Planetside 2

[Viin]

I don't know what they think they fixed with the Ground to Air launcher, but it's fucked up. It freaking NEVER HITS for me. ...

Yeah I was very disappointed. Anti-air needs a big boost, there needs to be a faster way to clear the skies from the ground, at least in a reasonably sized area.

[Mrbloodworth]

All Infantry Weapons are on sale today.

Also:

The servers will come down at 6:00 AM PT for a brief maintenance. Downtime is anticipated to be less than one hour. Players may notice the following changes:

    

• The Annihilator Rocket Launcher is now available to all empires. This weapon has the ability to lock on to both aircraft and vehicles. It cannot fire without a lock on.
• Reaver Decoy Flares should now correctly reflect their intended price.
• Horns should now equip correctly (We really mean it!)
• Decals are now available to show your allegiance in the Ultimate Empire Showdown! Don't be left out.

[Trippy]

People bought horns

[Mrbloodworth]

I have heard a number of them in my recent time playing.

[Thrawn]

I don't know what they think they fixed with the Ground to Air launcher, but it's fucked up. It freaking NEVER HITS for me. Sure, if the target is standing still, possibly AFK, eventually there's a chance my rocket is gonna hit them once, but most of the times they just shrug it off. This is not even about using flares, or moving around that much. For some reason, the pathing of these rockets and eventually the netcode make it so they frequently do not deal any damage, no matter how precisely they hit the target. This is particularly visible not just on ESF (they seem to always being able to just do a few twirl and lose the rocket), but on Liberator and Galaxy too. You see the rocket getting up there, connecting... and not registering a hit or dealing any damage. So annoying.

I have no idea if they do, but if they function the same was as Air to Air missiles they only try to hit from the back.  So if you lock and fire at me and I fly straight at you, the missile will miss because it will try to loop around behind me and the turn is too tight.     (It works great against A2A, try it some time.)

[Viin]

Lame! 

[Miasma]

Probably old but I hadn't seen this easter egg of the BFR that planetside 1 people talk about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt_E-h5Rq_c

[Falconeer]

The Air to Air are super effective, they pretty much hit all the time. The Ground to Air are pathetic.

Not sire if anti-air still needs a boost. MAX anti-air bursters are really good now if you ask me. It's just this stupid Ground-to-Air missile that is a waste of money and time-

[Druzil]

The Air to Air are super effective, they pretty much hit all the time. The Ground to Air are pathetic.

Not sire if anti-air still needs a boost. MAX anti-air bursters are really good now if you ask me. It's just this stupid Ground-to-Air missile that is a waste of money and time-

Yeah I have double Burster MAX and I think it's good how it is now.  I mean it's about impossible to kill a full health Galaxy or Lib in one pass by yourself, but you can still put a hurting on a Lib.  ESFs go down fairly quickly as long as you have a good angle on them and they are in a decent range.

My main issue is the 'bailing out' that 100% of everyone does because the game mechanics encourage it.  I rarely get a kill when I take down an aircraft.   I really think they either need to add 3-5 second ejection timer/animation for air-born aircraft or make anyone that ejects from an aircraft on a parachute so that they are easily visible and can be taken down.  The instant ejection suicide is just silly.

[Viin]

I eject when I am LA and can jet down safely. Which I try to do a lot, since I die all the freakin' time in a plane.

[01101010]

All Infantry Weapons are on sale today.

Also:

The servers will come down at 6:00 AM PT for a brief maintenance. Downtime is anticipated to be less than one hour. Players may notice the following changes:

    

• The Annihilator Rocket Launcher is now available to all empires. This weapon has the ability to lock on to both aircraft and vehicles. It cannot fire without a lock on.

I can only hope these things hit like a paper wad because a lot of people are going to be very angry at purchasing an Anti-air and/or anti-ground rocket launcher and now having access to this.

They should seriously consider refunds of SC purchased stuff..though I have no clue how they'd do it. I'd gladly trade in my skyguard for a fraction of the SC I spent or even cert points (though that would probably be gamebreaking).

[Kageru]

The Air to Air are super effective, they pretty much hit all the time. The Ground to Air are pathetic.

Not sire if anti-air still needs a boost. MAX anti-air bursters are really good now if you ask me. It's just this stupid Ground-to-Air missile that is a waste of money and time-

Burster max are pretty weak. A skilled pilot can jink and be out of there long before they take any meaningful damage. Meanwhile the burster max needs engi support, is incredibly vulnerable to everything (high powered AA gun's bounce off flesh apparently), lacks mobility and has terrible XP gain over time. I've played as one for a couple of hours on top of the crown, with lots of air activity, and getting kills requires a careless or overly aggressive pilot. Though since pilots don't like getting hit a couple of them can discourage ESF hovering at close range and Lib's hovering at longer.

[Nija]

Burster MAXes may be weak individually, however...

I don't use mine unless I'm with about a half dozen other clan-mates and we're dropping everything in the sky. Coordinated attacks letting the air get fairly close.

Good times.

[Kageru]

Yeah, with multiple burster max, a secure environment so you don't get over-run by tanks and infantry (thus a well garrisoned crown or organized platoon), and some co-ordination you can get a kill (and minimal XP) on a incautious pilot. Still don't consider it much in the way of balance given that air has amazing mobility, fewer vulnerabilities, better XP potential and a much wider range of targets.

The best one I saw was 4-6 max, supporting engineers and sunderer in a valley outside our spawn. Quite a few air flying low and not paying attention, since they were leaving the spawn, bought it. But in the end one of them brought up a tank and cleared it with a couple of random infantry.

I've pretty much gotten to the point in this game I only defend the crown or the point from which an attack is being launched. Since all bases are the same, and I don't care about territory, there's no goal other than some vaguely balanced action.

[Jimbo]

Since tomorrow is the big sale, what are some of you all getting?

My wish list:

S type carbine for TR and NC

AP ammo for both TR and NC on the tanks

AP or skyguard for the lightning tank  not sure though...

Might take the machine gun for the flash


I've got the NS-11 for both TR and NC medic's I play, and it is quite effective for my play style.  If I was doing more close quater combat, I might take a different weapon.

Anyone have a suggestion on the TR or NC light machine guns?

[Falconeer]

I want to pimp up my anti-infantry Max but I can't make up my mind about Mattock, Hacksaw and Grinder. Any of you feel like sharing some personal experience with those weapons? I have a double-scattercannon upgraded to slug ammo which is a lot of fun in very-close quarters, so I wonder how the other weapons compare to that. Especially considering that they all seem to have 7 rounds per mag (Grinder might have 9 I think) and short range only. How many differences justify the 4 different weapons?

[01101010]

Since tomorrow is the big sale, what are some of you all getting?

My wish list:

S type carbine for TR and NC

AP ammo for both TR and NC on the tanks

AP or skyguard for the lightning tank  not sure though...

Might take the machine gun for the flash


I've got the NS-11 for both TR and NC medic's I play, and it is quite effective for my play style.  If I was doing more close quater combat, I might take a different weapon.

Anyone have a suggestion on the TR or NC light machine guns?

I'd hold off on the skyguard till they tighten up the CoF for it. Take the AP or HEAT rounds for it - you'll do much better.

My wish list:

• a HA gun for my TR - not sure which. (been working on the HA role just to get a feel for it)
• second burster arm and maybe dual Mercy arms since the outfit seems to be all about MAX crashes (even though I think MAXs are just too flimsy in their current state)
• the Flare for my dirty VS whoring
• rainbow decals!
• oh and a shotty for my LA

then I am going to sit on the rest of my SC till new stuff comes out.

[Miasma]

Double xp from the 21st to Jan 2nd.

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/281551603453014018

[01101010]

Yeah... Sadly, I won't be back to play till the 24th. But a week straight to cert my new weapons will be nice. Now if Higs and the crew would get something working to even out the continent pops instead of having the faction zerg on each continent. It is becoming routine to see 60% for each faction on each continent which is just sad. They put in limits on PS1 per continent, might be time to think about a way to do that here.

[Kageru]

They nerfed the defensive turrets on the crown (2 of the AV weapons vanished). I have not the slightest idea what thoughts are going through their heads. Other than perhaps desperation from falling activity.

I might buy a couple of bucks of station cash, but I'm not going to spend it until the game settles a bit.

[01101010]

Meh. The Crown is just a big king of the hill tower fight. It has no inherent value other than farming xp/certs - which is now the name of the game...rather than trying to take over a continent that immediately gets flipped back. There are still fights to be had in some places, but the zerg and cert farming is where the game has turned. I am a pretty big critic of the game, before and still, but I am playing it and having a good time for the most part...but they definitely need to adjust some things on the "battle front" because those large battles that were promoted as being this game's calling card is falling by the wayside for maximizing cert gains with least effort. Go figure.

I hope once people get their stuff fleshed out with certs, that a refocus on the fighting will start...though I highly doubt it.

[Mrbloodworth]

Only thing that may refocus that idea, is whatever they put on top of the game.

[WayAbvPar]

I am not spending another cent or another Smedbuck until they make unlocks global across the account. They talk about it, but I haven't seen it done yet.

[apocrypha]

Kinda lost interest in this a few days ago, not logged on since.

Unlocks too expensive & certs too slow to come in, no point to take territory or defend it except to grind certs, terrible ground/air balance, no global unlocks. 3 month sub cancelled, there's just not enough game here to warrant spending any money on at this point.

[Malakili]

Unlocks too expensive & certs too slow to come in, no point to take territory or defend it except to grind certs

This is basically exactly what I have felt.  I just haven't logged in and don't miss it. One of the things that drew me into World War 2 Online was that there was this war going on all the time and it had a sense of persistence, so I felt involved in the big picture.  In Planetside 2 it is just logging into a larger scale session shooter with a crappy free to play model. 

[Megrim]

I want to pimp up my anti-infantry Max but I can't make up my mind about Mattock, Hacksaw and Grinder. Any of you feel like sharing some personal experience with those weapons? I have a double-scattercannon upgraded to slug ammo which is a lot of fun in very-close quarters, so I wonder how the other weapons compare to that. Especially considering that they all seem to have 7 rounds per mag (Grinder might have 9 I think) and short range only. How many differences justify the 4 different weapons?

For what its worth, I've been fragged by most MAX variants I think, and the Hacksaw was the consistent. Like, "run around a corner and/or over a hill and *blam* dead" consistent. Usually I have time to get out of the way since most people can't aim.

[Kageru]

The grinding certs actually helps cover for the lack of any depth in the game. Without it people would take even less time in coming to the conclusion that nothing they do has any meaning, there's limited variety, and that if they just want to death-match other games do it better.

The crown was a place to reliably find action, either attacking or defending, and since the strategic level of the game is meaningless that's really all you want. But the designers seem to consider people fighting over a base a fault to be repaired. I think they have visions of massive combined arms fights in the territory around the bases but there's no mechanics to give that any focus and the game balance heavily favours air in that situation.

I'm vaguely tempted to do a token log in so I can get some passive certs (yummy, yummy certs) but I can't see much to buy that will drastically improve my game-play, and it's going to take them many months to build some depth in the game. Assuming they don't sack or re-assign the dev crew once activity fades.

[Miasma]

Triple station cash is live now, seems to have gone in early, plus the deal from today is still active so you can buy now 3x and then get 15% off vehicle weapons.

[WayAbvPar]

As tempting as 3x is, I am not spending a dime until I get my unlocks so I can play other factions without either gimping myself or spending more money.

[Mrbloodworth]

This caused me to pass out my X-mass gifts to friends early :)

Apparently, there are also reports of wall-mart running out of station cash cards all over. I guess the report on Battlefield heroes was right.

[Lantyssa]

As tempting as 3x is, I am not spending a dime until I get my unlocks so I can play other factions without either gimping myself or spending more money.

You can buy the Station Cash now and not spend it until later.  It doesn't go away.

[WayAbvPar]

True, but if I decide that PS2 is not enough fun to spend money on, it is stuck there. Like the 100 Smedbux I had on there from whenever they last shit on their customers and tried to soothe them with almost worthless currency.

[Venkman]

Yea that kinda only works for anyone playing at least one other SOE game.

For me, I've never had anywhere near enough loyalty to a specific video game company to buy their pretend trans-game currency. It's an article of faith to take that leap, and I'm as fickle as they are.

I kinda wish I cared enough about PS2 to support it. But both in beta and now, it's just not something I think is sustainable. I am very glad they went f2p over subs, but I kinda wish they had launched in like March or some other dead month as a $40 box sale, no subs, but with some marketing. Probably no more an option for them than f2p was for PS1, but if wishes were horses...

There's just no point to it right now beyond a cool Halo-looking kinda/sorta BF combat feel with way more option.

Sure, ok, there's no real point to any of these games if you want to get philosophical. But here, the one thing that sets it apart, the persistent map, has kinda no purpose. Spend a few minutes getting to the cert farm or spend probably the same amount of time in game over/loading screens in Black Ops 2. Not much a difference.

[Lantyssa]

I play enough SOE stuff off and on that it's worth it to get a cheap card or two with each triple cash day if I don't have a balance.

But then I still fiddle with Free Realms, Clone Wars, DCO, and even Pox Nora once in a while.

[Venkman]

I will say that PS still represents a something that hasn't been fully realized yet. Same with the first gaem imho. No idea if they'll get there this time. But I do feel the foundation is stronger.