There is a link between the rise of "infantryside" and the downfall of the games popularity

Technical posts always interested me. I was a fairly active forumer through the tech test and beyond. Of course I can support changes I think are good but my support means absolutely nothing to anyone that matters so there's no point doing it on my behalf.

I suppose my main point was that many changes are put forward without any real thought as to how they actually improve the game for everyone, rather than a subset at the expense of others.

I have not played in Server Smash. I have watched SS replays, spoken to people involved with it, and reviewed the data when it was being tracked on http://ps2alerts.com/serversmash/match/ss/. And, I always welcome people with SS experience and/or knowledge to correct and teach me whenever possible.

You can watch a May SS battle here (Server Smash 61: Emerald TR vs. Cobalt VS on Hossin):

Main Video with Commentary

Individual POV Videos

NOTE: the special rules for SS 61 were special rules agreed upon by the 2 teams as:
* No Constructed Bases (it was new and people didn't know it well enough yet)
* 216 Players vs. 216 Players
* TR vs. VS
* Single 90 minute battle
* No AI MAXs
* No A2AM
* No Ants
* No Gorgon MAXs

And an archive of SS and other tournament types here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/PlanetsideBattles/videos

You can see other info here:
https://www.twitch.tv/planetsidebattles
https://twitter.com/ps2battles
https://www.reddit.com/r/PlanetsideBattles
http://planetsidebattles.org/ (under construction)

Air has a big role in SS. ESF Sky Taxi, Gal Drop, Valkyrie, A2G AI, and some A2G swarm removal of key Deployed Sunderers, etc.

Ground Vehicle use is choppy. Sunderers are used in both deployed and "spawn in". And some other Ground Vehicles show up especially when they can be squeezed into the bases themselves. But much of the SS meta is Infantry and Air swarms, and many Vehicles do not hold up well to these. Also, Vehicles are very slow to move from base to base, they are limited in how/where they can spawn, and they can't be revived. And they are forced to stay very close to bases where their line-of-site is bad, they are in CQC with Infantry, and very vulnerable to Infantry AV swarms that can come at them from any number of surprise directions.

The "No Deploy" circle around a Deployed Sunderer, combined with the No Deply Zone circle of a base, combined with the high need to have Deployed Sunderers near cap points, limits the placement and how many Sunderers that can be setup as Respawn points. This both bottlenecks their spawned Infantry's attack vectors, and enables opponents to knock out such hyper-finite points with AV rushes. While Spawn-in Vehicle (undeployed Vehicles), Beacon, Revive,and Air Transport provide additional easy, robust options for PRIM (pinpoint rapid infantry movement).

@zaspacer
Thanks for the detail explanation. I will try to set aside some time to watch it. 2 hrs is damn long lol.

I suspect that with air's mobility its much easier to concentrate your forces and overwhelm ground vehicles with sheer numbers in addition to the points you mention. It is interesting how coordination changes things.

Cool stuff.

I would encourage you to reassess your concept of "anyone that matters". It really is a very relative thing. If you want to specifically communicate with, lobby to, or affect the minds of PS2 Devs, then posting on this forum is likely not the best route for that. But if you are looking to engage in sophisticated (and knowledgeable) discussion and concept exploration, and maybe dabble in PS2 community thought leadership, then these forums are great.

I personally don't really care about talking with the Devs for the most part, at least with regards to making actual changes in PS2. I have a very low opinion of their ability to really benefit PS2 (general playerbase and DBG) from such interactions. And I often have revulsion toward the occasions of their cult of personality in the forum community (I am positive toward and enjoyed their presence on other various things like community videos, and thought people like Higby and Margaret did a great job on that).

I assure you, almost all my conveyances are put forward with real thought as to how they actually improve the game for everyone.

You can check any of my posts. If you have any questions on my agenda on them, ask me. If you have any interest on more tangible details to explain how or why my ideas might be implemented in the game, ask me. I am not saying I am better than anyone or that my wants are more important than anyone else's. But I tend toward being thorough, I have the benefit of some productive experiences, and my general focus with PS2 is toward improvement of the game for everyone.

the only reason to choose planetside over every other shooter on the market is large scale combined arms.

if you wanted infantry combat you should play a game focused on that (its not like there is any shortage of them) the only reason i took interest in PS2 was vehicles. the number, the variety and above all the fact that all of it was on the same battlefield.

if i want an infantry focused game i play Call of duty or one of its million slightly different flavour clones.

nerfing an limiting the role of vehicles chased off the very core of who PS2 tried to attract in the first place, why play PS2 with its ****** clientside hit detection and bad gunplay other than for the vehicles and scale? i mean its like Mcdonalds deciding to cut burgers from their menu because vegans want better salads.

no. that might be your reason, but it's certainly not the reason.

call of duty? lol.

again... it's a 4 year old game. that's why the pop is lower. balancing didn't "chase" people away, time did.

Again, not necessarily true. There are plenty of older games that still attract a population because they're, well, good.



Consider these two games. Blue is Planetside, and green is ARMA III. They are roughly the same in terms of age, with PS2 only a few months older.

But overall, these curves tell two very different stories. Whereas Planetside sees mostly a decline except with a few bumps, ARMA sees a general increase except for a few drops.

A good, well designed, well balanced game can certainly do well for 4 years. ARMA has prospered. PS2... has not.

Actually here's a better, more up-to-date chart.

Arma 3 has mods. Are those all vanilla players or are modded games included?

Yes, because infantry have no meaningful interaction with the game outside of killing things, which was fine when things to kill were in greater variety, even if some were teeth pullingly difficult.

Now that Infantryside is here, mans have nothing to do but kill other mans. In TDM, the whole massive thing just creates a chaotic mess and the game gets stale. Plus now numbers of 1 unit (infantry) are the deciding factor where with vehicles all sorts of different number variations had a big effect on strategy and vehicles have more locations to choose from since they get up rocks better and stuff.

A few things:

Almost all games lose people over time. That a few have managed to stand the test of time doesn't change this reality. 4 years is a long time in today's gaming environment.

What contributes to a game's longevity? Pretty sure it has nothing to do with tougher tanks.

Arma 3 supports mods. You can rent your own Arma 3 server. Arma 3 doesn't run like doggie dookie.

While it's a feat of engineering that PS2 works at all, the reality is that it just doesn't run well for a lot of guys, still... even after 4 years of trying to optimize it.

Ooooor the lifespan of this game is near its end. SO it is in its prime. Might as well get off forumside and go enjoy! Now if the question is "Will there be a planetside3?" Who knows?
But really who knows what will happen in the next couple of years? One thing is for certain when the US federal reserve stops printing the gig is up.
Now follow the parent company to see when they sell Day Break to the highest bidder. I am surprised they have not parted it out yet.

Sure all games may lose people over time, but to say that 4 years is "normal" to result in player loss is a joke. By all measures, ARMA has more players playing today than it had in the 1st year after launch.

In fact, a list of games that are around 4 years old who have more players than their 1st year:
DOTA 2
CS:GO
Civilization 5
Euro Truck Simulator (maybe ANTs weren't such a bad idea after all)
Europa Universalis IV

The point is that good games have the ability to withstand the test of time. Eventually they will fade of course, but many of them are at 4 years and going strong.

PS2 is not such a game. It really isn't very memorable in any way. On the other hand each of the above games has a good amount of depth and continuing content that make them worthwhile. Only CS:GO stands out as a boring "shoot face" type of game which doesn't show too much strategy, but even then it lasts much better than the other arcadey FPSs out there (CoD).

Adding stronger tanks would in fact give PS2 more depth, because it would introduce an actual element of strategy and combined arms to the game.

You people also forgot about War Thunder, the free-to-play, combined arms game. It doesn't feature infantry at all, but it does feature tanks and aircraft. Similarly to Arma III, it was released in 2013 but a month before, and the game has prospered as can be found in the Steam Charts, where War Thunder averages approximately 10,000 concurrent players daily. But also take note that this number is only a mere fraction of the immense population of players who play this game without Steam, which from my ingame observation peaks at 50,000 concurrent players daily.

This is the potential that Planetside 2 could have had at this time if it were a true combined arms game, where it could had flushed out the

lol, you guys are so sadly transparent.

We get it: you want stronger tanks. The idea that stronger tanks will bring people to ps2 is utter nonsense.

Because you didn't ask me to, I didn't know I was supposed to only look at PS2's graph as it relates to Arma, and so I forget to not look at it on its own. Oops.

I think you better have another look at your link? This time, ignore the other game. PS2 popped its first year. Since Feb 13 it's been about the same. No massive bumbs, no massive drops, just a really slow decline ever since the initial fanfare. That's not coming back dude. It's over. Making tanks stronger only makes you happy; it doesn't do anything else.

It's worth mentioning that ps2 devs said ~2 years ago that most ps2 players don't play it through steam. So the steam charts only show <50% of the population. However it's the change that is of importance and I don't think there is any difference in the steam pop and the non-steam pop. PS2 had lots of players at release who wanted to try out this new strange game. Shortly they realized it was a niche low quality high demanding game and left. Since release it has just been a slow decline. The bumps that came with server merge, Amerish revamp, OMFG, construction didn't last long.

It's funny that ps2 quality does not have nuch correlate with population. The further back you go the more problems it had of every kind except dev communication. So many bugs, performance issues and crap balance. Yet more played the game back in those days.

I always felt that the peak of the game was in spring 2013, even though this was the time of harassers, ZOE, PAS and what not.

Very well said.

i dont think anyone is saying stronger tanks will bring people BACK, they are already gone. there are a few hold outs who check in once in a while to see if SOE/DGC has finally gotten their **** together, and post this stuff in the hopes that they soon will.

the reality is this was built as a combined arms game, but nearly every aspect of that has been sanded down or simplified. a great example being sunderers.

at launch it was very limited in where they could be pulled, and how much they actually cost (iirc it was 300-400 ground resources)
since then we combined the resource types, removed the different values generated by bases, allowed you to spawn them literally anywhere, and dropped the cost.
they originally needed to be heavily defended and really hurt when you lost one, now they are cheap throw aways you can spam and never run out of resources for.

the issue isnt that tanks got weaker, its that pretty much every role they used to fill has been gutted. there is really no point in armour columns now other than to take out bases, and rather than having to form them at warpgates or major facilities now we can do it from almost every base.

this game above all else imho lacked any sort of coherent Design doc that they stuck to, everything is all over the place and things kept getting changed in what seemed like a completely ad-hoc way.

Well OP like I said many times before, there's no way to stop bads being bad.
Farmers still farm and lemmings still die despite all nerfs.
All the same except less pop and fun.
JUST AS EXPECTED.

The op reasoned that making tanks weaker is the reason they're gone in the first place. That's stupid.

This thread is just one really big whine for stronger tanks.

The game was released and enjoyed a nice population. Like most games, that faded within the first year. The population has been relatively stable, with a slight decline, since Feb of 2013. Despite the many changes to the game since Feb 2013, the population didn't increase or decrease in any meaningful way; thus, arguing that one balancing act or another had an effect on the population is divorced from reality. The changes didn't do jack to the pop good or bad, so arguing the merits of each change is pointless.

If op's tank is getting torn up it's because of his bad positioning. Tank vs infantry is no contest. It takes several rounds to take out a tank. He's just mad he can't withstand 20 shots at once, then roll into a base and cap the point. This whole thread is dumb.