Quick Look: PlanetSide 2

@Rox360 said:

Nothing like it. When you leave a match on BF3, you're done. There was a conclusion. Whether you won or faced defeat doesn't matter, the round ended and someone came out a victor. There's even a permanent record of it having happened. You can save it, too! The record of the match, to prove that it happened, that you were there and that you kicked ass, got X many kills and Y deaths and scored Z points throughout a half hour engagement at the harbor, or whatever. Each map, each session, has a very clear objective and there's always closure at the end. That feels good.

But it is still just as meaningless as the persistence in planetside 2 right now. The fact of the matter is after that map ends, you start back and square one just like when you lose previously held territory in Planet Side. The only difference here is you have a number saying you won the match, but who gives a fuck?

Finally there seems to be just as much closure in Planetside 2. When you win over a base and hold it, it is yours. That battle is over, you move on to the next battle or you leave just like in any other shooter. The only difference here is when you come back to Planet Side again there is a chance that previously held territory is lost, but it's because the opposing team won it fair and square. Of course, that is still only a chance. Your team can hold territory. In other shooters every time you jump into a fresh map, you are back at square one each time.

Sound is ever so slightly off for me. Weird.

@Porkellain said:

System requirements for this? I'm afraid my laptop would burn...

fucking insane, my computer isn't the beast it was back in the day; core i7 920 @ 3ghz 6gb of ddr3 ram, and a 5850, and i cant run the game at anything playable unless i set most options to low.

I've been having a lot of fun with this game. It plays nice and smooth on my PC.

Started playing this stupid game. Now I cant stop main reason i started playing it i had 3100sc doing nothing so i figured id burn it all in PS2

@year199X: It was posted from one of the lead designer's twitters, so they'll do something with it. Also, the developers have actually planned for other types of "continents" including a large water area, and also they mentioned space. They said in a live interview that the water seen on Amerish (the latest continent to show up during beta) was also a test case for future water technology in the game.

@Rox360: Well then, you need to let go of pointless little numbers telling you that you did well, and actually go out and do well. There is a persistence though. If you help capture an entire continent, your whole faction gets a bonus that lasts until the continent is taken over by a different faction. Also try setting goals for yourself, or your squad to take an area and hold it.

I had a great time a few nights ago where I got my friends on and drew a line in the sand, organizing the defenders of an outpost that held off a major counter-offensive until reinforcements could arrive.

When I logged out that night, the fight was still going, but I had my own accomplishment of stopping an attack dead cold with my friends, so much so that while they focused so many resources to try and take the new heavily defended area that our other forces pushed out the lines and cut off the attackers.

I was expecting this Quick Look to be an hour and a half. From what I've seen of PlanetSide 2, it's a very complicated game.

Why play anything other than NC?

Jeff+Drew= OTP

@SharkMan said:

@Porkellain said:

System requirements for this? I'm afraid my laptop would burn...

fucking insane, my computer isn't the beast it was back in the day; core i7 920 @ 3ghz 6gb of ddr3 ram, and a 5850, and i cant run the game at anything playable unless i set most options to low.

Oh wow, that sounds scary.

I had no idea what this game is about, but it seems pretty neat. It really reminds me of BF3 i several ways. The HUD icons, movement, Q to spot.. It's seems like it's all taken straight from BF. And that's not a bad thing.

I really did expect a longer quick look of the game. But from most of his attitude during the video, Jeff seems to either not care about the game or hate it outright and only be playing it out of a self-imposed obligation having played PlanetSide 1, so I suppose a short video was inevitable.

I've put enough time into PS2 between the end of the beta and launch to say without reservation or hyperbole that it is amazing. I've said it elsewhere but I'll say it again: this game is largely what I hoped Battlefield would become back in the BF2 era, before it regressed on so many things. i was a naysayer on the actual benefits of the "MM" in "MMO" myself, as my probably-never-to-be finished blog entry and ill-fated call-in to a certain GB event can attest to, but this game has changed my mind on it, because it does all those huge player numbers RIGHT with some smart design and actual quality FPS mechanics.

I guess I could see people not appreciating the (current) lack of "endgame" or overall "winning state" or whatever, but I honestly think that's just a matter of the wrong perception. The victories of PS2 aren't an artificial "this team ran out of tickets" or "that guy got the most kills", they're the amazing war stories you're constantly partaking in. When you have memories of amazing things from Battlefield or really any FPS, it's probably not "remember when we won that round?" or "remember when I had the best K/D ratio?" (although that stuff IS in PS2, just "rounds" are not rigidly defined), if you think about it.

Instead, it's the stories you remember, like that time you drove a tank across the map in time to flank the platoon of enemies who were pinning down your entire advance. Or when you lined up a perfect shot with your tank's cannon and brought down the irritating fighter that was harassing your entire column. Or when you stormed a base with your squad and buckled down to hold it when the enemy you just took it from hit back with everything they had. That last one in particular is the sort of thing that can only really exist and shine in a game of this scale.

All that said, there's no question that the lack of any real tutorial/guidance is inexcusable. Jeff illustrates it pretty well here when he mentions how he can't seem to learn the bases; in reality there are only 4 base structure types, but with the amount of stuff generally going on when you're assaulting one it can take a looooong time to learn them reasonably. That's probably the most frustrating thing about the game: it's actually not very complicated at all if you've played any modern shooter, but there are so many things going on with no explanation/turorialization that it's completely overwhelming.

Honestly, I'm confident that anyone who's played a Battlefield before could have this game's mechanics down in 30 minutes or so if they just had some guidance. In fact I've been considering starting up some kind of quick in-game "seminars" to teach people the basics quickly and intuitively, because every extra person in there who knows what they're doing makes the game that much more fun, regardless of skill level. Doubt there'd be much interest, but that's how much I like this game and want to see it prosper.

@mrangryface said:

Planetside 2 for TNT

second

Watching this is occurs to me that something like this is probably what people were expecting from Bungie. Maybe it's what people are still expecting now that details have leaked. I don't know, but looking at this it doesn't look fun, it just looks like madness. If I am go hang out in a shooter turned MMO I don't think I want the meat of the game being shooting other humans. That doesn't make sense. I want the meat to be exploration of a large and mysterious world filled with danger! That's what I think Destiny seems like given the plot and I really hope that's the case. Massive PvP stuff seems stupid.

When I was young, say 17-18, this was exactly the type of game I would dream about. Now that I'm 25 my tastes are very different and I have no desire to play it, but still I have nothing but admiration for what they are doing with it and I am overjoyed that it exists.

This seems decent, you guys should definitely play it on TNT...but Far Cry 3 coop is cool too

Pranet.

@SamDrugbringer said:

@SharkMan said:

@Porkellain said:

System requirements for this? I'm afraid my laptop would burn...

fucking insane, my computer isn't the beast it was back in the day; core i7 920 @ 3ghz 6gb of ddr3 ram, and a 5850, and i cant run the game at anything playable unless i set most options to low.

Oh wow, that sounds scary.

which is funny because I run on high detail with an i7 2.8ghz, and a GTX 460. The i7 came with VISTA, which tells you how old it is

this is the nature of PC gaming though

oh and the PS2 executable is 32bit, which is why I didn't mention how much ram I have, because it only has access to about 3gb of it

I'm running 64bit windows 8

@Nettacki: Most probably they would. I'm afraid I never had the opportunity to play the original and so it is indeed a blind spot on my part. When it came out, I had an interest but anything subscription based was off the table for me.

Certainly from what I've heard/checked into myself, there are a lot of really interesting/cool things in PS1 that I would very much be pleased to see make their way to the sequel. But I have also heard the actual shooting aspect of PS1 described as, at best, "functional", simply due to the limitations of the tech at the time if anything. But I think the core components of 2 are generally extremely solid and it's so early in its lifespan that possibilities for improvement are basically unlimited at the moment.

Didn't care much for the time I spent playing this, enjoyed the original but this feels off to me.

I tried playing PlanetSide 2 but it ran like ass on my system. It never went over about 35fps regardless of the quality settings.

Mediocre shooter with mediocre metagame and tons of grinding unless you pay real monies. Yay.

@jabbertrack said:

@SamDrugbringer said:

@SharkMan said:

@Porkellain said:

System requirements for this? I'm afraid my laptop would burn...

fucking insane, my computer isn't the beast it was back in the day; core i7 920 @ 3ghz 6gb of ddr3 ram, and a 5850, and i cant run the game at anything playable unless i set most options to low.

Oh wow, that sounds scary.

which is funny because I run on high detail with an i7 2.8ghz, and a GTX 460. The i7 came with VISTA, which tells you how old it is

this is the nature of PC gaming though

oh and the PS2 executable is 32bit, which is why I didn't mention how much ram I have, because it only has access to about 3gb of it

I'm running 64bit windows 8

64bit win 7 here, maybe it just doesn't like ATI/AMD cards, couple of my friends with newer computers were having issues as well.

@OfficerMeatbeef: The two games might as well be in different genres. The shooting in Planetside wasn't great but that's totally okay because that wasn't the focus of the game. The best way I've heard it put is that Planetside was a strategy game cleverly disguised as a first person shooter, while Planetside 2 is a pure first person shooter in every respect. Both are good in different ways, but 2 is nothing like 1.

Always be red team

@SharkMan said:

@Porkellain said:

System requirements for this? I'm afraid my laptop would burn...

fucking insane, my computer isn't the beast it was back in the day; core i7 920 @ 3ghz 6gb of ddr3 ram, and a 5850, and i cant run the game at anything playable unless i set most options to low.

Something is wrong with your computer then, that's not normal and sounds like the performance you'd get in the crappy beta, not release. Maybe ATi are slacking with driver compatibility. (again)

@Nethlem said:

I gotta say i'm really disappointed with PS2. I never played PS1 (lack of CC and beefy hardware) so i really looked forward to trying PS2, i even liked that they went F2P (no upfront investment to try it). But in the end it's all the F2P stuff that ruins the experience for me. Unlocking anything at all is a pita because stuff is expensive and points come in so slowly, they basically force you to pay2win if you want to get any feeling of progress. It just feels like such an grind to get anywhere remotely interesting.

@anzejk: What about having sex while playing Planetside 2? Or screw that and go the full distance, have sex while playing Far Cry 3 ;

Yeah! Now you're talking.;D

I downloaded this thinking I'd have some fun. Turns out my computer is completely incapable of running it except on the lowest settings and even then performance is spotty at best. Time for an upgrade.

Reminds me of Starhawk

I think Jeff's being way too harsh on the non-permanence thing, that's an issue, certainly, but it's literally existed since the very first time a game was described as "massively multiplayer", so it's hardly exclusive to Planetside. I think I'm gonna check this out, and buck trends by joining the purple team.

On a positive note, this game looks super pretty.

This seems really interesting to me. It's kind of how I'd imagine Battlefield 4 going.

There's been fewer experiences more enjoyable this year than sweeping over a base after a half-hour long push through a whole sector. Unfortunately, the game seems sort of unoptimized for AMD cards because I frequently get ~20fps on medium and stay barely in the mid-30's with some things changed to low. A 6850 isn't a great card, but I'd expect it to push this game at medium settings, at 1600x900, relatively well.

Also, fuck the progression in this game.

Jeff remains the best at running quick looks.

"everyone is somehow British"

Thanks a lot for this video. I used to play Planetside back in the day, but have forgotten all about it and I did not get any enjoyment after a couple of hours of Planetside 2. Now I feel like giving it a go again.

It's cool remembering PS2 at launch. The game has gone through so many overhauls since then, I forgot how unplayable it used to be.