Planetside.. the $1,000,000 question

[Andaas]

Just curious what those in the beta think.

[Tilea]

I'd say it's worth 10, but it isn't the type of game you play anywhere near as long as something like EQ. It would get boring within a few months unless they make major additions.

[Arcius]

I agree with Tilea, $10 would be about right. If it were around $5 a month, I'd probably keep an account open to play it every now and then, but PS is not something I'd be playing regurally for very long (and isn't worth $10+ a month to me).

[Rhedd]

I love it, however, as the other two posts have pointed out. Right now a lack of content is going to kill it. Yes you have 10 continents... but for what? to capture and recapture bases.


Some of the thoughts I had on what they should add are faction bonuses for held continents , the ability for several engineers to build mini bases, or bunkers/towers ect... that have to be maintained or they fall apart ect... uh what else


Something huge... some other thing to strive for other than capping bases.

[Vinen]

To play glorfied counterstrike?

[Zarxen]

Yeah I can't understand why they would charge people for it, considering games of that type tribes, counterstrike, battlefield 1492 have allway's been free.

That's what will likely prevent me from getting the product.

[Rhedd]

I honestly do not think its so much of a glorified counterstrike or battlefield 1492 or unreal tournament or any of that shit. Those are all instant respawn and only support up to like 32 people.

There is sooo much more than can be done with something like planetside. You have 50 on 50 battles if not more... you have turrets, tanks, planes, ect There are 100's of possibilites.

Yes you have turrets, tanks, planes in all those other games... but not on this scale, not this massive and not that diverse.

[Andaas]

I agree that PS offers some game features that other games do not, but, I don't think PS offers enough that it is going to be able to sustain a $10 or more monthly subscription rate.

Also.. if you voted for $10/month, but followed up your vote saying something along the lines of "the game won't hold my interest for more than a few months", then you aren't really willing to pay $10/month for the game, are you? :p

[Rayena]

I voted without playing the game because, its a FPS .. it should be free... Look at tribes 2, Unreal and Quake type games. Same difference but more graphics, and maybe a few enhancements. whopee.

[Vidmer]

I would be willing to play 5 bucks a month for this, possibly 10 depending on how much work they put into it. I played an RTS game with a monthly fee (shattered galaxy) that was massive in scale. I loved that game and felt the 10 bucks was worth the persistant and interesting world.

So 5 bucks a month if its just a massive version of tribes.

10 a month if they really do something nice with it.

[Tilea]

It's not possible for PlanetSide to be free, period. Each continent is run on it's own server, so each actual game Server (ie druzzil ro, fennin ro blah blah in eq terms) is 10 servers. That stuff isn't cheap, if they made the game free they would go broke in no time.

"Also.. if you voted for $10/month, but followed up your vote saying something along the lines of "the game won't hold my interest for more than a few months", then you aren't really willing to pay $10/month for the game, are you?"

Sure I am. I've payed to play EQ, and when EQ is boring for me, I'll stop playing. As long as PlanetSide is as fun as it is now for me, then it's worth the $10.

[Nuuk]

If they add more of a point to the game and more to the character development, I would be willing to pay 10 bucks for it a month, but as I see it, I probably will not be playing it. I have got my fun with it by the time the beta is over....

If they make it more.... I will play it....

[Andaas]

Of course you will pay to play it if the game is fun for you, and I expect that people will in fact pay to play Planetside.

However, my personal opinion is that the "tired" factor will kick in relatively fast (ie, 1 month, 2 tops). Consider that the current stage of beta for Planetside has been running for only 2 weeks, the game has gone through substantial changes in just that time alone. Once it goes gold the amount of change will be much more limited. No more player wipes after gold either.

Unless they come up with some "hook" to keep people playing (ie, some reason to capture bases that has a larger impact on the game world/teams), players will quickly find something new to play.

So how many people will play for only the "free" month with purchase? How many will go for a 2nd month? From the few responses to this thread, more than one current beta player that currently likes and enjoys the game has stated they are unlikely to play for more than a few months.

A successful MMOG needs to sustain a base level of subscriptions for longer than 2 months each. Other MMOG's have or will be shutting down their servers (Motor City Online is gone, Earth & Beyond may be going..), due to lack of subscriptions.

If Planetside really has something to "hook" the player, they should provide a free online service to suck the player in, something that is just a single map timed team battle. Then offer an enhanced pay-for-play service that offers character development, continental conquest, and fighting with more of a goal behind it (ie, take over all of a certain type of base and your team grows in power in some way, via a small HP boost, weapon strength, reductions in power usage, etc.).

Just my opinion though. :)

[Ktul]

There are games outside of EQ?

[Maelikki]

would be okay to play like 10/months however i pretty much doubt id play it more than 2months (total of 3 with beta)
Basically the game lacks content compared to a mmorpg and you seem to be able to hit max br pretty fast tbh

it also lacks a skill factor compared to other fps, wut kept ppl playing counterstike is that you can improve by playing a lot.

Basically gonna use PS as some hersatz untill SWG or WoW is out.

Unless they start adding huge content to the game and fix the damn tr av max :/

[Arcius]

I don't think the low Battle Rank cap is a problem, but the lack of reason to capture continents and participate in massive battles is. The lattice system was a step in the right direction, since the change people have been forced to attack bases next to ones they control (which makes for much larger battles, it was no fun dropping into an undefended base in the back for free xp).


If Planetside really has something to "hook" the player, they should provide a free online service to suck the player in, something that is just a single map timed team battle. Then offer an enhanced pay-for-play service that offers character development, continental conquest, and fighting with more of a goal behind it (ie, take over all of a certain type of base and your team grows in power in some way, via a small HP boost, weapon strength, reductions in power usage, etc.).

My thoughts exactly :p And perhaps a short period of time the continent must be held for the new technology (empire boost) to be researched - which gives the other factions a chance to retake a base or two and encourages teamwork (and large-scale battle, that's what Planetside is about, right?).

[Maelikki]

well problem i have atm is with the 15 mins delay to keep the hack when base got like no def
i mean waiting 15 mins to kill the ninja counter hacker that gonna pop every 5 mins aint excatly exciting especially when you not gonna get exp due to the fact the base was lowly defended.

For latice ya its pretty nice since forces are way less spreaded around and makes fights more intense.

[Maelikki]

and humm yeah andy keep the 1000000 dollars but gib me some cool custom title and shiny stars kk thx la ~

[Maegwin]

Well, don't forget about the "guild" system they have. And don't underestimate the friends factor. I can see people playing planetside longer than 2 months just so they can keep in touch with their friends who moved to or started on Planetside.

Being able to log on and blast a bunch of shit with people you know and care about is a nice thin.

Maybe they could take the global rewards you guys are talking about and scale it down a bit to the guild level so that your guild gets certain bonuses for reaching certain points levels. That way you feel like all your hard work is a reward for the people you care about...not just the rest of the joe schmoes in your realm.

[Lothbah]

I'm not sure how PlanetSide works or what the game is about, but if I recall correctly, Tribes 2 allowed for 40v 40 team combat. I didn't like the gameplay at all though (probably because I sucked so bad). PlanetSide is max 50v 50?

[Illegal]

Well I'm not gonna get into a long drawn out dissertation on my thoughts about PS... That said,

I've been playing it for a month and a bit now. Maybe longer, can't remember exactly. I've tried the solo thing, and I've also tried the group thing ( people I knew also got into beta, and it got pretty easy to get a group of well known people together, especially after open beta rolled in ). Collectively we must have gone through every different basic scenario the game has to offer. I've gone through at least 5 or 6 br10-br15 characters, all differently specced.

The game places little to no emphasis on individual skill. Don't think that your fps skills will help you any, because the game's response time is ... sluggish. I'm not sure how to put it, action and movement just feels slow, dumbed down. The best way I can express it is, the game is noobed down, it's way too easy to kill someone or get killed regardless of your skill.

Takes about a week to learn how to do pretty much everything you can do in the game. Sure, maybe some of the slower learners will take longer, but for the (ugh) "hardcore" gamer, it'll take a few days. And when I say pretty much everything, I really do mean pretty much everything.

Bottom line, after a month of playing, I'm bored of the game. So is almost everyone else I know who is in beta (this is a considerable amount of people we're talking about). The game kind of reminds me of ac2's "point and click to kill the mob" mentality, where some things are compacted and simplified so much that doing them successfully is simply not rewarding. We storm a base, we spend a couple hours killing people ( which eventually turns into killing the same people who have just respawned, repeatedly, i.e. no xp for me ), we finally get a cap and, hell, my first reaction always seems to be "it's about fucking time, now can we log off and go do something else already?".

So there you have it. PlanetSide is gonna make for a fun 2-3 hour gaming session every now and then ( that's a couple times a week, maybe ). Am I gonna pay the standard mmog fee for that? Hello no. Am I gonna pay $10 a month for that? Not too likely.

[Kenju Weeple]

no max in people vs people, it's a persistant world like EQ. you run around the different contents and go from base to base trying to take them over. why, i don't really know, it seems pretty pointless to me, but it's the whole point of the game.. towers are funner to fight over than the bases because everyone is right there adn you don't sit around for 15 minutes waiting for a hack to end while the people that were definding it say "aight, we lost this base, lets go try to take over that base while their all busy waiting for the hack to finish"

i got bored playing PS after 1 week. only time me and 2 of my friends log on is when it's all of us playing. other wise it's boring, and usually one of the 3 of us ends up getting bored and quitting, then the other 2 of us get bored and quit too. they should charge an hourly fee or something. should be really cheap tho. i wouldn't want to pay a fixed rate on PS knowing i'm not going to play it that often, but if it was cheap to play a few hours every now and then, that'd be kinky. that way could play it and only have like a 2 or 3 dollar bill at the end of the month. the fact when i was a sniper i started to remind myself " aim for the body, not the head, a hits a hit" started to make things get duller.

[Tilea]

PlanetSide is definitely friendly to people not normally good at those shooter style games. The fact that I can do (fairly) well at it pretty much proves that. :)

I guess it depends on what your'e expecting. I don't expect it to be another EQ with years worth of stuff to do. I just like to play it for a couple hours and have fun. In that regard, it succeeds just fine.