Planetside

Nemesis

How is this new exp nerf patch affecting gameplay Greg?.
I really hope that gaining exp is not the reason to play this game.
Like to think that you start playing at night to have fun like you do in CS or DoD and that any exp you gain is a bonus.
DemonBaby.

quozl

i don't like it. I gained 1 1/2 lvls last night in about 4 hours play. And that was from lvl 5 1/2 to 7. So if exp gains slow down with every level you gain, then leveling will be a concern if you want to have multiple good characters.

We lost a hack last night with 20 seconds left because everybody left the cc to go looking for enemies to get exp. Having exp being a major concern may just lead to lameness. Like having stats on public game servers often leads to teamplay-hurting whoring behaviour.

But then again, I plan on joining a decent outfit as soon as I can after the game releases and playing with them most of the time, so I think it'll be ok. Especially as the're planning on bringing in platoons of 3 squads (30 players). It'll probably end up a bit like EQ, you know the people you can rely on, and you play with them.

Remember, from the second you start, you have the certs to buy the biggest armour/weapon combo already. So you can just play and ignore the exp, and it'll build up overtime.

Greg

Nemesis

Ok sounds not too bad.
Once game goes retail I'll be looking you up and annoying you for a while to show me the Do's and Dont's.:).
Also getting a copy for Odhran.
I'm getting mine from England but is Odhran probably better off buying from a shop in Dublin.
Like it will be released in stores in Dublin on 23rd?.
DemonBaby.

quozl

don't have a clue Brian. I ordered mine from station, seeing as it's their game I thought they'd
have it the earliest and ship it quickly. But some friends told me their famous for delays (weeks not days). This was after the cancel by date so I ordered it from amazon.co.uk as well

So i'll have a copy of planetside to sell cheap some time after the games european release.

Greg

Thorbar

I don't think certs limit your ability to play the game. I've only been able to play it for two nights due to lack of time so far but the first night I just wandered around figuring out what was going on. The second night I was part of a squad that was involved in 3 sucessful cc hacks and I got 5/6 kills and destroyed a vehicle. The only thing certs do is allow you to play the game in different ways. Its sorta like at the start you're forced to play as a basic grunt which is still enjoyable but then later on you get the oppertunity to get try out new classes as you gain exp. This isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

Dr_Teeth

Yup, they just give you flexibility though there are some 'essentials' everyone should have:

Medium assault
Reinforced Armour

and either AV or Special weapons

After that you have a decent assault rifle for infantry, decent armour and carrying space and you have access to weapons that can actually hurt a MAX, which is nice.

Mind you some people go down the stealth/hacking route soley, and they don't need any of the above skills.

I'm really noticing the xp slowdown now. In an evening of fierce fighting I only got 4 ******* through BR15.

Teeth.

Thorbar

Is this a perma change or just a test by the dev team?

Nemesis

Can you lose XP?.
DemonBaby.

Thorbar

I lost a small bit when I died. Not sure what the rate of loss is tho but its nothing like the spirit crushing amount you lost in EQ.

quozl

i never noticed losing exp for dieing, so it must be pretty small, seeing as I'm headless chicken-tastic.

Venom

Losing exp in any game sucks but in a FPS style such as PS it totaly sucks.

The current rumor is that the subscription fee will be $12.99 per month.

Teeth - while those features you list sound nice they are really only more of the same in all fairness as people will still just use or will aim to get the best weapons and ignore the crap ones. The same will apply to vechicles I imagine.

By content I ment features to keep the game interesting as capturing bases will get boring after a while, and there should be some meaning to capturing the majority if not all of a continent.

Monty - the one and only

For who ever regulary play on johari, you missed a huge 6hr battle between NC and TR on Cyssor last night that started at a about 4am...at that time 3 squads with in my outfit had decided to raid cyssor but we encountered very heavy resistance, which to be honest is unusual to say the least, we managed to make our beach head and at that point we started to get renforced by 2 or 3 other outfits maybe about 90 odd players, but it was of little use, we were just being swarmed and over run, it was at this point that we realised something, all of NC's online forces were on cyssor while TR's were scattered fighting VS on about 4 different continents...We slowly managed to push them back through organised facility assualts until we pushed them to Hoshi(? to the leftside of dropcenter) , thats where the fun began... for 4 hrs the facilty swapped hands( all the time staying neutral)hacks being removed in the last 5 min...for the first two hours of that battle my outfit was alone, a meer 32 people against 4 or 5 times that number...

When we finally capped that base the rest fell like a house of cards, espeacially when VS came through another warp gate, When I left the game, TR had just taken tore, which was a pretty messy 3 way skirmish, NC had 1 facilty and 2 towers left VS had 3 and TR had the rest...

In short NC are pushovers in a normal battle, and sure as hell wouldnt survive against the bulk of TR's forces but when they have numbers hugely in thier favour thats the only time youll get a good fight from them.


Many NC grunts fell before my feet in tower assualts but the assults and defence of theNW tower at hoshi a great many died....

Thorbar

I agree with vemon there should be stat/equip bonus for a race if they manage to control a continent for a 24/48 period or whatever. Also maybe give the lads who are involved in the last base capture on a continent medals which can be viewed by other players.

Hobbes

Originally posted by Venom
By content I ment features to keep the game interesting as capturing bases will get boring after a while, and there should be some meaning to capturing the majority if not all of a continent.

Yea that's the biggest whine for capped out players in Neocron. Thats why they keep adding content to the game.

I would guess planetside will do something like this as well. I can't see them using the XP threadmill as the only way to keep players in the game. I can't see Twitch players hanging around to level up.

Dr_Teeth

Well they'd have to change the game completely for the leveling treadmill to matter.. right now you can be BR5 and be a very effective infantry man. More levels just makes you more flexible, not more powerful.

I'm BR15 right now and the only difference it makes is that I can afford to drive two different vehicles or use two different types of rocket launchers without having to unlearn something.

Teeth.

Monty - the one and only

The beta is going offline at 4 pm pst, or 2am tonight for us, hope to see a few of ye about;)

Nemesis

Is there Voice communications in-built in PS?
DemonBaby.

richindub2

I dont like it.


The maps are far too bland: the bases are all nearly the exact same. Theres a huge amount of fogging (this is most likely because I have it on medium detail rather than high mind you).

Shots dont register enough to make it a rival to quake / cs etc. Ive found that the only realistic way of killing someone whos moving is to either be a) very close to them or b) have a splash damage / spammy weapon.

Taking base after base that look the exact same on mildly different islands (hey, its snowy instead of deserty but this makes no real difference to gameplay. wow!) isnt my idea of fun.

The vehicles are fun for a while but get boring quickly. The maps are just far too dull.

Overall Id say go play BF1942 and its mods instead. Its basically a nicer PS (albeit with no exp gaining / character development) that wont cost you a monthly fee.

(Oh and Ive got two characters and have a sniper cert / cloaking armour / MAX armour / reaver & galaxy flying certs between them so I feel Ive tried a fair share of what the game has to offer)

El Marco

Everyone to their own taste, I just sorry that you didn't like it considering the 1.3gig download

Shots dont register enough to make it a rival to quake / cs etc. Ive found that the only realistic way of killing someone whos moving is to either be a) very close to them or b) have a splash damage / spammy weapon.

Is that because of your connection or shots just don't register in general? That comment has kind of made me nervous since I'll only have ISDN when I get planetside :eek:

Dr_Teeth

I use 128k ISDN and its fine for me, considering I'm connecting to a beta server in California! When it comes out here they will have servers hosted in Amsterdam so even better. I don't have a problem hitting people, at long range you just have to take a knee to narrow the cone of fire and lead them a bit has the bullets take time to travel - in fact it's very similar to BF1942 in that respect.

Teeth.

richindub2

I dont think server location would play a significant part in it - I was on 128k isdn pinging sub 190 to Eastern US servers. It just seemed to be more a fault with the general weapon design / netcode.

Mind you I am basing this comparison on tfc / cs / q3 etc which all have relatively decent netcodes for hitscan weapons so I guess Im expecting a bit too much... however if the game is meant to capture the 'twitch'(as Hobbes calls it) market then I cant see it succeeding. As an alternative to DAOC / EQ maybe, as an alternative to your FPS of choice I dont think so.

El Marco

Could this not be an issue that could be resolved once the full game comes out? Or at least a few weeks after when some patches are released?

And seen as I probably won't be playing the game for a few weeks because I'm going to wait to get ISDN first and then play it, it hopefully won't effect me to much

Dr_Teeth

I haven't noticed anything like you describe rich, my FPS of choice right now is BF1942 and I find PS is very close.. no hitscan weapons, cone-of-fire to model accuracy, large distances etc.

I think the netcode is great given that I can kick ass on a 300 ping to a west coast server.

Teeth.

Monty - the one and only

Originally posted by Dr_Teeth
I haven't noticed anything like you describe rich, my FPS of choice right now is BF1942 and I find PS is very close.. no hitscan weapons, cone-of-fire to model accuracy, large distances etc.

I think the netcode is great given that I can kick ass on a 300 ping to a west coast server.

Teeth.

Have to agree completely, depending on where I played from my ping was either about 150 or about 300, I generarly didnt use the spammy weapons. I had plenty of kills, I had the leading amount of points in my outfit by well over 1000, the outfit I was in was ranked 5th in TR, I intend to stick with them we are damned effective at what we want to do. The secret to the game is understanding your weapons and how to maximise thier effectiveness using the right ammo for the right target, eg TR's cycler,if firing at long range, fire one shot at a time and 90% of the time you will hit your target...using amour peircing bullets are rubbish against infantry...pretty much the same as using standard ammo against vehicals and max's

At the beta's end, I was br17, I had certs in reinforced armour, medium assault, engineering, galaxy, AMS,maruder and ballisk...

I have tried the 3 max variations, didnt like them too much, very good at what they were designed to kill,


In my opinion bf1942 dosen't hold a candle to this, don't get me wrong its still a great game, but after you've been in battles with 2/300 people a side...it just seems, well small.


Nemesis:

there are voice comms in the game.

Myg

Monty, what is the maximum amount of people that can be seen @ 1 time on each persons screen? This is something that has always plagued online games, and im wondering if PS has been able to handle more then 64.

Dr_Teeth

Nice going Monty, I got the BR16 and specced in Medium Armour, Medium Assault, AV Assault, Special Assault, Engineering and Marauder with 2 points left-over that I put into a Burster MAX out of boredom.

I tried the MAXes but they weren't my style. You're always screaming for an engineer or getting pooned by missiles.

Seriously thinking of going to NC though, with my preferred load-out I'd have access to the Gauss, maybe the Jackhammer and of course the Phoenix.

Myg, I can't recall the most people I've seen on-screen, but the lag has always been fine for me even in big battles when there are 50+ people fighting over the same base. I've got a sweet machine though.

Teeth.

Monty - the one and only

the most Ive seen at any one time I suppose is when doing hot drops.., I generally use a distant external camera when flying a galaxy and have the veiw distance set to max....you can see pretty much all the attacking and defending forces(above ground and outside in most cases)

At an estimate I would say about 160 people and 20 or 30 vehicals before getting noticable fps lag, on average though, you'll only see about 30/40 people onscreen at any one time...the huge battles are not as regular, I've only seen 6 or 7 of them in the 2 weeks Ive been playing, but generally they are the long hard battles that are fun even if you're getting creamed.

Nemesis

Cheers monty..I like voice comm in games nowadays.
Any more news on Euro server?.
I'm a little wary of the sincerity of Sony regarding a Euro server.
Could someone point me to a news clip or statement saying there will be a Eruo server.
I dont want to buy the game and find I have to play on US servers with my ISDN.
I'm still going to get game For next weekend but I want to be re-assured.:).
I have a kick ass PC but only got ISDN which is more important regarding gameplay?.
Connection or System?.
Or should I say what do you guys reckon the min specs are and not the Sony's ideas of min spec.
Demonbaby.

quozl

a friend of mine was playing on my sisters' pc for most of saturday (with me on my pc, good craic). It's a p4 1.5ghz, with sdram (it's the ****est p4 I've ever seen), and a radeon 64 (about the same as a geforce 2 64mb), and he was perfectly happy with it at medium detail levels.

He did have 768 mb of sdram which I'd say was the saving grace.

So if you've anything close to that, and a better graphics card you'll be flying I think. My p4-1.8/gf4ti4200 is perfect for it (768mb ram again though)

Greg

Dr_Teeth

I'd say you'll need 512MB of RAM, a geforce 3 titanium or better, and a P4 or Athlon XP CPU to get good performance. 1GB of RAM is nice, the game quits and backgrounds instantly now, no minutes spent swapping.

Teeth.