[Megathread] Planetside 2

[Punxi]

Didn't intend on speaking of it especially specifics of any kind, if they take action over that comment then so be it.

[A Day to Remember]

Didn't intend on speaking of it especially specifics of any kind, if they take action over that comment then so be it.

Im certain they wont, but just a friendly warning, the last thing you want is to lose access to the beta.

[Trakanonn]

Little late to the thread, but I am very skeptical if SOE is making and running this game. I don't know who here plays SOE games, but I have for 10 years and they are absolutely horrible at customer service, communicating to their customers, updating their products, responding to concerns, etc. SOE has literally let bugs go untouched for 10+ years in their games. They are a very poorly rated company and you will bang your head in at what they try to pull in Free-To-Play.

To put it bluntly, if you think this game is anywhere close to being freetoplay you are mistaken and will find out just how bad your restrictions are within the first week. Note that I am basing this off other f2p games of theirs.. they are NOT playable, they are simply a masked free-trial.

[Toxigen]

Little late to the thread, but I am very skeptical if SOE is making and running this game. I don't know who here plays SOE games, but I have for 10 years and they are absolutely horrible at customer service, communicating to their customers, updating their products, responding to concerns, etc. SOE has literally let bugs go untouched for 10+ years in their games. They are a very poorly rated company and you will bang your head in at what they try to pull in Free-To-Play.

To put it bluntly, if you think this game is anywhere close to being freetoplay you are mistaken and will find out just how bad your restrictions are within the first week. Note that I am basing this off other f2p games of theirs.. they are NOT playable, they are simply a masked free-trial.

So far, what is available to buy w/ RL cash are implants that provide XP / resource boosts.

They've sworn up and down that you will not need RL money to have access to the best things in game.

SOE did Planetside 1 - which is in my top 3 MMOs of all time (thanks to my outfit, mainly).

[Trakanonn]

So far, what is available to buy w/ RL cash are implants that provide XP / resource boosts.

They've sworn up and down that you will not need RL money to have access to the best things in game.

SOE did Planetside 1 - which is in my top 3 MMOs of all time (thanks to my outfit, mainly).

Their latest slogan is "Free to Play - Your Way." But the sad truth is free to play is the equivalent of going to a ballpark with a blindfold on. They need to make profits and their paid services must become more and more enticing and "must-have." I certainly hope they change their FreeToPlay methods in Planetside 2.. But this is Sony Online Entertainment we are talking about. I've dealt with them for far too long to have my hopes high on free to play.

[Edge-]

Their latest slogan is "Free to Play - Your Way." But the sad truth is free to play is the equivalent of going to a ballpark with a blindfold on. They need to make profits and their paid services must become more and more enticing and "must-have." I certainly hope they change their FreeToPlay methods in Planetside 2.. But this is Sony Online Entertainment we are talking about. I've dealt with them for far too long to have my hopes high on free to play.

Free to play is not like that at all. There are plenty of companies that have great free to play models that don't try and don't punish free player or players who pay money.

SoE does have a pretty terrible job of monetizing their games, punishing the hell out of free players. EQ1, EQ2 and Vanguard are all TERRIBLY gated for free players, and it's actually bad enough that I won't give them money for the things I actually want in those games because I don't want to support that model. They've done a great job with DCUO though, hopefully they use that model moving foward.

[Profyrion]

Sony is very good at monetizing content. I trust that they will find every possible way to squeeze a dime out of players. A little healthy skepticism isn't uncalled-for.

[Toxigen]

The proposed F2P model for Planetside 2 doesn't look nearly as restrictive as EQ2 and the like.

EQ/EQ2:
-Limited characters, limited class/race combos, limited spells, limited gold, limited equipment.

PS2:
-Access everything, paying gets you faster exp/immediate upgrades.

Planetside is all about mass participation, if you don't have a lot of players it simply doesn't work. You can say this about any MMO, but PS2 is on another level. What's the most players you interact with at any one time on WoW? 24 (Raids) 79 (AV/IoC) 199 (Full WG/TB, which basically never happens). On PS2 you're talking about 2000 players per continent, so you ought to be getting battles with 500+ per side.

PS2 needs mass participation, which is why F2P is needed but a restrictive model is a bad idea. If PS2 lives up to my hopes and expectations I will probably buy some stuff even if I don't really need it.

P.S. The great thing about F2P is that if you aren't sure if its going to be too restrictive, you can always find out and it wont cost you a penny! Its much better than paying $60 for a game only to find out the DLC is pretty much required to be competitive.

From what I understand, it will be a lot like League of Legends. You buy the XP/resource gaining bonuses...dunno if they'll have skins or anything...but you'll be purchasing things that do not change the current effectiveness of your character.

That's the thing that worries me about the success of PS2. You need crazy-large server populations to make the game fun. When PS1 started dying...it ended up being the same 3 outfits fighting one another with some non-factor stragglers running around.

Let's just hope launch is a big success.

[Deleted]

Anyone know when the people that got their beta key from the magazine will be allowed to get into the beta??

[Ighox]

Anyone know when the people that got their beta key from the magazine will be allowed to get into the beta??

In a few weeks, PS1 vets wave is scheduled for ~monday, the wave after that will be pcgamer/twitter.

[Deleted]

My guess is that PS2 will be much like Tribes Ascend. You can get almost anything in the game (except some skins and voices) by using your ingame XP, but without a paying membership it will take you forever to get that XP. You will most likely also have some form of ingame currency you can buy for real money that you can buy your self shortcuts.

[AdrianCC100]

By the time us twitter user are allowed into beta, Guild Wars 2 will have been released already. Oh well. I was really hoping to get in before the 25th. I'll just wait until PS2 is actually released.

[Deleted]

i really wanna try out planetside 2. I really liked the soundtrack and atmosphere of the first one.

[A Day to Remember]

The thing is, the Planetside Devs wont allow the game to become like those other F2P + P2P games. They are serious about this game and want it to be absolutely perfect, and they are making it for themselves AND the players. This game will not be pay to win, if you are going to compare the model to anything, id say compare it to Blacklight: Retribution, only without fire ammo because thats OP as fuck. I believe they said Station Cash can ONLY be used to buy cosmetic things and the various boosts they have available.

[Lysah]

I trust SOE. Let's be honest, Planetside is pretty much the only MMOFPS worth talking about, the first one was/is and the second one will be the same. When you have pretty much zero competition for the entire genre you can't really afford to be screwy with f2p models. I trust that they will keep the f2p model fair for the free players because they don't want to alienate their market when they are in a great place to lock in pretty much any FPS/MMO lover.

Especially when you consider similar genre games like Firefall will be so easy for people to switch to should they screw it up, I believe they as a company are smart enough to realize they will do a lot better if they make PS2 highly accessible. Of course, companies have screwed up in the past...but, usually those games were RPGs/etc that already had a lot of competition.

[A Day to Remember]

Planetside 2 has three fundamental types of items. Power adding items: [These are] items such as grenades, med kits, certain types of implants (like a run speed booster); these items fundamentally alter player power and are acquired exclusively with resources earned in game. Playstyle items: These are sidegrades for vehicles and weapons, these switch up playstyle, and as much as possible are balanced against one another to not add absolute power. These are available for resources earned in game or Station Cash. Non-gameplay affecting items: [These are] things like cosmetic skins, resource or XP boosts, etc. These don't have any impact on moment-to-moment gameplay, and therefore player power, and are available for Station Cash.

So as you can see, anything that gives any gameplay impact of any kind is always going to be available through gameplay. You wont be able to unlock a gameplay affecting item exclusively for Station Cash, there will be an in-game acquisition path as well, you're just bypassing (or short-cutting) it by using Station Cash.

Additionally, none of our item sidegrades really give a discrete power advantage, and those items which do (such as grenades, etc.) are available exclusively for in-game resources. So, while you can unlock different playstyle choices with Station Cash, you're not really buying an advantage overall, you're just unlocking different situational breadth.

Thats a quote from Matt Higby about how things will be acquired, they dont want to mess this game up, they expect it to be around for a while.

[Ighox]

Little late to the thread, but I am very skeptical if SOE is making and running this game. I don't know who here plays SOE games, but I have for 10 years and they are absolutely horrible at customer service, communicating to their customers, updating their products, responding to concerns, etc. SOE has literally let bugs go untouched for 10+ years in their games. They are a very poorly rated company and you will bang your head in at what they try to pull in Free-To-Play.

To put it bluntly, if you think this game is anywhere close to being freetoplay you are mistaken and will find out just how bad your restrictions are within the first week. Note that I am basing this off other f2p games of theirs.. they are NOT playable, they are simply a masked free-trial.

They do make good games though, but they make a lot of retarded decisions and like once a year they make a REALLY FUCKING RETARDED decision and if by chance something doesn't happen then they solve that empty hole by getting hacked, so just because their "plan" now sounds good on paper it might not last.
Maybe 9th time is the charm and they finally get everything right but the sad part is that I probably won't even play it since I'm EU and we'll need a ProSiebenSat1 account to play and I really dislike them for about 20 different reasons.

[Deleted]

Planetside 2 has three fundamental types of items. Power adding items: [These are] items such as grenades, med kits, certain types of implants (like a run speed booster); these items fundamentally alter player power and are acquired exclusively with resources earned in game. Playstyle items: These are sidegrades for vehicles and weapons, these switch up playstyle, and as much as possible are balanced against one another to not add absolute power. These are available for resources earned in game or Station Cash. Non-gameplay affecting items: [These are] things like cosmetic skins, resource or XP boosts, etc. These don't have any impact on moment-to-moment gameplay, and therefore player power, and are available for Station Cash.

So as you can see, anything that gives any gameplay impact of any kind is always going to be available through gameplay. You wont be able to unlock a gameplay affecting item exclusively for Station Cash, there will be an in-game acquisition path as well, you're just bypassing (or short-cutting) it by using Station Cash.

Additionally, none of our item sidegrades really give a discrete power advantage, and those items which do (such as grenades, etc.) are available exclusively for in-game resources. So, while you can unlock different playstyle choices with Station Cash, you're not really buying an advantage overall, you're just unlocking different situational breadth.

Thats a quote from Matt Higby about how things will be acquired, they dont want to mess this game up, they expect it to be around for a while.

sounds ideal, hopefully they wont break their word.

I trust SOE. Let's be honest, Planetside is pretty much the only MMOFPS worth talking about, the first one was/is and the second one will be the same. When you have pretty much zero competition for the entire genre you can't really afford to be screwy with f2p models. I trust that they will keep the f2p model fair for the free players because they don't want to alienate their market when they are in a great place to lock in pretty much any FPS/MMO lover.

Especially when you consider similar genre games like Firefall will be so easy for people to switch to should they screw it up, I believe they as a company are smart enough to realize they will do a lot better if they make PS2 highly accessible. Of course, companies have screwed up in the past...but, usually those games were RPGs/etc that already had a lot of competition.

offtopic: why aren't you a mod anymore?

[Nirawen]

They do make good games though, but they make a lot of retarded decisions and like once a year they make a REALLY FUCKING RETARDED decision

Sacking the original lead developer and hiring a new one who's first decision was to add BFR's in Planetside springs to mind .

[Toxigen]

It saddens me to see this thread on page 3. Hopefully the population here at MMO-C isn't representative of the average MMO gamer out there...otherwise, PS2 is in trouble.