Planetmans of the Forums - Help an ol' vet with not much of a mind left, make up his mind! Long version is long... So.... I started playing Planetside back in around 2005, not long after the release of Aftershock. It was my favourite game, and over time I stopped playing *everything* else to focus on Planetside - including the supposedly crack-like addiction-generator World of Warcraft. I loved it. I mained NC, but played all three factions - I wore my goggles proudly, and shoved my fish-hat on just like every other alien-fetishist. I played everything. I spammed my Lasher, corner-whored with my Jackhammer, sat in HART queues, hovered on water with my Magrider, pounded on doorways with my Prowler, earned my backpack and beret, sat in my AMS while directing full platoons, ran LLU's (both from the caves to bases AND from bases into the water), grabbed my biffer and spent far, FAR too much time on Cyssor. I particularly enjoyed the far-superior support play in Planetside 1 (RIP Engineering and it's sub-trees, Hacking and it's sub-trees, my Deliverer and my beloved Lodestar). I have dozens of wonderful memories of Planetside. Unfortunately, as with all good things, it came to an end. Numbers dropped, outfit members left, the Reserves program resulted in larger and larger numbers of hackers (either that or SOE's declining budget meant there were fewer and fewer support personnel to deal with them) and eventually I couldn't justify the subscription to myself... and after having three fully certed out characters, I just couldn't live with the restrictions of the reserves programme or the whole one-man-army-I-have-everything that the BR40 upgrade brought. So I moved on from Planetside. And then then I heard that Planetside 2 was coming. Cue the hype-train. I didn't want to be hyped. I tried not to be hyped. But I was totally hyped anyway. I started on Day 1, and I was constantly subbed from release in 2012 up until around early-mid 2018. No, I lie... I was unsubbed for about 3 weeks in 2017 because I was so angry about the "new" implants system, when they took everything away from us (and I had everything) and told us to literally buy it back from them. At that point, I was still playing, and I saw a Cmd. Cyrious video which pointed out that DBG (or, more accurately, it's money-grubbing filthy-capitalistic-******* possessors Columbus Nova) would only see a reduction in revenue as a reason to shut it down rather than as unhappy customers calling them to account in the only way they can (wallet-voting) and change their ways. So I resubbed, because I didn't want Planetside 2 to crash and burn. Anyway, that's about 5-ish years of sub in total. I've been away for just shy of a year-and-a-half now and have finally fallen to the persistent lure of Planetside 2. I've been playing for about two weeks now, and I'll probably keep at it for a while. But I feel really bad about being fully F2P at the moment. I firmly believe that if a game's worth playing, it's worth paying for. For an average player, the price of a PS2 sub is probably less than $1 / hour. For me, it's probably clocking in at 2c / hour! But here's the rub.... as much as I feel like Planetside 2 deserves my money, I'm equally sure that DBG (or, again more accurately) Columbus Nova certainly does not!! While we were paying our subs, DBG wasn't putting the money towards Planetside 2. It was going into their doomed attempt to leap onto the zombie-survival-shooter bandwagon. An attempt so horrendously late that H1Z1 (based on the craze kicked off by 2012's Day Z mod) was actually released in early-2018..... *after* the release of Fortnite (i.e. the next big thing) released in mid-2017. That's so late that it went free-to-play A WEEK AFTER LAUNCH - their flying leap to catch the zombie-shooter train missed so badly that the train had already reached the end of the line and was on it's way back before they leapt from the platform! And while H1Z1 probably wasn't a total failure, it certainly didn't have any staying power... So after blowing that PS2 money, they did it again. With Planetside Arena released just now in late-2019. They're not quite as late leaping onto Fornite's battle-royale train this time, but they've still missed it. And there's no denying it failed... and failed HARD. According to the Steam Charts (which admittedly are probably not a complete representation - but likely give a good indication as to the state of the PC-market) there were 1,481 peak players in it's first month (averaging 474). Now there's 143 peak and 25 average. And while H1Z1's peak-stats were undoubtedly higher (86k / 150k) it's currently sitting at peak 623 and average 288. For comparison, Planetside 2 released to a peak of ~29k with an average of ~16k and even now, 7-odd years later, it peaks at 1,856 and averages 1,098. to put that into perspective, Planetside 2's *current* performance is better than Planetside Arena's release performance! And miles better than both Planetside Arena and H1Z1's performance NOW. Columbus Nova took our Planetside 2 money and made H1Z1. It was meh, but they did OK-enough to make a second attempt at it. Again they took our Planetside 2 money and made Planetside Arena. This time it crashed HARD. What're they going to take our Planetside 2 money for this time? Another game? Just stick it in their pockets and say "**** it" until the servers are dead enough to shut down? That's my issue. I *want* to give my money to Planetside 2... I just don't believe that it's going to GO to Planetside 2, and I honestly see no reason to shovel it straight into the pockets of Columbus Nova, while they actively neglect Planetside 2 to death. Help me decide please....
I don't think you should continue to support the developers if you don't feel in strong support of them. Likewise, I really doubt much of the revenue is actually going into PS2 itself. Keep playing, not paying.
I agree with Campagne, Unfortunately any money you spend in PS2 will be flushed down the PS:A toilet, That game has almost killed the franchise, it's failure has caused mass layoffs, We barely have a dev team left (and one of them is Wrel...) So I really wouldn't bother wasting more cash on PS:A. It was dead on arrival and DBG will continue to throw your money onto the corpse instead of saving the currently living, but bleeding out PS2. Because what's better than one dead game? Two dead games apparently. Wreldone DBG...
Since the beggining of ps2 i always donated money for the game, since 2012 to 2019 i have spend huge amount of money in game, supporting dev's. Believing the game go into deep gameplay mechanics or bringing old gameplay from PS1. But if all the money really go to PS:A.... Well i'm sorry to say that, but i dont support the game with money anymore.
Thanks for the responses, folks. I also asked on Reddit, and their responses were pretty much the same. Certainly helps clear things up for me!
at the end of the day, whether you support the devs by investing cash or not, isn't going to change a thing. Like literally, your "whatever" euros isn't gona turn the game around and the lack of euros, won't be missed... I get why someone might want to support a cause, or a kickstarter, but man, this game is 7 years old, seriously... Spend cash if you want to, don't if you don't, it's that simple, but don't make the (common) mistake of believing that it'll change anything... Edit : did a bit of reading and some of you sound like this is a charity you're donating too ... you got cash to give? save a life, feed a homeless, jesus
i played PS2 on and off since the betadays .. wouldn´t call myself a vet by any means i´m just a novice player more or less .. but i gotta say i have yet to spend a penny on PS2 ... before it was for finacial reasons and later cause how flawed a number of things still are in PS2 be that gameplay or monetization .. so yea i for my part just merely play the game .. nothing else ...
There are plenty of us who would spend hundreds more if we saw a meaningful gesture from Daybreak. But right now it's sadly not worth investing in this train wreck of a company. Basically what everyone else is saying. Definitely play though.
The game has faults. But they clearly aren't bad enough to stop me from playing. So gaming (and currently this game in particular) is my hobby. I also have a job. So... I have no problem paying for my hobby. I'm getting enjoyment from it and my moneys worth. My current sub is good through January. I'll evaluate again then.