No.265
"What is Planetside 2?"
Planetside 2 is the long-awaited sequel to/remake of the original PlanetSide, published in [FIND DATE] by Sony Online Entertainment.
"That didn't answer my question!"
Okay, okay. Planetside 2 is a massively-multiplayer online first-person shooter. There are only three maps, but don't fret! Each map is multiple square kilometers in size, and instead of the 64-player cap on most shooters? Up to six thousand players can be on the same map, at the same time, potentially even in the same general area.
"Holy shit! How does it work?"
The basic game is "Point bangstick at other players, pull trigger", with what I've been told are heavy shades of Battlefield 2/3. The bigger picture, though, is territory control and resource management. Each continent has several bases of varying degrees of importance - from clusters of prefab buildings with a name attached to them, to full-fledged bases that are roughly the size of your average Battlefield 2/3 map - that can be captured by each faction. Capturing a facility, be it a trailer park or a tech plant, gives that faction an increase in the amount of resources it gains.
"Wait, resources? This sounds like a trap."
I was hesitant about them too, but it's okay, they got this bit right. See, each faction has the ability to spawn vehicles. There is no limit, aside from raw player count, on how many of a vehicle a particular faction can have in play at any given time. Vehicles are therefore limited by two things: resource cost and a re-purchase timer. If you want to drive a tank, you spend ~200 Mechanized resources to spawn a tank and a countdown is started. If you try to buy another tank before the countdown ends, or you don't have the resources to buy another tank, you simply can't buy another. Don't worry, resources regenerate fast enough to keep competent drivers and pilots in their vehicle of choice. Infantry resources, on the other hand, are spent on things like grenades, C4, mines, and MAX armor. I'll get to that.
No.266
"You said something about factions. The fuck do you mean by factions?"
Yep. Planetside 2 has three factions to choose from. Let me outline them for you!
Vanu Sovereignty: The VS are, in a word, technospergs. Yes, that's a word now, shut up. Everything they use is based off of ancient technology found on blah blah blah who cares you have laser guns. VS-specific infantry weapons have decent DPS and no bullet drop, in exchange for worse damage at range. The VS tank, the Magrider, is firmly middle-ground as far as armor and speed go - but it's a hovertank, with all of the benefits that implies. The VS fighter is the Scythe, which doesn't give a cold shit in a sandwich bag about gravity. Also, they're purple.
New Conglomerate: The NC have the power of teenage rebellion on their side, as evidenced by their love of butt rock. All of their equipment is based around the concept of doing as much damage as possible with each shot, or in the case of vehicles, taking as much damage as possible without exploding. NC-specific infantry weapons focus on making each bullet hurt a lot, at the cost of fire rate. The NC tank, the Vanguard, is the slowest armor in the game and makes up for it by having the biggest main gun out of all the main battle tanks. The NC fighter is the Reaver, and it's supposed to be the most durable, though as a result it's a bit slower and harder to maneuver with than the other two factions' fighters.
Terran Republic: The TR enjoy goggles far, far too much, and their mission in life is to leave no bullet un-fired. All of their equipment is built around throwing rounds downrange until the other guy falls over, and/or being fast - you know what they say about red ones. TR-specific infantry weapons focus on rate of fire above all else, which does make up for their lower per-shot damage to an extent. The TR tank, the Prowler, has a double-barreled main gun and is the fastest of the three MBTs - but its armor is a bit thinner than you might like. The TR fighter is the Mosquito, and it's - you guessed it - the fastest of the three fighters available at the cost of being a bit fragile.
No.267
"Sounds good, but what can I do in the game?"
Immediately after creating a character, you'll be dropped into a fight already in progress. That is to say, dropped into a spawn room near what the game thinks is a fight. Congratulations, you're a Light Assault, go shoot dudes that your HUD doesn't identify as friendly and spam Q - this is your "I want my teammates to know where this is!" key - when you see people or things you personally can't deal with. You'll also be automagically put into a squad with a bunch of random players, so try and stick near the green names and help them out.
When you die, you'll be presented with a number of spawn locations organized by their distance from where you died, as well as the option to change what class you want to spawn as by changing which of the five buttons below the list of spawn locations is selected. From left to right they are:
Infiltrator: A Predator-style cloaking device and a big fuckoff rifle are the signature gear of infiltrators. Unless you're NC your starting rifle won't one-shot people, and even they need to get headshots to do it, so don't park your ass a kilometer from the fight.
Light Assault: Light Assaults are known for being the class everyone starts as, and having a jetpack. Use your jetpack to flank people and shoot them from the side or behind, but don't forget that the other name for a flying soldier on the battlefield is "skeet".
Medic: Medics are what happens when you give a Light Assault a better gun and replace the jetpack with a healing pack. You lose mobility in exchange for a healing tool that lets you raise players from the dead and heal the ones that haven't died yet, though the latter is better handled by your special ability - upon activation and until you run out of charge, you heal everyone within a certain distance of you without having to pay attention to them.
Engineer: Engineers are Light Assaults with a backpack full of toys instead of a jetpack. By default you have the same weapons as a Light Assault, plus a repair tool for patching up vehicles and MAX-armored troops, a functionally-unlimited supply of gun food dispensers you can place in the world, and a deployable anti-infantry turret.
Heavy Assault: Heavy Assaults are what happens when a Light Assault decides carbines just aren't big enough, and those damn tanks are getting on their nerves. Heavies get an LMG, a pistol, and a rocket launcher right off the bat, as well as the ability to turn on an overshield that acts as a third health bar on top of their shields and health.
After spawning, you'll likely have an equipment terminal nearby. Use this to change your class, the equipment your class is carrying, purchase more grenades, or to climb into MAX armor. MAX armor is the sixth class available to infantry, and you get a heaping pile of armor and two arm-mounted guns of rather ridiculous size. The tradeoffs, however, are thus: Each suit of MAX armor costs 100 infantry resources and has a reacquisition timer. You can't cap points. Your armor doesn't regenerate, forcing you to rely on engineers to stay in the fight. You can't drive or pilot any vehicle, and your transportation options are limited to hitching a ride in a friendly Sunderer or Galaxy transport. However, remember that this is in exchange for having guns for arms.
No.268
"But what if I don't like the gun I have? What about C4 and mines?"
There's an unlock system in place, using what are called cert points. Cert points are generated slowly over time, and earned during play for doing things that earn XP - the more XP you earn, the faster you generate cert points. You spend these to unlock additional gear for a class, or different add-ons for your favorite gun, or entirely new weapons and abilities. Don't like ironsights? Unlock some optics, you'll find something you like. Tired of trying to predict grenade-bounce on your Light Assault? Unlock C4. Tanking buddy complaining about your default gunner weapon? Get a new one.
Now, you'll notice that there's two costs listed for weapon unlocks. One in cert points, and one in SOE's flavor of funbucks. This is, in my opinion at least, not pay-to-win. Most unlocks need some degree of certs sunk into them for optics, ammo capacity, reload speed, things like that. As of this writing there are some "trap" unlocks - ask around to find out what, everyone has different opinions - but that should be hashed out during future patches.
No.269
And this is where you get to ask questions.
Also it's late and I missed the bit where I should've put in the date PlanetSide came out in, fuck you all
No.305
Oh cool I didn't know any of you Eldarfuckers played this.
Don't go to Mattherson. It's terrible. But if you are with the Mattherson TR feel free to add me: GreyEminence. I'm not any good but I like playing engie.
No.306
>>305>Eldarfuckersdammit, Pinerelic
No.309
>>305>Mattherson TRSo what's it like fighting on the same side as a homophobic neo-nazi shitstain with anger management issues?
(For the record, I play VS and NC on Connery. I've just seen some pretty goddamn offensive video captured from BCP's twitch.tv stream.)
No.310
So, people still play this?
Is it still grindy and pointless, or should I try it out again?
>>309>So what's it like fighting on the same side as a homophobic neo-nazi shitstain with anger management issues?It's like rolling around in certs atop The Crown while some screaming asshole jerks off in the corner.
No.311
>>309I try to avoid TE when I can. They're completely retarded, and unlike the other retard zergfits (AoD, mostly, but there are a few others) they're really unpleasant to play with.
Also I have no fucking clue why anyone watches Bazz or pays attention to him. But he got banned a few days ago for having a tk-on-sight order against AoD (and broadcasting it on his stream because he's a retard who thinks the rules don't apply to him) and there have been rumors that he's going to leave the game ever since. Fuck I hope that's true.
>>310I'd say it's still pretty grindy if you don't have a boost or subscription or something, but I think it's a lot of fun nonetheless. Also the next big update (hopefully sometime this week) should introduce
something of a metagame – the factions receive "alerts" which are basically just missions. "Go conquer this place by X hours and get some more XP." The xp in itself isn't much (like 3000… gee thanks SOE) but you get a passive xp bonus for fighting wherever the alert sends you. So now there should be some more fights on Amerish/Esamir, so that's good, I guess.
No.314
>>310>Is it still grindy and pointless, or should I try it out again?No reason not to give it a try again. It's free, after all.
>It's like rolling around in certs atop The Crown while some screaming asshole jerks off in the corner.I'll admit, I lol'd.
>>311>But he got banned a few days ago for having a tk-on-sight order against AoD (and broadcasting it on his stream because he's a retard who thinks the rules don't apply to him) and there have been rumors that he's going to leave the game ever since. Fuck I hope that's true.Oh shit, so do I.
No.330
>>326The Jackhammer sucked so hard prior to the patch that they forgot to nerf it with the rest of the shotguns.
No.331
>>330The thing is, it's a viable alternative to the rest of the shotguns now. Longer range for slightly less damage per pellet, but still just as if not more deadly at knife-fighting range thanks to its 2 second short reload and high refire rate.
pic: What happens when you take up skeet shooting at a biolab's air pad.
No.705
GINYU FORCE RULES
No.711
>>705#GINYU #FORCE #RULES #SWAG #YOLO #TWILYCORN
No.1249
GU13 trip report: New Esamir owns bones.
NS-7 PDW trip report:
http://youtu.be/P3ALwKeSEYs No.1744
Game has been updated so it doesn't run like fucking shit all of the time, and ZOE glowcrabs are getting nerfed, so I've come back to the game.
I'm going to shamelessly plug my recruitment link. If you haven't played in six months or if you're new you can get some free shit from it.
https://recruit.soe.com/recruit/smlanding.action?iId=YYUY5DE2GHAXQYQQ82GZ&gamecode=PS2
