Well I cancelled my account today

I am not going to go away saying how bad this game is because there are good things about it. And for the price, even though I bought anti-air stuff only to find out how useless it is in the game (some things you have to learn the hard way I guess) I would have to say for the price I got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Break down how much I spent per hour in the game and we're talking pennies

I was going to buy a lot more in the game but it just makes me sick to play it anymore. I guess I'll list what is wrong and maybe it will be a passing thought to developers if they read these threads:

1. The whole game is decided on air power. Anti-Air is a joke and a waste of money in this game. DON'T BUY IT! Now Thank Me for saving you a headache. Bought a AA missle launcher for Heavy assult and out of 60 times firing it I downed 2 aircraft and hit 12. You read that correctly. 60 shots, 12 hits, 2 downed aircraft from it. Might want to think of that before purchasing it. Most were not even far shots. I'm talking like 100 yards away.

2. Infiltrators are about the worst "Sniper" class I've ever played in any game. That doesn't go without saying I do get some kills, but the 2.5 second breath of air (or should I say breathing problem) and holding your gun as if you are painting a house is just...well..it's kinda funny. Don't take my word for it however, simply join a platoon and count how many infiltrators are in it. 8 squads and 3 infiltrators. That includes me. People are not playing them for a reason. Not to mention that sometimes your headshots don't register along with the fact that all terrain has an invisible wall around it and half the time you find yourself shooting that invisible wall even though you had the shot lined up perfectly on an enemy player. Not very fun.

3. Freezing! Some say it's a c-4 exploit while others say it's just a code problem. Whatever it is, I have a computer that can play this game easily and I find it freezing all the time. Sometimes I'll go 3 hours without a freeze and sometimes it freezes every 40 minutes or so. In either case, this leads me to my 4th reason I cancelled.

4. Developers. It's like they don't exist. People come here telling them how they can fix their game. I've seen countless posts telling the teams that Air is too powerful and if you expect to play a ground game then you need to find another game to play. It always boils down to 100 people saying Air is WAY too powerful or AA is WAY too weak and then you have 4-5 pilots coming on defending their 100 kills an hour saying how it isn't over-powered and I guess by the devs silence they kinda take the few over the many. I wouldn't think that a wise decision but it is obviously their decision none-the-less. They don't comment, they don't say what they are working on, in fact if the whole development team was fired yesterday nobody would know the difference.

So before this turns into a blatant rant I will say that I can't forget the good times I did have in the game. Mostly before everybody started figuring out that this game is won and lost by over-powered Aircraft. Before that there was some fantastic battles and like I said, you can't beat the price. As long as you don't make my mistake and actually buy anti-air thinking you can help your side because you have a few less aircraft then the opposing forces, you'll be alright.

The sad thing about this is that I was really into this game. I don't even die much from aircraft. They come around and I just stay behind a forcefield and watch the other players die who don't follow my lead. Although it saves my butt it isn't any fun.

If I could give you my stuff I would when my subscription runs out. Although buying the Anti-Air stuff for this game was obviously a mistake, playing the game was not. It is well worth the free price tag. Just not much more as it is now...

Devs are on holidays.

Who let them out of their cellar?!

Re: 4 - as you might have noticed, it's currently Christmas-New Year break for most people. Including SOE.

SOE made a monumental mistake of releasing what is essentially a beta just before Christmas, then simply leaving on extended, two week vacation. I don't know why they did this; maybe they wanted the Christmas sales, maybe they wanted to fit in 2012 fiscal year. Either way, it backfired because the game is broken, people scream it's broken, and SOE doesn't even answer. Because they're not there.

Bottom line is, if this is one of your main reasons, wait out untill... well, now. I imagine most devs will be back at work tommorow and they will actually start releasing content/patches/fixes.

Maybe you should try coming back on the 25th apparently there's going to be a huge update to the game, I am done with this game for now too though.... how did you cancel your membership btw?

I know where the OP is coming from regarding air, but why not cancel your account and consider coming back after a patch or two, your character(s) will still be accruing certs while you are away.

I don't need pilots coming here telling me how good they think they are because they hopped into an over powered aircraft and could finally kill somebody. Save it for somebody that cares "mate".

I swear it's like somebody bragging that they are really good at a game as long as they use an invincibility code. Kinda leaves everybody else just standing around scratching their heads

As for how I cancelled. Go into my accounts and then Subcription info. Once you click the cancel button it switch to a re-subscribe button, or something like that. I won't be using it again but it's nice that if you decide to come back your character will probably still be there for ya

Cya mate!

On what server did you played? On Miller (EU) air is always countered by air (as I think it´s meant to be in PS2) and I never have a feeling that air is dominating the game. Sure there are moments when some Liberator-armada comes along and bombs the **** out of everyone, but even then it won´t take long when friendly Mosquitos deal with this annoyance. BTW, I just bought Skyguard-cannon for Lightning, and while it´s not actually powerfull, it´s serious threat when combined with other weapons.

This underlined thing is what I think is one of the greatest things in PS2: you have to work together to bring vehicles down (land or air). In PS2 vehicles are a serius threat, unlike in BF3 where you can bring a multi-million dollar, high-tech battle tank down with a single shot from your rocket launcher. About the Infiltrator class: it sure is the weakest sniper-class on any FPS and thank SOE for that. There is a little point to have a instaheadshot-class in game. Inflitrator still has plenty of use.

Game has it´s problems (bugs /performance problems most notably) but most of this OP-talk areises from the people playing this game like it´s COD or BF3. To a guy that came from ARMA-camp, PS2 is like a dream come true (and boy, have I learned to live with bugs )

Only for the first 24 hours after your last login, not always.

Check back after SOE comes back from their 2 weeks vacation. Don't think Smed is happy that pilots are making majority of their playerbase miserable and thus many are leaving the game. I'm not happy with the whole anti air balance either. But yes, criticism is warranted for them pushing the game out in November, then taking 2 weeks off within 2 months of release. You really can't do that, although I think we know it's not the developer's fault and everybody deserves a bit of vacation this time of the year.

It is what it is, let's see what they do after they get back. What they do in January is very important. This is the month they'll be 1) coming out with a large optimization patch, 2) will be laying out their 6 months plan, and giving players a voice on what we like to see, and 3) more content will be coming out this month.

I don't get it, I just don't. The times I've been killed by enemy air while on the ground can be counted with less than 5 fingers. This "massive, utterly game breaking OP god mode liberator spam" has only killed me THRICE in the course of the ENTIRE game. And I've played plus 3 hours every day since launch. I've been killed by an ESF on ground TWICE. I drive tanks and I run around as infantry just the same as any other guy.

Sounds to me the majority your'e talking about is just the vocal minority. Most people are silently content enjoying their play time in-game.

1. The whole game is decided on air power
One rocket is not meant to take down an aircraft

2. Infiltrators
people use em actively

3. Freezing!
happens in every game

4.. Air is too powerful
it is in real life too

You have to be either playing with 1 eye closed, or drinking something funny to think those who dislike air superiority is in the minority. A lot of people have either already quit or are taking a break from the game because of air. It's a common knowledge that majority of the players still prefer ground based combat, be it infantry or ground vehicles. Air is a niche sport, but it just so happen that air in this game got rewarded with the best farming tools in this game, and air's true hard counter is air, nothing else.

There is absolutely nothing balanced about a BR100 guy bragging about getting 7,000 kills in a Liberator within less than a week. Zero, nothing balanced, all arguments need to be tossed out of the window.

And this isn't real life. This is a game, games require balance, not an immigration of real life. If we imitate real life, they should just have nuclear bombs in this game so someone pressing 1 button could wipe 500 players at once.

Games require balance otherwise people leave that said game. Without good balance, even the air enthusiasts will get bored with the game when there are less and less ground targets to farm. Nobody wants this game to get to that point, I know I don't, and you can bet developers don't either, neither does the CEO of the company.

Exactly, there is no such thing as "The Developers."

You have corporate (Sony), publishers (SOE executives), managers, game designers, programmers/technicians/artists.

Sony is in a death spiral and clearly had put pressure to make PS2 mainstream and profitable in the first six-months/year. This is clearly why the game is released early, why one simple gun with no attachments costs 7$, why there is no real need to join a squad or organize. I also believe that someone in corporate (who probably never played a game in his life) decided that vehicles are the selling point of this game and thus should be easily obtainable in-game.

Blame Sony for releasing an unfinished product, wrong emphasis on vehicles and fast game-play and a pricing model that is a pure cash-grab.

Really, there is no reason to argue with pilots guys. Pilots should all be BR 40 plus from kills while everybody else is BR 40 and below because they don't hop into an aircraft, right? They need to inflate their egos by thinking that it's skill to sit in the back of a LIB or Galaxy or fly a fighter and rack-up kills while basically fighting things that take forever to kill you back. At this rate they'll not have anybody else left to kill and then they'll move onto the next ego-builder I guess.

Just sad that SOE has to ruin what could of been a great game because of it.

1. AA is weak and useless besides maxes with double busters. Can only hope they do something about it.
2. Infiltrators are not that bad I use them a bit different than everyone else so I guess that's why I feel that way about them.
3. There are those moments when the game randomly freezes and crashes for what ever reason, may it be memory leak or w/e.
4. Holidays or not as someone posted, they have never reply back to anyone nor inform what they are doing. And you are right the lack of telling the people what they are planning etc is horrible for a gaming company. I feel they avoid to tell anyone because people will disagree or tell this or that and it seems they can't handle that.

As Smedley himself has said, if you're frustrated, take a break. This is a MMO, things will evolve over time, it may or may not improve, but things will change.

MMOs aren't static.

And yes, it is the holidays.

Re: This being a Beta, I see it more as a soft opening, I'm sure they'll tweak the game based on findings over the holidays and analyze the data. Makes me wonder what the grand re-launch will be like.

I share much of your frustration. I'm waiting to see what is proposed in January before deciding on what to do with my subscription and Station Cash habits.

I don't know which way this is going to go. On the one hand we have a heavy leaning elsewhere in the MMO industry towards studiously avoiding counter play and balancing for skill, yet Planetside 2 seems to deliberately go against those design philosophies, which seems pretty self destructive.

We get told that air needs to be the hard counter to air (despite the stark warnings about the destructive side effects of counter play). OK, but why? We don't get to hear the reasoning behind that seemingly odd design decision. We get told that air vs ground is a "delicate balance touch". OK, but why? What does that mean? Why is air so special in this game?

The problem with not getting answers to questions is that people start making up "answers" of their own. Is air so heavily favoured because certain influential people in and around the dev team prefer to fly themselves? Is air being so protected and pampered to the point of encouraging counter play a side effect of a dev team of young gamers that are making "the game they want to play"?

Who knows? It seems highly unlikely that such things would be allowed. But in the absence of any official explanation, those are the current whisperings.

All I know is that the current dynamic between air and ground isn't fun if you're in a vehicle or on foot. As has been said elsewhere, even if something is balanced on paper, if it isn't fun for both sides of the encounter, then the game is failing in a big way.

Hopefully future changes will encourage people like you to come back to the game (and people like me to stay!) but I guess we will have to wait and see. There is plenty of scope for change in this game. It is still incredibly young and there is the strong potential for a heck of lot more balancing to be done and content to be added that might help make the game seem more attractive to those of us that don't favour flying.

Here's hoping anyway!