Planetside 2: Grindy McGrindy McSpaceyPants

Yeah, I figured that was the dynamic, but I wasn't exactly sure since the health bar is green.

Do you mean the sprint ability ? A teammate yesterday cheerfully announced that he ran over some infantry with it. He didn't know it was possible.

How's that? If someone is close enough that you can see him with the IRNV scope, then couldn't you find his head just as easily with one of the other scopes?

I guess so, but it doesn't work out that way in practice for me. Using the IRNV is about reducing the visual noise and making it very clear what you're aiming at.

The IRNV is a mandatory addition to all close-medium range weapons that feature it. Considering whether to buy/use a 1-2x reflex scope or an IRNV? Get the IRNV. The only exception to the usefulness of the IRNV comes with long range combat, as everything past a certain distance is filtered out and simply turns flat black.

No amount of spotting comes close to the effectiveness of a quick glance with an object that turns everybody and everything freaking neon (including deployables like mines and cloaked infiltrators).

So they added a new LA weapon: the Razor. Anyone try it out?

No, but it looks like exactly what I'm looking for description wise. I'll bite the bullet and report back.

EDIT: Sigh. Bought the gun, can't buy any attachments.

Man, my PC doesn't like this game at all. It's playable, but it's not pleasant enough to make me want to play.

If you have an Nvidia card, try downloading the newest beta drivers. They have a bunch of Planetside-specific optimizations.

Almost done outfitting my LA how I want. I can't buy attachments for the new gun for some reason, so eff it. I have one of the carbines with high velocity rounds, and a grenade launcher with a 3.4 scope. Just want the compensator now. Got the first rank of C4. It's enough to put light vehicles next to dead. Grenade launcher is friggin' fantastic when the enemy clumps. Got into a firefight today where I gained about 210 certs because the enemy just came in huge groups. We were around one side of the building, they were on the other. Just fly up and rain grenades down on the masses.

I've been playing a bit this weekend. Trying to fly the fighter without any missile weapons is an exercise in futility. Seems like I'm pretty handy with a MAX though.

I'm starting to suspect I may have a video card issue then. Here's a few screenshots of what I see without and with the IRNV. Does it look like this for you?

Eww, your graphic card/settings/whatever sucks.

I am SlainteMhath , NC on SolTech. Outfit invite would be greatly appreciated as I'd love to play with someone other than random squadmates.

Here's a very quick example of what stuff looks like from my end, feel free to ignore shitty jpeg compression:





Some blending of units and vehicles, also note the useful shadows.:


Sneaky bastard, would hate to just run up and be surprised by a vehicle tucked away somewhere:








The only occasions where units blend into the surroundings on my end is either when they are sitting in the middle of bushes or leafy trees (which means they can't see you either), clumped together (not a big deal), or when they're standing between you and a vehicle (see 3rd pic); since, like any other unit in the game, vehicles light up for you too (see 4th pic). If you've already tagged your enemies you get the benefit of big red arrows over their heads to help in those situations. Neither situation has ever been an issue for me, and I can't imagine it would be for anybody else.

I can't duplicate the problems you have with snow (even our snow is different colors when scoped, with yours being the same bright white as your units, and mine being more grey, still giving me plenty of contrast betwen players and environment), but maybe that has something to do with your graphical settings. I play on High, with everything set to default for that setting, and no special gamma or contrast adjustments made from my end. The addition of player shadows alone is a huge benefit for me.

There aren't any units in the last two photos, but I include them because they are without a doubt some of my favorite places to scope when traveling to or through. The IRNV is absolutely invaluable in those long Amp station pathways, and I'm constantly scoping towers before landing (from jump pads). As a light assault with a nearly maxed Jetpack, this scope gives me an insane advantage over any enemy unit on a tower, given that I can land where I want, or just keep sailing on past, as the situation dictates.

Whatever possible negatives you can imagine for this scope in the short to med range, they are by far outweighed by the very huge positive that everybody becomes a huge glowing target, and no amount of screenshots will demonstrate this better for you than simply using the device.

If your graphical settings are holding you back, it would be in your best interest to toy with them till you are able to distinguish units from their surroundings, because the way you're playing seems like it would be absolutely terrible for me. I don't even know where to tell you to start, since the game just works out of the box for me this way.

Baklr,

What are your current graphics settings? If you are set to everything LOW for performance (which is common) you may want to change the Lighting and Models detail to Medium and see if it makes a difference. From the screenshots you posted it looks like the problem is basically white-on-white making player models indistinquishable from those of vehicles, terminals and other non-terrain graphics sources. Lighting and model detail should allieviate that somewhat, giving more contrast and defintion to the player models, making them stand out better as is Kerzain's examples. You could also play with the brightness slider a little and see if that brings more contrast to the IRNV images.

I was kinda lukewarm on the game, but then I unlocked the 100 cr vanu infiltrator sniper rifle. When you get set up in a good spot near the back of a zerg, repeatedly picking people off near their spawn is ridiculously fun.

I think my time with PS2 is coming to an end. When the game is good, it's very good, and they've done well on issues like faction balance.

But, the frame rate is still awful as are the flickering bugs and CTD's. The infantry game is essentially random - your K/D ratio is basically determined by whether you're defending or attacking (unless your zerg is big enough). Finding the fun is harder than it should be, with the auto-join being exceptionally broken.

In essence, its MMO-nature is becoming clearer - there's good game play, but there's a lot of chaff to dig through on any given night.

Thanks to the feedback from folks here I decided to try playing in a style more like what I did in PS1 -- fly into a fight, shoot down what I can, then after I get shot down respawn on foot and play support tech.

Having a MUCH better time! Today at lunch I spent 15 minutes running behind a MAX healing him as he blew enemy fighters out of the sky. Loved it!

Sadly I'm TR as I was in PS1 (LOYALTY UNTIL DEATH) so I'll never see any of you except down my Mosquito's gunsights.

I remain ass at infantry fighting, like really really really ass - but I still have a lot of fun in a tank or as Engie support.

I did get into a big infantry scrum inside a tech plant last night and noticed lots and lots of grenade spam. It made the randomness of death much more random. I haven't noticed it this bad before last night. Have they added a 'nade weapon or something? (fucking hate nades in any shooter I've ever played, other than the sticky ones in Gears)

Haven't fad any graphics bugs or CTDs, but I did try playing by myself yesterday and definitely had trouble finding the fun. It was either jump into a one-sided battle where we'd quickly cap and then sit around until it flipped, or jump into a one-sided battle the other way where we had no chance. Doesn't help that it usually takes me forever to even figure out how to get into some of the buildings. Also, not getting xp for successfully defending a point sucks.

During the capture of one of the large-ish structures with vehicle/aircraft spawnpoints (like The Crown in Indar) I was playing a light assault. I play TR on Connery, which seems to be where a lot of the people here go. The Vanu were holding the facility at the time, defending it well enough but we were still swarming in. The NC shows up from the opposite side of our thrust, and manages to establish a foothold next to one of the entrances to the main building. Now, the group running the assault on our end is competent enough to stop the NC from exploiting the opening, so they stall at the door.

They’re so focused on getting inside the damn facility that they don’t notice the 10 infantrymen, including myself, an engie, a heavy and a medic (for primo synergy) laying waste to them from a nearby hill.
I got easily 20 kills in a single spawn, and every time one of them got clever enough to kill any of us, the medic brought us back and the engie kept us supplied. It was a steady stream of lead, certs and XP.

Fun times.

They need to reward defending. I'm hoping it is something that can be tweeked to encourage more front-line, stand up fights. I like the fights for the Crown for instance. Both attacking and defending is fun.

I'd love to see some big armor battles on Ice Rivers of Esamir. Sniper wars in the jungles of Amerish. Force infantries to go house to house to take the remote stations of Indar. Encourage the opposing Zergs to actually fight by restricting the paths they can advance.

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.....

Technically there is currently a small reward for defending, it's a +15% exp bonus for everything you do that earns exp in an area you're defending. But yea, overall this benefit sucks and actively discourages would-be defenders from even bothering to do anything more than circle-strafe opposing forces from across the damn continent, whilst going about their business zerging and plowing through completely empty zones while their enemies do the same.

I switched to TR/Connery last week and hooked up with TRG there. It's awesome being in an outfit that fields multiple platoons.

I think the design intent of the defense xp bonus is good.

Before you'd get xp only on a defense tick. This had a couple of bad side effects:

1) If your defense was too effective and the enemy never flipped a point, the tick would never start and you'd get nothing.

2) If it was a losing battle, you were not going to get any reward for defending.

The new system gives players an incentive to defend in all situations. Maybe the bonus needs to be bigger, but it does add up.

It also needs to be a lot more visible. You cap a place, a large message appears on screen to tell you of your amazing success, and how much XP you get. Technically, defense does the same - just that the giant message is not directly coupled to the XP reward. Which is most likely the reason most players I know do not even know about the defense bonus, in turn leading to defense feeling lacking in terms of rewards.
I'd also think that defense should be rewarded a lot more, since it only breaks even with successful attacks if you get a horrendous amount of kills (15 xp bonus per kill against 250 to 1000 xp maximum cap bonus, or 16 to 67 kills total). The game at the moment suffers from the current system - lots of attacking zergs, and more often than not you will not find any defenders in location when attacking, even at large bases. Which means that a coordinated team waltzes in, removes shield generators and SCU, and only then starts capping. Hurray, another uncontested 1000 xp. A fun side effect was visible in a chat yesterday - a guy who so far mainly followed zergs around joined us online. He was tired of zerging, since he mostly only died from being run over by friendlies. Most bases will be taken uncontested, or after a very small skirmish. Which is of course exacerbated by zerging, but is also true of smaller outfit action. Another example - yesterday my group of players took two tech plant, and amp station and an uncounted number of smaller facilities without any resistance, simply using the above mentioned tactic. We got bored a bit, then started throwing our weight into actual fights, with far less reward.

I strongly disagree with this.

I disagree, to a point. I don't at all think that the infantry game is random, and I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it. I would agree, to a certain extent, that K/D ratio is an unreliable way to track player performance, because it does depend partly on what role you take on. Given equal player skill, for example, you are going to rack up more kills vs. deaths as a Sniper than you would as a Heavy on the front lines. It's a team game, though, and it's important to remember that sometimes what the team needs is people holding the line under heavy fire. You'll likely die a lot more often in that scenario; that's just the nature of combat. That doesn't mean that the game is essentially random, though.

I also must be better at choosing where to deploy than other folks in this thread, because I frequently (like, every time I play) am able to find good battles where it's not just one side steamrolling the other. You need to look at the map, and especially toggle on the "display enemy activity" overlay. This, along with the hotspot indicator, will show you which battles are just a zerg grabbing lightly defended bases, and which battles are real battles. Rywill and Grishinka and I got into a great fight when we played Sunday afternoon, which turned into a massive three-way battle for dominance of the Crown in the middle of Indar. Good times.

I do wish infantry had a bit more ability to deal with vehicles, but maybe that's because many people haven't unlocked anti-vehicle devices yet. I've been able to use C4 pretty effectively with my LA, against tanks and infantry. Not sure if the anti-tank mines and anti-vehicles grenades are worth anything. But yeah, I think the infantry game is pretty good, actually. I love when a line develops. People taking cover, supporting the people around them, bottling up the enemy in a base, etc. I've participated in some great ridge battles where either side has been fighting over the top of a hill essentially. Anyone know if you can do the C4 jeep tactic like in BF3? I'm going to have to test that tonight.

There was a huuuuuuge entrenched fight there on Waterson last night, Vanu and TR slugged it out for a couple hours before I went to bed. Hopped in briefly when I got up this morning, and there was *still* a huge entrenched fight there. Probably not the same fight, but maybe.

Apparently you can C4 kamikaze stuff.

Part of the problem with "not being able to deal with vehicles" is that people seem to get fixated on a particular class. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to persuade people to switch to Heavy to fight off the tanks that are causing us grief. As you don't need to die to change class - just use a supply station - it's really no bother at all and the default rocket launcher is an armour-destroying monstrosity as soon as you have multiple people focus firing.

Anyway, to expand on my previous point, infantry is surprisingly good. If you want to just be part of the meat grinder then yes, you'll probably find your K/D depends almost entirely on the relative zerg sizes, but I view most other people in the game as NPCs and try and find the few who know what they're doing. If you're fighting in a Biolab for example, there's no harm in just throwing yourself at the brick wall of the enemy defence if you've taken a teleporter because you're forcing them to commit more numbers, allowing your side to secure the rest of the entry ways. Going LA inside the Biolab gives you a lot of fun angles to play with and more chance of actually destroying a generator, too. On the flip side, if I'm defending I'm more likely to leave my teammates to it and go and try and retake the teleporters and jumppads.

I can't blame anyone for not getting the bigger picture because the game itself is fairly terrible at giving you the information you need, but I can usually find the kind of fights that interest me and make a difference with my / my squad's decision making process. You'd be amazed how many zergs don't understand the concept of teleporters...

Was in a squad with an active squad leader. We were trying to take a tech lab that was being awfully stubborn because they just had too many vehicles. So our squad peeled off and went for the bio lab. Something to be said for a squad or two storming through a teleporter.

It's basically impossible to shoot flying vehicles without the guided anti-air launcher, but the anti-tank one is a waste of certs/space bucks. I get tons of ground vehicle kills with the default dumbfire rockets, which do a lot more damage than the guided rockets (1700 per shot, rather than 1250). You need to practice your aim, and get a feel for drop over distance and how long it takes the missile to hit the target. I've gotten so that I can hit targets from very far away, especially if they are stationary, or just moving a short distance forward and backward, as tanks often do. With the guided anti-tank rockets, you need to spend more time aiming in order to get a lock, which is a luxury that you often don't have. Tank drivers will look for whoever is shooting at them, so you want to kill them as quickly as possible. With the dumbfires, you just pop up, fire of a rocket that hits for considerably more damage, and duck back into cover to reload.

When you do hit a flyer with your dumbfire rocket it is the best thing ever. I managed a ridiculous deflection shot the other night against a Scythe that was burning and banking at low altitude over our outpost - basically firing almost 180 degrees away from it - and nearly burst eardrums on comms in joy when the plane blew.

Great fun :)

Talking of anti-tank tactics, I found being a pretty good tank hunter in BF3 held me in good stead when transferring to PS2. In both games you can turn the tables on tank drivers by having >1 rocket launchers available. A single hunter is likely to die but might just get the kill; multiple HAs will sweep all before them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fine hitting targets with rockets from the BF3 days. I guess I just don't see enough coordination for it to work when there's one side with more armor.

Absolutely. Unfortunately it's up to the people who know what's needed to communicate this to the rest.

I haven't used it since beta, but there are a couple of nice things about the guided AV launcher. If you fire at a moving tank, it will track the target and often hit them in the weak rear armour. Anyone on a Flash is also free XP.

I'm actually really happy with the state of tank mines, they make playing engineer a lot more fun. It's funny to have moved on to another base, and still get random kill messages when some tank rolls over the mines you left deployed.

This is the way it should be, IMHO. It should not be easy for a lone infantryman to take out a tank. The tank has a large advantage in such a situation, and rightly so.

The nighthawk shotgun has turned my light assault into a total badass. I'm now excited when I round a corner into a big group of enemies, there's a good chance I can just kill them all. I have a pretty good shot at taking out maxes one on one, the kill speed makes my hit and run tactics way more effective, and I usually stay at full health instead of trading damage. I absolutely terrorized a tower last night, jet packing level to level and double-tapping fools. I've never gotten consistent kill streaks like that.

My only real problem is ammo, so I'm thinking about certing to carry more, but I'd have to drop my run speed bonus. Not sure I should, since the gun is useless outside of ten feet.