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To anyone playing planetside (ep5 this means you)


Guest Fox__Trot
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Im considering paying for Planetside. (due to new SOE all access pass debute)

I managed to get into the open beta for about a week and after I finally learned the ropes it really was quite fun. Bad thing is I always had massive FPS drops when more than 4 people were on the screen at any given time...which needless to say makes aiming a bit tough. So, I adjusted to using only the stealth suit and trying my luck at assasinations and hacking. Found that my preferred method is to carry around a bag full of plasma grenades and wait for an unsuspecting soldier to bombard.

Tried my luck at sniping but to my dismay a single shot to the head of a soldier doesnt kill them. Need to land 2 shots. That killed the thrill of sniping and at the first opportunity I traded that back to the certification terminal.

Tried my luck piloting a mosquito but due to the FPS problem I looked more like a kamakazi pilot that had gotten drunk and started flying with a rabid wolverine in the pilot seat. Ya...traded that one back too.

Overall I was dissapointed with my problems with fluidity of motion in battles that limited me to a backseat role in combat. I can only assume its my system at fault but changing the graphics quality to low only seemed to help a tiny bit. Dunno, I have a gforce4 TI4200 128MB. But that card might not be my problem I might just need an entire gig of ram...that and/or a faster processor.

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ok, a bit more details on the game

first and foremost, the game pc requirements are pretty steep. I suggest minimum 1 gig cpu and a gf2 gts/ultra and 384megs of ram. Recommended is a 1.5gig intel cpu or equivalent, a gf3 or radeon 8500 and 768 megs of ram.

I run on a xp2000+, radeon 9700 and 1 gig of ram. under 1 gig of ram the game keeps caching on the hard drive. KEEP IN MIND that the game holds the entire continent you are on in memory, and continents are very detailed, hills, vegetation and at least a dozen bases.

The graphics of the game are very good. high poly counts, detailed base that have complex underground levels, NO loading aside from when you switch continent, beautiful sky, night and day cycle (although the night is never pitch dark), dynamic lightning (rotating alarm lights, lightning inside changes when there's a hack going on or power is lost) weather (lightning storms are fun), etc. The game has a great physics engine although it feels that gravity is low in the game (long jumps and large tanks that jump over small hills) and grenades bounce off walls properly.

when the server is crowded, battles can rage with at least 100 people on each side. no matter how good is the engine, your computer will slow down if you don't have good hardware. Like I posted elsewhere, this is small compared to what we can often get.

And I tell you, sony did one hell of a job with this game. They went as far as asking us to send debug logs to them so they can analyse crashes, and for the last 2 weeks I didn't crashed, didn't freeze.

---

Planetside is a MMOFPS, purely. there is zero RPG, aside from levelling. gun damage and accuracy is hardwired, there's no mobs, if it moves, it's a player, or a bullet coming your way. You can be on foot, in vehicles (tanks, APCs, jeeps, ATVs, etc) or flying in a gunship or in the huge Galaxy transport dropship (can carry 12 people and a light vehicle). 3 factions to play, unique and balanced.

The goal of the game is to control every facility in the game in a never-ending war. form up squad to assault enemy-held bases and fight your way to the command console to hack it and gain control. After you hack a base, you have to hold it 15 minutes, a time in which the enemy can come back and try to regain control. there are many towers on the maps, small spawn points with only equipment terminals and 2 gun towers on the roof.

The arsenal at your disposition varies from pistols, grenades, assault rifles, shotguns, chainguns, rocket launchers (dumbfire, laser guided, camera-flying) grenades launchers, and even the fancy energy weapons of the vanus. And of course you have the Mechanised Assault eXosuit (MAX for short) which is basically a full body armor with big guns attached, sacrificing mobility for sheer firepower, and the infiltration suit, allowing you to cloak and go (mostly) unseen inside enemy bases, stabbing and gunning down the offguard soldier.

not counting the sanctuary, a safe zone for your empire to meet people and form up squads, there are 10 continents to wage war on, each one being (wild guess) between 5 and 12 kilometers across. you travel between the continents using warpgates

Current battlefield sitation (select a server)

There are no concept of headshots in planetside. the game is NOT twitch based, but skill does count for alot. Snipers, despite being unable to one-shot-one-kill you are still a pain-in-the-ass, and infiltrators are either a blessing or a curse to people, good think there's the darklight implant which reduce your viewing range but makes the cloakies glow.

Graphics are great, sounds are too. The game is pretty easy to learn.

Levelling is done by killing people and capturing/resecuring facilities, and levelling a battle rank give you a certification point, which allow you to buy certifications that allow you to use specific types of equipment. there's no tradeskills (i.e. crafting) and no economy. the closest think there is to an economy is that you need to "refuel" bases periodically as activity drains the NTUs (nanite technology units) using the ANT (advanced nanites transport, which is incidentally the slowest and weakest vehicle in the game), charging up at a warpgate and unloading at a silo. A base without NTUs is unpowered and goes neutral.

the game went retail 2 days ago. already the servers are starting to load up. there are 2 western, 2 eastern and 1 european server up, and they have many more waiting in the shadows.

Planetside is GREAT fun. Especially when you have a large group, and coordinated people.

So join in, have fun, fight furiously, and defeat your enemy!

(i don't think I forgot anything, hehe)

ok, back to the game

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I am learning to like PS. FPS games were not my cup of tea, but this is a lot of fun.

I am a casual player (i.e. not very good). I play as "Cavalier" on Emerald (TR), the other east coast server (NC), and one of the west coast ones (VS) (I can't think of the name this moment).

Would love to see something like this on xbox live. All things considered, I would rather play while relaxing on a couch in front of a big tv than hunched over my pc.

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quote:


Originally posted by Epsilon 5:

KEEP IN MIND that the game holds the entire continent you are on in memory, and continents are very detailed, hills, vegetation and at least a dozen bases.


Thats rubbish. Where did you read that? Do you have ANY idea how much memory is required for just the game itself, models etc etc, let alone the terrain data for an entire continent? If this was the case, the game would never work on even the recommended system specs.

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

quote:

Originally posted by Epsilon 5:

KEEP IN MIND that the game holds the entire continent you are on in memory, and continents are very detailed, hills, vegetation and at least a dozen bases.

Thats rubbish. Where did you read that? Do you have ANY idea how much memory is required for just the game itself, models etc etc, let alone the terrain data for an entire continent? If this was the case, the game would never work on even the recommended system specs.


well then, if you are right, the game is excellent at hiding the fact that it's loading

edit - because I'm a screenshot whore I'm going to post a few I took recently

Defending a base

Warp gates

Tech plant vehicle bay

AMS with a magrider tank wreck

weather effect (note that the yellow beams are waypoints I set for my squad)

Odd parking

uh-oh (I died shortly after)

Lush forests of Amerish

Fighting for control Vanus utlimately drove us out (about about an hour of fighting), but we did a come back a few hours later.

- Epsilon 5, Strategic Officer, (SOL) navy

Battle Rank 8, Command Rank 3

Terran Republic, Konried

[ 05-28-2003, 01:58 PM: Message edited by: Epsilon 5 ]

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well since my outfit on konried is the 2nd biggest of the Terran Republic (and 2nd biggest asskicker, but considering the #1 is a invite-spammer outfit, we are #1 for the more selective groups )

And since I'm a screenshot whore, here's more for your eyes...

Rainy day in sanctuary

Running to waypoint

TR holding a hack on Nzame, Cyssor

the prowler, icon of the Terran Republic's armored forces

It looks high ..

Alright, who did that?

Erm .. the game isn'r perfect yet

Lovely carnage

Feels like the movie speed

doesn't mean I can't do it myself

We [(SOL) Navy] mostly play on evening, between 5pm and 2am. we usually have 3 squads going, about 25 people online at once. we have teamspeak server, although not all of us talk on it.

Planetside is very boring alone, and joining random disorganised squads isn't really much better too. There's nothing like 20+ people in tanks, buggies and large transports all arriving at once at the objective, and sweeping an entire base within few minutes. Of course if there's 50 of them.. there's bound to be a long fight

I play under the names of Epsilon5 and Epsilon4, to message someone you type /t and press backspace to reply to the last tell you got.

[ 06-04-2003, 03:18 AM: Message edited by: Epsilon 5 ]

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  • 2 weeks later...

To anyone wondering about PS, here are a bunch of fanmades movies, very good quality, a bit large for dial-up though, but excellent if you consider getting the game. Some details in the movies are outdated, but nothing major (i.e. corpses are not coffins anymore, but backpacks, and some weapon effects changed)

Those 3 show the game in general

Click here

Click here

Click here

This one shows how fun it is to fly the reaver heavy gunship WARNING the music is loud!

This one shows what you can do as an infiltrator with combat engineering skill

This one is much smaller, and plain funny

This one is a promotional video for the outfit that made the movies, scripted, it's nonetheless very cool.

I, for one, am very happy of how Sony handles the game. Sony ARE plowing loads of cash in the game AND they are working on improving the game, no seriously, they are!

[ 06-14-2003, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: Epsilon 5 ]

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Well, the game is pretty good, but as a support role player, it can be kind of annoying. What they need to do IMO is something like they do in Black Hawk Down. On the map they should somehow indicate which member of your squad is a medic or engy. Just replace the green dot with a red cross, or but a symbol next to the member number on the map. It would really make things a little easier than screaming "I'M a MEDIC!" etc. Also, if you have revive, it would allow other squad members who get popped to know that they can be revived instead of going all the way back to a spawn pt. Little things like that would do TONS for the game.

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