Planetside 1 was infinitely better

Well I know why I stopped playing PS1, it was because SOE rejigged things so I had to level 5 BRs to get to the same build I had before they increase BRs, that annoyed me (and I was playing WoW pretty hardcore at the time).
But I don't think PS1 was remotely a bad game, even then, just I found SOEs behaviour shady.


EQ1 is a bit unique I think, there's nothing like it really (assuming it still plays like it used to, not played it in a long time now), if you launched a new game like EQ1 now it would fail badly (as a few have in fact).
Would I play an EQ1 with graphics as good as say ESO? I'd certainly give it a try, but in all honesty I wouldn't want to play a game where Raiding was like it was in EQ1 (vanilla to SoL anyway), been there done that and realised it was a huge waste of time, I wouldn't want to play a game where PvP was as bad as it was in EQ1 (vanilla to SoL) either even though I enjoyed it at the time PvP is just much better in other MMOs now, and after so many MMO games where soloing is truly viable I wouldn't want to go back the experience of solo grinding my monks (even with a Fungi Tunic on the second it was a pain), ranger, warrior etc. (Beastlord was fine), or even mage (quad-kitting was boring as anything, if effiecent for EQ1).

I'm not sure what makes EQ1 a different game makes it better than say WoW or a truly modern MMO, different certainly, but better?



Would I like PS1 now, maybe, I still like to play the orginal Hidden and Dangerous even though the graphics are terrible (because essentially its gameplay is great), but honestly my game-time is more limited now and I'd rather they added more PS1 features to PS2, and they hackers are bad enough in PS2 (and apparently they are now terrible in PS1) if they gave PS1 a graphical overhaul and some anti-cheat software........ then all bets would be off.

Appreciate the honest response here. This was sort of what I was looking for.

I will say this though, since I have to be fair. PS1 on its own is not a terrible game. Its got features that are interesting. The one that comes to mind is doors that can be hacked. That's a feature I wouldn't mind seeing in PS2. But I don't want to see it implemented in the same way. When I played PS1, there was a dozen people attacking a base and only one person had the hacking tool. If he died, and he did alot. We'd have to wait till he respawned and came back.

Why didn't any of us get one? Because most of us were PS2 players who had no freaking clue how to change our loadouts. Or those of us that did, couldn't figure out what was what. Especially when your base was also under attack. The interface just wasn't very intuitive to say the least. I couldn't just switch to Infil and hack a door. I had to drop something, and take something.

There wasn't exactly a wiki and a set of forums to look through prior to playing to get this sort of info before dropping in. I know after the fact what was needed but couldn't get it then.

Anyway, something like a hacked door could be interesting in PS2. But an attack shouldn't outright require a infil to hack the door. Having an infil instead should make hacking the door possible and make the attack easier. Meaning if you can't hack the door, there's another way in, but it might be more dangerous, harder, or just predictable by the defense.

Its kinda like my suggestions about destructible base assets. They make assaulting a base easier, or harder to defend for the defenders.. but not required. Anything that gives us options should be optional. Not required. And I think that, coupled with the bad gunplay (you have to admit.. the gunplay in PS1 is pretty bad), makes it a chore to get started in the game. Alongside the required progression lines.

That last one really bothered me. For example in PS2, I have a relatively new TR character. Its like BR56. Medic and Engie are certed the hell out. As well as a harasser (Vulcan is damn fun). I have a Skyguard.. that works. Its not certed out like my NC's Skyguard. But it works. In PS1... if you certed out towards a MAX, you know infantry based stuff. But needed an aircraft for whatever reason.. You gotta get someone else to pull it. And you just go without if you don't have it.

I'm sure back in the day it wasn't so bad. Outfits/Clans/Guilds probably had dedicated peeps for stuff. But as the population dropped I'm sure it didn't help. PS2's population dropped, but I can still pull a Galaxy if I need to, or a Skyguard. Even on a brandnew character. If I started a BR1 VS character, my Skygaurd would be there waiting (and being Alpha Squad with those extra weapons doesn't hurt either.. as I found with the AMC on my TR, love that carbine).

Probably has a lot to do with a multitude of factors.

PS1 was not perfect. The single most damnable thing was the bad shooting mechanics. With no distinction between the head and body, no iron sights, no recoil, it was a bare-bones COF bloom management exercise. What it was, however, was a lot more complex than PS2. Given the state of the industry, this is unattractive to a publisher.

In PS1, everyone had to (well, they didn't HAVE to. But you were considered useless if you didn't) carry around a hacking kit called a REK to hack your way through door locks, located on a console next to enemy doors. Planetside 2 uses shields that you can either walk through, or can't. Period. There is no mechanic to circumvent this other than taking over the base or destroying one of the many generators that a base typically has.

The entire shebang of any given base in PS1 was tied to a single large generator. An infiltrator, or a specialist squad (usually via a galaxy drop,) or a zergling mob, would enter the generator room and be greeted by this big, towering, spinning thing of a generator. It could be blown up with explosives, and once that was done, everything on the base would shut down. People manning the defensive base turrets would find their guns resetting to their natural passive states and kicking them out as they power down. Spawn tubes would stop working. Equipment and medical stations would go to sleep. If the defenders wanted to hold on to the facility after that, they would have to run to their physical lockers and grab equipment that they saved up there. Also, the lights would flick off, and red warning lights would flash. There was a deep sense of **** going wrong when the generator was under attack.

Infiltrators could hack the mainframe of bases and infect them with viruses, which would then propagate through the lattice system for various effects unless they were taken care of.

Capturing a base actually required you to use the hacking tool and look at the capture node. The one capturing the base was vulnerable while they were setting up for the count-down. They could get off of it once the countdown began, but this helped to combat lone-wolfing of major facilities.

Aircraft were generally more specialized in their roles. The liberator was a heavy bomber that dropped strings of bombs, rather than a hovering gunship, for example.

MAX suits were less 'just better infantry' and more of a support tool. They drove and maneuvered like a vehicle, and not all transports could take them. Indeed, only special transports had a limited number of MAX slots. The Sunderer, for example, had two chambers for MAX suits. If a MAX could not find transport, he had a travel mode option that powered down his weapons and allowed him to move faster than an infantryman, but slower than a vehicle.

And, the most important thing in my opinion, the lack of public stat tracking. Public stat tracking makes the game about the individual, and not about the team. While PS1 had too much stat tracking for my tastes, it was less than PS2. And it showed. People were able to coordinate maneuvers and offensives for the good of the team/empire, with less worry about being ostracized later because they died a few times while taking back a home continent.

These days, arguments regarding game balance or similar factors always come down to "I have a better KDR. Therefor, your argument is without merit and you should kill yourself."

PS2 at it's release and until recently was literally Battlefield: Online. Those 18 months of development were more asset creation and planning out their cash shop than actual game and mechanic design. Battlefield works in a controlled environment of so many players and so many vehicles. PS2 blew those limits and turned into a mess at the ground level because the leads didn't know what they were doing. And I'm not even talking about the capture systems in place before hex and eventually lattice, but raw, first person shooter/driver/pilot game play on a "map."

It's true that PS1's shooting mechanics aren't impressive, but it's not particularly that they're bad, so much as unsatisfying - weapons had no kick, among several things, which is like night and day difference. The gunplay also allowed rather accurate fire while moving, though it did support better accuracy for crouching and remaining still. However, because of the nature of the game, strafing back and forth often meant warping, and believe me, it was worse in PS1 than it can get here. That's where the gunplay really falls apart. Also, there is obviously personal preference in ADS being a thing or not - some people feel it is a must to enjoy a shooter. I'm the type to prefer hip fire, but I find it's really down to what the game is about.

When I said earlier that some of PS1's systems, even if they existed due to technological limitations, might have been the right way to go (like no headshots) for the type of game Planetside is, I'd be the first in line to say that because of the nature of PS1's and PS2's net code, ADS is a powerful tool for the developers to control warping in an exchange of fire and not just merely a method to force players to move at a crawl, making them easier targets as seen virtually in any other shooter (and sadly, most developers probably don't even think of that, they're just going with the flow.) The layman might look at ADS and go "oooh, so realistic!" But in terms of game play, it's a mechanic to slow players down to make them easier to hit. Games like Halo, Team Fortress, Unreal and Star Wars: Battlefront III, Quake, the upcoming DOOM, etc. don't do ADS because they're all about movement = survival, with any ADS action merely acting as a zoom function or being exclusive to precision weaponry, namely, sniper rifles.

If there's anything to take away from game design it's this: a long time on the drawing board is only worth anything if the planners can actually envision the consequences of their decisions, and know exactly where they want to take a game. PS1 was a game with true visionaries that understood a shooter on the mass scale can't work like a shooter with a dinky little 8v8 arena. These are also the same people that made Tribes by the way - they knew what they were doing.

PS2's initial design team just did the "MMORPG bandwagon" thing only instead of drawing from WoW (which their earliest iterations of EQN probably drew from,) drew their blueprints up from whatever Battlefield had going on without working out why things were done the way they were, and whether or not they'd actually work in a massively multiplayer space. Naivete and idealism make for horrible decisions.

The thing is though pretty much any game I've ever played, no matter how great I thought it was at the time (and indeed how great it was at the time), would be unlikely to stand up fully if released as a "new" game, not because it would then have been bad, but just because of 10 years (or whatever) of time.

There's very few games that would stand that test (and most of them are in fact 8 bit games), and even most of them would be a "better" game for a modern graphical update.

Like I said I'm pretty sure I'll never go back to EQ1 unless it has a full graphical overhaul & update, but that doesn't make it a bad game, and at the time it was wonderful. The orginal zones were so fully of character and care of design, and later on in RoK loved that stream running into Lake of Ill Omen, as it genuinely reminded me of a real stream I knew (albeit in low res) and I've never been as lost (or scared) in a game as I was at night as a blind newbie human monk in Qeynos Hill being chased by wolf pups and blundering into that circle of night spawning skeletons or just generally being constantly totally lost in Warslicks Woods (although it was excellent for training Safefall)..... and then they invented in-game mapping and killed a little bit of EQ1.

But PS1 was certainly good enough that I built a new PC for it.





PS1 was definately not a 1 toon game, per faction I think I had 1 generalist engi/HA/MAX toon (that I played most), 1 pilot toon, and 1 vehicle toon....... this was no bad thing at all IMO as it added a lot of player investment potential to the game in a similar manner to how something like EQ1 did with its multiple classes. It may even have been why PS1s population remained pretty stable for the first 2.5 years.