Recently I gave Planetside 2 another try , motivated by this RPS post. I didn’t write about it the first time I played, but broadly: I found it immensely interesting, but deeply flawed. Had it changed in the intervening years? It must have, if it motivated Mr. Rossignol to write such superlatives about it.
However, despite the hours I sunk into it this week, the game simply did not stick. I shall attempt to articulate why.
For completeness, since this is the first time I’ve written about the game, let me first paint the game in broad strokes. Planetside 2 is a free-to-play MMOFPS. When I say this, banish any thought of WoW from your mind; I mean it in the most literal sense of the term. There are heaps and heaps of people, lots and lots of space, and you shoot the people in the space.
And when I say there is lots and lots of space, that is an understatement. It is massive; absolutely breathtakingly huge. It is this that gives the game its strength. The map consists of territories, each controlled by some faction at any given time. Each of these territories contains several control points. Hold those points for long enough, and you’ll capture the territory. Certain territories serve only to connect your main base to other, farther territories; others give bonuses to everyone on the continent, like the ability to regenerate health, or purchase a certain tank. In this way, territories serve as small mini-maps, as part of the larger continent.
Some people say these territories are the main problem with Planetside 2; that there’s a sense of impermanence, since the territory can simply be taken again, later, by the other faction. Personally, I don’t think this argument applies. The territories do give substantial bonuses, and the battles are worthy to be fought in themselves.
The battles really are the true spectacle of the game, commonly going up to nearly 100 people on each side. Generally, most of these players will belong to some assortment of platoons, each of which is split up into squads of 12 players each. These platoons and squads serve as order to the chaos; the platoon leader will be giving orders to the squad leaders, and the squad leaders give orders to their troops. For example, the platoon leader might order Alpha squad leader to pull tanks and form a tank column, the Bravo squad leader to pull aircraft and provide air support, and the Charlie and Delta squads to ride with Alpha and provide infantry. Then, the squad leaders will tell their troops which tanks and aircraft to get, how many medics and engineers they need. Thus, the army forms.
[](https://straypixels.net/assets/2014-09-12_00001.jpg)When it all comes together, It is a heady experience, to say the least. When you see tank columns rolling across the landscape; a charge over a wall by men with jetpacks; dogfights taking place over all of this; it’s a good feeling. You think: _This is what videogames are all about. It’s pure awesomeness.
Unfortunately, in my experience, this so rarely happens. Perhaps it’s the platoons I join, but I’m more inclined to think it’s the game mechanics themselves. Instead of turning into a back and forth battle of artillery, infantry drops, and tactics, it turns into… something resembling World War 2 trench warfare. Two battle lines of infantry, shifting just meters in either direction, because neither faction has enough organization to bring in artillery or air support. With infinitely spawning troops and no way past the enemy lines, it’s a slog of killing and dying and respawning and killing again. Once, a platoon I was running with was defending, massed behind a wall, and the enemy was reduced to crashing cloaked vehicles into our forces because they simply couldn’t do anything else.
Then, there’s the shooting mechanics themselves. I don’t have as large of an issue with them as many do, but they are still there. Guns simply feel insubstantial, and movement floaty. Very often, you will find yourself dead without a clue as to who killed you, or even from where; you simply die too quickly to react. Even with the heavy infantry’s extra shield, if you get hit from the back, you will die before you have a chance to turn around. Yes, it’s realistic, but it’s absolutely not fun. It only contributes to the trench warfare feeling; if you can’t run up because you die too quickly, all you can do is sit back and try to snipe heads.
I don’t think you can discount the technical issues with the game, either. Often, the game will find itself without enough audio channels to play all the cues for everything going on around you. Lasers, rockets, and tank shells fly all about you, but all you can hear is the sound of distant explosions, like you are walking around in a daze. Often, you won’t even be able to hear the firing of your own gun. It may not seem like such a large problem, but this, combined with the mechanical problems, makes for some very loose-feeling combat.
It bears repeating that the organizational problems could probably be fixed by joining a proper clan. However, as a casual pick-up game, Planetside 2 falls far short. Gameplay consists of either zerg rush overwhelms or spawncamps, and rarely gets past that. Perhaps there are some pick-up-and-play outfits out there, but as it stands, I don’t have the time nor the will to commit to playing Planetside 2 when there are so many other games out there to play.
Well, onwards.