Planetside 2

[01101010]

Protip: When hotdropping, be prepared to shoot as soon as you land. 

Learning curve is a tad steep and dear god cert points as a light assault flow like slate... but it's pretty fun flying around shooting people from above. Z-axis is the forgotten area in the game so far.

[Sky]

So far every hot drop has been in the middle of a large enemy force. Hotdrop = exp pinatas for the enemy.

Re: central HUD. Yes, I've set that option. The chat right now is unusable because it's too small. Nor can I really make out anyone's names. I saw a config file but changing the font size in there didn't do anything. I like the little icons for things, but it would be nice if they could be bumped up just a bit in proximity.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hardest thing right now is getting people to use Light Assault on a Tech Plant. Apparently dieing to the grinder at the back doors is preferable to flying over the shield walls to the objective.

Besides that, I feel Tech plants are possibly the worst layout there are. Not sure why there are zero sub-objectives outside the main compound.

[Miasma]

I guess there is double station cash if you buy some today, for black Friday, so if you were thinking of buying some sony bucks now would be a good time.

If you bought some at any point other than today, yes, you should be very pissed off.

[Malakili]

Great three faction fight at Tawrich Tech Plant on Indar (US East - Waterson), just played there for nearly 2 hours straight with constant fighting.  VS defending, TR and NC trying to push in.  Good stuff.   That is the game at its best.

Nonetheless, when things go bad, they certainly do go bad.  It is easy for things to get out of hand and for one faction to totally roll for a while.  I'll be interested to see if they do anything to balance this out.

[Sky]

I saw a config file but changing the font size in there didn't do anything.

Scratch that, I guess it took a few reboots to work. Today my FONT IS 30 POINT. Ok, I'll dial that back.

Unfortunately, it's only the chat box text that is affected, and not even the chat entry (typoes away!). But it's a start.

[Ulysees]

To those guys having a hard time play heavy assault as your first charachter while you learn the ropes. Whenever you get in a fight press F - it activates your resistance field which absorbs extra damage which while weak without being invested in is still better than not having anything. All heavy assault stock guns are decent but now the suck part. You need to invest 230 certs into pretty much any weapon to make them properly usable. 30 certs for a sight of some kind (and if you are HA you probably want a reflex and then the NV/IR for night time fighting) 100 certs for the forward grip, this greatly reduces horizontal recoil and then another 100 certs for a compensator, this greatly reduces vertical recoil. You will suck until you have these upgrades on any weapon that allows them even if you buy the supposedly better sidegrades with station cash. Cert gain if you lone wolf is slow, very slow so look in the squad screen for a squad that is advertising teamplay with voice, join it and even if you don't like using voice just say your mic is shit but you will listen to and follow orders, teamplay is where this game really takes off.

If you do find you like it join an outfit and increase the fun and cert gain by about 10 times. When i first got into beta I was lucky to make 10 certs a night lone wolfing. Then I joined a squad and had a blast then I joined my outfit and now I make between 100-150 certs a night and that is with a KDR of 0.5 (I die twice as much as I kill) so I am not good at this game by any degree but if you like organised tactical shooters then there are groups of people out there currently actively recruiting players like you. If you don't like playing as part of a large team I don't think you will get much out of this game tbh because it's strengths are definately not letting you be Johnny Rambo.

[01101010]

To those guys having a hard time play heavy assault as your first charachter while you learn the ropes. Whenever you get in a fight press F - it activates your resistance field which absorbs extra damage which while weak without being invested in is still better than not having anything. All heavy assault stock guns are decent but now the suck part. You need to invest 230 certs into pretty much any weapon to make them properly usable. 30 certs for a sight of some kind (and if you are HA you probably want a reflex and then the NV/IR for night time fighting) 100 certs for the forward grip, this greatly reduces horizontal recoil and then another 100 certs for a compensator, this greatly reduces vertical recoil. You will suck until you have these upgrades on any weapon that allows them even if you buy the supposedly better sidegrades with station cash. Cert gain if you lone wolf is slow, very slow so look in the squad screen for a squad that is advertising teamplay with voice, join it and even if you don't like using voice just say your mic is shit but you will listen to and follow orders, teamplay is where this game really takes off.

If you do find you like it join an outfit and increase the fun and cert gain by about 10 times. When i first got into beta I was lucky to make 10 certs a night lone wolfing. Then I joined a squad and had a blast then I joined my outfit and now I make between 100-150 certs a night and that is with a KDR of 0.5 (I die twice as much as I kill) so I am not good at this game by any degree but if you like organised tactical shooters then there are groups of people out there currently actively recruiting players like you. If you don't like playing as part of a large team I don't think you will get much out of this game tbh because it's strengths are definately not letting you be Johnny Rambo.

Meh. Light assault gun is fine as it is and I have very little problem with downing 1-2 people at a time. I invested my scant cert points in boosting health and shield regen. I'll dump the rest into the gun at some point. HA? no thanks   

[Falconeer]

Reflex sight changes everything, this is the most important piece of advice you can get, as Ulysses said.

High Speed ammo on the other hand? Can't really feel any benefit so far, but let me know if any of you likes it. And they are 100 certs. Yikes.

[Sky]

HA isn't all that tough, I rather like it. I haven't certed up my weapon yet and I'm at something like 19/31 k/d..maybe a bit more d if it counts suicides because I was setting up my gamepad for aircraft.

Of course, I should've started on the big planes and flew the reaper into combat. Loliberator big old whale. Still, it was nice to get back into the cockpit for a bit. I used to fly for my BF1942 clan and was playing PS1 around the same time, so I used to be pretty good in the cockpit. I mostly like dogfighting, flying close to the landscape, last second vertical kick to avoid hills etc.

WAP got me into the Las Gallinas Malas. I know he said they use TS3, but I like the ingame option for proximity voice. "Ja, I am thankful....FOR BULLETS!"

[Malakili]

I can not fly anything more than 20 feet without crashing into the ground in this game.

[Bzalthek]

I can't get more than 20 feet from a spawn point without some mysterious enemy killing me.  I'm so bad at this shit.  It feels like a battle of methed up explosive lemmings.

[Zetor]

So far my deaths are about 40% planes (and tanks to a lesser extent), 20% snipers, 20% grenade or similar AOE death from nowhere, 10% from guys I can see 2-shotting me, and 10% someone from my own team running me over in a buggy while I'm rezzing someone else ( ). Probably doing it wrong, though!

[Threash]

I've ran over so many people i've quit using tanks.  I am so freaking horrible at this game! Seeing people flying around makes me jealous though.

[Sky]

Use a 360 controller. I can screenshot my mappings if it would help. Still, even with a mapped control, she's a fickle bitch. And I'm a looong way from combat ready. But I can maneuver pretty well and hug the ground, etc. So it's a start.

Most of my deaths are from charging straight into enemy fire and I should know better; with a nice smattering of losing a shootout and getting shot in the back during a shootout.

[Malakili]

I'm doing a lot better with my reflex sight since I found out there is a zoomed mouse sensitivity setting. 

[Sky]

For a Heavy Assault with a GD22S, which kind of reflex sight? A 1x Teklyte Reflex or a 2x GD ReflexR?

[Tale]

Last night I was a total noob (but I remembered things from PS1). Here are some impressions I posted for my guild, who are playing TSW not this. Feel free to correct me on anything.

Finally got around to playing this last night (purple team, Aussie server). It's very good! I might be hooked.

One warning: you die HEAPS as a newbie on free-to-play. I died 17 times before my first kill and by the end of my experimenting I was at 61 deaths, 10 kills.

Some things I started to understand:
- It's free-to-play but subscribers aka "premium members" progress faster (typical MMO $14.99/month etc).

- There are levels (called battle rank), but it's all about cert points (which are like AA). There are endless things to spend cert points on for every class, piece of equipment, vehicle, etc. Plus you can unlock new equipment, and those have their own certs. Looking at just one rifle, I could spend all my time upgrading it.

- It'll be a ridiculous cash cow. Smed's RMT dream, taking after Free Realms. Need that rifle upgrade? Buy it with cert points you earn by playing, or just pay Station Cash. And yet... the fact you're probably fighting people who dropped $$ really doesn't take away the fun. Bastards.

- Healing/rezzing or resupplying/repairing by spawning as Medic or Engineer probably gains you the most cert points. But you'll want to run around shooting for a bit first.

- There are two other continents, not just the one you start on.

- I need a better PC.

- I am addicted to the Tribes-style jetpack worn by Light Armour soldiers.

But really, I still know nothing compared to what there is to know. Tactics for one thing... OMG what could be done with an organised mix of classes and vehicles, where everybody knew how to play their role.

[tmp]

Hm, we're (NC on Briggs) currently getting curb-stomped by both TR and VS so most of my gaming is desperate defense of the spawn point while heavy tanks circle outside. So guess that colors things.

I had some of that today, and it was glorious, xp-wise. Almost felt like fighting people in PvE over NPC spawns (where the spawn is freshly killed guy, and you are trying to apply your heal tool on them before the other vultures medics)

Afterwards i got a Sunderer parked nicely outside enemy base and it sat there for about an hour with constant stream of cannon fodder pouring out of it. XP notification never disappeared from the screen even for a second.

120+ certs in one day and going from rank 6 to 10, and that's with hardly killing anyone. My k/d ratio is too shameful to mention  

edit: game client has some nasty performance issues, though. I get decent framerate with shadows set to low (50 fps or so) but that without fail takes a nosedive in just couple hours to single digits and freezes, until i restart it. Possibly some nasty memory leak somewhere, or who knows.

[Malakili]

I'm concerned about the lack of attrition.  There is very little way to actually stall out an attack, nor is there any way for a smaller force to slowly wear down a bigger force by being efficient.  I come from a WW2 Online background, not as much a Planetside background, and this concerns me greatly.  I know PS2 isn't WW2O, it is much faster paced, things can change hands 50 times a day or whatever (in WW2O some towns might change hands once the entire campaign), but it seems like there is very little strategy involved right now.  I was hoping for perpetual war, but I am getting a perpetual battle.  The gameplay is fun, and the battles are fun.  But I am worried about the seeming lack of strategy so far.

Just to explain for those not familiar: In WW2O there were armies on the map and they supplied their town city/adjacent cities.  But they were limited - you literally could run out of stuff to spawn (even infantry), and so it was possible for a well played defense to stall out an attack by being very efficient, to the point where the attackers would have to either bring new armies in (and thus probably leaving another part of the map less defender or able to attack) or simply call off the attack and come back tomorrow (or later). 

[Surlyboi]

For a Heavy Assault with a GD22S, which kind of reflex sight? A 1x Teklyte Reflex or a 2x GD ReflexR?

With the heavy, I find the 1x Teklyte is the way to go, as you really aren't gonna hit shit at a distance and the almost instant target acquisition when pulling to sights is great.

[Sky]

Thanks. I'm slowly learning my way around things, and while the abundant customization options are awesome it would be nice if there were a bit more feedback. Like "what will this camo look like on my dude/ride?" Happy to have some play money to blow in the shop, but I'd rather not waste it on crappy camo.

I did use some of it to unlock the Hawk and Crow for HA. Got a couple kills and a bunch of assists on a ferocious stalemate battle and then switched to engy for a bit, ammo packs were a nice trickle. Between them, manning some second guns on tanks and running a lightning for a bit I covered most of BR4, should hit 5 tonight pretty quick.

[Falconeer]

For a Heavy Assault with a GD22S, which kind of reflex sight? A 1x Teklyte Reflex or a 2x GD ReflexR?

2X if you ask me. I love it. It makes you see everything better without messing it up by zooming too much. Made the game simply more fun. Mind, as a Heavy Assault I use the EM6, but the sight is the same, methinks.

[Surlyboi]

At BR 8, now mostly from popping the usual array of shitty enemy snipers in the face while they were hanging out on ridges looking for targets.

[Kageru]

BR10... mostly from repairing turrets on the biodome. It would be nice if those turrets were worth spit, and not the first thing popped by passing vehicles, but oh well.

I must admit I wish you could just buy some certs. I don't want to sub but if it was a couple of 100 certs to get started I'd pay for that.

[Sky]

Nice streak I was on, only died once to an enemy in an hour of playing (during combat, half HA half Engy). But I died 4 times to NC bros I like the pie chart, equal slices of dying to TR and NC...

[WayAbvPar]

BR 14 here, mostly because I have put something like 23 hours into it already. Having premium + Founder's doesn't hurt either (+60% XP). I might have to try the 360 controller or my joystick..I can't fly for shit with m +kb. Have wasted some cert buys...anti-tank mines are extremely situational, so buyer beware there. It is pretty sweet when you blow the shit out of a tank or Sunderer full of bad guys though =)

Just unlocked sticky grenades too. Not sure how best to apply them just yet, but they sure look funny when they just STOP instead of bouncing.

I can't get the in game comms working for whatever reason. Can't hear, can't talk, etc. When I am playing, I am on the Evil Chickens TS server- we have a PS2 room set aside. Ping me or Engels in game for the specs. I will try to remember to set it in the outfit info tomorrow too. Voice comms make it so much more fun, as well as making us a lot more effective as a group. If we can get a full squad together we could really get some shit done. Or just laugh at each other as we die hilariously.

[Mrbloodworth]

All the camouflage:

• Desert Camouflage
  
• Forest Camouflage
  
• Snow Camouflage
  
• Vanu Sovereignty Camouflage
  
• New Conglomerate Camouflage
  
• Terran Republic Camouflage
  

   

    Hello Everyone,

    I want to bring you up to speed on some of the larger scale service impacting things we are working on. This is by no means a comprehensive list. We're seeing massive numbers, and with those numbers we are stressing the servers in big ways. Here are the major things we are working on.

    1. Overall Server issues - This is hitting Miller and Woodman the biggest but many other servers as well - We were able to fix an issue that was causing a lot of problems under very heavy load. This impacted all the servers in some fashion. We literally just fixed this.

    2. Login queue stuck at 0 or doesn't move - this issue is fixed and was actually caused by #1 above. Basically the servers were in some cases getting bogged down. It's fixed now.

    3. Briggs server - The issue with it centers around the network connection between this world and our central servers in the US. We have not resolved the issue yet and continue to work on it. They are very tricky and a lot of them were issues with the data center we are in and getting the network traffic shaped properly and utilizing all the available bandwidth. Our other data centers around the world have been up and running for many years. This is a new one and we're still shaking out the issues with it. Regarding lost boosts - once we're back up we'll take care of restoring everyone's boosts and anything else that got lost. This will likely happen early next week. We apologize for the issues and want to assure our Australian players we value you and this is a top priority.

    4. Boosts vanishing - in some cases if you trialed a weapon and had a boost at the same time it would disappear when the trial ran up. We're working on a fix for this asap. Monday at the latest. We will absolutely be adding back boosts for anyone impacted. Again, this will occur early next week.

    5. Bad Warping on Miller - this was a bad network port on the Miller server. It's corrected now.

    6. People with Patching issues / patcher crashes - we resolved the patcher crashing issue. There are a small subset of people who still crash in the patcher. We're investigating this. The number of people this is impacting is very small but it's also very real and important to us.

    7. Client crashes - we have massively reduced the number of crashes - we know that because we have crash logs reported to our server. Some people still crash. We're working tirelessly on these crashes.

    I realize there are a bunch of other issues you're going to ask about. We know about them too. We're just focusing on the big stuff first to make sure everyone is in and playing. Our goal is to be very stable by this weekend and use the next week or two to kill any other bugs we're seeing.

    We will keep you updated frequently. I urge you to watch my twitter feed @j_smedley - I'm doing my best to personally tweet anything we find. We'll also post in here obviously.

    (update - Briggs is still having problems - we are working on it hard)

    Smed

[Sky]

I can't get the in game comms working for whatever reason. Can't hear, can't talk, etc.  

That's funny. I was in Ahnold mode the short time we were in proximity. I love proximity chat. Nononononononononononononononononono....

I should get the EC infoes since I have the headset, err, set up.

Thanks for the advice on the scopes. I do like the 1x, just gives a nice dot without zoom disorientation, because I'm mostly a close to medium quarters skirmisher. Now 1/5 of the way to the handle thingy

fake edit: oo, thanks BW!

[Mrbloodworth]

Np, Also, for the curious. PS2 is number 8 on steam for the most played titles.

[Nebu]

As a pvp enthusiast, I'm tempted to play this.  As someone that never enjoyed PS1, I'm hesitant to act on my temptation. 

I'll keep watching this thread.

[5150]

I guess there is double station cash if you buy some today, for black Friday, so if you were thinking of buying some sony bucks now would be a good time.

If you bought some at any point other than today, yes, you should be very pissed off.

Whats worth getting? (or can you get it all through normal gameplay)

I looked at the weapon list during beta and the list seemed to contain lots of very similar weapons and was hugely confusing

[Engels]

As a pvp enthusiast, I'm tempted to play this.  As someone that never enjoyed PS1, I'm hesitant to act on my temptation. 

I'll keep watching this thread.

You know its a free download, right? No need to be the coy girl at the high school dance.

[Sky]

Got in a couple good firefights and caps and decided to grab the AMS cert. Now it seems everyone is dropping AMS all over, heh. Still, handy to set up a spawn wherever I want one.

Then hit a nest of what seemed to be a dozen TR medics holding a point and just called it a day.

Yes, Nebs. Grab it off Steam and just check it out. Whip that skirt right off!

[Jobu]

I guess there is double station cash if you buy some today, for black Friday, so if you were thinking of buying some sony bucks now would be a good time.

If you bought some at any point other than today, yes, you should be very pissed off.

Whats worth getting? (or can you get it all through normal gameplay)

I looked at the weapon list during beta and the list seemed to contain lots of very similar weapons and was hugely confusing

Both of the lock-on missile launchers (for either air or land vehicles) for the Heavy Assault are pretty nice. Helps you sit in the back of the zerg and pick off tanks or airplanes and still contribute while you get your bearings. Kitting our your MAX to have both arms of the weapon you like can be nice, if you play MAX with any regularity. And like I mentioned previously, the XP boost is really handy. The XP boost is the only thing I mentioned that requires station cash. But the cert cost of the weapons is like 500-1000 certs, so it's definitely better to buy them straight up, IMO.