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I realise that so far there’s not been much excitement from across XDC regarding this game, but it’s something I’m putting a lot of time into at the moment because there’s potential to really make something of XDC within it. Already in Beta we’re seeing some outfits (aka clans) forming who are really starting to add to the overall experience of everyone involved in the game, and I would like to involve us at that level.
Just a very basic example of what I mean here can be seen when you log in at the warp gate these days, where you’ll always find a galaxy (big transport ship) waiting to deliver people to the front line (normally 12 at a time). These galaxies are being coordinated by an outfit with eyes on the ground across the battlefield enabling them to direct the “taxis” to where they’re needed the most, according to their assessment of the intel gathered. Now this may sound like a terribly boring past time, particularly for the pilots, but consider that each of these “taxis” is also provided with a fighter escort, who you can see flying in formation behind the galaxies when you’re a passenger. These fighters peel off to intercept any enemy fighters, to keep the galaxy’s cargo safe (not always successfully), and several times I’ve witnessed battle of britain scale air battles develop from just this sort of instance. This can start from random players, but I suspect there are also squadrons being organised now to intercept these taxi trains by each of the other factions, creating a micro game in itself across each continent. Consider that this all started with one simple idea, a taxi service to the front line, and that it is all player driven, and you may start to appreciate the potential depth to this game. A sandbox first person arena, on a grand scale.
There is still plenty of development time left while it remains in beta, and new features to come which will serve to expand the possibilities within the sandbox, but when you start to appreciate what is happening at a macro level within the game, rather than simply from the first person perspective, you may see why I’d like to position XDC here in future. It’s a lofty ambition, but right now we’re starting to run our own squads, which is where things always start in MMO’s. For those unfamiliar with MMO’s this means squad leading, but not in a battlefield sense.
You need to understand where the fight is, set appropriate squad goals, but most importantly keep a squad of 12 randoms focused and on task, which isn’t an easy job. We are however starting to see our friend lists expand as we experiment with doing this, as other players want to keep in touch with capable squad members/leaders.
Anyway, there are of course a few barriers to entry at the moment, with the beta key requirement being the main one, but even if you get into the game it requires a lot of patience to get through the initial learning curve, particularly if you’re on your own. I’ve experienced that myself and I know a few people have been struggling to get to grips with new weapons, new spawn systems, and certain game mechanics which are unfamiliar compared to BF3 – this game is similar to BF3 in a lot of areas, but it’s not a futuristic clone. The futuristic setting may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but from my point of view, I always look at gameplay over setting.
So what I’m starting to do is put some planetside footage together to show you all what we’re doing in game, talking through the thought process behind some of our squad decisions, which I hope will start showing off some of the game’s depth. I’ve put this video together yesterday to start off, but there will be more to come, including some quick guides to help anyone if they do get beta access. This one shows a typical fight, where I hope the likes of Max will see the similarities between planetside and BF3, in terms of how the combat actually works. I made it with him and Jim in mind, given we all started playing about the same time, and the experience was difficult initially to say the least.
[youtube:1xhxq9ny]ZVfyp3O50qY[/youtube:1xhxq9ny]
I’m trying to get going again with this . But it killed my bandwidth this month . Also punched my moniter the other day and finally suceeded in killing it so waiting for a new one to come .
I am planning to get involved with this as soon as its out. I did apply for the beta a while back but have heard nothing so far! Not holding out much hope of getting in before launch now.
I’m in the same boat. I like the idea of it. I applied for the beta a while back but heatd nothing back. I mihht have another look at it when it’s out. But equally i might forget all about it. I think an open beta would work wonders for games seeing as they never seem to release demo’s anymore.
@Beer_Monster wrote:
I’m in the same boat. I like the idea of it. I applied for the beta a while back but heatd nothing back. I mihht have another look at it when it’s out. But equally i might forget all about it. I think an open beta would work wonders for games seeing as they never seem to release demo’s anymore.
The game is free to play anyway and will not be pay to win either. You will probably be in the minority if you pay money and all you can buy are things that you can earn anyway only slower, and visual changes such as new camoflage etc.
The game is good, the only thing I’m not keen on is the length of time it takes to kill someone (although that could say more about my aim than anything else) and air combat, which is just shit in my opinion. The scale of it is just mind blowing though. If you compare a 16 man CoD deathmatch to a 64 player game of conquest of Caspian or firestorm or something, that’s the magnitude of difference at least between planetside 2 and BF3.
The my poroblem with it too Ben, I dont fancy tracking miles, to see no one or get killed and then have to walk miles to the next point to kill soneone – I must have played it wrong but it didnt grab me by the balls
@=XDC=MADMAX wrote:
The my poroblem with it too Ben, I dont fancy tracking miles, to see no one or get killed and then have to walk miles to the next point to kill soneone – I must have played it wrong but it didnt grab me by the balls
you run about like a loon in BF3 from flag to flag. PS2 is way too large to do this, also its a game that requires a squad or at least a group of people. i played it briefly and had some great fights that went on for 30 minutes or so. will be playing more once the raft of other games that i have to play has died down 🙂
If you signed up for beta and have simply sat waiting around, as I did for the first month or so, you’ll likely still be disappointed, as the only people who seemed to get a key via that method were those known to have played planetside 1 (to my knowledge). The only way I managed to get in was via twitter and facebook, finding a website offering keys, and obtaining one that way. The game is to be released by the end of December at the latest, so no matter what you’ll not have long to wait now. If you get on the beta though you really have to be prepared to give it a go, but you’ll probably have a much easier time of it now that a few of us know what we’re doing. Be prepared for the game to change rapidly though, as this is a true beta where significant changes to game mechanics are being made all the time. They are not simply tweaks either, there are some things being ripped out altogether, replaced by a new mechanism which you then have to figure out for yourself. You also have to contend with the usual bugs you’d expect from it being in beta, especially following the release of some of these large patches.
Anyway in response to Max, I think what Ben was referring to was the time to kill someone when you shoot at them, which is slightly longer than in BF3. It obviously depends on the class and a number of factors, such as your character setup (certs etc) but I don’t actually find it’s much of a problem. It’s hard to judge how much of a difference there is to be honest because I find people dropping fast enough once I’ve gotten the hang of a gun. What you’re referring to though Max is what we all experienced during the first couple of days playing this trying to figure out wtf was going on, and those days are gone. If we plan an attack on a point, the tactical imperative is to ensure there’s a respawn point within easy reach (though it must also be difficult for the enemy to spot or reach themselves –so it’s not taken out). That is what we didn’t know at the start, when we struggled to work out how the spawn system worked, and we didn’t appreciate there are many tactical and strategic considerations in this game which you’d not normally associate with a FPS (and this is where you have to remember it’s a MMO as well). If you don’t consider the logistics of an attack, you end up in the position we were in at the start, running around so much, it makes Max’s BF antics seem like a dander to the front door.
The other problem we had was initially focusing on the wrong sort of fights. There are several types of fights in PS2, if you like, but around certain hotspots on the map, where we focused, you’ll always find a huge battle of attrition between hundreds of people, and what can you do here really when you’re a squad of 3 or 4? There is no point in my view involving yourself in those fights unless you’re part of an alliance or outfit organised enough to issue 12 man squads with objectives, and with squad leaders coordinating with a commander and squad members (like an FC would in Eve). It would be awesome if we could organise this for XDC in future, but right now I’m exploring the small scale game, trying to find a way to influence the macro game with one or two players, which we initially thought was not possible, or at least too difficult. Now we’re a bit more clued into what’s going on though I’m finding this most definitely IS possible, and I’m having so much fun doing this, I’m not even tempted atm to set up a larger squad.
I’ve been playing this game all weekend so I thought I’d give my first impressions. There’s a lot to like about the game but there’s also a lot that frustrates me and that I don’t like. Pretty much all of my experience comes from playing the infiltrator class.
The Good
The map is huge and there are always multiple battles going on. The massive frontline fights can be overwhelming but there’s always the choice to avoid them completely and attack an enemy’s flank or defend some of your territory from a smaller squad. The map screen gives you all the info you need to make an informed choice about where to go and I found it relatively easy to get around (Instant action is a nice feature too). The interface was a bit confusing at first but it didn’t take me long to get the hang of it.
The core mechanics of the game are great. The gunplay itself is as good as you’d expect from a top fps and I haven’t had any issues with the time it takes to kill (even using a pistol). I like the way the spawn mechanics and the base capping works. Squads are large and you can pile loads of people into the transport vehicles which opens up the possibility for some great team play.
I haven’t had much experience with the vehicles outside of the quad bike but they all seem pretty well balanced. There’s lots of variety which is nice.
The Bad
The lack of weapons is a massive down point. With the launch date looming I really hope that they start adding lots of weapons variety’s for each class and even some universal ones. I was so disappointed when playing an infiltrator to find that there is 1 additional semi auto sniper rifle I can buy (48 cert points) and one shotgun (448 cert points!). That’s it. No automatics, no better pistols and no cool gadgets. I also don’t like that I have to spend cert points on these new weapons as cert points seem way too valuable to waste in that way. I want loads of weapons and a second in game currency I can use to buy them with and try them out.
The classes are also really restrictive. I expected a lot more choice within the class itself from an mmo. As an infiltrator, I’m locked to using very light armour with little protection and a cloaking device. Sometimes you are in a battle where this combo just isn’t effective and there is nothing you can do to change it which is frustrating. Of course you can just switch class but I’m trying to progress with the infiltrator and that’s where I’ve spent all my certs so far. I’d love the option to drop the cloak for a jetpack or trade mobility for armour. Just give me some adaptability!
Now for the facilities you fight over, I understand that there needs to be 3 types to tie into the 3 resources but having only 1 layout per type doesn’t provide enough variety. I’d like to see 5 or 6 different layouts for each facility type randomly distributed around the map, maybe more. How about some faction specific ones so you can tell who built it originally? That would really help with immersion and make the place feel like a real world we are fighting over rather than a carefully constructed battlefield.
I also find the resource system over simplified. Why are we fighting over imaginary vehicle or infantry points when we could be fighting over real resources? There seems to be no reason for this war other than to earn magic resources points which you can use to keep the war going. They ultimately serve the same purpose but a real resource is tied into the lore of the game. Having some imaginary points not tied to a physical resource is the biggest immersion killer for me.
Theres enough to keep me interested for a few more weeks so i’ll try some other classes and see how i get on. Its fun but i’m not sure it will hold my interest over the long term.
Max there will be one day you bore of BF3.
Anyway Gary, that’s a good post, and I share a lot of your views, though let me give you my perspective from a couple of months of beta experience.
The first thing is of course that it’s not finished yet, but the recent announcement regarding the release date does suggest that we’re at least nearly there in terms of how the game will look on November 20th. From the state of the game update they gave us a couple of weeks ago though, we can expect some significant changes between now and then though which may address some of the bad you’ve posted above, but it’s hard to gauge by how much.
Some of those planned changes have already been implemented, with us currently sitting in a sort of half way house between their plans and the current build. One of the big changes they made was in removing Auraxium as a resource, which was previously used exclusively for unlocking weapons. This has however presented a few new problems, but let me address the unlock matter first.
Auraxium was generally a pain in the ass to accumulate. Even when NC sat and dominated the new continent (on it’s release), giving us maximum Auraxium gain, we were still facing hours of game play to unlock weapons (I saw a thread estimating 20 years for all certs and gun unlocks at one time). Now part of this may have been because they wanted to fully test the basic weapons, and indeed many of the current weapon upgrades, were unavailable until very recently. I can only guess that their main priority is in ensuring the entry level game is balanced, and it’s from this point on that they’re starting to evaluate the next level up. I fully expect more weapons to become available as the game evolves, much in the same way Eve did. I expect another part of this is in them trying to find a balance between the incentive for people to buy into the game, using their marketplace etc, and not turning away people who simply want to play for free. This could be why they’ve spent so long assessing the entry level game, given they may actually plan to keep you there a long time, should you not pay for station cash. All costs are being constantly tweaked at the moment though, so it’s impossible to tell where we’ll end up.
The way you gained Auraxium was the same as how you still accumulate the other resources, with control of the large outposts giving your faction +10 every 10 minutes or so, but this was such a slow rate, that many people just sat AFK at the warp gate so they could accumulate as much as possible. It was so slow that you almost had to do this. They initially tried giving you an Auraxium boost along with cert gain for earning XP, while adding an AFK timer to the game, but they quickly scrapped this in favour of just using Certs for everything unlockable, and removing Auraxium. The cert gain was massively increased (250 xp per cert now, compared with 1000xp per cert previously), so for us who’ve been in beta a while, we’re probably now seeing a much quicker progression in terms of unlocks, but it still requires a good investment of game time.
The problem this causes though is that there’s now little incentive to actually take bases, other than just having a fight. The other resources are so numerous currently that it really makes very little difference to your factions resource pool, if you lose territory. I think this is something they’re still looking at, so watch this space. At the moment this does look over simplified, as you say.
In much the same way as I expect them to increase the amount of weapons available, we’ll also start seeing new abilities for classes. What we have today is already miles ahead of what they had just a few weeks ago, so again this is a work in progress. I’m not sure whether we’ll reach the point where Infiltrators can use jet packs or whether we’ll see them given automatic weapons, in much the same way as I wouldn’t expect the light assault class to be given a sniper rifle unlock. You need restrictions within each class for balance, or just scrap the idea of having classes.
Regarding the facilities, I know what you mean, but I think of greater concern is how the capture mechanics currently work. This has been tweaked, and retweaked, scraped completely, and reinstated, over beta, and there are plans to change this yet again. I want them to do away with the slow capture rates, which only encourages people to sit around twiddling their thumbs, but add more to an assault, as in more objectives, and more layers to the defence. The wouldn’t necessarily be to make an assault harder, just more complex, in order to disperse the fight a bit more. I really dislike the zerging you see during the largest battles, so anything to change this would be welcome. How the facilities are laid out could do with a bit more variety (certainly the largest outposts), but I’ve never really been one to get into the lore of stuff, so the cosmetics really don’t bother me that much, although it would be that little bit of icing on the cake.
Anyway, last point, get on ts with us, I was on for ages over the weekend!
Its interesting to know that they had the auraxium system and scrapped it although I can see why based on the way it was acquired. I envisioned a system similar to how dust works and was a bit surprised the certs were the only real “currency” in game so to speak.
If you combined dusts lore, economy, classes and skill system with planetside 2s gameplay you’d have the perfect mmofps. Its a bit of a shame that both have kind of missed the mark in key areas!
I’ll get on TS asap. Probably wont be tonight though as I’ve upgraded to windows 8 and given the amount of faffing about it took to get my PS3 headset to work with windows 7, I suspect it wont be easy.
One of the biggest barriers XDC are going to have getting into this game is in overcoming the differences between PS2 and BF3. The two games are similar in that combat works essentially the same, you have classes, you have vehicles (although a lot more of them in ps2), and you move around in PS2 using exactly the same principles as you use in BF3 – never run around corners, know how to peak, always use the minimap and be aware of your surroundings etc. I’ve looked at some of the key differences below though, which I’ve had to struggle to overcome, so perhaps having this laid out in advance may be useful for anyone trying the game out for the first time.
– First and foremost is the spawn system which is much more tactical, and if you are trying to set your own objectives, or a squads, the logistics around getting back into the battle after a death should always be high on your list of priorities. Be aware of this even in defence as if you’re pushed back to your spawn room in a base, it is game over for the defence when the opposition have you camped in the spawn room.
– Secondly, the gun mechanics are essentially the same as in bf3, i.e. vertical and horizontal recoil, hip fire and ADS accuracy, however they’ll not feel as “clean” as bf3 guns, since there’s a lot more bullet deviation at range (for most guns). This is overcome when you adapt to new definitions of close, medium, and long range, and understand (as you do in bf3) how each gun operates at those ranges. Once you understand that long range in this game is essentially medium range in BF3, you’ll find your game improve dramatically. This doesn’t mean you have to wait until you see the whites of their eyes to score a kill, but if you consider what is long range in BF3 when playing assault, this is long range in PS2 for a sniper.
– Thirdly, the unlock and resource system will result in improved performance on the battlefield, but don’t be concerned by “pay to win”, because my experience of unlockable weapons is that they perform specific roles better at the cost of something else, rather than providing you with a win button. There are some weapons which provide new functions, such as Anti tank and aircraft rockets, but these are easily unlocked through a few hours of play, as are the countermeasures.
– Last but not least is the end game, there isn’t one. In BF3 you play a round and it finishes, in PS2 you have a constant battle, and you choose where you want to fight. You can think of each outpost as a BF3 map (they’re big enough), but when you win a fight, the battle doesn’t necessarily end. It may do for a few hours, or it may carry on for a few hours. You pick and choose when you enter or leave a fight, and always have one eye on what’s happening elsewhere on the continent, since it can directly influence what’s going on where you are. Also, be aware that the biggest fights are not necessarily where the best game experiences are to be found. Quite often you will find yourself unable to influence things when you’re in a fight involving a few hundred people, though it is still possible. Always look for a way you can influence things, even if it means going elsewhere, as this is were you’ll find the satisfaction in the game. Surviving, or succeeding against the odds, is also were I find a lot of enjoyment, as well as coping with the unexpected. Events in the game are entirely player driven, and you never know when you’re going to run into the next “holy fuck” moment.
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