Out of Pod Experience

That's not irony and Planet-Side 2 was announced around the same time, but was known to be coming long before anyone had heard of Dust 514.

But I digress.
I have no faith in Planet-Side 2 what so ever.

The whole concept of Planet-Side was to progress your character through levels to gain FLEXIBILITY in combat, rather than dramatically increased damage or health numbers and that was a good idea, but then they just crumpled the entire design intent into a ball and threw it away by giving everyone free/fast character swapping, grouping certifications of weapons into 'packs' so you could have more, and allowing respecs and changes every day.

The community raged about one weapon or another being a bit over powered, or one cert or another needing a longer timer, but at the end of the day no matter what your squad brought to the fight every enemy who saw you ran directly to a console, switched to your perfect counter, and came back to kill you.

No one ever recognized this. Even as they put in an expansion with massive mechs and then watched them fall apart when every person on the continent simply switched weapons and shot missiles at it, they were getting more and more liberal with flexibility of what people could bring. They Castrated their own design of building a character with an equipment kit to play a role in a squad.

/rant

I'm waiting for a real shooter MMO, and you know... I'll probably buy and play Planet-Side 2... but I have no belief that it will be anything special and I'd drop it in a heart beat for another, and I'll not leave my sub on reoccurring bill.

In deference to MMOs that's referred to as B2P (Buy 2 Play).

If it took months to cert things in planet-side and you had to change an equivalent to ships I'd be a lot cooler with it, but the heavy armor could carry two of any guns it wanted.

I'm glad someone bumped the thread.
This article took me from zero faith, to looking forward to it.
Don't miss Page 2 at the bottom, that's where the good stuff is.
Most of page one is WOW ITZ PURDY

http://www.pcgamer.com/preview/planetside-2-preview-2/




Things are class based, which at first hit me as all wrong, but it solves this just like ship types do in EVE. You can't grab whatever you want in the biggest heaviest armor anymore, if you need engineering you have to actually go be the combat engineer class and take it's shortcomings with you.

At the same time though, it gives some restriction and creates the RPG elements because the classes will each have their own skill trees where you must make decisions. One person can't be 'everything' from that combat engineer. So in the end it is, in my opinion and in theory of course, an excellent balance of being able to go get what you need, while being restricted to some degree and actually having to commit to a character.

Instead of 'I have everything' or 'I have only one class' or 'lol everyone can play every class and we pretend to be an RPG'... you end up playing Engineer type 1, Soldier type 2, Stealth type 1, pilot type 3... lots of options but all are commitments within themselves. I think it's an excellent idea and I can't wait to see how it turns out.




There's also a pure shooter class, which has the highest damage and highest mobility but is easily killed. For people who want to play it as an action game this is great, and people who play it tactically will now ACTUALLY HAVE TO WIN WITH TACTICS not just going and getting the anti-infantry gun from the nearest console then claim they're L337.

Also weapon customization... you'll be able to pick from a decent list of scopes and attachments to change the way the weapon looks, how it zooms, and how it sounds when it fires. Always nice to have things like that.