It's starting to seem like the developers of Planetside 2 are changing up the game to receive the majority of income through mainly memberships. This decision is being made possibly because the cosmetics don't sell often, like 2 helmets and that's enough, why would you need more 'hats' if you are satisfied with what you are equipped with? The free A.S.P. skills, free campaign, the faster grind, extra missions....It's obvious that this is all set up to necessitate membership. From my view it feels like an absolutely pathetic and lazy attempt to boost income. It will give a bad, wrong impression to newcomers. After thinking about the issue of new players leaving, it's starting to seem to me that the solution to this problem has dissolved, it's lost. Lets start off by asking this question: How did you get into this game, what kept you in there? The new PS2 player starts with nothing, their income is low, usually they search for some role they enjoy and can stick to. The new player doesn't have the comfort to just choose to their liking, they need something they can specialize in and work their way up with their favorite roles. Me personally when I first went into PS2 I chose Construction as my specialization. What I liked about it was that I could support my teammates in a unique and creative way. i liked supporting but for some reason didn't enjoy engineer or medic. Possibly it might have been because I felt like it was missing something, it was limited. Implants are a perfect addition to Planeside 2 because it allows you to shape your role based on your own playstyle, which ultimately allows you to specialize in it, give you more options. But the devs chose to make the Implants that impact your class the most like Bionics, Carapace, and more (rare), brutally expensive and for exceptional implants, near impossible to receive unless you only focus on grinding ISO for days and up to months. Speaking of Implants why is it that the most skill oriented Implants like Assimilate are common, but the ones that actually shape your class are ultra rare? Assimilate shouldn't get received by new players - It's 0 help to them, they're just going to get decimated as usual by the more experienced players. And same with A.S.P. skills. Why are you only allowed to shape your favorite classes after you know the game perfectly after all that time put into it? After I got my A.S.P. skills, I put most of them into vehicle discounts. I couldn't care less about shaping my classes at this rank because I think differently. I think about winning, team composition, support. These 2 perks (Implants, A.S.P.) could have helped new players find what they were looking for. Instead it's hidden way up, requires a lot of grinding, multiple months and all the benefits received through membership makes the game feel heavily pay to win. Nobody when starting with an F2P game just instantly purchases some boosts, membership. They stay to find out whether the game is for them and then they support it...This extreme heavy grinding to what you want, has a repelling effect on new players because it could take years with the BR 100, certs, ISO. Repeating again, the 2 perks will help with keeping them here. And lastly the game can generate income pretty well through exclusivity. NC can have DBC exclusive captured TR/VS weapons just for fun. For TR it would have to be something original TR but unnecessary so the game won't turn pay2win. For example the Mini-chaingun can be calmly removed and added back as a DBC exclusive weapon. It's my most used weapon in PS2 and from my XP it's fun, unique but not necessary. TR wouldn't lose anything by restricting this weapon to DBC. VS can have a mix of captured and original VS exclusive guns. And so on...
It's a business. They need to earn revenue or the game sunsets. (Obviously, they need to balance the F2P population with the power curve). They need to make money and they've chosen to incentivize membership. The alternatives are Fortnite-like Battle Pass ($10 every 3 months) and Cosmetic Shop rotation, game expansions ($40+ per year), or a heavy focus on loot crates (you can get away with the basic implants on PS2). I've felt that the Planetside 2 revenue model has been fairly generous. Even with the new campaign system (and all of the baggage with Wrel), new players can simply do missions for weapons. If you recall, back in the day, most weapons were 1000 certs (which usually precipitated $5-10 cash purchases per weapon for starting players). ASP and good (rare-exceptional) implants are largely incentives for top-end or end-game players to progress. Or else, those players would seek games with more challenge or grind. ASP and good implants are not designed to be handed to new players from the get go. (You can also make the argument that common Regeneration and Battle Hardened implants, etc. are already good for most players).
I think PS2 has lost the capacity to keep (not just to attract) a long time ago. I do not have statistics but I kill more BR100+ than BR10- and that's not because I am good. Simply there isn't nobody else to kill. What does it means? New players do not stay. They play a bit, get killed mercilessly, don't understand the hyper complex weapons model (RoF, CoF, recoil, DMG, accessories), see flying vehicles as weird UFOs and are confused by the moronic spawn system and lattice, plus alerts appearing and disappearing (Max Pressure? Aerial Anomalies? ), players collecting plants on Esamir among tempests and a giant, invulnerabile spaceship in the sky popping up from nowhere and vehicles on the ground mining something and building something else for no apparent purpose. Everything feels unglued. After a few days of playing without a purpose and a sub 0.5 KDR they simply say "Enough is enough" and they leave. If they want to attract new players RPG must narrow the immense gap in terms of equipment, experience, complexity between veterans and newbies. Otherwise i do not see any future: hype goes only so much...
Wrel is scatterbrained. Higby had laser-like focus. The other devs (Nick Silva) were in between. The problem is the majority of the player base was clamoring for new, shiny mechanics (construction). I was in the camp that wanted new continents but the original system for the most part (sandbox). They devs ultimately chose to go with new mechanics but executed it in a haphazard fashion.
I'll post it again (see the whole thread): Becides the time spent playing and experience gained I think the main difference between newbie and the veteran player that effects the "how-well-are-you-doing?" is the IMPLANTs section. New ( < 80 lvl) player has not all the necessary implants upgraded to level 5. The new player doesnt even know what implant he needs. And this leads to a great advantage veteran player has over a newbie (becides aimin/movin/tactical thinking etc). Few examples: - Assimilate lvl 5 is required at least for HA and Infils. Because this game is about headshots. - Ammo printer lvl 5 is required for Engineer tank driver - Safe fall at least lvl 4 is required for LA with ambusher jets and so on. That is why it would be great to give any new player ALL the implants for trial period (untill player gets BR 45) in the following way: 1 lvl 5 and 1 lvl 3 trial implants can be used in one loadout. Any combination of implants can be chosen. For example he can try Assimilate lvl5 and Survivalist lvl 3 or Survivalist lvl5 and Mobility Mesh lvl3 etc. This will allow player to test maximized versions of implants before he gets BR 45 and choose and permanent upgrade what he is really needs. The same logic can be applied to a few (2-3 not more) slots: Adrenaline shield, Nanoweawe armor, Cloaking.
Perfect write up... ...also the biggest mystery that's the longest to learn in the whole HeadClicker Gunplay model is not even ADS'ing, or Side-Strafe modifiers or even bullet velocities and Spread VS. Recoil.... it's the frikkin NETCODE and roundtrip latency and just how unfair it is to players who don't know how to exploit it with peeking/crouching, VPN'ing, Overclocking FrameRate way beyond 60fps, and other forms of lag/physics wizardry. The end game really and truly is just one giant Exploit-fest that a part time Youtuber and marketing Producer never had any hopes of recognizing much less admitting was a top Problem. They'd rather focus on smooth brain solutions like fetch quests, lattice flow, and redoing tutorials that will just be skipped through anyway b/c n00bs hate reading and if they wanted to read they'd be playing Pillars of Eternity instead
What would help is (aside from the existing chats for mentors and new palyers) if there were a panel that automatically popped up after half an hour of playing, recommending to join an outfit, and then list a few that have specifically opted in for taking and training new players. The prompt should also state that they can leave at any time (so they don't consider this a commitment), but that it may be good learning from other players at least for a while.
Without an unbiased committee of veterans to Curate that list, it would just send the vast majority of new players to the latest and most inexperienced Zergfits who don't even attempt to prepare their players for anything other than Deploy-Side meta while leaving half their platoons scattered all over the map accomplishing nothing at all (or worse: focusing only the TR/NC against eachother while VS have essentially no resistance as usual and thus get to farm defenseless newbs with Impunity).
Could you elaborate on that Lag wizardry a bit more? I've come back from a break of over a year, there are some blurry memories about lag but thats it... Is this the reason I am getting killed by people that should have a quarter TR magazine in their brains and another quarter in their chest? Am I being horribly murdered because my Internet actually WORKS?? Because frankly, If that is the case thats no endgame, thats simply cheating. And you make it sound like everyone does it...
Absolutely true, the list would need to be moderated to only contain outfits that really care about helping out new and returning players.
