For several days I feel a strong dislike of Planetside 2 after every battle. While several things are amazingly well done, the basic game mechanics seems flawed. First of all, I will talk about the overpopulation. Yea, that 25/25/50, that leaves you no actual way of fighting. Worst of all, some (or every?) server got population imbalance. On Miller, TRs have the highest numbers and VS has the lowest. The result is that you constantly see a huge crowd of tanks blocking you in the spawns without a chance to fight. Not cause they are better or more skilled. Just cause they have more people. Constant underpopulation is gives an awful gameplay experience. Oh, did I just mention zerg? Yea, that's it! Zerg rushes! Second most stupid thing in Planetside. And another way to win the fight by numbers and numbers only. Right now the only way to fight the zerg is another zerg. The one with the most meat wins. Does not sound fun to me. Hm, actually it is even interesting to participate in one for the first month or so, but then.... Boooring. I remember NC MAXes rushing in the open with engies and medics. No tactics, no idea, just rush. I killed like 6 people and others killed a lot, but they still had waaay better numbers so they won. I played in PS1 and remember one important thing PS2 lacks. Supply lines and repair times. A damaged tank had to repair for several minutes or use the help of Lodestars (vehicle transporters/resuppliers, size of a Gal). It all created the circling of vehicles in fight and on repairs, making damage meaningful and removing those absurd numbers out of direct combat. Ps2 lacks this system and tank can be repaired in 5 seconds, so all vehicles are present on the field all the time, a tank that is not killed will be back in combat in 10 seconds. The next big thing are outfits. Well, I don't like what outfits have to do in PS2. Here, only serve the purpose of grouping up zerg. With the removal of backdoor caps, outfits lost the last possibility to actually execute spec-ops missions. Now there is only one front line with some major fights and outfits just group up their people and organise a fast delivery. Or organise some tank zerg. Or MAX crash (yea, all spam MAXes, so much tactics and skill). I mess the PS1 genholds and behind-the-lines operations a lot, since PS2 gives nothing like this. And yea, as always! Balance! Some weapon and abilities design ideas are just awful! Pounders being the best spammable AI grenade launcher while being actually bad against armor due to fall off. Vortexes and Lancers nearly never used by VS, since they quite suck. Magrider main gun being useless at ranges, where you can finally put your strafe at work. Vanguard shield used as a tweak to its low performance stats, causing rage from all sides. Lock ons used as a way to simplify the airgame for newbies. I can go on and on, gut you probably got my idea. The solutions: In my opinion, there are 3 main problems: population, zergs having no counter but other zerg and no gameplay outside the usual front-line fights. Balance is an issue, but it is so in any game. I just hope devs are going to do something about it... First, the servers population. The solution is simple, but ignored by devs. We have a global character database, then why the hell should we be limited to playing on one server with one char??? To create "unique server atmosphere"? Oh yea, "TR overpop Miller, VS overpop Connery" is a cool identity! Let us have our chars unchained from servers, so that we could select the server to play each time we enter the game. It was done this way in all non-MMO games for years, what is the problem? Set up high rewards for underpop empires, and simply lock the access to the server for overpop emires. Then we will suddenly get the magical 33/33/33 everywhere! Second, zergs. We need the repair times increased for vehicles, so that the damage sustained will take vehicles out for longer time. Just as well, we need some harder counters, like artillery and Liberators with bombs. Those will not outright kill tanks, but will damage them and may be - stop the assault. In fact, Liberator must be a counter to tank spam, but now it simply can't operate in zones with any AA presence. And third, give outfits a real job. Something spec ops, like braking the resource flow, hacking into a facility to disable its benefit and so on. I want more "Yea, those guys know how to fight!", less "Huh, that outfit brought 20 MAXes, 10 engineers, 10 medics. So much pro...". BTW, remember some outfit making stuff like this on one of the biolab's points. Sneaked inside under the EMP grenade effect, managed to kill around 7 people in 10 seconds before they saw me... Such a pro outfit. As for now, I am still unsure, should I find a better use for the PS2's space on my HDD or not...
The complete opposite of Mattherson,quit if you want(developers stated that they cant control population,but they still try).As the underdog for about a year now i would appreciate a huge bonus reward for us to even pop out.I also agree with giving outfits more jobs to do,BUT i completely disagree with your second argument about the vehicle repairs(vehicles already die to easily),imagine if the tank users chicken so much now how will it be when they wont even be able to repair it?
I agree with this... You are not close to quitting though, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. You are close to taking a break however, which is a good thing, everyone needs to take a break now and again.
More chicken than now?They wouldnt even leave the warpgate.They would basically lose every base just to safely shoot out the warpgate.ahahahaha
I feel for you mate. The reason I look to the door off myself is because I like competitve shooter games, and this has never been one. There arent many things to do other than jump bases across continents in order to find a good slightly underpoped defence in order to have a good fight that wont last 5 minutes or you wont be shelled by a tanks from all directions. Sometimes there are no such fights and then the game gets real boring. Do I want to join platoon and run with the zerg? Having zero kills and just capture facility XP isnt fun. Do I want to join very tacticool outfit that does alot tacticool stuff that mostly fails and involves lots of dying for no reason? No thanks, I simply dont enjoy that. I recently started focusing on flying, but that swiftly got filled with a2a lockon spam and its now boring as well. So I recently ask myself If I should just quit the game for good, the only problem that there are no good FPS games at the moment and returning to BF3 isnt an option.
"Server population" and "zerg" is two things that can't be "fixed"; no matter how you balance your game, players will always pick on the most effective ways to "win". And this is a game of numbers, where "zerg" (a group of mindless/unaware/casual players playing in a mindless fashion) is pretty common. With that said, you can't expect both to be fixed. More like, lessened (increase respawn times for overpopulated empires, resource cost, and other sort of penalties, etcetc) so I'd suggest you to take more pratical approaches instead of just "wahhh gaem is so terribl so unbalanced I wunt 2 quit ;_;"; switch to another hex if enemy squad is taking over, and avoid friendly zergs (make your own squad, try to take a enemy hex with em, etc.)
A population whine thread.. I hate to say it but that's just how it is. Mattherson will continue to have a TR underpop as it is. There might not be a TR increase in population for you server before the April Balance patch happens which will have some nice buffs which will probably attract some of those 4th factioneers back to the Red. Other than that... Go play on another server, sure that's harsh to say but it's currently the best solution, go Waterson if you want to TR something. There was some talk about continent locking, but that would hurt the game rather than fix it as some people just plainly prefer Indar over Amerish / Esamir.
There are somethings that irritate me but voice coms keep it interesting. The Discussions, inflight chat, and general game play, graphics and large open field combined arms is more then enough to keep me coming back. I've been dreaming about a game like this for 20+ years, I dont see myself going anywhere, learn to appreciate the awesome scale of this game.
Sounds to me like you need a break. Take a few days off. Maybe come back on Monday. I've had times when playing this game day in and day out where I do not log in except to get my membership certs. Sometimes it only takes a single bad night where I just get owned left and right. Sometimes the population imbalance makes every fight hopeless. If you are having a real tough time with it, just leave for a few days. The game isn't going to leave you if you leave it for a few days.
People who think A2A lockons are easy, obviously don't use them enough to know that they can take longer to get a lock than it takes to simply Vortex the guy to death. Their cone of "locking on" is very tiny making it generally impossible to use at closer ranges against anything that isn't flying in a perfectly smooth arc. They're also a worse solution in every instance to RocketPods when trying to take down Libs/Galaxies and the ONLY people who ever complain about them are RocketPodders who don't seem to understand that the whole point of A2A is to be a long-range only deterrent or area-denial to Podders. A deterrent that was made harder to use but not reduced in Cert cost BTW. Podders meanwhile; don't know what a real nerf looks like (their only nerf was a little reduction in Splash radius). G2A was also really nerfed as the only thing the pilot has to do avoid them is just thrust DOWNWARD right as the lockon would be fired, causing it to launch straight into the ground instead because the launcher over-predicts and shoots the missile 10-20 degrees wide in whichever direction the pilot starts moving. If we're going to talk about "Skilled" Pilots.... then lets talk about the guys who equip extended Afterburner tanks and DONT RUN ROCKET PODS IN EVERY SINGLE FIGHT. Those guys literally outrun & terrain-ditch all lockons and even make it through heavy flak zones in one piece while managing to gun down plenty of other ESF's. The only skilled rocket podders are the ones (example: on youtube) who kill other dogfighters with those pods instead of only farming Infantry with them and then QQ'ing everytime they failed to react tactically to that "Lock-G/A" message in their HUD.
So much this.. ZERG or fail is getting old.. I am taking a break, I'm playing skyrim.. never got around to playing it until now..
Tanks are already weak compared to ps1 and it didn't take mins to repair a tank maybe 45 to a min if your gunner was lazy
Increase underpop xp and resource gain by five fold. Decrease timers by same amount. Pops will either balance out or people will stop complaining. Mind you that is around 2 certs per kill if you have the full boost. And you would be able to pull a vehicle whenever you wanted, or spam C4 to your heart's content. Booyah.
I play TR on Connery and we have been out popped a lot recently. This is my attitude when we are being zerged and losing base after base, I will take what I can as smartly as possible and then fall back. So brother, take as much as you can.
