Where do I even begin… “PlanetSide 2” was a sci-fi spinoff of the hit game “Battlefield 3”. Wait… This is supposed to be THAT “PlanetSide”? Oh, God… I get that they had to make some changes for wider appeal, since the first game was a commercial failure, but what happened here? People were hyped for this game, and look where it is now. To say this game was confused and a lot went wrong is an understatement, but I’ll try to get to as much as I can. This is probably the most directionally confused big budget title I’ve ever played. I’ll go into why this is later, but for now let’s take it from the top. “PlanetSide 2”, what you could have been… “PlanetSide 2” offered three major selling points of why it would be a better sequel. The first being that “it’s gonna be bigger”. “PlanetSide 1” maps were kind of barren, and they had a player limit of around 600, so they upped it. For the second game, they had completely filled out 64 kilometer squared maps, with the player limit of 2000. So, this was promising a lot more action. Their second appeal was: “it will look better”. “PlanetSide 1” didn’t look great for the time, but that makes sense, because there was a lot to process on-screen. So, they were offering bigger fights AND better graphics. Finally, “PlanetSide 2” would be “for everybody”. They would use Free-to-Play to get more soldiers, and the game would work for solo or groups. Here’s what happened… To their credit, the game looks good. It’s pretty impressive on the technical level, considering how much it shows with that amount of players. Every so often there’s some effects that are really out of place bad, but it really works where it needs to, which for me is having the maps and the fights look interesting. That being said, the graphics are worse than release. For the most part, the current “Ultra” settings used to be the old “High” settings. Developers have been cutting back on visuals more and more, to try and stabilize performance. They even had a pretty high-profile partnership with NVidia to put in PhysX. It was around for a few months, and really brought a new level to the battles, but one day they just shot it off, and I don’t think it’s coming back anytime soon… I don’t blame them, because even years later, performance is still awful. Not to mention, there is a lot of pop-in in the bigger fights. I don’t mean nitpicky “I saw a tree pop in far away” – I mean someone popping up in your face in a fight. It’s hard to tell when the game is taxing your CPU, or the servers are just lagging. Get used to being safe around the corner and then dropping dead. The fact that loading screens are giving hot tips on performance really speaks volumes. And while this wasn’t officially announced, it’s pretty well-known that the player count isn’t 2000 per continent. They secretly lowered it to around 1000 or 1400 – somewhere in there, but no one knows for sure. Even with the lowered player count, optimization patches for years and new modern hardware, the game still doesn’t run well. There’s so many different reasons why this could be that speculating would be pointless. So, what I can tell you is that even if you go out and buy top-of-the-line hardware, it might not save you. The best you can do is try to avoid big fights. You know… The whole point of “PlanetSide”. Let’s take a break from that and talk about some art direction. There are three armies to choose from. Each has their own unique design and gameplay style. The Terran Republic are authoritarian, and they’re described as the only professional military in “PlanetSide”. Most of their weapons and equipment are all very curved, and have rounded edges. Their shtick is that their weapons have a high rate of fire and large magazines, so they fight pretty well at medium range, but at long range they have issues. The recoil of their guns means that shooting far out is kind of difficult, so you just need to hold that trigger down and spray. So, visually, their weapons look complicated, with very large magazines. The New Conglomerate are a group of corporate-backed rebels. Their supplies are from companies, industrial equipment, or stolen. Their equipment is very angular – almost box-shaped. Kind of like their stuff was made to work at the bare minimum. Their weapons are high damage, and they work really well at long range and very short range. Accuracy varies. The Vanu Sovereignty are transhumanist cult and furry rights association. I think they pray to aliens or something. Their equipment look otherworldly, and most of it glows. Their weapons are incredibly accurate, at the expense of damage. That’s the price of energy weapons. So, every faction has a very unique look, right…? No. Things have gone terribly wrong. Here’s my TR Assault. You can clearly tell he’s TR. But now it’s a little harder. Being a Free-to-Play game, one of the first things they sold was camouflage. This works well if it’s still following the faction color. But it’s CAMOUFLAGE. If you look at most “PlanetSide” promo material, there’s very little camouflage. If there is, it’s usually something vibrantly that faction’s color. Or they show Terrans with camouflage, because it’s bright red and you can’t miss it. But in-game, where fights are more like this, it’s a nightmare. Hey, that dude is pink! I’ve seen Vanu wearing pink. But isn’t pink closer to red? Well, it doesn’t matter, because that guy is NC – the blue faction… That seems kind of confusing. Now have the room look like this! Name plates don’t always load in with the character, so you might shoot a friendly on accident. That’s hard enough as is, but now you can’t tell the colors apart easily. But if you’re not wearing camouflage, that means an enemy has an easier time shooting you! So, now you’re compelled to put it on, or else you’re an easy target. I’m pretty sure that giraffe camo was the most notorious example of this, but it’s still around in other ways. Camouflage doesn’t hide you well in the environment – it just makes the enemy wonder if you’re one of their friendlies. That’s just frustrating… If you’ve seen montages of this game with people racking up kills in crowds, it’s because they don’t know what’s going on. Here’s what I mean: this guy has black armor with the big conventional gun, so what is he? He’s Vanu. To pick on Vanu a little bit, they used to be a lot brighter and more vibrant, but to attract more players they got made darker. As a result, their dark camo makes them nigh impossible to see at night. Combined with how bright some of their weapons are, you can just walk into a crowd at night. Players might be uncertain if you’re friendly just on your silhouette alone, so you can really rack in the kills with these blinding weapons. Let’s move off of the camouflage a bit. Each faction has some unique vehicles: a main battle tank and a fighter. So, here’s what everyone can get: the “Flash”, the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Lightning”, the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Lightning”, the “ANT”, the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Lightning”, the “ANT”, the “Sunderer”, the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Lightning”, the “ANT”, the “Sunderer”, the “Valkyrie”, the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Lightning”, the “ANT”, the “Sunderer”, the “Valkyrie”, the “Liberator” the “Flash”, the “Harasser”, the “Lightning”, the “ANT”, the “Sunderer”, the “Valkyrie”, the “Liberator” and the “Galaxy”. So 80% of it doesn’t matter here. If you haven’t seen my “2142” video, I talked about how having a different silhouette for each faction’s vehicle makes it stand out. Even if they’re nearly functionally identical. “PlanetSide” doesn’t have this asymmetry, and they knew it was a problem. They launched the “Harasser” with a lot of fanfare in April 2013. While players were happy to get a new vehicle, they were disappointed that each faction was getting the same one. When the end of 2013 rolled around, they started teasing these new vehicles. And these look pretty cool! I wonder how they play! Well, I don’t know, because they never came out… I’m not a fan of people shutting down faction variation, for two reasons. The first excuse I hear is that it’s too much work, or too hard to balance that many vehicles asymmetrically. They did it before in the first game! I’ve seen it. I’ve played them. It can happen. So, the next fallback is the performance argument: “You just can’t render all those different models!” Then how come they’re selling 5 trillion vehicle cosmetics? These are more than just a paintjob! I’m still in art design, and we’re already approaching a core problem. You can probably already see it, but I’m gonna talk about some more cosmetic stuff anyways. Players can submit their own cosmetics to be sold, and, admittedly, they’re all pretty good. I get the feeling that players might have understood their factions more than some of the art people. The only cosmetic besides the composite helmet on release was a skull mask. For a lot of people there was one infamous incident: the art director told an NC player that they can’t have berets – those are for organized armies, NOT rebels or militias. But they had those in “PlanetSide 1”! And “rebels don’t wear berets”? You lived on the West Coast and never saw a shirt in your life? Now, granted, there are some issues with the cosmetics. The hitboxes don’t always line up with the model, so you can be shooting a vehicle and not doing any damage. How do you line up a headshot in this Big Daddy? I know I said I won’t speculate earlier, but I do… kind of wonder if all these cosmetics are contributing to performance going down. So, maybe you shouldn’t wear a helmet. Oh, it costs $10, or 5000 certs, to not wear a helmet… $10 to show off one of your three pre-made faces… I guess you SHOULD wear a helmet! “PlanetSide” boasts about having a lot of weapons for each faction, which sounds great, until you actually use your eyeballs. Keep in mind: at launch, people said all the guns look the same, so this is AFTER years of updates to fix it. You have to be shitting me… Every faction is like this. At least four or five guns look nearly identical. This is for every class. There’s no excuse to have this, when they’re all so similar to each other! They’re also selling these weapons for $5-7 each! And wait, what are these? They have weapons that any faction can use. And if you buy them with real money, you get them on all your characters! They must be a good deal. After all, there’s so many of them… There’s weapons for every class. Every kind of weapon. They’re really well-rounded, too! If my faction has a weakness, I could just solve it by buying one of these bad boys. This is… a little absurd. Alright, there’s no getting around it now: this game is designed to take your money, and they consistently choose to do it in the laziest, cheapest way possible. “Why make unique vehicles, when we can make one, and then sell cosmetics for all three factions?” “Less work and more money for us!” Hiring modelers can get expensive, but if you have a community, you could get them to help you out. Which leads into the next big idea: “In fact, we can have our passionate and talented players submit their items for a 40%... no, 60% cut for us!” “But you can roleplay as Ben Garrison! Or make T-Ray mad!” ♪ And I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free ♪ ♪ And I won’t forget the men who died, who gave that right to me ♪ Free-to-Play messed this up good… The only reason all these guns are here are to sell them. If this was designed to be good, there wouldn’t be three versions of the TRAC – there would be “the TRAC”. You could use the current side-grade system, but flesh it out more. These different gun models could work as upgrades, instead of separate weapons. It would become a big plus, that your gun looks different the more you alter it. Plus, it would make balance easier to manage. Yeah, balance, the gameplay… I haven’t even STARTED on the gameplay. But getting back on track, I think it’s safe to say most people would prefer fewer, unique weapons. The thing is: they’re out to make money. So, naturally, they sell the guns that anybody can buy. Even a year before beta, they were toying with the idea of making the Free-to-Play model cosmetic-only. If they had just done that, the game might not be in such a mess. But I don’t have the numbers, so, for all I know, these weapons are the only thing keeping the game alive… Remember that the original company got bought out, so it’s easy to say that they could have been desperate. I can’t just call them the Devil if I don’t know their story. So, as is, the art style is all over the place due to the varying quality in player items, any semblance of plot or background the game has doesn’t matter, faction visual differences have been ruined by camouflage and weapons. All that cool promo stuff with the uniform faction? No more. Welcome to Free-to-Play hell! I’ll talk about the actual gameplay of these weapons a little bit later in the video. BUZZ: “Just give me a fucking 200 damage Gauss SAW. There you go, for a … for TR.” BUZZ: “Give me… Give me 200 damage weapon for TR, called, ehh… the BCP-400 or some shit.” BUZZ: “You know… Who gives a shit? Can’t get any fucking worse…” MANDALORE (whispering): “Buzz, we’re not doing that yet…” So now that visuals are out of the way, we can finally get into the gameplay. How this game has transformed is kind of incredible. In some ways, it went a few steps forward, but in others it took a giant leap back! I’m gonna start with the basics though. “PlanetSide 2” is a class-based shooter, like “Battlefield”. You have six to choose from. Infiltrators are your sneaky class. They come with the ability to use a cloaking device. They can serve as snipers, but they’re also the ultimate counter-sniper. After all, your weapons are on the same range, and you can get around them with your cloak. It might seem a little odd to have one class that, basically, just counters itself, but that’s how it works. That being said, you can support your team directly: you could unlock mines to defend weak points, and the class also comes with the motion sensor. This is used to detect enemies in a radius. But hands down, your most useful ability is hacking. You can hack enemy vehicle spawn terminals to your side. You can do the same thing with enemy fixed base turrets. This helps in dividing up the enemies’ attention, and hitting them from behind, where they least expect it. Turrets are great for this. You know… At least when they’re working… Light Assault is a class about ambush. You have the best mobility of any class due to your jetpack, and you can unlock a variety of them. So now is a good time to explain that system. All of your equipment and abilities can be customized using certs. This also extends into weapons and vehicles, though sometimes it will also allow real money payments as well. A lot of things you do earn experience, which will flash up on the screen. So, a certification point (or “cert”) is made up of 250xp. You can spend certs on whatever you like, so, if you play an Engineer all the time, and just wanna unlock sniper stuff, you can do that. It’s a good system, but the implementation has some flaws. To give you an idea: killing an enemy is roughly half of a cert. Initial unlocks might be cheap: between 10 or maybe a 100 or 200 certs, but then things start to take off. Weapons can be hundreds or even thousands of these certs. And this is AFTER they did a price reduction on a lot of weapons. They did add service ribbons and other bonuses to make it less of a grind, but it’s still bad. The grind isn’t AS atrocious as launch, but you still have a ways to go if you want to get competitive. Unless, of course, you’re willing to pay. “Shell out, or get shelled on…” As penance, you can try a new weapon for 30 minutes once every… 8 hours. So, once again, pretty neat idea, ruined by Free-to-Play. However, it does mean that each class has a variety of unique weapons and abilities. Instead of just “the jetpack”, the Light Assault can choose from three. Basically, a choice between “jump really high”, “drift far” or “get a little bit of both”. The Light Assault comes with a rocket rifle that does minor damage to vehicles, but its main power is C4. Most classes can unlock this, but with the Light Assault, your mobility means you can get right on tanks quickly. So, this is the premiere anti-vehicle class. The Combat Medic can revive fallen soldiers and heal the living ones. They have some okay mid-range weapons for fighting. Kind of like a cross between a paramedic and… well, you know. Then there’s the Engineer. This guy does just about everything. If there’s something on the battlefield or in the building, there’s good chances the Engineer can fix it. Later, they can disarm enemy mines, without setting them off. Like “The Hurt Locker” in space. They can set down their own mines, along with the variety of deployables, so their loadouts can range to anti-anything. But wait, there’s more! They always come with an ammo pack that can resupply their teammates’ weapons. They’re fulfilling a lot of roles at once here. I’d almost say two classes, because I know who I’m gonna pick when I cert farm. Speaking of farming: you have Heavy Assault. This is the class you pick when you wanna fight people and win. They can equip a powerful anti-infantry weapon and an anti-vehicle weapon at the same time. They don’t even need setup, like an Engineer – they just have these weapons. For defense, they could choose a powerful overshield to protect themselves with. So, if someone doesn’t wanna do a support role, and just wanna fight, why would they pick anything else? Well… they don’t. I’m not sure it was a good idea to roll anti-infantry and anti-vehicle class into one role. Heavies can get C4 just like the Light Assault can. And a few other classes, actually… Yeah, they don’t have the mobility, but they come with rocket launchers. The class lines are getting blurrier, so let’s move on to the last boy. This is the MAX. The MAX is more of a vehicle that can fit the heaviest weapons in the game. It has incredibly high damage resistance. The only real difference is: it has to specialize against an enemy to be effective. You know, with a gun on both arms… Once it is though, the thing’s a killing machine. The weapons on it are different for each faction, but of course, there are a few NS ones as well… Each faction does have a unique MAX ability, too, which is pretty cool. So, the question becomes: “Why isn’t everyone in a MAX all the time?” Unlike other classes, they cost resources to get. You need these if you wanna spawn vehicles or equip special weapons. I’ll get to where those come from in time, but it’s more pressing for me to discuss how the class system is being ruined. These are perks, called “implants”. You can equip two of them at a time, and most of them are for every class. Hey, you know that cloak they gave to the class that has some relatively weaker close-range weapons? The Heavy Assault can have it! Because an uncloaking combat shotgun is fun for you! The only reliable way to find cloaked enemies, besides a shimmer on the screen, is using this flashlight. You know… A very close-range flashlight. In shotgun range. That is insane! But it gets worse… As with everything, you could buy them with real money, but you can buy them with certs too. But, OF COURSE, it’s a random drop. A crate system. With duplicates. I’m just gonna flush 300 certs down the drain to look at the basic box. Oh, sick, a duplicate of something I have and… unlimited ammo? Don’t need resuppliers anymore! You can even upgrade these implants to make them even more powerful. I wonder how many times I can do this… I don’t even know what I’m upgrading these with! The Wiki says it only comes from other implants. Wow! This is some bullshit! This is “Batman: Beyond Bullshit”! So, my question to “Daybreak”, or anyone in the comments who knows what they’re talking about is: why? If there’s an auto-healing implant and unlimited ammo implant, why should I play anything other than Heavy Assault until the end of time? “PlanetSide 1” didn’t even have classes – it used an inventory system. Is that what you guys are trying to do? Before I made this video, I was gonna harp on the all-faction weapons, but I’d just be wasting my time… I could talk a long time about weapon and faction balancing issues, but there’s no point anymore. Why bother? In a few years, it might just be infantry and MAX, that’s it. In the case of stuff like the ZOE MAX, they can make it go from overpowered to completely worthless in a matter of time. Anything I could criticize could be flipped around in 3 months, or 10, so why bother? That said, NC weapons feel the best to me. In fact, I give the game credit: there’s some really cool weapons in this game. The sound design and the animations are excellent! It feels like a quality game. You know… When it’s working. “PlanetSide” frustrates me… The overall goal of “PlanetSide” is territory control. The mechanic is very simple: each territory has one or a few control points, and you capture it just by being near it. When it flips to your side, a timer starts counting down. When it reaches the end, this is when it becomes your territory. So, efforts should be focused on capturing or defending the control point. When it is captured, it even displays which outfit contributed the most to it. [players cheering for the winning outfit] Players can work together in squads or platoons, but an outfit is different. It’s basically a guild or a corporation in another online game. You have a better chance of succeeding if you’re coordinating with a bunch of people at once. The reason I have an inhuman amount of hours in this game is because, around launch, I was in a leadership position in an outfit. I still have videos up of me and my old outfit doing stuff together. Yeah, they’re filled with stupid inside jokes, and not very good, but I’m sentimental about it. I miss those days for this game. The game had less features than now, but we’d do stuff, like have races or gladiator matches. It was a pretty good time. The 99% of them (myself included) don’t really play anymore. Or if there are people still playing, they’re in different outfits now. I met people there that I still talk to today! But I might not ever see some of the others again… Getting back on track, I don’t have a big outfit to really measure how this works in a modern sense anymore. So I went and I contacted the leader of the biggest active outfit right now. It’s Buzz. For those of you who don’t know: he leads a group, called “The Enclave”. I’ve never joined it, but I tagged along in their platoon a few times, and I had a long talk with him about the state of the game. At the same time, I brought back some old players and some new ones to work as a team together. Along with running solo and joining a few public squads. Taken all together, there’s a lot to learn here. “Can’t wait to be res’d by [ReyniAllasRui].” “Typhoon or the locklets?” “I res’d you, like, 5 times…” “I know!” “I can’t fucking hear what the fuck Noot is saying.” MANDALORE: “I’m trying to remember how to fly.” MANDALORE: “I’m trying to remember how to fly.”
“The fuck do I use with a Rocklet rifle?!” MANDALORE: “The what?” “Just… fucking ROCKETS!” Even in the current state of things, it shines as a group. BUZZ: “And that really goes for any game! Any MMO.” BUZZ: “MMO games are driven by community.” BUZZ: “Community within the game, community outside of the game.” BUZZ: “If you don’t foster community – your game will surely fail.” BUZZ: “A good community can prop up a bad game.” BUZZ: “If you don’t have a community, your bad game could be a lot harder to play.” I said it still shines as a group, but it doesn’t shine as brightly as it used to. This isn’t nostalgia talking – this game has been mechanically sabotaged against groups. I’m going to explain my biggest flaw with “PlanetSide 2”. It’s possibly more important than even the Free-to-Play garbage and the weapon balance: “PlanetSide’s” objective and territory gameplay is a complete mess. On the game’s release, and for months after, the map would frequently look like this for territory control. This is because players were allowed to capture any point on the map at any time. For reference, each faction has a territory, called a Warp Gate, which is at their corner of the map. It can’t be captured. So, naturally, you’d think resources would flow out of it and onto the battlefield. But because you could capture anywhere, battles didn’t work this way, and it was a mess. They then changed it so you can only capture adjacent territory, which was better, but there were still some problems. Looking on any map of a continent, you could see that there’s roadways and open spaces that direct the flow of battle. Adjacent territory didn’t always follow those, because that setup might direct you to move through a mountain. So, they came up with a brand new idea, called “Lattice”. In it, you could only capture bases connected to certain others. This made fights flow better, and also made the lines clear. Okay, so this system was from the first game… It took 6 months of a broken territory system for the team to realize why “PlanetSide 1” did things the way they did… I think that quote sums up everything, really. It made you wanna tear your hair out, watching them speculate on problems that “PlanetSide 1” figured out the answers to, 10 years ago. However, “PlanetSide 2” was still lacking an important part. Here’s how attacking works in the current game: there’s an armored transport, called the “Sunderer”, which can spawn units. But it can’t park too close to an enemy point (that’s the red circle on the mini-map). You can’t park near other “Sundies” either. Once it’s deployed, your side can use it as a spawn point. So, if you wanna keep the attack going, you need the spawn point to be protected. Defenders spawn in from a shielded room. But get this part: defenders can also get a “Sundie”, which… you can then just park on the point. They don’t have a no-deploy zone. Look how many of my guys are in there now! It took them, like, 20 seconds to push them off. You’d think this is hard for attackers, since they have to get past, you know, barriers and turrets and other defenses, but it gets worse. This is a button, called “Redeploy”. It makes the open map worthless. It’s pretty easy: you click this button, an then you can spawn on a base within a massive range. So, if the enemy is starting to win, you get you friends and then spawn in a massive zerg, right in the middle of the base. You recapture the point and kill their guys in the spawn, and since it will take them 5 minutes to get back anyways – you basically win. I find myself fighting at the same places over and over again. It’s because the maps aren’t moving. Defending is too easy. In fact, some bases do have a destroyable structure, called a “Spawn Control Unit”. But only SOME bases have this. Even then, a lot of them come with a secondary shield generator, so you have to disable that too. And this is so you can accomplish the same thing as somebody blowing up your bus. And like I said before, they might already have one parked on the point, so it won’t matter anyways. So, the only way to reliably attack is with overwhelming numbers. And guess what happens then? People clip their guns through the spawn room shield for easy kills. And if you really wanna know just how widespread this is, check this out: “No battle was ever won in a spawn room.” Yeah, well, the people doing this aren’t here to win. They’re here to get certs. I don’t know if I can blame them! This game is such a grind, I see why people are compelled to do this. Look at this siege camp. There’s dozens of vehicles, there’s personnel running all over the place – it looks amazing. Do you know what this amazing organization of manpower is doing for the battle? Nothing. A point isn’t being captured, so everyone is here just to farm certs for themselves. I mean, if you’re having fun – good on you, but you can do both. Like many things, “PlanetSide 1” had the answer to this. As I mentioned before, you use resources to spawn vehicles. How many you get depends on territories controlled by your faction, continent bonuses, and how much money you paid for boosts. So, if you have the resources, and the base has the terminal for them, you can spawn as many vehicles as you want, along with MAX suits and other equipment that needed. So, how did it work in the first game? It used a resource, called NTUs. For the sake of convenience, I’m gonna use a “PlanetSide 2” map to show how it worked. “PlanetSide 1” also had the “Advanced Nanite Transport”, or “ANT”. If you wanna think of it like a real war, imagine it as a supply truck, carrying fuel and ammunition. In this way, Lattice represented more than just a captureable point – it represented where the supply lines were going. The Warp Gate was your main supply hub, so the “ANT” would deploy there and load up on resources. “I’m gonna need six hot loads!” “PlanetSide 1” bases had a limited supply of NTUs, so they relied on these transports to resupply them. NTUs powered the shield generators, terminals, turrets, respawn tubes – everything. Without the supplies, the base would shut down. So, if there was a battle at the front line, you would be relying on these “ANTs” to bring you more supplies. One trip could keep the base going for a while. But if it was a huge battle, or sustained – you would need multiple trucks to keep it going. Those are the Lattice lines. In fact, let’s lay the actual game map over this area. See how the lines are roughly following the shape of the road, or even open areas like beyond the mountain in the middle? This is why the first game was designed this way as well. This means that these cool sieges are actually depleting enemy resources and serving a purpose for the battle on the map. If someone is being selfish, and just wants to farm certs for themselves, they’re still helping the team effort indirectly. Let’s talk about the content these trucks generate. We’ll use our first example again: same battle at the front line, but the enemy knows how this works. So, a solo player decides to help out the team. When the “ANT” is on the way, he flies his “Scythe”, and then ambushes it. It gave a solo player something to do. Or this: before it even leaves, a small group of friends or an outfit shows up. They know the fastest route to the front, so they leave mines, or set up an ambush on the road. But these are desperate supplies, so some players might protect the “ANT”. The result is: instead of one giant laggy battle, the fight for one area is spread out across the map, in a good way. You’ve also given solo players and small groups something to do that’s not a mind-crushing fight. I can almost guarantee that they cut this out, thinking it was too complicated for people to understand. JOHN: “That doesn’t sound fun, Greg. We should let the players have as much stuff as they need. Or can pay for.” GREG: “Yeah, I guess you’re right, John.” GREG: “We’re releasing this on PC first. PC gamers never play slow, boring games.” GREG: “What if the truck drivers never got into a fight? No one would want to play a game about driving trucks!” Combined with “Redeploy”, your result is endless fights in the same areas, over and over again. There is no reason to join a group to move around as a team – you just click a button. BUZZ: “So, they put the “Redeploy” in…” BUZZ: “So, instead of us having a packed pod, where we all come in, scattered throughout the hex,” BUZZ: “we’d all redeploy into the safety of the spawn room.” BUZZ: “Pull MAX suits, crush def… crush the attackers, excuse me, and then move out.” BUZZ: “And then go somewhere else to do the same thing. We’d find ourselves redeploying every night.” BUZZ: “The game has not changed. As the matter of fact, “RedeploySide” has gotten even worse,” BUZZ: “and I have to FORCE myself not to use it.” BUZZ: “And that’s… I mean, that’s just using something that’s ineffective.” BUZZ: “So, you’re walking this fine line of “well, do I want to win, or do I want to try and have some fun?”” BUZZ: “By that point, you’re simply LARPing, because everyone else is redeploying, except for you…” BUZZ: “In “PlanetSide 1”, you did not have an endless siege.” BUZZ: “If you had a stalemate, it would eventually be broken, because the defenders would run out of resources.” BUZZ: “They’d run out of power at the base.” BUZZ: “Spawning took power, repairing turrets took power, creating vehicles took power – ” BUZZ: “all these things took power from the base.” BUZZ: “Eventually, the base would run out of power. When it ran out of power, you could no longer spawn at the base.” BUZZ: “So, what that meant is that the siege was over, and the attackers would eventually win.” BUZZ: “So, even if the defenders put up an amazing defense, they would eventually lose,” BUZZ: “unless they got an “ANT” into the base, to refill the base.” BUZZ: “It added a great layer of combat. “PlanetSide 2”? No such thing…” It’s especially telling how big of an issue this is, when you see the development videos for the maps. Right now, they’re working on “Ti Alloys”. It’s dead center of the map. People fight there a lot, because they don’t progress easily. So, I need to talk about the maps, because you might be wondering, why I’m spending so much time in the desert. The four continents the game has are expansive, but each one was kind of used as an experiment for base design for the developers. For example, most of Esamir’s bases have giant walls. This was them experimenting between separating vehicle and infantry gameplay. Hossin has interesting base designs, and I like playing on it, but nobody else does. I get why though. Because it’s a giant jungle, it’s hard to move vehicles around anywhere. Plus, there’s a lot of environment pop-in. I know some people without good computers, who don’t play here just because it nukes their machine. And yeah, it does this even with maxed render distance. Amerish is made up of mountains, valleys and winding roads. Eh… Basically looks like “Oblivion”. But you might find yourself fighting on mountains a lot. Which isn’t really the best. I overall like this map too. So why is everyone on Indar? Well, it gets most of the base changes for one thing, which keeps it popular. Also, unlike other maps, that are just one biome, Indar has three. Compare that to Meadowland, Snowland and Jungleland. Yeah, it is all a desert theme, but there is variation here. It has the advantage of having both, winding roads and cliffs, along with having open fields. The only time people aren’t on Indar is if it’s locked off. Your faction locks a continent by completing objectives. These earn Victory Points. Some of these can be made by custom player bases. That’s what the “PlanetSide 2” “ANTs” are for: mining. You search the battlefield for deposits of a mineral, called Cortium. You can use the rocks and the “ANT” to build a silo, which will be the heart of your base. Then you can drop off your rocks in the silo. People can work as a team and make some really elaborate bases, with stuff like vehicle terminals and spawn points. But each time you spawn something, it costs some base materials, so if you run out, then you have to… have supply trucks bring in more. Really? You’re just gonna do that here, and not in the rest of the ga… The bases seem to be the most useful when they’re an obstacle, but they also have a building which generates Victory Points over time. So these kind of break the map flow, because people have to come out to them, to stop them. If you don’t, you could be fighting a faction, but then another one will win, because they built more “Minecraft” castles than you. This is pretty obnoxious! Either they’re made relevant to the overall game, but they’re out of the way, and break the map flow, or they’re irrelevant, but… then there’s no point to them. Because of “Redeploy” and how many vehicle terminals and spawn points there are, there’s really no point to having a forward base. The most they can do is be built to slow down an advancing force on one of the main roads, but there’s also a lot of no-build zones. Bases can also build an Orbital Strike Center. I’ve never seen this used on enemies – just allies who are fucking bored and wanna nuke each other. Or they might not like the fact that you’re mining rocks that they say are theirs. Kind of like being in first grade. So, if you built a base in a wrong place, you may get nuked by your own faction. The odd thing is: you’ll always be in the wrong when they do this. GRUMPY: “And here they go again. They’re just gonna keep on shooting. So, I’m gonna keep on orbital striking them…” GRUMPY: “Because they’re the no-dick squad.” GRUMPY: “They have NO DICK.” “This guy’s really mad…” GRUMPY: “Come on, retard squad!” I guess I can touch on a community a little bit. It’s Free-to-Play, so it’s a mixed bag. “We get the me-emes!” “Here is the “Valkyrie”, boys…” “Memes are inbound!” “MEEEEEEEMES!!” “WEEEEEEEE…” "...the people..." “GET THE MEMES, YES!” “…pretty much just like this…” I didn’t even know this guy, but he got my “Prowler” unstuck. “Trying to see if I can bounce you off my ammo. There you go. There you go.” There’s really a mix of people in this game. Most seem friendly to talk to. There’s a lot of groups with leadership that are public, and they’ll help you learn the game. Despite its flaws, “PlanetSide” does have a passionate community, and I think they do want to see this game work. But there are a few that just wanna watch it burn. “Thank you!” MANDALORE: “Someone’s spamming really loud gachi…” “Yeah, yeah! So, I’m not imagining it! He’s playing it!” MANDALORE: “That spank nearly blew my eardrums out…” “Oh, God, WHY?!” [tortured chuckling] This game has a ton of issues, but it’s not dead. There’s people playing. If I went over every bug and flaw, it would take forever, so let’s just wrap this up. This game is Free-to-Play, so you don’t have to open your wallet to try it. For what it’s worth, it’s a lot better if you have a big group of friends to bring, too. But you can burn out pretty quickly. The magic of these giant battles only lasts so long. There’s not enough varied progression to make it a good MMO for an individual or a group. There’s also a lot of better shooters out there. There are Free-to-Play games that are a lot more fair than this. Though, personally, I prefer just buying the game and getting it over with. What’s frustrating is that the game has all the components to be great. It’s retooling things – all the assets are there, but they won’t do it! I don’t know what their vision is! I don’t know if THEY know what their vision is! Why do they keep adding bizarre garbage nobody asked for? So, yeah… You can try it if you want, but in its current state, I don’t recommend it. So, what do you think, Buzz? BUZZ: “I will always feel a sense of sadness and despair for the “PlanetSide 2” franchise and what it’s become.” BUZZ: “And I must say, there has never been a greater IP given to a more undeserving group of people than “PlanetSide 2”.” BUZZ: “That’s how I sum it up.” Oh, God… I miss Higby… HIGBY: “Low resources? No resources?” HIGBY: “Well, ain’t no problem! I got my own resource bank! I can finance anybody!” So, that’s “PlanetSide 2” – the ultimate tug of war between good design and making money. I think we both know who won out in the end. The next video will be on a game a little bit less mechanically complex. Or… maybe it’s more so… [divine cybergibberish] ♪ We’re all in this together (Together) ♪
He hits the nail on the head with a lot of visual points I was downvoted for just a few days ago. The art direction in this game is abysmal, and the worst thing is that it didn't even use to be this way. It feel into the TF2 trap, but at least TF2 had striking enough visual design to begin with that even underneath a pile of cosmetics and paint, you can still fairly easily tell which class and team anyone is at a glance, at least easily in relation to this game.
PS2 was already leaning a bit too dull and gritty compared to the bright colors and clear silhouettes of its predecessor, and they've only made it worse since then. When viewing those pics of the Nomad armor that was posted earlier today, I had trouble picking out where the Infiltrator pics were without explicitly looking at the highlighted menu option on the left. Frankly, that's unacceptable.
It's only even more embarrassing to someone like me who actually knows a thing or two about visual design. Too much effort is put into the wrong things when it comes to PS2's art style, despite the game having a potential great stylistic foundation if they actually stop smothering it.
The better part I thought didn't start until 18:15 with the discussion of the territory control & gameplay mechanics.
I struggle to sympathize with the main sentiment of the video. Mourning what might have been in Planetside 2's case will achieve nothing. If one wishes that Planetside 2 emulated its predecessor to a greater degree, that's fine, and I'm sure many feel the same. Although, Mandalore acknowledges in the video that Planetside 1 was not a critical financial success. So, does incorporating the very same niche gameplay features which rendered the first game obscure seem like the best idea to ensure the sequel is a knockout hit?
I've seen Mandalore's video on Space Station 13 (and I've played the game a fair amount), so I know he's aware of the massive numbers a truly niche game can rope in. All sarcasm aside, I can personally say that many of the niche attributes of Planetside 1's design hold personal appeal for me, but I won't pretend incorporating those features in the sequel would have improved the game's population retention in the grand scheme of things.
Also, there are better shooters out there, really? Perhaps there are better managed games, but besides battlefield (super niche game btw), what game series can really compare?
Painfully truthful.
About TR...
"You just kinda need to hold down the trigger and spray". SeemsGood.
TRay truth bombed
Almost 10.4k views... More than all the server pop combined i think
Ohh i remember that fight with T-Ray over the "NC can't have berets", was so bizarre. :S
In 2017, he's still seriously lamenting camo and IFF, even after they included more faction colours? Right. I also like the way he uses some old camo coverage to back up his point (you can tell it's old from the stance). Some solid points, but chunks of this are just a bad parody (VS are so hard to kill at night!!).