PlanetSide: Fire Team for the 21st Century?

Sometime back, I dunno, five years ago or so, there was this game called Fire Team. It was a simple isometric multiplayer shooter. I loved Fire Team–I thought it had a really elegant, simple system that was easy to learn but always led to challenging and enjoyable fights. I had a blast playing it, but after a couple of months, I started running into a serious problem: the game was multiplayer-only, and fewer and fewer people were playing. I have no idea why–I thought the game was terrific. But apparently people just weren’t into it. And without other people, it was impossible to play. The game eventually folded, but I had stopped loading it up well before it actually went out of business. After a week or so of logging in each day only to find no games I could join, I just moved on.

PlanetSide came out, I guess, about a month or two ago. I love PS–I think it’s got great game mechanics and it’s a ton of fun to play. But for the past several days, I’ve noticed fewer and fewer people on. This whole weekend, my server (Johari) has had a population about 1/4 of what it had at its peak. I logged in this morning and hit “instant action” (which transports you to the hottest fighting your empire is engaged in) and was told that there were no fights. No fights. Anywhere in the world. I waited 10 minutes and tried again, and got the same message: sorry, no fights.

Maybe it’s because this is a holiday weekend and people are out of town or something. Maybe it’s because everyone is off trying SWG, and many of them will come back after souring on it. But it sure feels a lot like how it felt to own Fire Team.

I guess I could re-start my character on one of the more populous, older servers, like Emerald. But I’d rather not–especially since, if Johari becomes non-viable, I imagine Emerald will a few weeks later. I suppose it’s possible that a small population would stabilize on one or two servers. If so, I wish the devs would let us move our characters. I’d hate to just crumple up my level-12 guy and throw him in the trash.

I think they pretty thoroughly pooched the instant action function several patches back, and have been having an unusually difficult time coming up with something that works. They’ve set a bar for what triggers a hotspot so high that it prevents you from finding anything short of what we’d call a bloodbath on our server. So where previously you’d be sent off to the nearest empty desert where someone tripped over a rock and misfired into a tree, now it means you’ll be denied any help in finding the small number of others who are off fighting, even though several bases may be in jeopardy with these smaller conflicts. Maybe it works better on other servers, but it exacerbates the isolation on smaller servers - an unfortunate outcome of making this mistake with hotspot sensitivity.

As great as the game is (despite some pretty annoying bugs / needed tweaks / balance problems), there are still a number of “yeah, I can see this isn’t a bug - so just what the hell were you thinking?” issues. Enforced silence on the respawn screen for example. Grr. And while I’m happy that they at some point silently relented and let us see things like hotspots and base warnings on that respawn screen, why can’t it remember what you want to see rather than defaulting to showing you absolutely nothing each time you start the game?

Has the first free month of play expired for most players? I wonder what the cancellation rate has been?

Oh, and no doubt SWG has swiped some players from PS, at least for the short-term.

It’s also a holiday weekend, so a lot of people are doing the long-weekend or family thing.

–Dave

Agreed, I’ll be much more interested in seeing how the server is next weekend. Momentum is a factor when things like holidays come into play. I was around yesterday but didn’t play at all because I a) got sucked into other things and b) didn’t expect much to be going on based off my experiences on Friday. There were probably a lot of other people like me thinking ‘eh, there are a bunch of people I know will be gone, so I’ll just do something else’.

The patch on Thursday was probably a mixed blessing as well, on one hand it’s neat to get new stuff in before an extended weekend. However, since the Liberator was so anticipated there were…no shortage of them. :wink: There were a couple issues with the patch which they did fix promptly, but with the instability Thursday night and the constant ineffecual carpet bombing (fratricide galore!), I think it made it a lot easier for people to go watch fireworks this weekend.

That said, I’m chomping at the bit hoping for some good battles this evening. :D

I play mostly on Emerald, though I’ve been putting in some time with the QT3 crew on Johari (I’m TheWombat). Emerald is still usually at four dots, the others at two. That’s quite a bit down from a couple three weeks ago, but as others have noted, there are any number of reasons for that perhaps.

But underlying all of this is the great question: will people pay $13/month to play a shooter? Ok, I love the game, and you get IMO stuff you can’t get, say, on a random BF1942 server, like persistence of characters, some rudimentary character progression/enhancement, less chance of devastating cheating, and occasionally huge ass battles. But there were a lot of folks in beta, and durin the first free month, who came from CS and other shooter communities, and leaving aside the whiners there were a number of them who voiced the feeling that the game simply didn’t offer enough to justify a monthly fee, or at least a fee that high. Certainly the hardcore RPG types won’t find enough character/level mill stuff here, and pure shooter fans will be miffed by the CoF issues among other things.

So, over time, will PlanetSide thrive, or become Tanarus/FireTeam/Motor City Online fare?

I also think a significant contributor to the problem is the simple fact that they throughly pooched empire balance - to the extent that populations are usually severely imbalanced, leading to boring fights that don’t keep people coming back. I’ve felt no significant urge to play in a week and a half.

I wonder about the empire balance, though. Most often, every empire is in the 30% range–32-34 usually. That’s not unbalanced, really. But a lot of folks say they see more extreme numbers. Dunno. I’ve only seen it pretty even. I usually play Vanu on Emerald, and while we’re usually the bottom rung it’s not by much.

I’m interested to see if it holds long-term interest for a large number of people. I played in the beta for a couple months, and that was enough for me. It has been interesting to see the discussion here, since much of it mirrors my experience in the beta. When it came time to pay, there wasn’t enough there for me to shell out the cash.

The persistent characters are an interesting idea, but that was one of the reasons I decided not to buy the retail version. There was a time in the beta that they instantly made all characters BR20. That was a lot of fun as there was a huge variety of hardware deployed. After playing a few hours, I realized that they had made it much more like BF1942. In BF1942, you can pick whatever class you want, pick up any gear kit you find, and use any vehicle. With everyone BR20, the variety of certs and implants you had finally made you almost as versitile as a freshly-spawned BF1942 grunt. That really knocked out a lot of my desire to play, since now it seemed like lower level characters were purposely handicapped until you invested hours & hours in them. Once I had sampled the full variety of the game I didn’t want to go back, but I also didn’t want to spend a month unlocking the entire retail game. Now I understand why people help their friends power-level new characters in other MMOGs, and I see why they changed the way squad experience works to prevent power-leveling.

Nothing will ever be as good as Fireteam. :cry:

I’m ambivalent about renewing Planetside. I hardly ever see a crowded server because of the timezone I’m in. Combine this with the lag I suffer on my 512 ADSL connection and it makes for a pretty awkward game.
My major beef is the pointlessness of the game. I bust my arse for a few hours but I know when I come back the next day the map will be rewritten. It feels like I’m playing a game of BF1942 on a map where neither side can capture the enemy base and there are unlimited tickets. There will never be a real conclusion, will there? It would have been nice to play in a genuine campaign which concludes rather than this forever war.

Well, I was out for the holiday weekend – and I suspect most people were.

I feel sorry for our Australian players though.

“That really knocked out a lot of my desire to play, since now it seemed like lower level characters were purposely handicapped until you invested hours & hours in them. Once I had sampled the full variety of the game I didn’t want to go back, but I also didn’t want to spend a month unlocking the entire retail game. Now I understand why people help their friends power-level new characters in other MMOGs, and I see why they changed the way squad experience works to prevent power-leveling.”

It’s interesting seeing the non-MMOG player’s perspective. Leveling a character in a month in an MMOG is rapid-fire leveling. Games like EQ and DAoC can easily take six months or more to finish leveling a character.

It may just be that RPGs are the one type of game that big numbers of people will pay a monthly fee to play.

I don’t know if the game has enough content for the long run. I envision, for long-term player interest, variety like combat in underground and floating-city facilities, underwater facilities, sea battles, night-time warfare, TFC-style spies…It just seems a little basic for $13 a month. Not enough differentiation between the types of bases and combat possibilities. I would especially like to see night combat.

I think there might actually be too many vehicles, though. I never see anyone driving a Deliverer, and rarely see the Enforcer, Harasser or Sunderer.

Planetside was released approximately 6 weeks ago. Everyone’s free month is running out, and it looks like I’m not the only one that thought that $13/month was outrageous for what PS offered, in relation to both what is available for no monthly fee, AND in relation to what’s available for the same or less per month.

I’m sure the holiday weekend and SWG were contributing factors too.

Too bad, tho. It’s a fun game, but ultimately it’s Tribes 2 with a really big map and better vehicles. Here’s hoping that if the server numbers really have taken a massive nosedive that SOE sees the light and reduces the monthly fee to something more in line with reality.

They’ve taken their time to fix some glaring balance issues that resulted in a mass exodus of players from both TR and VS to NC. My outfit on Markhov lost almost half of our players to NC. My outfit on Emerald lost quite a few as well.

It really gets old fighting against NC. It’s just not a fair fight. I play NC when I’m on Johari, but I don’t use a Jackhammer or their AV weapon that I can’t remember at this time in the morning.

In my opinion, the devs have done a really poor job communicating with the players about the game and people who feel ignored with all actually go away. It’s not like the early years of EQ when there was really no other game in town. People have more choices now.

Great game, I really like it alot, I just don’t know what I can do to help. I’m not sure if continuing to pay helps or hurts.

I couldn’t disagree with you guys more, except on one point (below).

1. PS is competitively priced. I don’t like the price, but that is how much the big MMOGs go for. PS is a quality product with unique features. Why should they charge less?

2. I was away for the weekend due to holiday stuff, but when I was on I teamed with another outfitter (Snargle) and easily joined a mid-sized squad, and fought in pitched battles for the 3 hours I was on. Johari was at 2 dots for pop. which is good enough for finding some great battles in a short time.

3. I’m a BF1942 super whore, and I’m a PS fanboi too, and in my experience these games are apples and oranges. I love PS for 3 major reasons: working and communicating in squads, a sense of environment and story, and major battles (50+ people). BF1942 has none of these. How often do you talk in BF? Do you ever? BF has teams, but that mostly means you don’t have to shoot half the people. PS has teamwork and great grouping mechanics. The maps in BF are great, but they don’t hold the same feel of roaming an entire island filled with bases, towers, and cool landscapes.

4. No one uses vehicles??? Its what I DO. I have Sund for moving people and Enforcer for doing battle. The enforcer is a blast to drive, especially if I can get the gunner to look forward so that we’re looking at the same thing at the same time. And regardless of who uses them, to say that there are too many is just silly. What kind of statement is that?? This game needs way more vehicles. Variety is the spice of life!

5. As to the NC balancing, well, I can’t disagree because thats all I play (since beta) and we’re pretty effective. Maybe the other sides are frustrated, I just don’t know.

-proud to be a fanboi

I played TR in beta, and I didn’t really have issues with feeling NC was overpowered then… but then again I mostly ran a dual cycler MAX…

I like the game too but I share some of the concerns.

As for price, I don’ think SOE has much choice. If they price PS lower than EQ, et al, it becomes a “budget” game like Tanarus, Infantry, etc. and will be seen I’m afraid as a lesser stablemate. This could have been avoided way back when by a publicity push to establish PS more as a shooter than as an MMOG, but they chose this route and are now stuck with it.

Empire balance issues are way overblown I think. Just my opinion, but I’ve played mostly Vanu since exclusive beta. Vanu, the empire with the slogan “Technology = Might (be able to loot a JackHammer)” Even so, especially after the pulsar upgrade, I’ve always been effective with the barneys. There are ways to kill anything in the game, including surge-using JH fools. Early on it was the Cycler whores, and the Pounder and DC MAXes. Strikers too, plus the NC Phoenix, have all come in for fire. (The only Vanu weapon that gets ragged on really is the LagRider, and sometimes the Lancer aka Sniper Rifle of Doom). The point is though that despite all this the team percentages seem to stay pretty similar. About a third each. In combat it gets frustrating any time you are killed over and over again. But having been on both sides of that–killer and killee–I don’t think it’s empire specific.

Variety is a real problem I agree. There’s a ton of cool locations for fighting, but few of them get used. Bridges, valleys, chokepoints, ridgelines–unless they are right by a tower/base they are simply places you see on the way to the tower or base. I have some ideas, as I’m sure everyone else does, to alleviate this issue, but we’ll have to see what happens. And the bases themselves are boring, being bland masses of FutureConcrete with no nifty nooks and crannies. There are things in the works to help that too I understand, but right now they are pretty nondescript. Weapon and vehicle mixes are pretty good; unlike Tom I see scads of Enforcers and Deliverers and Harassers, and especially Sunderers. But until combat is diversified from base fights we won’t see that many of these in combat, but only as transport.

Pointlessness is another issue. While you can argue with a degree of accuracy that the combat is the point, there is a certain sense of “Groundhog Day” here carried over from MMORPGs. There, no matter how many times you kill Foozle for the Claptrap of Destiny, there’s always another Foozle spawning with another Claptrap, so things never change. Ditto for PS, where you lock a continent one day and it’s unlocked twenty minutes later. The saving grace for an RPG though is intense (and IMO grotesquelly elongated and anal) character building. In PS you have a rudimentary experience system with minimal benefits. Whereas in EQ or DAoC the repetition is mitigated by the cool things your character is gaining, in PS there is little to disguise the essentially nihilistic pointlessness of it all. It’s like Valhalla–we’re all immortal warriors reborn constantly to fight and fight and die and die, ad nauseum.

Right now I can deal with the negatives (and the bugs, aieee, the bugs) because it’s fun to fight in mass numbers. But SOE has to add stuff to the mix–and more than just a dune buggy with one moving wheel and a poorly thought out bomber.

That made me laugh out loud at work this morning. Thank you for that. :)

I’d like to start a petition for the main gun turrret to be removed from MagRiders, they’re not used anyways. :)