The Importance of Skill in Planetside - Understanding Skill Curves | Planetside 2 Gameplay
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Skill - The expression of mastery and ability within a certain field. For many Planetside players, the expression of skill comes from many years of working on their abilities as a player. But does a high skill player prove problematic for Planetside 2? Let's discuss. If you enjoyed the video backhand that like button! Feedback is always appreciated.
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As someone who discovered this game alone, and had to learn by himself, I gotta say this game is really hard to get into.
But man, it's amazing.
It’s got a serious curve to it, but one of the most satisfying ones to master for sure.
I highly advocate for joining squads and working as a team. It will take time to learn bases and how to do a lot of team-based activities, but so long as you follow squad/platoon lead's orders you'll do great.
Edit following reply: it's perfectly alright to not be able to follow "usual" orders at first too. Let people know you're newer when you join and they will choose if they want to help you work with them or not.
Some people are uncharismatic on this game (to say the least), but the bottom line is that we'll all play this game to have fun. People have more fun with players who want to try similar styles of play, so grouping together is best whether you started playing at launch or literally the minute you're reading this.
@@Direblade11 100% agree, my main problem back then was that i was so lost on what to do, and people would often kick me from squads for not "listening" to orders.
But I got there at some point c:
As a ps4 vet same.
I just picked it up for the first time. I played a lot of Planetside 1 but am pretty lost as to where everything is and what everyone is doing. It is fun to join the zerg and kill people but I have no idea where the zerg is going.
I've ran across many skilled new players, they have inherent skills in games like this but lack the knowledge of PS2 mechanics. Once they get that knowledge they become rock stars
I agree that the flow of this game is something else, it acts as a barrier for a new player of decent skill to get into things straight away. But after some exposure, it’s certainly something that can be easy to deal with.
To reaffirm low-skill newbies: this was my first FPS game that I got into. What I got excited about was team play and trying to hold points. To this day, I don't care about meta much more than squad composition. Even when I was the weakest link of a team, working in one is the most fun imo
As a battlefield player who played both console to pc with average 4kd even in competitive , im actually hyped for the next planetside now that i have a gucci pc and see what will happen with said skill gap.
@@Direblade11teamwork makes the dreamwork ! As a battlefield medic only i live for teamwork and momentum in a teamplay!
@@ReflectorExe Honestly PC Planetside is far from dead. I'm stuck to a dying Consoleside 2, and I promise you the best fights can be had on PC.
We rarely have 200+ people fights. That's prime time on PC US
One other thing I'd like to add is if you are consistently running into players who decimate you in this game, ask them if they would be willing to teach you. That's the route I went with a 00 member about a year ago, and it changed my whole trajectory in game. If you can set aside your ego and be willing to learn then you may find a whole new side of this game to enjoy.
Honestly wish people did stuff like this more often rather than rage at “tryhards” and whatnot. I honestly don’t think I’ve seen another game where the top 5% of players are generally disliked by the bottom 50% like in planetside. Probably bc in most games the worst don’t have to fight the best. Anyways, like gef said, at least just ask a good player for tips or something if you feel like they’re stomping you. Most of them are relatively nice people and aren’t mad at you, they like to help new players.
@@espanadorada7962 I could not agree more. I never realized truly how toxic many casual players' views are towards skilled players until I made the leap myself. As someone who loves to mentor and teach people what I have learned it is always sad to me when people chalk up all of my hours of hard work and practice to cheating. Many of them get complacent with where they are without realizing how great they could get with guidance. Not everyone can be as good as gan, fatal, sayn, etc... but like Cami said, everyone can certainly improve. Just takes the right mindset
That's a rare response, to be honest. Most of the time when you ask some sweat for advice they'll just say "git gud" or something similar. I've had many friends try this game and message good players that kill them for advice and its always toxic responses.
Edit: as a caveat, its always infantry players that give toxic responses. ESF aces are usually more than willing to offer good advice
@@Alkezo1 I’d have to disagree. Toxic players are out there and (more commonly) people who just don’t feel like giving advice right then, but I know plenty of good infantry players who are nice people. A lot of people basically just like to show off their knowledge and will teach for that reason alone lol. People asking in the first place is super rare tbh. Personally, for every time someone’s asked me for tips, I’ve gotten 10ish hackusations/ragetells.
@@Alkezo1 If you ever want infantry help just message me in game, my name is the same on TR connery if you're looking for training
My small squad of 3 got into a 3 v 1 dogfight two nights ago. We lost. That guy was good. I sent him a tell to say thanks for the fun. Watching him fly was something to see. I think he shot us down 12 times (combined). You can imagine the cheering and high fives on our side when we finally shot him down. He pushed us to play as hard as we could for about 8 minutes. We learned what's possible in an ESF (which is important like you said) as well as about communication and coordination that we will all take with us into the next dogfight. Next time he won't last as long. ;)
The right attitude right here.
Game is super fun when you take the difficulty as a challenge
One thing that I always wanted to do was be good at air...
I still bite after 1000 hours. Something about the roll/pitch and yaw/strafe being as they are rather than roll/strafe and yaw/pitch just makes it extremely awkward for me even after all these years.
I started playing PS2 about 4 months ago, and have been sticking mainly to support classes, since that's what I usually play in other games. The knowledge I have from previous games carried over this one, and I have seen so many medics just walk over my dead body without a care in the world, as well as seeing how, a lot of times, one of our groups gets wiped because the medic in the other group decided to move over to mine because they wanted to farm revives. I feel like most of the players that complain about learning curves are not acquainted with teamplay, and they just want to play in a rather greedy way, and when they get punished for it they start complaining, I am talking about players that mainly come from team deathmatch games, where there is no objective other than fragging.
I tried to bring 10 different people into this game; only one stuck around.
The 9 had different reasons of not sticking, namely jank interactions with vehicles, infantry play was rather clunky (like sprint holding ads penalties after ending or model warping, lagging, so on so forth). It happens, not everyone likes the game right then and there, some of them actually expected some kills or something similar to ranking, trying to find them good fights mostly ended up getting metad by either zergfits that dropped 100 people in one building, or yes leetfits pretty much stripping the initial wow factor and was and I quote “this just feels like tf2 strange farm servers with a death timer”.
The one guy who did stick around was legitimately interested in the game. Mostly asking questions like “how to engage properly” or “what to do at a max” or “grinding tips?” So on so forth. The only question that really stuck out was “how do I get from here to there?” commenting on how long it takes from casual to leet. I told him it’s not really a set number, and there are guides for it, but for the people who are higher planes of skill over the usual slog it takes a bit, some of them have 5k hours+ in this game and he cut me off there.
He slowly played less and less, mostly in his words playing against people who have literal years on him in terms of experience with no sort of easing into it was frankly demoralizing and frustrating to no end.
So he stopped playing altogether, leaving the count at 10.
It’s not unreasonable to have high skill levels in planetside, doing meta whatevers. But it’s unreasonable to expect new players to stick around when they have to scale that cliff. While people who do push the skill curve up and push the server to be better themselves just to keep up; you isolate and kill any new competitors from joining the race.
The npe and nanoweave nerfs were a great step in those directions but it’s still unfun to go up against xxbeastheadshotzmcgeexx as a newbie. Most newbies will often just play vehicles and more often just tanks or maxes and get mocked for it since they feel as if they need to compensate lack of ability to fight higher skill players with nanites; but then are just mocked for it.
The game or much moreso community simply pushes out new players into either eating shit until they get good or to be focused and ridiculed for trying other methods to even the playing field.
Now sure, that’s my own sample size and findings, I still like the game and play it but I can understand the frustrations of new players, to the point it’s not a game for everyone it’s a game for those specific few people that are willing to put up with it until you get more out of it than put in.
People hate me because I main a Stalker infil, with a 44L Black hand and I sneak up and shoot them in the back. Why? Because I play using a MiFi Jet pack and my signal is around 1.3 Mbps. It's just bad and I can't go toe to toe in regular fights, where normal people have at least 10Mbps. And it's either I stop play PS2 because it's so frustrating to keep dying behind a wall, because they're still shooting my after imagine, or find a play style that at least lets me play and have a little fun. Do I like it? Not really. I wish I could play differently. I wish I could fly without lagging out like crazy. I wish I could fight toe to toe and know that I have a chance. But instead I pop out from behind a wall from a left to right peek, and then die before I register any damage taken. Or start to take damage, jump back behind the wall and then die there, as if they're shooting me through the wall. 🤷
You make a damn good point here. PS2's skill ceiling is so incredibly high relative to the floor that it's too daunting for most new players.
I do find it funny that so many vets look down on MAXes even though they ran Adrenoweave Assimilate HA until Nano and Adrenaline shield got dumpstered.
started couple months ago myself, got 1 fella to play with me, he's enjoying it, but he liked battlefield aswell, and im a terrible shooter, auraxium'ing weapons is gonna take forever for me lol, getting better, but i had some friends in game show me how to be suupper useful as a support role, so i mostly play stealth radar/ medic/ engi, and vehicles are wonderful if properly explained how to make for each role, and why
support also is one of the quickest ways for exp/ certs in turn, starts the cycle essetially, by the time they got there support maxed, there hooked, and willing to get better at shooting/ stratagys
Put them in a harraser and have them gun. If your a good driver you will get them hooked. I took a noob on a 8-10 tank kill run and I'm sure he probably hooked now.
@@Andrew-xs4qy did so with a valkyrie, same effect, but harasser and MBTs are def easier to gun
I think you did a good job of addressing both sides of this debate. Thanks for that. There is one point that is worth mentioning that you might have missed, and that is how the skillfits could help the greater population by engaging with it in a manner to better the other players. You play on Connery, and there have been other non-Recursion skillfits on Connery over the years that have been positive in engaging with the community. It is a great way to help mitigate the issue of 20 skillfit members murdering 100 commons or casuals and driving them from the game. Because at the end of the day PS2 only last as long as there is a population to play it at a rate that is profitable to Daybreak. If new players keep getting scared off by skillfits then the game doesn't grow, it shrinks and eventually goes poof. And skillfits that just murder fights and never engage with the larger population don't help that issue. Skillfits that do engage mitigate it.
So, if we are going to tell the commons that they need to understand the game is competitive and they need to accept loosing or get better, then I think its also fair to ask the skillfits to take a moment and engage with the mortal players around them to also help the greater cause of PS2.
I remember when each faction on a server had 2-3 skillfits to choose from and perhaps there was a "best" outfit among all of them, but they didn't actively recruit every good player from every faction into one server-wide megafit. As more players became multi-fation and population dwindled however, we now find ourselves in a situation on Emerald and Connery where it's 2-3 skilfits for the entire server, competing for the same batch of faction-less players. This can easily lead to skill-fits being unopposed or minimally opposed. As a former sweaty player, now casual, it makes for a dreadful experience and I avoid those fights when I can
I believe the willingness to work as a proper team - matters more than individual skill.
A MAX, who is confident that he's got engineer and medic behind his back - will do much more than them individually running like headless chickens on the battlefield, even if taking more kills.
And well, there are lock-on launchers or empire-specific launchers. They are scary if 4 people coordinate fire on one target.
Not to discredit individual skill in general. A single ESF pilot or a lib - will take a tank or two and fly away for repairs.
Interesting point to discuss is competitive Planetside tournaments. (Always liked them when I catch the streams) There only people of the highest caliber individual skill participate from their guilds. But still, proper management of people wins almost always.
And well, damaging or not - I always thought of it as "This is proper war, Everything goes. It's spectacular even if we get warpgated" It's kind of even funny to watch our base get taken by 3 gals worth of people and 4 orbital strikes on the point building. (We should have thrown more nades before the last two minutes next time!)
I often see groups of guys hovering around doorways feeding the people inside who already have their weapons trained on where all the heads would be in that situation. As a combat medic main i used to think: "great i'll just plop down a shield and farm certs". Eventually I got tired of that and decided to actually rush and lo and behold, I made it inside just fine solo and got a few kills, then you realize that whenever your room got rolled, it was just a mass of players coming in. Either its a sweaty group coming in headshotting everything in sight, or a zerg, all it takes is numbers. Now I just get frustrated when two maxes lead the charge and nobody follows them in.
The only thing to remember in situations like these: you all have the same amount of bullets, and they die to the same amount of bullets.
“This is a proper war, Everything goes”
Except it’s not, it’s a game no where near comparable to war. And it’s mostly due to mindset.
The anything goes mantra fits well when real life is at stake, when there are serious consequences to failure.
That same mantra fits horrendously when applied to a game meant for enjoyment in your free time. People aren’t as committed, nothing stops them from never playing again. Sure you can do anything you want, but if you love the game isn’t it better to keep people coming back?
The only real consequence of treating this game like war is that the harder you succeed, the less “enemies” want to play. We successfully kill off our own community through this “the game like war and should be treated as such” mindset
@@tprtiger I will continue saying: Planetside 2 is the best war simulation game, that is still a game.
I mean, there's war simulators - arma, foxhole, holdfast... They have defined win condition. But what's important is that they are 1v1 matches, right? Or deadly 1-life games like tarkov, dayz, pubg.
It's kind of inevitable that better tactics would show up in a proper mmo, which planetside totally is. I can't even imagine what game design hoops you'd need to jump through to 'balance' a disorganized zerg vs coordinated outfit - and make it seem like each individual player in that zerg is having a great time winning. Not at the expense of the organized team players.
Yea, you can segregate people into graded by skill matches. But it wouldn't be mmo after that. We already got a hundred thousand games that do that already anyway.
In PS2 you can go to other faction, hopefully continent; pick up a vehicle (maybe even build a base?) Sure, a br2 guy won't be doing most of that besides bashing his head against the difficulty wall that he was droppoded into. But the option is there.
You can be shot at from all possible angles at any time by some random jetpack guy; get hopelessly stuck in spawn room by 30 tanks with real players. It's still my choice to stay there or leave. And I love it, wouldn't have it any other way.
I agree that coordination is important to netting the wider victory of the larger objective (map control, if that’s your thing), hence why a collection of “independently skilled players” is also just as impressive as individual skill to me.
I disagree on the notion that just because this is a war game - everything goes. Total freedom for the sake of total freedom breeds the same ole frustrating end results for a lot of people. I often hear the fact that this is a “war game” be used as an excuse to ignore balance problems in the game, which is something I also don’t agree with.
@@tprtiger I agree with Wardell. This is both an interesting war-like simulator and a sandbox. Getting into groups and doing things together is meta because of the nature of the game, and you shouldn't expect people who like that to reduce their experience for people who aren't currently fighting in groups. Even if it's unfair.
As it's a sandbox, people can have their fun. It appears that many people have fun by getting in any group and fighting together. Because everyone has the same power level, your best force multiplier is friends.
I completely agree with you.. yet here is where I disagree
I brought a group of my friends to the game.. they are all good fps players.. we started playing the game during low pop, so I can show them the robes.. during a whole week.. there was this VS clan called trinkehsomething.. I don't remember the whole name.. and they were all veterans above 3k directive score.. they decimated my guys and everyone else who is on the server for a whole week during the low pop.
So.. you have an outfit of veterans that exclusively farm new players during low pop not giving them a chance to experience the game.. or learn it, causing them to leave it once and for all... It's only natural to have such a distan for the vets.. if this is how they treat the game and new players in it.
My friends all left, I myself was a victim of this when I first started playing the game.. it took me two years to give it another chance and luckily I was given a breather at low pop for a while to learn.
That chance however was not given to my friends.
So yes you are right.. but yet.. wrong, those veteran clans or outfits go out of their way to play in low pop against small number of new players just to farm them.. causing the game to staginate and lose growth.. at least on a personal lvl.
I have tried to contact some of them and tell them this.. the response was a very colorful language.
Here’s the thing about this whole “veteran players hunt down new players” - there’s no metric that tells veteran players where new players are on the map. Veteran players are more often than not, just hunting for a good fight and in off peak times, there’s normally less things getting in the way of those good fights happening.
@@CAMIKAZE78 Killing somebody shows their battle rank - after fighting the same group for a few minutes would tell that they are new to the game
BR is not always an indication of how new a player is. I’ve had plenty of alts over my time, and have seen plenty of alts destroy me.
@@CAMIKAZE78 that would be ok actually if you also find them during the high pop time.. but you don't, they group up and form streategires and execute maneuvers that is obviously aimed at high tier player base and numbers but they do that persistently during low pop hours.
I told you that I have contacted some of them about this.. their response was obviously a show of their intent.
Yes directive score might not be a metric..but given their grouping and play style which is aimed at farming new players by conduct is definitely a metric.
This has been a problem for a long time now.. while some vets go on low pop to play for some fun.. or even help new players.. most "by my experience" are just there to farm to easily improve their stats.
Which is something they care about a lot from what I have seen.
@@CAMIKAZE78 If I kill >BR 10 players over and over without any mentionable resistance - I'd assume they are new in the game
I always appreciate hearing your comments on these types of things Kami! I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of the skill curve, especially having gone from a brand new player to a fairly competitive sweat. While you focused on infantry for this video, I would also like to point out the similarities in ESF flying. The really good pilots I’ve know, like Stroff, Canadian, Stax, Murderface, etc., have all gotten a ton of shit just because they are skilled individuals. Hell, I’m at lease a level below them and I still get called out for “gatekeeping” whenever I go flying. The skill floor for ESFs is so high that the piloting community tends to say that 100 hours of experience is necessary to reach the lowest degree of competency. I know how daunting that sounds, but it’s worth it because you do reach a level of skills that feels really good. No game should nerf skilled players or erase that ability to feel like you earned your abilities. It may only take 3 competent pilots to wipe a continent’s air, but those pilots probably put in hundreds of hours, if not thousands, to get there.
TL;DR: No aspect of the game escapes the “good players are too good,” and some areas are even worse because the skill curve is harsher.
This only works if the skill delta is within reason. A new player pulling an esf is going to get mulched by someone from the 1000+hour gang, every single fight, without even realizing how they’re losing. New ESF pilots now are facing players with half a decade or more of experience. You can’t learn experimentally when you just die instantly no matter what you try, which pushes new players off of ESF (why bother sitting at zero nanites constantly due to constant aerial deaths when you can just pull an a/a rocket launcher for free, and *actually do something*) which further raises the skill floor.
@@Spectre-907 Pretty much... I came into the game and was flying against Murderface and Stax at their prime. I straight up couldn't fight them and spent most of my live experience running Hybrid loadouts. It wasn't until I started doing duels (be it on live or jaeger) that I actually worked my way beyond that initial barrier and could at least see how to fight. I definitely believe that having a good teacher helped a ton (mine was Project Incursus when he was running with the Emerald TR WinterGaming outfit). These days though, most good pilots don't even fly anymore because of the AA or whatever. It's kind of sad seeing the few remaining ones, like MalwareBytes, drifting away.
Although I agree with you, the spo rts analogy failed for me. Everyone inthe NBA has a minimum skill level - there are no casuals. The teams are motivated by profit, whereas Planetside is F2P and has no minimum skill requirement.
Planetside
While this is true - there’s still always a skill curve present between your more noteworthy players and your fresh players. Sure, the skill curve has a heightened point of entry, but there’s still a matter of growing within that field too. It’s how your noteworthy players make a name for themselves, by standing out.
It is hard for new players to improve and respect skill when they dont understand what happened half the time. For example having random snipers shoot you from stupid places REALLY can be frustrating. The lesson they take from that is "well, I guess I should not get shot"
"respect skill" and "guess I shouldn't get shot in a shooter game"
You reek of sweat lol
@@rackneh huh? How so? I literally still feel like a newbie in this game.
@@ronanbax6102 Yeah okay my bad, I read it wrong
@@rackneh its all good man, I hope you have a good day.
@@ronanbax6102 You too man
Nailed it. In a massive sandbox with no sbmm system, pushing a decade old, there's bound to be a wild skill gap. But thats what keeps me logging in, that experience grind. This game can be pure chaos and it surely isnt for everyone.
As a former casual player, I don't think you fully understand the casual perspective. Eventually it stops being fun getting killed over and over regardless of what you do, unfortunately. In my experience the average ps2 player has a rather high skill level which I could never hope to match, so I quit the game. I was disappointed cuz I used to have fun years ago but nowadays the general playerbase is so good at the game that there's no way for me to compete.
+1
Well you could always try to improve… I understand that to some people that feels like work and not fun, but I know a lot of people who applied themselves to getting better at the game and actually had fun doing it and found new love for the game when they “got good”. I myself was pretty bad up until a year or so ago and while I’m still not a top-top player I look back on the months where I was really growing as a player fondly and realize I had a lot of fun. I still try to get better but it’s somewhat less fun now and more stressful tbh so I muck around a lot more than I used to lol
@@espanadorada7962 the problem with that is its a proven statistic that most people dont see it that way. Games that try to subscribe to the notion of "players will die 4000 times and get better," end up dead. A majority of people will die 40 time go to a different fight to have another 40 deaths then go to a diffrent one to get over popped and a2g spammed and tank spammed. Then quit the game. Thats just how it works, especially with new players who have no idea what to buy to deal with these situations, no idea how to play as a team because all the vets are busy doing the same stomping together, and get frustrated when they realize they spent their certs to deal with one issue to then fight another they cant buy an answer for. Its silly to ask these people to stay and play. So, we need to hope we get enough players to stick around and deal with dying over and over and over again and pretend that's okay. Which again has been proven to not be the likely outcome in many many cases. PlanetSide itself included, otherwise we would be having a growth in population than a drop.
one of my favourite quotes from game development is "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game" and therefore "one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves" having played certain mmo's for a period of time, i've come to agree with this quote more and more. so unfortunately i disagree with your take on meta slaving being good and natural for the health of the game.
Meta abuse is what gets the game balanced which is ultimately better for all.
@@Sammysapphira The problem is there hasn't been that balance to help the non try hard players
Meta slaves and sweats don't play the game for fun, they play for achievement. You may have noticed that 90% of the people now are either smurfs on their 6th character or they're br 100, the game has been dying for years and it's basically just a whale fest.
Wouldn't surprise me a single bit if the biggest whales hire people to play with them
You make a very good point of professional teams winning which encourages/pushes other professional teams to be better. One thing with professional teams is they have a "salary cap" and at the beginning of each year the worst team gets the best player. Planetside 2 doesn't have that type of balancing system. The best players of all factions can move to one team without any type of "cap or limit". I feel this is the biggest difference when it comes to a sandbox shooter like and other games/sports. A player rating and team rating cap is not in place and there is no yearly balancing to outfits/teams. Yes is it healthy for competition, BUT its like saying if a NBA team had unlimited money, no salary cap, and consistently recruited up and coming players to make an All-Star team it is healthy for all other NBA teams for better competition.
I feel its up to the community to self balance the factions/servers or more importantly to have the DEVS put in a rating system on players so other players have a better understanding of who they are fighting against and how balanced the outfits/factions/servers are.
This is a fair point. Many have made it clear that the NBA analogy might not have been best due to those caps. But I guess the logic applies to other sports, Australian Motorsport is a great example of teams having just flat out, more experience and therefor, being the front runners more often. Happens all the time.
@@CAMIKAZE78 I think it does come down to a question of game health and enjoyability though; if, for instance, three "sweatfits" are running ops on a server at the same time, but they're all stacking the same faction, the other two factions of casual and solo comp players have basically zero chance of winning alerts or even individual fights for very long, creating frustration.
I'm not sure how to solve that beyond a gentleman's agreement of sorts between outfits to avoid stacking, which afaik already happens to some extent, but there are probably more efficient ways to ensure that there's an equal split of skilled players *between factions*.
I like this video as it does explain the poor mentality of the pubs in the game, and it sheds some much needed light about the importance of understanding mechanics and having the willpower to be an improver, but I have a couple of "buts" to throw your way.
New players and lower skill outfits have less access to outfit resources, they pull less bastions, less ANVILs, and can use less orbital strikes. Additionally new and low skill players typically don't understand, or don't value highly enough, acquiring certs for upgrades to their favorite classes, acquiring and upgrading their implants, and doing basic infantry fight improving things like upgrading their Sunderer so that it isn't just a 600 XP pinata that blows down to a stiff breeze.
When people talk about organized, high skilled players being problematic, I think an unspoken truth is that it's not just the combining of forces and skill. It's also the investment gap, these players have upgraded valkyries/galaxies/sunderers. They have medics with full implant packages and rez nade packages. They have fully upgraded engies protecting points with spitfires, mines, and barricades. They have fully upgraded maxes with supporting implants. They have outfit resources that can be used freely, such as pocket orbitals to reset pushes, ANVILs to reset spawns, or force a forward spawn, and of course bastions that will have a supporting airball and all seats occupied in order to bulldoze a lane, or break up opposing forces.
The only problem I have with PS2 is playing with ppl who have a extremely high ping. Theres few times when I engage with a target and the bullet count for a kill is correct. Usually it'll take a few more to A LOT more bullets to kill (same reason as to why most ppl who you kill are a "extreme menace" bc they are a bullet sponge).
Played the game for several years (over 3k hours) and yet I havent explored many aspects of the game. For instance, I barely touched Liberators (as pilot or gunner).
When it comes to infantry gameplay my aiming is average at best (or even below avg), but knowing how weapons should be used and how to best play each class strenghts I can outplay most newbie players or even skilled veterans.
Game knowledge and experience plays a mayor part in "being good" in PS2 and thats why many players stick for years and years, in comparison to other FPS where players jump from one to another and instantly become good at them (Overwatch, CS:GO, Valorant, etc).
Yeah if you’re a newer player or have friends you’re introducing to the game. Avoid bringing them to Connery. That server definitely has the highest concentration of hardcore players on it at any time. Emerald will be a much easier time cuz there’s simply much more people and therefore a lot more average or newer players. Don’t know about the EU servers since I’ve never set foot there.
Miller is full of Infiltrators mains - during prime time it's nearly impossible to play without getting killed out of nowhere every 5 seconds
Yeah, the Connery imports to Emerald are definitely some of the better outfits to jump over.
I think for a new Player, like me, one of the most important ways to reduce frustraiton is the join battle Button. If I am on a battle where I know that I can't do much to benefit my team and constantly eat bullets I can just easiely join another one where things are more to my favor/liking. Thats the cool thing about PS2 compared to other MP-Shooters, there is never just this one Battle that I must take in now. There are several on very diffrent Locations but If you come from said other shooters it is very likely that you might take a while to realize that
Yeah, overall deploy system is great. Dying in one place due to zerg rush? You can try to sneakingly take another zone in opposite map direction. And you can choose which fight you prefer.
Having played this game for many years as well I will say that this is one of those games where it does feel unbelievably unfair at times when you're trying to learn the game but your consistently getting destroyed by overpowered Dalton liberators or mag riders etc. When the game was focused on combined arms mechanized infantry and movement as a group it was much better than this more individualized playstyles
The thing about infantry skill is that the gunplay and movement is deceptive. From the outside it looks like you need to know you typical positioning, recoil and target management etc. But as soon as you look more into it you will find many little "quirks" in the game that can give you big advantages and thats where big parts of the learning curve are "hidden" for many people. Thats also where many ragetells or hackusations come from i feel like.
A huge portion of those quirks include abusing clintside hit detection and netlag to the extreme instead of your regular fps skills.
And it's more fault of the game tbh. Just today I got shot while spamming E trying to get into the sundy. I was spamming for like a second or two but I got plinked. And then my corpse entered the sundy.
PS2 players will say that this game requires positioning as a skill, while PS2 has Recon Detection Devices and Aimbot Spitfires at every fight, the most common class has a reflexive "Push to have double health" ability, Recon Darts, etcetera.
Also yeah, the clientside thing is a real big part of the game.
Something you can only get in persistent server mmos is a level of infamy that is just exciting for me as the filthy casual. The other day we were running an armor column with my squad and someone spotted an infamously good vanguard player on the other side. Everyone started to sweat a bit and where we were playing very chill before we started to focus up because we identified a perceived threat that we all knew was beyond any one of us. We communicated more efficiently, we coordinated, strategised and pooled our collective knowledge of the game, weapons, map and what recon we had available to figure out a way to take this guy and his teammates on with any advantage we could get as we knew full well we were outmatched. After a HARD fought battle we managed to take them out and we celebrated (during which we got taken out by a rogue orby..)
This game doesn't have boss fights but some of the players provide that and I think multiplayer games are a poorer place without that experience of spotting a white stag in the wild..
Like your arguments in your video, i basically have the same mindset.
However I'd like to mention something quite crucial in my point of view, that is in most cases required to grow beyond a certain skill level. It's the hardware you're playing with. Sure, if you put your settings to potato, you can make the game run even on some laptops or pcs, that aren't particularly made for gaming purposes. However there's definitely a limit there. Speaking as a pretty much broke student here (as im sure many other students are, and even just other people too), there's only so much stuff i can afford, which means that even at potato levels, the game might not run at 60 fps at let's say a 96+ fight at Nasons. Therefore, my ability to achieve insane killstreaks, might be limited (due to multiple factors obviously, for example my low fps limiting my weapon's rpm or even reaction time).
Another thing that is kinda similar to my point above would be internet quality. Some people can't afford or don't even have the possibility to have fast internet with low ping, which could also be limiting in certain situations.
Eh, it's a fair toss for most people really. I myself am a casual cause of my limited hours mainly but also I set a rough max bar of finishing my dailies if I can.
At times I can finish it within one or two hours but sometimes it takes double that or slightly more. Definitely a fair shake when you don't know what or who you will encounter in planetside since it's so open indeed.
Also, it seems you can store more than 100 pages of unclaimed missions. Fun little tidbit that I don't think many know
Some real top-tier observations. I'm looking forward to your next videos "Water is wet" and "The sky is blue"
I just wish the skill-floor of flying wouldn’t be a logarithmic one.
Aka. there is little in between - you got the handful of casual flyers (usually within Zergs) and the diehard aces.
And it is taxing on a different level having to fight your own plane while getting bursted down before you know what’s happening by an ESF - while a Ranger Harasser can wipe you out as easily as a Solo-Lib Ace Pilot in a single Dalton shot, while Decimator and MAX‘es onetab you - all the while you somewhat try to keep that sweet sweet crosshair on the pin needle sized target of an infantry guy, trying to not get hit by the AP-Gun of next door Prowler while praying to everything unholy that no one pulls a skyguard.
En contraire, you see those enemy pilots farming sites „easily“ (due to skill), dodging and avoiding Anti-Air fire as it was nothing; most commonly Reavers and Mosquitos; or even ambushing ESFs third party style (wouldn’t be the first time I get shot down by a Reaver in Howling Pass, VS-TR-Front).
Even though I try to fly on/off for 10 years on Miller, on VS 300+ hours, I still suck at it; that there’s like only 10 total pilots on VS side combined on Miller doesn’t particularly help; neither that barely any new player will try, due to the difficulty of entry into flying; esp. on a server as tryhard as Miller.
I've been playing this game for 8 years now, and I can say that yes, high-skill players are damaging to the game, but nothing can be done. The simple fact is that people don't like getting outplayed over and over again. They don't like getting outskilled by the same person 10 times in a row. No one does. So when a high skill player shows up to a small fight and starts killing everyone, people will inevitably leave to go find other fights where they actually have a chance. When that high skilled player follows them, they get frustrated and just stop playing. Do this too many time and players get burned out. New players especially will get it in their head that the game is impossible and unfair and they will simply go elsewhere.
But again, nothing can be done. You can't tell high-skill players that they simply can't play the game anymore because they are "too good".
Bro this was documentary quality . You have a real talent for narration and documentation.
0:37 I'll stop ya right there, apex legends had the same problem: high tier players that found each other in a match would join their group discord, then act as one giant squad to rake in easy wins. If what you're saying is "the best players make up an elite squad that just wipes everyone with thousands of hours of practice with each gun, everything unlocked and maxed, and maps memorized?" Id say yeah, that's a natural byproduct of competitive scenes, but usually there's a system in place to solve it, like call of duties prestige system.
But I also bet you cover all this in your video, so I'm gonna continue watching
I never had a hard time getting into this game back in 2014. I got out of the useless tutorial and just sat in the front lines as a heavy assualt with 40 people and shot anything looking at me and made money.
But high skilled players and actual full on cooperation is OP and pretty unfun for anyone else on the receiving end.
I know from being apart of a small clan. We were basically a spec ops unit for the vanu, we literally would turn fights with a 30% population against 70% to winning fights at times. We would stroll around in a sunder, 3 engineers, 9 heavies or 9 maxes / a mix. 9 of us would jump out rockets perfectly coordinated ready and instant kill anything. Or battle galaxy shenanigans along with paradrops onto points as engies, medics and heavies. Lock the place down with buildables turrets everywhere, respawn points at times. It was disgusting how many certs I made back then. Ill likely never get an experince like that in another game ever again wild stuff.
13:29 I agree with your points here. I just want to say that the analogy is kinda weak because the weaker teams in (I believe) most national sports leagues are then granted high draft picks the following season.
Had to replace my mouse, sensitivity was completely out of whack and I had to get used to everything again. I was never amazing but I could hold my own, trying to readjust has been hellish and I get something like one kill every ten minutes, and several deaths in between. This has given me some perspective to what it was like when I was starting, and I sympathize very much with new players. I can't play more than 20 minutes without wanting to quit, it's no fun to essentially play as a target for better players.
I think the worst thing most shooters fall into is skill expression should be shown through harder to use guns that give the user an advantage. Higher recoil for a bit more damage, fewer bullet carbine with higher damage, etc. I feel that's the whole NC arsenal though is it's biggest issue with 200 damage guns reward headshot consistency vs the higher dps 143/167 damage guns.
Laser beam type guns, more casual lower skill ceiling guns like the orion/t9 carv/em4, should be good, in the sense people can easily aim them but should be the worst in TTK
Main thing I've noticed since I started playing is that the people that build the forward bases do not get enough credit. I've seen some of those bases help more in a fight than the pre-gen bases.
I think out of every game that has a lot of vets, this is one of the easier ones to break into. That's not to say its easy to get really good at, just that it's much easier to enter than many of the really sweaty games out there. You can improve noticeably very quickly if you just spend some time looking into stuff or trying to hone certain skills. You don't have to sell your soul to PS to enjoy it, not by a long shot.
If you're a new(er) player, I'd highly recommend you stick with heavy assault at first and just focus on getting good at managing recoil, tracking targets, knowing when to break off, and aiming for headshots when possible. I promise it doesn't take hundreds of hours to see major improvement. And don't forget to join and outfit or a squad. Talk to people, the community is really not very toxic at all, you will get good advice.
While I've play PlanetSide since the beta testing of the first game I'm very much dirt level if there was a rank. I've got a delay in my response time so I die lots, that why I play support roles and am happy if I manage to get a 0.5 k/d ratio. I play to help my faction win alerts instead of get high kill counts. I also only play with guildmates because I can trust them. I run solo till they log in or till I'm had enough for the day. I run into more skill players all the time and accept that I'm going to be take dirt naps a lot. I also understand their desire to only run with people you can trust. I refuse to join squads with people don't use voice coms and don't work together, but I am also a fairly antisocial. They can be dirt level like me but if their willing to work as a group and use voice coms then I might squad with them.
I have massively improved at the game just by playing, but I'm putting in particular effort into getting better, and I continue to get wrecked by better players, but I'm okay with that.
I think if you're playing a game you should get enjoyment out of the game itself, regardless of whether you're winning or losing, and if you're not okay with losing, you just need to find a game you can't lose, or improve enough not to lose, and that's entirely on you.
I would lose to see a real competitive PS2 scene though, with actual tournaments where an entire platoon is hired by an esports org to practice as a full-time job and at then show what they can do against the best in the world.
You should see some of the Lanesmash teams people put together! They may not be a platoon of pros, but the top A bracket teams are pretty insane.
@@hawklight3739 It's not the same. There are a lot of weird rules about it too, and there's just one a year. A good esport is as similar as possible to the original game to attract both viewers and players, and really show the limits of what is possible in the actual game.
Whether it be 1v1 on Nexus or 1v1v1 on Koltyr doesn't matter so much, the latter would be cooler, but also more difficult practically, but mainly I just want to see no additional rules.
And I want VS to be played as well. Hahah.
Although I agree with most of the points you made in the video, I am really not sure if you should mention NBA as an example to support your points. NBA has its system (e.g., draft lottery) to make sure low performing teams still have chance to get better. To some extent, I think the problem goes down to the “point-holding meta”; it has more to do with the basic design of the game that encourages competitive players to get together, not to do with the competitive players themselves.
There are also salary caps in a lot of organized sports eg. NHL. In European football they have "relegation" and "promotions". The lowest performing teams are dropped down to a lower level league while the higher performing teams are promoted up.
I’ve been made aware that the NBA comparison might not have been best as a comparison due to their draft lottery system, but I think the wider point remains the same. If a team in any sports league has been formed, and they aren’t performing up to scratch in that season, it’s not on the other teams to bring themselves down to their level to match - it’s the other way around. In Australian Motorsport, we have drivers who are clearly better than other drivers, with better supporting pit crew and engineers that create a huge skill gap. I think there’s always room for that skill gap to exist even with balancing tactics in place.
Another interesting video Cami! I agree with this. I believe the attitude of self improvement is needed in this game. Lots of these high skilled players (ones that I have approached) are willing and able to give training and pointers to improve.
I know I've personally been able to give some basic pointers to casual players to help them out, I'm no cracked laser beam but the concept is the same, there just needs to be a better way to connect these players with better players to actually help them improve.
It kinda shocks me that Recursion even finds people that are willing to stay at fights when they drop 2 gals on a point. Call me a casual or whatever, but getting farmed is not why I play this game, and it's the U key for me whenever I see the 00 show up.
The big outfits make the other factions log off when they run ops. They can absolutely choke the game by turning every fight on a continent into one-sided pop-dump-farms with ungodly amounts of force-multipliers and maxes, and that is absolutely a problem. Never mind the sheer sizes of some outfits makes it impossible to play against them, because they have more members than you have bullets. They need to make the Orbital-strikes cheaper again, so that they can get punished for this kind of bullshit.
I friggin love the term "Meta-slave" though. I use sub-competitive builds to grind directives all the time, so when I come across a squad of try-hards in their most optimized loadouts I can't really go toe-to-toe with them. Especially not if I play solo, and as a 10-year veteran on the server, most of them know me and will teabag me.
Therefore, i feel no remorse for my actions as I equip my SAS-R and EMP-bandolier. I can even use infantry-mines, and still feel no regret as they bitch about my cheap tactics in our discord. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside as I farm the doorway to the A-point, while NOT pushing it. Just killing them from a safe distance every time they poke, giving them almost no chance to fight back. If they wanna frustrate me, there are almost no circumstances where I cannot also frustrate them.
dont make this mistake, i will correct yoy, they should not make orbitals cheaper because those large outfits would also benefit them
@@Leo-jr5vk I don't see the issue. The benefit of most orbital strikes is measured in the amount of vehicles you can send flying. No zerg, no problem.
Absolutely loved this video. I wish these arguments would spread across other games's communities as well because I feel like this is the biggest problem that gaming culture is facing atm.
The only issue i have with planetside now is the same one i had when it first came out, an attacking zerg starts capping bases left and right until they encounter another zerg the zerg defends then suddenly this massive attacking zerg just vanishes they dont go to the base they just captured and fortify for the defending zerg to attack they just vashish out of thin air and suddenly those players that do stick around usually only about ten of us get hit with that massive 100+ zerg and just end up getting steam rolled until that attacking zerg comes back and or a new zerg is formed.
There should be an encouragment mechanic to not stay in 80% overpop bases, to go to underpopped bases under attack and to spawn sunderers even when your team already has one.
@@Igor369 Thats what they tried to accomplish with locking continents and the alerts and such to force the big hard core teams to face each other and not over pop one base because it ends up with several large groups fighting each other and then they went and made the base links a spider web where four or five bases can be attached to each other and it completely ruined it like i was playing on Esimer earlier first time playing legit in like 3 years and there was a spot with four bases all connected and 1 3 man squad back caped the others while 1 zerg fought our zerg and it was like "What was the point of those bases being connected like that?!?!" Like alls it did was separate our zerg adn keep the enemy one at full power and we had to take other squads from other fights to come to this one little area just to keep 1 zerg from squashing us and pushing us back to the warp gate it was so dumb...
Like they try something get it almost right and then completely ruin it by doing something so smooth brain it should have been obvious from the suggestion board that it was dumb and never should have been implemented
@@inqufox1750 I liked good old open system with hexes. When lattice was coming out, Esamir turned from most open continent, into most closed of the three. But looking back - I see that in hexes zergs could evade each other way easier than in lattice!
It's the difference between '4-6 potentially open battles that are barely smoking and 1 with open hell gate'; and '2 battles at all times and maybe a 3-way burning Crown/techplant in the center'. (Per enemy faction)
One idea I have had for a while might help alleviate this issue. So the map has this little pie chart on it that shows the relative population of each faction. What if it were replaced or supplemented by a chart showing how likely each side is to win the fight? It could take into account population, time remaining in the fight, and yes, the skill of those players.
Once you have this metric of how likely each side is to win, then you change the spawn system so that players can only spawn on a fight if there side is less than about 55% to win. I think that would help players have more fun without doing anything too drastic.
I don't think you understand the difficulty of this algorithm you're proposing. This is high level machine learning statistics.
@@Sammysapphira I'm not saying that it needs to be entirely precise. An elo system with some multipliers based on the relative population, the remaining time in the capture and the base in question. It would take a bit of fiddling, but it definitely doesn't have to be based on machine learning.
My problem is not the skill curve in itself.
But the difference between someone at the skill floor and someone at the skill ceiling.
Or more peculiarly, the mechanics in the game that exacerbate this difference without contributing much to the game experience.
Like for example, I think that with a damage buff on most weapons we could eliminate HSmult in all non sniper weapons. And that without affecting medium TTK.
There are also game knowledge that are hard or sometimes impossible to learn without being told they exist.
Like things related to game performance like latency and knowing how it impacts the game:
you don't see a player at the same time they see you,
you can be already dead on their screen.
And so change player optimal comportment and positioning in sometimes unintuitive ways.
There has been a skill valley between PUG squads and outfit/organized platoons since Year 1. There is just that much power in organized numbers.
It's a MMO. Those high skilled sweaty squads that focus fire and have all their gear maxed out and loadouts perfected are providing CONTENT. Games often have Boss monsters/mobs and challenges the player has to try to overcome. Better players in PS2 are the challenges and bosses. They're exactly what such an ecosystem needs.
(I say this as someone who is usually the punching bag for such sweaty good players. The one or two times I am able to figure out a way to defeat one of them makes the game fun.)
TBF MMO bosses are normally like 1-3 dudes at max, not 12-30 of them. And also you normally fight them with a massive numbers advantage, not in relatively even groups.
Not a perfect analogy.
Problem with that analogy is with time / practice,in MMO you get better gear / learn game mechanics that makes those fights beatable, and eventually farmable.
In PS2 the vast majority of players will never get to that skill level, so it's not a mountain to climb, it's a wall you constantly slam your head against.
I like that the whole community started using my words to describe things to make people understand. /Leffeleifson
Like sweaty, meta hunters etc
Another thing what i want to add is finding your own playstyle. When i started playing i was using automatic rifles, sniper rifles etc. and avoided shotguns. As a result i had no kills and couldnt compete on any level (my fps isnt good, so i couldnt lock my crosshair on anyone). Today i installed this game again, said fuck it and took shotgun. And game appeared to be fun and now i want to play more. In "sandbox" FPS game like PlanetSide that gives you a lot of content, i think should be some sort of guide that will progress you through all mechanics and aspects of the game, not deeply but just show what there is something like that and give you chance to try this out by yourself. Something like guests.
It's also a matter of where you put your focus. I haven't played in years but my character has 22days playing medic. My KDR is 0.5. But when I played my outfit mates would argue over which squad I was in. Why? I knew with my reflexes and shooting skill I was never going to be the king. But I was good at finding people who were and supporting them. That heavy assault with the high KDR who can melt face. I make sure he says out there melting face. And I was damned good at it. I would fire on enemy infill I knew I couldn't 1v1... draw their fire so my buddy could drop them. I die? So what my job was to keep someone else in the fight. I run back while he gets two or three more kills. People are really tied up in statistical representations of "Skill" like scoreboard and stuff. But there are lots of intangibles out there that can make you a great player. You might not BE the best. But you can do your best.
There is a definite skill gap between new and experienced players not only in terms of gunplay, but also knowing whatever meta is at play for gear. I've only recently joined and implants and what guns are best is something I'm learning. While skill plays a role, I cant count how many times I've been offed in half a second by a BR100 NC carrying a Godsaw. As a new player it makes me feel severely undergeared and underskilled compared to veterans.
i honestly dont care about veterans cuking the life out of newbies, hacker does concern me but thats another problem, what i have problem with is the excessive grind that comes with the game, coupled with the newbie facing veterans. its good to have actually worthwhile rewards for veterans who play the game regularly with auraxium rewards, but with no real alternatives getting access to these unique pice of armory aside from heading head on towards veterans of the game that can score 2 KPM instead of .1KPM newbies usually have(and thats not even using the same ass weapons, C4, pistoles, etc) without any kind of compensation for the newbie. this didnt really matter in olden days where 90% of the auraxium weapons were pretty much useless compared to their base guns, relevant when NSX auraxium weapons were a thing(kuwa in particular) and then now shown in the post arsenal update auraxium weapons across all factions.
one example would be medic's access to cure nade launcher, which for non AR auraxium users only option is the punisher. dont get me wrong, punisher is a good SMG- but it cannot do what assault rifles, or carbine does effectively as them. when cure launcher was exclusive to the punisher(and so does other special nades) it didnt cause much of a problem, since you were sacrificing your primary weapon's brute force with some added benefit in support. problem is, with the arsenal update's impulse/cure/havoc launchers, its outclassed-directly. you could use punisher with shit flying accruacy, mediocre mid range capability and only 2 impulse in reserve when you can use any of the auraxium carbines and get 4 impulse nades, good hipfire even when jumping, and can deal with medium range targets more easily. This is the same problem i have with ASP perks in general, least in that time you can progress the levels with anything- you could be farming infantry, or doing tanking in your lightning- or you could be eatjng away cortium nodes and earning xp. you cant do that with auraxium weapons. its "do this with this specific weapon" and nothing else.
The reason I took a break from PS2 is because I dealt headshots, but in most cases I still died, although I started shooting earlier and not taking any headshots myself. It felt like I didn't have a shield while the other person did.
I would like to see a some leaderboards on sanctuary that would track over the previous 7 days of most kills, best leader(squad or platoon), and best support player (motion spots, heals, repairs & ammo, and possibly kill assists). It would give people a heads up for who to look out for or who they should try to group up with
Vanity board, you mean.
@@HomicideJack187 something to strive for
Soon you will see newcomers building bases everywhere and orbital striking by looking at the prev 7 days of most kills.
@@H3adx thats fine. I still want more than a kills leaderboard too
honestly even as a beginner i never hated the skill players on the battlefield
i think it really makes it FEEL like a battlefield and not some match making lobby
Great vid from one of them new fodder casual players. Tough learning curve but fully understand and learn from every encounter that drops my character.
The video slightly oversells the meta. If you think of a game's tools (weapons, vehicles, etc) as a landscape full of peaks/valleys indicating their strength, most well-balanced games end up with lots of peaks that are similarly high. In fact players often latch onto the first peak they find (either through personal experience or listening to what others consider the meta) and never look back. Yet clearly other peaks exist, and I find that fixation leads to a very inflexible mindset where the player just always takes that weapon regardless of the current situation rewarding something better.
The wisdom of the crowd will often give you a rough indication of a few peaks that are known to be pretty good, but often the crowd won't have a nuanced understanding of when other tools are better.
The biggest example to me in Planetside is just how many infantry-only players exist, despite vehicles sometimes being the best choice. But it also extends to meta infantry guns, where people often fixate on certain "best" picks while ignoring that many alternative weapons outperform the meta pick in the right conditions. (But since players are notoriously bad at managing those conditions, the reason a gun is considered meta in the first place is often that it's decent all-around and therefore doesn't require that a player manage their range (or whatever else) with intent.)
So while I'm fine with players using the meta things to ramp up in skill rapidly, it's actually quite limiting if they stop at the meta and only master that one thing, because often there are better choices (and making better choices is what differentiates the noob from the master).
That said, this obviously has nothing to do with the overall theme of how Planetside mixes players of different skill, and an important sub-point Camikaze brought up where sometimes vets group together to be basically unbeatable. I'm not sure Planetside in particular has a way out of those problems (and they _are_ problems, because they cause _awful_ player experiences for low-end players, which can cause them to leave the game). With Planetside it's an MMOFPS which means that by its very nature you're going to simply pile everyone into one big world, whereas with another recent game where this came up (Evil Dead: The Game) it doesn't make sense for vets to fight newbies -- it's a bad experience, but the game could've just used matchmaking to have the vets fight vets! _Most_ other games fall into that "it would be better with good matchmaking" model, and it's just a weird quirk of Planetside (and a fundamental limit to its broad appeal) that it can't really solve that problem in a meaningful way without ruining the point of Planetside, which is massive battles.
See my secret is I know I am terrible, and I don't get upset then.
GIGACHAD
First time watching one of your vids in a while Cami. Agree with a lot of your points. But what is your opinion about mechanics in PS2 that actively diminish the skill curve and have discouraged many veteran players to the point of quitting? An obvious example would be max suits (and the complete lack of true limitations behind them because nanites do not truly limit supply). Pump action shotguns also come to mind. Revive grenades which can cancel out all the kills you had to scrap by unless you can actively camp the bodies. Over and Over. I love Planetside and still play this game actively. But I think development decisions in the past (and some in the present) run away from embracing the skill curve you discuss, and instead seek to dampen that curve. As a result, skilled players become frustrated when they elevate their abilities, make good decisions and still get punished by mechanics designed to prevent them from succeeding too much. The concern over the "new player experience" has been to work against the skill curve in my experience. Insightful vid, great work.
It’s something that certainly gets in my nerves at times - MAX suits definitely feel as though they have been balanced around being this crutch tool which drives me up the wall and I’ve been vocal on it for a while now. Items like rez grenades I hold less issues with, but can understand the frustration. I understand that some items would have a skill curve that aims to be a bit more approachable, it’s a hard balance to strike however. Good to see you stopping by again mate, appreciate it!
Well put , I tend to be on the receiving end, however I understand the dynamics. There are time where I know to log out because nothing is going good, however I never spam hackusations.
There's a lot of mental hurdles. You can watch hundreds of people funnel into a kill hole because "That's where the 'fight' is."
Like how many times have you seen this exact situation:
There's a doorway at the north, south, east and west of this building. A perfectly shaped cross of doors, right?
North door has 40 allies, and enemies, each firing through that one doorway. People are struggling to get LoS, grenades are friendly firing constantly, it's chaos. But you turn to look at the doors at the south, the east or the west? Completely empty. Maybe 1-2 people coming through those at a time, but it's so small that it can't quite make a difference unless they make a massive play and then manage to get a push going.
It's one of those things that annoys the shit out of me because if just 10 on either side actually broke off, and preformed a flank, it would be over. But instead people think if you don't just turn your brain off, you deserve to be sent irl threats (actually happened to me because I traded with someone in vs last night. Got sent "Going to slice your kids throats and make you watch" because of a trade kill....the mental state of ps2s player base is dogshit and the RUclipsrs like cami are partly to blame.
One thing I want to see is something like the new death screens in World War 3 that show where you were shot, where they are (no crying from Infils, you can just cloak and move; also, PS2 did use to give direction from where your killer was at one point) and with what weapon. If I can learn what I'm dying to and where I'm getting shot it could be helpful for me to learn and curtail what is getting me killed. When, currently on the servers, I just get a hit notification and die in the next millisecond and all I know is I was killed by some guy with a scout rifle from somewhere possibly in that general area. I have no idea how far away he was, if he had any headshots on me, or if on his screen he dumped half his magazine into me and the server was just like, "Oh, I guess you died, you're dead now."
During peak hours where death can occur basically instantaneously, I could flip a coin as to whether it's a server issue or headshots. It's not like the game is telling me.
I like this game because I dont feel punished for taking a casual approach. I've played this game for over 5 years, and I've put the time in to building meta class setups but I approach the combat in a new player way and I enjoy it. I don't even care about my k/d because I never felt that it mattered in a combined arms game, especially in such an objective/team centric game as ps2. But in my defense: I prefer playing medic and other team support roles anyway, and would rather revive players or repair a max than farm kills.
Edit: I guess you could say that I was the new player that looked up how to make certs quick and liked the support playstyle so I keep doing it years later.
And because I watch the kill cam and my teammates. I have learned so much. When I started playing.. 1v1 was instant death for me, now…. Yeah I die, but not every time. Most of the time now in 1v1. If I die it’s more like “damn, good fight man.” And get back in the battle. I went from spawn room hiding to get into battles!!! I suck at this game yet I managed to get high threat kills. I use to rely on Grenades to afraid to use my weapon let alone my pistol or knife. Now, by watching and learning I’m getting kills and having fun.
Getting banned from this game was the best thing ever. I got a job, started studying, had a more decisive and forseen future after making this game almost feel like a second job to "get good at" now i play games that are generally speaking lower skilled but more fun, more enjoyable and less tedious to face just people who's life is basically the game as a whole. So getting banned form planetside was basically a kick in the ass to say that this game only drags people in, get the frustrated and basically feeds off it to make even more pissed off from another person having a bad time. Only way i can describe planetside in. It's an never ending story of toxic people who get other people toxic from them not having anything of value in life else then being good at an old ass game. After this i went to enlisted, Deep Rock Galactic, Hunting games, Warframe, well really just anything that is a hard time to build anything competitive around it. Because i could not. As an adult man sit down for 15h's a day anymore wasting it on playing a game that doesn't yield me anything in the long term at all in terms of actual real life skills or values it's basically cast away time which i could be enjoying by not wanting to throw my PC out of my window thanks to someone who doesn't have a job or anything and plays games all day long.
For me, "Meta-Slave" was someone who exclusively used the "best" loadouts and weapons based on the community outlook, but not on the actual preferences/predispositions of the player in question. For example - TMG-50 and Bull apparently suck ass, but I am getting way better results with them than with MSW-R/Watchman for example. If I was a metaslave, I would be using those and suffering, because "they are better". Same goes for other games - in Dota 2, metaslaves will pick the best heroes of the patch, but I will pick Pudge - a hero that has been absolutely dogshit awful for the last 6-7 years or so and get 62% winrate in ranked games. Because the meta is simply not something I will be ever able to play. Because there is only an extremely small amount of players that actually are capable of that and blindly copying them is idiotic metaslaving.
i been playing fps for years started in halo 3, just got into planetside like a month ago, is brutal but soo fun, it has almost that old cod or halo feeling that you know your are going to find cracked players you have 0 chance to kill, but honestly that makes it so much fun every time i hope in the game i feel how im improving and that is rare in most fps games rn
The problem with sweaty players and especially sweaty groups in this game is that:
1. The game doesn't rely on matchmaking, so you can essentially farm noobs and lower skilled gamers, which is fine because that's just the nature of this mmo shooter
2. Skilled players farming people is fine - but you can often seen groups of very skilled players (*cough cough* recursion) drop into areas with 5 - 8 players and just farm small groups of players that are outmatched with very little opposition and without pushing larger, more challenging fights
In the spirit of being constructive, I wish there was a high level area where good players went to specifically challenge other good players - maybe an area that can only be contested by players over a certain threshhold (KDR, Rank, some other metric)
There's a bigger picture to take into account. Outfit leaders are constantly working to win an alert so when you see a platoon drop on a small pop base, it's probably cuz they see a land-grab opertunity or their desperately taking what they can before the alert ends.
@@skullguy1922 nah, lots of times you see recursion and other groups sit on areas that don't have any strategic value. Case and point was a few days ago at Nason's defiance where 7 TR sat near an area and farmed while a three way was going on - farmed kills with 0 other objective.
@@Triception well then yeah that seems like shit. I don't get that much though
I came into the game pretty late. I never saw a MAX with a flamer and as an NC main the idea of blueberries with flamers sounds terrifying.
This game was hard to learn. It was hard to put up with. You think C-4 fairies are bad? Try looking at it from the perspective of a newbie who doesnt even know how C-4 works. Then you look at it and have to drop near a thousand certs into getting your own C-4? All while trying to fill out your various passives just so you can be useful in the first place? The idea of getting certs per level is miraculous, but my god the grind. All while you're getting two tapped by stalker cloak commissioner infils.
Now that I've hit my stride the game is incredible. But it took willful investment to get there.
nice vid - havent seen a ps2 vid in such a longtime, nice to go down memory lane
Got into this game for the first time about two weeks ago, and as someone who plays support classes in every FPS, I have to say that the skill curves for the engineer, medic & heavy assault classes are some of the easier ones I’ve played.
That being said, I’m definitely in the “casual playstyle” camp, prioritizing base defense over frontline operations, so I’m probably in the minority.
I love planetside 2! They need to update the graphics in this game!
I have 1000+ hours logged in this game and I'm still learning...
I am honestly not that great at FPS games to be quite honest. I'm older now so my reaction times aren't that awesome. I have long lost "Monster-fueled" twitch reflexes and it feels much more natural to me to engage in more planning-based endeavors. I'm the guy that looks for every opportunity to flank in a map. I'm the guy that looks for various ways to use some form of splash damage. I'm the guy who will play a much needed 'team' role to make sure everyone's equipped/healed/etc.
The problem with the game is that skill has always been a problem due to the nature of focusing ENTIRELY on the headshot meta. This started a long ass time ago when Nanoweave armor provided extra DR but did not have that DR on the head (because bolt-action sniper babbies waaahhh'ed too hard.) Because of this, the entire skill meta was designed around "shooting a target the size of a pea on your screen". The entire thing is, arguably, bogus and that headshot meta is what made things way too hard for new people to work with.
They've made a _few_ changes (such as KCAP, Experimental ammo, etc) but honestly the other issue is just the code of the game itself. You will die before you have a chance to respond because damage is client-side (see ha ha ). This means if a shooter sees you, even for a moment, they can send a message to the server that says "AHA HERE IS BOOLET" which sparks immediately by the server, causing the person being attacked to essentially take damage before they can recognize they're being shot at. This makes headshots even MORE lethal because someone shooting and hitting the head good can *LEGITIMATELY KILL SOMEONE BEFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TO REACT.* This has always been the elephant in the room. Nothing makes a player hate this game more than having a sweatlord 0-100 them before they even realize they're being shot at.
Personally, and this is just me I guess, I think that all the health pools should have been larger, at least 50% larger than their current pool. I also think that removing heatvision for infantry was a horrible idea, as it was a way for new players to legitimately get revenge on experienced folk by using vehicles; I'm still under the impression that a LARGE amount of the combined arms initiative needs to be repealed. I think that headshot damage should only be +20% and that more guns should have the faction-specific "accuracy inclusive" ammo types. I also think that there should be a sort of 'veteran siphon' that will be a high-competition, sweatfit series of maps that will be high-skilled outfit vs high-skilled outfit. This will help spread some of the experience around.
I completely agree with you! People should respect skilled players because they worked to get there.
Outfits on planet side mass report skilled players.
Or they got lucky with an implant that set them miles ahead, or found something they could abuse and just chase exploits/OP weaponry, once it gets patched they find the next one. Plenty of exploiters consider their ability to exploit "skill". If they found a way to be invincible you think they won't exploit it and still consider themselves skilled?
The reason I can play and most of all ENJOY Planetside is because of the different skill levels and playstyles that all interact with each other at the same time. I would call myself a casual but I like to get a little competitive every now and then. If I'm not playing my best I don't have to worry so much about my overall contribution to the team as the game is so vast unlike something like a modern competitive fps where teams are smaller and therefor the value of the individual is greater.
yes, the vets are a really big problem, idk about other servers but on emerald in the morning you physcicaly cant do anything if your solo or just a small group when soccard legion wipes you and some random coalition of tr heavys come out at you. and no the problem isnt that there good the problem is there are more good then there are bad because the game is fun when your good and not when your bad and when new players do bad and dont have fun they leave. the only way to make the game feel more smoothe would be a dramatic rebrand/reluanch or something to get planetside into the direct public eye of gamers, this could be done via a reluanching of the game like destiny 2 did, or it be done via a rebrand/mega graphical update like overwatch 2 did. or just a planetside 3 in general. or a big update. and yes i know the problems with making a planetside 3 but if the devs need money and started a go fund me or whatever the site is called where you fund start ups is they would defintely be fudned enough to make a new game and maitain this one. look at star citizen they have what i belive is a smaller dev team and smaller population of players and still have raised millions to fund this game. if planetside was rebranded on a new engine with new graphics and graphic settings that are easy to use for the average gamer then the game woiuld be a hit and we would have thousands or hundereds of thousands of new players coming in to even the playind field.
another option would be just a big youtuber spotlighting the game, not creating a zurg but a legitmate review on how the game functiosn and what the community is like to kind of get the word out to average gamers, im fairly certain the devs could afford to pay a big streamer or youtuber like ludwig or mrbeast or somebody for one or two ads and the player base would explode with people who new what they where getting into with the game and still chose to play.
I defy that there is a real meta in Planetside 2. I don't use meta builds but do fairly well. I do crazy things to challenge myself and make it work. Using the crossbow as a stalker infiltrator to kill tanks? Yes please and it can work. I think skill isn't necessarily using the meta which seems to be what you are implying.
Anyone can use optimized builds or even optimized builds for them. But skill level is different. It takes practice and if you want to put in the time then you will improve.
i witnessed a flying sunderer who killed 100 players and after watching this video i will no longer accuse him of hacking but will do my best to reach and surpass his level
Hackusations are something that I can’t really find a way to mitigate. I started out as a low skill player who would be guilty of raging and hackusating. Now years later I would say I can play among the best. There is no way that my from the early days could have seen it. At least the first month maybe longer
How can you tell who is actually good and who isnt in game that has next to no anti-cheat or ways to prevent exploiting lag or lagswitching overall? If I get killed by player who I killed 4sec before, or if I die instantly to HA without hearing a single shot being fired and him having no LoS, how do you "outplay" that.
What you say at 7:47 is not necessarily true for all skilled players.
When the game was younger, it was way easier to spot mistake and learn from them because the skill gap wasn't that high.
It comes a point where you die/loose so fast that it become impossible to learn from your mistake.
And even if you do learn about some of them and correct them (or at least improve on them), you could just not see the difference because the skill gap is so wide.
yaa about changing fights if going against recursion... here is my experiance last time i played on NC Emerald:
O recursion is here time to change fights, *does so* a few mins later. "o hey Recursion is here now" *changes fights again* and a few mins later again "O COME ON! Now they are here as well now!" *changes to fight the VS, Finds everyone is not as sweaty as recursion but are still super sweaty and beat my shit in at every fight where i had some chance with TR till recursion showed up.*
Don't get me wrong im bad, i have a mind set i keep trying to fix but always fall into again >.< but it becomes bullshit when i Try to relearn the guns after months of not playing only to constantly have my shit pushed in and trying to find a fight where i can have some sort of success, often finding it till one of the sweat fits move in and kills it off horribly.
Mind you not saying remove sweat fits, its fine, i just have horrible luck, horrible skill, and tired of getting crapped on.
Also does not help the thing that draws me to this game the combined arms, has been feeling less and less combined and more and more separated spheres of influence, besides that one Air to ground fuck that seems to refuse to die even with skyguards around.
An Angry player.
lol Yeah i don't have a problem with SWAT strategy players on Plantside2 sure they do make it harder to take Territory. but it's a hell reward when you finally take out three of them because they're too busy focusing on or scenario to remember that they forgot about the blind spot.
my issue with them is they shouldn't be everywhere at once. it's fine to have 3 or 4 Platoons split up in different sections of the map.
but to have their best players travel around the map instantly with no repercussions.
give the weaker players a chance to actually avoid them.
Great vid cammy! Thought about uploading a bit of sweaty sqaud play to showcase to newer players that aspect of the game? (the most fun to play the game in my opinion...)
This is a common issue for small market fps games because it's a lot easier to enter that top 5% of skilled players compared to actual competitive shooters. The best players in planetside probably wouldn't even sniff the competitive scene on actual competitive shooters like valorant, cs go or COD. If all those players from other games all of a sudden switched to PS2, you'd very quickly see a power shift in who is considered the best players in the game. My personal opinion, but people who put that much time sweating in a casual shooter do so because they aren't good enough to get the same satisfaction or outcome in more competitive shooters. I know because I did the exact same thing back in the day in Warface, a small f2p arcade shooter that had the same phenomenon before that game died. In call of duty, you will consistently find a player who is head and shoulders better than you, but the same can't be said for planetside, which is where the egos come into play. Personally, I'm not invested in the community to know these people, and whenever I play online I 95% of the time join a random platoon who is full of cool dudes and we just chop it up over the mic. Whenever I send invites, I always get friend requests accepted, and I do the same for others as well. I honestly think this specific issue is the top 10% complaining about the top 1% being slightly better but again just my opinion.
I love you Cami, and I'm totally on board with your point here, but you needed to get some proof readers for this script. Sorry man. :(
Everything you meant was spot on, but many of your arguments here didn't really make sense. Most notably, I think the way you defined "casual" as well as your Sims / competition analogy were both very confusing.
Seriously love all your work, but on complicated topics like this get somebody on Discord or an outfit leader or a Recursionite or someone to just read it over before you publish.
Keep it up though, I'm loving what you're doing! You're an awesome PS2 content creator who provides reliable quality and entertainment.
the grouping up i totally agree with. When gals are used in groups as weapons and not transport vehicles is not fun, likewise when a team of harassers group up with extremely elite drivers/gunners its not fun
7:26 I mean when you enter a game and meet “definitelynotahacker4” who has mastered flight below the ground and gets a headshot kill with his smg from half a mile away every other second, i think you can confidently say that you aren’t going to reach that level of skill.
Speaking as someone who played this game AGES ago, and came back to it recently when in need of a time burner, and has been grinding slowly up towards competence [*eyes my slightly above 0.5 KD] I kind of vaccilate on these points. I've got a couple hackusations in mind. There's three names I see relatively often on Connery who I'm relatively certain have some combo of walls/recoil/aimbot, for instance. On the other hand, I have about half a dozen names that I kind of hate seeing in the killfeed [because I know I'll be next to them shortly separated by whatever gun they're using] and I don't think they're anything but legitly skilled. [Screw you and your Mosquito, Herman, I wish I could fly like that] I see the differences in their gameplay and I feel fairly confident that SOMETHING, software or otherwise, separates them.
Approaching from another aspect, though, I still feel like there are a handful of places where there's an overly strong P2W aspect that really favors people who've got time or resources, and they mostly revolve around Implants and Infiltrators, especially the Stalker types. A decent Stalker cloaker with Catlike 5, Avoidance 5, and a Blackhand/Commissar/Underboss has probably kicked more people off this game than a server crash, and every piece of that is basically 'I have more time/money in this game than you so you lose'. Another is Ambusher LAs going after people with Amaterasus [Amaterasi?]. Neither of those are terribly effective in mass battle, but they definitely don't make you feel much like there's a competition at hand. Just 'Tough luck that you're the one I decided to troll, you get a chance only if I miss'
I can deal with being outshot any day, I have a pretty realistic viewpoint on where my skill falls, but those two bugbears in particular are the ones where I feel like P2W/Veterancy rears its head enough to tempt me to sign off for the day.
As someone that sucks at all aspects of fps games. I've recently been able to pull higher than a .4 k/d and man does it feel great. The other day I even ended a session with a 1.11. But I'm about as casual as it comes in regards to fps. Now style action games such as dmc I can hold my own with.
Say what you want about "fairness", "competition" or whatever bullshit analogy, it's undeniable, being a casual/new player facing sweaties is not fun and surprise surprise, fun is the most important factor in a game, one could even argue that they are slowly killing the game.
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game; One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
As someone how is at least somewhat skilled in the infantry game, i only can awnser the question "is it fair to team up with skilled players" with 2 diffrent questions: is it fair you guys bring 2-4 people against me? (In my opinion no but i like the chalange) and 2. Is it fair to bring force multiplyers to deal with 1 guy?
There are plenty of infuriating moments in Planetside as you said. Argueably you called it correct, however there are some sub concepts that people also are good at and ARNT aknowledged for there skill
1) Piloting
- Air Superiority (extremely common)
- Fire support (moderately common)
- Taxi (not as many group of players)
2) "Ground Vehicles" (Hard to name a hover tank this)
- Fire support
- Infantry Support (soaking fire and advancing with infantry dislodging heavy dug in defenders)
- Infantry Support Scouting (not as common but just as vital in positioning)
- Infantry Supply & Convoy Protection (Spawn vehicle protection and vehicles used for logistical trains)
3) Infantry (*Here is the hard one, cause each class can fill multiple unique rolls*)
- Infiltrator can severely point the knife at enemy lines, with a well placed recon dart they can expose enemy weak-points, flanks, and even once all this is deployed can then rely on skill and marksmanship to pick off key targets in a pinch to break the stalemate (These targets include Infiltrators, Medics, Heavy Assault, and Engineers trying to keep the war wagon rolling at the enemy)
1) Infiltrators can specialize for covert styles and ambush guerrilla tactics focusing on saboteur work and have mastered the craft of stealth to effect
2) They can be a grunt like any other in a pinch
3) with the right equipment they can be a Max hunter instead of a standard "Marksman"
- Heavy Assault
1) Brawn of a push, can steamroll threw the hordes of lead spitting return fire and breaking tight hallway sieges with rockets and grenades
2) Can decimate an enemy push with a counter play nobody was expecting
3) This class can also serve as anti-armor or anti-air as the weapon of choice is viable to do either with enough skill
- Light Assault (The definition of Mobility and the cause of most chaos in the fighting)
1) mobility to always create a monumental flanking play: Can rain ordinance on heads of the enemy in flight and quickly go back to get ammo when out cause the high mobility offers a good chance with map knowledge to escape a good amount of the time
2) in some cases can be better then other classes due to positions in even small hallways other classes cant reach, making it a special forces grunt of the battlefield (like a paratrooper, but just brings the plane in the back-pack)
3) Can focus on Anti-Armor, Anti-sniper, and even Anti-Max depending on necessity and play style
- Medic - (A very angry grunt who gets tired of reviving people you nock down before reviving half the army and full sending himself to turn your face to paste to satisfy his aggervation)
1) Helps any push, keeping Max pushes and Heavy Assault Pushes alive (multipul methods, and the key skill here is learning what to use and when for the equiped soldier you have)
2) can use effective weapon choices to be more self defending, allowing more focus on team play
- Engineer
1) Grenadier
2) Max push repair
3) Ammo Bearer
4) Anti-vehical
5) best class for vehical pilot/tanker/driver
6) great for defensive play
* Sorry for rushing Engineer and missing anything else, please add bellow * Off to work now!
I’m 35 but I’ve been playing shooters since I was 12 and I still tend to destroy out the gate on new games . I feel guilty because there are a lot of players who can hardly look around . It draws casual and hardcore a like .
you would be suprised, but there is actually a Sims Esports scene.
I’m curious now..
imho the headshot multiplier needs to drop to decrease the skill gap.
if it was 50% bonus damage then high skill players would still win 1v1s,
they just wouldn't be so massively oppressive.
double damage is way too much.
Most FPS players are not used to the abscence of a match-making system so that they are pitched against similarly-skilled players. It's a big sandbox in PlanetSide.
So I have a problem with something said... I don't know if I'm not understanding that right. The thing about Meta chasers, and the job interview analogy.....
Wouldn't the ultimate display of skill BE succeeding IN SPITE of the meta? Taking that non-meta weapon, and just mopping the floor with their opponents? Picking the meta weapon because its statistically better would mean you care more about the stats. And thus the skill used to wield it is just a means to an end of "KDR go up".
I see a similar problem with a lot of arguments surrounding competition, in that skill is used as the term to represent a level of performance, but its only ever measured in the outcome of trackable stats. Which quickly falls into the trap of "Skill = X Performance", which is hamstrung by the subjectivity of how Handicaps are perceived in FPS games. Part of which I think has to do with how the comp mindset routinely sees things primarily in 1v1 comparative terms. Yet its frequently in that same space where hackusations rise, because of a belief that theres no way anyone could be that good, "with that weapon/build". Which is odd to me, considering this is how new metas tend to come to dominance; because at some point, someone is going to figure out what works before it becomes popular.
Thinking about it now... I guess this is how the whole "git gud" thing got out of hand. A lack of clarity on how much something is mechanically carrying the player, verses how effective a player might be in spite of it. Something the KDR (and other stats) aren't good for understanding at a glance. Yet for lack of something better, THIS is what we're using to figure this stuff out at a larger scale. Too subjective at the individual level, but too diluted at game scale level.