The New Player experience per the Cryaotic Stream: "It's fun when you're not getting **** on."

VANU and TR MAX need nerf, This game is the most I have ever seen imbalance (Population weapons systems)

The thing is quite simple, even before taking experience or skill into consideration, if a BR1 faces another infantry class, what happens? Chances are he will die, but he can actually take him down and as I said before, without taking experience or skill into consideration, it's a 50/50.

Now, what happens if he faces a MAX? If he's a HA with a rocket launcher he might be able to win, it's much less than a 50/50 but it's doable. What happens if he decides to fight fire with fire? He'll get absolutely wrecked, no chance of winning a 1v1 with a stock MAX against a fully certed MAX.

Now let's view this from a different perspective, say there's a fully certed HEAT Prowler with a Halberd on top. What can I do to counter it? I have a few options, pull an AP Magrider with a Saron/Halberd on top, or just switch to LA, grab a ESF, drop on him with C4 and gg (unless the guy is smart, but whatever, skill is not relevant for this argument). What can a new player do to counter it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, a stock HEAT/PC MBT with a Basilisk stands literally no chance because the weapons are just worse, and because the cert investment into vehicles/MAX/aircraft changes much more than it does for infantry. Not to mention it's impossible to get into the air game with a 15 minute cooldown, etc, etc.

And that's why new player experience sucks, it's not even a matter of HE/Bulldog/PPA spam (which obviously makes it worse).

Ok, so reading this thread - we're all in agreement that tutorials are good, though I know for a fact that SOE cannot make tutorials that will be in any way useful. Also, no one actually reads tutorials - I sure didn't.

So I'm not putting stock in any tutorials. And as for making PS2 a game for dummies...what game are you all playing, exactly? Maybe I've been spoiled by years of PS1, with 10+ continents, intercontinental lattice, fierce outfit rivalries fueling long running spec-op wars behind enemy lines, and ntu siege mechanics, but PS2 is not a difficult game. It is a very easy and casual game hidden under mountains of confusing crap that needs to go. Most off that confusing crap happens to be in the layout of certain bases (eg, every base that decided to substitute teleporters and jump pads for intuitive base design) but there are a ton of things about this game that are not necessary and simply exist to make the NPE hell.

I tried to get a number of people into this game and most leave because the game is simply way too chaotic for them.

The TTK is brutal and there's so many "welp" things in the game that they are unaware of how to prevent or are not interested in learning how to prevent they mostly get turned off super fast. I remember one time I got 15 or so of them together fighting with me in a Canyon in South East Indar and the reactions to sniping were unreal. Lost 5 of them within about 15 minutes of it and when the rest realized we'd probably be in that canyon for the next 30 odd minutes I lost 4 more. I explained to them forever to keep moving, at that stage it just doesn't matter the impression has been made.

A lot of the rest of the game is like that as well. I had a new buddy of mine from PS1 get a new computer and come try it out and his first reaction was, "Man these bases are made out of swiss cheese." and all I could really do was sigh and say, "Yep." I will be shocked if it makes it past a few weeks cause no one else I know does.

I can't believe the ignorance I'm seeing in here and all the hostility towards the DA guys who are bringing attention to the problems this game has. And the fact that anyone would argue that the game is fine and fair for new players is astounding to me. This game has been out for close to 2 years and a lot of the fanbase (most people who are still playing) are fanatics. Look at all the high BRs with all their certs!


Now I'm sure it has been a long time for some of you since you were new, but try to remember your first day. On top of all the confusion and obscured information, the actual gameplay is NOT easy to get into. Not to mention the game mechanics aren't 100% finished, and most were created at different times post-launch. You are familiar with this, new players are NOT. This would be a large enough advantage in most situations.


But take into consideration that you are dropped into this world with nothing compared to the average BR. Some of it is cheap and easy to get, others take a long time of gaining certs - something new players are not going to do quickly when they first start. Although everyone gets the same basic guns and a few abilities, here's a short list of things they DON'T get which are a BIG deal:

- Vehicle equipment slots
- Gun attachments (ALS is literally a straight upgrade that they can't afford on day 1)
- Vehicle and MAX timers (admittedly going away, but it has been this way for close to 2 years)
- Lock-on rocket launchers
- MAX flak armor
- Dual MAX guns (the devs even use a dual setup to balance these)
- Revive grenades, C4, med kits, proximity and tank mines


Not everything can be sidegrades, why bother grinding or buying anything? And I'm all for progression in making abilities better in time. But the glaring issue is that new players have loadouts that are noticeably downright worse than everyone else, who are already better at this game. It's brutal. These players are actually missing things in their loadout slots until they somehow grind their way to enough certs and don't blow them on something useless that they didn't realize is useless because of the lack of information about what they're buying. They can't even see how many certs it will take to max out one line of upgrades.

So now this undereducated, underequipped player fresh out of their tutorial goes out and tries to fight the good fight. Except they die, over and over again. Ok, maybe they can't kill...but they can at least join the zerg or a group that will win some fights and get capture exp right? Not necessarily, and the experience from caps is not that great. If they decide it is the best way, congrats you have just created another ghost capping, fun-sapper who will probably quit due to boredom anyway.

What about playing support? A decent choice, but easier said than done. No rez grenades, a med tool that takes forever and you have to be right on top of the guy (yeah, the spot where they DIED recently). Ammo? Low exp cap, good luck competing with the higher level engineers who have a huge range and can drop 2 of these at once. You need to dump it on top of someone who isn't already being resupplied. Hacking or motion detectors? Decent but not going to draw players to this game, also not very easy for new players.

What does that leave them as the most effective they can be? They can try pulling MAXs or vehicles! That will help them, surely! Right until a high BR pulls their same vehicle with an AP cannon, AI farming secondary, equips fire suppression, and takes a dump on their face.



So yeah, new players need to either be handed some certs or given some free equipment to put them on a more level playing field. They don't need everything, or the best of everything, but at least fill their damned slots and give them a fighting chance.

Sorry I don't see skill in Jackhammers(0.56KPMIN hey) 24/7, MAXes, PPA spam, MBT HE spawncamping, ESF to ground rocketpodding and bansheeing, LIB to ground spawncamping, shotguns, Zerging/ghostcapturing nor effort either, just apathy, and all these things i've mentioned make New players quit or 'make game hard' for them.

Also I've had many bunch of skilled FPS players try to play this game, while they were doing good, they got bored because of all the bullsht, nonsense spam the game is all about. Tell me which players who are on top of XP leaderboards don't use rocketpods, m14banshees, liberators, MAXes, shotgun LA towerwhoring, MBT HE/HEAT , which? It doesn't matter though, it's the problem of the game taht let's nonsense bullsht useless tmechanics to be in there. All of this stuff is low effort and extremely high reward, especially if you 'get the hang of them' by means know when to use it and where to use it.

Yeah It's great I know, they had 'A LOT OF FUN' playing the game first time ever, but around 1% of them will stick in the long term. maybe less. Saying stuff like that is just ignoring the problem.

You are fricking insane!

Fixed...and you're welcome

SOE could bump new player's starting builds. Example give them the following: One fleshed out class, w/Nanoweave, a full tool, overshield, or jump jets with full 2 c4. (They pick the one class to flesh out, hvy, LA, engy, medic but not infiltrator as that maybe to hard to get more certs in the beginning), one fleshed out lightning and one full fleshed out Max unit 2x fully certed AI and 2x AA uncertied and 2x AV with full Auto repair or maybe flak armor.

They have everything to play to get more certs, live, and learn. They need to move the starting line for this game because to many of us are at the finish line already.

No, he's right. The only vehicle mounted AI turrets should be slightly more powerful versions of small arms, AKA the Kobalt.

The game isn't 'awful for new people', new people make the game awful. That stream is a bunch of tryhard idiots following the streamers around who have no idea what they're doing and don't care. Midway through the video it's just forty people standing at a vehicle terminal. The game is fine when all the scrubs didn't push everyone with brains out of the server. And none of them want to actually play the game 'for real', they want to follow around their celebrity.

Imagine if Pewdiepie and his legions of morons joined the game - they'd singlehandedly ruin whatever side they joined, because Pewdiepie is a total idiot and everyone who follows him is even worse.

Define 'farming'. We're not the ones who made it impossible to destroy a spawn room, that was SOE. Every second this game doesn't copy Planetside 1's base assets setup EXACTLY is a second you're forcing attacking players to farm a spawn room. Every second they allow people inside the spawn room to shoot out is a second you're forcing attacking players to farm a spawn room.

SOE ruined the game by making farming the only way to hold a base. Not the players.

I've got an idea and it might even work.

A good handful of like minded vets should get together and declare open season on every place where newbies congregate. Go full on farm mode. And I mean brutally... target them instead of the objectives. Get them cornered in places where they can't move or do anything but get farmed.

And the trick to this is to be so vocal and blatant about it that it draws attention. Basically hold the newbies hostage.

And the reason behind it is to Force the ones who wish to help the Newbies to fight back. Basically you would have two major offensives going at it. We'd finally have the mass coordinated fight that the game was intended to have. I mean these people are SO vocal about not hurting newbies and they have such passion to keep the game going, that they would fight against such disruptive behavior, right?

Or would they sit back and let the game die?

Those of you who are worried about newbies and the game dying from their frustration.. are you willing to fight for them? Are you willing to be their champion? Are you willing to stop those who engage in newbie farming for the greater good of the game? Are you willing to take action over words?

It would be interesting to see. I think this game needs more game shattering ingame drama events. Get everyone riled up and actually care about fighting one another for a change. Something more than just making stats higher.

PS2 is like a Cambridge course in quantum chromodynamics compared to every other FPS game out there. Planetside 2 is the result of Idiocracy-esque approaches to video gaming for over a decade now.

Planetside 1 was a beautifully designed game. Everything was in the game for a reason, and there was a reason for everything in the game. One of the core components of Planetside 1 was the BR20 limit and the fact that it was impossible to do everything at once.

A decade of pandering to morons has resulted in a sense that a player DESERVES to do everything. I can jump out of a jet in Battlefield with an assault rifle and anti-tank rocket launcher on my back, fire a rocket between my legs and blow up a target beneath me, and then land on my own tank and then drive that around. The idea that a pilot might not be able to drive a tank is utterly unthinkable to these people. The concept of tanks being multi-crewed vehicles - like a real tank - requiring teamwork and coordination to work properly is so utterly foreign to modern gamers that when I described it to a buddy of mine he was completely unable to understand why that would be a thing.

Planetside 2 is a very simple game. It has a bit of a learning curve, particularly a lot in the UI department (the stupid missions don't help) and unexplained concepts ('Why can't my Sunderer deploy'), but the underlying core concept is easy: you have classes, and every single base is basically just Battlefield style 'hold the points'.

If people are confused by this it's because that's just how stupid gamers have become, by being fed a diet of McDonald's-style FPS games, where the concept of a full-auto rifle NOT being laser-accurate makes them angry.

Planetside 1 wasn't perfect - the bases were overly-repetitive and the tower -> base footzerg was obnoxious - but those were the only two outstanding problems.

I would just say 'make Planetside 2 the pre-Aftershock version of PS1'. All that nonsense with capitol shields just complicated the game.

So what should they have done? Let them win?

The problem is the streamers decided to advertise they were doing it, which meant HUNDREDS of BR1 who know nothing about the game spamming his team. Everyone who knows what they're doing was forced off the continent. Meanwhile, this idiot who thinks a Burster is a 'long range precision MAX weapon' is leading the battle.

Should we be mad because he lost? Did he expect to win? If he wanted to win he should've told his viewers he was playing on the other server, and then play on this one, under an alt.

The only way to currently take a base is by camping the spawn room. If you aren't camping the spawn room, you greatly increase your odds of losing the base, because the spwan room is a perfect chokepoint for hitting enemies before they can flank your teams holding the points. In Planetside 1, when the enemy got close enough to spawn camp they were close enough to blow up the spawn tubes. What's your option in PS2? YOU HAVE NONE.

Letting people shoot out of the spawn shields just makes it worse, not better.

That would be nice. You wouldn't even need a shield on the SCU if it was right by the spawn. Make it so you can overload the SCU as soon as you control the cap. If you can force the defender back from even taking back a covered easy access SCU, you've already won anyways.

I can see people don't want their toys taken away.

I only suffered through the NPE because I was surrounded by the top talent in the game. I can't imagine being a fresh player without good players teaching you.

Remove xp caps on support roles (if it gets abused, so be it), put up dome shields, and seriously tone down the offensive power of maxes.

Easy steps until base design can be reworked to remove farming.

Also, people arguing about the laziness of gamers--yea, that's the reality. It isn't going away. Stubbornly standing with your arms crossed frowning at all them damn kids with their Battlefields won't make the game thrive. The best bet is to adapt to the new casual landscape as best you can.

Which means we're just circling the drain in terms of game quality. Not even Battlefield could resist, and the franchise is now effectively dead with how terrible BF4 ended up. We're all just dumbing down, nobody's smartening up. This is logically leading us to a very unpleasant, ugly future.

Honestly we need another video game crash like in the 80s.