Planetside Server Merge

[Kharza-kzad]

Good fighting tonight. There are two continents population locked and I'm on the vanu side. Not sure if we are still the underdogs though.

We are fighting the terrans mainly on searhus, had a decent but short bridge battle earlier. Good times!

[Tearofsoul]

Tons of people, I am in love with the game once again

[Xenrauk]

Originally Posted by Kharza-kzad

Good fighting tonight. There are two continents population locked and I'm on the vanu side. Not sure if we are still the underdogs though.

We are fighting the terrans mainly on searhus, had a decent but short bridge battle earlier. Good times!

What a long battle that was. First it was NC against TR on Searhus and then VS backdoored us at Rehua, then NC spent more than an hour holed up in Sina fighting off both sides. Which was nice because I finally managed to hit level 20 in that battle

VS = underdogs? no, not with the op lasher!

[Kharza-kzad]

I saw some terrans using lashers and wondered what was up haha. I'm special assault. Nearly maxed my grief tonight from people running in front of me.

Seems like everyone has orbital strikes now. They are going off every few seconds. I never bothered with command rank.

[BacardySmooth]

Originally Posted by Vekruul Shuth

And why hasn't someone ran with this genre yet? Seems like it would just be a sure fire winner if done right.

Couldn't agree more. Man I remember some good battles. I had wet dreams about this game in beta and after playing for a couple months it just kind of felt "meh". But if someone could figure out how to do it right it seems like it would be awesome.

[brekk]

Just got SOE Launcher. Downloading game now ^_^

Hopefully my chars are still around. 2 BR20's one was a CR3, or 4.

[Neric]

Actually many people claim that the Lasher is OP, but in my opinion the Lasher isn't the problem. The real problem is the Lancer. The Lancer will shut down opponent vehicles and MAX units, so that the VS heavy stuff will dominate the battlefield. I simply don't know if I should laugh or cry when I see Vanguards, Lightnings and even BFRs getting owned by a single guy with a Lancer and that even from a huge distance.

Everything has to be put into perspective. Of course each empire has one or two weapons that seem unballanced, but you have to consider the effect. If one weapon has the effect to clear the whole battlefield from opponent vehicles, that has much more impact than some minor imballance in close combat between single players. It's like rock-paper-scissors. Tanks dominate foot soldiers. If one empire can bring all the tanks to the battle it doesn't help the other side if they have the better close combat infantry weapon. AV > AI and therefore the empire with the best AV has a clear edge, an edge that translates into winning every single battle.

Personally I understand that the VS had to be buffed. Back in the days since nobody wanted to play them and their numbers were way too low to compete. Nowadays this is not the case anymore (all numbers are equally low one could say) and there should be an adjustment.

But who cares...

[kaid]

Hehe that searhus fight last night was one huge furball. I was on TR and it looked like we were going to finish off NC but then vanu started running wild and trying to hold them off NC started pushing back that was hours of back and forth big fights.

I am kinda suprised we have never seen somebody try the planetside idea in some format. After playing battlefield 1943 then trying planetside again those 12/12 fights from battlefield just are not as satisfying anymore. When you are on a continent with three sides each having even pop and the continent being poplocked there is a very impressive huge battle field. Lots of aircraft zipping around huge tanks blasting things and swarms of foot troopers running about.

[Tolin]

Having never played the game before - Does it function like a big CoD server? Just hundreds of people playing at once? Normal FPS rules? I.e. just...I don't know, shoot at people through your cross hair?

How long does it take to become combat viable? Are you essentially worthless starting out?

Viability of sniping/stealth solo guys? (Don't think I can wrangle up too many friends to play this old thing)

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Tolin

Having never played the game before - Does it function like a big CoD server? Just hundreds of people playing at once? Normal FPS rules? I.e. just...I don't know, shoot at people through your cross hair?

Not so much CoD. More massive scale Tribes. 3 factions each side is limited to 150 on a continent. So large 3 way battles in close proximity can be 450 people on foot, in ground vehicles, and in aircraft.

How long does it take to become combat viable? Are you essentially worthless starting out?

From the very first level you can specialize enough to be as good as anyone else in one role. Leveling all the way to BR20 (battle rank 20) only enables you to buy a more varied amount of skills. Allowing you to drive different vehicles and use a larger array of weaponry.

The biggest difference in power between BR1 and BR20 is implants. You can equip an additional one every 3 levels. So at BR20 you'll have 3 of them, some are innate extra abilities, some are activated.

Viability of sniping/stealth solo guys? (Don't think I can wrangle up too many friends to play this old thing)

Not Viable. Sniper rifle is too large to fit in a Stealther kit.

Sniping is amazing in this game, I used to have epic sniper battles , where in a massive map you end up constantly flanking eachother. My main char was always Heavy Assault + Sniper combo.

For anyone who wants an amazing experience make a char as a dedicated Cloaker. The game design of the cloaker in Planetside is absolutely brilliant, the ability to play stealthly but still try for quick suprise kills, use of jammer grenades on mines to kill enemies, hacking installations, hacking tanks in the middle of the battlefield ejecting their occupants, going on knifing sprees, sneaking around an enemy base getting cheap kills and evading capture. Anyone that wants to see how a stealth based class should be implemented in an FPS needs to try a cloaker.


Played for a few hours earlier. Populations were really low so fights were sporadic and small. Hoping it picks up towards primetime.

[Neric]

The game is like a 3D version of Starcraft. You got 3 empires fighting over control. The goal is to win bases. In the best case you will have a massive battle of over 300 (?) people fighting each other under FPS rules including grief. The action can be insane! New chars are limited in their options but not worthless. You can basically do what the big guys can do right from the start, except that you can only do one thing well, while they can do many different things like drive a tank and fly a plane and use heavy weapons and such.



This old trailer shows the gameplay pretty well.



That one is my favorite, but I am biased

[brekk]

[Xenrauk]

Couple corrections.. I think the game is up to BR40 now, the implants you get at BR6, 12, 18. Uniform upgrades at BR 7, 14, 25, toggle shades/hat at BR24.

For people just starting out, I think you'll get 7 cert point by the time you finish with virtual training, enough to get medium assault with sniper and a vehicle. You'd basically have enough to make yourself into one role until you get more cert points. Join a squad as soon as you can(usually get picked up by one in a couple mins), and let the exp flow in, you even get assists and support exp from helping others by healing/repairing them and hacking equipment for them. I usually park an AMS in the front lines of battle and rake in a ton of assist and support exp.

Hackers and engineers got buffed up nicely, hacking people out of their vehicles, being able to implant viruses into bases so the defense turrets fire on it's owners. Engs have a bunch of new turrets, shields, traps.

P.S I know core combat content sucks, but damn if it isn't nice to grab the base shield mods from down there, makes the difference on holding off enemies until reinforcements arrive.

[kaid]

I cannot stress enough the part of this about the certs from training. If you start a fresh character do the entire training thing. You will then have enough certs to get some nice fun stuff right off the bat. You can also unlearn a skill every 6 hours so if say today you want to drive a tank you can and then if tomorrow you want to try stealth type stuff you can switch to that.

Higher BR give you more options but it does not take a huge amounts of certs to do one thing very well. They did a good job with the cert and BR system. The main difference between high BR and low BR people is verstility and since you can only hold so much junk at once its pretty even footing.

The upgrades to combat engineering and hacking are very well done. Nothing is more disconcerting to somebody than when they get out to repair their tank a stealther sneaks up hacks the tank gets into the turret and kills the former driver and gunners with their own vehicle.

Originally Posted by Xenrauk

Couple corrections.. I think the game is up to BR40 now, the implants you get at BR6, 12, 18. Uniform upgrades at BR 7, 14, 25, toggle shades/hat at BR24.

For people just starting out, I think you'll get 7 cert point by the time you finish with virtual training, enough to get medium assault with sniper and a vehicle. You'd basically have enough to make yourself into one role until you get more cert points. Join a squad as soon as you can(usually get picked up by one in a couple mins), and let the exp flow in, you even get assists and support exp from helping others by healing/repairing them and hacking equipment for them. I usually park an AMS in the front lines of battle and rake in a ton of assist and support exp.

Hackers and engineers got buffed up nicely, hacking people out of their vehicles, being able to implant viruses into bases so the defense turrets fire on it's owners. Engs have a bunch of new turrets, shields, traps.

P.S I know core combat content sucks, but damn if it isn't nice to grab the base shield mods from down there, makes the difference on holding off enemies until reinforcements arrive.

[Ninen]

Originally Posted by Neric

Actually many people claim that the Lasher is OP, but in my opinion the Lasher isn't the problem. The real problem is the Lancer. The Lancer will shut down opponent vehicles and MAX units, so that the VS heavy stuff will dominate the battlefield. I simply don't know if I should laugh or cry when I see Vanguards, Lightnings and even BFRs getting owned by a single guy with a Lancer and that even from a huge distance.

Everything has to be put into perspective. Of course each empire has one or two weapons that seem unballanced, but you have to consider the effect. If one weapon has the effect to clear the whole battlefield from opponent vehicles, that has much more impact than some minor imballance in close combat between single players. It's like rock-paper-scissors. Tanks dominate foot soldiers. If one empire can bring all the tanks to the battle it doesn't help the other side if they have the better close combat infantry weapon. AV > AI and therefore the empire with the best AV has a clear edge, an edge that translates into winning every single battle.

Personally I understand that the VS had to be buffed back in the days since nobody wanted to play them and their numbers were way too low to compete. Nowadays this is not the case anymore (all numbers are equally low one could say) and there should be an adjustment.

But who cares...

Odd, this nerf and then rebuff of Vanu must have happened after I quit playing. Vanu was *the* reason I quit. On Markov server, the 3 different factions ended up shaking out to different timezones. Euro's went Red, Jpn went Vanu (or vice versa, I don't remember), USA went Confed. My schedule meant that I was always playing in the midst of the Vanu zerg and I simply got tired of strafing tanks, jump jetting MAXs and consistently watching Vanu take over bases.