f13.net

I know there is a graveyard forum for this, but I figured this is a very long re-trial for all us old vets that gave it a go. 45 days free for all accounts.

Via my old outfit's spam email:

" Included in the new content is the upgrade to BR40 (from BR25) and the free gift of the BFR (BattleFrame Robotics, the really big shaky mech things) imprint for all characters created before the 6-year anniversary. If you're receiving this email, you probably have a character that qualifies.

Also, a reminder of the Term of Service awards to date: at your 2-year veteran mark, you get free access to the Heavy Scout Rifle and the Scorpion bomblet launcher. At your 3-year, you get the Dragon flamethrower. At your 5-year, you get FREE reinforced exosuit (rexo) for your character. This frees up an extra 3 cert points, if you were using rexo. As announced in our previous letter, new hacking certs have been added, new vehicles such as the Phantasm and Galaxy Gunship have been added, and if you havent logged in for a long, long time, you'll enjoy seeing the improved Sunderer Assault Bus, and the new Combat Engineering deployables such as the Shield Generator and the Shadow Turret.
"

So, anyone else got an Emerald Vanu character that wants to roll out? I have (well it used to be anyway) a good outfit that has made it throughout the life of this game. This trial could get some good fights going again.

Alas, when PS was THE game on my pc, I had another email on a friend's host. That has since been nuked and I don't receive emails anymore from SOE... and for that, I am thankful. Curious as this might be and 45 days free is a nice perk, I will have to say pass. As for Emerald... didn't they knock PS down to one server, Gemini or something? I cried a little when they shut down Johari and haven't looked back since a few weeks with the asshats on Markov and then the CN invasion pretty much sealed it.

Do keep me informed though...

I seem to remember hearing something about the game not running so great for newer dual core Vista systems. Confirm/Deny?

Will download tonight when I get home, have a 5 day weekend coming up.  :awesome_for_real:

I don't want to shatter my fond memories of this game by logging in and seeing that SOE has wasted the potential of one of the best MMO ever, still.

The new BR ranks are a joke, and completely screw the original premise.

Well, I just look at it as 45 days of some large scale warfare with friends again. I can convince my people to do 45 day reactivations! Come join this magrider driver for some horrific deaths! If anyone wants info on the outfit or TS, hit me up.

Also, I should be 'Slayerik' in game as well.

I never touched the dirty Vanu except with my ammo, but a 45 day free reactivation would be fun.

BR40 is ridiculous. Who needs that many certs?

One man army's.

That used to be NVSniper... *tear

I would've loved that many certs when I was still playing. I'm the kind of player that will (try to) fill any role that helps my side win even if it's the "boring" stuff. It's harder to do that when your certs are limited. Part of this, I think though, is so people don't have to give up other stuff while being able to pilot BFRs since everybody still playing will be getting them.

So you could have adv hacking/engy/med along with a reaver and HA/REXO? *sigh

Is there a free download anywhere? I lost my disks, but I checked my sony station account and I'm listed as subscribed to the planetside event.

I'm in the same boat, though I might be able to dig up my discs. I won't have any expansions or anything.  Am I hosed?

I did verify my account has a 45 day activation on it  :awesome_for_real:

You can download it through Station Launcher. It's a good way to get an install of any SOE game you have access too when you've lost the disks.

http://launcher.station.sony.com/

Other perks include chatting with the folks who are in game while you are out, etc.

The downloads through this are pretty quick too.

Confirm: Planetside: SOE's Forgotten MMO? (http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=18908)

Yeah, the launcher is giving me an error and an update page with the following at the bottom:


Pro.

update: apparently I was running a preview version even though I installed from the big DOWNLOAD HERE link.  I'm supposed to change it via the help menu, which would be cool if I could run it to begin with.

I set the shortcut to run as admin and it crashed.  welp.

Tonight I fought in some cool ass battles. A squad of Mags working together is pretty sweet.

Apparently I have to enter an activation code that was never sent to me.

Yeah, a full fleet of riding lawnmowers.  :oh_i_see:

Vanu vehicles were quirky as all get up, they handle the worst, TR had the best handling and armor, which made it great to drive.  NC was supposed to have the better guns, but I would get gunners that were spazs, stupid, or spaced out (one guy told me I had to stop and let him shoot...), still wish they would have gone with heavy tanks instead of BFR's...

I'm tempted to try, but I'm running Vista x64, so not wanting to put up with that hassle of getting it to work.

Works fine on vista 64.

Removing the stupid cavern fight req for BFRs for vets is pretty cool. PS stands as a lesson of how to fuck up the best premise in mmo.

I didn't get the reactivation email, either.

Any station account that has had Planetside is automatically activated. Just fire up Station, log in, and select Planetside. That's all there is to it.

I'm on Vista 64 and no matter what I do the game is crashing on load.

I just remembered that I think the station launcher thingy was working on this very machine when I installed the EQ2 trial.

Maybe I'll try going that route again to get a stable launcher.

I remember having a hell of a time because of the Saitek keyboard I was using. I had to disable a couple of the non-essential HID drivers the keyboard was loading.

And I think I'll go home and give the old girl a spin. I'm also using Vista 64. I'll let you know what happens.


Don't discount the Magrider's ability to go over water. Getting used to hover might have been a more difficult, but it more than made up for it when you were able to have your own unassailable firing platform on any river, lake or shore.

I don't remember the Prowler having more armor than the Vanguard, but I could be mistaken. That said though, in the right situation they could be hell on wheels. The thing did handle real easy, was as fast in reverse as it was forward, and the rate of fire on those dual cannons were perfect for running battles. One of my favorite memories of PS is driving a single Prowler to 100 kills for my gunner and I.

I had to set planetside.exe to Win95 compatibility and check disable visual themes, desktop composition, and display scaling on high DPI settings on Vista x_64.

It took me about 2 hours to get it working on Vista as well, but the above should work for you.

Worked on my Vista 32 just fine right out the gate.

Getting the old squad back together is mighty tempting. What's that launcher download link, the one that works?

http://launcher.station.sony.com/update/StationLauncher_setup.exe

Had an awesome Magrider run yesterday...gunner and I were on about a 50 kill streak. Anyone who says the Magrider handles badly has never seen me strafe through trees at max speed outrunning and dodging 5 Vanguards firing at me.

Anyway, fun stuff. First game I have gotten into since I became single.

Fired it up last night. I poked around a bit, shot a stealther near tower, flew around in a Reaver and got shot down.

I liked the game better in it's heyday when I was in an outfit.

No doubt a key part of the full experience.

The above did work for me. Now to actually get some time and play a little bit.

Well, I have offered up an outfit to anyone that wants to play Vanu on Gemini :P

TR for life baby.

Not sure if I will jump on, but I (was) a high ranking officer of one of the oldest PS outfits on Emerald.

I think I'm on Emerald, too. With a (K), beyotchz.

Yeah, I'm a Konried Original myself ;)

No, THIS was the link I was looking for. http://planetside.station.sony.com/download.vm

I don't want ANOTHER launcher. Sorry. I just want the game.

GAH! Stop all this chatter. I only have one fail-safe left from reinstalling and that is my long lost forgotten sealed account info.

One search on gmail and a password recovery feature later and I'm in business. 20m left on the install but I'm sure I'll be really disappointed.

We had our outfit raid tonight. 5 magriders and a skyguard for our armor division. Not too shabby. Infantry around 15 , and air support 10-15 as well. Took over Searhus after a good battle with the NC, turned that bitch purple by the end because they withdrew to Amerish.  Check out

www.gotr.net - if you are from f13 you are in and rollin'....tell em ole Slay sent ya :)

This worked for me too, but I had to run as admin for it to update itself.

Ah, forgot about this last night. Trying to squeeze in AoC before my free month is up.

The only thing I touch vanu with are my bullets. NC for life.


Game is pretty fun though I remember why I spec'd all engineering and hacking. I'm horrible at the fighting aspect. Unfortunately, that's where all the kills are. I remember now the things I loathed about the game - namely that stand around a corner watching in 3rd person bullshit.

I logged in specc'd for the new engineering stuff, which I remembered why I hated it - you can't deploy anything in the enemy sphere of influence. Screw that. I'm also only something like 14 whatevers so I'm really short on talent points for the cool stuff. The grind's pretty big but it's a good waste of a few hours.

Advanced engineers can now, I think. Its another cert or something though.

Yeah, it's not exactly a newbie-friendly game  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah and now I remember the MOST frustrating part of this game, the fact it takes you a week to repsec your character. Why? There's STILL no good reason except a cockpunch.

But now there are 40 cert points, so you don't have to recert if you've been playing since 2003.

It's like a combo cock punch/testicle squeeze.

Yep, fuck this game. Can't kill a single guy when I'm in an anti-personnel max. 7/22 k/d.

All the little things they are doing are band-aids for pinpricks on gaping bullet wounds.

I'd love to get back into it but with a new game, a fresh server, and when Dawn of Discovery releases the grip on my testicles.

The launcher is shiite. Takes much longer to patch any SOE game through the launcher. How that makes sense, I don't know.

I fired this back up for about a week and I've had my fill again. It's a really fun week though.

This e-mail went out today.


Here is the survey:

(http://blog.rv.net/wp-content/2008/06/casualty-care_clip_image0042.jpg)

free to play Planetside with microtransactions, hooray?

I am curious whether this revisit to PlanetSide would be occurring if FreeRealms hadn't happened, and what lessons they are learning from that? Or perhaps it's just part of the industry trend in general.

PlanetSide's type of not-really-MMO gameplay does seem like a better fit for F2P / Station Pass / lifetime sub. Or even Guild Wars no sub box expansions, except it doesn't have the same potential for content addition. F2P would also generate a lot of useful cannon fodder. (I'm sure this has already been discussed here ad nauseam.)

F2P, or fodder side was a hit when they did it.

If they don't cock it up, and microtransactions = proper support, then make it the fuck happen.

PS.  NC 4 LIFE

I'm thoroughly excited. I'd be cool with a microtransaction BF Heroes sort of pay system.

Planetside and subsequent "massive" action / shooter types have proven to me that an open world isn't the way to go. I'll take focused "maps" ( a la MAG) whose victory / defeat affects a global stateover an open world that isn't fully designed for focused combat and has lots of unnecessary space.

what? I have the best memories of gaming from PS, mainly due to the open world format (before PS jumped the shark with AFTERSHOCK). Forseral, Ishundar, Cyssor... all were an absolute blast with the air support, tank columns, air drops... you just don't get that in a traditional sandbox. BF and BF2, even the later addtions of the Unreal series. came close to bottling that lightning, but it just lacked in a certain element - huge spaces.

Yes, but the effort to achieve that awesomeness was beyond what most want to invest. And the people who DO want to invest that shouldn't be held back from the casuals who just want to wait on line for the plane so they have 5 minutes of fun before quitting.

I loved PS when it was at its best, but it was too often not, and it was the players, not the game. Since you can't solve the players, I'm with Lorekeep on this.

Smaller more targeted maps. Want to MMO-ize it? Stitch them together with zone ownership some social public space where the 5% who care can make themselves all pretty or do quests or something (ie, Huxley done right). Matches don't need to be 2,500 to be "massive". You can get that for 10% of that size just fine. Even with vehicles.

I think you're looking for Global Agenda.

Yep, been watching it. Not really sure they'll pull it off either. I'm more interested in APB for this style of thing.

NDA rules here being what they are, I can't comment on GA, but there's no reason Planetside can't do both. I know there is a vitriolic hatred from some guys here for instanced combat, but there is no reason you can't have both massive open world and small scale "Spec-Ops" COD/Halo/CSS maps. There is a place for both in online gaming.

That being said, there's no reason you can't do gorgeous massive open world battles (UT3 proved that, other failings aside.) One issue is doing vehicles right - easy to try, tough to master, quick, not game-breaking, but strong enough to matter. The major sticking point, though, is ensuring players can get to the battle quickly. Ideally, the BF2/BF2142 idea of squad leaders being a mobile spawn point is the best method. It works, it avoids babysitting deployables, and adds an added layer of strategy.

I don't think there's any real hate for open world FPS vs instanced. More like a wait-and-see attitude. PS got a lot right, and I'm still convinced that without that retarded false-equivalency of a subscription fee (and the launch day XP nerf), the game would have attracted more and maybe kept people longer.

I'm still surprised they're even talking a sequel. But they do have an IP they can leverage on a console and own it entirely.

The sub fee, especially bumping it to $15 at the same time as dropping the fodder program at the same time, was a master stroke of idiocy.

Fodder program, I think it was 2 years ago, was a blast. Some of the stuff that happened in Planetside was superfun, and it never happened again in any MMO yet. Maybe WW2 online, but I really can't bring myself to try it.

I was referring more to the tendency of some guys here to foam at the mouth when instanced diku PVP is mentioned.  :awesome_for_real:

World War 2 Online is great fun, but its barely a shooter.  Its got way more sim elements to be honest. 

I do not see anything wrong with the way Planetside had its worlds laid out, they were connected by warp agates and persistent, it was one of the major reason for the love of the title. It is the only way to go for a MMOFPS.

The issues Planetside had, and why it had stagnation are the real issues, not anything you guys are talking about. I may have had a chance to look at its code, asset setup and architecture, and believe me, the game was NEVER BUILT to be expanded on, it was for all intents, a one off game with persistent servers. This is the crux of its issues, not its game level designs (well..maybe a few). Editing maps was a near impossibility..so they used server objects (Such as BFR sheds), the dam thing didn't even have a map editor, it was completely compiled, hence any change required you to download the entire world pack, assets were loaded at load time like a non-massive game instead of streamed and unloaded dynamically... This is why the maps never changed, it why the bases were never adjusted, and it the entire reason the expansion was created the way it was done, and it added new space, this is why new objects reused existing textures.

Anyway...

Do not throw the baby out with the bath water, Planetside was ahead of its time for its day, and remake needs to be the same, but based squarely on its predecessor. Just have a little more forethought in your tech and ability to expand.

EQ1 was built the same way: modularity was an afterthought.

The lack of post-launch support didn't help, but it wasn't the cause of the failure. It was the two elements I mentioned that both prevented droves of new people from showing up to give it a shot at all: bad PR from the launch day XP nerf (which was ginormous, and the first memory I've had of such a thing), and the stupid same-as-EQ1 monthly fee.

Didn't matter after that if the game was built to be modular or not, because they never achieved critical mass in the first place. If they were wildly successful, they'd have done what they ended up doing on their wildly successful title: figure it out as they go.

Ironically, the core tech behind EQ2 was specifically to ensure two main things: expandability and relatively easy tools for wholesale changes across the game. Both they've leveraged well, but neither made a bit of difference in the face of WoW.

What was the fodder system?

They had a free to play option but your level was capped at a low level.

I want real fucking urban door-to-door combat and more free shit for the noobs.

The only things I don't like about PS are the kitchen sink development after years of almost no development, the retarded expansion, and the fact that it's about a zillion years old and looks like poop.

A brand new PS is something I want to play, put me in the camp that thinks the open world worked.

basically this

See my post.

 :thumbs_up:

Yep. The large, persistent world was what really enchanted me with the game. What ultimately made me stop playing with the repetition of assaulting and defending the same bases over and over. If the world and bases could change as the game went on, that would be huge.

Eh, who am I kidding, they could make the exact same game with new engine and I'd still buy it and play for a year or two.

I went back to planetside with that long reactivation period. There is a lot of good in planetside. The combat engineering and hacking stuff are really well done. Huge three way battles with masses of tanks/foot troopers/mechs and planes is very very impressive. I think if they were able to more easily update their game so things change a bit more and fix a few of the long standing issues such as mods that easily let you see stealthers even if you don't have darklight on.

Hell I enjoyed planetside enough if they make a second one they will get my money for a couple months.

I just played this for the first time last night, VS on the one server. I'm almost angry that no one informed me how good it was. I guess since I missed out on your personal Trammel and 6 years of stagnancy, it's all new to me

I am sure we have had this discussion before.

Bad:
Ugly ass character art.
Static bases.
Three sides that play almost exactly same with one notable weapon difference.

Good:
Engineers.
Galaxy drop mechanic.
Brilliant net code.

My solution is too make each side completely different like Starcraft. Sure balance would be a bitch but it keep the game lively much longer. Also the easy mode targeting mode (with penalities) for scrubs like me would expand the market.  Just limiting your market to crack-addled dex monkeys (engineers aside) is mistake when CADM have FPS without subs to get their fix.  

Well, my solution would be to say "fuck making sides" and let politics do the rest. Bu i doubt that that would be a model that worked well in an FPS.

It would be nice to see more persistent effects and a larger world to cope with that, but i am not sure how it would work or if it could support an economy.

FIFY.

PlanetSide uses client side hit detection. This leads to all sorts of fucked up situations. In their defense that was really their only option back then given the amount of "stuff" that had to be sent back and forth to support such large battles.

I'm not particularly a fan of it, but CSS's loadout system would work well. Revenue based on kills, wins, survival, etc. The only issue is that the CSS method is all about the rich getting richer, and in a world that depends on replayability, I doubt that the poor would stick around for too long.

FPS's, more so than any other game, cater to the "lone wolf" mentality. An economy is the only way I see of curbing this. (Clans generate revenue, which allows for the purchase of vehicles, "airdrops", etc. This keeps the lonewolf from spawning in, getting into a WTFPWN tank and rolling through a battlefield, encourages player interaction, player structures/capturables, blah blah blah.)

I would love to see an FPS finally adopt an ELO rating system (enemydown uses this with most shooters that have published stats.) It works well, and is a much better rating then the common MMO concept of "time = skill". In addition, you could (if you were really anal about it,) add a "skill rating" to weapons to further the accuracy of the calculations. (I.E. rocket launchers have a lower "skill rating" then shotguns, which in turn have a lower skill rating then a melee kill.) Ideally, if you're generating revenue based on player kills, a higher rated character generates more revenue than someone who spins in a circle trying to figure out how to strafe.  :awesome_for_real:

Let's be real here.  The reason PS sucked/sucks is simply because of the release of SWG.  Plain and simple.  The entire game went to crickets when SWG released and very nearly was just cancelled outright.  I lost my entire squad to the game and quit myself.  Seriously, battles turned into Unreal: Tournament.  It was horrible.

Imo they should've scrapped the game and re-invested in a new model once they realized they werent going to get the subs back after SWG and WoW raped them.  WW2O is a better persistent FPS design than PS, it's just most people are bored out of their minds when it comes to WW2 stuff.  PS had a hard-charging sci-fi appeal that was pretty awesome, but the gameplay itself lacked depth.

All they really had to do was merge with Cornered Rats and make a modern WW2O and they'd have been set.

Is there a FPS with the server-side hit detection?

All of them.

But none with 250+. Even MAG.

MAG is client side? That might change things.

Quite sure. This is not a bad thing.

No sir. It just affects my aiming philosophy and helps explain the "Round the corner and I'm dead" moments I've experienced.

But PS would be missing half of its game if it was about player kills.  Without the support roles, vehicles, and game play not related to killing it would just be another FPS.

I get that, and completely agree that it's a necessary facet of tactical gameplay (looking at my BF2142 stats will show a 0.9 K/D, but over 57 hours with the defibrillator equipped.) The concept of monetizing kills could easily be converted to monetizing points (for lack of a better term) generated by support roles.

wat


Wait...SWG had bo staffs, right?  :oh_i_see:
Did you play PS? Because you're...ahh...wrong.

FPS do not cater to "lone wolf's" in fact i would argue that they go mostly the other way. Just like anything else, the sure fire way to win is to have more guys than the other side.

If i were to build PS 2 it would probably look something like Natural Selection. Except that it would be large, persistent, there would be no sides, and there would be a "resetting tech level" sort of system[kinda difficult to explain]

The real problems come in two types;

Designing a management system that can cater and coordinate in real time hundreds of players who decide to play on the same team.[maybe this isn't necessary, but i think the game would be better off with it]

Balancing between long term held assets and short term assets and determining when and how you can assault them[this is necessary to have a big "no sides" persistent system]

I think the first one can be solved, the second one, i am not so sure. If you have a system where you can only assault large important structures at set times[ala eve], then you need short term structures that give players persistent benefit. I.E. you need inventory/money which causes its own problems. Both in the sense that you need some sort of empire like mechanic to foster smaller groups and allow basic economic activity. If money is based solely on winning the winners will always have the best stuff and you've created a more or less cascading system where one group "wins" the game eventually.

You could counteract that by making the base(free) level of tech very close in terms of capability to the stuff you could buy and making research/money production scale to the number of players in your outfit, but i don't think that is a very good answer either. In the end you either have to slow down combat and introduce non-combat production system or you need to say "fuck it" and go entirely with a model that looks like the current Planetside with no real resources and set teams.

Planetside the 1% (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/05/planetside-the-1/)

Just wanted to toss this out there. I know its old.

Also, in case some of you didn't know. The planetisde community has been suggesting and designing additions and changes to plantside for almost half a decade. (http://www.planetside-idealab.com/index.shtml)

Wait! An mmo community has been suggesting and 'designing' additions and changes to the mmo?!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

Not sure you looked at the level of competence of the ideas on that site. My point being, its not like SOE doesn't have things to draw from, or, was ever lacking for player feedback.

 :uhrr:

Enough said.

(http://accordionguy.blogware.com/Photos/2005/05/noooooooo.jpg)

The talking has never been the problem.

First time I've read it. Best article about Planetside evar.  :drill:

Agreed, I enjoyed that :) Though there are other games I had the "i was there, man!" feeling about. Shadowbane, UO, and Neocron.

All Planetside needed to keep me from jumping in for a month and then out for 3 months was new base maps. I wouldn't have cared if I had to download everything again. Bandwidth access was not a problem a few years after launch.

Whenever I think about what would make Planetside more sticky for me, I start thinking about DIKU grind mechanics. And I feel ashamed.  :uhrr:

I think maybe more low-impact activities, like ANT runs, only 'better and more varied', and a game dynamic that generates all kinds of battles, from small tower skirmishes, to big continent offensives to some kind of uber achievement where an army 'wins' the war for a short period of time before resetting so we can get back to it.

Yes, I'd proably crib a few more ideas from CRPGs instead of just levels and xp. Keep it an FPS, keep the massiveness, but allow players to do more and accomplish more than respawn and wade back into the zerg.