Kinda, a little... wow?

I played to around level 8 over the past few days. New player to the game and intrigued by the concept. I generally don't buy into subscriptions for a game unless I really like the game as most sane people would do. Either I'm exceptionally bad at FPS, much worse than I've ever been, or these starting weapons are total garbage.

I joined VS and I've played all the roles as much as I can. I've learned that the only 2 things I can do reliably is Heal/Revive people as a medic or repair random things and drop ammo packs while I hide in the room we are defending.

I can unload almost entire clips of most weapons into people and not kill them. Sometimes they are in the red, sometimes I barely take out their shields. Using the default "sniper", I shot someone in the chest 5 times and they didn't die. They killed me with some rifle. It wasn't a huge range cause frankly the rifle sucks at that.

Is it just me or do starting weapons suck? I feel as if there is a MASSIVE difference in killing potential between me and most enemies I encounter. The only time I can really kill anything is when I'm in a vehicle turret. Doesn't last long because there's always seemingly twice the enemies against me.

The only way I can earn certs is to tag targets with the "sniper" and hope a teammate kills them, pray that my heavy launcher hits my target and hope someone kills it, fix things, heal things.


I was kinda hoping this would be more like the gameplay in UT2004's Onslaught [with obvious exception] game mode but it's more like World of Warcraft meets Call of Duty.

Everyone, and I mean everyone seems like they can just kill me with absolutely no effort after I've already started shooting them first, doesn't matter which weapon, and I know I'm not a terrible aim.

Tips so that I can get certs without grinding my face along the dirt healing and repairing?

By right, this shouldn't happen.

Here's some advice: go to VR, and try shooting at dummies to get a feel of what it takes to kill a target.

Try hipfire as well as ADS/aimed fire.

I suspect you are missing most if not all of your shots due to low FPS/etc

1. Find a Biolab
2.Be a MAX
3.Kill everything in sight
4.Profit

I always use my sights when firing unless the enemy is point blank range or to adjust my aim [which doesn't really happen that often]. My FPS is good. I don't notice any skips unless the entire server is lagging like that serverwide DC last night.

I can hear the tick of ever shot I hit them with and the only kills I ever manage to get are on people around 20 and a lower in level.

I assure you, my aim is plenty accurate enough to kill people. It shouldn't take an entire clip every time with most hitting the target to kill someone let alone 5 sniper shots to the chest and still not kill them... should it?

with my LC3 Jaguar, while going for the head, I can bag 3-4 HAs per magazine easily one after the other. for a 143 dmg weapon, it's a 7 shot kill for all bodyshots, 4 shot kill for headshots.

you're doing something very, very wrong...

i can't help you, it's like a guy calling an auto repair shop saying "my car won't start but everything is working perfectly i swear"

Many of the enemies you are shooting probably have NAnoweave armor. It's a Suit Slot upgrade on your infantry page that gives % resistance to small arms fire. Almost everyone who's above level 10 has it at Rank 4, which grants 16% resistance. Combined with the likelyhood of encountering enemies who are Heavy Assault, who have the Overshield ability to grant them even more health (or resistance, depending) can sometimes be difficult to kill if you do not aim for the head.

IF you're on VS, the starting weapons for most of our classes are decent, especially the HEavy Assault's Orion LMG. It's a Close Range only weapon, for the most part, so its good for indoor battles primarily. Otherwise, stick to support classes to try and rack up cert points for a while til you get more comfortable with the combat.

Also try to see if you can get into gunner seats of random vehicles during open field combat. That can be a nice way to get some shooting practice; just don't shoot EVERYTHING you can possibly see, especially if it's far away. Your driver may be trying to sneak up on some enemies, and you could be giving the position away.

Hey Shineko, firstly, welcome to Auraxis. We hope you enjoy your stay here.

The default weapons are not garbage. The dev team has done an excellent job with making weapons "sidegrades" within each category. If you aren't familiar with that term, it means that stats on each weapon are balanced and tweaked to be "better" in certain situations but not better in "every" situation. One weapon may fire slower but do more damage per shot. Another may fire faster but do less damage per shot, and on and on. The default weapons are not always "good in general" and some are actually specialized to a niche. The default Orion LMG for the heavy assault is very dominant in close-to-mid ranges, for example, but you'll still die easily to a shotgun or SMG. There are weapon types that you do not get for free, and investing in them will give you more ways to engage and come out on top.

Other than a small anomaly with ammo upgrades for some weapons ("high velocity" ammo kills better at range, and "soft point" ammo kills better within a certain shorter range) there are no certifications or mods that make your infantry weapons do more damage. There are, however, a few ways that your guns will do less damage. For instance, equipping a suppressor, as you might have done on your sniper, will decrease the rifle's damage. Generally, the problem you are encountering with not being able to kill as easily as you are being killed can be attributed to all of the certs the other players have already gotten that you have not had the opportunity to unlock yet.

Nanoweave armor gives better resistance against small arms like rifles, pistols, etc. If you hit someone with a body shot and they have Nanoweave, they will take much less damage. There are five levels of Nanoweave armor, and if you were to encounter someone with level 5 equipped, yes, they will take longer to kill.

Additionally, if you are fighting a Heavy Assault, there are a few different varieties of shield that the Heavy class can use. Without going into too much detail, the shields either provide an "overshield" benefit that must be shot through before the Heavy will take health damage, or increase their resistances to damage so that your weapons do significantly less damage to them.

Lag, ping, and clientside hit detection will also mess with your perception that "They still killed me even though I got the jump on them". This is perfectly normal, and as you continue to play (we hope!) you will adjust to this.

I hope this was somewhat helpful, and if you happen to be playing on Mattherson VS, let me know and I may be able to help you out.

It's a learn to play issue on your behalf. I've used the starting weapons of all three factions extensively and can easily say they are more than capable. Their strength is also their weakness though - they are all-purpose weapons made to be decent at everything - after all these are the only guns you have when you start. Every other gun has some area where it shines, and thus others where it should not be used at all.

Best advice for you is this:

Get off the forums and stop whining. Instead, spend your time getting to know your weapons. If you want to know how the weapons operate and what attachments are available and such, go to VR training. This can be found in the warp-gate, at the continent console in the middle, by pressing the "VR training" button down at the bottom.

In there you can get a feel for recoil, aim at targets at varying ranges and measure how many shots it generally take, what attachments are available and what they do etc. etc.

After that I would advice you go find some small to mid sized battles where it's not to intense and the tank and air forces shower the area in explosions and 200 snipers compete to kill you. Then try your weapons out in live combat.

Everyone does poorly at the start, and everyone that press on and try to improve does better as time goes on and their skills and know-how get's better. Not everyone complains on the forums however.

NW5 is basically 1 more shot, and HA overshields are pretty weak.
Don't think that's the reason for what OP says. 1 full clip while ADSing cannot possibly be survivable by any infantry unit short of a max.

Remeber what this guy just said. Default weapons are FAR from garbage, and are more than often in the top 3 choices.
Orion LMG: This thing is a monster. 0.75x ADS speed on a LMG is a significant advantage, not mentioning the insanely fast reload.
T9 CARV: Another monster. Trades away 0.75x ADS speed for much, much longer reload and 50 more bullets per mag.
NC6 God SAW: Mother of all monsters. 2 headshots and 1 bodyshot = 1 kill. Super accurate. Underrated.
and so on and so forth.

No, the starter weapons do not suck, the majority of weapons in the game are truly just sidegrades of them. It takes roughly 8 bullets to kill somebody with any weapon youre using, the default VS sniper is a semi auto, 2 heat shots or 3 body shots kill, 4 body if its a fully certed heavy with a shield up.

This game is just a tad less forgiving for noobs than most out there which is why youre having problems, you actually have to have situational awareness and semi decent aim, weird for an fps i know.

Your experience with the game sounds pretty close to mine when I was starting out. Based on that, I can say that 20FPS isn't actually "good".

Though if your trigger discipline is horrible, you'll have been lead hosing the whole time and end up with a screen-wide COF.

The starting weapons really are not bad compared to the ones you can buy later (excluding sniper rifles the default ones suck unless your NC). Pretty much with how this game is you almost have to just accept that you going to die a lot and be cannon fodder for the first month or so of playing. Its just how it is.

in planetside 2, CoF is capped to very tight values and is a joke. Try looking at CS for example. Screen-wide CoF is an exaggeration. It'll rarely be larger than a few degrees.

I'll grant you the exaggeration for effect, but I think we have dramatically different definitions of 'few'.

Sadly, the starting VS "sniper rifle" is just a semi-automatic rifle, not really sniperish at all. Infiltrators have 100 less shields in exchange for a cloak.
PS2 weapons have bloom, recoil, etc. You have to control your fire. Go to the VR.
PS2 weapons are generally built for certain ranges, their difference lies in the damage per projectile, projectile velocity, and how much recoil they have. Longer range weapons only have better time to kill when used at range.
All the starters are going to close-medium range weapons.

I played UT2k4 Onslaught mode, trust me, PS2 is better (with the exception of PS2 not having the Leviathan, but we are supposed to be getting something called the Colossus soon).

ever full auto'd a weapon in CS?
then come back and spray a gauss saw and tell me it's not tiny

it's likely the starting weapon(s) don't fit your playstyle.

The starting sniper rifle for VS is a semiauto, but still has scope sway and generally requires multiple hits to kill even on headshots.

The starting LMG for VS is a high mobility "ADS" LMG, it has the advantage of being able to keep your move speed up when aiming but has some downsides in other categories.

et cetera et al.

As stated, I would experiment in VR until you find weapons that more fit your playstyle. Shoot the guns at targets at various ranges, while standing, while crouched, aiming down the sights, not aiming down the sights, and with various attachments.

That could be the case. I've always played semi automatic / bolt / 3 round burst weapons in games that have them. My element would be with the sniper as an infiltrator if the sniper could actually kill any target I hit in 2 or 3 shots. When they start jumping around and running back and forth, it's a pain to lead, esp with bullet travel time on low velocity weapons.

I'll try the VR.

100 certs or so and you can get a 1shot sniper rifle (headshot) , the beginning VS rifle isnt for bushwookies

After I started using NVIDIA's shadowplay features to dump videos of 'wtf' scenarios I have determined a few things:

A) If your reaction to an engagement is to aim down the sights and fire, you need to get good at waiting until you are sighted in before firing, or your cone of fire will start out blooming from the hip-fire cone which is way worse, and will never be given time to settle down to the iron sights cone which is super tight.

B) a surprising amount of time the automatic weapons will paint a silhouette on the wall behind your target, straight out of looney tunes. It's downright comical in replay.

C) A TR and VS max can kill you in the time it takes to fire 5 or 6 bullets from any automatic weapon, from a surprisingly long range, and assuming you already paid the time it takes to aim down sights.

D) Moving while while sighted will come with a pretty big accuracy penalty (a big deal for NC's 200 dmg SAW/Reaper/ACX11 guns and all the sniper rifles)

E) Lag can mess things up, as the game tries its hardest to hide network latency issues. I have a pretty nice video of someone killing me I never had line of sight on (I saw their shadow coming while I was resing and moved behind cover and got killed while he was behind a wall.

F) NC slug maxes have a cone of fire that is invisible due to the MAX HUD. Crouching matters, as does firing at not quite the fastest rate of fire in order for your cone to be as tight as it will get, and you can kill people at rather crazy ranges with them with some trigger discipline, practice, and lot of spare ammo.

You also need to learn how many bullets to burst with each gun, at each range. Not enough and you can leave someone standing while waiting on your cone of fire and re-aiming time, too many and you dont' leave enough for his friend.