well, Sony sent me my invitation today along with the CD key in an email… I am pretty damn excited.
I have been downloading the client for the past hour, one more hour to go.
My question is, I thought they were MAILING the CDs out to beta testers, not downloading the entire client! (Not that I am complaining, I would much rather d/l it and play it in an hour rather than wait until the long weekend is over and get it via snail mail in 3 days!)
As I understand it, if you are in the “exclusive beta” you get the download. The “open beta” gets the CDs. They supposedly started sending CDs out already, but I haven’t met anyone that has them. There have been more new people, but they are still sending out download keys (obviously).
jesus! after a 4 hour download the fricking thing CRAPS out in the last 2 minutes and 30 seconds!
PHUCK!!!
I got the CD’s in the mail yesterday. Installed and downloaded but haven’t been able to play longer then just to pop in and see “yeah it’s a FPS” cause i had to go to work :P
No Getright for this, it has its own shell and downloader. We wouldn’t want the humans trying to do things on their own & screwing it up. :?
Seems like the gonegolders are starting to turn around on this game, and really like it. Its hard to tell what the concensus is on the official forum. How are the beta testers here enjoying it? Is it worth signing up to fileplanet to get into the beta? If you sign up are you guaranteed a spot?
Well, so far I’m not finding it very newbie friendly. Apparently there are training missions available, but they don’t make it all the obvious. It’s quite choppy even on an Athlon 2100+ with a GF4 4200 and 512 MB RAM. I have to turn the dtail down to get it in the twitch shooter FPS range.
I like the “bigness” of it, it’s quite impressive to see massive ships coming out of the top of huge hangars. The graphics are very Tribes 2, which I don’t mind because I liked T2.
The other problem is that I see is this. You are mixing the FPS mentality with an MMOG environment. In most MMORPGs it’s not to hard to find people willing to help you get started and that good will usually gets turned around later when you find a newb. The FPS mindset is usually a very “lone cowboy” kind of thing. Very few people know how to play FPS games as a cohesive team. So, you end up with people that will bail because they can’t seem to get anywhere and they feel that everyone around them is more powerful than they are so there is no point in playing.
If they can address performance issues and make a good team play reward system I think it could be a fun game. YMMV.
I think people will adapt if the game is well done. People have certainly learned how to work together in games like ghost recon, and I’ve heard that planetside has its own built in voice chat system (maybe I’m wrong).
One concern I’ve heard people say is that there is no there there. That just because you take some territory it doesn’t really matter because the next time you log in that territory could be retaken. I think it would be great if there was some website that showed the ebb and flow of the front lines real time, without having to sign in. That would really create an immersive feel in my mind. I always wished that WW2OL had that feature, so I knew if I had to log in and defend dinot or dinut or donut and the other one.
But what I’m hearing you say is it isn’t really worth the fp subscription quite yet.
would agree with the lack of user friendliness. I had to go to an outside source that had a tutorial for new users to figure out how to be able to buy better guns. The first two hours in game I spent dying over and over because I didn’t know this and couldn’t figure out where all the cool guns were coming from.
For reference, should you play, you get certification points based on how well you do in game. If you go around in the sanctuary area and simply try eveything out you end up with 5 points. You then have to find a terminal and spend the points on skills, which then allow you to buy guns. Even though the equipment terminals call getting equipment buying, your not, because all equipment is free. Got that?
I also had to lower everything to get playable framerates, current system 2 gh p4, 512 ram, geforce 4200 128 meg version, audigy sound card.
The game has grown on me, but if you want a game with lots of action it pales in comparison to other games on the market.
They have made a number of game tweaks in the past couple of weeks that do a good job of creating a front and spurring large battles. However, there is still LOTS of downtime when you get killed. I have started playing anti-vehicle troopers almost exclusively, and about 60% of my reasoning is to reduce my downtime after dying. I can respawn at a nearby friendly facility, buy new equipment at a terminal, and head off for the fight. If you need a vehicle, you are probably going to have to respawn at your team’s sanctuary continent, run to a terminal, buy gear, run to a vehicle terminal (a virtual quarter mile or so), buy the vehicle, fly/drive it a mile or so to the warp gate, warp to a new continent, drive to the battle (most likely several miles from you). Some continents require multiple warpgate jumps to reach. They should rename the game “Traversing the Logistical Tail,” since you spend more time doing that than fighting.
Getting into an experienced squad makes a big difference. Just having a quasi-cooperative battle unit improves your survivability.
The lack of locational damage still bothers me a lot. Combined with the perfectly round yellow flashes that indicate hits, it makes combat feel very cartoonish.
I do like how experience works into the game. The primary benefit is more certification points, which lets you have more skills available. A new character will have to specialize - just a sniper, just a pilot, just a driver. An experienced character would be able to do all three. However, that new sniper is still going to be able to kill the veteran in two shots (since headshots don’t matter - sigh).
They are still shooting for a May 19 release, so it may not be worth buying your way into the beta right now.
On the other hand, Day of Defeat retail just released, so forget Planetside. :D