Planetside

[a_c_saunders]

Too right stu CCP have majorly screwed up with that patch. I wonder if they rushed to release it before E3 so visitors could play it there? Whatever the reason they should give us a discount for our first month after the trial period or something to make up for it.

Apart from this annoying glitch though I would reccomend this game to anyone. Its my first ever online subscription based game and its been nothing but fun up till now. The idea sounds quite boring but when you play it you'll find yourself staying up till the early hours of the morning "just to finish this mining run" or the like.

[Edame]

I just upgraded from 512Mb to 1Gb of RAM, big improvement. There's no more mouse lag, and no annoying pauses while the game loads outdoor environments. Hopefully this will help improve my abysmal marksmanship (thank god for squads, otherwise I'd get no BEP at all).

[Edame]

In case anyone was thinking of purchasing this, don't bother. I liked the beta and decided to fork out for the full game, I've since cancelled my subscription and my free month expires in just over a week or so.

Somewhere between the beta and the full release, they completely screwed up. The experience system was totally overhauled, and the game had a mammoth amount of bugs. The SOE boards have been full of complaints, and for the most part SOE are just ignoring everyone. Their seeming arrogance has been staggering. After releasing a patch which proceeded to hardlock thousands of player's PCs repeatedly, their solution (when they actually answered at all) was to blame the user's PC in every instance, despite the game working before the patch. There's nothing worse than playing a bugged game and having no communication from the devs about what's going on, and these people tell you nothing.

The game is laggy, bugged and unbalanced....and after a while it's just plain boring.

I'll possibly take another look at it in a few months, but right now you would essentially be paying to beta test an obviously unfinished game.

[g-funk]

I was just about to buy it this friday too, won't bother now.

[Super Stu]

Hmm, this sounds poor.

To be fair, however much CCP naffed me off with the initial "EVE retail is considerably more b0rked than beta was", they sorted it. It's been solid for weeks now, apart from the niggling little bugs. They added a lot of good features recently, although it's added a few annoying crash to desktop bugs.

All in all, they seem to have quickly put the effort into what clearly wasn't quite ready.

Sounds utterly different to the situation with PS :/

[Edame]

I may try it out again in a few months if they sort it out. It does have potential, but there are a lot of people cancelling subscriptions at the moment.

Right now the gameplay is quite basic, everyone swarms to a base, takes it over (which involves 15 minutes of literally standing around while you wait for it to be 'hacked') and then moves right on to the next. The only incentive to play is to gain experience (which is also capped at a fairly low point), the moment a base is captured it empties and everyone moves on, the bases themselves hold no strategic value whatsoever.

A lot of things they promised at launch are yet to be implemented (platoons for example, where up to 3 squads of ten can pool resources and tactics). The european server (only one for the whole of europe!) is actually slower than the US East coast one (which I use). They seem to be slowly taking notice of things, as they recently posted a short plan of updates and new features, but it looks to be in direct response to the cancellations (it may already be too little, too late). During the huge commotion made about their disasterous patch, they didn't update the main website for 6 days and they haven't apologised for anything (they almost go out of their way to avoid saying it), it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in them.

That said, there are still hundreds, if not thousands of rabid PS fanboys who continue to play regardless.

[mechamonkey]

I disagree and are finding Planetside to be just about the most fun I've had online , its like Tribes on steroids.

Whats not to love in being part of 100 per side battles

It sound as though you havent come up against any decent opposition, believe me when you get into a tug of war battle for territory with a few decent squads the game takes on a whole new dynamic.

People have questioned the longievity over what is essentially a huge game of CTF but I ask you how long has counterstike, quake or tribes been going for ? they are essentially a handfull of maps replyayed time and time again, and they dont have fecking huge tanks or gigantic continents !

Anyway what I'm trying to say is dont be put off, PS is and will continue to be a bloody good game.

[g-funk]

Ok, I'm gonna pick this up tomorrow. If it's **** I'm coming for you Mechamonkey

[Edame]

I have been in huge battles, but after a while I realised that most of the time it just seems to boil down to strength in numbers. I went back to playing Tribes 2, and realised how basic PS really is compared to it.
PS has only 5 base designs on the entire planet (approx. 70 or so bases?) for example, and every continent is pretty much the same bar the scenery. There are no bases built into hillsides, or underground, or ones floating in the air. When I compare the strategy and teamwork required in Tribes 2 to take a base (knock out gens, lower shields, kill automated defences), compared to what's needed in PS (sneak into empty base and hack), the Tribes comparison just doesn't work for me any more. Tribes has a huge array of weapon and item configurations (MAX armour in PS limits you to a single weapon at a time). Combat in PS to me basically consists of spraying the enemy with my gauss rifle for about 5 seconds and hoping that I kill them before they kill me (and no damage models either).

The only thing that PS has going for it IMHO is the huge battles, because of the scale and the fun factor, but aside from that, the game itself seems far too limited in scope and design.

Just my opinion though. Now actual Tribes 2 with thousands of players, that would be something

[Captain Falcon]

Any news on a possible Tribes3. I never played no2 but it sounds cool.

[mechamonkey]

Yes Tribes 3 is in the works, its been previewed on numerous sites.