Planetside 2

[Dark0ne]

Depending on the matchmaker setup this can lead to extremely bad situations since you can potentially have high-ranked players who's only redeeming skill is to stand in the backfield and point out enemy locations.

 

There's no matchmaking; it's like the Eve Online of FPS's in that everyone is on the same continent fighting various different battles. If you want small battles you can find yourself a nice quiet place where you can "bait" people in to coming to defend their territory. Normally less that 8 people. If you're looking for the truly epic fights then you can find yourself a tank column (aka a zerg) and you'll be in a battle with 100s of people on each side once your zerg has trampled enough territories for the other teams to take notice and bring their own zerg to fight it. To rub salt in the wound I just warped over to Indar, another continent, and joined a 100-strong tank column that just zerged The Crown (one of the hardest territories to take) in less than 5 minutes. It was a real sight to behold having over 100 mags pound it from a distance while the infantry stormed the front.

 

All the continents are seamless, so when you're on a continent it's one big landmass. Individual battles are taking place in various different territories on the continent but you can run/drive/fly your way across the battles much like you'd run across Skyrim to get to another town.

 

It's not without it's flaws, but it's free-to-play and not TOO bad at being pay-to-win. How much I'd recommend it to you depends on how much you like the "epic" concept of Eve Online, and how much you like shooters. This is very much a jack of all trades and a master of none. It has Risk/Eve style territory control but it's all mostly for bragging rights. It's an FPS but it's built to allow battles that involve hundreds of people so it's never going to "feel" as good as your more low-key shooters like COD, Battlefield or CS. If, however, you like jumping in to squads/platoons and using teamwork to capture objectives, or you have lots of friends to play with, then this one is a winner. It's great for teamwork stuff. Yes, of course you can lonewolf it if you want, but as with most MP games the fun is in the teamplay.

[Passb]

I think I'm going to have check this one out then from what everyone has been saying.

 

Just to clarify, are there certain classes with like the platoon commander or a general that engages this Risk/Eve type of territory control and management? I guess I'm not too sure how that fits into the game, my presumption was that it was just a large scale shooter. I definitely need to install this one ASAP and check it out for myself.

[Dark0ne]

There's no overall general or commander on the continent like there is in say, Natural Selection, but you can be either a squad leader or a platoon leader if you wish. A squad is a team of 12 people, a platoon is 4 squads led by one of the squad leaders of the 4 squads for a total of 48 in the platoon.

 

As squad leader you can set waypoints and objectives for your squad to capture. As platoon leader you can send your squads to different territories, or you can send them to different objectives within the same territory or go for an all out assault. Whether it works or not depends largely on whether you're in a good squad where everyone pays attention and follows the orders given (or not), and whether your squad/platoon leader is quick to react to the changing landscape of territory ownership on the map. There's nothing I hate more than stubborn leaders who refuse to leave a territory they've been fighting in for 20 mins. If it's at stalemate it normally means that your enemy is off capturing all your other territories while you're stuck trying to capture just this one. You've got to be willing to bug out and say "we'll be back for this one, but for now, lets go elsewhere".

 

Most important for me is people using the in-game comms. It makes it so much easier to give orders to people, and receive feedback on enemy movements etc. when you can speak on the move. Saying "tank column 200m south" is a lot better than typing it. Similarly having squad leaders report in on comms rather than typing it stops you becoming overloaded as platoon leader. You're spending a lot of time looking at the continent map as platoon leader already, you don't want a backlog of typed messages.

 

Perhaps my favourite tactic is the synchronized drop-pod attack. Getting 48 people in your platoon to deploy in drop-pods (you can do this once every 30 minutes) to a strong territory, all of you landing in a specific close area within 5 seconds of each other is a real sight to behold. It's my own form of zerging that works well when your platoon aren't all clueless people who don't speak English. It also makes everyone in the platoon really happy as they know they were just a part of something that looked really awesome ;) as the local chat comes abuzz from enemies exclaiming "err, I don't know what just happened but that looked great!" or my personal favourite "omg hax".

 

I'm generally leading platoons on Esamir and Indar at the moment, and have a growing friends list of people who are always asking for invites each time they come on. Turns out most people like being bossed about when they know it's going to work out well in the long run. I'm on as iPokeZombiesWithSpoons on the Miller server. Vanu, of course, because anything other than Vanu is for kids ;)

[demidekidasu]

I played as Vanu in the beta... Have not had chance to fire it up since release though lol

[tredmillion]

would love to hear more opinions about this game, im downloading it on steam as we speak, am currently looking at different empires pros n cons :)

[Passb]

would love to hear more opinions about this game, im downloading it on steam as we speak, am currently looking at different empires pros n cons :)

 

Still waiting for it to install, but I've been watching some basic tutorials on the gameplay and while on the surface it seems slightly confusing, after watching a couple videos it's pretty straightforward. If only it would finish installing so I could jump right in and finally play it.

[tredmillion]

 

Still waiting for it to install, but I've been watching some basic tutorials on the gameplay and while on the surface it seems slightly confusing, after watching a couple videos it's pretty straightforward. If only it would finish installing so I could jump right in and finally play it.

 

 

heh im finally at 70 per cent (damned computer keys are going :( cant type the numbers between 4 and 7) been waiting on it to download all night :P, i watched lots of videos too, it looks frickin awesome, and only out in the last 3 days :O...ive heard theres a fair learning curve, but tbh after watching the videos and stuff, its just another fps, and i can still aim and shoot juuuuust fine :D

 

soon as ive played it for a few hours ill be back with my own opinion :)

[Ghogiel]

Was in the closed beta but haven't played since that week where they gave you million cert points to test out the unlocks. It's pretty epic, even in the beta with less people online. Edited November 23, 2012 by Ghogiel

[micalov]

Played it, died a lot, had fun, great game, although annoying when you get killed by friendly fire, combat medic is fun :D

[marharth]

Only in regards to aircraft guns. Everything else is fine.

You also use certs for class upgrades though. While most weapons are sidegrades, upgrading class related things is a straight up advantage. Like upgrading the medics healing is not a sidegrade, it is a direct upgrade.

 

PS2 is a good game if you can get past the cert system and you can run it at a steady framerate.