Ok, so, I'm doing one of these missions where I must defend a harvester machine and together with my teammates we are just sitting there, doing nothing, occasionally we get bored, start throwing grenades at each other, use the tanks turret to toss each other up...And after a short duration we get the paycheck, is this some hidden message? The Campaign, same nonsense, collect this, that, inspect. Firstly you can't roleplay with this. Secondly what's its purpose? If you look for the definition of roleplay in google you get this: "One who assumes or acts out a particular role." "Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development." It's a war, Some reactor blew up, who gives a crap? We are playing out as the soldiers, not scientists. The written narrative is the war, the separation. The players are supposed to play out their role based on the written narrative. The role playing aspect was already there, it only needed to be improved by innovating the factions, but you BUTCHERED IT, YOU BUTCHERED IT, YOU BUCHTERED ITT!!!! You removed the role playing aspect and added trash you....
Instead of having a fetch quest parade they could have made a PvE mode for a whole 12 people squad (no matter the faction) on a small map like Koltyr with different objectives. Having a Co-op mission fighting against rogue NS bots for example, or any other scenario that fits the lore. Heck, imagine the NS operatives being played by other players (with disadvantages to balance out the numbers) could even be a funny mode. Following along the missions with an actual story line rather than just some flavour to justify doing the same stuff as always would have been a better option. As motivation they could hand out special cosmetics, equipment and such stuff for completing that - or make it a source of A7 or ISO4 in a balanced way to keep enough people interested to let it stay afloat. From a technical standpoint it wouldn't be that hard to implement in theory when using instances for this (I don't know a lot about coding, so... no clue how easy that would be actually)
I feel like the campaign was... ok. It wasn't anything stellar, and it had a huge bevy of issues (camping campaign areas, certain missions requiring you to go to Esamir which wouldn't always be open) but I liked it's character, particularly FL-34. Terrible as the crate mission was, the bridge jumping optional was neat. If only it rewarded you for it. Then again, I only played the 3rd part, having rejoined in between the 2nd and 3rd parts, and evidently they learned their lessons about the fetch quests when the carrots failed to make a return. But this was evidently their first try. Planetside has lore, but its rarely touched upon outside of external media and aesthetics, and this setup has interesting potential. However, I do believe the next time they try a campaign, they should definitely take lessons from other games elsewhere - more focus on story, less on menial busywork. People liked reclaiming vehicles, and as a story idea the shattered warpgate is a decent excuse to rework the map, but people despised carrots, and I certainly hated having to wait to do missions because Esamir wasn't open during the times I play. I also hated getting ganked while just trying to do the crate mission or fly to the Warpgate. I had to drive a Wraith Flash all the way to the campaign objective more than once. Additionally, more voice acting. Having NPCs only spout a scant few lines and forcing us to read random text isn't likely to engage people. It's also very odd given how often we get yelled at in game by our CO's yet of the NPCs, only FL-34 has more than one or two lines, and they're all to ask if you want implants. He's superflous as a vendor anyway, as are a couple other ones, since his interface is literally part of the menu. The devs were able to get SOME voice lines for the campaign, despite the current pandemic - why couldn't they get more? God knows video game voice actors need to be paid more. As for "role-playing"... yeah I got nothing. Faction exclusive campaigns would be really cool, but that would take a lot of work and time (getting voice actors in, designing encounters, creating solo instance maps so you don't have to worry about other players, etc). Removing much of the busywork and making these objectives mean something would be excellent - like the last trip to the north-east of the map, the last step of the crate mission (terrible as it is, it was unique as far as objectives go), and the step of the "find Foster" mission where they dropped an orbital on him! That was very cool. However: Gotta disagree with you on that point. A whole WARPGATE went up in flames. You know, those super essential points of access for an entire empire onto a continent? That's kind of a big deal. Also, having us investigate is the only way for such a campaign hook to work - if we are just sent to shoot more people and do nothing else, how is it any different from the default gameplay? Worthless as they may be, at least the fetch quests are different gameplay, at least. And it gave them an excuse to rework Esamir, which everyone hated! Granted, they totally borked it up and Esamir is still considered by many to be the worst continent, but gotta give them points for at least trying. Not much that can be done now anyway, so might as well live with it until Esamir whatever-point-zero. ------------------- I'm probably in agreement with you on the worth of the Harvest missions. Defend an objective for however long for... a chunk of exp. On the plus side, Its the easiest way to get Blue rarity rewards, filling out my Implant collection, since doing Valkyrie/Galaxy transport kill assists is torturous and Platoon leading requires you to... well, have access to a platoon. Free weapon/implant rewards need to be way more common, as do A7 rewards. Missions also need to be telegraphed for newer players more, and they need more interesting objectives. The latest batch has made it a bit more interesting, but they aren't enough to make me do more than the easiest of missions. Heck knows the Message Delivery or Tower missions aren't worth the pittance they give you. I'm also gonna disagree with you there. No role playing aspect was removed - because there was none. Before this campaign was added, the written narrative was entirely backstory, with little snippets of info on current times and only the empire choice and voice chat lends itself to role playing. The "written narrative" you describe of war and separation only factors into what exclusive stuff you have, how you look, who is yelling in your ear about capture progress, alert ending, etc. and how the community views their platoons. E.g. you're a lot more likely to get Communism and Empire references in a TR platoon, and so on. This game has been solely multiplayer focused, and role-playing is sadly exclusively limited to that sphere. Even after the campaign was added, it has barely done anything. You were just a hired hand, doing nonsensical tasks for Nanite Systems. As someone who played part 3 on two different empires, the only difference was in the wording of some text, who you were sent to speak to for certain missions (all of whom barely do anything otherwise) and what music plays when you complete or turn in missions. Its a prototype, intended as a selling point and to give more meaning behind an map redesign than "we redesigned a map because it needed to be". The only thing they butchered was the very campaign they added (that and Esamir). There is still hope for superior role-play opportunities, we just need to make sure THEY KNOW WHAT WE WANT. Yelling angrily rarely gets us anywhere unless a lot of people do it, and judging by the changes after the previous chapters, they are listening at least a bit. They need to listen more, but its a start. ------------------- The NS Ops would HAVE to be players. Setting up AI like that would require a lot of work, and it would likely just be lazy, static AI. Think an enemy team made of nothing but Spitfires, because creating intelligent AI in a game as buggy as 9 year old Planetside is asking for a coding disaster. Additionally, they would have to implement a matchmaking system to ensure proper balance. If nobody ends up playing the mode, they would have to ensure the teams were even.
Yeah, this ties in with other problems this game is suffering. I hate to admit this about a game I love, but PS2 is dying. While Wrel may not be a good pick to lead the game, he was the best candidate available out of a pool of 1. Without Wrel this game would have closed down entirely. The trouble is that Wrel's true passion is obviously RPGs, and PS2 isn't the game he wants, it's the game he's stuck with until he can get something better. That's why his content doesn't fit, he's trying to turn PS2 into the game he wants to dev for, rather than accepting it as the game it is. There is a similar problem with the containment sites. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that in a vaccum the containment sites wouldn't be bad arenas for an FPS, but they have no place in Planetside. This is likely (IMO) because they were designed by someone who knew he was on the way out, and was using his final time on PS2 to build something that would make a good resume for whoever was going to hire him next. If it didn't mesh with PS2 whatsoever, meh, not his problem.
The missions are for the most part dumb, some downright ********, but they add a relatively easy way for new characters to get certs, boosters and implants. The campaigns were the afterglow of the mindfart called PS Arena I guess. I disagree that the game is dying, as there's still no good free to play alternative out there. It will actually die when we leave.
Truthfully, the game got more pleasant for me when I started ignoring missions entirely. I found their checklists bothersome and arbitrary, and it felt bad that following them often meant I was doing my team a disservice by not being what we needed locally.
A great step forward would be adding actual shooter mechanics into the game. The gunplay reminds me a bit of the 3D Fallout games - a bit too much NERF gun esque. Range, damage and accuracy could use an update to make it more a shooter rather than an action RPG
^ This! The number of times I've had to intentionally play in a dumb way because I'm close to the end of my night and have finished a mission yet...rrrgh! An example would be the heavy. HA is just not the efficient way to kill vehicles. Therefore I often haven't achieved the damage credit for the launchers by the end of a night. Therefore instead of pulling AP Lightning to kill that Sunderer, I'm pulling flashes to get close and deci them because I NEED 4 MORE TICKS OF LAUNCHER DAMAGE DAMMIT!
Shows how clueless the devs are about their own game - they don't even seem to acknowledge that the dedicated AT unit is actually the worst option to deal with vehicles
Daily Missions add player retention. It's a short term, short time investment boost to progression that rewards players for logging in. It's also a source of ISO and A7, and a way to teach players how to play the game by doing things they wouldn't otherwise do. It's one of the campaign's best additions, albeit yes some of the missions are boring.
That may be true, but past br15 when the missions swap from the beginner pool to the standard pool, they can be awful to complete, and they are a frankly horrible source of A7 and ISO-4 (ISO rewards are a pittance, A7 rewards are both rare and hard to do in the case of NSX Eval). And lastly... they're barely telegraphed. A new player has to go looking for them, and won't necessarily understand them since, surprise, there isn't a tutorial on them. They certainly could use at least a tutorial segment for new players...
