Windows Planetside 2 - Massive Combat on an Epic Scale

Triple SC sale tomorrow, and double exp from tomorrow to the end of the year

 

Yeah I might have to get my wallet out this weekend, seriously enjoying just playing with 3-6 mates and flying round in a liberator or getting a few tanks together. Got involved in a huge night battle last night, love the light show.

Its a great game and I enjoy coming in for a couple hours with friends but I have to say it feels a bit "pointless" at the moment. No real feeling of progression and no scoreboard to top, I guess I just need my own goals but everything seems so unachievable at the moment.

 

Here's my summary of playing planetside 2:

I have no idea where to go

I have no idea what to do when I get there

I have no idea how to make a meaningful impact

Character customization and the ui in general is a confusing, disorganized mess

I don't understand the currency system at all
My sqaud keeps placing waypoints that are thousands of meters away

I shot a few guys

Sent from Bittech Android app

 

Follow your squad. Failing that, follow the masses.

Shoot people who are not your teams colour and run for markets labelled on the minimap as A, B or C.

Play your class role and cap the points as above.

Agreed, it's as smooth as sandpaper.

You earn cert points. Use these cert points in the customise menu and unlock things for your character (class-specific).

Yep, the maps are rather massive.

Fun, isn't it!

 

Just started playing on cobalt, i know one person so far is on that server, any more?

 

I have to agree on some of those points with you here. The frame rate dips and poor performance is one of the main reasons why i don't bother playing anymore but the game also just feels so big and... impersonal. I was really looking forward to it too.

 

i like the feeling thats its too big. Its all about the squad and the team overall not your individual scores. I never look at my k/d ratio because its not important.

I must say that i dont tend to frame rate dips although i get crashes every now and again. @spectre thats probably due to your GTS450. Im running an i7920@4Ghz + 7950 and it never seems to dip below 50FPS @ max 1920x1080.

It feels like a war cause there are no pauses, no stupid kill streaks just areas to control and it never stops even when you stop. due to all of that i feel like i belong to a nation and get excited and annoyed when we gain and lose ground. Especially frustrating when you log in the next day to notice all the work you did last night was gone !!!

 

If you get yourself in a decent squad/platoon/outfit and you see the map slowly turning blue/red/purple there is a sense of "wow i helped conquer all that", big battles where you can see the front line slowly moving forward then taking a base. Things like that, there is no "Game over Vanu win" that will happen its a persistent war with no real end. The most you can get is the big "Faciulity Captured" that comes up when you take a base.

You need to make ur own goals really. Mines has been to unlock specific weapons etc.

Also there is a "scoreboard" they go by the region you are in, so if you are fighting in a bio lab and press tab you will see the score for everyone in the region.

 

It's actually a gtx 560. I just never bothered to change my sig.

 

I bet its ur CPU then, i have a GTX 560 also, same issue, when i got the i5 quad core its been fine since.

 

More than likely it's the game, it's been stated by the devs on the forums somewhere after a load of people complained. There are people with an OCd 2500k and 570 suffering FPS issues, however after checking the usage of their GPU and CPU the game is hardly taxing either. Changing the gfx setting didn't improve the fps much either.

 

odd as i dont really get FPS issues

 

Yea it doesn't affect everyone, I know with me, my fps will drop to around 20 being CPU limited all the while my i5 750 strolls along at around 50% and not even use 2 cores fully.

I think it's alt - f for FPS if anyone is interested.

 

The game was never designed to be a one-man type of thing. One person doesn't make an impact here. A squad, platoon or outfit is the game-changer. For example, my outfit, the 208th Strike Unit, is one of the top on Woodman and we have been known to hold back an entire enemy front line whilst our own side is somewhere else.

A good outfit in Planetside 2 can often be the equivalent of an entire army, and a good squad is the equivalent of a good player in any other FPS. You just have to think bigger, that's all.

 

I've spent this morning watching all the training videos and now I now what's going on I'm really enjoying it.

 

Most important changes I'd make out of the blocks are (as mentioned in the training videos) set your thumb mouse buttons (5+6?) to up and down when flying a plane. Makes flying infinitely smoother and controllable. I've also bound roll left and right to Q and E, though I've yet to make much use of it so far.

Also, get the first tier one of the suit mods right away, 1 cert in nanoweave armour bumps your hp by 10%!

I bought the T1S Cycler my medic, with a 1x reflex scope on it and I'm really enjoying using it. I don't think there's a huge difference to the normal cycler, but it has more room for attachments and different bullets that the stock rifle doesn't have. Just saving up my Certs for the final tier of the medical applicator and the revive grenade first!

 

I'll put in my experience here, having come from Planetside 1 and through beta for PS2 and into live, where I play almost exclusively now when gaming.

Nanoweave Armor sounds brilliant at first. 10% health is a good-sounding upgrade. However, bear in mind that when most guns drop you in anywhere from 2-4 seconds, 10% health equates to an extra 0.1-0.3 seconds of gunfire on you. Sure, in some situations, it will help, but most people find very quickly that as they improve, the downtime on their shield is the bigger killer. This is why many people drop certs into getting their shield downtime reduced. Killing someone and then having to wait an age for the shield to come back up will get you killed a lot more than actually being in a proper fight most of the time.

Nanoweave works well for support roles when they take splash damage (ie. a Medic behind the HA's, or an Engineer behind the MAX's), but if you're front line (LA, HA or Frontline Medic/Engineer) rather than support, grab that shield regen and you'll increase your survivability by quite a margin.

The Medic class has one of the best utility rifles in the market... The NS-11A. It is accurate, has very low recoil and has some of the best attachments and setups available, even when compared to HA or LA setups. If you're a frontline Medic, I recommend it over anything else. Stick a 1x or 2x scope on it and start firing. People will drop like flies.

Personally, I use a Compensator, Front Grip, 2x RDS and High Velocity Ammo.

I would also advise against the revive grenade at present. It's a little buggy, and very often in combat, if you've lost enough people to have to get out a revive grenade, you're about to be rushed anyway. Healing grenade is a good one to throw down when you start a large combat. Throw to the front line with the HA's, etc. Then sit back, pick up the odd corpse and keep healing the frontliners. Keeping them up is always better to picking them up when it comes to winning a fight.

Just my two pence there.

 

Phalanx I really like what your're saying - it makes a lot of sense. Do you have any advise for an Light assault player What should i spend my certs on, how i can be most effective and what I should be doing.

One thing Ive buffed slightly is the jet-pack but ive not come across any situations where I need more juice to go further. I can pretty much get into any window or roof which is great when destroying generators.

Am i right in thinking you have to destory all the generators before a territory can be taken?

Cheers,

 

Your outfit sound immense lol. I've put minimal time into this so far but it's clear as day that you need a fair few of you to unlock the games potential. Also patience, as always a virtue but really more so with PS2 as there's not always much going on. But when there is, it's awesome.

I'm sticking with heavy assault for now and seeing how I get on. Still pretty much a noob even though I put a few hours into the beta.

 

Outfits make this game. Find one that is active and well organised, and you're golden. You'll get a totally different feel and attitude from the game. We use Teamspeak with Channel Commanders and a proper military structure when playing (our outfit is a Military Realism outfit. We use radio chatter and even train for joint operations with air, mechanised infantry, logistics, SPAD and a whole other bunch of branches). It adds so much to our game it's like playing a totally different game.

Even within a class, you can specialise quite heavily. I carry three seperate loadouts for HA. Markman, Close-Range and Ranged.

Personally, I use my LA in two ways. The first is in an anti-vehicle capacity when attacking or defending main bases. He is armed with C4 and increased boosters, to allow him to fly above the field and drop on to tanks to arm the C4 before flying away and having a cool explosion go off behind him without looking back. It's the only cool way to blow **** up.

The second is with drifter jets. These things are so underrated it's hilarious. You can be almost a kilometre away, overlooking an enemy position with it, and within seconds, be right in the middle of the enemy, causing god knows how much confusion. You sacrifice upwards thrust for horizontal increase, and you go flying! It's like the human equivalent of a flying squirrel! Just stunning to watch when you have a whole squad engaging the enemy. Carpet bombing grenades followed by a drop in on the infantry with hip-firing or shotguns is a massive shock tactic.

In general, LA want hard-hitting items first. So things like underslung grenade launchers and the like are first choice. The more you can clear BEFORE you hit the ground, the better, as you carry less armour than others. Also, get the regen kit and tab it before you hit a big fight. The regen is quite substantial, and worth the points for the first tier at least.

The default jet pack will get you to most places. Putting more power into your pack allows you to, for example, double the jump so you can bypass levels, or gives you a reserve to allow you to bug out if you realise you've made a mistake.

Not at all. The only proviso of taking a base is to be within the capture area for the time it takes to capture. Nothing more. Taking and holding capture points speeds this up tremendously, up to the maximum number shown on the point (ie. 0/6, 0/2, etc - Just means you can add 6 or 2 or whatever number of people close to the point to speed things up. Others can spread out through the base).

Generators simply power things like gate fields, forcefields on the SCUs, etc. They are beneficial to take out, but not mandatory.