like that on Esamir, like as if sanctuary was a good design.

What you said is true about how the majority plays on lower graphics.
And this is something I don't understand. When you look at old games, with like very weak lighting, shading, models, textures it actually turns out to be pretty sharp, clear and very nice to look at.







But over here you can clearly see something is very wrong (these are not the worst graphics). For example look at the soldier in the corner with simple green camo, one texture is stretched out, then the helmet is high resolution, for some reason it is filled with all these detailed 3d shapes, same with the weapons, unnecessary shapes, then you look at the background, the buildings have simple shapes, and baked textures which look hideous without shading, and then again stretched out textures...Everything is wrong. This is what I mean by how the lighting saves the picture.

When you look at the older games the details are simple, just what is essential to give you a good image. But in PS2 it is trying to like forcefully show off its capabilities, high details, with its engine and save the image with good lighting.
Or look at the ground... If you were to do something like that to the battlefront 2 screenshot, instead of the surface just being a concrete texture with some paint on certain areas, imagine how it would look if there was an attempt to forcefully add in detail by making it concrete slabs....You would see all these lines all over your screen, it would look terrible.

This is the situation we have here. The majority of players in PS2 play on the weak graphics, we need simple designs, but no, the devs go to the next level, which absolutely hampers performance BTW. Each new item that the game receives my FPS drops.... I am not joking.

The devs could have been working on redoing some assets as I mentioned, making it so there are minimal shapes, implementing it to the new continent Oshur while it was being created to see how it would look as a second project for testing new graphics and visuals, with much better performance for everyone. And with improved performance it would probably allow them to work on some new mechanics or improve some aspects like animations (perspective on player hip firing, getting down, etc.), special effects to improve the immersion, the explosions right now look like farts, maybe add the feature that PS1 seemed to have were your secondary weapon showed on your back, it looks very cool. But no, Oshur -30 FPS, nothing solved.

I think the art work both above and underwater, has to be some of the best art work ever produced in the game to date. Same goes with the Shattered Warpgate on Esamir as well.

Now for the hammer, they are beautiful, but so many flaws in game design are surfacing. Vehicles are way to dominant, fights get choked up at key locations and some locations there are no fights at all, but it sure looks beautiful.

The work for Oshur is incomplete and same goes for Esamir, the boats for instance seemed cool but horribly implemented and serve no basis without bases and land battles with infantry. Let’s face it, ground pounding is where it’s at. They need to ditch construction sites as they don’t work and go back to traditional base designs.

I agree, this game has had it's share of white elephants. I've said this before in game and I'll say it here: Prior to Wrel this game was coasting to a stop and without him the death of PlanetSide 2 would be yet another reason to hate the year 2020. That said, for all his drive his judgement is laughable. He may not know what the steering wheel does, but at least he found the gas pedal ffs.

The game changed my graphics settings to low for some reason, made other settings high or ultra and I decided to go with it.
The performance was still unstable so Shadows had to be turned off. And later Flora had to be turned off as well because of the massive handicap it causes as the majority does not have it.

But I have noticed something very strange... Why does every object look like it's made out of clay with a high degree of glossiness to it?
Every object is so shiny, light is being reflected an awful lot on all. And except the ground every object looks like it's made out of clay. Glossy clay.




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I played this battlefield 2 (2005) mod and visually it looks much better. I don't understand what's going on in Planetside 2 to make it look how it does.



Like everything looks more normal, I don't know how else to say it. You don't see any material reflecting light like crazy. A little bit of glossiness is added to metals, like the hull of a military truck for example.
Oh and here is another thing I don't understand....Look at this.



There are literally 1000 trees on this map. Planetside 2 would blow up if it were to have this many trees, it would not be able to run this..... And worst of all this battlefield 2 game from 2005 runs super smoothly, you can face any direction, run into a smoke grenade, etc. ... there are no lag spikes.
On Oshur I face some directions and my fps drops by 30. Battlefield's sound effects are better, it's animations are better, SFX.

How come a game from 2005 runs this well. What all is slowing down Planetside 2, when comparing it to the battlefield 2 game?
It's not the map for sure, there are 8x8km maps in the battlefield 2 game and much more detailed, there are some maps which are entirely towns. It's not the player count, at the start of the match when 50 players spawn on a single locations no lag spike, SFX, sounds effects and animations are better in the battlefield game.

My hats off to them to try something new, but much of the map work feels unfinished or unrefined. Using construction bases for capture points was always a horrific idea.

Shattered Warpgate was in my opinion the best artwork they could have ever put into the game to date, but why didn’t they put it in the center? Such great areas like the forests and no fights. Such great sections of Esamir and bases taken out that should have never been taken out in the first place. Oshur and water fights face the same challenge.

Unfinished, just like everything else. Every part in PS2 feels like as if enough was done to make it just playable and that's all.

Ye it's kinda odd that Hossin gets A LOT of trees & that doesn't lag the server when everyone with weekend pop is around Nasons. With all those Hossin trees. The average part, is how Hossins trees are mostly used for vehicles to drive around or once awhile put a router at the branches & that's it. Maybe some pilots have some trees to swerve around, meh. Hossin's trees are near pointless & are just for styling the map.

Yet where are all these USEFUL TREES, since hossins trees are useless for infantry? Their aren't any, name me one region with many trees that effectively cover infantry a lot & is actually a area to fight at for infantry prolonged fights? Trees the height of infantry or taller, or trees you're able to use ladders to climb. Trees with leaves that hang down or fall entirely hiding infantry mens shoulders & knees. Where is that tree & bush given field fight? I wouldn't be able to name you one region, where tons of infantry are hiding around tall bushes.

The only area that is near to this example, was the Shattered Warpgate Purple Tree area & those fights since they were at some random corner of the map, they only lasted since launch phase. & shattered warpgate was too much about ant gameplay. So essentially require a field fight, that isn't about Ant's, that's not about vehicles, that isn't about generic point holds, yet has some outdoor grass based field events to capping a region. That isn't just some A point thrown out into a open field of grass, like how Oshur has grass A points, too open, no cover, not enough trees, boulders, bush, or trench.

Why did players like running on the rock bridge, maybe the rock bridge has better boulder to boulder fights than Oshur has had so far. Pommel Gardens layout is ok however, above average area. Requires something else special, tho still okay. Pommel Gardens is better than Mirror Bay. Mirror Bay is just a stupid bland tower, get rid of Mirror Bay, towers don't belong for Oshur, not at all.

Give Oshur a ton of Pommel Garden boulder formatiions, that lead to a treehouse wooden bridge fight. that leads to a double stacked from bridge fights, that leads to a waterfall tunnel underwater fight, that leads to a Purple tree outside field fight, that leads to a Farmers wheat field 20 foot tall wheat field fight, that leads to a WW1 Trench mortor bunker verse trench area Uboat D day invasion french line siege warp event area. Then tons of fog & kelp, more nighttime time, & other capture the base modes than just king of the hill always.

Then help all new players 2.0 with 48vs48 narration guide videos & wa la you have more new players & better field fights.

So there's no regions for Infantry to effectively hide around 20 bushes. No regions where more than 2 or 4 trees at a time hide infantry. Barely any vines that hide infantry besides some hossin vines which are more like roots & I'm talking about leaves that hang down to cover infantry not much of that. No trenches for infantry field fights. No tall grass. No Rock bridge. No farm style wheat fields from Intersteller to hide infantry. No cover whatsoever for infantry field fights, besides a random log of boulder space by 40 yards to the next boulder.. & ALL the bushes barely hide a Infiltrator who's crouched & invis.

" Tho how will the tanks get to the thick jungle? " Who cares. Just make proper jungles first. Focus on Infantry fights & who cares about vehicles. Prioritizing vehicles over infantry, for field fights, is how you get Oshur, which is just 3 lanes of platau's mostly favoring vehicles since the lanes are so open & each island has like 3 bushes, 3 trees, & 3 boulders for infantry to use.

I was telling the guys when we were talking about wanting Vietnam or Iwo Jima. That Oshur is modeled after Mediterean Islands. Other known as islands with darker dirtier sand, gritier beach heads with broken machine gun bunkers, lots of debri, busted ships on land, jungles with vines to use a machete to cut the vines. Personally since all the Oshur " Base " fights turn into some hallway spawn camping shootout. Then yes, I would prefer Vietnam dense infantry jungle fights, over a hallway base fight.

Perhaps the water makes Oshur lag more, if more trees are added, since Hossin doesn't have water, I don't know. Or maybe they should keep Oshur how it is, fix some links for underwater fights, make the map half underwater fights. & then make a whole new smaller map. Or medium sized map, for entire tree to bush jungle gorilla warefare.

I suppose people want DeathMatch & Captruee the Flag & other game modes for Jungle Tree Bush Wheatfield Infantry Trench Bunker Fights with lots of piles of leaves around to hide & sneak.

P.s. Hossin would make sense if they turned those trees to Treehous events & started giving wooden walking bridges with nets, to every tree. The bases that are tech treehouses, like floating patios near the trees, those fights for some reason always bore my allies & nobody stays for long or they leave after getting the base. The regular treehouse design is average. Essentually allows defenders to just camp the top patio & shoot any attacking jumping from the jumpad. Simply isn't a interesting enough treehouse patio end result.

Honestly the nearest to a Wookie tree themed base that is good, would be Shrouded Skyway. & the fights there don't last long enough. & the Scarfield Reliquary is a good base type to give to Oshur.

Honestly while were at it, I'd give Oshur some more mountain bases as well. Or just generally more mountains for Oshur, that aren't ledges, have easy path roads, yet still are mountains.