The Devastating Downfall of Planetside 2 Continues

🥷 Subscribe for more & Support via membership: bit.ly/ZealousVidya
🗨️ Our Community / discord & 💜 Follow / zealousvidya
🖥️ STARFORGE PREBUILT COMPUTERS bit.ly/44UOCKJ
B-Roll: Roulden

[@ZealousVidya]

Subscribe for more! What are your personal gripes? What do you think is leading to Planetside 2 being a lower pop than normal? Edit: Wrel and the rest of the devs genuinely seem like cool people, I just disagree with the game design specifically. Please keep criticism logical, don't use this type of content to justify toxicity.

[@D4rkPro0xy]

NCAP ammo, remove Nano weave, Movement Multiplier, faction balance Maxes A2G .... Why lowering skill cap for players when 90 % of the Comm are Veterans with higher skill :) Just trash game design

[@piptyson5512]

I don't know if they'd ever admit this, but I think they've tried to lower the skill gap to bring in more players. Lowering that gap while adding new elements that I don't care for makes it harder and harder to find good action that I use to absolutely love. I understand why they'd make this philosophical move from a business perspective (if indeed true), but it looks like it has backfired. I don't log on much anymore, and the game doesn't get any more of my money.

[@lordcreepy]

for me its not the game - rather the release of lots of other games I want to play and my time is limited.

[@cualpoohsho]

Planetside is the only game I've played where the "community" hates a staff member of the company. Its weird. THATs why people are leaving.

[@ZealousVidya]

@@cualpoohsho Tbqh Wrel seems like a cool guy and I kinda use 'Wrel' sometimes as a replacement for 'game designers' because he's even said he perfers that. This isn't personal or anything, I just think the game is being mismanaged and want it to do better.

[@ivabogdanova4338]

The thing that got me into the game was the massive open-battlefield fights way back in 2013-14. Lines of vehicles on a mountain, slow stalemates on a bridge lasting for over 2-3 hours, infantry utilizing natural cover and ditches. The whole feel of the game has changed drastically. It lost it's unique feel for something that seems to try to replicate a "modern shooter". A lot of forceful pushes into breaking "stalemate" fights with the intention to create more engaging fights resulted in the obliteration of "epic-scale battles" (eg. orbitals) We no longer have "epic scale battles" instead we have a couple of overpopped fights in a few bases per map that don't last longer than 5-7 minutes.

[@VintageNarwhal]

This.

[@TheHuffur]

Very much agree but if you come with that idea anywhere you will be buried under a avalanche of CoD damaged players that simply cant handle not being "in the action" 99.9% of the time from the moment they start the game. The overabundance of easy spawns and hopping across the continents is what ultimately reduced the open field fights. People will just take a Valkyrie or something and drop on the base and spam up some beacons, hack the vehicle terminal and pull Sundies right at the base itself rather than fight their way to it.

[@VintageNarwhal]

@@TheHuffur what you said is do damn accurate its sad

[@ivabogdanova4338]

​@@TheHuffur Although the game is older than the modern shooters we currently have, it still suffers the same issues because of the playerbase. You either keep it try-hardy, tough, hard to get in and not sutable for "COD" player mentality, and hope that the core community likes the challenge or spend a lot of time educating the player by holding their hand, make it less punishing and easy. What in my oppinion when wrong is that PS2 devs went with the second option. They tried to attract player masses that are casual, won't stick around, wont generate enough revenue. Another thing that's wrong with the game is the fundamental gameplay that's not suitable for the generic "modern shooter mentality". There is no MMR, there is no matchmaking, no matter what you put in the tutorial, nothing can prepare a new player for the scale of the massacre that's gonna happen. To be honest entering the game should greet new players with a message along the lines of : "You will die. A lot. You're not important, and you are just a cog in the wheel of the meatgrinder. And that's alright. Try to have fun" :D There has always been that debate of carer to "core community of veterans" vs cater to new players. And honestly there's no win or a guaranteed recipe to succeed in either one,just because of how the mentality of gamers and gaming industry changed.

[@TheHuffur]

@@ivabogdanova4338 Yeah but I would have preferred if they tried to cater to their core playerbase, there is a lot of veteran players that have stopped playing due to these changes and lack of "meaning" when taking bases since the enemy can just retake it a few minutes later. Thats a problem that will never get better as long as the devs aim for the casual players/everyone. There cant be a satisfying and meaningful fight over a base if it takes 5 minutes to take it and you can lose it 5 minutes later. The whole point of the game should be about epic large fights outside and inside bases and should probably be almost on par with the scale of continent locking alerts except its for the base being fought over for 40-80 minutes or something so its a big deal if you capture it(would obviously need a lot of changes to map design and such). "A sense of pride and accomplishment" cant come from something easy to do that only takes a few minutes, if its not a struggle then no one will care about it. I think it would be a mistake to make PS2 into Arma but it would definitely be better if it went a little closer to Arma than CoD at least. People always shoot down logistics as being boring and that no one would do it but they also always fail to realize that there are people who enjoys doing it, years and years ago when people were not so stuck in the meta of just teleporting to every fight there were more often than not AT LEAST one Galaxy sitting around the WG waiting to taxi people to a fight. Nowadays they usually wont even land, they just spawn and fly away to their target base because their squad is spawning into the Galaxy as it flies, as a new random player how 'epic' is that? its more like a ghost town and 0 interaction between the players and thats one of the first things they get to experience joining the game instead of a hub of activity and people telling them to hop into the Galaxy and take them to a fight and getting invited to a squad/platoon its ghost town WG with a bunch of people standing around and vehicles just instantly driving/flying away. Its just silly that a MMOFPS that is supposed to have big fights doesnt actually have any logistics in it even though fights would naturally be created around it if the game had it. Prime target to attack for the other factions and a prime target to defend, give all the vehicle players something to do other than farm bases. Bleh.

[@perttuhamalainen4942]

I just cannot understand how a game this amazing cannot attract couple of thousand players out of hundreds of millions of gamers.

[@braydenlawrence6148]

Its because its not that "amazing". Its just a ok super janky shooter. Something fun to play a for a little bit. Nothing close worth investing real time into

[@dropz5030]

It is actually not so surprising if you think about it. Even though the community for Planetside 2 seems large it is actually very small and Planetside 2 community is also in a kind of bubble that doesn't have much contact with others.

[@thegreatordeal7692]

the opinion of everyone I showed the game to : so much farming !

[@kiro-fo9qg]

It's because the new player experience deters alot of players, from wanting to stick around long term. (And vets don't make it easier for them tbh)

[@Effect_FX]

The game has no depth and is filled with bad game design and more bugs than the average methlab. Throw in terrible server performance and you have a recipe for a game that is entirely unable to retain population over an extended period of time. Average new player logs in, get wowed by the "back of the box" experience but then it eventually wears off and they log off for good.

[@Markfr0mCanada]

Thank you for calling out CTF. As someone in game put it "It wouldn't be a Wrel update if it didn't include something weird which nobody asked for and wasn't properly tested". If we ever get micro alerts back, I wouldn't mind a map level CTF as a mini game, but it shouldn't be involved in base captures.

[@MachinedFace88ttv]

The CTF mode could have worked if they did it like PlanetSide 1. Where you bring a node from one territory to the next. Instead, they made it like a bunch of mini halo matches that go on within one territory. So it is not a crescendo of action that starts with vehicles and goes into infantry fighting into a base and then pushing out of the base with the flag. It just ended up being so bad

[@VultureXV]

I miss air alerts so much it hurts man...

[@xanaxkamikaze]

Having to wait in a queue anytime I try to play during primetime, hatred towards vehicles by devs, hatred towards normal people by sweaty tryhards, hackers that fly through the sky for hours at a time without being noticed by whoever is moderating the game.... etc The queue time alone makes not bother. Try to do outfit ops but can't get in if you are late.

[@ZealousVidya]

Yeah that's been a massive issue for us too. 750pop continents is dumb and goes against what Planetside as an MMO is about.

[@xanaxkamikaze]

@@ZealousVidya The max size per continent went down, right? That's gotta be the major reason. Less capacity is likely to lead to less people :(

[@Zygorg]

@@xanaxkamikaze from 900 to 750 because of something about the old spawn system

[@dalentces2492]

Hatred towards vehicles 😂 They hate vehicles so much they gave you back OHK AP and HESH while nerfing C4 and simultaneously allowing you to constantly pull vehicles by introducing 10 different methods of lowering the vehicle cost with a currency that is a replenishable resource you only need time for (making it more of a food stamp than a currency, really) and nothing else.

[@dalentces2492]

If anything, DBG should introduce a rocket launcher that costs the same amount of nanites as MBTs, make it perishable on death, but let it kill vehicle farmers on hit just like they can kill infantry, except from the safety of their farm chariot that's immune to small arms and can be stationed on a hill in another base entirely. That would be fun.

[@MrSpeedFrk]

In a way I feel bad for the devs. because of the time and effort they put in to add the boats, underwater fighting etc. Adding a new mechanic to the game, they must have felt great about it but then to see everyone basically end up hating it, they did good work unfortunately it is not what the community wanted

[@ZealousVidya]

Totally agree and I always feel bad because they seem like cool people but I think this type of video unfortunately needs to be said

[@MrSpeedFrk]

@@ZealousVidya yes I agree it's important to raise these points, good job

[@DobryakDobreyshiy]

@@ZealousVidya no matter how cool you are, if you are talentless and can't integrate new stuff in proper way. Example: underwater combat? Why you cant let players swim? Why you force them only walking at slow speed? Why you restrict use of bunch of weapons? Why you made it so slow and fucking boring? Just why? Boats? Again, why so slow? Why I can't jump out of the boat, and swim back to it without dumb "underwater jetpack" that not allow me to shoot? Why we have only boats, but not big ships that requires some teamplay to get operated? See, policing the fun out of this game never worked well. Just like removal of rumble seat repairs.

[@xWHITEx]

Yesterday I wanted to play, I went to cobalt - a queue of 40 people, and then to a miller - a queue of 35 people. Finally I got out. What were the developers thinking about when reducing the population on the continent, weakening the server side, releasing controversial updates? The devil knows.

[@sassysaddles9981]

cuz people cry about NC zerg and population balance

[@see_horse]

​@@sassysaddles9981 when ironically, it's VS and TR that are massively out of fuckin balance.

[@derth9230]

​@@see_horse vanu infiltrators make me scream

[@declanjones8888]

​​@@derth9230I swear Vanu Infiltrators have given PTSD to people with their ambushes on Hossin.

[@Gearfried813]

I remember when Wrel was just a KZbinr and how excited the community was that he was being brought on to the development team. His biggest asset was that he was incredibly in-touch: because he was just a player, he was sharing all of the same experiences that other players were. Don't know how much time he gets to play the game himself anymore, but I hope the devs remember how helpful that was and play their own game often.

[@JohnFromAccounting]

I was not excited when he was hired because he didn't have a track record.

[@0Letten0]

He was focusing too much on just infantry play, just like Planetside nowdays

[@FoMScratch]

The loss of confidence in daybreak's veteran players due to their feedback being ignored and daybreak's inability to retain new players due to a very grindy gameplay loop featuring low TTK client side damage verification.

[@joeschmoe2843]

SoE vets laugh at your pearl clutching.

[@weenercarguy4100]

The game is just ridiculously hard to get friends into, I have gotten 5-8 completely fresh players to install the game and give it a try. The infantry experience is just a hell hole sometimes, no matter where you go sometimes the new players can’t compete with the 30 year old veteran players. The only way I’ve managed to keep some enjoyment in our group is doing cheesy tactics and stupid garbage, we have had maybe 2 good experiences where we took a base as a squad. I understand you need more people to have a good base taking experience but I invited more than 20 people and people just outright refused to play and said the game was horrible. Game won’t really die, just will be the same masochists playing it. I had one session that was particularly bad, we played for an entire alert on Esamir with a VS hacker flying around killing everything, anti air everywhere, we just did infantry for the entire thing. After the alert on Esamir Indar opened up and we got into a mid range infantry fight where we were fighting VS comprising of 90% infiltrators that would uncloak kill you then recloak. I hopped in a max when one of our bases was being taken, I was chasing a guy, I expected there to be c4 so I looked for it, it just didn’t load in and I died in one hit to it. Combine that stuff with pulling vehicles to get tank mined, orbital strikes hitting a base 4+ times the game really is just shit and all of the veterans think it’s perpetually shit.

[@defter6800]

This game is simulation of war in some sense. So this is expected and this always would be a case. Only possible solution is some special space for beginners to play and gain experience with similar beginners for long time before drop them vs pro players. But anyway you would lose a lot of battles and if you can't live with this - ps2 not for you.

[@weenercarguy4100]

I personally like the game, just no point in bringing new friends because of the state of it, I mean In the tutorial they don't even tell you to finish the ads animation or your spray will be terrible. The game needs new players, having the attitude "It's just not for you" is a very fair one but just not healthy for the game. I have just had my yearly week of Planetside 2 and they really need to fix this orbital strike garbage, whole point of the game is huge long drawn out battles.

[@rylandrc]

7:15 As someone who hasn't use orbital strikes, I still find them fun. They can add a lot of excitement and the explotion that sends things flying is pretty great.

[@axlandgamer3332]

To me is more fun than the Bastion, by far.

[@Aerroon]

I think both are fun if they happen in moderate quantities. The problem is that they often just get spammed.

[@HardlyGaming]

Construction OS is acceptable, that takes time to build and prepare and can be seen on the map and stopped. However, one of the worst things the devs ever did was add pocket OS's to the game.

[@tellmewhenitsover]

The air events were so fun, the servers would just stop and have a big air battle for a half an hour and it was a total blast. Every platoon comms would just be filled with people screaming and laughing their heads off. So Wrell removed it, because Planetside isn't allowed to be fun.

[@capnprat7692]

Well, they're back. And guess what, your glasses are rose-tinted. They're really not good. Like 5-10 people that air main just destroy everyone. Wooo, fun time! I flew 200-2000m just to get instantly killed, alongside 15 other people, because one dude can somehow kill 4 other ESFs in a single reload! YAY!

[@Xarus1812]

@@capnprat7692 it was fun when everyone was shit

[@deadaces7949]

Is the player studio still a thing? Why don't they run compitions, and allow players to design continents and even vehicles. I'm no developer, so I have no idea how possible this is. In Space Engineers, the community create the content for the game. The developers simply add their content, meanwhile they are focusing on the actual game, bug fixing etc... One thing I know from gaming communities, is that they know what they want from a game, and amoung the community there is always at least few people with the means to do this, and they normally design better content than the devs themselves. Even Star Citizen has teams of competion winners from around the world designing ships for the game. I just think by bringing in the communtiy on decisions like making a new continent or FSV, would be a great thing. Allow the community to get involved more. I'm pretty sure if they had asked about Oshur and the boat, I think we know what the response would have been. Planetside 2 is unique among games, and I don't think it needs more of what other games have, I think it needs more of what it already has. More continents, more vehicles and if you could dream it up, more classes?

[@ZealousVidya]

Totally agree, crazy they don't import in player made bases and encourage that type of thing, people would certainly love to help.

[@magnificent9784]

THIS!!

[@dajuanmoten4566]

@@ZealousVidya idk why they don't look at the original planetside and take some concept from there and port them into the game

[@ZealousVidya]

@@dajuanmoten4566 I've been checking out the orginal Oshur bases on Planetside 1 and it's crazy to see some of the bases are actually better than what we have now lmao I wanna do a video on that at somepoint

[@deadaces7949]

@@ZealousVidya I would like to see a post apocalyptic city landscape for Planetside2. I know I'm not the first one to mention this, but imagine how epic it would be fighting in a broken city with the scale of Planetside 2! This would be super cool! Better than Oshur!

[@theDemolisher13]

It all boils down to Wrel has no vision what so ever for the game. That's why all of his content is so sporadic from each other.

[@Skeaz10]

As an old PS1 vet this is all so interesting, and really like deja vu, but the OS was in the original practically at launch, I was among the first 5-10 NC CR5 commanders on my server, and the OS was a big deal, a prestige point and reason to grind CR. You might be right that most new players to PS2 didn't want it or care about it, but every old player especially PS1 veterans probably have a different disposition.

[@Markfr0mCanada]

You mentioned his ego. I feel like PlanetSide veterans will be less forgiving of this flaw than most, as we have experience leading platoons. In order to be an effective platoon leader you have to separate criticism from hate, listen to the criticism while shutting down the hate, and all without losing your authority. It is tough to maintain a strong image and not seem mean, but it's something that PlanetSide leaders are forced to learn to do. Thus, the man leading PlanetSide should be capable of this.

[@TheHuffur]

There is also the thing where PS veterans have gone unheard for 10 years, at some point along the way you just get fed up with being ignored and you start to call the devs idiots when some issues have dozens of well thought out and reasonable fixes/alternatives with a lot of people having taken part of a discussion and have come up with stuff that would probably work but then when the devs finally pick up the topic(if they ever do) they dont use anything the community has come up with, instead they pick their own answer which more often than not is highly questionable for anyone that has spent any time actually playing the game. .... kinda like some of the proposed construction changes that will more likely than not push away almost all the current builders despite the changes supposedly being 'for' the builders.

[@datuputi777]

Or be a mad lad cult leader in vanu. No hate or criticism just spandex fervor.

[@Frosthowl93]

I love this game but the sheer amount of hesh/a2g nowadays is just exhausting.

[@meepins]

Capture the Flag... in Planetside 2! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Benny.001]

Exactly my reaction when i heard it for the first time. Who TF thought that it would be a good idea ?

[@Lady_Maria-2007]

I’ve had orbital strikes used both against my team and for my team, never once had an issue with them. When they were first introduced it was quite the spectacle.

[@VultureXV]

I'll say it once and I'll say it again. Adding Wrel to the devteam was (at once) absolutely necessary but now it's turned into their biggest liability. Wrel has ALWAYS just wanted to do infantry v infantry combat. Everything else is a punishable offense and not worth the time in his mind. You can see this in the failed Planetside BR game that was released and subsequently shutdown in a few weeks. The Planetside BR game was most likely a product pushed almost ENTIRELY by Wrel. It was Infantry only, limited classes, and limited gear options. A far cry of what Planetside games should stand for. The developers, at this rate, are absolutely hamstrung because Wrel has become such an integral part of their team that he can absolutely stonewall anything and everything until he gets his way. It started off with obvious Vanu favoritism (Wrel's favorite faction) and ended with Combined Arms Initiative. But at this rate, the game is a decade old which is honestly one of the most impressive things about it (simply because no other FPS game even _touches_ the combined arms approach for some really weird reason).

[@UltraFlea]

They should made the boats hovercrafts and maybe have a ferry like galaxy option to stransport 1 or multiple vehicles.... as a 20 year vet i recognise when the changes they made should have come earlier...same as the outfit wars seem like it came way too late after the main outfits had left theg game. I always found the biolabs were 80% teleport rooms spam farms at 48/48. With dev team less than 30 memebers so personally i think we are on the back end maybe 2 more years before decide its not financially viable anymore

[@partydemon2849]

Now that would be cool

[@karaboga5984]

I stopped playing 3 years ago and there's not much that would make me come back to the game, especially with Wrel's vision of the game. Thanks for making a quick summary of all the problems the game presents and making us aware that the inevitable death of the game might come sooner than we think.

[@gr3yh4wk1]

I left the game after all the really cool 6 hour long battles over one chokepoint stopped and the cheese came in like Oribital Strikes. They did the same thing with Everquest 2. Game was absolutely amazing for the longest time, then they completely changed the entire game and effectively ignored all the content prior to level 80 overnight. PS2 is now like EQ2 for me, completely changed the game to a shadow of what it once was.

[@belladonna2477]

Daybreak games love to do that apparently, same happened with H1Z1 it was the biggest battle royal game with all the big streamers playing it then they added or changed stuff noone asked for and it died off within weeks x)

[@Evermore098]

I am so sick of orbitals and a certain faction dumping 2 of them at a time on your base

[@theDemolisher13]

9:13 we have about 0.1% of all players that have tried this game those that are leaving are those like me have fallen in love with the idea but we all hate the people in charge but there's nothing else on the market to compete with the game. So they're destine to come back again and again till someone gives a option 2 button to them.

[@theDemolisher13]

Oh no I was being generous with my numbers according to Steam DB we had between 2.75M to 6.87M and that M is for million for those that don't know. So we had basically 5 million players play the game and we have maybe like 5 thousand active players 5,000 / 5,000,000 = 0.001% player retention span. Oof that's painful to see also we had 5M players actually try this game!? that's clear evidence that the concept intriegues people but the execution is been botched hard.

[@valorantsmurf4794]

I tried to convince many of my friends starting with Planetside 2. I think the main Problem in Planetside is that its very hard for Beginners to earn some Items without losing the Fun playing the Game. Main Reason why they lose the fun are Massive unfair Zergs, cheaters, or like toxic Veterans. Its always very frustrating for me when they give up playing Planetside 2 because its more than a average game, its very special and unique.

[@see_horse]

Toxic vets is a MASSIVE thing. Number of times I've seen veterans abuse new players in game, on reddit, YT etc etc (usually for some 'elite reason', like they've asked a question, or said something, and didnt have the courtesy of having a 2.0KDR before speaking) it's next level. Gatekeeping in a dying game is the dumbest fucking move ever, but it's apparently the fashionable thing.

[@dalentces2492]

I'm pretty sure the in-game latency counter is very much lying to players. If they realized the extent of latency they're truly dealing with, they'd just stop playing Planetside altogether. Recently I'd die to Infiltrators whose decloaking, knife and gun sounds would reach me only after I died. Latency counters didn't show anything out of ordinary.

[@Evermore098]

Also sucks when you duck behind cover but still get killed by multi headshots through the wall becuase your character still in the open on their screen

[@bighouse581]

I do well in the underwater fights because people have to be more methodical about movement. People heavily rely on shuffling and netcode abuse and it really shows.

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Shuffling should be removed. In underwater fights I'm unbeatable. I've beaten entire squads by myself by weaving through cover and catching them from angles they didn't expect.

[@piotrek324]

It's like 1 of 8 ideas are really great and the rest was meh at best. Bastions, free NSO and Arsenal update was really great.

[@TwoHams]

I love osher, but the problems are everywhere. Sunderers in tridents feels like an exploit and makes it feel like it's better to attack than defend honestly. Water is a giant flat area that makes it easy to shoot any vehicle. If I'm on TR I can set up a prowler and shut down an entire section of water locking the fight to the lane. Something else that's really fun is to use a skyguard on the beach with nanite regen, drive in the water if you get swarmed and it's much harder for the swarm to hit you or the salty lightning pull to kill you.

[@Garlan4]

"It feel like it's better to attack than defend". That line sums up the entirety of Planetside 2 and the philosophy of these devs

[@arcanusluvalus1388]

planetside2 is definitely being worked on by a skeleton crew.

[@arionell]

Flash News

[@LothlorianOG]

I started playing back in 2012 or 2013 (I cant remember) and immediately was blown away. Today, its a shell of its former glory. In an effort to streamline it and make it more accessible, everything that made it unique and feel special seems to have been changed. One of my most memorable gaming moments (of any game at that) wasn't even in combat. I can vividly remember traveling to a battle, sitting in a sunderer, at dusk through a canyon. As our convoy made our way there, fighters were zooming overhead, we passed the heavy tank lines pounding enemies we couldnt even see. Getting closer there were light tanks with a few infantry around and our sunderer started taking small arms fire, all while we rushed ahead. I dont even remember the battle. But that moment has always stuck with me, and no game yet has captured the feeling I had during that transit. Moments like that were common back then. Nowadays groups would just redeploy and spawn on the other side of the map instantly. The slow movements of the armies across the map and the deployment of troops to the right front used to be a key aspect of the game, now it just feels like a generic shooter, just not with the flashy graphics. Oshur was a missed opportunity. Water should have been more dangerous, and players shouldnt have been able to swim, that was just silly in my opinion. Id also take the unpopular opinion that vehicles shouldnt have been able to float without special attachments either. A flotation device should have been something equipable at the expense of something else. I like the construction items, but I feel like rather than focusing on building these larger player bases the emphasis should have been on smaller, more quickly deployed fighting encampments. I could go on, but Ive written too much already. In short its just kind of sad the direction the game has gone.

[@sugarflame1833]

Yeah I love those moments in the game. I vividly remember playing like 4 years ago and being in a convoy of like 150 sunderers driving at night with headlights on. It was pretty awesome. I wish they would add more to encourage more of these movie like moments

[@LothlorianOG]

@@sugarflame1833 yea absolutely. The logistics part, while it might seem boring to some folks really made the game feel special compared to other shooters.

[@HaloPlaya443]

Lemme toss in some pennies to this. As a PS1 and PS2 vet, as well as a guy who's played pretty much every FPS out there, including classic boomer shooters, verticality is so damn important in a 3D space that you can even make a 3 lane map so much more enjoyable so long as you give them options in those three lanes, It's why games like Quake and Unreal, as well as Halo CE/2 had such good MPs and fairly solid map balance. They were built around funneling the players toward the objectives and the rest of the game. Not saying that open world is a terrible choice, especially for Planetside, but it's what keeps the game alive and fresh, so players can learn the maps. Planetside 1 had very odd level design, most of the fights ending up being a slog through basements or just a courtyard hold for a bit until one side got bored. The vehicle combat was simple, but quite necessary to break stalemates outside of bases too. And it wasn't too complicated or too overpowered toward infantry either, it took some degree of skill, and was a little scary getting caught out of place surrounded by a bunch of decimators back in the day. There was a lot of mixed fights, and no clear objective other than hold the continents, take the other continents. You could in theory start a fight on a continent you didn't even have connection to, just to piss off the other faction, you could choose to just focus on faction instead of both at the same time. It allowed a lot more scheming and planning to play. Not saying splitting the player base is a good idea, but funneling the factions onto every continent at one time just seems like a terrible idea too. My biggest problem rn for the game isn't just the server issues (which thankfully I noticed on Emerald only happens to me when I play Amerish) it's the damn alerts rn. There's zero incentive to do the alerts other than a few extra rewards, and maybe ISO (which is pitiful and hardly worth the time investment at all), nobody but the vet-fits on Vanu even care enough to play them, and it usually boils down to 1 minute skirmishes before you redeploy back into a vulture only to repeat for an hour. It's boring, unsatisfying, and benefits only the big outfits for padding out their armory resources. Honestly, the game's too fast as well. being an FPS I understand people like the speedy gameplay, but being an MMO however, it benefits more when there's time investment on fights. A lot of the PS1 vets only really would complain about weapon balancing and maybe map layout for some of the older continents (including the caves and BFR balancing), otherwise they usually loved the 3 to 4 hour fights gaining and losing ground inbetween bases, or even in a base's courtyard. I played near the end of of the game's life so I didn't get to see the super big fights back in the day, but I absolutely adored what I did play. Back on point, we need more incentive to break up a lot of the big fights a bit, give reasons to keep combat flow steady and smooth, instead of killing the fight before it starts and speeding your way through lanes. Look at what worked great for other games, and even in the history of PS1 and 2. Bringing back special alerts, like the air alerts, or the MAX alerts, or maybe some of the older map win states like needing to push for specific bases instead of pushing to warpgate constantly. Break up the monotony. Oshur could of worked great for smaller scale stuff, maybe take a note out of Old Oshur's book and limit vehicles and loadouts a bit. Allow for smaller fights and give more incentive to hold the lanes and not the bases themselves as well. I agree that the tridents are terrible rn. I wish there were more to them than just the circular hotel aesthetic. It'd be nice to have it be a bit more vertical, more entryways, give it more of the open interiors mixing with branching tight corridors for side paths, mix that Ikanam with the best of the Containment sites. They could maybe add more rock faces or foliage around the watery areas to make it better for vehicles to engage against, make the water more shallow allow for that popping in and out, but not fully rely on the underwater for most of the combat, make it more alternate paths undetected for say ATG, or more pathing to get to the above water objective. Just food for thought on that from my experience on the beach objectives around.

[@ZealousVidya]

The Halo 1 maps are so underrated its crazy

[@Bobyoudontneeemyname]

One thing people forget about og planetside was lower ttk, i think in mmofps thats more important than people realized

[@HaloPlaya443]

@@Bobyoudontneeemyname OG Planetside definitely was more consistent with its TTK with weapons, you weren't guaranteed death for just looking into a room. But death also had a much bigger impact overall than in PS2, since you couldn't just respawn anywhere on the map, it was tied to the last place you were at or within your SOI you were fighting in. Using vehicles were a must for getting around anywhere, unless you wanted to wait for the HART. It was much easier to sustain yourself back then, since the damage models were simple and arcadey, whereas now it's more in line with modern FPS philosophies (leaning more toward Battlefield's philosophy for guns at least.) Definitely was unique for the game, and it made learning the playstyle a bit harder since it had a lot more nuance to figuring out weapon spread and strafe times during combat

[@UEENavy]

Capture the flag should be an additional objective on top of the current capture the point system. I would suggest that flags successfully captured by attackers speed the capture timer by 15 to 30 seconds depending on the type of base while a defender capturing a flag rewinds 15 to 30 seconds. I think this would bring a fun dynamic where 96+ players aren't all on the point in a tiny room and would give an incentive to keep trying to get the flag because it adds an immediate reward. Of course the numbers I put out are examples, it would need to be tested but I genuinely think it would be a good direction for a capture the flag mechanic in the current game.

[@roxstar5088]

I often have the idea stuff gets implemented like halfway through, with the best intentions to add to it later, but then it is completely forgotten for the next thing. The building system - Fun as a concept, the foundation is there, but other then the foundation there is nothing. Boats - They should have made several types boats, and focus completely on naval battles, maybe having infantry fight on the larger ships. And there are many other ideas that are great on paper but half implemented making them lame. Why stop with just 1 poorly implemented game mode to take over bases. Make a bomb game mode, hell make a escort type of game to take over a base. And design bases around this. Don't turn the capture points in flag points and be done with it. Oh and I think they did the infiltrator dirty. They are suppose to be the sneaky patient class, now 90% of them just have a smg and run. The engineer has the anti-material rifles that outshines our snipers. Even the medic has a scout rifle sniper now. Our whole identity is simply gone and we get outranked by almost every class.

[@Hotrancidgrease]

Been playing for years now, cant fault what you have to say. I love this game but it sure is going in the wrong direction.

[@Chris_Tootoo]

We’ve been having a community ran version of outfit wars on the console version inside the Genudine server called Total War on Auraxis since December, we’ve been seeing a slight bump up in population. The issue is though that we have been seeing a population bump on the event night the population is still very low for the rest of the month during the time in between the events. We’ve been lucky to have a population spike of over 700 people during the first event, sadly the turnout of the second event wasn’t as large, but here’s hoping the turnout for the third Total War event will be larger.

[@owmyballs2087]

uh im pretty sure the reason ppl aren't playing is because servers like emerald are 500 ping constantly and basically in a pseduo-crash state in other words literally cannot play the game but maybe that is just me? :-)

[@ZealousVidya]

Yeah that's also going to be a small(only recent so it doesn't explain the overall trend) contributing factor. With that being said, I've played Emerald primetime over the last week and personally have not been at more than 100ms(EU) at any time.

[@TwoHams]

This. The only time I'm ready to quit and play something else is when the server takes a shit, which is pretty regularly. When someone fires an orbital and you can't fight there anymore because you have no idea when it will fire

[@Garlan4]

@@ZealousVidya dont worry. Even at 100 and some ms the game become unplayable. If i had a nickle for every time i lost a fight against someone due to 120 ms quick-lag, i would be richer than DBG ( not hard, but still...)

[@fabiovenegas9331]

The thing also sucks on Genudine currently, you aren't able to see the map with the regions colored to the faction it belong and choose the spawnpoint you want to choose. Ping and server latency tend to be catastrofic as well.

[@Markfr0mCanada]

10:50 Which construction players have you been talking to? My whole crew know that this is a massive nerf and a rework by someone who doesn't know what he's doing or frankly even like it. Wrel has been trying to soft delete construction from the game since he took over, and this "rework" is probably going to be a sub cancellation from every builder I've spoken to. And yes, builders are generally subs because of both the paywall to get in, and the time investment per play session to make construction work.

[@TheHuffur]

I can throw in my +1 on that pile of construction players, I cant see it as both a big nerf on the viability/versatility of construction as well as making it a massive PITA that no one will want to waste their time on. Slot in time limited modules into buildings? Thats some strong stuff they are smoking if they think thats something anyone will bother to do and what good will it be if the base is without automated repairs etc etc etc when the base gets attacked? The whole point of building a base is that you do the work first and then its there, if I have to immediately go to my base when it gets attacked and then spend minutes running all over it(since it seems they want to make bases cover a larger area with 'big' buildings) to slot in modules into the buildings just to get the basic defenses up and running.... I mean.. isnt it obvious that the base will already be in enemy hands at that point? Why did I build that base if one or two people can just drop in with a Valkyrie or whatever and bomb the shit out of it? or even capture it.

[@masterbob3227]

He literally designed a continent around construction and added multiple construction bases. Wrel wanted to force people to play this "special" part of the game.

[@TheHuffur]

@@masterbob3227 Which continent? Oshur is one of the worst continents for construction. Its good for the arty/OS spam farmers though but for someone actually building a base its garbage. Super limited area to build on and with almost the entire enemy faction coming down the same lane the bases that gets built are constantly demolished by swarms of vehicles pushing from one base to another, because there is no land to drive on either forcing everyone into one small spot of land. When a single Lightning can kill your turrets and walls, the base obviously wont hold up against a 96+ zerg pushing through with a sea of Sunderers as support.

[@masterbob3227]

@@TheHuffur He designed it around construction, but as you said failed miserably as always. Tbf construction in its current state has no place in this game.

[@TheHuffur]

@@masterbob3227 I dont think its fair to say construction has no place in the game, it does what it does even if its to barely acceptable levels. Its not like any vehicles have a place in the game either if we want to go that route... I mean a PMB can do things nothing else in the game can, like spamming out vehicles, artillery and even act as a roadblock if the terrain can support a good defensive base. Thats why I am not liking the proposed changes to construction, I fear we are actually going to lose the little that construction actually has and it will truly not have a place in the game anymore when you cant even do the bare minimum that we can now.

[@calebcooksey4390]

Sounds like a typical, "Rookie gets a chance and does good work, but becomes out of touch and ego-driven" story. The exact same happens with businesses all the time. Sad to say, but the mass lay offs in the tech & gaming industries are probably looking pretty good to Daybreak atm.

[@NireBryce]

I think you're focusing on the wrong end of things -- the question isn't why we're hemorrhaging older players (because there's so few of us already), it's why new players just aren't sticking around to offset them. The devs have made some questionable choices, sure (Though I think this is overplayed as to why people are leaving compared to the 4 months of crippling lag on Emerald Amerish), but the problem is we're also just flat out not retaining new players, between the new player experience not really reflecting how to read a map to avoid being farmed, outfits having few tools to onboard people / give resources without making them download/join with external tools like teamspeak, discord, etc, and various other friction points for new players. but also? our community is absolutely garbage to new or struggling players, and that's not a dev problem outside of refusing to moderate anything but the worst of that. and some of that is a lack of tools for being able to be effective with some new players who joined you, which *is* on the devs, but a lot is... people not realizing that on some level, they have to bother to care about people, because they're your opponents and the game population. (The devs do listen, but it's often to outfit leaders who show a lot of diplomacy within the game. Perhaps for obvious reasons.)

[@see_horse]

I invited 3 new players in, friends from RL. Al three left within a week, because they got the absolute balls torn off them by sweaty vets abusing the hell out of them. I personally witnessed one of them get abused for 'asking questions before having a positive KDR'. We can't expect folks to wanna be in a community that gate keeps.

[@lrock48]

If I remember correctly, in the original planetside, there are couple bases on the continents that are open to capture at all times. Always enjoyed going after those because it means you'll be drawing enemies from the frontline where there's a stalemate and potentially giving your faction an edge, and the entire server is not funnelled into a few battles on the continent. The classless inventory system was also really fun, you're not confined to predetermined roles.

[@thoalis4325]

Tarkov went through a very similar phase recently. The game had so many problems that the players complained about for over a year. One community member made a video similar to this one where he calmly gave constructive feedback about the game with solutions instead of complaining. He encouraged everyone else to make videos in his long, detailed, and respectful format and it worked. Three or four big creators made 15-30 minute videos and tweeted them all to the devs and they actually listened. Hopefully it works here too.

[@swedichboy1000]

Of course its only "big creators"

[@thoalis4325]

@Scott's Precious Little Account lmao

[@Arnveld]

@Scott's Precious Little Account What's wrong with Russian game dev's?

[@Alpha-cp4bm]

Oshur is 100% the reason. The vets hate playing Oshur and have just left, especially when it's the only one during off hours. Bad base design, lack of bases, and catering an entire continent to a fraction of the playerbase which actually use construction. But no, Wrel won't look at Oshur because the only people who complain are people in an echochamber, because when he looks at the statistics of Oshur and loss of players, the people must love oshur

[@hobog]

And construction isn't fun on oshur

[@dalentces2492]

Vets didn't leave because of Oshur... If anything, they left because of the general direction of the game. Oshur is just one component of that. There are many other shooters on the market where developers have resources to release a steady stream of new content. Meanwhile Planetside is plagued by a myriad of old issues, including technical ones that severely impact performance and stability, that won't be getting fixed, yet the new content we're getting isn't even something community requested.

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Everyone logs off when its Oshur

[@nani4416]

i think the big problem in ps2 is that infrantry simply gets mowned down by tanks and air to ground. I think the fighting areas should be bigger and at the same time only have space for few tanks to be in the fight at the same time. For example big field with lots of trees and few buildings, and the ground should have large height differences so you can take cower more easily.

[@plussum3255]

That sounds a bit like hossin

[@kleopatra540]

this is something I've never really understood, vehicles are not hard to avoid if you're not a complete beginner, and getting cheesed 1/15 deaths or so is really something I can live with

[@arionell]

You're just describing Hossin.

[@siramira4183]

Well i play for 4 weeks now and im already on the brick of leaving it again cause its shit and i regret that i spend well over 70-100 euro in this game :3

[@iamxevicho5170]

the one thing keeping me from completely commiting to planet side 2 as a new player is that I don't know when the game will die I mean 10 years old not even average of 2k player... Is it worth it getting into it now?

[@Markfr0mCanada]

Other than Esamir I'm not quite sure what you mean by bio labs getting removed. Indar, Amerish and Hossin all still have them.

[@ZealousVidya]

Functionally removed; they took out the spawn point so nobody fights on them for more than like 2 or 3mins at a time.

[@Markfr0mCanada]

@@ZealousVidya Ok, I get you. The hard spawns weren't good either though, as logistics is meant to be an element of this game. Hard spawns for attackers ruin that. The satellite bases weren't originally independent and didn't have sunderer exclusion zones, so it was possible to park a sundy by the teleporter. That's some really old school stuff, but probably worth revisiting.

[@qtheguru3044]

Somebody told me that oshur was intended to be construction play oriented, so what us console players don’t understand is the fact the we DO NOT have construction so oshur is not fun 82% of the time with the back to back vehicle capture bases being THE WORST possible idea added to the game so far (infantry & vehicle mains agree) and most people just log off or play something else until the con. locks.

[@flyer3154]

Can't seem to find the game on ps store anymore

[@samuelschneider9067]

I used to play this game 5 or so years ago. 800 hrs +. I figured to see what all changed. My issues was the blatant hackers. Instance: Flying liberator and watching another liberator glitch through the sky. We got oneshot a couple times until I just logged off. No kill feed. There was another time where I was sniper hunting with stalker cloak. I got rage PM's and he turned them on. I started spontaneously combusting in spawn rooms. Got dropped from the sky a once. Oshur = log off. Not much to do there and normal players are required to spawn in the "custom bases". None of the buildings are accessible so you're stuck running across an open field. I ended up uninstalling and finding a "fun" game to play.

[@ChargedPulsar]

At first, weapons really felt powerful, tanks were like tanks, they were feared from, you would fear planes etc. Everything was able to surve their purpose. After all kinds of nerfs, changes. You don't give a shit when you see a MAX suit anymore. Flying Liberator is waste of time. Tanks are a joke, there are no big tank fights, lasting hours. No more big huge fights, lasting 12 hours. Orbital cannon is stupidly interrupting all the fun and progress. Stealth isn't a nimble feature, it's like a common soldier ability now, there are ninjas running around 24/7 everywhere. And suprisingly, there is no way to reveal/counter them. It makes you wonder, if you can wield the same weapon and have the stealth ability, why are you playing soldier, engineer instead? With no stealth ability. Jumping into a vehicle is no longer an exciting adventure, it's just something that gives you minutes of visuals. Bases are literally hard protected to disable vehicles from having any real effect or pressure. It's like two different games, within the wall of a base, or outside the wall. You want to play vehicles? It's no longer Planetside, just go outside and play with your stupid vehicle. And inside the wall? It's just counter strike, with the only ability mattering the spawn mechanics. Whoever spawns more and yolos, progresses. There are worthy tactical weapons, no value in intel, no value in vehicles and strategically positioning them. It's still fun, if you want to play free counter strike alternative. If you want to play a stupid tank game replica. If you want to play a dumb flying simulator. If you want to play worst replica of simcity in the form of base buildling. When planetside 2 was introduced the first time, it had a vision. And it was combining everything together, violently. Giving us extitement for hours and hours, more than 12 hours every weekend, until you were dead tired.

[@JJANON167]

The devs had some pretty bizarre priorities from the start. Since then they've added features that make no sense with PS2's downward trajectory. Tone-deafness is killing the game.

[@battleraventhegreat9819]

Here is food for thought you did not address. Since the last update, no thanks to the Vanu victim mentality, NC and TR are disappearing from many servers. When Vanu cries then TR and NC weapons get nerfed. Look at the history of Vanu continental victories. It certainly surpasses TR and NC. Wrel don't care about NC and TR, he only cares about Vanu.When Wrel ever comes on game, he plays only Vanu. Most of the physics I see are pretty mucked up. Bloody lightning flips over by a small rock, a Phoenix missile or a rocket shot by light assault does very little damage to an enemy player, a Vanu player able to use less then a full clip to kill an NC max when an NC player only can kill a max with 2 or more clips. How is that realistic? How is it realistic when a King Cobra takes 2 shots, from a Mag rider? TR and NC drive only paper tanks while Vanu has state of the art weapons. Many NC players are quitting Emerald due to Outfits like R18 and VSTD exploiting the new weakness in the system. We can thank Wrel for his prejudice.

[@Jack1134]

It needs to be advised around the social networks. They could pay for ads now and again, run promotions and give free items away. Reward players for updates and down time.

[@see_horse]

they won't dude, doubt they've got any money. When a dev studio hires a KZbinr instead of someone with experience and know-how to lead them, you know they're circling the drain slowly.

[@ThatSpecificIndividual]

Yeah, the advertising for this game is non existent. At least sponsor a big youtuber so they make an entertaining video about it.

[@arionell]

​@@see_horse It is not unheard of that such people gets taken for the jobs. However, Wrel was an actual developer. He had the experience. Also, he wasn't taken into lead dev position immediately, he was working for them as a dev. He climbed the ranks to dev lead. Also, according to a few people who left the company the game would be literally dead and shut down already if it wasn't for him. So yea. You should read some stuff before spouting random things.

[@DanceSC2]

I think, there needs to be a forum post or something where people can all work together on ideal patches that they believe will make the game better for everyone. Vote on them, and then suggest them to the devs. I think this would be a much more productive way of influencing the game. I have a lot of gripes, the esf dieing too easily from lock on rocks and 1 shot from tanks / non lock rocket launchers drives me nuts. The shitty state the magrider is in compared to the other mbts. The population doesn't bother me, oshur doesn't bother me, construction doesn't bother me, just wish the faciton balance was better

[@0xxhell_destrierxx9]

Excuse me ? Magrider shitty state ? What about vanguard it's the only mbt that gets one shot by C4, and prowler and magrider always end up winning in 1v1 against a vanguard

[@DanceSC2]

@@0xxhell_destrierxx9 magrider don't need to be c4'd, they can get 1 shot by trying to fit in a gap that is a few pixels too tight ; )

[@MinkieWinkle]

can confirm, game now feels dead, i stepped away for a year ago due to work. Came back last week, the game pop is dead, i missed a lot of the changes over the last year. so i did not see the players reactions. but looking at the pop, i can see the results. people left. a lot of people

[@ZealousVidya]

it's such a shame but yeah it's pretty dead rn

[@Vaniity_Velvet]

Ever since Wrel joined it's basically being Wrel-Side 2. Man's Ego is so insane I'm shocked he aint renamed the Railgun to the Wrelgun.

[@alexey5070]

I think orbitals are fine. The huge battlefields do need some sort of huge area of effect weapons. That's fiiiine. Bastions, though... I liked the idea, even though I've never flown in one. Unfortunately, it was implemented badly. Indeed, it has become a farming utility, because there was nothing else to do with it. If there was some sort of sky capture point which would impact the possession of the territory of a given continent, that would've been fine. Therefore, hopefully, bastion would have another purpose, a goal to fly to, to capture for a given (long) period of time, and with a respectful reward. Constructions are fine, even though the locations for the constructions seem to be unfruitful. One can fire an orbital on the enemy base, but not the flair ? Why ? But creating a continent expecting to be used for the construction ? Meh... I imagine it this way : a construction site should be a turntable in a battle. It should be able to create its own capture point, that would link itself to other points nearby, either automatically, or manually. This link, for instance, could choke the enemy offensive, but cutting their previous point. So, the offensive would need to divert its attention to the said base, or to do another maneuver, or whatever. This is all over simplistic, indeed, since some tweaks are to be made, but in my opinion, that would've increased the potential of the construction of a base, and would've added some variety to the battlefield.

[@Kugorbok]

I think the biggest issues that need to be addressed with the game in its current state is the lag, the cheaters, and the NPE (New Player Experience). You will never attract new players to this game if they come into the game and can barely do anything due to extremely laggy situations, cheaters smashing them down constantly (even a small amount really affect the feel of the game), or in general not being able to be consistent with new players. Any game that doesn't attract new players will eventually die, and if they don't set their sights on getting new players, attrition will eventually claim this title.

[@HansensUniverseT-A]

I've had a really difficult time booting the game up for a while now spite my resilience, i may find my self playing for a few hours a month if even that, just grown tired of the whole thing, slowly drifted into doing other things, better accept the game's fate rather than lingering around full of hope and wishful thinking.

[@pappapaps]

Orbital strikes are nothing but annoying and they scare new players away. Many vets don't remember how hard it was in the beginning just to be at the right place, at the right time, facing the right direction, and now when new players finally get all those right, they're blasted off a cliff by a force they have no counter to. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Another thing entirely, just needed to vent this: The way you have to "claim" DB cash every month is the reason PS2 does not have me as paying member anymore. I remember stopping playing, but keeping the subscription because at least I'd come back to a fun little shopping spree. But no of course not, I paid for months on end for zilch because I never read the fine print. I can see from threads online that many people find this absurd. The reply when addressing them about this? "Don't worry, once claimed, DB cash will never expire" Like are you for real? I bloody hope not! Why would the make-believe currency I bought with actual currency spoil with time? Should we be thankful that you let us keep our expensive arbitrary numbers on your server? It's like talking to a dystopian AI from the future that replies in non-sequiturs. So they are losing out on real cash because they are cheap with fantasy dough. I can't support that _and_ an illusion of self-respect at the same time.

[@zakadams762]

Its difficult to even parse the problems the game is facing since its layers in multiple directions. The things I think should be priorities, Make Money with a public goal in mind, clean the game up removing things that detract (CTF or Bastion Cannons), and Performance. There is a very good shell to work on, but its getting dicey

[@theDemolisher13]

10:20 put it simple construction need a complete rework with someone who has actual vision of what they want it to be. Anything less and it will fail.

[@see_horse]

Thats the point I think.

[@raefevakhar]

Saturday at 10pm there were 3 continents open, no alerts, and hackers farming spawn rooms, not fun

[@wetblanket3714]

For me, is the game crashing on PS4

[@Jarred-J254]

As of now Wrel has FINALLY stepped down from the dev team. The Conduit CTF system has been the worst change lately. But some of the other changes that have impacted the gameplay is like some entire bases being deleted from the maps and being made just a capture point out in the open to be a "construction base" for the on-going controversial construction system which I disagree with, I dont mind construction bases but they shouldn't remove entire bases from the map. The whole Shattered Warpgate update on Esamir which in the end made Esamir even worse while bringing some benefits. Oshur with how it was set up with its water mechanics and underwater fighting made it flop before it even went live. The way Wrel's team has handled the balancing of Empire's arsenals has defeated the point of what this game is suppose to be about, and the bias against TR with the amount of nerfs our arsenal has received in just the last 2 or 3 years is outrageous (Read the game updates and patch notes) and not ever bothering to really nerf as much on NC or VS, this overall is ruining the experience for newer players trying to get into this game. MAX revive removal why some call it a good thing are IMO full of crap and are simply the ones on the receiving end of MAXes rather than playing them, the MAX suit was already in a bad position with Anti Material Rifles and C4 Light assaults, now with them being unable to be revived, is just gonna slowly kill MAX gameplay more. There needs to be some changes undone in this game and some different changes made to put the soul back into it, there is tons of stripped/unused content that could be more looked at rather than trying to add something else new.

[@derth9230]

At this point VS is objectively better for people who want to have "fun"

[@jambothejoyful2966]

I think something worth pointing out is that some infantry players believe that infantry must be able to counter everything on its own without specialization, things like OS, citadel shield, MBTs and A2G intentionally have a huge advantage over infantry because a small diverse infantry squad shouldn’t stand a chance against these things There are ways to counter all of these things without infantry, but some players want to be able to counter anything given a specific infantry loadout

[@see_horse]

The flip side of that though, is that vehicles need to be somewhat realistic in taking damage etc. Like multiple rockets to nail a fuggin harasser? It's a glorified dune buggy. Anyone who's fired AT IRL would tell you what the fuck would happen to these vehicles if hit... 3 shots to take down air etc. I've served in two wars IRL. I totally get infantry shouldn't be able to handle EVERYTHING, but likewise - it shouldn't take a concerted effort by multiple team mates, to kill -every- vehicle. LIGHT vehicles SHOULD fear infantry, as infantry should fear vehicles. (And yes, before anyone trots it out, I'm aware that RL and video games are widely different...) We like to talk about "balance" but it's just a joke while things like harassers can function better as a light tank, than a light tank as one example, IMHO.

[@jambothejoyful2966]

@@see_horse I know I wish vehicle survivability took a more realistic stance

[@jambothejoyful2966]

@@see_horse like, I think modular damage would be a good idea

[@robertk3016]

What are the major problems? To start, the queue times even for members are too long. People will then decide to play something else. When the thought comes to mind to jump on PS2, some will remember the queue wait times, and find something else to do. A tacky addition I noticed on the players map menu are the messages in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Various little jokes about why someone should become a member. Its unprofessional to say the least. Moving onto game play. Once you finally get to spawn on a continent, there's a chance now that you will run into a hacker. The types of hackers that get on turrets out of sight, and then shoot directly through walls using AI mana turrets, and AV mana turrets. Most hackers I've seen are on VS. Now onto the fights themselves. Once you finally see a good sized fight with more than 48+ players on each side, more than likely multiple "pocket" orbital strikes will be used, effectively ruining good fights. The pocket orbital shouldn't exist in the game. An orbital strike should be limited to player made bases only. This requires strategy instead of having a larger zergfit that can produce them quickly. Lag issues. Never have I experienced the lag that I commonly see in game these days. The top continent that lags the most is Amerish. The lag issue is so bad, that when a player decides to use an OS, it will take 10 seconds (or longer in most cases), to finally go off. If you are in vehicles or interacting with anything on the map, there is a delay with these basic interactions. The parent company that owns Daybreak, is a company called Enad Global 7. In 2020, Enad Global 7 purchased Daybreak for $300 million USD. If a company is willing to invest $300 million in a company, you would think they would have the resources to fix basic technical issues on their servers. In closing, I've played PS2 for along time. The game despite its shortcomings has massive potential. Which some have already outlined in the comments. Unfortunately, I don't see the development team changing their ways anytime soon.

[@jaghatai_bulut]

What attracts players is huge battlefields. Ps2 can provide something no other games can provide and it is to become a part of huge military campaigns as a single individual. But its very annoying to travel long distances and it can get very annoying when you are significantly outnumbered. Too much freedom can make maps unentertaining. What the developers should do is to motivate people into joining platoons without forcing them. They should reward players who follow squad leaders instructions. Maybe add some kind of a wait list for joining platoons and discourage leaving them too early. Again, without forcing them. That would serve the real function of this game, which is the feeling of doing your part in a huge wardare situation. They should also find a way to make spawning and traveling more ergonomic. Its very annoying to spawn too far away from action and having to travel all the way. A good idea could be making capture faster with manpower. To balance this they may add strategic advantages for the losing side somehow. Maybe make defensive positions in maps more advantageous. That way spam spawning can be dealt with. I dunno, this game is unique, i want it to be succesfull.😊

[@jaghatai_bulut]

Another good idea could be spawning into moving vehicles with time intervals for each player. Maybe not make them able to leave it for 30 seconds or smth. That would help a lot in regards to getting easier into action in maps which are mostly empty. Also they really gotta make spawning anywhere in map viable. Not just regional.

[@greatbrandini3967]

The 2 big changes that killed my enjoyment were the redesign of the Phaseshift (my fastest Auraxium on any gun), and the rebalance of air combat. I was in an aerial platoon on PS 4and loved how much skill the ESFs required to be good at. Once they nerfed stealth so that coyotes were effective against it, flying ESFs suddenly became a game of which side had more lock on spam. As a pilot who loved dogfighting using the Hornets, my playstyle was made largely ineffective and I never was able to enjoy the coyote meta

[@B1itzkrieg97]

The game is 10 years old and it’s still holding on by threads, which is sad but it’s a great game that needs more spot light

[@FamiAoi]

The fact that I can still fire this game up, right now, and find that 1 continent on Emerald is at max-population AND a second or THIRD continent is open, AND that I can join a MASSIVE FIGHT on at least 4+ bases PER maxed continent, or 1-2 on the low pop continent, is phenomenal. I adore this game. I still see the same people playing it. I LOVE OSHUR SO MUCH!!! I LOVE IT SO MUCH! OSHUR has the BEST fights! You are NOT opening your eyes. I see boats all over. I fight in the underwater bases all the time! Your EU server is so dull!

[@ShapdCrusadr]

It's not helping the fact people are using high screen resolution monitors these days. Ever tried playing Planetside 2 and use your 4K monitor at it's native screen resolution it's not pretty. You cant see crap cause things are way too small.

[@stuarthamilton5112]

Capture the flag bases could have been really cool, but the execution was done so poorly. I thought the way it would work was the flag would need to be carried to an adjacent friendly base on the lattice. But, Wrel copped out. Wrel just isn’t a combined arms gamer. He doesn’t respect combined arms, doesn’t understand it, it’s sad really.

[@poopikins]

I remember playing this on PS4, good times. I heard it was abandoned on console so I wanted to try it on PC years later, but no controller support, hackers, general player dislike. I guess I'll wait for Planetside 3

[@LanzerYT]

Boat ops: the only success we've (our outfit) has had is using the boats as launchpads as airborne assault onto the point.

[@jambothejoyful2966]

WOAH, are you serious about orbital strikes being annoying??? OSes are fun as fuck it’s hilarious to be playing with a group of people and all of a sudden a giant beam appears, sending you all flying seconds later

[@jambothejoyful2966]

The chaos is part of the spirit of the game, asymmetric game designs like the bastion aren’t meant to be balanced against infantry, they are meant to be effective

[@axlandgamer3332]

I must add something, there are wonderful big orgs where find kind people, but there are also a myriad of small orgs which need some love. Keep that in mind to retain players.

[@astealoth]

PS2 only ever had one problem. TTK has always been too low and headshot multiplier too high. They narrowed the niche too much for it to ever be able to get off the ground as a successful product. We're at like 1/4th the TTKs of a game like Counter-Strike or Call of Duty, and those are games with small numbers of people on precision tuned maps. Having these nonstop instant deaths puts too many potential customer's quit moment in the first minutes. Your experience as a new player is spawn, see a death screen, hear the TINK that killed you a few milliseconds after the death screen came up, repeat. It's not a good MMOFPS. I think Planetside 1 would have outperformed Planetside 2 if they had launched it on Steam, just because Planetside 1 combat plays much better for the people who don't have 10,000 hours in aim training software with $200 peripherals or cheats. Planetside 2's balance gives cheaters and unusually high skill players absolute dominance over the game. PS2 was always destined to flounder, and I spammed this on PS2 reddit from closed beta for years. No one listened, and it played out just like I thought it would.

[@benburns9505]

They should add some more support aspects. Mining cortium to power or improve forward bases sounds like a nice concept. Don't know why they got rid of it. Logistics support and supplies lines could add alot more gameplay options to the game to draw more player being able to earn xp facilitating combat and supplying your troops can be fun for some people. Not everyone wants the cod. Large battles are the whole point for me too. I don't like it when they breaker the fights up into 10 5v5 battles experience. Having to bring up ammo from the warpgate in ammo sunderers or ammo galaxys to replenish the ammo dumps at bases could be a thing too. Teamwork should be greatly rewarded

[@zialfps7038]

The main underlying reason pop is declining is because everything devolves to a stalemate in the middle of the map. Worst are Oshur and Hossin. Nobody likes being at Nason's Defiance or Wellerman's Watch for 10+ hours in a vehicle shitterfest with A2G and tanks everywhere. The capture the flag is pretty shit too, and the containment sites are where fights go to die. Not to mention, all the other bases in the game are a terrain bowl so tanks and bolters on hills can make you avoid taking fights cause you know you'll get hawked. This leads to people just holding buildings or running around as infils and it doesn't give much to people who wanna enjoy real infantry gameplay and just aim-duel people. The zergling mentality hasn't been lessened and most of the tards that hailed zergling gamplay (sitting outside a spawn room in overpop) dont play the game anymore. Go figure that kind of gameplay got boring. Maybe if they pull their head out of their ass and focus on the shooter aspect, the game will claw back some players.

[@sentinal94gg]

ive been playing on cobalt since day 1 im a jester.. you wanna fix the game, go back to the old map styles, let people move round the map via the hex system again, no more zerg horde opens the game back up to more players and wont have the ridiculous stalemates on the same few bases every night, use the lattice lanes as pipes to move resources like nanites etc go back to the year one style of bases offering faction bonus not just outfit now look at that.. the game is open and can have more gameplay options and random fights from small squads developing into the massive fights

[@ChefBoston]

Planetside 2 is a game you want to enjoy but it’s hard to enjoy it. From the micro transactions in the game to the veteran players who grind their life away since day one. This game is mostly for hardcore players who like chaotic battles and tryhards. For example when you first play the game there’s a small little tutorial and then after that your on your own. Fighting massive battles and getting killed way to much. In this game you die a lot to everything, veterans, cloakers, your own teammates, tanks, aircrafts. The game has friendly fire so it makes it a little harder trying to kill the enemy. The micro transactions. The veterans who play this game will tell you “it’s not pay to win” or “this is a joke right?” When you ask if it’s PTW. The reason why the veterans say that is because they already got everything from grinding since launch. Speaking of grinding it takes super long to grind and it’s a hassle to do and to speed up the grind you could either buy micro transactions or buy the membership. The membership The membership in my opinion is a waste of money! You pay is 9.99-14.99 for a monthly subscription with 2X the XP and 500 micro transactions which is 5$! And a lot of the stuff that you want to get is 699 or higher!! So it’s a scam in my option. Construction Construction is an amazing idea but done wrong, you have to buy EVERY SINGLE PEICE!!!! From a simple wall to a orbital strike uplink!! If you actually want to buy the whole set with micro transactions it’s over 100$!!

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Its not pay to win. The default guns are all really good. Nobody spends money on guns.

[@ChefBoston]

@@JohnFromAccounting yea the default guns are pretty good but there are some that are better than those and all the guns can be bought with certs ( except for the micro transactions only guns ). Also there’s codes to get free guns but a lot of people didn’t know that, not even me until someone told be. But there are some people who actually buy guns.

[@TheScure]

I blame following the ideas of reddit users, turning to infantryside, making the graphics worse, losing the identity of the original game. I want Planetside 2 classic. Give me the 2013 Q1 version.

[@shinlucario]

Just quit the game myself, don't think I'll be returning to the game any time soon

[@syrphilipgulmatico5352]

I like ps2 but as what I observed that can turn people off is. Long grind, spawn camping( bases should atleast have more spawn points and multiple exit points)., Recently dealt with hackers that shoot through walls and shoot so fast. Construction needs a lot of investment which sucks.

[@juusojuuso9214]

500 hours in. The game is no longer fun for me, haven't booted the game in two weeks. I'd enjoy some open field combined ops, it felt great in 2016 or so to have massive land battles. Vehicles are like paper now against am rifles and rocklets. I'm not smart enough to articulate better exactly why it's so dreadful now but I'm flabbergasted they thought that the game was missing stuff like CTF and Outfit wars. Never was interested in construction because I have no certs for that, feeling completely excluded. Coming back to check the bigger updates but now looking at other games.

[@michaelnuttall5896]

Good luck out there, other games in the genre or close enough to it are cash grabs. Unimaginative and boring.

[@Einxeld]

To be fair in the dev letter Wrel said he will drastically lower cert requirements for construction

[@dalentces2492]

Which vehicles? Be specific. Harassers, yeah. These are used mostly for farming infantry, and excel at hit and run in difficult terrain that no other vehicle bar Magrider can traverse, so it makes sense to give them some weaknesses to infantry. But the rest? Seriously? They don't have much to worry about when it comes to AMRs of all things... Do you know how many shots it takes to take down MBT with one? Try it in VR training 😃

[@juusojuuso9214]

@@dalentces2492 Lightnings specifically. You destroy enemy tank, driver hops out and spams you from behind cover with amr while you're picking another target. You're just denied.

[@AbdAllah_54564]

As a new player, I have no idea what's going on, the grind to get a slightly powerful gun is too much of a headache, plus lot of empty fights that I have to use the "Join a Combat" option to warp to a place of action. Yeah, I just wish the devs make Planetside 3 correcting all their mistakes and start anew.

[@thatguy4974]

I think devs should organize an event for popular streamers and have their community join with everything unlocked but only a limited time and participating grants bonus xp and certs but i doubt they can make xqc shroud or pokimane play

[@gentlerain3245]

12:05 That's incorrect. I have seen the MOST cordial and respectful reddit posts giving ample feedback on updates and they still fall upon deaf ears, the reason the devs don't listen is NOT because people bark slurs at them while telling them the RIGHT thing to do, it is because they surround themselves in a yes-man bubble and become completely unapproachable by anyone who thinks otherwise. They will only listen to what they want to hear and those are the only people allowed to even speak to them, period.

[@STARKILLER0925]

This is also test season for schools I went from 4 hours a day to 1-2 yeah the devs might have a little bit to do with it but it’s just not really a big gaming time of the year Also Covid is now over so people are going outside again I personally am just now getting super back Into the game and everything seems fun

[@GrindRoyale]

Orbital Strikes. Getting spawncamped. Massive Overpops. All Vehicles except transport / lightnings. War assets. Came back after a bigger hiatus. Immediately leaving again.

[@Mikisoq39]

COMBINED ARMS: puts walls on every point of interest so vehicles cant do nothing.

[@RaptorJesus.]

i don't often agree with your opinion, but you're spot on on this. the game direction is terrible, the only decent patch in recvent memory was arsenal update. wrel is trying to hard to mix shit up, and it just doesn't need to be mixed up. the spawn system is junk, and its lagged the crap out of the servers, the reduced player limit is BS, CTF is AWFUL, once busy bases are now empty, because these abominations are impossible to cap without a zerg, Oshur straight-up shouldn't exist, it servers no purpose beyond killing the player limit whenever it is active (which is for 10+ hours because noone wants to play that crap). the esamir "rework" is simply insulting, dozens of great bases deleted, the remaining ones ruined by wreldesigns, a large portion of the map wasted, god damn containment sites halting progress when pushing down a lane without a zerg, and now riddled with CTF crap too, just look at the mid-left of the map, a line of CTF bases and a construction site, there is no lane to push without a zerg. this just illuminates more than ever why "the weapon review guy from youtube" is unfit to be lead developer of a multi million dollar franchise...

[@JohnFromAccounting]

Arsenal update also came with 6 months of literally unplayable latency issues.

[@axlandgamer3332]

Veteran player here. Sadly I agree, It's nice to see Wrel trying to refresh the game, but as most FPS players seems he has no grasp at strategic level, nor the rest of developers. PS2 despite being an FPS is different in the scope, involving large number of players and vehicles. One example of this is the grid system. This was introduced early game because players complained about the fights in rear lines, each contest was a chaos, something that I miss. Oshur gets the rigidity of the grid system and worsens it by being a symmetric map. The reward system capping bases is clearly focused to benefit big orgs, but also the grid system creates choke points that every commander know, the chokest of all choke points are containment sites and an able commander know that they need to be zerged at the start of every contest... Well all these measures prevents any originality and you know in advance where to fight. Worst still, the grid prevents combats in most of the map but not the free movement of players, and big orgs, at will. The result is a boring and previsible zerg against zerg in these critical bases and nothing else. They tried to overcome a problem generated by themselves by modifying or even suppressing a base, like Ti Alloys. With construction they had an opportunity to shake things, but are frankly lacking and at best they serve as choke point to delay a zerg. I suggested several times to let these player bases act as a node in the grid, that way you can overcome in some extent the linearity of the system. But also can alleviate the problem of large numbers of players stuck in a corridor because most bases are not conceived to be the scenario of big fights. In short, they have tried to turn PS2 into a standard shooter by eliminating possibilities.

[@mikerotchburns1622]

founder here, i quit due to the bastion and esf's. that has changed?

[@ZealousVidya]

bastion nerfed and irrelevant now a2g esf are still aids but lockons buffed so less annoying, kinda

[@bluenightfury4365]

I started to leave the game once Rocket launchers and vehicle damage values were tweaked, then the dwindling playerbase made it harder and harder to find battles so I left, games already dead. Quite depressing I knew Wrel would ruin the game, shouldve just kept the original game designer.

[@savageshark379]

I just recently got back into Planetside 2 after a very lone 5 year hiatus and was surprised to see the CTF style gameplay. After a week, I uninstalled the game. The new CTF, reminded me of the LATTICE system they did back in Planetside (1). Though it was taking the base SCU from the enemy base to a friendly one within the timeframe. The battle islands are...well bad. The battleships in the air are sadly underwhelming too. The biggest problem w/ PS2 I see, it focuses so much on being a high tech/detailed game, it looks more like if CoD & BF had a baby and the baby crew up watching Star Trek. I hate having to upgrade stats for points. Back in PS1, you spent cert points on the setup you wanted. Like Using a Rocket, equip Heavy or Medium armor, be a cloaker, be a medic, me an engineer, drive a tank, be a cloaker who heals, be a sniper who repairs a tank, etc. Having the whole class system is just restricting and limiting.

[@darktrooper4]

Now that wrel is gone we as a community need to cyber bully the devs into marketing this game and bringing in new players with new content.

[@jaster9870]

Oshur should be reworked to be a construction only continent. Or bring back the old hive system for just oshur.

[@valzicplayz3845]

The problem with the game is that it's pay to win, which would make it harder for casuals to get into and enjoy. You have to pay or do a boring progression of a grind to get the weapons you want or the structures you want to build. They don't have good marketing. The game has good qualities, but my god it's 10 years old and hardly any improvements.