The post to PS beta board

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

Made this post to the board. If you want to add your feelings to it, please feel free. I hope they put the fun back in as I think this could be a very good game.


I hope you will bear with me to point out what I see as problems that are driving away a lot of players. Some of this may be personal opinions, but it seems that they are shared by a large number of people.
First, let me say that I am not just some random noob to gaming. I have played FPS games and RPG games for quite some time. I have been a very loyal customer to Verant and Sony, with an easy 200+ days played in EQ since the first month of release. I have been following the Planetside venture since the day it was first advertised on the Verant/Sony website. I was looking forward to this game more than any other that is due out in the near future.

What I have seen, is that this game went from being an extremely fun game with something for everyone, to a tedious, lag-filled game that requires zerglike numbers to accomplish anything. The outfit that we established was a group of people that were brought together from several guilds from EQ, including people from arguably the top guild in the entirety of EQ (you know them as Fires of Heaven) and many of the other top guilds across the Veeshan server. We had (and I will emphasize HAD) the top ranked outfit for TR on the server through most of the exclusive beta. Coming from Veeshan, we were used to being a very competition oriented crew and had a very skilled group of people. We generally had between 15-25 people online during normal peak hours and very very rarely found anyone that could either repel our assault or take a base that we were intent on holding. We took pride in being able to do things without requiring a huge herd of people. This is what we enjoyed...small squad activities with skilled people.

If you look at the same outfit today, there are generally 3-5 people online at peak hours. Several people have already uninstalled the game and for the most part, 35 of the 40 members already will definitely not purchase the game. The main reasons are as follows:

1) The exp penalties across the board reduce the game to absolutely tedious leveling. You have made 3 penalties to exp that have halted advancement and will require EQ-like dedication to leveling that most players simply will not go through. The biggest killer was the base nerf. Capping bases should be the main focus of the game. What the big erf did was force people to fight for towers instead, where you will earn much more exp simply by killing people over and over again. This is quite pointless to do and accomplishes nothing. The exp for killing enemies was cut in half. This is not that big of an issue, except that in conjunction with the base capping nerf, it makes leveling too much of a chore for people that want to have fun. The third penalty is the impending hell levels for 14-20. All things being considered, I can understand this one and I believe it is a good thing to leave in place if the base capping exp is raised substantially. I do understand that you are looking at exp. You need to tweak this upwards quickly before beta ends if you want to retain a large portion of your beta testers when this game releases. I don't think this can be stressed enough. People as a general rule are motivated by rewards. Levels are going to be a huge deal to them.

2) The pricing structure. It has been said before, but a lot of the customer base simply will not pay EQ pricing for a shoot-em-up game. You need to get them hooked and add content before you charge premium pricing on a game that is still going to have bugs at release. I know the people on this team are good and having played EQ for 4 years I have no doubt that this will be a very stable game at some point. The thing is, EQ started as a $10 a month game in its infancy. You truly need to think of this as a game in its infancy and adjust the monthly price to reflect that. When you can add 5 expansions and demonstrate the consistent reliability of an EQ, then you can think about charging premium prices. You are driving away another large chunk of people with the price plan.

3) Certifications just don't make sense to a lot of us. There is a claim made that players should be specializing so that there is a bit if a "class" feel to their characters. I personally think there is a lot of things that need to be addressed along these lines. What we are witnessing is that the MAX is a very strong certification, yet it can be taken with 2 or 3 cert points right off the bat, while the AV cert required to kill one takes a minimum of 6 certs. How can this be? The MAX needs to have prerequisite certifications to use it. Either by taking the medium assault and heavy weapons certifications first, or reinforced armor certs before someone can jump in a MAX suit. My personal feeling is that there should be a logical progression in MAX suits. The requirements should be that someone specializes in MAX by taking reinforced armor, then can certify in AI MAX, then can cert in AV MAX, then AA MAX. The same applies to the Reaver. Anyone can hop in a Reaver and simply go and deal amazing amounts of damage. Simply requiring that someone certify in a Mosquito as a prerequisite to the Reaver will reduce the sheer volume of reavers poluting the skies. The role of the basic infantry is being driven away by certs that are simply too easy to get. Making people specialize a bit more will let us see the branching into different roles that we all thought we would see in the game.

4) Large scale battles and the zergfest. Not every single person that logs into the game wants to be at a 300 person battle. Many would love to engage in smaller unit incursions where skill can play a factor in winning and losing. Before the lattice, we would routinely defeat larger forces with a squad or a squad and a half. Currently, if we travel with less than 40 people, we are just overwhelmed by an enormous number of enemy. There is simply no way to take a small group of people and enjoy yourself. You are FORCED to follow a herd of people to be able to cap a base. Before you tell us to drop our squad somewhere in a remote area and drain NTUs blah blah blah, let me tell you that it is not a fun option. How boring is it to sit with 15 people and have zero fighting and do nothing but shoot a generator? The lattice system hurt the small squads more than anyone. There must be a way to enable smaller units and outfits to still get decent smaller scale battles within the lattice system. I have not truly sat down to think of a possibility that would work personally, but it really should be looked at.

I hope you don't just lock this thread arbitrarily. I have seen what some of the changes has done to a group of people who all wanted to play this game for a long period of time. When 80% of an outfit all decides that they will not purchase because the fun has been sucked out of a game, then there just might be problems that need looked deeply at.

[Llaffer]

I tried to play the beta.

I took a serious attempt at it.

I went through all of the out-of-game training, I did the certification for gear and a vehicle. Tried to do what seemed to be the simple event of refilling the power to a building.

And I got my ass handed to be a shitload of times, never seeing my attacker. Both in the car, in a plane, and running around.

This game is good for the FPS fanatics out there, but will bomb in the "casual player" market.

It is impossible to do anything alone in this game, yet no squad will accept you if you don't know what's going on.

I might give it one more try to get into it this tonight, but I can guarantee that this isn't going to be a game that I subscribe to.

[Shanter]

The game just isn't appealing anymore, it's the exact same battles over and over again. Either get killed by a zerg force or kill someone using a zerg force, not fun.