Planetside 2 Discussion - Out Now!

Jodou

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Released 11/20/12

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Debut Trailer - Official Trailer - Beta Gameplay (w/ Commentary)

[CUSTOMSPOILER=Matt Higby Int.]
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First of all, I’m really thrilled to be premiering this game here at fan faire. Represent our most passionate fans.

Planetside is a truly unique and unprecedented gaming experience. We made planetside 8 years ago, with planetside 2 we’re hoping to blow the roof off of the mmo fps market.

This is a game that we’ve been wanting to make for a very long time, it’s a game that has been evolving for years and it wasn’t until recently with the Forgelight engine that we really had the technology to bring to life the vision for what we knew Planetside needed to become.

A lot of what you see in Planetside 2 will be familiar to those of you who played Planetside 1 but what I’m going to talk to you tonight are a few of the aspects of the game that are brand new and unique and things that we’re adding to the Planetside experience.

The number one design goal for Planetside 2 is to deliver on massive warfare. What massive warfare means is, it’s a promise that the battles you experience in planetside 2 will be amongst the most epic and memorable that you have ever had in any FPS or any MMO ever.

We’re talking thousands of players, competing directly, no instancing, it’s open world combat, massive continents and this game is unlike anything you have ever experienced in an FPS.

One of the things we’re adding to support this massive warfare is a brand new territory control and conquest mode. This is going to turn every square inch of the map into contestable, valuable real estate that you want to control.

As places are being captured and conquered, the actual topography of the battlefield will be changing. Areas that used to be secure, that used to be controlled by your empire yesterday might be the new place of battle today.

Now that means, not just facilities are contestable but every single square inch of the map, you might be fighting one day over a volcanic ridge or a completely desolate dry river basin and we’ve hand crafted all of the terrain in this game to make sure that no matter where you play, no matter where you fight will be exciting, will work really well.

So players that control territory and players that control territory will gain access to resources. Now, resources aren’t like in everquest where you have to go to a resource node and bang on it, it’s not like that, you’re not going to hit a ore node with your assault rifle to try to get some ore in Planetside.

You are going to be automatically given resources based on your territory control, the territory your empire controls and your success in capturing and defending territory. Resources are going to be used throughout Planetside 2 for a variety of different things such as upgrading your weapons, attaching new weapons to your vehicles or even shortcutting certain skills on the certification tree.

The importance of resources to Planetside 2 can’t be overstated. These resources are going to add so much to the way people play and the way that your empire, outfit and the way that you manage resources is really going to affect your success or failure on the battlefield.

And later we’ll be going going even further with resources. In the future resources will be used for more sandbox features perhaps your outfit will be able to build its own facility, create its own defensive structures, build its own vehicle pads, we really do want to explore the sandbox nature of the games and we do think planetside is an awesome IP to do it in.

Another one of our cornerstone features with planetside 2 is massive customisation. What this means to me is that we want to make sure that players can play the game the way they want to. One of the main things you’re going to customise is which empire you fight for.

In Planetside 2 we’re really pushing the diferentiation of the different empires and we’re bringing back all three, so we’ll have the Terran Republic which are the strength in numbers, militaristic, disciplined group. We’ll have the New Conglomerate which is Guerilla Tactics and unconventional warfare and the Vanu Sovereignty which is about high tech gadgets, high tech weapons and some of the most technologically advanced vehicles on the battlefield.

Now, these empires aren’t just going to have different tools to be able to be able to fight differently, but the tactics and strategies that they use are going to be completely different as well.

Another place we’re allowing you to customise your game is through classes. Classes are brand new to Planetside but they’re familiar to those of you who played a lot of modern FPS games. The classes in Planetside are going to allow you to really have a distinctive combat role when you play the game.

You will be able to switch between classes seamlessly and they’ll all have their own upgrade paths but each time, each class is going to have a specific purpose in battle and those of you who are more support oriented are going to gravitate towards engineers or medics whereas the people who are more interested in in your face, gung ho, infantry action might be more interested in playing as heavy assaults or MAXes so classes add a ton.

The last thing I’m going to talk to you about is massive depth. One of the things all the classes, vehicles, weapons have in common is they all advance through a massive certification tree. The amount of advancement you’ll be able to do in Planetside 2 is going to be astounding and this certification tree affects all aspects of the game – Implants, weapon attachments, even outfits and squad leadership are going to be able to be customised through this certification tree.

The mechanics of this certification tree uses an offline, time based unlock system so some of you who might be familiar with EVE Online will sort of understand this concept – you’ll be able to advance while not even playing the game. Now this is really cool because it allows folks that maybe don’t have as much time to game will be able to keep up with their friends who seem to be able to get on all the time.

We’re still limiting these skills based on your characters overall battle rank so you’re not going to be able to just create a character day 1 and just sit there, wait six months and suddenly be the most awesome character in the world. You will definitely be continuing to play the game to unlock access to new skills and then those skills will be trained using the offline system.

We really think this is a great approach towards advancement in an FPS and allow us to have a huge amount of customisation, a huge amount of depth and it’s ultimately going to serve a massive warfare. So there’s a lot more to talk about Planetside 2, I’ve only got 5 minutes or so up here.

In the coming months I’m really looking forward to being able to talk to you about Planetside 2, about some of these features and really describing some of this stuff more in depth. We’re going to be starting that tomorrow at 10AM. I know that’s a little early for Vegas, but I do hope that some of you guys can crawl out of bed and wipe the alcohol of your face and come down and see the panel.

There’s gonna be Tramell our Art Director, Josh our Executive Producer, myself and John Smedly will be there to answer any questions that you guys have about anything I talked about tonight or any questions you have in general about Planetside 2. So I really do hope to see you guys there and I really do hope to see you all in Planetside 2.​
[/CUSTOMSPOILER]

 
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[quote name='crystalklear64']It will face the same problem all massive battle based games face. You will feel insignificant. I just don't see any way around this.[/QUOTE]
I agree, which is why I looked for smaller skirmishes. This at times was the real problem with Planetside -- too ambitious with large continents and not enough population to support it. I often found it too easy to ninja a base, hoping for some smaller resistance, only to have nobody come at all. This lead to everyone just focusing on hotspots whenever they joined the battle.

If they can find the right balance and actually place focus (like they say they are) on strategic positions, then it will give meaning and significance to smaller battles.
 
Back when I played Planetside, I had small squads instigate shifts in the battle front. Often I would hack and get a group establishing a new presence on a just unlocked continent. Eventually it would boil down to a hotspot of battle and hopefully a take over of the continent. I assume the new mission system will help alleviate any monotony of large battles.
 
Some new details:

[quote name='FPSGuru']John Smedley and Producer Matt Higby were part of the SoE team that presented Planetside 2 at SyndCon, the annual guild meeting of The Syndicate, a guild that has been in existence since 1996 and works together to provide professional alpha and beta testing services as well as the writing for print as well as website game guides. Planetside 2 is built on SoE’s own proprietary engine, Forgelight and we were given close up shots of the graphic possibilities with Matt accelerating the day / night cycle while the audience “oohed and aahed” at the light changes in an early build of the game. We were also given close-up looks of models and the level of detail possible, down to scratches on the paint of armor.


There will be a dynamic weather system that can affect warfare. Intense firefights causing a lot of smoke can affect the weather and they also spoke of volumetric clouds that can mask vehicles. That may not be in at launch, but is definitely in the long term plan.

“The long term goal,” said Smed, “is to have environment that is destructible.” If players wreck a base totally, they will have to rebuild it before it can be useful again. He also alluded to EVE Online’s outside-in approach in that they started with space and have since created on- planet game play while their plans are inside-out, with plans for space game play in the future.

“We can build in extra detail where it is needed,” said Matt as he pulled the camera in and out of landscapes and models. We saw the heat shimmer of super-heated air under vehicles, reflections of light off armor and the sun light striking the canyon at sunrise. There will be spotlights at night, on towers and on vehicles as well.

“Imagine the old Looney Tunes prison break,” Matt laughed, “with the spotlight following you as you try to escape it.”

Bases and outposts have attained greater variety, with some buildings built into the sides of stone walls, making the approach only, say 180 degrees, not 360.

“We will start with a single planet and continent,” said Smed, “then add more continents, and eventually planets.”

That brings up the possibility of naval and air transports between the continents as well as fighting on the high seas, refueling stations and floating bases – both on water and air. Planetside 2 will retain the same three factions, the Terran Republic, the Vanu Sovereignty and the New Conglomerate, but the three factions won’t be battling over territory just to hold it for the sake of holding territory. There will be outposts that control certain resources and looking at the map, players can gain control and hold them for the purpose of denying another faction the use of the resources, or use them, themselves.

The game will be able to re-allocate resources so that one strong faction won’t be able to completely monopolize a single resource. They might deplete one type of ore and spawn another, or create an abundance in another non-controlled area.


Matt then spoke on skills or as they are called in Planetside and Planetside 2, certifications. Planetside 2 will be much more of a skill-based game than Planetside was as the Forgelight engine is capable of the physics. For example, headshots will be possible and snipers will have a harder time of it, as ballistic physics will be in game and they will have to account for wind shift and bullet drop. The game will play very much like an FPS, with a keyboard layout that will be familiar to FPS players, however, there are leadership certifications as well as other support roles like medics and engineers.

Certifications can be trained offline or on, with online training speedier than offline. Players can still be a Jack of all trades, and bring specific load outs into each battle, but specializing will get players higher level certifications faster. Throughout the presentation, we were told we could do this or that, provided we had the proper certifications. For example, Terran Republic players will be able put a powerful anti-vehicle weapon on top of the Prowler (a mid size tank) and swap them out as needed.

If a player has the command rank and the certifications, they can command the base to raise specific turrets such as anti-personnel or anti-aircraft. Missions are area based, the objectives popping up as you enter an area, but leaders can also pick missions for the squad / outfit as well.

Players respawn on death and if leaders have the certification, the respawned player may be able to drop-pod directly back to the group rather than making his way back from the respawn point in a camp or outpost. Friendly fire will be in game, which will make AE weapons more strategic and player sacrifices more meaningful. Each faction will have an uncontestable base and Outfit housing will also be a safe sanctuary.


At FanFaire 2011, Smed had alluded to a cash shop, and he did the same here at SyndCon, reassuring the audience that they would not be selling power. If a weapon can be bought in the cash store, he was quick to assure us that it would be attainable in the game as well. Definitely though, one of the things that will be sold would be customization.

SoE hopes to create a parallel feel for outfits that’s like the US military, for players to recognize outfits for what they do, like how the 101st Airborne Division is known. To help with the identity, Outfits will be able to customize the look of their armor and vehicles. Leaders (with the right certifications) will be able to unlock abilities and customize the skill tree for the Outfit. Drilling down, an Outfit can have more than one Division, so they can have for example, a light assault Division, an Engineering Division and etc. Group play will be the same with 10 to a squad, but in addition, platoons of up to four squads can be formed.

In summation, Smed had this to say of Planetside2. "Basically, we took everything that sucked out of Planetside and made all the fun things better."​
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[quote name='Jodou']Might be time for an annual bump LOL, but for great justice!

Beta footage looks sick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM3DxaxfErs[/QUOTE]

Your video is no good no more.


I am looking forward to this. I like the idea that there is a massive battle going on and you could just get a group of friends together who specializes in bombing strikes, or sneeking into bases and taking over.
 
Yeah, I was afraid it would get taken down but even though it was laggy/buggy, it was still impressive for what little I saw. They borrowed a LOT from BF3 and almost looked like DICE worked on it TBH. All I know is having a jetpack will be badass and reminds me of SW: Battlefront a bit.
 
So good. After seeing some stuff explained, I can't fucking wait for this game. Didn't know TOD was in this, which is pretty huge for map variety alone but the bases are crazy huge as well. That's the one thing BF3 always had problems with, because maps tended to have chokepoints or would start to get repetitive. With this game, outside of any copy/paste bases I feel like I could play it for a year and still find new ways to approach each area. I love the amount of freedom there is, so hopefully the game is just as epic as it looks.

WTB release date, PST!
 
Played for a bit earlier. Game was laggy as fuck. It runs a bit shitty maxed on my PC (GTX670, i5 2500k @ 4.2ghZ, and 8GB's of RAM) considering it doesn't really look that great. Seemed alright though gameplay-wise.
 
Did you check to see if there were any driver updates from nvidia? Doubtful there's anything but sometimes they put out beta drivers for specific games. Man, I registered for beta when they first announced it and I thought us veterans were supposed to be shoe-ins. I double-checked my account and sure enough Planetside is registered there. Can't believe it came out nine years ago. I would have played longer too except SWG stole me away.

I'm just glad this one will be F2P because it's why I left the first one.
 
[quote name='SEH']My drivers are up-to-date. Just the game being un-optimized I believe.[/QUOTE]
Word. If I could get in I'd be able to test how well ATI works but it'd probably be similar results.
 
Wow. I respect the NDA so all I'll say is day one purchase for me. Also SEH, I turned all settings on max and the game played smooth as butter regarding framerate, even when there was a lot of action going on. Maybe check their forums to see if anyone else is having similar issues.
 
Ugh, the one thing that sucks about beta (and live with some games, amirite?!) is that. . .it's beta lol. Hard to report a lot of the bugs I've seen too because they occur randomly and can't really reproduce them. Really wish this was coming out this year!
 
No? I was just playing. I suck though. I can never tell who is on which side till I'm already dead. I did get a few kills though, and some nice headshots
 
Huh, maybe they left them up since it was down all day Friday. Easiest way to tell if someone is an enemy is they won't have anything above their head.
 
Yeah, I can never notice quickly enough. Found out how to win though. Get like 2 gunships full of people, and circle the enemy spawn. We couldnt even leave the building without dying >.
 
I'm Waughoo81 if anyone wants to add me.

Just a FYI, if anyone loads this up and all they get is a white kinda cloud-like screen, where you can still see the Green/Red Player names running around then try this... Go into graphics options and reduce the rendering from 100% down to 99% then reload. Worked fine for me. I did have to go in another time and move it to 98% once though.
 
I played a couple hours last night. I still have trouble telling quickly if someone is on my team or not. Did have some good times though. Had like a 4 kill streak early on. I also had a couple good revenge kills.
 
I need to start playing this again, probably after this weekend since there's another Just Cause 2 MP beta happening right now. Highly recommend checking it out for a few hours at least if you have the game.
 
Watched some demos at PAX on youtube and man... looks fun as hell. Haven't played PS since it came out years ago and been waiting for another MMOFPS.
 
Was playing tonight, and gotta say the game needs some serious love fixing glitches/exploits.

I was DC'ed 3 different times, one time was on the last couple seconds needed to cap a facility I'd been working on for 10 minutes, and had a 3 kill streak just from defending one point. At another point we had a galaxy deployed near a cap point, and like 5 of us attacking. 1 guy on the other team was able to wipe us out several times, even though we were all hitting him. Then his teammate was glitched to look like a dead body, and kept killing us from behind when we thought he was dead. Another time the same guy killed me through a wall with 2 shots. Finally they spawned a tank, and was using it to destroy our galaxy. I hit him with 2 missiles and the guy (same one who killed 5 of us without dying) jumped out, and killed me again. I respawned at the galaxy, and ran for cover. 3 of the enemies attacked and finally destroyed the galaxy, so I have no backup. I shot the guy who was killing us in the back with half a clip, and finally killed him. Then his glitched dead buddy came slidding up, and I got a lucky headshot on him. They had 2 more teammates show up, and kept running for cover and getting pot-shots in on them. The 2 I had just killed respawned, and I hit one of them dead on with a rocket, only to have him live with full shields and health, while his glitched buddy shot me in the back. Really annoying.

I also died several times by heavy machine gun fire that somehow was more accurate and had better range than my sniper rifle.

I'm looking forward to more of the weapons and certifications being available.
 
Just keep in mind it's under closed beta and NDA. You should leave feedback on the beta forums so they (hopefully) do something. I've already told them my thoughts on tanks and max units so far.
 
Yeah, the NDA ended a week or so ago. You can chat it up all you want now.

The graphics are still a little buggy Flip, a lot of people are having trouble. 2 updates or so ago they fixed the issue I was having, so they are working on it.
 
Yeah, the updates are crazy on this. I can 'teach' you how to die repetitively, thats how I play :)
 
[quote name='Waughoo']Yeah, the updates are crazy on this. I can 'teach' you how to die repetitively, thats how I play :)[/QUOTE]
I haven't looked yet, did they put a timer on maxes yet? If not, just play that while tank/jet/whatever is on cooldown. They're seriously broken without a timer, because unless you're toting a rocket launcher or something heavy -- you're dead lol.
 
updates remind of SMNC on steam. They dont know how to do updates, so you have to redownload the game EVERY time. i uninstalled that because its stupid to do updates like that
 
Eh, some of the updates are huge. I had one the other day that was only 166kb though.


[quote name='Jodou']I haven't looked yet, did they put a timer on maxes yet? If not, just play that while tank/jet/whatever is on cooldown. They're seriously broken without a timer, because unless you're toting a rocket launcher or something heavy -- you're dead lol.[/QUOTE]

Doesnt look like it. I only hop in them when I'm in the middle of huge fights though. I'm usually a infiltrator or a heavy. I haven't really even tried the tanks yet, just havent been interested. I've killed a bunch of them though. I mostly just spawn somewhere with heavy fighting, then kill things. I sometimes will go out into quiet areas on a quad and steal back areas though.
 
[quote name='Waughoo']I sometimes will go out into quiet areas on a quad and steal back areas though.[/QUOTE]
NC sometimes has GAL pilots running ninja missions for BR points, so try to catch a ride if you see it in chat. It's pretty awesome swooping in and hot dropping onto the flag area, then load up and do it again elsewhere. :D
 
Holy crap everything was cheap tonight! We literally couldnt do anything as the Blue and Purple factions teamed up on us Reds. They were swarming us with tanks and planes, and we couldnt even get a plane up to fight back. I got a tank at one point, and started firing on a plane that had landed and was already smoking. 5 shells into it, and it was still not destroyed. The infantry hopped out and laid down regular machine gun fire on me, and dropped my armor fast. I kept firing at the plane, but everyone hopped back in and they flew off. I was able to run 1 guy down, then another plane strafed me and I died.

Even without the vehicle advantage, we couldnt do much. Why in the world can I hit a Medic square in the face with a rocket, and he just turns around and kills me in like 3 shots? Some guy named Gaaz seemed to be after me, if I went Infiltrator he somehow snuck into our base and shot me in the back. If I went Heavy, he popped up in a tank near me. If I was a Engineer, he landed a rocket on me as soon as my turret was deployed. This is all with me respawning at random places. One time I went infiltrator and decided to go cap a point nowhere nearby. I ran cross country for like 5 minutes, went in an empty base, and started capturing it. Then he pops up behind me again >.<

Also, team killing is annoying as hell. I captured a point with like 2 other guys. We had been capping/losing the point over and over. So I camped there after we capped it. Some guy, on my team, came up and started moving back and forth in front of me. So I moved towards the other wall, and he unloaded a full clip in my back. Really? He had nothing better to do? So I respawn, and we lose that point before I can even get back there.

From what I saw in chat today, the different factions weapons are not really the same. I figured the base sniper rifle for each side would be about the same but with a different model and effects. I guess not, because people were complaining that one faction's SR was a 1-shot kill. And they were right, I was getting 1-shotted with full shields.
 
Yep, each faction has different strengths and weaknesses. It was in PS1 as well, so I don't mind it. I'm fairly certain the NC sniper needs to be a clean hit or headshot to 1-shot people though. As for FF, I do hope it's optional on some servers because coming from BF3, it's really taxing to shift from a shoot first mentality and tank shelling can splash friendlies which makes my job 20x harder laying down suppressing fire. Realism in games can really suck the fun out with stuff like that.

The whole 2v1 thing is something that won't really be an issue on live servers unless factions are skewed. Right now beta is restricted to one map, so it's really a population balance issue.
 
With the Alpha Squad now being available, I was seeing some weapons that I didnt see before. Couple of Maxes were running around with flame throwers, and some people were using different vehicle turrets. No way I can drop $40 on it though, plus I'm not sure I'd want to.
 
What I find kind of stupid is how their certing works, in that upgrades are applied when you spawn the vehicle, not who is commanding/gunning. This is a step backwards from what BF3 does well and they've copied so much already, this really needs changing badly. Tired of having no zoom optics in the gunners chair despite having it unlocked.
 
Well, only having the upgrades available when it spawns makes sense, but I can see where it is frustrating. I started a Vanu character (well actually I started using the one my friend started to try the game out), and I like the weapons and vehicles much better. I spent awhile just merrily running people down with a tank, before someone in a plane took me out. Also I put a infrared scope on a sniper rifle, MUCH better.
 
It doesn't make sense because it's the player that should make a difference. Every vehicle should spawn with no upgrades and only the commander/gunner should have access to those upgrades, just like BF3 does it. It's a work in progress though, because they only added gunner seats to tanks recently. The tank commander also needs to be able to see the gunner's ammunition supply for when they're low or bingo. No real excuse for that information to not be there since they put such an emphasis on supply lines.
 
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