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Planetside 2: When trees attack!

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We totally need to talk about this game and potentially get a Thumb crew going. When you first play it, you won't know what is going on and your characters life span will probably not be very long. I was sent to the frontlines and landed via drop-pod in, seemingly, the middle of nowhere. Nowhere, except the giant steamrolling enemy force that passed by. All I got to do was register that there was a giant enemy force and then I was dead.

The game does a very poor job of explaining anything. In fact, it explains nothing and you just kind of have to figure out what everything does and means on your own. I'm glad I stuck with it, as this is a game of war stories and it's on a scale you've probably never seen before. Unless you played the original Planetside.

One part in particular had me jetpacking from tree to tree, concealed in the leaves, absolutely devastating an enemy assault. I had to go back and restock my ammo at least 6 times, all the while in the chaos of the fight, no one had bothered looking up. I'm currently learning how to fly properly. Got my flightstick and everything, getting used to everything. In one of my first flights, I was just kind of getting a feel for things when, in the middle of nowhere there's a light assault trooper running around. So I'm thinking "Target practice!" and when he realizes that his gun and ammo supply is only gonna scratch my paint, he just keeps running. I swear to god, for 2 minutes, I'm following this guy around, attempting to shoot him. I didn't hit him once. I attempted to do a cool hover thing. I half succeeded, pressed the wrong thruster button and pancaked onto the scenery. I hope that person had a good laugh.

I've gotten better though. It was an action movie moment, where a whole group was holed up in the room with the thing you gotta capture. Windows on 1 side. I hovered up, could see the wealth of fodder in the room and as they stood and watched me for a second the realization of what was gonna happen seemed to sink in and all of them dash to the doorways. I think I shot a good 8 dudes on that one run. It was great.

So yes, let's go play. I'll teach you useful things and then we can be each others wingman.

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Thanks for pointing that out. You know, I did a search for Planetside 2 and that did not come up for some reason. I remembered that it was talked about recently, but I could not find that thread for the love of me.

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I am so looking forward to sprucing my PC up and sinking lots of time into this. I actually completely missed the fact it'd released, please tell me it's actually getting a decent player base and won't be dead when I get to it in a few months.

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They recently added servers, so that can only be good, right? It's been pretty busy for me.

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Just reviving this thread to highlight that (at bloody last) it's been released for the PlayStation 4. I haven't spent much time with it, but it seems reasonably solid and it remains the only game really doing this kind of thing — which to an extent makes up for its various shortcomings, because holy shit some of the moments in this game are great.

I suspect that Battlefront is going to refine a lot of this into a more condensed but extremely fun shooter much like Battlefield 2142 did with PlanetSide, but it's a good stopgap for those who didn't play the PC version, like, years ago.

Because it's brand new on PS4 to an audience that's never experienced a game like this there's a pretty cool sense of excitement to it all right now, although how many people are actually on board I have no idea. Still, been no shortage of action for me so far and apparently the servers are getting wrecked.

Here is an assortment of terrible footage I captured using the handy capture button:

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I played quite a bit of PS2 back when it came out on PC a few years ago. I spent alot of time as a Mosquito pilot; hunting down other pilots and doing strafing runs on enemy tanks was great fun. I have a pretty good PC but it ran like crap and the framerate jumped all over the place, so I might jump onto the PS4 version to see how it plays in a more stable form. Do you know if your purchases etc. carry over between versions?

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I haven't seen anything indicating that it's possible. When I opened it for the first time, it auto-recognised my PSN account and went straight into the account creation process. There was nothing about integrating with any other accounts.

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I played a bit of this on PS4, and it feels odd. There were a couple of really good moments where both teams where throwing grunts at each other and just getting mown down constantly. 

Then there's shit moments when someone on the other team is a god and destroys everyone. Also, in a few battles I hit "instant action" and got teleported to a dead zone with nothing going on. 

 

What I did like about it, was that I didn't give a shit when I died. It felt completely irrelevant since it had very little impact on my team.

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I'm not sure if you fancy PS4 people get a squad join button but you should consider linking up with people. You can find action alone or just with friends but some really cool options do open up with squads and platoons.

I havent been on to see a decent Armourside push recently but they're magical when you do see them.

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I seemed to be automatically placed into a squad, as some bloke started talking rubbish while I was enjoying the mountaintop ambience.

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Not sure, when you're choosing where to spawn there's a squad option, but I just went for instant action because I wanted...action.

 

Is it a pay2win game, because I feel like some people take a bunch more hits than me and can kill me from a thousand yards without breaking a sweat? Maybe I just suck (which isn't unlikely).

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In the original there were three levels of armour, the maximum of which you might as well just run away from if you're not armed to the teeth. It was pretty well balanced as the bigger guys move way slower. No idea how much of this remains true in PS2.

I always found playing more stealthily with cloak camouflage, silent weapons, hacking, sniping, etc very satisfactory in the original. I don't have the equipment to experiment with this yet.

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I tried sniper briefly, but it was the worst time as it was a close range battle and the pistol is weak compared to the assault rifle/shotgun. 

 

It seems like it would be fun, but for some reason the stuff required to get a vehicle is severely limited. I wanna drive a tank!

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Maximising your time as sniper often involves sneaking past enemy lines to where they don't expect you. When you try to snipe head on frequently you'll find they can evade or countersnipe you easily.

 

As for armour infantry can spend certs to maximise DR against specific damage types. Take Flak armour if you're sick of rockets and nades. Take Nanoweave armour if you're having trouble against small arms fire.

With Heavy Assualts the guys with the rockets, and shields; while you do see that class spammed a lot but you can counter them easy with smart use of cover. If you're Light Assualt though you're best used attacking the enemy at odd (usually elevated) angles.

 

As for guns out-ranging you all of the guns are side grades. if it makes up for it in range it probably sacrifices something else.

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I played quite a bit of PS2 back when it came out on PC a few years ago. I spent alot of time as a Mosquito pilot; hunting down other pilots and doing strafing runs on enemy tanks was great fun. I have a pretty good PC but it ran like crap and the framerate jumped all over the place, so I might jump onto the PS4 version to see how it plays in a more stable form. Do you know if your purchases etc. carry over between versions?

 

I remember reading there is nothing that carries over. Something about not giving people who played on PC an advantage over new players on PS4.

 

How's this running compared to beta? I tried it when it was first available for beta several months ago and it was barely playable. I'd love to have something to play with more people!

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Sooo it's not sharing a server? Aw I hoped it would.

 

Yeah, I was hoping so too. The main argument they had for doing it on its own was the usual kb/m vs controller is not fair (which is utter crap). I just hope it doesn't prematurely kill this game.

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kb/m vs controller is not fair (which is utter crap).

I've been on both ends of it and for me at least it feels extremely unfair. Point and click is so vastly superior to slowly-track-and-click.

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Been spending more time with it. It's definitely growing on me now that I've slowed down a bit and started paying attention to the various equipment configurations, potential routes of upgrading I could take, etc. I started playing as the Infiltrator class and I'm enjoying it much more already, stalking the edges of conflicts and figuring out what's a good vantage point for sniping. Even more so than Battlefield, you can position yourself very tactically due to the terrain being so expansive and so multi-level.

 

One thing that I remember finding really great about PlanetSide and that's true of its sequel too is the atmosphere of simply being in such a big world. There's a certain epic feeling to being in a huge world with day/night cycles, detailed environments (for an MMO) with all kinds of different terrain, etc. The graphics definitely aren't going to give something like Battlefield a run for its money, but the reasonable level of detail combined with lovely dynamic lighting works well. I was tickled to find that the lighting changes as clouds go in front of the sun.

 

Last night there was one period where I spawned in a quiet area at night, and because the game aggressively gives you objectives unlike the original I thought I might as well just walk to the next base. I ended up going along some strange walkway with lovely trees and lights everywhere illuminating the path in the darkness, enveloped in natural sounds. There has clearly been a monumental amount of work put into creating these environments, with so many unique areas.

 

Also, unlike in the original the bases feel like they are organically part of the environment, rather than just being clones of each other plonked onto flat parts of terrain. For example, there's one base on Amerish that is basically just built all over some hills and it looks fantastic — especially as part of the base is on top of a huge hill, which became somewhat a 'last stand' when it was being terrorised by enemies.

 

There's just no other game that delivers an atmosphere and moments comparable to this. I don't know why huge-scale shooters are such a rarity even 12 years after the original PlanetSide showed that it could be done, but my god do I crave more of this kind of thing. If they could incorporate more meaningful and story-driven missions into a game like this it would be incredible, like Destiny but without having to sacrifice the scale or free-form gameplay.

 

You can totally feel that Tribes DNA here, too. In many ways PlanetSide 2 is the culmination of what Tribes and PlanetSide were meant to be, before a fortunate bug turned the former series into an aerial acrobatics-focused experience. This is no surprise considering the people involved with both series' development, but it just makes me happy to see vehicle pads, slow-projectile blasters, jetpacks, and a glorious range of not-Earth environments.

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I had the exact opposite experience last night. I was trying to play for 30 minutes and found nothing but empty maps that I had to slog through to find one player. Kept hitting instant action and it just moved me to another barren place.

 

Came close to un-installing it last night because I had such a shit time with it.

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Sounds more like you should find a higher population server? Or is there only one server on consoles?

 

All this talk about Planetside 2 recently made me remember the Idle Thumbs Hot Drops Squad:

 

ss8KyHC.jpg

 

Good times, good times!  :tup:

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The serve I chose is the only one without a wait time to join. Fuck waiting 5 minutes to join then another 5 minutes to load into a map.

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