In the end I think a game is a good game if it always offers you a choice to make something different while everything else is just depressing. And SOE is constantly removing this stuff out of the game. Looks like SOE doesnt care about the populations on the servers. Miller got like +60% TR population since months now and its always a joy... ... to get a nice xp-boost from it, actually. °_° But thats only cause im persistent. I blame all the fault at SOE for being too carefree or stubborn to make according changes to the obvious nuisance/s haunting the game. You can name most of them under the term "to support brainless zerging and overpopulated factions" . I waited long enough now, I cant pretend to be polite anymore. Why are they not doing anything and making it worse and worse? I already lost hope that the game will ever recover. - Lattice ... making the mapsituation boring as heaven. Who cares about it even anymore? WHO? This change tought me that people dont want proper middle-seized fights. They always want boring overzergs rolling over one side or the other. The faction with more population cant lose territory as easily anymore, even idiots can defend everything now, no room for tactic, just "population vs population" instead of player versus player. A few days ago someone at Rashnu said " So this place is the whole game now? " He grew a little frustrated with how the terrain was not changing anymore. I think NC got 40% or 50% population that day and had fun standing around for hours with Maxes, Engineers and Medics in the same location. *lol* To think the current PS2 is supporting this kind of gamers is just...- As if the game is not slow enough if you have to wait "for hours" to decrease a capturetimer. I suggested elsewhere to implent a little submechanism in form of little computers and if you stand 10m near them, you can increase a capturepointtimer or slow it down if the enemy got the point. But now I think that mechanism would maybe not work anymore... because you couldnt use it properly when your empire only got 10% population remaining, cause the game was so BORING for months that everyone else left for something else. - Gens/SKE invulnerability or taken out of the game. Another content taken out of the game that was the lifeline of outpopulated factions. It was a choice. A choice to go and try some sabotage- and guerillia-action in deep enemy territory, when the frontlines got too cramped with enemys! Its still nice to hack Turrets and destroy the majority of other turrets with them at certain bases but something is missing now. Its not satisfying. To know I cant destroy stuff that I could normally destroy anytime if not defended, even tough there are no people nearby stopping me is so stupid. And everything just to force me to a front that BORES ME TO TEARS. You know what im doing when faced with zergs that keep forcing me in the spawnroom hex after hex? I shoot out of them... kill some people since there will always be people not knowing that there are locations enabling them to get shot from inside the spawnroom. Nice huh? Cool game-content, isnt it? " People can wait for resistance that never comes. Get shot a few times. The medics in their ranks get a few xp beside the xp from the sloooooooowly filling base-capture and thats it. Ooooh maybe they can get a few cheap kills from people sliding through the shield for a sec!!!! Great cinema!!!! *claps unimpressed* " If the old content could come up people would at least have A TASK while their empire zergs the whole continent! Like " Hunting the rats in their big bases deep inside their territory, destroying turrets, gens and ske's. " SOE just give up already before you turn the game into the most epic looking boredom ever produced in our worlds videogame-history! This is HORRIBLE !!! Your game wont simulate unavoidable frontlines. It wont simulate "empires clashing in each other". It cant! Cause you refuse to implant NPC's in the game, who keep populating the hexes BEHIND the frontlines, AI thats able to attack enemys as well and make the territorys actually "look alive" - your game wont simulate what you want! And you are making it even worse by robbing people from choices <- the thing keeping a game alive! Your only hope is that there will always be so many people playing in not just 2 but 3 factions each server to keep the game working at all. Why dont you realize already that everything chasing people away suks donkeyballs?!? " Ooooh but there will always be people who dont like some changes. Its impossible to make everyone satisfied. " ^ thats the mindset that kills a game for real. You are becomming the reason people stop playing. Fight the problems, don't BE the problem! As many variety as possible, NO MATTER WHAT !!! Did you see people avoiding your game when it went released? NO. They played it, regardless of all the not implanted stuff back then that made them quit the game later! It was fine! People whined but they would have continued to play! And what is it now?! So many content in the game that kept being different becomes more and more a movie you have seen all the time! Do you even know how great it was to be able to attack every hex from every other hex nearby? So many new paths to find and to explore. How boring lattice makes all that. You can never reach a certain location without going to exactly the same location you have gone throught for like 100 times already. OMG !!! And its not even related to skill and strategy but only population-fuel !!! x_x In that sense Outfits got a little boost in attractivity cause they got an increased efficiency to move forward in lattice-times, I must admit that. Since lattice doesnt stop making you able to advance in disconnected hexes as well, the path became obvious but not impossible. Still - I dont join Outfits just in order to win or because something forced me into coordinated gameplay with others. Im joining an Outfit because the game itself is fun and offers me many reasons and ways to approach the enemy. I for my part like Hotdropping. Amusingly, this is way to easy to archieve. But im not motivated enough to start a real big Outfit to this ingame-experience. The current changes made the VS candidates on Miller drop anyway. I guess mostly already got their solide place in which they want to be. Playing with the people they want to play with. So just give up SOE and return the variety already you took out beforehand. - Remove Gen/SKE invulnerability - Make Biolabroofs accessable again as before, implant long loop ways to justify it if you want, or give another floor for the Biolab already. And please dont implant some kind of mini-lattice for Biolabs. *rofl* - Add Subterrain-bases in the game if you got the time. Thank you, thats all. Rescue the game before only cranky people keep playing it who bite into everyone critizising the game in the slightest. You know, this unhappy kind of people who play because they are too cowardly to search for another game or something, but are not really fulfilled with PS2 either.
To my knowledge, there is no other game out there that competes with PS2. So your claim that people are playing because they are too cowardly to search for another game is just drama. I say this, as someone that doesn't see the Lattice as a fix for anything. Don't think I'm here to defend Lattice. As far as I'm concerned, it fixed nothing specific. It took away from some areas and gave to others. But many of the underlying mechanics of the game are still broken, such as bases having no significance in themselves, bases not being defensible, resources meaning very little, etc... I realize english is probably not your first language. Maybe because of that I am not understanding your post fully, but I get the impression that the real point of your rant is you're upset you can't stealth into bases far behind enemy lines and blow up generators and SCU's everytime someone fixes them. I have played that game of cat and mouse, fixing turrets, terminals, generators, etc... while some lame infiltrator hid in a corner somewhere and waited for me to leave to go blow them all up again. There is no gameplay value in that, other than the XP rewards. Turrets far behind enemy lines are no threat to your team. Taking out an SCU long before your team ever hopes of reaching the Biodome/Amp Station/Tech plant serves no purpose. If it was up to me, I would allow the access to blow these up, but I would award NO XP for any activity that happens more than 1 hex away from the front lines.
YET. PS2 got a huge advantage in "being highend". Thats all it has currently. There had been many cosmetic accidents but it was good as it was. But then SOE started nerfing popular playstiles. Players will always find new one's but oh well, thats not solving anything either. Thats not entirely true. Bases support empires that are already in advantage due to their population anyway. Thats "all they are doing" beside from being on the map and presenting territory to fight over. Because people will run out of ressources sooner or later and must desert the continent or fight in the most limited ways. Yes. 0: ) Everytime? Just once is enough for me. Im off then to other bases. Nope - its tactical value and "normally" we all know Soldiers would do it IN ANY CASE if possible. Of course not because they get XP, that only happens in a game, but because it damages the enemy. A realistic simulation needs to be as realistic as possible and THEN the game becomes the best possible version of it. Variety no matter the cost. You dont like hunting "phantoms" and "ghosts" ? THEN DONT TO IT. Or do it as long as you can have no motivation anymore. Someone else will take over your job! If not, then the justified disadvantage kicks in. You can do it too if you want! Everything available in the game is available for everyone after all. No one is is in disadvantage. Only people who want to feel in disadvantage. The people not fighting at the frontlines are still "missing" there and not doing any harm there! If the enemy empire doesnt advance to the weakened base, the "advantage" doesnt exist in any case! So whats so "overpowered" or "unreasonable" regarding this? Nothing. Its a legit tactic in warfare. I dont understand why so many cried and screamed as if they were about to get slaughtered, over this, while they seem to have no problems to get shot a few times out of spawnrooms and take over continents during the most boring kind of war imaginable. Is their ego worth only this much? Are they really satisfied with this kind of gameplay? No feeling of archievement at all. No REALLY personal actions rewarded. No personal tasks. Just zerg zerg zerg in hope to always have enough people trying to counter it. I have no obligation to go out of the spawnroom either, you know? Why should I? Im not interested in the slightest which empires owns what anymore. The game became to stupid for that. All I know is people tried to deny me my fun and now im denying theirs in any way left. It feels amazing. And I get more xp after all for paying less. Who is the true winner, huh? Ok I admit im not lvl100 yet. But must I...? All those people who are lvl100 for months now and still move in unstoppable zergs - I wonder how they must feel? Bored? I hope so. SOE robbs me from ways to keep them buys anyway. But im not complaining. Im VS after all. I will adapt. Evolution adapts always.
SOE is a business. They will apparently do anything to continue to have the bucks roll in. If its at the sacrfice of players like me who already put way more $$ into PS2 than a game normally would get ($65), then they are in a good place. Just keep changing the game to entice constantly new players to buy subs and micro transactions, and the 'veterans' can go fly off a dock for all they care. In my instance, I purchased 3 months early sub, then purchased an additional year when the game was going good. No sooner had I done that, changes were made that completely changed the game from why I signed up in the first place; and I felt like an idiot for giving them so much money. So If i left the game, SOE wouldnt care. Perhaps they care about the other 9 players that would have purchased and played the game; on my word that it was good. Now they literally have 0/10 customers. Right now, they have an influx of numbers from summer break, but who knows how many of them will actually pay, or are using PS2 as a free 2 play entertainment during the summer. All I know is some of us old gamers have lost most, if not all, interest in making this game home. We need more options, more depth, more strategy, more community and outfit options. There is a reason why Counterstrike (Classic), even after close to 14 years, has 3 times the players of PS2 ALL DAY. A game doesnt need to be changed every 3 days in order to be successful.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The lattice without NTU's is half a gameplay system and doesn't work. NTUs make the lattice system work and the fact that SOE thought they could just lattice things with out going through the work of making the NTU speaks volumes of quality of the developers.
Also, heads up to all, this game is changing because it is not finished. Just because it is released dose not make it complete or version 1, or anything of that nature. Actually, this game IS NOT at V1.0 yet, it is still Beta in a business point of view (obviously to the players they assume it is finished) Just because something is removed/implemented does not mean that decision is forever we have already seen things removed and are still being worked on for later release, this game is still in developement. We are watching it change through the process! and many of you probably do not know that PS2 was only in developement for about a year before the first players were able to get their hands on it, it is far from finished, and so it will not stop changing for a long time (just as any other game)
Of course one can say that since there's no alternative people still play PS2 simply because they don't have a choice.
People always complain about zerging, but really, it's been the main tactic since Beta. Whether it's 50 tanks, 50 planes, or just 50 dudes in drop pods, it is the most efficient way to seize base control. A steady yet slower flow of soldiers allows for reinforcements to come in and turn the tide of battle. (and you do NOT want to let the NC get maxes into the fight in a place like a Biolab that can mess with things immensely) And then people always complain about the spawnroom, when at least it's somewhere SAFE to spawn. In all honesty it gives you that chance to change things up and break out of it. Get everyone to run out the door at the same time and not only can you break out and form stronger defensive lines but fun fact: Half the invading team always seems to run around aimlessly or afk waiting on cap timers. All you have to do is break out and it's a fight again. Put some Engi turrets down, have a dedicated res medic, and a good bullet sponge max. And we dont want any npcs that would be just farm tools for certs/xp. One of my favorite parts about this game is that if something explodes it's because someone did it. All of the action is player controlled. Npcs would actually ruin the game experience. The game certainly aint perfect but when it comes down to it... it's a free (seriously it's free nobody forced you to put any money into it you have wasted nothing) good looking fps that brings a LOT to the table. I cant think of other fps games that can compete with the sheer size of the fights Planetside 2 has. When I want my shooter fix, game of choice right here.
I'm sorry if I missed something but I couldn't read the whole post. I got through the lattice part and started on the spawnroom shield stuff. Now with the disclaimer out of the way, name any other 'current gen' FPS games that can support hundreds and hundreds of people in a single fight. With the changes to how base captures work (the lattice) it is enforcing the main populations to engage with eachother directly. Instead of having them skirt around eachother ghost-hacking defenceless bases. What you suggest is going back to a more battlefield-esque feeling of small groups of 30ish people fighting eachother. Planetside is planetside. Not battlefield. If you want small skirmishes, go play something else! Planetside is already a copy enough of battlefield! I dont want it going the full rout and us stuck playing that stupid metro map over n over!
Yep, we pay to beta-test their game for them. I just wait for the day when they drop development, then maybe there might be something to work with.. and all the crying and whining and up/op screams will go unheard, and players will have to deal with the strengths/weaknesses of the game and TRUE competition can begin. The best day for PS2 is when the developers stop fiddling with it, and leave it as is. Hopefully that is soon. NOTE: I feel that way about Minecraft and other games as well. They were fine as is, and continued 'developing' (basically meddling) is just pushing them away from the original reason people bought the game in the first place, and eventually can become detrimental.
I wouldn't count on it, It is planned to be a MASSIVE game, and with maybe 2 years of development behind it, it won't be any time soon sadly I'd expect plenty more years of whining/changing/additions and I can assure you, the Devs are passionate about this game, I'm am sure that it will be amazing when it is fully complete! Edit: Just read your edit, I agree, though what this game is supposed to be has been stated from the beginningand most of the changes so far have been expected. It is also FTP and you don't need to spend money, which is also a bonus!
Wow you are quite optimistic. PS2 won't last years, other than in the fanboi community, like PS1 did. But for as major numbers, I dont think so. I dont think of PS2 in terms of years, maybe months. I'm also keenly aware of SOE's history with games and how they operate, so I am not as optimistic as you.
I too am aware of SOEs history, then again, this is a different team created from people trying to re-create planetside from the very start! I quite enjoy PS1. I believe this game will last years, yes it is FTP and is a fun, unique game that runs on an engine capable of upgrading its visuals for further generations of gaming and the possibility for a vast number of implementations. we will see where SOE take this also, I am not a fan-boy, just for clarity!
Oh they do? Well - I guess there will always be idiots who demand that they can beat 10 enemy players, with their deployed and well defended Sunderer already in position. They really are delusional to actually expect that. I complain about stuff supporting BRAINDEAD zerging. You know, like spawning at an not really efficiently placed Sunderer, running like an Lemming to a location that is under heavy fire, not really pushing forward for hours, but do they change their approach? NOOOOO. There should be more efficient ways to play, more EPIC looking ways. But do people do it? NOOOOOOO. And why should they? Just try to box yourself through everything, lamercombo Max-Medic-Engineer in check and lets go!!! Doesnt matter how often we die - we play inefficient as our enemys - but hopefully we get more people and can push through. " If we dont get more people... WHOOO CAAAAAARES we get certpoints anyway!!! " ^ I bet this is how most people play the game. There are barely any tactics in a game making a noticable difference. And im speaking about something when all empires got an even populationnumber. But how could there be such a thing? SOE is removing this elements! Lattice made the game obvious and expectionable. If there is no room for surprise-tactics anymore - its clear as day that there will always be idiot-defenders in position very fast. While they dont deserve it, to mention it. In the 2nd Worldwar, the ***** only defeated France in a flash because no one would expect such a thing to work. To be honest I cant understand why France gave up either, since they still had many troops left when drawing the white flag. But they did it, for whatever reason. Because the ***** had not been restricted by some kind of "lattice" that enabled France to intercept their attack in an optimal way. Lattice is bullpiss. It is stupid, it makes no sense, it "shrinks" maps, it bores to death and it is serves NO purpose! Cause if a continent gets to hard, people will NATURALLY go to another one. OH EMPTY HEXES AGAIN, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT? The situation is only stable when people dont got a problem to fight in the same spot for hours. But I think the most time people will just shift from one side of a continent to the other (like me), not caring about the advance or retreat and maybe even abandon the continent if there is no progress for too long. Whats left is decided not by skill but "population". How boring. How disgusting. Why are so many idiots everywhere not understanding this?
You're acting as if they read the official forums. At best you'll get a thread-locking emissary to see what all the fuss was about and disperse the crowd. There are more Higby posts on Reddit than official forums btw.
It's obvious how PS2 will fare, since we've seen it all before with Tribes: Ascend. Both games were picked for no other reason than nostalgia and brand recognition, by a studio that had little experience in making similar games, and turned into the f2p model. Both games were "modernized" with contemporary FPS features, something that ended up only hurting them, because it was done without giving it any thought and considering how will it impact the rest of the game. Both games had a vocal, "veteran"(players of previous games in the series) community that jumped on them during closed beta and gave valuable insight that was completely ignored by the developers. Both games released in what was essentially beta state and turned paying customers into free betatesters. Both games featured a number of "major" updates that all were too little, too late. Both games relied heavily on social media and "internet celebrities"(lol) to promote them. Both games pushed heavily into the progaming scene, and obviously failed miserably because progaming isn't something you just get in with your game "because you want to". Both games were fundamentally broken in a way that simply adjusting balance will never fix, as the entire core of the game was simply badly designed. Both games had drama and tears related to their f2p model, with things that were buffed and then nerfed and then give me my money back SOE/HiRez! So if you want to know where Planetisde 2 will be in 7 months, look at where T:A is now.