Originally posted by Teala
I really do not see this lack of big battles being a problem in PS2.   I never "not" seem to find a big battle - especially on Indar.   The fight for the Crossroads area is never ending - so when I want a huge battle I just go there.  :)

Play the game at launch, every server either high or pop locked, every cont packed and just massive battles everywhere and at every time. Now every server is low/medium apart from one or two that are high during a few hour period a day :\

My server was Medium during peak time and every faction was on their own cont dominating in a zerg ignoring each other with large fights in the odd occasion, however no one defends so it is pointless. The problem is too 90% of the day there is no one on, cause everyone is so spread out you only get good fights during the peak time of the day. Planetside suffered from this too, basically you can only play in the late afternoons and the evenings. 

Originally posted by tixylix

Originally posted by Teala
I really do not see this lack of big battles being a problem in PS2.   I never "not" seem to find a big battle - especially on Indar.   The fight for the Crossroads area is never ending - so when I want a huge battle I just go there.  :)

Play the game at launch, every server either high or pop locked, every cont packed and just massive battles everywhere and at every time. Now every server is low/medium apart from one or two that are high during a few hour period a day :\

My server was Medium during peak time and every faction was on their own cont dominating in a zerg ignoring each other with large fights in the odd occasion, however no one defends so it is pointless. The problem is too 90% of the day there is no one on, cause everyone is so spread out you only get good fights during the peak time of the day. Planetside suffered from this too, basically you can only play in the late afternoons and the evenings. 

No different than when PS1 released, and PS1 had twice as many continents.    MMOFPS is not everyones cup of tea.  You are either a fan of this type of game play or you're not.   I think, PS is a lot like EVE, in that it will never be a game that has 10 million players.   It's a niche game.

Originally posted by tixylix

They have too many servers and people are spread too thin, it's really hard to find a big battle these days. If you want big fights then you can only play during the late afternoon and evenings which is a problem Planetside had. The problem is a static server system they have where they cannot bring players together when the population is low, I have really no idea why they didn't address this issue from the first game. I've found myself not really logging in at all for various reasons but none of my friends liked the game, they all seemed to find it hard to work out what was going on and kept complaining about being spawn camped. Then you have this small windows you can only play if you want giant battles and I just got tired of waiting to play.

It is that classic cliche SOE tale of having a game in beta with such potential but with obvious issues, SOE ignores the players and launches the game way too early, then the population declines fast after launch and never recovers. SOE hasn't shown the ability to acknowledge what is wrong with the game, how to fix it and what players want. Now they're in the stage of buffing and nerfing stuff and pissing people off each patch, something that didn't need to happen at this stage but what should have been done in beta, the problems existed then. 

I don't know what SOE plans to achieve with the weapons in this game either, they all look the same and play the same. SOE really seems to want to make every gun play the same way, I like every other Planetside player complained about the HA weapons. What they've done is taken away their personality and made them like any other gun in the game. The Lasher really just plays like any other Vanu rifle but with a slightly bigger effect, the MCG plays like any other rifle in the game, the only difference is it has a spin time which makes it worse. Then you have the NC Jack Hammer which is worse than the common pool one, it like the other shotguns look like rifles and it doesn't even sound like a Shotgun when you head it being fired at you. 

This really exists to the vehicles too, you can be fired upon by the Lib and the projectiles don't seem to have any effects on them when they hit your vehicle. You often just sit in your MBT and you see what looks like rifle fire on your vehicle and ignore it, then suddenly you're dead and it is like wtf happened? Soon you realise it was a Lib.......

The vehicles really dominate the game, though I should say ESFs and MBTs. Sunds are useless for anything other than being the new AMS, I don't even know why it is in the game, they should have just made the AMS. Thanx to the main gun being on the driver seat of the MBTs The Lightning is useless and no one uses it, not even for the Skyguard cause AA is a joke in this game. What they've done is turned MBTs into the only viable ground vehicle in the game, it really should have been the Lib of the ground where you need 2 or 3 people to make it useful. You have the Galaxy which isn't all that useful because it is a massive target that gets fucked up so fast, not only that but capturing a spawn point in a base or spawning on your squad is so easy it makes it rather pointless. You have the Lib but using an ESF is much more effective, you can avoid AA like a piece of piss and rocket pods can easily destroy a MBT.

Overall though because you can customise everything what SOE has done is really taken away the personality of vehicles, weapons and the class system with no inventory really makes you not think about armour sets. I would have liked a mass of vehicles that played different roles just because it would be something else to look at and the same goes with weapons. Instead they all have this generic look that you put attachments to and even then you cannot always see much of a difference. 

 

I also find base capture to be tedious and rather pointless as without a Sanc or more conts you cannot lock conts and own them like you could in Planetside. There is no sense of flow to the battle like Planetside had because of this and also the Hex system spreads people out too much. Instead of having these large fronts and masses of people coming together you now have people spread out over hundreds of tiny outposts. One person can capture an outpost and it then causes people to go and defend it but this is happening all over the map so it really spreads people out a lot and isn't all that fun. Each Cont as its own problem, Indar funnels the Vanu and NC upwards towards the TR so you find the TR fighting two factions and the other two ignoring each other. Amerish gives a massive advantage to the TR with access to two or three tech plants and Esamir only has one Tech plant so you tend to find the battles being rather lackluster. 

What generally tends to happen in base captures is with Outposts vehicles just sit outside the spawn and you as a defender cannot do anything about it, as soon as you walk out you get shot at. I really don't understand why spawns were designed to have no protection and I don't understand why the capture system encourages this. Currently you just sit there and gain influence to cap and you have to camp the spawn, there is nothing else to do. They really need to ditch Influence and make it so you need a certain number of people on the capture point to get or have something that takes the battle away from the spawns like a CTF type system that Planetside had. 

In large bases usually the defender gets spawn camped again, there is very little infantry only area in bases, so vehicles destroy anything in the courtyard which is basically 80% of the base. The only two bases where infantry isn't exposed is the Biolabd and the Tech Plant, these have their own problems though as the Biolab quickly turns into camp the teleporter which is basically a spawn. If however there are too many people then it becomes the attackers camping the spawn, quite often you cannot get rid of the attackers teleport as it is now behind the front lines. The Tech Plant becomes that BF3 Metro map where there is only one way in and it's just get shot as soon as you walk in and there is a spam of grenades. 

So I don't find the base captures all that fun and the annoying thing is that they don't last long either like they did in Planetside. There is no reward for defending, you're much better bailing and attacking another part of the map or shifting conts. Generally people switch conts because you're rewarded for winning but not defending and you gain more resources and certs. So quite often your base will be attacked and everyone bails and there seems to be very little resistance. Then you look at the map and you see the enemy are just attacking another base or are all on another cont. 

You have these giant bases but they're actually really small, most of it is just for show and has no indoor space. When looking at the Biolab for the first time I thought it would have so many levels inside, there is only one and it doesn't really feel like an indoor area either. There are no doors to anything, so it is really easy just to wonder in, bases are so open and hard to defend.

 

I found myself having fun in this very flawed title but everything I want in the game like a Knife slot, enemy collision, reduced damage done to infantry by vehicles, a revised capture system or the Underslung MCG is stuff where the developers have said no to. I find it really hard to keep playing when I know that stuff that I want wont be in there but it is stuff that really annoys me. On top of that with none of my friends playing any more, it's really hard to enjoy a game like this on my own. 

 

I remember in October when it was announced the game would launch in November that SOE were making a mistake. This was no secret, we all said it on the forums, the game lacked so much they were saying would be in the game. SOE said they knew the meta game was broken and they were fixing it, however they launched with the broken meta game and we still have yet to hear what they have planned. It's another case where the game will be dead before anything gets put in that makes people enjoy it. I just don't understand how SOE could screw it up so much, I really thought they had changed and learnt from their past mistakes, they keep saying they have and yet they keep making the same mistakes again and again. 

The population is in decline, you can easily see it, you used to have battles everywhere and pop locks. Now you have servers that top out on medium, but are mostly low for the day and it's hard to find the big battles any more. SOE wont merge them in time either, they'll just let more people quit because they're bored of playing with a low pop. You cannot switch servers or make new characters as the stuff you bought is based on that character and not account bound which is dumb. They've put this dumb low character limit so you cannot make new characters to move with the time zones if you wanted to, unless you deleted one and accepted losing money.

 

I said similar things when SWTOR was launching, I made a post in Jan to merge servers because the population was clearly declining. It was easy to predict that the servers would be highly populated over Christmas but as people go back to work they'll lower by quite a bit. It was a very dumb time to launch the game, they made too many servers and they all quickly died. SOE are making the same mistakes as SWTOR and what they have done in the past and developers don't seem to learn. 

agreed

Originally posted by Teala

Originally posted by tixylix

Originally posted by Teala
I really do not see this lack of big battles being a problem in PS2.   I never "not" seem to find a big battle - especially on Indar.   The fight for the Crossroads area is never ending - so when I want a huge battle I just go there.  :)

Play the game at launch, every server either high or pop locked, every cont packed and just massive battles everywhere and at every time. Now every server is low/medium apart from one or two that are high during a few hour period a day :\

My server was Medium during peak time and every faction was on their own cont dominating in a zerg ignoring each other with large fights in the odd occasion, however no one defends so it is pointless. The problem is too 90% of the day there is no one on, cause everyone is so spread out you only get good fights during the peak time of the day. Planetside suffered from this too, basically you can only play in the late afternoons and the evenings. 

No different than when PS1 released, and PS1 had twice as many continents.    MMOFPS is not everyones cup of tea.  You are either a fan of this type of game play or you're not.   I think, PS is a lot like EVE, in that it will never be a game that has 10 million players.   It's a niche game.

No like Planetside as in you can only play during peak time, the rest of the day the game is dead.

I mean at 1am I went round capturing bases on my server on my own :\ No one around. They need to populate the servers all the time, so they need to merge servers automatically as the population declines.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
Seems busier than ever to me.

Hell 3 of my "normal" mates that don't work in IT play it

Also don't get the swtor thing at all, planetside is about as opposite as you can get from swtor while still being a mmo.

Classic

I disagree with some of it.  It could use a bit of fixing up but it's not a total disaster.

TTK could use tweaking for Infantry.  The speed at which people die really needs adjusting.  Not a lot but enough so folks can compensate.

Air, Vehicles & Infantry should *ALL* have the same effective ability to counter each other.  Not the current poorly designed state of the game.  It needs more focus on "how *YOU* want to play" - not "fly or die".  A few air and they can keep an entire platoon pinned down, "fodder to the farmers" style.

The rewards for fighting need a revamp big time. 

It's a hell of a lot faster and more profitable to simply float base-to-base, flipping them.  Hopefully with a very small defensive force - empty gets boring but a few "defenders" to butcher lends enough bonus XP to keep you going.

If you're caught in a base by a bigger force, there really is *NO* reason to stick around and fight it out.  All you do is feed them certs so that 15% XP defense bonus is pretty damned worthless when 5-10 air, 5-20 armor and a half dozen infantry show up.  Which isn't uncommon for a "base flipping" force.  15% of nothing is still nothing.

Major battles can be fun but have become less and less common over time.  They really need to motivate the players to *WANT* to fight it out and not "this is going to take too long, let's go find some bases to flip."  Been here and done this repeatedly.  It gets old "moving on" because a fight takes too long and leaving a few hostiles around becuase it's faster/easier to just go to the next base? ...

Just like a Call of Duty game or basically any one of those F2P lobby shooters; You can only shoot someone in the face so many times before it becomes monotonous..

The "tactical" map is near pointless as is locking a continent all together.

Too much emphasis is put on the zerg and as a result people flock to whatever continent the zerg is occupying, usually undefended.

Defense has little to no rewards at all, more rewarding to just find a low contested pop continent and zerg every base for capture points. Most bases are purely indefensible due to lack of turrets, or even lack of tank spawning units or any static air defense at all. Non upgradable bases.

Air, Air, Air, tanks , and more Air.. Everyone can drive a vehicle, the result being that nearly every engagement will be between who has the most.

Every "battle" ends just about the same way, with spawns being camped..

Overall, the epic battle feeling the game once had has finally faded from view as the more mechanical and systematic way of combat has taken prevalence. It's nothing more than a grind for cert points, no one cares about territory. Most of it is useless and it flips nightly. Cont locking gives a puny bonus no where near fit for a king but they fit the theme of "here today, gone tomorrow" by not overly rewarding a faction for accomplishing such an easy feat..

Bottom line: The Metagame needs work.. The foundation is down, it needs refinement..

Originally posted by Vyeth

Just like a Call of Duty game or basically any one of those F2P lobby shooters; You can only shoot someone in the face so many times before it becomes monotonous..

The "tactical" map is near pointless as is locking a continent all together.

Too much emphasis is put on the zerg and as a result people flock to whatever continent the zerg is occupying, usually undefended.

Defense has little to no rewards at all, more rewarding to just find a low contested pop continent and zerg every base for capture points. Most bases are purely indefensible due to lack of turrets, or even lack of tank spawning units or any static air defense at all. Non upgradable bases.

Air, Air, Air, tanks , and more Air.. Everyone can drive a vehicle, the result being that nearly every engagement will be between who has the most.

Every "battle" ends just about the same way, with spawns being camped..

Overall, the epic battle feeling the game once had has finally faded from view as the more mechanical and systematic way of combat has taken prevalence. It's nothing more than a grind for cert points, no one cares about territory. Most of it is useless and it flips nightly. Cont locking gives a puny bonus no where near fit for a king but they fit the theme of "here today, gone tomorrow" by not overly rewarding a faction for accomplishing such an easy feat..

 

Bottom line: The Metagame needs work.. The foundation is down, it needs refinement..

Pretty much spot on to how I feel about the game at its current state. I am personally only interested in playing the Infiltrator class and after hitting BR22 with everything I wanted unlocked it just feels pointless to continue. You get nothing for defenses, you really don't gain ground because there is no lock on territory or any reason to hold it and all fights usually ends at the spawn point.

Overall I think this game will slowly lose players as time goes on and pretty much the only people playing will be the die hard planetside 1 fans who only care for FPS style games. Everyone else will eventually move on to other games but until they can give people a reason to play beyond certs I dont see the playerbase gaining much ground then it currently is.

Originally posted by Vyeth

Just like a Call of Duty game or basically any one of those F2P lobby shooters; You can only shoot someone in the face so many times before it becomes monotonous..

The "tactical" map is near pointless as is locking a continent all together.

Too much emphasis is put on the zerg and as a result people flock to whatever continent the zerg is occupying, usually undefended.

Defense has little to no rewards at all, more rewarding to just find a low contested pop continent and zerg every base for capture points. Most bases are purely indefensible due to lack of turrets, or even lack of tank spawning units or any static air defense at all. Non upgradable bases.

Air, Air, Air, tanks , and more Air.. Everyone can drive a vehicle, the result being that nearly every engagement will be between who has the most.

Every "battle" ends just about the same way, with spawns being camped..

Overall, the epic battle feeling the game once had has finally faded from view as the more mechanical and systematic way of combat has taken prevalence. It's nothing more than a grind for cert points, no one cares about territory. Most of it is useless and it flips nightly. Cont locking gives a puny bonus no where near fit for a king but they fit the theme of "here today, gone tomorrow" by not overly rewarding a faction for accomplishing such an easy feat..

 

Bottom line: The Metagame needs work.. The foundation is down, it needs refinement..

Very well said and I was not surprised to see the game devolve into mindless flipping back and forth. SOE simply do not have the vision, nor the talent to build a persistant, strategic and tactical MMOFPS.

Originally posted by Yamota
All modern triple A MMOs start to decline 1-3 months after release. They are designed to get a lot of people buying it and then try to squeeze as much as possible out of you before the content gets repetetive and you move on. Sad, but true.

PS2 is not a AAA mmo nor does it have a purchase price but it's clear they are trying to milk every penny out of players with the extremely painful cert grind meaning it's extremely time consuming to get those 1000 certs for a new weapon even with xp boosts.

PS2 is a very shallow game, it lacks all the finesse and strategy of the original and is getting very boring and repetitive quickly.

Faction population imbalance is also becoming a massive problem, on my server (Miller) NC are always underpopulated. Earlier today i logged in to find we had 17% on Esamir, 20% on Indar and 6% on Amerish. With only three continents there is no way to sneak around and spread your enemy all over the place chasing ghosts, three continents means it's zerg warfare 24/7 which is fine when populations are even, but when your outnumbered 3-1...well...it's painful at times.

Worse still, Miller at times degenerates into base flipping, TR take one continent, NC another and VS (even with superior numbers) seem happy to let the reds and smurfs flip bases so they can flip them back later.

Too much focus on certs and xp, it's not good and something needs to change.

For me, PS2 was a nice diversion, and it might remain good for that in the future, now and then anyhow.

But it is quite repetitive, especially if you're going in as a solo player (I have no real interest in joining a guild, as I'm already guilded in other games). The cert grind is also boring and newer weapons seem to offer very little benefits or variety in the first place, except for air / vehicle weapons, that seem to be almost required and cost tons of cert points.

People who are saying it isn't are in denial, the game is dead any other time than peak time, which SOE should never have let happened. This basically means you can only play during one time of day, which then puts more people off playing. 

Not only that, the population during peak time is so low, I couldn't find a single big battle last last, the game was dead. It used to be so packed in the first few weeks of launch, now you cannot find the battles it once had.

Originally posted by tollbooth
only reason I quit was because I didn't want to deal with hackers/cheaters.  People with multiple accounts team killing at bases in order to take them.  the game turned into a total mess.

Personally I never experienced any of that but I'm on the EU servers, maybe they're better for people behaving. 

Originally posted by tixylix

People who are saying it isn't are in denial, the game is dead any other time than peak time, which SOE should never have let happened. This basically means you can only play during one time of day, which then puts more people off playing. 

Not only that, the population during peak time is so low, I couldn't find a single big battle last last, the game was dead. It used to be so packed in the first few weeks of launch, now you cannot find the battles it once had.

What server(s) are you playing on?

Originally posted by ignore_me

Originally posted by tixylix

People who are saying it isn't are in denial, the game is dead any other time than peak time, which SOE should never have let happened. This basically means you can only play during one time of day, which then puts more people off playing. 

Not only that, the population during peak time is so low, I couldn't find a single big battle last last, the game was dead. It used to be so packed in the first few weeks of launch, now you cannot find the battles it once had.

What server(s) are you playing on?

I would ask the same question, Miller has big fights most of the time but often not on all continents outside of prime time.

Usually during quiet times 2 continents are populated with base-flippers and the third is usually TR vs VS with NC making a nuisance of themselves.

I'm on Three servers, on AU and two EU, I joined the AU simply cause I have friends there.

I can't remember the name of one of the EU servers but it never has people, I mean not even during peak, it is always dead and as a result each faction tends to just take over a cont and not leave.

The AU server is mostly dead too, what I expect from there though, has some battles during their peak time but not much. Funny cause when I first joined it on the first few days it was massively packed, like all the servers were.

Miller is my main, it's the most populated EU server but it never goes above Medium any more. You can only play on the server between like 6 and 10pm and any other time and it is a ghost town. I remember logging on at about 1pm once and was capping bases with like 2 other people, just wasn't fun. There used to be like 100+ people standing at the spawn in the WG during peak but now there is more like 20 and I flew around on Satuday during peak and I couldn't find a big battle to show off the game to my mate. There was stuff going on but everyone is so spread out on each cont, again factions tend to ignore each other as defending sucks.

The first two weeks though each cont was packed all the time, just big battles all day it was amazing. Now it is like a ghost town..... none of my friends play any more, even on Giantbomb Jeff said it just isn't as good as Planetside was. 

I pretty much stopped playing myself thanks to the air imbalance. I played PS1 for 5 years straight before taking a break, but with PS2 I stopped after a month.

Something's wrong.