Planetside 1 > Planetside 2

Why don't you guys go play planetside 1 then? It's free for 5 months.

No one is playing it. I think you guys are just in your own little rose tinted haze.

15-30 second ttks? Go try and play the game now. Jackhammer can instagib and the TTK's are similar indoors.

Are you out of your mind? Yes, PS1 was more fun to play, but it was that because of the better gameplay! PS2 offers nothing but mindless spawn room camping 24/7 without any kind of tactics. You camp and move 500 meters to the next spawn room and camp again. That's brilliant gameplay.. Duh..

PS1 had better ideas, but it wasn't a better game. PS2 would be an amazing game if some of PS1 ideas were further implemented, but PS2 is a much more enjoyable game.

Yeah, everyone being able to carry a deci, engi, and medi tool being completely self-sufficient in a team-based shooter is balanced. Literally everyone carried the same load-out unless you were a cannon-fodder low-BR.

Seriously, it's free for all you "vets" so go play it and have "fun". I did, and immediately remembered what it was actually like and it's not better than PS2.

Nostalgia threads, i believe it is story time!

Once upon a time there was this game, lets call it "GSW".
Within that game, fellow gamers were running around gaming and being happy, then one day a dark evil wizard that eats gamers emerged from the depths of wall street, he put a curse on "GSW" known as "NGE", it was simply put, lethal towards the gamers.
After the curse had murdered most of "GSW's" population, he summoned an undead lawyer army to marsh on the rest of "GSW" players that wanted happiness.

No one knows where the dark wizard is now, but some say that the stampede of the undead lawyers can still be heard in the west coast in the US.

And the prophecy has foretold us that, whenever an unreasonable acronym is being used as a means to steer a game development, then the evil dark wizard will arise again.

Based on a true story.

I really wished that SOE had taken Planetside 1 and figured out how to improve that for the sequel, rather than be inspired by Battlefield & Call of Duty. Sadly it was clear right from the day PS2 was announced and Smedley's blog post talked more about the big 2 shooter franchises than Planetside that what they really wanted was the profitsssssss from a game with the popularity of the big 2 instead of wanting to make a better Planetside. They threw out so many of the core mechanics of Planetside 1 that it's barely the same concept.

Sadly Planetside 1 has taken a big, bad, hit too. It was far from perfect. Chief above all else is that the player base had figured out all the dominant strategies, rendering other playstyles a bit moot. For instance, it's rare you'll find a TR without MCG in his equipment and mosquito ready to be pulled at a moments notice. The game eventually became stagnant despite the attempt to mix things up with BFR's (Mechs) and once Planetside 1 dropped below the critical mass of players needed to sustain the larger battles, the dominant strategies took over even further, taking away what was left of the joy that could be had in the game.

I went back after the 6 months free thing went live and was saddened to see the same old, now stale, game play plus a number of very green players who hadn't even learned they need to run up to an equipment terminal and equip a loadout. Oh well.

I seriously doubt few people look back at PS1 and see the things I scratched out as the reason it was a better playing game.

MMO ESQUE TTK's 15-30 seconds: The TTK was most certainly not 15-30 seconds. Dramatization is cool these days I guess (I get to do it myself down below). Try <4 seconds, which yes, is high compared to modern low latency arena shooters. Neither PS1 or PS2 are low latency arena shooters, so it's acceptable to have higher TTK's in the name of good gameplay.

BFR's: Again, few people will dispute that BFR's hurt PS1. That said, once BFR's finally got balanced they really became a non-issue.

horribly imbalanced weapons (Jackhammer, Splat Max): I disagree. PS1 does a much better job of making each factions weapons feel unique in operation while still retaining excellent balance. PS2 falls down hard in this area. In regards to PS2 infantry combat just answer: "what color would you like your projectiles to be today sir?" to determine what faction to play (Note: Dramatization).

PS1 was a better game overall because:
It had 15+ maps linked together with a global lattice that promoted 2-way fights as well as 3-way.
Bases were defensible and hard to farm with vehicles.
It had a way to deal with base sieges (NTU drain).
Vehicles had room to move around, chase each other, and play in areas infantry rarely went. Much of this space was between the bases. Rarely did one "foot zerg" to the next base, unless you liked a 10 minute hike.

That is my "short list" on why I feel PS1 is a better overall game.

Good post. I made the below in response to someone in a thread on PSU.

PS1 did not use the free-to-play model. That makes a large difference in how the certification and inventory systems between the two games are done. There are no pre-built classes in PS1. There's more continents, homes continents with sanctuaries, and an inter-continent lattice with continent locking in PS1.

The base capture mechanics and many other meta-game elements are better developed in PS1 then PS2 atm as well... There's more vehicles in PS1 and the spawn mechanics are very different.

For those saying, "Why don't you go play PS1 then?". Some of us do. But I would say most people like PS2 for the graphics and gun-play mechanics. Both of those things lack in PS1. We just want PS2 to have the depth of game-play that PS1 had.

EDIT: Also, when it was announced that players were given 6 months of free time to play PS1 SOE only posted about it in a thread on the forums. No email was sent out about this. Also, they stated in the thread that only PS1 veteran players got free time, not PS2 players. Although we know PS2 players did get free time. The effect of this? Not many people logged in to PS1 to check it out for the first time or revisit because they simply did not know they could.They also released the lattice in PS2 the weekend that they gave the free time for PS1.

A MMO that is PvP only doesn't play very well without players.

Agree on the points you made.

When PS1 went FTP, I only ended up playing for a day or two mainly because PS2 is the future. However, there is nothing wrong with looking back at the past and realizing some things were done better, and pushing for them to return in PS2 like:

Meaningful certification system that encouraged short term specialization
Global lattice
Sanctuary
NTU/ANT
Infantry/vehicle inventory
Enter/exit animations for vehicles
Boomers that had to be planted (**** tossable C4)
Holstered weapons visible on players
Less cheesy OSK's
etc...the list could go on, and on.

PS2 is literally a shell of PS1 in regards to gameplay mechanics and maturity. All it really has at the moment is great looks and semi-solid gun/vehicle play with tons of pay-to-look-cool items (which I will admit, I spent a ton and still don't look cool ).

PS2 just needs plasma imho.

The TTK's in Planetside are under 2 seconds for HA weapons and not a great deal different for MA weapons.

There is some utter nonsense in this thread

PS2 is a good game, but it could (and should) have taken far more of the good things from PS1 and built on them.

It's almost as if this set of developers ignored as much of PS1 as possible out of sheer principle.

They could have had the graphics and gunplay from PS2 still and made the game a much closer relative to PS1 and still have been able to call it "their game".

PS1 only offered more in the logistics area, which is correctable in PS2. Everything else, down to the combat and netcode was kinda.. eh. I do miss lobbing plasma nades over walls where enemies where located, though. That was fun. I mean it was cheesy because it was easy kills, but fun.

^ You got kills from plasma? It just tickled the enemy, unless you hit them while they were already low on health. Plus, it was a good way of getting grief locked too.

Yippee, another one of these threads.

Planetside came out when a whole generation was in college or living in mom basement. The community just isnt there to support such features. They want no recoil and K/DR twitter feeds.

Plasma is OP as all get out. It was nerfed heavily for the Thumper/Pwnisher and is a joke now. but the hand held grenades do right about 50% of your HP if you get nailed in the face by one.

I dont' know what any of those things are, but I agree! Something needs to be done!

Have to disagree with this. Even though they were nerfed, they still bogged down the flow of the game due to their high armor. The time it took between base fights was basically quadrupled due to the disgusting spam everything from distance fights (Leza bridge anyone?) where nobody would advance for hours on end.

PS1 certainly had its flaws, but this above all else led to me quitting.

All these fresh-meat don't understand what PS1 was, and what that the sequel wasn't meant to be an endless death-match with lone-wolfing, to cap an entire continent and not give a damn because there's no point other than bragging rights.

I agree with a lot of what people are saying, but if they just figured out how to FTP PS2 with new mechanics and graphics engine, but keep the basic structural design of PS1, PS2 would be a better game.