What type of game is Planetside 2 supposed to be?

This game has a lot of potential. It's fun and has a big player base. But there's a big conflict between the two things it can be:
- An instanced arena FPS with vehicles, with a match time of about 5 minutes, no team balancing and map (base) rotation controlled by the lattice. Alternatively,
- A unique, massive, open world war game with battles taking place over four large continents, with fluid battle lines, combined arms and logistics.

I was sold (metaphorically, since it's F2P) the second game. That game sounds really excellent. If I wanted to play the first, I'd be playing a game from a series that is good at it, or failing that CoD. SoE claim it is that excellent second game. I really want it to be that second game.

Is that the game you're actually going to make, SoE? And if so, why has almost every change since I've started playing moved it away from that and towards the first game? The changes I'm thinking of are
- Squad deployment into vehicles. Now you don't need to pick people up and move them, just REDEPLOY and you're in the next map! Only the driver needs to see any of the world.
- Reployside. Now I'm not sure if this is down to a mechanics change regarding reinforcements, or just players working out how best to abuse it over time and it not being addressed. But base defence these days consists of people winning one map, pressing REDEPLOY and joining the fight at another map.
- Lightnings spawnable everywhere. Why think about the map as anything larger than the current base and about where you can pull vehicles when you can just make every base the same!
- That experiment with spawning at any sundy, anywhere. The map screen just becomes a CoD lobby: which fight do I want to join? Thankfully you saw the light on that one.
- Resource/alert revamp. Now territory doesn't matter at all, so people deploy to a 'good fight' with no intention of pushing territory.

About the only positive thing you've done is add SCUs to some bases on Indar to prevent redeployside without someone at least fixing it first, though it's easy enough to drop in 3 engineers in advance of the zerg redeploy. We desperately need fewer spawn options, possibly even none within active combat areas, so control points and bases are useful areas of the overall continent map, not the sole focus and redeploy zones.

tl;dr please stop making your game like CoD and start taking advantage of the scale of the map

MMO(BROKEN)FPS

/thread

People will tell you what Planetside 2 is supposed to be based on Planetside 1.

To me, the truth of the matter is that's it's a sci-fi, persistent world version of Battlefield with its own little spin on some things.

From the SOE side of things. The game needs to be profitable. This means the game needs to very easy to understand and cater to casual players who make up the vast majority of the market. This in turn means simplifying many aspects of the game down so that brand new players can enjoy the game.

it's a whack-a-mole game.
pretty good, the colours and numbers popping up everywhere really sold it to me.

Theatrical comedy.

lack of optimization simulator 2012

SuperMedicated nailed it. 100% this.

This whole time I thought it was Cooking Mama

When the final phases of the resource revamp come into play with the other upcoming changes to missions and metagame. You will see the game take 100 steps forward for the 2 steps it took back with the resource revamp in its current form. Patience people...patience...

An console Arcade FPS

I really hope so...
Anyways, the biggest problem here is the ammount of facilities we have (and the current status of resource revamp...). Because there are so many facilities it's too easy to get from one base to another and battles between bases (aka in the open field) don't happen as often as they used to in PS1. If SOE removed some of the facilities this could be the best innovation since Vanu invented sliced bread...

I don't think SOE themselves are sure what they want wiith this game.
On the one hand I like redeployside, I redeploy all the time looking for a good fight.
Not really caring about the meta game since there isn't any besides alerts.

On the other hand I would not mind it being a bit more like Planetside 1. Where you really moved from base to base and could influence the enemy's power by doing spec ops missions.

In my opinion it has gone to far with the instant gratification, we need a bit more consequences to our actions with objectives that matter. But at the same time not like Planetside 1, sometimes it was really annoying getting to a good fight.

Honestly, once the RR is finished, this game will be nearly as perfect as it can be. At least meta wise...
Once they get that done, new conts and the battle islands, then it'll be a finished product and finally out of beta :eyeroll:

From time to time i do output those comedy gems

Like this on april fools

I would support a broad restructuring of bases and their functionality!

Maybe in the future this will be feasible with the smaller bases having interlinks to feed the larger bases nanites or power. The world certainly has an unfinished feel to it. Its almost as if the budget ran short when it came to implmenting functionality to bases and a rewarding meta experience.

I wouldn't say they should do it with all bases...

...But they could fold the surrounding bases of some tech plants and amp stations into the same hex as the larger bases. and disperse the cap points between the main facility and the smaller added facilities so that you have mega bases. With the smaller outlying bases actually doing what what their name implies in some cases.
One could be operating the shields at the base.
One could be generating resources.
One could be the radar facility.
One could be where you pull vehicles from. etc etc with the less important stuff on the outlying buildings (former bases) and the more important stuff closer to the center.

At least this would give some purpose to zerging.. or a goal other than rush, surround, camp.. move on. It would be the equivalent of having to hold 4-5 facilities to cap the larger bases.

You could add new dynamic objects and make some existing objects dynamic. Think hackable ammo towers and facility radar that exposes enemey aircraft etc. etc..

This would allow for mini alerts in areas of the maps and give meaning to that otherwise seemingly pointless tower in the middle of nowhere

Thats how sony rolls... LOL been doing it since EQ1!

It goes something like this:
I need repairs! *Drives away from the engineer* I need repairs! *Drives away from the engineer* I need repairs! *Runs over the engineer*

I need ammo! *Runs away from engineer with ammo box* I need ammo! *Runs away from engineer with ammo box* I need ammo! *Goes to a sunderer instead of an engineer*

i call it a MMOSDFPS
Massive
Multiplayer
Online
Single
Digit
Frames
Per
Second

They don't even need to remove the facilities, just the spawn rooms in outposts.