Koltyr and why it sucks

I've decided to check out the scrub zone with an NC and TR alt I got that I rarely play and what really blew my mind was what I saw going on there.

You know those air ****ters that pollute the main continents? The kind that like to farm infantry and all while flying around with the pro MLG pilot skills? I'm not going to doubt it is hard to learn to fly that good, but I'm not going to say its ok to see them take a DUMP in the kiddie pool.

They are surprisingly all over koltyr, and it isn't like they are on some equal playing field alt, they got their black scale camo, with their rocket pods, and ES anti infantry gun of choice like the skill hammer or PPC.

Now watching these scrubs run around trying to learn this game brings back memories. They try to shoot at tanks with their pistols/rifles and have no idea about switching classes or how to even talk to each other so they don't even know they can revive or repair anything.

But then here comes those big meanies in their decked out MLG ESF, obviously making a alt character on the same faction as their main character just to give these defenseless scrubs a bad day.

Now what I like to do is double down on flak with a max to end their reign of terror and kick them out of koltyr (because they literally stay there at br15 because no one can kill them)

However I really want to ask why this is ok?

You disable the use of MBTs, why are ESFs ok? This is a scrub learning zone and you allow the kings of ego make alts to just spend hours climbing from BR 1 to 15 over and over again in their ESF.

No one even has a lock on launcher in koltyr, no one can even defend themselves.



here is a picture of the average koltyr player

Alright so I shot one of those MLG sky gods down with duel flak and immediately he started screaming in /yell about how I'm a BR100 who I quote, "YOU ARE RUINING THIS GAME!" is what I was told. He typed up a lot, but it went as he feels he should be allowed to farm and kill scrubs with rocket pods all day without anyone killing him back. If anyone does, I guess that makes them a BR100 who is destroying the game and shouldn't be allowed to play.

Is this real life? Is the ego of pilots that great on this game?

First off, is YOUR ego that big? The ESF is a part of this game along with it's armaments and the newbs don't need to be coddled with carebear crap like you are suggesting. They need to learn to fear and respect enemy air, or get farmed. Every person who played this game started out as a clueless newbie and learned the game through playing it. Either they will get a clue or they won't but sheltering them will not help. Trust me, if you think ATG is bad now you should have seen launch time. Back at launch max level flak armour was like a 20% reduction and every explosive radius was 1.5 to 2 times larger. I didn't whine, I got on my grind and hit BR 100 eventually. If I can, so can they.

You came in here and proved my point. ESFs require skill, sure, but you are literally defending taking a dump in the kiddie pool.

That is some mighty ego pilots have, and to be honest, they deserve all the nerfs they get. I'm glad I can kill them with flak or homing missiles, infact I'm so glad every method to kill them is by buying weapons with money because you need this stuff as early as koltyr to fend off air ****ters from ruining the game.

Your argument is like saying because hackers can hack the game and developers dont do anything about them for months on end means that everyone should just deal with it and we don't need the carebear moderators people keep asking for. We should learn to fear and respect hackers, or get killed.

It is literal overkill to bring MLG air****ters into koltyr to farm scrubs, you have no way to fight them off, you can fight everything else because you come with the weapons required, but you don't have anything except for stagnant base defenses or an aircraft that requires you to be better than the pilot in question.

A good tanker is not immune to other tanks.
A good max isn't immune to other maxes.
However a good pilot may as well be a god and that is what is currently running loose in koltyr.

IN
KOLTYR

nope, just fantasy

Wow. Tear-fest.

So just like before Koltyr

Surely an easy fix for this would be to not allow players with something like more than 50 directive points (or another figure, that's just off the top of my head). As these are account wide it would be a foolproof indication of whether an experience player is just going there to farm.

It has one small problem, you can't get outfit leaders or officers in there to try and recruit people, as well as people that are willing to teach people the ropes.
It has its consequences and honestly, after seeing a line of engineers in their MANA AI turrets 60 meters away from the point, I somewhat feel they need a helping hand from experienced players

As i said in one of my treads, players presences in Koltyr should be set by their average KDr rather than BR.
That way MLG farmers will be spotted right off the spot and sent to the main game.

Without any noticeable advertising from DBG, I'm not sure if anyone on Koltyr is exactly new. But they could easily limit it by directive points as they seem to stick to the character. Ive met some "mlg" types that are far more interested in getting attention for themselves and if it's at the expense of new players than so be it. Which is an attitude in the playerbase that I've blamed for declining server pops even before Koltyr.

Those farmers aren't that skilled. I just went over to the Biolab, fixed up a Phlanx AA turret, and spent ages blowing idiot scythes and reapers out of the sky. It was damn satisfying, because A) They were causing hell on the ground, and B) I happen to be one of those new players. I don't have an AA launcher, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna enjoy myself by blowing those idiots up. I only stopped because we lost the base to the Vanu, at which point I relocated to Indar to man AA on Sundys instead.

C4. Problem Solved.

Remember the rule.

When in doubt. C4.

They dont need to take out ESF but limit Koltear to people who have STAR RANK less than 500. XD

The whole reason for Koltyr is to give new players a place to learn how to play the game without getting mowed down if they were playing on the 4 normal continents.

I don't hate to say it. You talk like a bully that insists that they aren't a bully but that the people that they are picking on deserve it (aka getting bullied).

Cap all the gear, weapons, and etc. to starting level while in Koltyr.
Don't allow any unlocks while in Koltyr.
Don't even allow a player to pay for cash unlocks until they are level 15.
In addition to this, it wouldn't be a bad idea for the DEVs to lock any account out of Koltyr that has played ANY faction in PlanetSide 2 for more than 24 hours game time <---- and I think that is being generous.

IT IS a starting area for NEW players.

You hit the mark, I didn't notice until someone pointed out that apparently those directive points carry across characters, and if you delete a character you still keep the directive points you got from them. So we have these MLG players trying to pad their directive points by deleting and recreating characters over and over again to farm directive points on scrubs.

Which is kinda pathetic, I don't know who places importance on directive points, I can understand unlocking directive weapons and such, but the points themselves mean nothing. Somewhere out there is a PS2 player with an existence that is only validated by blue digits.

Oh no I don't think they are hard to kill, but it was as I said earlier. The new players who are there don't even understand that they need to use weapons other than their primary to hurt some if not all vehicles. They don't understand to switch classes to fill the need of the situation. Some don't even know the F key does anything in this game, so you have this problem where they are very helpless.

You know you'll be surprised that new players try to play this game all the time, it is just that they can't get into it when they are literally slammed against experienced players without any idea of how the game works. They come in thinking this is call of duty or battlefield, and to be honest that isn't too far off. However this isn't exactly the same thing with the way controls work and how you have a selection of weapons and classes with abilities.

As the new creative director said, "New players commonly quit at around BR10" and that simply comes from the frustration of finding fights and getting farmed all day when they don't know what to do.

People are used to games holding their hands so firmly, and funny enough PS2 doesn't hold your hand worth a damn, it doesn't even give useful information or explanations for anything. You come in blind and you gotta make do with the **** that comes your way or you quit and call this game **** because you can't deal with it.

Planetside 2 for the PS4 is a disaster, and that means they spent 3 years working on a waste of time and effort. A casual game that can't even reach the casual audience that it was designed for. I worry that if this game can't at least bring people in and keep them they will not continue to support this game. PS4 port was like their death throes at trying to garner some sort of attention and it bombed, they should have focused on what this game was intended for, the PC audience and give it the polish and features it needs to not be a console game but a real PC exclusive.

First off you assume I'm a skyknight...I'm not. I rarely play ESF anymore because g2a has gotten so common that piloting one is simply frustrating 90% of the time. I play all facets of this game and if I main anything it's infantry. ESFs are rarely a threat to anything as they are easily chased away and are huge targets for literally everyone with a gun. And unless they have overwhelming air superiority they rarely do much beyond annoy a few people unlucky enough to be targeted.

Your hacking analogy is beyond laughable and that is as far as I will address it.

If players are too incompetent to read a couple of lines of text on various weapons and to use them accordingly I DON'T NEED THEM MUCKING UP THE MAINLAND. That's my whole point. If players are too lazy to repair an AA turret and use it, or use a free flak burster arm, or just shoot them with basilisks then they deserve to be farmed and frustrated. It's like a kid in school that refuses to study and yet expects to get good grades. That's not how the world works, nor is it how video games work.

Now that all being said, i'm fully behind a directive point limit on Koltyr to prevent this sort of thing as it's obviously a problem to allow non newbies on the newbie island.

Just make it so anyone with a Character on their account higher than BR15 can't enter it, if they want to make a new account thats on them, but at least they won't have any of their equipment.

Koltyr sucks because ingame tutorials don't work. Nobody jumps into a game and thinks, "I want to be led by my hand before I learn the ropes and play with others that know just as little."

No the average player is cockier than that. They believe they are god's gift to gaming. They're going to head to one of the major continents and try their hand. The only people who check out a tutorial are vets and semi-vets who are curious to see what they are like.

The best way to keep new players playing is to give us vets better tools to teach these players. Personally I like the idea of a Looking for Squad tool. Right now we can advertise squads. But players can't advertise themselves to squads to pick up. Its a bit intimidating to push P (if you know to do that) and see a list of platoons and squads and not know if they will be noob friendly or not. LFS would help that by allowing them to put their skill out there (displaying BR and certs spent) so that squads can pick them up.

I'm willing to wager that players are more likely than not to take a new player under their wing.

I've personally taken 4 noobs and trained them into vets. I have had 3 of them continue playing after BR20 and those three still play to this day. I've had a 75% success rate. Koltyr has had a 10%, and that is NOT a made up stat, but one Directly from the horses mouth:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside...ew_executive_creative_director_almost/cvu1trd

90% of players leave the game by BR10. 10% retention WITH Koltyr. Koltyr does suck. The stats show it, the Executive Creative Director even admits it.

Personally I think Koltyr should be removed from generalize play. Turn it into an instance where Outfits can have skirmishes. Maybe even pay DBC for the priveledge. But either way nothing can be done to 'fix' Koltyr. You can restrict by BR, directive score, keep the vets out entirely. But at 10% retention, you can't tell me that any fix to Koltyr will fix that retention rate.

Judging by my retention rates.. I think the players can do better than the devs. The players should step up and guide new players. I mean if you all are serious about it and not simply jumping on the hate big business bandwagon. I personally can retain 8x the rate of players Daybreak can with its coding. I'm sure some of you can do better.

I dare some of you to do better.

But Daybreak will need to help somewhat. Here's what I think they should do:

1. Better visibility of players' capabilities.

This is a big one. Too often we have 'hardcore' platoon and squad leaders that send their people into situations that their people may or may not be able to do anything about. It does no good telling your people to go medic without certed tools, anti air without lockons, and MAX crash without a cert spent in MAXes.

So how does a Squad leader know what he has? Well he has to ask, and that takes time. You think a full squad of 11 people answering the question at once.. well that gets hectic. So the fix is to allow Squad Leaders the ability to see what they have. Allow them to see the Battle Rank of his players. Maybe even allow them to inspect further and see what they have unlocked.

Allow outfit leaderships to do the same within their outfit lists. This way they can see what direction a new member is going and offer advice and guidance.

2. Looking For Squad (LFS)

Planetside 1 had this and when I saw it, I thought it was an excellent idea that should have carried over. LFG tools are in most MMORPGs and in a team oriented game like PS2, you'd think having one here would be a no brainer. I mean I like the squad recruitment, but that only goes halfway.

What I'd like to see for both noobs and vets alike is the ability to advertise yourself a solo player looking to join a squad. You get to select your preferred classes and even set a note saying what you'd like to do or join. Imagine you are an ESF pilot that just wants to provide CAS to a squad. Well you want to join a squad that wants to use you.

I'd even go so far as a Squad could go Looking for Platoon. Say you've got a squad of buddies and you just want to join a larger group, this would be a great tool for those public platoons to increase their capability.

The point of all this, is the easier you make grouping, the stronger the bonds form between players. And this makes new players stick around. A new player can handle a .25 KDR if he thinks his efforts are with a team. They'll eventually get better and they'll see their own progress.

But more importantly they'll see that making friendships and teammates will make them part of something bigger that they want to be apart of.

3. Better visibility on trials.

You damn near have to be on the final page before you even see the Trial pop up. Trialing weapons should in my opinion be so visual as it has its own page. In addition the restriction of 30 minutes once per day needs to be lightened up. Allow players to trial one weapon of every type every 8 hours. 30 minute time limit is fine, maybe allow members 45 minutes.

But how it should work is every 8 hours you should be able to trial an infantry weapon. A ground vehicle weapon, a ground vehicle secondary, air vehicle weapon, and air vehicle secondary (3rd and 4th weapons count as secondaries). Could this be abused, using a certain weapon once or twice a day in situations? Sure... but thats the beauty of it. Allow it to be abused and people will want to use it even more, means more likely to purchase.

But more importantly a new player doesn't feel like trials are a limited resource. But an actual ability to test drive things. In fact I may even suggest an even more lenient restriction. Every weapon can be trialed once a week. So if you trial a certain weapon, you can't trial it again for a week, but once its trial is up, you can immediately trial something else.

VR is great. But it doesn't give new players the insight that it gives vets. Only experience will do that. Again sure.. it can be abused.. let it be. Eventually the person abusing trials will get hooked on a weapon they like and just outright buy it.


Those are three things I think Daybreak can do right now with very little effort other than UI changes and interactions. But even with the ease it would take planning, design, implementation, and testing. We're still losing 9 out of 10 players that try the game. And that doesn't count the number of vets we lose for various other reasons.

So.. before those changes happen, if they ever do, if any changes happen at all, whatever they are. The players need to get together and do something. I think it should start with the outfits. You guys are already organized, how much effort would it take to simply change up your missions to find and guide newer players? They're not too hard to find, look for those without titles and camos around warpgates.

Make sure your people know when they send them tells that those players may not know how to respond and be ready to instruct them how to respond. Of course not all will be receptive to such, but if you can help just one person out of ten stay in the game. You have DOUBLED the number that are staying.

That's huge. And I don't think it would be that much work.

The devs can help us keep PS2 afloat. But it will take squads, platoons, and outfits to actually do it.

From this line, I personally have been throwing tips and advice while I spend my time on Koltyr, on Emerald. It's kind of that fuzzy feeling, seeing your team become better and better and the enemy repeatedly flank you again and again, and this is from a pubby standpoint.

'course, there's still the couple spoiled cherries, blueberries, and grapes from the entire harvest, but I like to think I'm doing a pretty good job teaching the newbies.