Planetcide
“Many of us found our gaming home in the ranks of the soldiers of Auraxis, our war was on land, air, sea and even underground when needed. There was always a target in mind, something to do, a single squad could take action that made a difference to the global fight, hell a single solider could turn the tide of a battle with a well placed orbital strike.
We fought in the vehicle bays of tech plants, defended stair cases of towers, assaulted rooms carved from crystalline structures. The goals and objectives changed by the minute: fall back, roll armour, hold the line while reinforcements flew to our aid. If there were dull moments, I must have missed them.
You weren’t thinking of your next kill or level, there was work to be done, and despite it being a “grind”, it never felt like it wasn’t the sole purpose of the game.”
- Excerpt from Tales of Auraxis – ChaosNC Archives
It is with a sad heart that say I’ve given up on Planetside 2, conceding to the fact that almost all of the enjoyable elements of the original game were overlooked when in came to designing PS2, presumably in favour of a more mainstream elements found FPS games.
At first I thought that it was just me and perhaps the shiny new engine just wasn’t my cup of tea, however after talking with a number if players it would seem to be a much wider spread concern.
If you are a veteran Planetside player who has played both games I shall ask you a simple question:
How many memorable/heroic feeling moments have you experienced in Planetside 2?
For those that enjoy the killwhoring side of FPS games PS2 is great, but for many others it’s almost a chore to play, with little enjoyment or thanks for undertaking support activities. Ignoring the free to play nature of the game, PS2 lacks many of the original game elements that gave the game some direction, a fact that has been noticed by the folks at SOE given that they aim to bring the lattice back into play.
However it’s a long way from the things that gave PS a unique feeling, from simple things like tower drops to tactical activities such as Gen holds/ base drains. There are large scale battles but they don’t last long as players drift off, or you get back hacked.
Also gone is the hack defense, emergency ANT drop from max altitude via lodestar, 30 person max crashes or re-securing a base with seconds left on the clock.
Maybe one day I’ll return to Planetside 2, maybe one day it will be the game I hoped it would be.
Welshtroll/ChaoticDecimation - SmasherDevourer - TurboTurbot
Bleeding the Freemium players
So this far into the Free-2-Play adventures it’s plain to all that there are frequently some tactics used to help customers part with their recently purchased coins/cash/tokens/crowns/points. However most companies seem to have some morals and don’t kick the arse out of it too much with the occasional item once every 3 to 6 months.
Additionally it is frequently some cosmetic item/armour or a new/unique horse.
However so far SOEs plan seems to be different, by making weapons unlockable with station cash many people see it as a “Win Button” approach and I have to say to a degree it sometimes feels like it. At this point I’d much rather a subscription game than the half and half model, which to be honest feels greedy.
However what appears to be happening at the moment is that SOE announce and release a new weapon, which once players have their hands on it turns out to be highly overpowered.
Once word of this gets into the mainstream player base there is a rush as everyone spends their Station Cash on the new Flavour of the week/month weapon, normally trying to get in on the action before SOE take a nerf-bat to it.
Of course the outcome is that SOE announce that it will be de-buffed in some way in the next patch, but not the worry as here is a brand new overpowered weapon to make up for it, just spend another 700 station cash and you can be a kill-whore like your friends.
As you can see the problem is due to two man factors:
- No testing server has been given but I hear it’s coming soon, lets hope they listen to feedback rather than ignoring it as they mostly did with Beta.
- The internal playtest/balancing is being done by SOE isn’t picking up any problems with these weapons. Now concerning that may of the devs claim to be life-long Planetside players, why aren’t they flagging these overpowered items before they hit the live servers?
All of this ultimately makes me believe this continual delivery of game wrecking functionality is being purely driven by SOE as part of their strategy to milk the players for as much as possible.Bit of a shame really.
Perhaps it’s just me, perhaps I’m that tied up with this game more than other F2P titles that I have most likely missed it happening to this extent elsewhere.
What are your experiences?
Grinding levels in RL
Currently I have that age old dilemma, can’t blog because I’m too busy. Well that’s not completely true it’s more that my free time is used up by gaming.
I rarely post about myself on this blog as it tends to focus more on games and my whole gaming experiences. However this one is mostly about me.
Almost a year ago I got a new job title, became a senior developer, since then things have got increasingly busy. Of course that was expected with the role but it’s more than just workload that has increased, there have been been many people leave the company in the last 12 months. People who took with them massive amounts of knowledge that you only get from working at a place for a long time, the ins and out of the systems, system quirks and configuration solutions.
I have been with the company 4 and a half years, yet of the original developers only 1 has been there longer than me now, infact I’d go so far as saying 75% of the development pool have only worked at the company for 12 months or less, or thy are contractors with a time limited contract.
I find that being one of few central points of knowledge is utterly exhausting and means that I haven’t the time I need to complete my own tasks.
The problem is compound by the lack of concern shown by management that I’m burning out fast being a single point of knowledge.
The reason I found time to write this post was the need to throw this all somewhere that wasn’t my head.
I’ll be back posting about games soon enough, I just need to figure a way to add an extra 4 hours to the day, or extent my weekend 
