Planetside 2

[Jimbo]

I have a beta key too, so  pm me and I'll send it in the morning when I get off work.

[Mrbloodworth]

Everyone who pre-ordered will get one (the 'Alpha Squad' folks). So don't worry about availability, it's basically just become an open beta.

Ah, that explains why I did not get one. Sucks, I was going to invite a friend.

[Bann]

Im interested in checking this out, if someone has a key burning a hole in their email.

[Surlyboi]

I've got a spare key. PM me for it.

[5150]

Are there still US and Euro servers or is everyone on the same server now?

I'm slightly concerned about getting Alpha and then losing stuff with the impending Euro spin off of all Sony's Euro services to ProSiebenSat.1 http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=513482

[Falconeer]

There is going to be Euro servers. There's already Euro servers in the beta.

About ProBienSat.1 (?!?), they specifically say stuff you purchase with Alpha-Squad pack will be converted to that service at launch, but the servers are already there.

[cironian]

From what I could find, their communications on this are really mixed up. While SOE people have posted in forums that they canned any plans for region locking on the US/Euro servers, they are still sending out mass mails which explicitly state that the servers will be region locked.

[Goreschach]

This one looks like it might be good, but I'm not sold yet.

If anyone gets a spare key, I'm up for trying it.

[Kageru]

It's going to be f2p right? I can wait.

And also see if they go through with having Australian friendly servers.

[Sky]

If anyone gets a spare key, I'm up for trying it.

Use pms.

[Surlyboi]

Key's gone. Congrats.

[Mrbloodworth]

All they spare keys gone?

Also, those that picked up Alpha Squad, When you hit Continue, after submitting your CC info and such. Did it just dump you in the your account page with no confirmation of any kind?

I also have not received an E-mail.

NVM, I Am retarded. I only updated my payment options, not bought the Alpha squad.

[Sky]

I have a key, waiting for a pm to take it.

Won't be able to play until Monday at the soonest, bulb went in my tv :(

[Mrbloodworth]

Took about 5 days to get your spare key from date of buying Alpha Squad, yes?

[Falconeer]

I got my Alpha Squad 5 days ago, and no buddy key yet. 

[Trippy]

First impressions after playing it for a few hours yesterday thanks to Jimbo.

* It's good to see Vanu is still underrepresented

* TR is still facist scum

* Where's my N00bhammer?

* The game still devolves into 2 on 1s (TR & Vanu vs. NC on West 1 yesterday), not that I thought SOE would actually figure out how to fix that problem

* Basic shooter mechanics are much improved though there's something funky about the mouse code which messes up the desktop mouse when switched out of the game on my system.

* It's way too easy to cap things now, even with multiple CP locations in the larger bases. One exception that I saw being that lab near the middle of the map with the 360 degree shields on the ground level where you have go up to attack the base.

* The game is way too dumbed down now.

* The HUD labels are too fucking small.

* Having to man the Engineer turret is just stupid beyond belief given how easy it is to be killed behind one -- i.e. it doesn't seem to afford any protection at all. Also how you deploy it is very confusing cause you have to deploy twice? (Once for the "shield" that doesn't do anything apparently and once for the gun itself).

* Tank drivers controlling the main gun is also stupid.

* I hate having classes, especially given how narrow they are. In Tribes: Ascend I can kind of understand them doing it since they are going for an eSports model so that makes things easier to balance for competitive play but PS2 has no such excuse. They took away my ANT and my AMS and now I can't even heal and repair with the same class. That's fucked up.

* I hate how games like Tribes: Ascend (Blood Eagle skins) and PlanetSide 2 have "devolved" armor in Sci-Fi games to be ever more flimsy than what soldiers today wear. Yes I know you have shields in PS2 but I really hate the look of running around in cloth "armor" unless I'm in a Max in a Sci-Fi shooter game.

* The game still feels suitably epic even with the relatively sparse populations currently.

* Building textures are pretty weak. First time I logged in I thought I was playing a game from mid 2000s or my graphic settings were wrong. Outside looks a lot better, though.

So they've kept the scale of PS1 (and even made it bigger in some ways) and improved the shooting mechanics but got rid of almost all the other things that made PS1 more interesting than your standard run and gun shooter with vehicles.

[01101010]

First impressions after playing it for a few hours yesterday thanks to Jimbo.

* It's good to see Vanu is still underrepresented

* TR is still facist scum

* Where's my N00bhammer?

* The game still devolves into 2 on 1s (TR & Vanu vs. NC on West 1 yesterday), not that I thought SOE would actually figure out how to fix that problem

* Basic shooter mechanics are much improved though there's something funky about the mouse code which messes up the desktop mouse when switched out of the game on my system.

* It's way too easy to cap things now, even with multiple CP locations in the larger bases. One exception that I saw being that lab near the middle of the map with the 360 degree shields on the ground level where you have go up to attack the base.

* The game is way too dumbed down now.

* The HUD labels are too fucking small.

* Having to man the Engineer turret is just stupid beyond belief given how easy it is to be killed behind one -- i.e. it doesn't seem to afford any protection at all. Also how you deploy it is very confusing cause you have to deploy twice? (Once for the "shield" that doesn't do anything apparently and once for the gun itself).

* Tank drivers controlling the main gun is also stupid.

* I hate having classes, especially given how narrow they are. In Tribes: Ascend I can kind of understand them doing it since they are going for an eSports model so that makes things easier to balance for competitive play but PS2 has no such excuse. They took away my ANT and my AMS and now I can't even heal and repair with the same class. That's fucked up.

* I hate how games like Tribes: Ascend (Blood Eagle skins) and PlanetSide 2 have "devolved" armor in Sci-Fi games to be ever more flimsy than what soldiers today wear. Yes I know you have shields in PS2 but I really hate the look of running around in cloth "armor" unless I'm in a Max in a Sci-Fi shooter game.

* The game still feels suitably epic even with the relatively sparse populations currently.

* Building textures are pretty weak. First time I logged in I thought I was playing a game from mid 2000s or my graphic settings were wrong. Outside looks a lot better, though.

So they've kept the scale of PS1 (and even made it bigger in some ways) and improved the shooting mechanics but got rid of almost all the other things that made PS1 more interesting than your standard run and gun shooter with vehicles.

Thanks for the brief review. 

[Sky]

My key is gone, too. Enjoy!

[kildorn]

You only have to deploy the engineer turret once, it just takes a minute to build itself and isn't really obvious about it. There are some bugs with weapon selection (sometimes I can use number keys to select ammo pack. 90% of the time it doesn't work however and I have to mouse wheel until I get to the pack to toss a new one)

Galaxy spawn point changes need to happen soon, they're too easy to spam repair and too hard to take out. Two galaxies landing in a fortified base can actually breach it via sheer human wave attacks. This compared to how easy it is to destroy spawn beacons when trying to take out a base.

I don't like some of the certs (IRNV is way overpowered because it has nothing to do with IR or NV, it just turns the world white and player objects bright red, I assume the visual effect is not done, because it's hilariously easy to pick out hostiles with it), and 90% of the weapons aren't in yet which makes it hard to feel like you're progressing.


I like the scale and feel, but I also feel like the entire game devolves into who brings the most galaxies to a fight in the current build. Rocket armed aircraft also seem pretty bullshit, considering they can take a cheap cert to become immune to infantry firearms, and at least the vanu rocket launcher can't hit anything moving.

[Jobu]

* Building textures are pretty weak. First time I logged in I thought I was playing a game from mid 2000s or my graphic settings were wrong. Outside looks a lot better, though.

If you're inclined, you can edit the UserOptions.ini file and "hack" the texture quality settings to exceed what is available in the game settings. I believe 0 is "best", but I can't recall exactly. You might be able to squeeze some better stuff out of it.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hi everyone,

Last week in the beta status I specifically referenced that certs were getting closer to their final times. We aren't done yet so don't assume what we have now is final. It may be too slow or fast. still measuring.. You will also notice that offline cert point gain has stopped. That is intentional. We do plan on putting that feature as something you automatically get with a sub and we *may* offer it as something you can purchase as well (it may only last a month btw).

I want to make sure everyone understands our goal with cert points is to get you in the game and playing. Playing will get you enough cert points to advance to whatever your goals are in reasonable time. If you notice we give you almost everything a skill based shooter needs right away. And you specifically will get that for free. Cert point gain is also for free. You will be able to speed it up with XP boosts (XP over time = cert points) and you can get it offline the way I mentioned above.

Also I made it clear in that previous beta status that time invested in this game IS going to matter. Is it going to unbalance it vs. the casual player? No. We've designed the game with that in mind. It does mean the person with more time invested will have more options. But not skill. That's all about the player.

I've been saying for a long time that we plan on having a deep enough cert tree for years of play. About 20% of the certs in the game will have top ends that require a lot of time investment to get. But getting 80% of the way there be painless even for a free player.

We've done our best to make a great game with a very deep certification system that will let you still be advancing years from now with just the stuff we have in the game today. We don't want our system to be as quick as unlocking in MW3 or BF3. That's specifically something we do NOT want. We want this game to have long legs and give you something cool and meaningful when you put the time in.

We also want the more casual player to have options to keep up with the heavier players.

We still have balancing work to do. we expect all the certs to be in the game in the next few weeks.

Thanks

Smed

Hey all -

There are some pretty cool facility changes coming in the next couple weeks that I wanted to tell you guys about.

First of all, you may have noticed that we've changed the way influence works for base capture.

Previously the amount of influence you had on a facility would give you a fixed chunk of capture points. This meant that sometimes you could capture a base by flipping a piece of adjacent territory. While we want the territory control around a base to matter, this sometimes abruptly ended base battles and took the fight out of the hands of the attackers and defenders within the facility - we didn't want that.

With the new system influence now controls the RATE at which you gain tickets from the control points you hold. Now, the more influence you have, the faster the base will capture for you. This way the capture of adjacent territory can meaningfully impact the base capture without taking control of who will win and lose out of the hands of the people fighting in the facility.

These influence changes went up to beta on Wednesday. One thing that we've gotten a lot of feedback on was that with the new system and the current values the bases and especially outposts are being flipped way too fast for there to be any sense of ownership or purpose to defending. We agree. The current timings for a standard outpost and an amp facility on beta right now are:

Amp facilities such as Zurvan go from 100 seconds to secure at 100% influence to 1000 seconds at 0% influence.
Small outposts go from 9 seconds to secure at 100% influence to 90 seconds at 0% influence.

Note: These "Time to secure" is the time that you must hold the control point once it's flipped to owned by your faction.

In an upcoming hotfix we will be adjusting these values to make these hold periods take significantly longer, with the new values it will now be:


Facilities will go from 300 seconds to secure at 100% influence, 600 at 50%, 900 at 33%, and 2700 at 0% influence.
Small outposts go from 60 seconds to secure at 100% influence, 120 at 50%, 180 at 33%, and 540 at 0% influence.

These numbers will continue to adjust while we try to find the sweet spot, but some things to keep in mind with how this system works:

1 - some of these numbers may seem a bit long, but we're considering the influence average for engaging in a base capture to be somewhere between 33-50% to be a 'fair fight', that means that a facility will be 10-15 minutes to secure and a outpost will be 2-3 minutes.
2 - if you've got no fight at the facility and the control console is secure, no one needs to stand there to make the base flip. You can begin repairing base defenses, set up for future assaults, loosen up defenses at your next attacking target, etc.
3 - One of our main goals is to try to encourage people to fight along major front lines while still keeping the door open for dedicated groups to drop behind enemy lines and through a concentrated effort allow them to cut off resources or cause a reaction. Our hope is that the longer capture timers for 0% influence keeps is a deterrent for most people trying to back capture, but leaves the window open for some specialized outfits to be able to do their ninja ops. That being said, for the time being, we're planning on keeping the adjacency requirement intact, with the possibility of opening it up in the near future to see how it plays with the new influence system.

Upcoming changes to base objectives:

Within the next couple weeks we'll be changing the way that sub-objectives in facilities work.

Right now you roll up on a generator and pop a cap or two into it to blow it up. We don't really dig this because it forces you to waste ammo and it also means that 10 guys or a tank can bust down objectives so fast that defenders can't really react.

We're moving over to an interact method to set charges on generators which will have a fixed time before they detonate, we're going to start with around 45 seconds for shield gens and 90 seconds for spawn generators, but this of course is open to adjustment. This will force the attackers to actively defend the sub-objectives once they place the charges, and allow defenders to have a more choices in how they defend bases, rather than just stacking up on the capture consoles.

This method will also allow us to do a better job of communicating to defenders and attackers what the status of the sub-objectives are with voice callouts and visuals such as sirens on the buildings housing the generators.

Strategic importance of facilities

We've also spent a lot of time discussing the strategic importance of facilities on the map, I want to stress that this is something that's only under discussion at this point, but I'd love to hear feedback on it. Currently primary facilities provide fantastic defensive positions, spawn points for vehicles and infantry, exert a lot of influence due to their large region size, and of course give you that delicious, delicious Auraxium. However, they don't add a lot of strategic depth to the fight for the continent. To address this we're planning on adding specific facility benefits to base types, similarly to benefits that facilities granted in PlanetSide.

The current design would mean that facilities that are linked via territory control would apply benefits such as :

Tech Facility - ability to spawn heavy offensive vehicles (MBT, Liberator) at connected facilities, towers.
Biolab - slightly reduced respawn time at connected outposts, facilities, towers
Amp station - reduced vehicle spawn times, enhanced turrets

Moving forward

Our philosophy has always been that the best way to make this game shine is to give players as many possible opportunities to define their own effective tactics and strategies. Solving the problem of "how do we attack this base" or "How do we defend this base" shouldn't be about fighting game mechanics but against other players who are infinitely more interesting and dynamic than the mechanics could ever be. To that end, we want to limit mechanics we implement to the fewest number that can provide sufficient structure for moment-to-moment and strategic gameplay and no more. This is a challenging balance to achieve, but we're committed to getting it right, and with your help we know we can.

I'm excited about seeing how these changes, as well as the ongoing changes to the facility flows that we've been working on will enhance the feel of facility battles. Please continue to help guide us towards getting this area of our game feeling great, we can't get there without your feedback.

Thanks!

-
mh

EDIT: Also, it seems today is patch day.

[Mrbloodworth]

“Initially we thought the Galaxy would make a really great spawn point. People could move it around, they could land it right where they wanted to, they could bring a squad with them and it’d be th place they’d respawn if they were doing field operations.

“And we were right, we were completely right, it works awesome. It works too awesome. It was allowing people to bypass ground base combat. They could just fly a Galaxy to where they wanted to go without having to push through the front line. So it was creating this disconnect between the vehicle gameplay and static defences. You could just go drop a Galaxy at the other side of the base and never have to go through the cool chokepoint that the players created.

Source.

No shit? You don't say? PS1 Vets may have told you this before beta even started.


I personally keep getting this "We are awesome designers, see, we took something that worked, and made it DIFFERENT. DESIGNERS!" There is a lot of "Different for the sake of different" in PS2.

[01101010]

“Initially we thought the Galaxy would make a really great spawn point. People could move it around, they could land it right where they wanted to, they could bring a squad with them and it’d be th place they’d respawn if they were doing field operations.

“And we were right, we were completely right, it works awesome. It works too awesome. It was allowing people to bypass ground base combat. They could just fly a Galaxy to where they wanted to go without having to push through the front line. So it was creating this disconnect between the vehicle gameplay and static defences. You could just go drop a Galaxy at the other side of the base and never have to go through the cool chokepoint that the players created.

Source.

No shit? You don't say? PS1 Vets may have told you this before beta even started.


I personally keep getting this "We are awesome designers, see, we took something that worked, and made it DIFFERENT. DESIGNERS!" There is a lot of "Different for the sake of different" in PS2.

This sounds promising for the return of the god damn AMS. Just mod the bangbus like you did the Gal and remove the spawn capabilities of the Gal. That would start to get me sorta interested in this thing.

[Trippy]

It's amusing how they intentionally left out most of the interesting things from PS1 and just now are slowly realizing that maybe the PS1 devs actually knew what they were doing.

"Hey maybe the main bases should confer some sort of benefit to the side that controls it"

[Mrbloodworth]

Say that on the main forums, and prepair to be inadated with:

"PS1 Failed"
"Your just a bitter Vet"
"PS1 Sucked!"
"Why revisit that failed game!"
" that game was not a success... why repeat that? "

[Trippy]

I understand the need to make a game that's more accessible than it's predecessor. Not everybody wants to play inventory Tetris for hours on end But if you want to keep people playing there's got to be more to the game than what they have now.

[01101010]

I understand the need to make a game that's more accessible than it's predecessor. Not everybody wants to play inventory Tetris for hours on end But if you want to keep people playing there's got to be more to the game than what they have now.

Pish. 1 minichaingun, 2 deci's, 2 med packs with a med gun and an engi gun. /fin.

Oh wait, sorry... just a disgruntled vet here.

[Mrbloodworth]

Inventory created some really intense moments in PS1. Being locked down inside a defend able point and passing ammo and supplies around, scrounging supplies off the dead was one of the more engrossing moments in the game. Not sure I can think of too many war movies where supplies were not an issue. Some things, are not about kill counts, or numbers but creating those moments you remember. Looting the opposition was also a great joy.

If you were playing inventory Tetris for hours on end, there was something wrong with you. ( Thought I know, you were exaggerating, right? )

[Trippy]

If you were playing inventory Tetris for hours on end, there was something wrong with you. ( Thought I know, you were exaggerating, right? )

Nope

The infiltration suit, especially, was hours of fun cause you had to make some hard tradeoffs on what to carry since your inventory is so small. There was also vehicle storage Tetris to play. E.g. again in an infiltration suit with the Wraith you had to decide what to stick in the trunk for those extended operations behind enemy lines.

[Mrbloodworth]

I don't have a problem with any of that. I used to keep my marauder trunk loaded with supplies needed on the field ( Using Vehicle load-out presets ). Normally more Repair juice and ACE's for my Engineer friend who rode with me.



Also HAVE NO FEAR!

Cloakers are now snipers. Somehow, that's logical. ( In Reality, its just copy pasta leftovers )

[01101010]

Was two months before I knew there was a trunk. My shit blew up so fast, I rare took the time to store anything in there. Of course, I was an AMS pilot... I had UNLIMITED trunk space.

[Mrbloodworth]

You know whats supper awesome!

I Get called a troll/griever when I tell people to press "E" when we approach the target base in our Gal.  

Yep, one of the most iconic, DEFINING elements of Planetside. Relegated to obscurity because someone, despite all information, and warnings to the contrary, thought it would be supper keen to make the Gal an AMS.

Dude: "Just land"
Me: "Get the hell out of my Galaxy!"

[Sky]

I personally keep getting this "We are awesome designers, see, we took something that worked, and made it DIFFERENT. DESIGNERS!" There is a lot of "Different for the sake of different" in PS2.

Ok, but some credit for them eating humble pie to the rampant volume of "TOLD YOU SO HAHA EAT IT" and changing things to be better for the game they're making today.

[01101010]

I personally keep getting this "We are awesome designers, see, we took something that worked, and made it DIFFERENT. DESIGNERS!" There is a lot of "Different for the sake of different" in PS2.

Ok, but some credit for them eating humble pie to the rampant volume of "TOLD YOU SO HAHA EAT IT" and changing things to be better for the game they're making today.

That has yet to be seen... how will the changes actually fit the whole, rah rah go go go playstyle they seem to be going for. But I will agree with you, at least they are using beta to actually test and adjust / change things. I will give them credit for that much.

[Mrbloodworth]

I personally keep getting this "We are awesome designers, see, we took something that worked, and made it DIFFERENT. DESIGNERS!" There is a lot of "Different for the sake of different" in PS2.

Ok, but some credit for them eating humble pie to the rampant volume of "TOLD YOU SO HAHA EAT IT" and changing things to be better for the game they're making today.

I have many doubts that this current Development team even played PS1. I gave credit for this beta being a real, olde timey beta, but I'm not going to praise them for finally coming around to common sense. Anyone that spend any time with the original knew GAL as an AMS was dumb.

To Add, I have ZERO clue as to why they refuse to put the AMS back in. Keeping the GAL/AMS as a high end cert, and the refusal to bring back the AMS smacks of "Designer pride". It was somewhat clear when the designer in question was directly asked in one of the last AGN shows.