Planetside 2: Grindy McGrindy McSpaceyPants

Aside from the fact that snipers in PS2 get a cloaking shield they can toggle on and off between attacks (it's not perfect stealth, and players can't fire while stealthed, but it's a useful tool for staying out of sight while on the move and whatnot), you can't see the snipers (or almost anybody really, except for most folks in Max suits) in several places in this game because distant enemies tend to blend right into the background in most situations (exceptions made for anybody standing in red rock or the plains of course).

There is no kill cam when you die (meaning the game doesn't show you where the enemy was that shot you, all you get is a stat screen so you can see what types of weapons were used to kill you), so if the sniper has put even a few certs into suppression it becomes even more difficult for survivors to follow any tracers or noise back to its source (and the dead don't have much more to share). Adding to the frustration that it's extremely difficult for targets/victims to locate these guys in most bases is the fact that most classes are capable of being 1-2 shot (most default sniper weapons allow 2 shots to be fired in extremely rapid succession, usually before victims have a chance to figure out where to duck to even hide).

Now, a sniper won't be taking out Max units as easily, but even if they don't manage to wipe out an entire squad, the fact is that right now snipers are capable of killing relentlessly without too much in the way of threat to themselves.

There are tools like IRNV (infra red night vision) scopes players can get for their weapons (if they spend dozens of certs to ever unlock one) which pretty much work as advertised, but the range on these things has been getting nerfed, and last I checked the range is shorter than the range of a sniper's rifle, plus they don't see cloaked players anyway.

Another problem with using an IRNV scope is that now you're at a huge disadvantage in anything but mid range combat, because you won't be able to very quickly focus your fire as easily as you would with a reflex sight, and because almost every weapon in this game will kill you in one second at close range, you're giving up a lot just to equip an object that has a very good chance of never being useful for finding snipers in the first place. IRNV are wonderful sniper tools though, because they want to stay out of close range combat anyway -- even though the joke is that currently even the default sniper rifles are more effective (speed/dmg wise) at killing at close range (with hip shots nonetheless) than most of the other default weapons given to other classes. So snipers aren't bad at close combat at all, while still maintaining long range superiority (with current available weapons).

Also, there are other tools like Recon detect devices, but the world is much too big to expect some random cloaked sniper to just happen to walk right through that miniscule little area you just freaking tagged and are monitoring.

Okay, with all that said, I don't think snipers are the biggest problem this game suffers from, they're just a symptom of a bigger problem. And they're just one example. One of the bigger problems, for me, is the fact that individual fire fights rely less on player skill and equipment (equipment only being important because this is supposed to be partially a gear & upgrade based game after all), and more on having fast enough reflexes to pull the trigger first (or even more important, the ability to get the drop on your enemy, because surprise is the #1 rule of this game, given how freaking difficult it is to defend yourself if anybody sees you mere milliseconds before you see them).

Certs have the potential to slow things down a bit, by giving players a little breathing room (with better armor) from the instagibs so prevalent in the game (especially the early game) at the moment, but they aren't meeting that potential just yet. PS2 feels less like an action based strategic/tactical shooter and more like whack-a-mole. He who reacts first wins, because there's absolutely nothing you can do to even try to save yourself in close combat unless the guy misses (you could always forgo even bothering to shoot him to death and just drop a grenade at your feet before you're dead to at least take him with you though). Regen & Shield consumables also have the potential to help, but at the moment everything just happens too quickly for any of that stuff to be any good (assuming it isn't just two shitty players with a 30% hit rate, actually living long enough to reload and fire again).

As it sits, the game (especially the early game) is 97% running around looking for a fight/or steamrolling (their semi-hourly hotspot drop system is all but worthless the majority of the time), 1% engaging the enemy, 2% loading screens. Sure, sometimes you happen across a stalemate, where players are busy reenacting Hamburger Hill (another inevitability that happens almost every time more then a few players even end up engaged in combat), but those times are unrewarding and the excitement fleeting (unless your sole purpose is to play Quake in the wrong freaking game).

End up in a solid squad and you'll steamroll 95% of wherever you go, because there won't be anybody there to stop you from taking an objective (so much fun). Steamrolling objective after objective gets boring (for life) after about an hour. Take that squad to where the heavy fighting (aka stalemating) is taking place, and you'll only be so much more useless fodder. And by this point it's may the biggest zerg win.

Sadly I have to agree with kerzain. Snipers like that are very rare in this game. But since they included on-hit killing snipers, and since it is fairly easy for a sniper to stay at a really large distance from his targets, and cover areas with very little cover...
In short, the majority of snipers are not good enough to be more than a threat you can deal with, but a really good one can absolutely fight 10 or 20 guys by himself. At least until he runs out of ammo. But if he has an engineer close by that also doesn't happen. Only hope is to have an equally good counter-sniper that manages to spot him. Small exception made for vanu snipers, thanks to the easily tracked laser shots.

Finding these is actually pretty easy - go to the Crown, then Zeno Tech Station, then the Allatum Biolab, in that order. One of the three will have a stalemate battle going on. Which in itself is pretty sad, since it indicates the lack of strategic decision forced on the players at the moment.

I got a Beta key and played yesterday with a solid team of guys all on Teamspeak. I knew a few from BF3 and various other games. I never played Planetside 1 because my PC at the time wasn't up to it. So aside from twenty minutes of instant action before (where I managed two kills in a Galaxy Turret and a 4-chain kill with a pistol, which was pretty fun) I'm a total noob.

The experience was tedious. I spawned on the squad leader and spent 10 minutes fannying around waiting for a Sunderer - the first one we got wasn't right for some reason. I then sat in the back whilst they spent 10 minutes driving to a contested area in a convoy of two tanks and a sunderer, with some air support. It was cool at first, but I alt-tabbed after a minute or two because, well, there's only so long you can freelook out the back of a tank.

We then all got out and went into a big building, which was apparently the capture point. Though I couldn't really tell whether we were capturing anything or what was going on, because there seemed to be no visual feedback on this that I could see apart from some bars that didn't move.

I spent fifteen minutes in there. There were some bad dudes outside, so I died a couple of times and killed a few people with a turret I set up on a spot I was told. Throughout this process I had little or no idea if we had captured the point and were holding it, or still in the process of capping it, or what. Eventually I got bored and left. For all I know they're still there 12 hours later waiting for the point to tick over.

yeah that is what i feel into at the crown, was just respawn / die / respawn for a few hours. when the opposition was in the base each "life" was sub 30s.

Aside from core gameplay and design problems, on a technical level this game doesn't feel anywhere near ready to be released this month. At this point I'm not expecting them to fix actual gameplay issues any more, and every time they try they seemingly just make things worse; but I think they need to push back release until they work out so many of these technical problems and bugs. I can't even load the game any more without a CTD. Even when I was able to load the game so much of it was still feeling so janky and half baked. It's much too late in the beta cycle (or more accurately, much to close to release) for the game to still be feeling this way.

I've had a couple of fun games now, and capped a lot of points. Had a good hour last night going 35-15 or so in a series of base defenses/caps across the centre of the desert continent.

It's definitely buggy though. I crashed twice (my PC never crashes anything, ever) and the instant action button has literally never worked. The abject lack of a tutorial is inexcusable. And the combat certainly lacks heft - it's a bit like water-pistol plinking at times, and the character models are rubs.

For all that I'm having a good time. What are the metagame tips? What should I be spending my certs on?

I have a one-use code someone can use if they want access to the beta... or you can all just wait a couple weeks and play when this free-to-play game goes live. I guarantee that you won't be missing anything by waiting. All the same bugs will still be there, all the same headaches, and all fifteen frames the engine is capable of rendering per second.

EE3J-ADED-9AP7-994M-7CAX

I don't know the details, but I think there's another character wipe due before release, so be sure not to waste too much time trying to painstakingly grind out certs or anything.

3rd continent added - it's a bit more interesting than the other 2, with some nice 'vertical' bases.

As mentioned, you can have a good time if you get into an experienced squad and the feeling of being a small cog in a war raging across a huge map is unique.

However, the actual infantry gun-play is terrible - when you're not being sniped by 6 pixels, you're going from 100% to 0 in fractions of a second to a heavy assault's machine guns.

Also, unless they have some sort of FPS-doubling miracle-patch in testing, the launch on the 20th is going to be horrendous.

Used the code. Thanks!

Congrats, you're going to have the time of your life.

Awesome!

I've got an alpha account I'm willing to trade away.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks that they went for the worst possible release date ?

Call of Duty, Hitman, Assassins Creed, Battlefield, Far Cry - all releasing in the same window. And given that this is free to play, would waiting a few more weeks really hurt them, or are they so keen on releasing the game buggy and half finished ?

That's the part of the featureset they're aiming at skeptical yet nostalgic Planetside 1 vets.

Possibly. It just seems to get worse, not better. Sure, only my personal experience, but the fact that with the current patch the game still needs somewhere between a minute and two to load, only to crash every third time seems suboptimal. Ah well, back to the backlog with it - will check again at release date or so.

Yeah, that's a real shame. I've been keeping tabs on the game but haven't put any time into it myself. There seem to be a decent amount of people who have given it a good shot, but it appears that, despite having a massive and dedicated community, SOE has absolutely no idea what it's doing. It should have been a sure thing, just replicate Planetside at launch---er, a few months after launch, this time with feeling, but I read some of the stuff here and it seems like such an uncoordinated mess being made by the Core Combat maintenance team.

For a while it seemed like SOE was actually listening a lot to the fan base, for what it is worth, continuously implementing stuff as expected from the players. At least according to my by-weekly cursory reading of the forum. As an example, they just added a third continent (which was supposed to come out weeks after launch), probably because fans wanted a home continent for each faction, with a feature (to be implemented later) to drive factions out of continents completely, except their own home. But simultaneously it seems a lot like there is a moment where they consider mechanics or similar 'done' and will not touch them anymore. Nice that we have a third continent, but fixing the still very bad combat would be better. As it is, large fights still are combats around who can respawn faster, since everyone just drops all the time. Not fun.

This just seems really rough every time I try to log in. I gave it another go because I got an email about it being triple station cash day, but I can't see spending any amount of time on this with the infantry combat being so.... instantaneous.

Funny enough, when the populations on servers were smaller the current combat model was fun, in a weird, maybe it is only me way. It was very much about out-thinking opponents in a one vs. one situation. But of course, low population had so many drawbacks otherwise that this did not outweigh the problems. Now, with large groups of soldiers sieging each other, the combat model is just sad.

So I spawned in, and someone on my own team instantly ran me over in a tank. Then I run out and someone shady looking starts shooting me, I think. I shoot him back and it says I committed suicide. This game is stupid.

TIME OF YOUR LIFE

Sony rolled out a new promo video for Planetside 2. If you're interesting in seeing almost 40 seconds of logos and text book-ending almost 60 seconds of A.D.D. inspired quick-edit shots of a large Outfit/Guild standing around posing for pictures before steamrolling huge empty bases all by their lonesome (to be fair, I'm pretty sure there were at least 2 verifiable solo enemy units shown in the video, so it's not like these guys went totally unchallenged), then you'll want to check this out.



Almost all the gameplay in this video looks like a bunch of guys just shooting at nothing (and the sky).

These are five Planetside 2 beta keys. Join Hanaker by signing up and having the time of your life:
42MMG3EJTP2XNPNPHGF9
DRP3C6NP4G4TK99FZK24
2PCZXARPD3DTX9CJHRAN
FMRJ42JADJDDEDPJGMAA
H2RAC7RFFXFJXGP3ZPZG

I was almost going to play again, but then I got blocked by a 3 gig patch.

Oh, and in case kerzain and I are driving up demand, here are 5 more keys.

CZG6NMAFTD4A64NJJGN7
F2ZDDJ6P23K3R22PXTZZ
ZJR3TT2TCJPP3JF64CJA
6Z774996KEJ3ZX3FDN6P
9N3XNXK494RXTM6TF6AF

Yea, I got tired of patching multiple gigs per week, so I've been putting off testing it till the game goes live.

Tried the PlanetSide 2 beta again last night. I made a new character in the Terran Republic. As it loaded I got a speech about how it's all up to me, we have to put down the Rebellion, fight on! Then my drop pod slammed into the side of a mountain and I died. A big thing flashed up, "SUICIDE: Stop killing yourself!" And the voiceover said "Mission failed."

I did the same.

Also, I can tell I'm going to have a month or so of playing a lot of this and having a generally good time before I get bored of it and never log in again. I figure I'm just wrecking my appetite at this point.

More beta keys if wanted:

3PAMZTRAF3XE2D47CATP
DEHKGA97DZ2ZPCZCR429
PKX3APG9PPH24KP6737N
27TFJ79D47AE7ACZP926
P9TTZGJKAFRFMRH7ZARR

Planetside 2 has been added to Steam. You can't pre-load yet (release won't be for a few more days), but the possibility of loading through Steam will be there for anybody interested.

If it's like DCUO from steam... once it's installed you don't have to use Steam anymore. It sets up the SOE launcher for the game... you can just launch the game directly form the SEO launcher after initial install and it patches the game updates for you.
(Like SWTOR and Origin)

Got email that they are saying the beta is now over. That kind of scares me given how rough the game seemed to me. Oh well, my two most anticipated games of the last few years and both seemed to be busts :(

Now that the beta is over, is there a reason why I can't uninstall? The launcher keeps running into a network error and control panel keeps running into an error before it can start the uninstall process. I'd just throw the whole folder into the recycle bin but I don't think I'll have gotten every bit of it.

I had to manually run the uninstall.exe from the file folder.

I just tried that and kept getting an error, "there was a problem during the uninstall (-1)"

Tried using control panel again, it deleted the launcher but not the rest of the game.

Same thing here.

Is the launch client incompatible for sure?

Yep.

I put in a ton of time over the last week of beta and the game was pretty solid for me. One crash apparently due to some conflict with my 360 controllers dpad. Framerates were very solid even in huge battles. I came away very impressed with the engine and looking forward to release. i5 & 560ti

I also think the ttk talked about here is a little exaggerated. The 1v1 infantry gunplay seems to be pretty standard to me. When I flat out get smoked its usually from multiple targets. There is plenty of instagibbing to go around though especially if you find yourself out of position versus a tank or other heavily armed vehicle. I don't see any way around that other than eliminating infantry all together.

How awesome for you! It's so nice that the game meets your standards. You should really enjoy yourself, be sure to keep us updated on how much fun you're having.

As for your observation that 1v1 gunplay seems pretty standard to you, and that perhaps much of the talk here has been exaggerated, I'll just leave you with this video demonstrating precisely the type of complaint I lodged in a post up above (where ever it was I talked about snipers being equally as capable in close combat as they are in ranged combat, especially given that their weapons remain just as equally powerful when hip-shooting as long distance sniping, and given how quickly their rifles can be scoped and ready to fire if they choose to go that way instead, whatever.):


As for my own tactics, maybe better aiming and strafing before firing my weapon on an enemy would have been a better option in a scenario where the dude is carrying a weapon capable of one-shotting me, but you live you learn. It's my fault I got one-shot, and the game is no worse off for some folks with that ability being there.

I may not like it at all, but this type of gameplay really works for some people. So if you're into it, this is what you can look forward to. Play the game and judge for yourselves. I'll just sit over here scowling at my $40 bank transaction.