Let's play Devil's Advocate for a bit...

So, lots of hubbub about the forums of late. There have always been the Armageddon-mongering nay-Sayers who think the game is about to spontaneously combust. I'm rather of the opinion that the game will bounce back eventually, as soon as all our lost sheep get bored of their current games and inevitably come back to PS2. I've seen this from RotMG, people all the time making dramatic "Omgz I quit, **** you all", then sheepishly returning with the proverbial tail tucked 3 months later...

But let's play Devil's Advocate here for a bit. What if PS2 is inherently flawed? What if from it's conception, PS2 was doomed to fail?


PS2 is admittedly, conceptually, a bit ambitious. One does not simply organize 6000 theoretical players at the same time.

We all know very well that PS2 was not executed very well from the start. But, what if it was? Can you simply not balance a game with over a thousand players on the same battleground? PS1 made it along pretty nicely, but there was still only a fraction of the PS2 playerbase in PS1. Is the population of PS2 simply too large? Even with an entirely new game engine, entirely new servers, large, well funded developer team, all the bells and whistles of an AAA developer team, would PS2 succeed?

Even if it could succeed, would it ever succeed to the degree that it was initially envisioned? With servers populated by 6000 players each, 2000 per continent?

Not saying I agree necessarily, just wondering what the Forumside thinks of this possibility.

In my honest opinion? I believe Planetside 2 was doomed to failure from the moment the first line of ForgeLight code was laid down. But, I don't believe it is ForgeLight that doomed it. Or the development team. Or any single point of contention in balance.

I feel it was the SOE/DBG corporate culture. In an over simplified way of saying, basically, the higher ups. In the more complicated sense, the entire structure existing above the development teams heads.

Unfortunately, SOE/DBG is operating with an out-moded corporate structure that does not react well to the current gaming market. Lets face facts - the current digital content consumer expects a rapid tempo of development and patching. This is a standard that has been set by the AAA industry (NHL Madden Hoops ^999, Battle of Callfield 44) and reinforced by the more successful independent developers on steam who push out guaranteed weekly/monthly patches.

Planetside 2 tried this when it first launched - the weekly patches - but there was something. Something in how the company is run, or how they interact with their engine, how changes are decided on... SOMETHING that required this be pushed back to monthly. Then to "when we have something".

I understand Planetside 2 is not a small game, and the codebase is no doubt staggering in size, however you can't argue it is a lack of developers. There are independent studios with games that are equally or more elaborate in terms of function, whose teams are equal in size or smaller, that maintain their schedules.

It certainly isn't talent. We know the people at SOE/DBG know how to code. The game wouldn't exist, in any form, otherwise. Quite frankly, they are also a business in an industry that considers base-line talent "dime a dozen". If someone really incompetent got into a position to delay development, they would be sacked and replaced.

So, really, all that is left is the culture. Smedly would make grandiose promises of the future, or what was happening, that the SOE/DBG community are familiar was just vaporware - but why? What happens between the head chair and the development team? How does that idea get battered around and eventually lost?

How can a development team that clearly has the talent - take so long to make simple fixes? Rubber-band balancing has killed much of this playerbase, and there is no discernible reason why balance passes take so long. Things are perceived as OP for too long, and then brought down too hard, where they then sit UP for too long.

Certainly they want to collect data, and not from the "shiny new toy" period where EVERYONE has one - but that is a month or two tops. Why couldn't they ever publish an official statement on how their balancing decisions are made? It would go a long way if they just drafted an official statement, and pinned it on the forums, basically saying "Hey guys. We try to release stuff balanced, but we can never test with as many people as are on live. Nor can we envision every possible way you will use it. We want to get good data however, and not just data from its peak of useage, so we will sit and watch it usually for 2-3 months."

As the saying goes, Talk is Cheap - and a 2-3 month promise shouldn't be hard to keep for something that amounts to a database change. The same could be said for new features.

We already know from RadarX that they basically can't speak on the official forums. So all the talk happens in unofficial channels - which many players don't know exist, don't check, or refuse to check. The official forums are devoid of actual developer feedback - and that is bad. They don't need to post in every thread - even just a monthly sticky from the head of development would go a long way.

So what does all this rambling come down to? It comes to the fact that there is some entity within the company, between the Top Chair and the Development team, that actually holds all the power - and is nothing more than the corporate version of the United States Congress. It is a place where good ideas and momentum go to die.

This is the place where the decisions are getting made that create the policies that result in a slow development and patching tempo. This is the place that puts out a restrictive corporate communication policy that stops their developers reaching out in their own official channels in any meaningful way.

And it is the place that will kill this game, and progressively, kill all of SOE/DBGs titles.

While it's a good read, and generally I'd agree with you more or less, my though on the possible impossibility of PS2 was more pertaining towards the idea of ensuring game balance with the massive quantities of players active at the same time.

To that specific point, I don't believe it is an impossibility. Just take the game as we have it as an example; despite how many players are in game, how many different weapons systems, and every possible combination of attachments - it is only ever three or four things that really get people riled up, and then, it is only actually one or two things that are over-preforming.

For all intents and purposes, even with the rubber-band balance, PS2 has been a success in terms of balance. In many regards, it has been more successful than PS1 - which struggled from its launch to its death with the balance of the ES Heavy Weapons.

Myself personally, I feel the balance could be done even better - and bring in more Empire "flavor" - by having an ES and NS version of EVERYTHING. You create your baseline using the NS weapon, and then your ES versions are balanced against this. In theory, if all the NS weapons are then balanced against eachother and the ES versions are balanced against them - you end up with a game that is balanced while retaining stark contrasts in armament choice. You also create a situation where Empire X's item Y might be better in a specific situation than Empire Z's item Y, but ultimately Empire Z has the NS version of item Y which should fill the gap in capability.

Things are intentionally released as OP because then people buy them.

The biggest problem with this game from day one is that the skill floor progressively increases as population decreases. Farmers farm, and the players (like myself) get to the point where we make no difference either solo or in a squad. This is what eventually leads to ennui with this game, farmers leave because there are no 'good' fights and the farmed leave because they eventually stop trying.

There is NO REAL way to fix this imbalance of skill without some exploitable loophole or that doesn't require immediate reinforcements that the player base can't or won't react to.

As for the OP'ness of an individual weapon system or class type; any weapon massed and used will appear OP. Simply because the synergy of so many using a single platform on a single or limited targets (Lancer squads for example) hit a critical mass and become one-shot kills. When people get one-shotted and only see that one player killed them the immediate reaction is that weapon or item is OP. Meanwhile really OP things (like medkits) are not looked at because they are generally only used effectively by a small number of people or people just figure they lost the fight because of luck or some other random thing in the environment.

There are always trade offs when a game is made, PS2 is no different. If I were to cite one thing that is endemic to PS2 it is the lack of of population control on a minute to minute basis. My correction would be to have one character that can be assigned to a faction based on population and levels as a single entity, this could be done simply by increasing cert gain if you buy ES weapons separately or by item or weapon type (Chain, LMG, Carbine) . There will always be over-whelming fights but at least one outfit logging on won't completely skew the population balance. Reducing the area of available contention might help too, simply making areas of a continent uncontestable based on population could help funnel fights to just certain areas of large maps thus creating better fights as continent pop increases more areas of a continent become contestable.

The player base is self defeating. They make Koltyr for noobs and what does the player base do? Create alts to farm the noobs thus defeating the purpose. Granted I suspect most of Koltyr's pop was made up of alts. So no matter where new players go, they are up against people playing for three years. There are only a small percentage that stick with that type of environment. Most play a game because they feel they have a knack for it or think they can get good at it. So I'm not sure there is a fix DBG can implement. It's up to the player base to bring in and help new players.

Its a bit hard to fix PS2, since its become SoE standard practice to make short lived games that exist purely for milking purposes.
I assume they knew it was going to be short lived when they made it, and that may be part of why it doesent get much funding or support.
A bit hard to further develop a game when its run by a minimal skeleton crew.

It was probably doomed to fail from the start, but im guessing its going to be atleast 1-2 years of promises and money grabs.
Then im predicting that support will be cut and the servers be left up. Like PS1.
Anyway. Thats just my guess on what's going on.

As for all the doomsayer posts recently. Its probably just flavor of the month posts.
The GK whine seems to be passing, and now that Betelgeuse doesent have .75 ADS anymore they need something to post about.

This is part of it. Daybreak still thinks they're a large corporation and runs like one. When in fact they are a quarter of the size they used to be when they were Verant/SOE. They need to run like a Independant LLC as much as their parent company will allow. That's what allowed Blizzard to do so well with their games (prior to them becoming bigger). Eventually they bought themselves from their parent company.

PS2's team as well as DCUO, Landmark, EQ Next, and H1Z1's teams all have to get permission from too high to do drastic things. They don't seem as autonomous as Everquest and Everquest 2 who releases expansions every year.

However...

This isn't the sole reason of why Planetside 2 isn't doing so well.

If you look at the complaints on these forums. You don't see very much in the way of bugs, glitches, and so forth. Occasionally we do. But not as much as we see on balance issues. If you just read the forums. You'd think that PS2 is an unbalanced mess and one side is dominating all the time.

When I log in, that's not the case. Everytime I login, different factions control different continents. And they change hands every day. I see complaints about tanks, air, C4, mines, ect. But yet when I add up all causes of death, those things added together make up less than 10-12% of deaths combined.

The other complaint is other players' behaviors. Look at this thread. You have someone complaining about noobs getting ganked in Koltyr. You know what other game had noobs getting ganked in it? World of Warcraft. 60's could attack level 1's in certain areas. That game peaked at what? 12-15 million players?

WoW's success wasn't its PVP. Its PVP servers were popular to be sure. But even on a PVP server, PVP took a back seat to raiding.

There's the issue. PVP. PS2 was doomed the moment it decided it was going to be a PVP game. Most shooters are PVP. And there are some very successful PVP oriented games such as DOTA and League of Legends. None of them are persistent world MMOs.

I've always heard stories of how PVP oriented MMOs do 'so well'. Mainly Planetside 1 and Dark Age of Camelot. Funny how both games have ghost towns of (a) servers. But aren't doing so well when compared to Everquest (16 years of continued development coupled with 22 expansions).

PVP on a mass scale like PS2 doesn't hold people's attention. The issue is its too high intensity for too long. If you were to login, and get a group together to capture a continent after it opened. It could take anywhere from 2-6 hours depending on the opposition. That's even if it goes in your favor. You might just get matched and stalemate. You might get beaten and lose the continent in 2-6 hours.

But to succeed or fail, you need to devote a good chunk of the day to the effort. The entire time is also high tempo, continuously moving, continuously maneuvering, and continuously competing. That is exausting work. When you finish for the night, you pretty much get ready to do it again the next day.

How the hell does anyone do this for weeks or months or even years on straight? They don't.

They do one of two things.

They either accept the fact that its a continuous war that won't end. And that partaking in it means you want the rush, the high tempo, and the constant maneuvering around.

Or...

They get frustrated. They pick up on something that prevented them from doing whatever goal it was they were trying to do, or what they perceived as doing so and make a post about it. Many complaints are from those who just solo it up and just want a clean, steady, and predictable session where they can play how they want.

What they don't understand is in PVP, another player can, will, and shall interrupt what they wish to do. Another player can decide how your session will be. If they wish to play on Indar, and the other wishes to lock it... it becomes a test of will, skill, and grit. Some like this competition. People like me revel in it. But many do not. They are turned off by it.

In most shooters you get to pick and choose where you want to fight. In PS2, other players get to choose where you fight. If you don't like it, you have to compete against them. That's a big difference than simply picking the server running the map you want to play on.

That's just talking about the general flow of battle. Then comes in vehicles, snipers and other mechanics that.. 'irritate' people. You see in some shooters you can set up rules, and enforce them with mods and admins. In PS2, if its in the game, its legit and full on will be used. Like in some shooters they don't allow you to strap explosives to the cheap ATV/car and run it into a tank. In PS2 you have no choice but to deal with that.

This is PVP. Players can, will, and shall affect your played experience when, where, and how they want to.

And the difference between PS2 and other PVP-like games (BF, COD, TF2, LoL, and DOTA) is they will do it for hours and hours. Not minutes. And the progress you made on Saturday will be wiped out on Sunday.

So.. does that mean Planetside 2 was doomed from conception? No actually. It doesn't.

What needs to change is the culture in gaming. Too often players think they should be able to play how they want, when they want. And see results at the end. Now normally this isn't a problem. And arguably why shouldn't they have that?

But what Planetside 2 is, is a game like Paintball, Football, Soccer, or Basketball. In PS2, like a sport you have a team, facing another team. You may win, or you may lose. Someone is going to win. Which means someone is going to lose. First thing players have to do is accept that.

Next.. its no holds barred. Its dirty, its tricky, and everything is on the table. Players simply need to grit and bear that. Yes a Lib can sneak up on you and gib your tank. Yes a Tank can bombard your spawn. Yes, you can get a platoon dropped on you at anytime. Understand that the possibilities are there and push through them.

In short, players need to stop being so god damned sensitive. Forget what your parents, your teachers, and your government said about you being special. You're not. Not until your accomplish something. And in PS2, that means being a winner. Not a loser. And not a quitter.

This means stop taking things personally. Just because someone wrecks you doesn't mean they are trolling. It doesn't mean they are being cheap. It means they are winning and you are losing. Don't quit. And stop losing. You know what you have to do to win, so shut up and do it.

Next... there is something Daybreak can do. Not the devs, but Daybreak themselves. Self promotion. They don't have to spend much money on advertising. Just get a charismatic and motivating person to play the game with the players. Higby as much as people hated his decisions, did promote the game pretty damn well. Do a google search for Nanite Ned if they haven't seen it yet. That was a cheap video that did wonders to motivate much of the player base.

Luperza and her Friday Night Fights was another good thing. Things like that motivate the players even if they don't watch it. I didn't, but knowing that there was an energetic motivated person promoting the game was good to know. It let us know the game is alive, it has a genuine community. Right now none of that is going on. Its fight and fight and well after a while like I said before, players get frustrated because its never ending.

The game needs events. Things that are short term. Things the characters can do and participate in that deviate from the day to day fighting. I'd put 3 people per server to do this. They actually login, do server events and make little challenges. GM events if you would. Those things drive EQ players crazy.

I wouldn't rely on 'profession' streamers and youtubers. They care more about themselves than the game they are currently taping. So it probably needs to be done in house. Or at least do challenges that open cosmetics or Daybreak Cash to those who step up and take the mantle.

These sorts of things get the players to do something different. Get their minds off of what might frustrate them after doing the same thing for a couple of days straight. I mean players do have to meet halfway. But self promotion would do wonders for PS2. Don't let the players feel like its an ignored game.

And I do mean IN GAME events. Not silly stuff on social media that requires separate accounts in something else to participate in.

I agree with most of what you said, but feel Daybreak does have a more active role in addressing this problem.

Despite being designed to be more "fast paced" than its predecessor, and (to my own opinion) unnecessarily cutting many features that made Planetside... Planetside, the fact remains the game simulates "Real War" too well. You have brief periods of absolute chaos, mixed with long periods of downtime.

I am not sure what changed between Planetside 1 and Planetside 2, but the downtime is less welcome. In Planetside 1 the downtime was a break in the fighting. A much needed respite where you regrouped, reorganized, and relaxed. These were the periods riding a Galaxy from one continent to another, or waiting for a cap to flip. Perhaps it was the THREAT of action that made it bearable - waiting for that cap, there might be a sudden counterattack. Your Gal might be intercepted on the way, forcing you to bail and adapt. I feel this doesn't exist in PS2 because of the redeploy system, which removes the need for transiting between attacks and defenses...

But like I said, I don't really know what changed. However, what I do know, is that the downtime in Planetside 2 is utter downtime. Ghostcapping, despite some people loving it just for the reward, is just watching a timer tick. If you are genuinely trying to start a fight, you rarely get that. If the enemy sees 1-12 attacking a new lane, they send 96+ to snuff it out right away and redeploy to the next base. There isn't a fight; you just get killed and sent back to the warpgate or whatever fight you didn't want to participate in. Sound tactics, sure, but not very engaging gameplay.

Planetside 2 also lacks "low intensity" activities, to break up the constant intensity of combat with something that is still active but less-so. In the original Planetside, this was operating Lodestars, or ferrying troops, or doing ANT runs behind the lines. Hopefully this is what the base-building component will add back in, by allowing players to collect resources and build bases - though there is the risk the devs will make resources only appear in conflict zones.

It wouldn't hurt to also have some PVE elements to the game. We don't need Auraxi-stags wandering the woods to be hunted for pelts to give to Commodore Fiddlystache, but some bots in the bases wouldn't hurt. In the Warpgate they could be moving around and pretending to maintain things and operate the consoles; just dudes in fatigues with nano tools and a pistol. At actual bases you could throw some of these in, along with some basic "stock" soldiers patrolling around.

This would add some life to the game world, even when populations are low or you are in uncontested areas, and allow "small" fights - if NPCs kept trying to get in to the point or disarm a generator, even in an uncontested base, it would set an "action level" above 0 but well below PVP combat. The Devs have enough data to be able to set the parameters of the NPC (awareness, sight range, accuracy, ect) around or just below the average player.

As a bonus, this gives an opponent to otherwise sub-par shooters to which they can hone their skills. Having SOMEONE you can always beat goes a long way in making getting beat more bearable.

For double bonus points, the NPCs could get random names assigned to them from the list of banned accounts (minus those that were banned for having an inappropriate account name). Add some salt to the wound of cheaters.

The reason why Planetside 2 will never take off is really pretty simple : The game creates a largely unfair environment for most of its playerbase. (Those not in large organized outfits)

You are either stuck dealing with over popped fights (whether you are the on the side that is overpopped and eventually spawn camping or you are zerg'ed out because another outfit decided to dump an extra 1-2 platoons of people on a base). Or you are forced away from the kind of combat you as a player might enjoy because the combined arm's aspect of this game is generally farm infantry inside a base or pull AP weapons to stop the other guys from farming infantry.

Think about trying to sell a version of CS or TF2 or any other team shooter where 9 times out of 10 the game puts you in an 8 v 12 or worse (8 v 20) type situation regardless of which side you are on. And as an added bonus, the teams with 12 or 20 can simply bring bigger guns (force multipliers) to the fight with zero penalty and limited resource management.

Personally I feel the game was set on a doomsday course in the summer of 2014 when they first started the second wave of server merges that were completely unnecessary, added Hossin, cont locking and most importantly, removed global alerts all within a very short time period.

While for the server merge I can only certainly speak of Emerald as that is the only server I have ever played on, other than Waterson of course, but out of all the server merges I have been through in video games it was probably the worst. (and no I'm not going to bash Matherson) But the two servers they just did not mix, Waterson was made up of one big zergfit per faction and several other somewhat large zergfits with the rest being somewhere between "spec ops" and medium sized outfits with each empire pretty much only having one "MLG" outfit. Matherson on the other hand was almost the complete opposite. It was either a zergfit or it was an MLG outfit there really was not a middle ground. Waterson's troll (snake00223nc) had also left the game at that point Matherson's however had not and still hasn't.

As for Hossin it was good in concept however it was executed poorly. Though since Hossin has gotten pretty much universal reviews, most people dislike it either because of terrain, map flow, or just general low frame rates I really don't need to go into too much detail about it. But Hossin really does show something about SOE in general. It was promised to be complete at launch day, yet it was delivered, half finished might I add, nearly two years later. And even though we were told it would only take four months to finish all of the Construction Site bases I believe there are still several that are unfinished.

Continent Locking sort of like Hossin good in design, terrible in execution. It like lattice lanes were added because they performed well in PS1. However PS1 had nine continents and an actual global map, what we have today is four continents half of which are always locked and players can go to any that are unlocked and maybe fight. Before SOE's genius idea of cont locking and constantly changing warpgates we had at least some sort of permanence in the game. And with the constant locking and unlocking of conts we always play the same damn bases ever day even worse than back in the day. Can someone seriously tell me when was the last time you fought at a base North of Camp Connery?

And for the big one, removal of global alerts and the beginning of the end of strategy in PlanetSide. As you can probably tell I really really loved global alerts and I was very sad and angry when they were removed so this next part might be a bit biased, sorry Globals were removed for the terrible and thankfully short lived system of alert when 50% of territory on one cont is owned by one side. Then they bumped it up to 75%, better but still terrible. Then they decided to go back to the old system, but only half of the old system. Just capping continents. Which we have to this very day. Now with lattice lines being how they are and throwing four very populated servers (and one kind of populated server, sorry Briggs) it went as well as could be thought. There was no thinking involved just complete rushing into a base with as many people as you can and pray that you can cap faster than people can redeploy. It's been a year of that and the game has gone seriously downhill. The concept of working together is gone the game is pretty much just farm or be farmed and not much else.

Which as I said on another thread it was made clear, at least to me, that the devs no longer care to restore the game to its former self, since their main plan for the next year is to add in player built bases which if there is one thing this game has in an over abundance other than stupid biased people who love to talk, it's bases lots and lots of bases.

This is how first and second generation MMO's operated. Or I should say, still operate.

I think everyone here should play Everquest, I'm serious. See what exactly what I am talking about. You can solo in that game. You can even get quite far duoing or 4-6 manning a group. But eventually you will need a raid (7-72) to do all of the content. And its still pumping out expansions.

Part of the challenge of PS2 is to bring numbers to complete an objective. And not just zerg, but a team that is willing and able to drop where they are told, when they are told. Is it lopsided? It can be when you don't have the charisma, character, or following that other's have.

The difference between CS and TF compared to PS2 is the social element. Those are casually played games when it comes to organization. You load in a map, get some kills, and the match is over. PS2 isn't like that. Its gather your people, identify an objective, and complete it using the tools at your disposal... then do it again. And Again. And again until the overall strategy is completed.

Instead of trying to change PS2 to something it isn't. We as the players should accept the game at the strategic level. Then make a choice. If you like it, keep playing. If you don't, then stop playing.

I know thats weird to say in a topic about ideas and reasons why PS2 is failing to say some players should stop. But its true. Why play a strategic game about numbers and coordination, when all you want is a small short battle? There's tons of games that already offer that.

Some people want the big battles. The idea of massing large formations and dropping them on an objective. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what PS2 has been and will be, and IMO should be. Players just need to understand that. Lets not beat around the bush. You either like the game or you don't.

game balance within hexes is pretty simple: when pop inside a base reaches 5 players, stop spawns from working if your pop is +10%. this allows randoms to pull tanks and sundies, but stops significant pop balance issues. 45-55% fights are very winnable in most bases. organized attackers with sundies near the point can usually win a 45-55% battle.

travel time from outside the hex would defeat most attempts to get around this restriction. Lattice restrictions on spawning would need to be dumped so that players could fluidly spawn all along the front.

therefore: no zergs, no stupid 90-10% boring fights, easier spawning means it's easier to find a fight you like. I love tower defenses, and that would be easy to find.

*shrugs* not so hard... this change would take about 10 minutes for a competent programmer...

unfortunately DBG has turned PS2 into abandonware, except for space pumpkins (soon to be space christmas trees).

more and more, i don't.
like most of the player base

Well holy Vanu, you guys have manged one of the longest, most philosophical discussions I've ever seen on Forumside, while remaining calm and levelheaded. If I could give you all a cookie I would

Keep it going guys!

I haven't read through the posts after OP, though I'll be sure to do so, cause I'm sure this thread will bring up some interesting discussion.

I don't know that it was doomed from the start, rather that it was a step into dark waters. PS1 and PS2 are massive games. I've always viewed them as pioneers into a genre that has been dreamed about by game devs since the early days of computer gaming. That's why I'm so apprehensive of seeing this type of game fail. If the industry as a whole decide that massive scale FPS games are a bust, we'll likely never see a huge budget version of PS2.

Other companies are watching this game's life closely. The two outcomes I can see would be the industry bailing on any mmofps project after watching PS2 flounder, or, if PS2 picks itself up by the bootstraps, they may take notice, and there would be increased interest in creating these types of games...

For those of us who enjoy PS2, seeing it succeed would be beneficial to both our game, and the chances that competitors would spring up, both of which would be good for us and the industry at large. To be honest, I think the game needs a competitor to really define whether or not it'll die. Without one, people will play the game as long as the servers are live.

One thing that I think really hurt the game from the get-go was the inherent contradiction of a free-roaming war and the controlled arenas of MLG. Back when the game was first getting released, I remember the developers putting a lot of hype into MLG, and a lot of the bases felt like they were designed for those sort of controlled 12v12 or 24v24 match-ups and not the large scale fights that routinely happened.

I could see MLG being something that could have had a chance if there was a matchmaking game mode that provided these arenas and gave some good ways to watch matches, like League of Legends.

My comment is so short I feel positively inadequate after reading some of the above but here goes..................

Balance is something you find for yourself in my view. With so many combinations of faction, class, weapons, tools, abilities attachments etc. to choose from everybody has a truly fair ability to find their own level.

I'll read all the other posts later, they seem interesting at a glance.

I think PS2 could have been successful, a cult-classic even that would have had a steady playerbase for 6 to 10 years easily. PS2 is the only MMO FPS with truly persistent worlds and truly the freedom to show up with 100+ people to crush 3 guys in one small base, or get crushed yourself by a surprise attack.

What they failed at is a small but important list:

• Lack of ways to reach goals in the game
  • While in theory there's almost infinite ways you can approach a point and capture it, it will always come down to a bunch of players playing king-of-the-hill for a few minutes and then either succeeding or failing. The timer and lack of chance on close-calls means players can only distinguish themselves through stats, which is a different problem altogether. It also means that the HA is just about the best class for the most common tasks in the game, meaning there is less variation and a more stale game overall.
  • They should have added more 'game modes' from the start. Some bases could have run CTF, or CTF and points. Bases could have run secondary objectives with hitpoints so that infiltrators and LA's had more to do.
  • Vehicles play a massive role in the game, but only for a few minutes during capture which means players don't see their value. And how players perceive the game is the most important part of the game. Vehicles should have gotten a longer and more important role in capturing bases, such as vehicle-based points and hitpoint sinks that vehicles need to destroy.
• Lack of necessity for transportation
  • Many players play very simply: They join the game, blow a few people up and then quit until the next session. They tried to please this crowd too much through redeployside. This causes a lack of value to territory and travel options, and also reduces the emotional value players put in getting somewhere. There are enough options to allow players to join and have a good fight without forcing them to travel huge distances, but travel and transportation should be part of any battle in some quantity.
• Lack of good balance in the G2A department

• Aircraft are either almost unchallenged or incapable of operating in the area, with no middle-ground in between. This has been since the beginning and unfortunately will persist for some time to come. This means that either the ground people are unhappy as they are getting stomped upon without much chance to defend themselves or retaliate, or the air people are unhappy because it's certain death to move into a certain area.

• Game focus on specific statistics

• Since there are very few secondary goals in the game and the best way to distinguish yourself in the masses is to get a high amount of kills, players focus on those kills. The way it's presented means players completely focus on getting infantry kills, and a MAX kill counts as much as an infiltrator kill, while vehicle kills are completely ignored and have no value at all in the statistics. Sites like Dasanfall and Oracle Of Death haven't helped, as the creators somehow completely missed the importance of vehicle kills, damage dealed per life and many other stats that people might want to know, see and boast about. Both the addition of more secondary goals to accomplish as well as a better focus and representation of statistics should help with this. If players can hunt vehicle kills with a particular weapon, or getting kills at a certain range or many other achievements you might want to get, then the players will try to farm those statistics and we get a more varied palette of actions players take. Rather than just seeing people farm infantry, you would see players actively hunt hostile vehicles for instance.

Well if my two certs mean anything as a returning Planetside 1 Veteran:

They have an MMO FPS, but stripped out a lot of the Persistent World aspects of other MMO's. Leaving Planetside 2 to feel like a never-ending Deathmatch mode game. When quite frankly, other shooters do that better.

Where are the Sanctuaries? Warpgates aren't good enough. Having that "home base" in Planetside 1 from which to organize strikes and do things out of combat gave the game a feeling of permanence that's missing in Planetside 2.

Bring back Command Ranks. There's a serious lack of leadership and global strategy in Planetside 2 because instead of proven leaders-of-men coordinating attacks and EARNING the right to use a Command channel, we have random people screaming "HEY YOU GUYS FUSKING SUCK TAKE THE BASE OMGGGGGG!!"

Meh....I have other stuff but honestly, I'm losing enthusiasm even talking about this game much less playing it as much as I used to.