Planetside 2, and why aren't you playing it

So evidently, this game is not getting the press it deserves. And people are starting to whine about being bored with COD and BF so this will be a wonderful refresher for all of you I am sure.

I can only describe Planetside 2 in one succinct way: Battlefield and Star Wars had sex, named the baby Planetside, and made it free to play.

..Yeah.

PS2 launched live about a month ago. It's a free to play, Massively Multiplayer Online First Person Shooter. When I say massively, I mean each of the 3 game Continents is 64 square kilometers (browse the maps here: http://ps2maps.com/), each loaded with substations, major and minor bases, some of which grant global bonuses when owned and required multiple layers of security and shielding to be breached before they are conquerable. By Multiplayer, I mean that I've seen and been able to count roughly 200+ allies in my immediate vicinity before, blobbing together on foot, in tanks, in aircraft, etc. while weapons fire is exchanged everywhere. And the rest you can figure out yourself: OFPS. You've played enough of "those".

The first time you enter PS2, You will choose which of 3 factions to play (they all have minor pros and cons, currently, it's not exactly Zerg-Terran-Protoss style. Yet..) and you'll be dropping in to a flashpoint: the server usually picks up where there is a healthy amount of violence and bloodshed going on, and it will create drop-points on the map to help you get to where the action is. So you'll be screaming in from orbit in a drop pod, NBD, and landing in the middle of a firefight. Expect to be shot

Taking a base is probably the most interesting part of the game. To start with, the outter walls are usually lined with howitzer and flak turrets. If you're lucky, nobody is bothering to man them, or repair them (yep, it requires real players to go and wrench these destructible objects back to health, and you earn XP for doing so of course), and the base's forward shields usually restrict weapons fire and vehicles from passing through them. So, infantry have to hop in (either charging down the big, wide open front gate, or jump-jet in or sneak in with cloaks) and take out the shield generator by setting them to overload. At this point you really want to get a Sunderer transport inside the base walls and deploy it as a spawn point. The inner shields are even a little tougher and require usually a couple generators to be blown before they will fail. Finally, you'll reach the enemy's Spawn Unit (SCU) which will prevent them from spawning from inside the facility anymore and before long you've captured the base and everyone is happy. Oh, except now you are the owner of this completely crippled base that you just helped decimate, so you better hurry and repair it before the enemy faction decides they want to rally and take it back from you. The map is persistent as well, there is no "30 minutes is up time for a new map" garbage. A base you helped capture last night still has influence on the events in-game the next day.

Some of the best fun I've had is from piloting a transport ship and ferrying people to and from the front lines. Proximity chat makes it easy to communicate with those around you, including your nearby escort craft. Many a spectacular crash has been had, though barrel-rolling a Galaxy is especially nerve wracking for your passengers.

Don't know what else to say, except that again, it's Free. You never have to pay a dime. If you want to, you can, and you can get quicker access to sidegrade and upgrade weapons (like trading your dumbfire rocket launcher for one that can lock on to Anti-Tank, or Anti-Air). These are handy but not requisite. Some of the better upgrades you can't buy into anyway, like Infrared scopes (oh btw the world is dynamic day and night) and forearm grips that help you take steadier shots. Those can only be got with "Cert points" which is currency-based experience. You earn these when you kill, cap (everyone in the zone gets XP for a zone cap), are playing the game, and even a little when you are offline.

SOE's President has taken to the interwebs of late and had this to say about the future of F2P:

I’ll give you a good statistic: roughly 10% of the people on Planetside 2 actually spend money. It’s very interesting to watch that balance. We designed the game from the start almost completely ignoring the F2P business model – we just wanted it to be fun. And the way we see it is that the 90% of players who don’t pay are making the game fun for the 10% that do. So we look at the world in terms of how many people are playing the game, and not in terms of how many are paying. The players are content for one another, so the free players are just as important as the ones who are paying. You do have to design the game to ensure there’s enough stuff to monetise – and we’ve done that – but you also need to make sure it isn’t ‘pay to win’. And we’ve done that too; I think we’ve found the right balance.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/14/soe-president-john-smedley-on-planetside-2s-future-free-to-play-and-everquest-next/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

Plus as it stands, the game just launched, and can only grow organically from here. Like any MMO before it it's not 'perfect' in that you will see funny things happen, especially when vehicles get flipped (lolz); but kind of like being an early adopter of WoW or Eve or something you'll be there to watch it all happen. Players on the forums are already talking about Naval combat and SOE has already hinted they want to make the entire planet playable territory, not just separated continents. Extremely ambitious project that will have to happen over the course of years. I also imagine you'll see more options for strategy and tactics, like top-down commander views, the ability to call in air strikes and orbital bombardments, whereas right now you can already place squad beacons that allow your squad members to redeploy via drop pod near your location.




Oh and playing as a MAX is fun. Burn up some empire resource points and equip one of these suits sometime:



Plus the game is just beautiful. People with slower boxes might feel better on Esamir which is the least demanding on your GPU, but even that, I mean, I have been stopped in my tracks watching an in-game aurora before. They have put the right amount of detail into this game. Even on the lowest settings the game will harken you back to an old school shooter; on the highest settings, everything around you just 'pops'.



Why aren't you downloading this yet?