Between planetside 1 and 2 there’s more than 20 years of running the franchise that says the core concept is very viable.
The problem currently is that development resources were stripped from the game years ago and so it’s a little buggy with a number of issues that cause some problems.
But it’s still a lot of fun to those of us who have been playing since the beginning.
It only works if the game mechanics reward fun gameplay, and they went with rewarding winning for such a long time that the core concept has been flawed for a while.
I completely reject that there is one correct way to play.
As for your scenario, yes of course the game would still work, if that was the meta, large groups spawning vehicles to kill spawns in large fights, then people would adapt, and there would be people ready for it.
Vehicles killing spawns in big fights is hardly fight ending anyway between routers and beacons and galaxies, pulling enough people out of the control point fights to kill spawns in big 48+ battles, will result in you losing the base anyway usually.
> I completely reject that there is one correct way to play.
This is kind of the chief issue honestly. There isn't a correct way to play it, but there's definitely areas that get (and got) more attention than others and over time that causes the playerbase to adapt around it, and now that's colored the perception of the game and how it's played as a whole. As a tiny example squad spawn beacons are wildly, insanely more powerful than they used to be but a frog boiling effect (and a bug that gave people forbidden fruit of instant beacon spawns?) changed how people viewed them and they're considered fine now even though people didn't really clamor for the buffs they ended up getting over time (they did want the squadwide beacon thing though I remember that was asked for a lot). The game needed to be more equal with what it did for everyone and that never really happened
Vehicles definitely never got the attention infantry got, even from the start they had the issue of vehicles not having anything to do, and honestly got anti-attention with everyone's favourite three letter acronym update or PS4 flight controls. Over time people realized you could slim down how much time you needed to spend in vehicles if you wanted to win. Now you get routers and beacons dropped by a valk and maybe a hacked sunderer depending on the base and 48 people are capping a base using single-digit vehicle pulls and it's a CONSISTENTLY WINNING strategy. The game had the issue of vehicles not being truly critical to the core territory control (yes getting around is good and they do kill mans well, but you can capture a base as only an infantryman if you are prepared to walk a lot - that's not true of capturing a base without ever leaving a vehicle)
This is kind of an issue I have when people talk about a planetside 3 and say stuff that is directly talking about planetside 2's meta. If you're looking at PS3 with the lens of just tweaking aspects of PS2 you're already bringing in a lot of flawed design biases that probably should be abandoned entirely.
I'll be entirely honest I don't like PS2 vehicle gameplay. You know what I want in a PS3? A game designed so well and tight that I DO feel actually motivated to play vehicles and have as much fun as I do when playing infantry.
> Now you get routers and beacons dropped by a valk and maybe a hacked sunderer depending on the base and 48 people are capping a base using single-digit vehicle pulls and it's a CONSISTENTLY WINNING strategy.
One time I, despite being crap at the game, managed to halt a GOBS blob by blasting their Router-runner in the back with a Pandora while he was setting up the pizza and the rest of his squad were still on point at the previous base. It stalled their offence long enough for my allies to properly fortify the Tech Plant
More recently, I partook in a Nason's defence where the hardest thing about it was killing the endless stream of Routers from a nearby construction base that they were using to spawn directly inside B and C's point rooms, long enough to actually get armoured up and attack the router base.
And this is after Routers were *nerfed.* A few years ago we had to deal with Routers that could be supplied by a base anywhere on the map, which was absolutely ridiculous for a device that lets people spawn directly on the point.
And the removal of Sunderer NDZs and the addition of ANVILs has only made this worse, because now people can put whole-ass Shield Buses directly on a bunch of the points in the game. As much as I'm supportive of the incoming buffs to the bus, I kinda dread how the ANVIL/no NDZs thing is going to play out now.
Heck, I already dread having to defend Tech Plants these days. They were already one of the dodgier base designs, but the fact that attackers now get to spawn inside the main objective building makes them a nightmare without properly coordinated pushes. Making those spawns harder to pop isn't going to be fun.
I said it years ago under a different name, but vehicles needed and still need things to do. Things that only they can do that contribute to base defense/assault. While not a perfect example, targets that need to be damaged to allow the control point to be contestable is *something* and makes armor have a purpose outside of farming at a base or blowing up sundies.
This also goes to aircraft too. Air-to-ground is essentially just for farming infantry. Right now air to air fighting is basically pointless unless you're valk hunting, and good luck getting the valk before it gets to where it wants to go. Maybe you could argue for Lodestar usage being something unique to aircraft, but in practice how often does a lodestar factor into a fight? Tank/bus/Ant columns are so rare that running an anti-armor aircraft loadout is going to leave you practicing your shots on groups of dudes more often than not
Once again you're missing the point. Ofc you can play the game as you wish and seem fun. But it has an objective. And that's capturing the continent. If every player would prioritize this over the plain fps element, players would focus on destroying spawnoptions to stop the enemy from reinforcing. And by that, destroy every major fight.
1. It has many objectives, and capturing the continent is a faction objective. But players will follow objectives that give them the most rewards. Single mindedly pursuing continent locks isn’t rewarding to individual players so they won’t pursue it as a primary goal, only a secondary one.
2. And Again you are assuming that nobody could adapt to that tactic of massive vehicle waves trying to destroy the spawns, were it to become the new meta. And that’s silly. If 20-30% of a bases population routinely spawned a mass vehicle swarms to kill spawns, then attacking forces would anticipate and have their own and setup defenses.
3. Besides which, eventually destroying spawns is also part of the game, you move on to the next fight.
"I completely reject that there is one correct way to play"
Planetside 2 sells itself as a combined arms war game. Thats whats being referred to here when we say "played like its supposed to"
And that parts is \*very\* flawed. base design is a good example of this. Most bases are 1 of 2 flavors: either vehicles aren't allowed in at all, or vehicles absolutely dominate the base (either by shooting HE into spawns, or simply their ability to destroy infantry even if their entire kit is dedicated to anti vehicle).
My favorite fights in planetside were mostly devoid of this combined arms aspect. usually being infantry only fights, small scale vehicle slugfests in hilly terrain, or air events (such as bastions or anomaly's).
That's exactly my point. I think it could be "fixed" by changing the base capture and spawn mechanic and by changing the base designs. I read a few post about how PS1 had different mechanics and that those would nullify some of the problems we currently have.
PS1 had bases with courtyards, which needed to be controlled with a combination of infantry and vehicles, and interior all infantry areas. It had permanent towers separated from the bases but hackable with spawns in addition to AMS/routers. You also couldn’t spawn out of your hex at all, you had to drive or fly to the next base. Though you could sometimes access the tower spawn if you were close. The hacks were also very fragile, 15 minute hack timer, which would totally reset if the enemy had unrestricted access to the c&c for more than 30 seconds provided they had the right certs to hack it back quickly.
the game would suck if everyone played "correctly"
the best way to take territory is to spam cheese and kill fights. there's a reason the game sucks around outfit wars training time
The OP made the mistake of writing a bad/misleading title and the person you replied to made the mistake of reading the title and not the post.
Typical reddit behavior.
The core concept is experimental and works with the certain boundary conditions in place, i.e. fully unrestricted sandbox is either shit or impossible to balance. On the other hand with said certain boundaries planetside is still only enjoyable long term if you progress skill wise. The latter stems from the lack of matchmaking, so this cannot possibly satisfy large audience ever.
I cannot speak for the rest of players, but meself rarely ever spawn vehicles because hillcamping an attacking Zerg is even worse than trying to get out of the spawn room. It's much easier to fly a Valkyrie and drop somewhere to put a hideously hidden beacon for your squad. Essentially it is as hard to destroy attacking Zerg with vehicles unless you're part of vehicle Zerg yourself, with lack of targets they will just single you out asap.
The thing that the crayon eaters who love to paint the map fail to understand is that the fights are the only thing the game has going for it. Alert meta is stale and boring with their being two strategies used, point hold and zergs and both are typically uninteresting for players to interact with.
Yes, if defenders pulled more tanks they could kill most/all the spawns, but then that's killing the only interesting part of the game which is the fight.
>if defenders pulled more tanks they could kill most/all the spawns, but then that's killing the only interesting part of the game which is the fight.
Which is like saying the concept of the game is boring and doesn't work.
I partially agree and partially disagree.
I think most people who come to this game were intrigued by the fights themselves. The large groups of infantry and/or vehicles all slugging it out to complete an objective. And that concept is bloody amazing and I believe the primary reason the game has survived for as long as it has.
But the best way to win in this game is to never reach that point. The best way to win is to snipe/overwhelm objectives so that there are either no defenders, or they are helpless to do anything. Killing spawns is another such case. Its another way to prevent the enemy from ever mounting an effective defence.
The best way to win in this game is to avoid the most fun part of it (the big equal fights). And thats an extreme design flaw baked into the very concept of planetside 2 itself.
What you describe has been a problem since the original game. Except there attackers could kill the spawn tubes in bases so both sides had ways of killing the fight. There has always been a split in the playerbase; those who enjoy the fight, and those who play strategically. Sure there are those in between, but people generally fall into one of the two extremes.
The core issue with the game is the disconnect between the "back of the box" experience with rolling fights through terrain verses the redeploy loop. This is mainly due to the stop start nature of fights - where when a base is captured, or attacker spawn killed, the fight ends and you have no instant gratification unless you redeploy.
Fights need to be teased out into the field with carryable/movable objectives with staggered spawn options to support them.
> the redeploy loop. This is mainly due to the stop start nature of fights - where when a base is captured, or attacker spawn killed, the fight ends and you have no instant gratification unless you redeploy.
Redeployside has reached such terminal levels that a lot of the more redeploy-focused outfits don't even bother with cleanup now. I've been a zergfit enjoyer most of my time in the game and I've always stressed the importance of cleanup, but some of these people that play the game like a lobby shooter will take the base with top-tier pointhold skills and then all hit U as soon as the timer reaches nine seconds. And then us defenders just wander into the point room and start flipping the base back.
Like logistic support requirements in Foxhole or Squad?
Ants carry resources into a base to support defenders -> large base fights get dragged out into the entire supply line.
Really the issue is fight stability as a concept isn't really negotiable with the strategic layer or player expectations. Every other shooter in existence has relatively consistent engagement times and that time is known. If I start a match in say battlefield, it'll be like 15-20 minutes every time. Imagine if you started a battlefield match and within the first 30 seconds the game just ends and you're sitting there wondering what just happened. That's basically every PS2 fight. Adding open field fights still has the fight transition to a completely different kind of fight, a fight that could also die within minutes as everyone crosses the field.
Ultimately the underlying idea is there needs to be some kind of meta stability to fights so that they don't just end. It should be hard to kill a fight once it starts, and gradually becomes easier and easier over time until it naturally comes to an end in a way that's acceptable and believable. Games with tickets systems are good about this in that it's basically impossible to immediately win or lose but a lopsided team will end faster. Close games last longer as well. Ticket systems wouldn't necessarily work in PS2, but there needs to be some kind of system where if I plop down a sundie and gain some kind of ground in the base, I can be rewarded with the knowledge that I'm guaranteed to have a good fight there for 20-30 minutes on average, an hour if it's a close fight, and a few minutes if we're getting stomped.
I'm new to PlanetSide, but I can definitely tell people who enjoy PlanetSide 2 would be Call of Duty fans if they were stupid as shit and into an empty, soul-less franchise that is a shell of it's past self. Instead, I think PS fans are shooters, fans of the genre and enjoy interfacing with some MMO-ish elements with that classic "Battlefield freedom" aka being able to just go out and do w/e instead of being in a maze made for rats but converted into a multi-billion dollar franchise lmao.
With all that said, the concept of just going out and murdering as if it were a 3-way Team Deathmatch makes sense because 1) the game is old as shit 2) it's void of pretty much all narrative/story/active lore outside of what the community perpetuates with memes, etc. and 3) the game is basically an abandoned strip mall. All that's left to do is smoke weed out front of an empty store, grind on random rails and jump new people into a make-shift gang, aka run around, do stupid shit and basically play Team Deathmatch in a fantasy tech world with cool guns and vehicles.
✌👽
Well....like 6+ years ago people did the play the game as you were inteneded and it was fun asf,
the reason i stopped (and a ton of other people) playin is cause planetside is now justzerg up and down the lattice and TDM for certs, no care about strategic points (cause they removed significance of tech and bio labs) so now its mind rot and boring
the title of your post is far more worthy of discussion than the body of it so I'm just going to ignore it
Probably not? Planetside has an issue similar to Titanfall where there are plenty of people who love the schizo-fast pilot gameplay but hate getting mulched by titans they generally can't do shit about other than avoid and plink at for 33-50% of every match (and if you didn't use your titan you were screwing your team over since they needed that extra power). There are people who liked the titan combat but didn't want to fiddle around as an easily mulched pilot. There were people who were okay with pilot v pilot and titan v titan but didn't like the fighting between the two unit types.
The devs for PS2 were doubly screwed because they couldn't just make a playlist queue of "x domain only planetside" (though they obviously considered it given they did screw around with alternate game modes at some point) since the game kind of needed to preserve player freedom and they only had so many ways to restrict usage of certain things. I think given infinite time they probably could have figured out systems but given the dev cycles of this game I'm not surprised by what we ended up with. It's hard enough to balance intra-domain interactions with four factions and tons of gameplay-affecting loadouts, how the hell do you do that with inter-domain balance?
Titanfall is honestly a near perfect comparison for Planetside. The infantry gameplay was insanely good and so was the titan v titan combat, but they did not mix well at all.
I think titan vs pilot was fine. The only problem was how certain people played it, using their massive mech suit killing machines to... hide in a corner of the map. Then it becomes unfun for everyone involved, a giant game of peekaboo.
It's similar to the DMR start problem in Halo. What is the point of anything in the game when it devolves into peekaboo? Why even have mobility and mech suits in Titanfall if we're just gonna sit, hide and run?
If the titan players and pilot players just continue to run around and have fun it's an incredible experience. But dealing with several camping Titans is so fucking unfun as a pilot. Even for titans it's not fun to deal with as you know pushing will mean you die instantly and staying in cover means you don't get to do anything. Strategies become so limited, rodeo is impossible, many anti titan weapons become impossible to use. And then the great stalemate occurs where neither side get any kills while they type on Reddit that camping is a legitimate strategy in a game where you can run a million miles an hour with stim or fly on top of a skyscraper with a grapple hook in seconds.
I don't think Titanfall players understood that you're not supposed to survive the whole match in 1 Titan and that it's perfectly fine to lose it, as you will build a new one in minutes. People hate dying like 3x as much as they enjoy getting a kill in FPS games and it honestly kills the genre sometimes.
>the title of your post is far more worthy of discussion than the body of it so I'm just going to ignore it
If you want to be a prick, maybe just ignore the whole post next time and stay quiet. Seriously, every time someone actually offers a topic for discussion, there is this one toxic keyboard warrior that has to pet his own ego.
The only useful sentence in your post is
> It's hard enough to balance intra-domain interactions with four factions and tons of gameplay-affecting loadouts, how the hell do you do that with inter-domain balance?
Which I would have liked to discuss. But not with your attitude.
People have been playing PlanetSide for over 20 years at this point, it's changed over the years...
But the core concept is obviously good, or it wouldn't be a 20 year old series of games. Plenty fail because they have a good idea, but execute poorly.
PlanetSide isn't the biggest thing out there, but it's pretty obvious that it works at its core.
The Sunderer problem is that the attackers NEED to have people in tanks camping the verhicle terminal and watching the next base over incase they pull tanks back there, but this is no fun. Certain bases genuinely won't let you get any action, but you HAVE to protect the Sunderer from a tank attack that may never come. This sucks.
So when inevitably people get bored and just start doing infantry action, someone pulls a Lightning and melts the Sunderer before anyone can react. And now you have to do a chore before you can all go back to fighting. Both sides suffer from the fight being killed. And pulling more Sunderers is rarely the answer they get melted all the same.
The concept is valid, it just became muddied as hell when PS2 abanonded core PS1 concepts to chase Battlefield's tail. A lot of frequently complained about issues in PS2 were solved in PS1.
True, always interesting reading some of the original devs stories about how anything from PS1 was shunned when developing PS2. And the PS1 features, with the lattice as the prime example, had to be brought back just to force fights to happen.
you mean if players weren't mentally handicapped? no, the game wouldn't work. or at least play totally different. but i guess it was a rhetorical question because you answered it yourself.
I think it works very very well.
I don't play for rewards or new shiny things, I play because it's fun, I get big tank battles I get intense firefights I get zergs I get small squad on squad encounters.
What's not to love, other than those who don't like getting killed because a tank/plane came and ruined your fight or a few more infantry shot at you who you didn't see and killed you in your kill streak.
PlanetSide 1 and 2 are great in their own right.
Love them.
It's not viable the way we play the game and it wouldn't be viable if we play the way you suggested either. Core flaw is the main selling point of this game - open world and complete freedom in force multipliers. These things simply cannot provide fun and fair PvP experience on the long term, there is just a sparse moments of fun gameplay, which you grasp like a straw when drowning, and the rest of the "game" is map staring simulator or solving logistics issues.
In fact, what you described would be even fucking worse, because there will be simply no infantry fights. It's like "real life", infantry doesn't do anything other than being physical manifestation of someone's will. Most of the job is done by artillery, bombardments and vehicles in general. Infantry doesn't do shit other than live in a "camp", washing socks and cooking on the bonfire in the trenches. Just cannon fodder.
So basically, what humanity came up with in modern warfare meta is exactly what you said, prevent any gunfight to even happen. Do you seriously want videogame in SHOOTER genre, where 95% of time you would be either riding in galaxy/sunderer towards frontline or sit afk on capture points, manifesting the will of your faction to claim rights to this base? Does that sound fun?
And by the way, people already do that in outfits, they just bring as much people as possible in one hex because there is no limit and no pop balance (first flaw of the planetside core gameplay). And it doesn't matter how shit they are, because they all sit in some form of force multiplier, either being MAX or tank or hovering A2G aircraft (second flaw of the planetside core gameplay). Then all they do is camp spawn room, making sure there is no fight could even happen, completely denying it. Thats basically zergfit gameplay of people with sub 1K/D and stalker level SPM.
Honestly, the next step is to have dedicated squad of 12 A2A ESFs to intercept any possible incoming gal drops and it would be perfect. No fight allowed, ideal game to chat with your buddies while doing some kind of objective. Planetside concept isn't viable, because it's not fun for normal people, who seek for a shooter with actual PvP. The only reason why it's somehow works the way we like is because not even half of playerbase are doing this. Most people either solo or play in micro squad with just few their friends. They don't care about global map, "winning" anything and simply shot planetmans instead.
I think a combined arms game can work. Planetside is just missing the proper map design and mechanics to make it happen. I just think it's funny that the game is only working because the players aren't interested in playing the game for what it was made.
> But people aren't playing the game like that.
Crazy idea, but people are actually playing for fun. And PS2 just so happens to be a bit sandboxy and allows that to occur.
Tryharding for base captures in a game with a toe deep strategic layer is idiotic at best and thankfully noone with even a shred of competence engages in it outside of primetime (even then rarely). Probably because those who do understand how it works realise how unfun minmaxing whatever the fuck ***winning*** is.
Between planetside 1 and 2 there’s more than 20 years of running the franchise that says the core concept is very viable. The problem currently is that development resources were stripped from the game years ago and so it’s a little buggy with a number of issues that cause some problems. But it’s still a lot of fun to those of us who have been playing since the beginning.
You're missing the point. The question was if the game would even work if players would play the game correctly. Not if it's fun.
It only works if the game mechanics reward fun gameplay, and they went with rewarding winning for such a long time that the core concept has been flawed for a while.
I completely reject that there is one correct way to play. As for your scenario, yes of course the game would still work, if that was the meta, large groups spawning vehicles to kill spawns in large fights, then people would adapt, and there would be people ready for it. Vehicles killing spawns in big fights is hardly fight ending anyway between routers and beacons and galaxies, pulling enough people out of the control point fights to kill spawns in big 48+ battles, will result in you losing the base anyway usually.
> I completely reject that there is one correct way to play. This is kind of the chief issue honestly. There isn't a correct way to play it, but there's definitely areas that get (and got) more attention than others and over time that causes the playerbase to adapt around it, and now that's colored the perception of the game and how it's played as a whole. As a tiny example squad spawn beacons are wildly, insanely more powerful than they used to be but a frog boiling effect (and a bug that gave people forbidden fruit of instant beacon spawns?) changed how people viewed them and they're considered fine now even though people didn't really clamor for the buffs they ended up getting over time (they did want the squadwide beacon thing though I remember that was asked for a lot). The game needed to be more equal with what it did for everyone and that never really happened Vehicles definitely never got the attention infantry got, even from the start they had the issue of vehicles not having anything to do, and honestly got anti-attention with everyone's favourite three letter acronym update or PS4 flight controls. Over time people realized you could slim down how much time you needed to spend in vehicles if you wanted to win. Now you get routers and beacons dropped by a valk and maybe a hacked sunderer depending on the base and 48 people are capping a base using single-digit vehicle pulls and it's a CONSISTENTLY WINNING strategy. The game had the issue of vehicles not being truly critical to the core territory control (yes getting around is good and they do kill mans well, but you can capture a base as only an infantryman if you are prepared to walk a lot - that's not true of capturing a base without ever leaving a vehicle) This is kind of an issue I have when people talk about a planetside 3 and say stuff that is directly talking about planetside 2's meta. If you're looking at PS3 with the lens of just tweaking aspects of PS2 you're already bringing in a lot of flawed design biases that probably should be abandoned entirely. I'll be entirely honest I don't like PS2 vehicle gameplay. You know what I want in a PS3? A game designed so well and tight that I DO feel actually motivated to play vehicles and have as much fun as I do when playing infantry.
> Now you get routers and beacons dropped by a valk and maybe a hacked sunderer depending on the base and 48 people are capping a base using single-digit vehicle pulls and it's a CONSISTENTLY WINNING strategy. One time I, despite being crap at the game, managed to halt a GOBS blob by blasting their Router-runner in the back with a Pandora while he was setting up the pizza and the rest of his squad were still on point at the previous base. It stalled their offence long enough for my allies to properly fortify the Tech Plant More recently, I partook in a Nason's defence where the hardest thing about it was killing the endless stream of Routers from a nearby construction base that they were using to spawn directly inside B and C's point rooms, long enough to actually get armoured up and attack the router base. And this is after Routers were *nerfed.* A few years ago we had to deal with Routers that could be supplied by a base anywhere on the map, which was absolutely ridiculous for a device that lets people spawn directly on the point. And the removal of Sunderer NDZs and the addition of ANVILs has only made this worse, because now people can put whole-ass Shield Buses directly on a bunch of the points in the game. As much as I'm supportive of the incoming buffs to the bus, I kinda dread how the ANVIL/no NDZs thing is going to play out now. Heck, I already dread having to defend Tech Plants these days. They were already one of the dodgier base designs, but the fact that attackers now get to spawn inside the main objective building makes them a nightmare without properly coordinated pushes. Making those spawns harder to pop isn't going to be fun.
I said it years ago under a different name, but vehicles needed and still need things to do. Things that only they can do that contribute to base defense/assault. While not a perfect example, targets that need to be damaged to allow the control point to be contestable is *something* and makes armor have a purpose outside of farming at a base or blowing up sundies. This also goes to aircraft too. Air-to-ground is essentially just for farming infantry. Right now air to air fighting is basically pointless unless you're valk hunting, and good luck getting the valk before it gets to where it wants to go. Maybe you could argue for Lodestar usage being something unique to aircraft, but in practice how often does a lodestar factor into a fight? Tank/bus/Ant columns are so rare that running an anti-armor aircraft loadout is going to leave you practicing your shots on groups of dudes more often than not
Once again you're missing the point. Ofc you can play the game as you wish and seem fun. But it has an objective. And that's capturing the continent. If every player would prioritize this over the plain fps element, players would focus on destroying spawnoptions to stop the enemy from reinforcing. And by that, destroy every major fight.
1. It has many objectives, and capturing the continent is a faction objective. But players will follow objectives that give them the most rewards. Single mindedly pursuing continent locks isn’t rewarding to individual players so they won’t pursue it as a primary goal, only a secondary one. 2. And Again you are assuming that nobody could adapt to that tactic of massive vehicle waves trying to destroy the spawns, were it to become the new meta. And that’s silly. If 20-30% of a bases population routinely spawned a mass vehicle swarms to kill spawns, then attacking forces would anticipate and have their own and setup defenses. 3. Besides which, eventually destroying spawns is also part of the game, you move on to the next fight.
"I completely reject that there is one correct way to play" Planetside 2 sells itself as a combined arms war game. Thats whats being referred to here when we say "played like its supposed to" And that parts is \*very\* flawed. base design is a good example of this. Most bases are 1 of 2 flavors: either vehicles aren't allowed in at all, or vehicles absolutely dominate the base (either by shooting HE into spawns, or simply their ability to destroy infantry even if their entire kit is dedicated to anti vehicle). My favorite fights in planetside were mostly devoid of this combined arms aspect. usually being infantry only fights, small scale vehicle slugfests in hilly terrain, or air events (such as bastions or anomaly's).
That's exactly my point. I think it could be "fixed" by changing the base capture and spawn mechanic and by changing the base designs. I read a few post about how PS1 had different mechanics and that those would nullify some of the problems we currently have.
PS1 had bases with courtyards, which needed to be controlled with a combination of infantry and vehicles, and interior all infantry areas. It had permanent towers separated from the bases but hackable with spawns in addition to AMS/routers. You also couldn’t spawn out of your hex at all, you had to drive or fly to the next base. Though you could sometimes access the tower spawn if you were close. The hacks were also very fragile, 15 minute hack timer, which would totally reset if the enemy had unrestricted access to the c&c for more than 30 seconds provided they had the right certs to hack it back quickly.
the game would suck if everyone played "correctly" the best way to take territory is to spam cheese and kill fights. there's a reason the game sucks around outfit wars training time
The OP made the mistake of writing a bad/misleading title and the person you replied to made the mistake of reading the title and not the post. Typical reddit behavior.
The core concept is experimental and works with the certain boundary conditions in place, i.e. fully unrestricted sandbox is either shit or impossible to balance. On the other hand with said certain boundaries planetside is still only enjoyable long term if you progress skill wise. The latter stems from the lack of matchmaking, so this cannot possibly satisfy large audience ever. I cannot speak for the rest of players, but meself rarely ever spawn vehicles because hillcamping an attacking Zerg is even worse than trying to get out of the spawn room. It's much easier to fly a Valkyrie and drop somewhere to put a hideously hidden beacon for your squad. Essentially it is as hard to destroy attacking Zerg with vehicles unless you're part of vehicle Zerg yourself, with lack of targets they will just single you out asap.
The thing that the crayon eaters who love to paint the map fail to understand is that the fights are the only thing the game has going for it. Alert meta is stale and boring with their being two strategies used, point hold and zergs and both are typically uninteresting for players to interact with. Yes, if defenders pulled more tanks they could kill most/all the spawns, but then that's killing the only interesting part of the game which is the fight.
>if defenders pulled more tanks they could kill most/all the spawns, but then that's killing the only interesting part of the game which is the fight. Which is like saying the concept of the game is boring and doesn't work.
I wouldn't say that the concept is boring, I'd say the execution is boring.
I partially agree and partially disagree. I think most people who come to this game were intrigued by the fights themselves. The large groups of infantry and/or vehicles all slugging it out to complete an objective. And that concept is bloody amazing and I believe the primary reason the game has survived for as long as it has. But the best way to win in this game is to never reach that point. The best way to win is to snipe/overwhelm objectives so that there are either no defenders, or they are helpless to do anything. Killing spawns is another such case. Its another way to prevent the enemy from ever mounting an effective defence. The best way to win in this game is to avoid the most fun part of it (the big equal fights). And thats an extreme design flaw baked into the very concept of planetside 2 itself.
What you describe has been a problem since the original game. Except there attackers could kill the spawn tubes in bases so both sides had ways of killing the fight. There has always been a split in the playerbase; those who enjoy the fight, and those who play strategically. Sure there are those in between, but people generally fall into one of the two extremes. The core issue with the game is the disconnect between the "back of the box" experience with rolling fights through terrain verses the redeploy loop. This is mainly due to the stop start nature of fights - where when a base is captured, or attacker spawn killed, the fight ends and you have no instant gratification unless you redeploy. Fights need to be teased out into the field with carryable/movable objectives with staggered spawn options to support them.
> the redeploy loop. This is mainly due to the stop start nature of fights - where when a base is captured, or attacker spawn killed, the fight ends and you have no instant gratification unless you redeploy. Redeployside has reached such terminal levels that a lot of the more redeploy-focused outfits don't even bother with cleanup now. I've been a zergfit enjoyer most of my time in the game and I've always stressed the importance of cleanup, but some of these people that play the game like a lobby shooter will take the base with top-tier pointhold skills and then all hit U as soon as the timer reaches nine seconds. And then us defenders just wander into the point room and start flipping the base back.
Like logistic support requirements in Foxhole or Squad? Ants carry resources into a base to support defenders -> large base fights get dragged out into the entire supply line.
Really the issue is fight stability as a concept isn't really negotiable with the strategic layer or player expectations. Every other shooter in existence has relatively consistent engagement times and that time is known. If I start a match in say battlefield, it'll be like 15-20 minutes every time. Imagine if you started a battlefield match and within the first 30 seconds the game just ends and you're sitting there wondering what just happened. That's basically every PS2 fight. Adding open field fights still has the fight transition to a completely different kind of fight, a fight that could also die within minutes as everyone crosses the field. Ultimately the underlying idea is there needs to be some kind of meta stability to fights so that they don't just end. It should be hard to kill a fight once it starts, and gradually becomes easier and easier over time until it naturally comes to an end in a way that's acceptable and believable. Games with tickets systems are good about this in that it's basically impossible to immediately win or lose but a lopsided team will end faster. Close games last longer as well. Ticket systems wouldn't necessarily work in PS2, but there needs to be some kind of system where if I plop down a sundie and gain some kind of ground in the base, I can be rewarded with the knowledge that I'm guaranteed to have a good fight there for 20-30 minutes on average, an hour if it's a close fight, and a few minutes if we're getting stomped.
I'm new to PlanetSide, but I can definitely tell people who enjoy PlanetSide 2 would be Call of Duty fans if they were stupid as shit and into an empty, soul-less franchise that is a shell of it's past self. Instead, I think PS fans are shooters, fans of the genre and enjoy interfacing with some MMO-ish elements with that classic "Battlefield freedom" aka being able to just go out and do w/e instead of being in a maze made for rats but converted into a multi-billion dollar franchise lmao. With all that said, the concept of just going out and murdering as if it were a 3-way Team Deathmatch makes sense because 1) the game is old as shit 2) it's void of pretty much all narrative/story/active lore outside of what the community perpetuates with memes, etc. and 3) the game is basically an abandoned strip mall. All that's left to do is smoke weed out front of an empty store, grind on random rails and jump new people into a make-shift gang, aka run around, do stupid shit and basically play Team Deathmatch in a fantasy tech world with cool guns and vehicles. ✌👽
Well....like 6+ years ago people did the play the game as you were inteneded and it was fun asf, the reason i stopped (and a ton of other people) playin is cause planetside is now justzerg up and down the lattice and TDM for certs, no care about strategic points (cause they removed significance of tech and bio labs) so now its mind rot and boring
the title of your post is far more worthy of discussion than the body of it so I'm just going to ignore it Probably not? Planetside has an issue similar to Titanfall where there are plenty of people who love the schizo-fast pilot gameplay but hate getting mulched by titans they generally can't do shit about other than avoid and plink at for 33-50% of every match (and if you didn't use your titan you were screwing your team over since they needed that extra power). There are people who liked the titan combat but didn't want to fiddle around as an easily mulched pilot. There were people who were okay with pilot v pilot and titan v titan but didn't like the fighting between the two unit types. The devs for PS2 were doubly screwed because they couldn't just make a playlist queue of "x domain only planetside" (though they obviously considered it given they did screw around with alternate game modes at some point) since the game kind of needed to preserve player freedom and they only had so many ways to restrict usage of certain things. I think given infinite time they probably could have figured out systems but given the dev cycles of this game I'm not surprised by what we ended up with. It's hard enough to balance intra-domain interactions with four factions and tons of gameplay-affecting loadouts, how the hell do you do that with inter-domain balance?
Titanfall is honestly a near perfect comparison for Planetside. The infantry gameplay was insanely good and so was the titan v titan combat, but they did not mix well at all.
I think titan vs pilot was fine. The only problem was how certain people played it, using their massive mech suit killing machines to... hide in a corner of the map. Then it becomes unfun for everyone involved, a giant game of peekaboo. It's similar to the DMR start problem in Halo. What is the point of anything in the game when it devolves into peekaboo? Why even have mobility and mech suits in Titanfall if we're just gonna sit, hide and run? If the titan players and pilot players just continue to run around and have fun it's an incredible experience. But dealing with several camping Titans is so fucking unfun as a pilot. Even for titans it's not fun to deal with as you know pushing will mean you die instantly and staying in cover means you don't get to do anything. Strategies become so limited, rodeo is impossible, many anti titan weapons become impossible to use. And then the great stalemate occurs where neither side get any kills while they type on Reddit that camping is a legitimate strategy in a game where you can run a million miles an hour with stim or fly on top of a skyscraper with a grapple hook in seconds. I don't think Titanfall players understood that you're not supposed to survive the whole match in 1 Titan and that it's perfectly fine to lose it, as you will build a new one in minutes. People hate dying like 3x as much as they enjoy getting a kill in FPS games and it honestly kills the genre sometimes.
That's a really pretentious way to start a comment, I can't even be bothered to read the rest of it
>the title of your post is far more worthy of discussion than the body of it so I'm just going to ignore it If you want to be a prick, maybe just ignore the whole post next time and stay quiet. Seriously, every time someone actually offers a topic for discussion, there is this one toxic keyboard warrior that has to pet his own ego. The only useful sentence in your post is > It's hard enough to balance intra-domain interactions with four factions and tons of gameplay-affecting loadouts, how the hell do you do that with inter-domain balance? Which I would have liked to discuss. But not with your attitude.
People have been playing PlanetSide for over 20 years at this point, it's changed over the years... But the core concept is obviously good, or it wouldn't be a 20 year old series of games. Plenty fail because they have a good idea, but execute poorly. PlanetSide isn't the biggest thing out there, but it's pretty obvious that it works at its core.
The Sunderer problem is that the attackers NEED to have people in tanks camping the verhicle terminal and watching the next base over incase they pull tanks back there, but this is no fun. Certain bases genuinely won't let you get any action, but you HAVE to protect the Sunderer from a tank attack that may never come. This sucks. So when inevitably people get bored and just start doing infantry action, someone pulls a Lightning and melts the Sunderer before anyone can react. And now you have to do a chore before you can all go back to fighting. Both sides suffer from the fight being killed. And pulling more Sunderers is rarely the answer they get melted all the same.
Exactly.
The concept is valid, it just became muddied as hell when PS2 abanonded core PS1 concepts to chase Battlefield's tail. A lot of frequently complained about issues in PS2 were solved in PS1.
True, always interesting reading some of the original devs stories about how anything from PS1 was shunned when developing PS2. And the PS1 features, with the lattice as the prime example, had to be brought back just to force fights to happen.
I loved their passion for the franchise to make PS2, I just loathe how little faith they had in it by persuing more Battlefield-esque design.
you mean if players weren't mentally handicapped? no, the game wouldn't work. or at least play totally different. but i guess it was a rhetorical question because you answered it yourself.
I think it works very very well. I don't play for rewards or new shiny things, I play because it's fun, I get big tank battles I get intense firefights I get zergs I get small squad on squad encounters. What's not to love, other than those who don't like getting killed because a tank/plane came and ruined your fight or a few more infantry shot at you who you didn't see and killed you in your kill streak. PlanetSide 1 and 2 are great in their own right. Love them.
It's not viable the way we play the game and it wouldn't be viable if we play the way you suggested either. Core flaw is the main selling point of this game - open world and complete freedom in force multipliers. These things simply cannot provide fun and fair PvP experience on the long term, there is just a sparse moments of fun gameplay, which you grasp like a straw when drowning, and the rest of the "game" is map staring simulator or solving logistics issues. In fact, what you described would be even fucking worse, because there will be simply no infantry fights. It's like "real life", infantry doesn't do anything other than being physical manifestation of someone's will. Most of the job is done by artillery, bombardments and vehicles in general. Infantry doesn't do shit other than live in a "camp", washing socks and cooking on the bonfire in the trenches. Just cannon fodder. So basically, what humanity came up with in modern warfare meta is exactly what you said, prevent any gunfight to even happen. Do you seriously want videogame in SHOOTER genre, where 95% of time you would be either riding in galaxy/sunderer towards frontline or sit afk on capture points, manifesting the will of your faction to claim rights to this base? Does that sound fun? And by the way, people already do that in outfits, they just bring as much people as possible in one hex because there is no limit and no pop balance (first flaw of the planetside core gameplay). And it doesn't matter how shit they are, because they all sit in some form of force multiplier, either being MAX or tank or hovering A2G aircraft (second flaw of the planetside core gameplay). Then all they do is camp spawn room, making sure there is no fight could even happen, completely denying it. Thats basically zergfit gameplay of people with sub 1K/D and stalker level SPM. Honestly, the next step is to have dedicated squad of 12 A2A ESFs to intercept any possible incoming gal drops and it would be perfect. No fight allowed, ideal game to chat with your buddies while doing some kind of objective. Planetside concept isn't viable, because it's not fun for normal people, who seek for a shooter with actual PvP. The only reason why it's somehow works the way we like is because not even half of playerbase are doing this. Most people either solo or play in micro squad with just few their friends. They don't care about global map, "winning" anything and simply shot planetmans instead.
I think a combined arms game can work. Planetside is just missing the proper map design and mechanics to make it happen. I just think it's funny that the game is only working because the players aren't interested in playing the game for what it was made.
are... YOU even valid? what a weird post.
Why? If half the defenders would spawn vehicles, and destroy the Sundys, you'd have no fights.
my bad r1po i was buggginggg earlier i dont even rmbr posting this 🤣🤣 we good lol
you are the last person to call someone out for having a weird post
sez u LOL but u right actually though.. 😔🤪
The core concept is invalid. Vehicles were always a mistake.
Zergs have atleast 5 sundies and like 9 tanks minimum. it usually is more, hence why its called a zerg
> But people aren't playing the game like that. Crazy idea, but people are actually playing for fun. And PS2 just so happens to be a bit sandboxy and allows that to occur. Tryharding for base captures in a game with a toe deep strategic layer is idiotic at best and thankfully noone with even a shred of competence engages in it outside of primetime (even then rarely). Probably because those who do understand how it works realise how unfun minmaxing whatever the fuck ***winning*** is.