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Planetside: A countdown appears.

M

MartinX

One Hour Martinizing While You Wait
Joined
Jan 23, 2003
Messages
7,184
http://planetside.station.sony.com/news_archive.vm?id=67981&section=News&month=current

The main Planetside website has been updated with a countdown to something.

This interests me.

For those who don't know, Planetside was an MMOFPS which came out about 7 or 8 years ago, which was awesome fun and *way* ahead of it's time. If you thought MAG was ambitious with it's 256 players, or you have fond memories of 64 player battlefield matches, try 498, in one map, fighting it out on foot and in the skies.

It was a proper FPS game, where hitting the other dude was based purely on skill, and "leveling up" only changed the range of equipment you could use, not your toughness or damage, a level 1 could kill a level 25, so in battle everyone was even.

It was truly epic, and truly awesome.

Then they made some retarded design decisions which screwed up the fun for a lot of people (some weird and confusing underground combat stuff and then some very badly implemented Mechs which were insanely imbalanced and not much fun).

While they ultimately fixed it, they had the poor timing of making these bad changes in late 2004, around the same time that buzz was starting to really build about another little MMO called "World of Warcraft".

Everyone left, the game pretty much died.

For many years there were rumors that a Planetside 2 was planned, and more recently a project called "Planetside Next" was confirmed, but no information was released.

Now this countdown to something has appeared.

Fingers crossed it's a badass new mmofps.
 
I played it for a very long time when it came out. It truly was a MMO ahead of it's time. Very fond memories of coordinating raids consisting of over 100 players.
 
I loved doing gunnery for the battlemechs or tanks. BFRs were vulnerable to a fast moving, coordinated attack. You really had to put a chunk of time in, in the underground caverns, to earn a BFR.

Sometimes I enjoyed soloing by piloting an fighter aircraft or driving my camper van to an enemy base, setting up a stealth field, doning my stealth suit, sneaking into an enemy base, ripping out the electronics, dropping explosives into the generator, suiciding and then laying mines around the base so that when the engineer came to fix it, he would get blown up.

A bigger problem was Sony taking over an independant game and not caring about it. It's a common story with SOE.
 
Planetside was epic... one can only hope they can do it right this time.
 
Jesus... I played PlanetSide for 3 years. Loved the game!! Got a bunch of friends addicted to PC gaming through it and got my start there too.

Tried to resub last year just to goof around and couldn't believe the same people played after 5+ years. The games ins't the same though when you know about games with graphics like Crysis and BFBC and L4D. Just kills you playiong a game that outdated. Hard to get immersed anymore.

I ramble... :(
 
Agree with the above. Heres some bullet points

  • Ahead of its time
  • Awesome fun
  • Later patches ruined things for a while
  • Would buy Planetside 2 in a heartbeat
 
Direwolf20 said:
Agree with the above. Heres some bullet points

  • Ahead of its time
  • Awesome fun
  • Later patches ruined things for a while
  • Would buy Planetside 2 in a heartbeat
Click to expand...

Ahead of it's time for sure. BFRs screwed the game IMO.
 
I loved BFRs to be honest, I just hated how you had to get them. If they could have done without the caverns and whatnot and made them take resources from your bases and all that stuff, they would have been great. Giant robots just fit and there were times when you saw the enemy had a couple of BFRs and you knew you were going up against a superior force.

Planetside was the ONLY FPS to hold my interest significantly, likely because it was a MMO. Also, the stealth suit and "real" stealth, knifing people in the back and setting up a minefield etc. I'm very sorry that it was left to die on the vine by Sony - it would still be fun today if it was only $5 a month or free and it could boost the population. I can't believe how after Aftershock they basically "gave up" on creating new content for it - that's the core of a game like PS - new weapons, vehicles, bases and more.

Planetside 2 needs to happen, but I don't want SOE anywhere near it.
 
Nothing was cooler than cloaking in the middle of an enemy base with peeps running all around you, no idea you were there. Then BOOM they get OSed on the vehicle pad or their AMS.

Loved it. BR20/CR5 BABY!
 
My favorite tactic was to wear a cloak suit, get a router and deploy it in a base. Then, hop into a mosquito (fast air vehicle) and fly to a nearby tower. Eject from the Mosquito, and deploy a router pad on the roof of the tower.

Boom, stream of friendlys pouring into their tower from the ROOF. The enemy never expected it, and we'd take the tower.

THAT was fun.
 
I liked the game before any of the expansions or extra crap were added. It felt the most balanced/fun imo...

They changed so much since the original incarnation...
 
One can hope to relive base defenses at 2:1 odds against your faction, in marshlands, volcanic landscapes, deserts, etc. Multiple galaxy drops, 20+ tank skirmishes.. to think it was 7 years ago, how time flies.
 
Yea... I was in one of the biggest outfits on Johari right after the game came out. I remember us organizing a massive raid on some continent... we had like 20-30 magriders, 20 + reavers 5-6 galaxies full of people and probably some more.

The game was just epic... it's really sad that nobody else has even attempted to match that, everytime I hear about an MMOFPS I got excited only to find crap like Huxley that's just "instanced" death-matches UT Style... 32 players at the most which is boring.
 
Planetside was awesome and no game since has really lived up to the scale of warfare that game had. Large scale operations in that game were just so sweet.
 
Global Agenda is expanding and as far as MMOFPS are concerned, it is second only to Planetside. They've begun to realize that people want that scale and upcoming patches (1.3) are really bringing the conquest world up in size. That said, I still wish to see a Planetside 2, but I feel that Sony needs to give the devs lots of support and also freedom to do what they want. I'd hate to see another rarely-updated $15 a month monstrosity drone on for years. Global Agenda doesn't have the scale that PS did, but their devs are MUCH more receptive - they've even gone to the lengths of putting off starting their subscription fee because they feel the content isn't enough to justify it, and allowing non-subscribers to still enjoy much of the game content.
 
Global Agenda is neat and all but it's a third person shooter, which isn't even in the same category if you ask me.
 
Nothing beats Planetside. Was in beta then in retail for a few months. Was on Markov.

Still have memories of huge 100+ people firefights over a single tower, or assaulting the bases with 5+ galaxies and liberators and reapers do strafing runs.
 
I was sick at this game. I was the guy that shot you all down as you flew about in the air vehicle of your choice. I might actually cry tears of joy if there was a PS2... I am getting so sick of getting hyped up over an MMOFPS only to learn it's a glorified 3D game browser/match maker for 64 player maps. I will be absolutely crushed if they announced PS2.... and then did that.

I was on Konried, then Emerald when the Konried/Johari merge came along. Heh... Does anyone remember SG? How about Hate Tells? Planetside still has the best Hatetells of any game I have ever played.

Oh, and by the way, the reason aftershock killed the game is because it drove off all the cool players which in turn made everyone they played with quit, ruined competition in the game, etc. I personally liked the cave environments. The robots were the most fucking retarded idea ever however... it's like they threw out their whole game philosophy in favor of some over-the-top "cool" bullshit. One person should never have that much power in a game like Planetside. Prior to the BFRs, every heavy assault vehicle in the game required a driver AND one or more gunners to fire it's most impressive weapons. After BFRs came out, you just had jackwads driving around in giant walking robots capable of easily brutalizing 4 of the previous "most powerful vehicle" by themselves. Even more ridiculous when you consider the 4 previous vehicles all had more than one person driving/gunning them too. Oh, and they can fly. Why not. Said jackwads were given the ability to pilot these Machines of Imbalance simply for running around in the caves for a while killing people which, as a simple accrual task, was extremely easy and took no skill. WAY TO GO SOE, GOOD IDEA.
 
At least when I remembered it, the best BFRs had a 2 person configuration - pilot and gunner. Single person config was more manueverable but less powerful. I don't have a problem with temporary earned "mini-imbalance" weapons or vehicles, but I didn't like HOW they acquired them. Did anyone remember Black Ops? I never got to do it, but there was a time when developers would outfit people with incredibly overpowered stealth suits that could carry heavy weapons, have as much armor as a vehicle, and gave them a laser katana that pretty much cleaved anything. I was hoping this would transition into the game itself as some sort of advanced stealth suit or something and there would be other ways to get ahold of a similar item (maybe half the power?), but it never came to fruition. It was pretty awesome to try and defend a base against an enemy team that had 2 guys equipped as Gray Fox/Raiden from MGS cutting tanks in half and stuff.
 
I see the countdown, but its 0 0 0 0 0 ? lol

Btw I love planetside too when it first came out then like everyone else stated kinda got annoyed by the changes and left. Although I do have alot of memories of epic battles.
 
yah i see that but i hope that's not what the countdown was for. I mean...WHAT? LAME???
 
To this day I don't think I've ever felt more rewarded than infiltrating into a base full of 166 enemie with stealth armour, laying explosives in the generator room, blowing them in one large detonation and knocking the power (and defences) out for the entire base.

Planetside was ahead of its time, it was FPS warfare that was done on a scale that simply had not been done before, it had its problems and eventually died due to some pretty bad management in the game. But it provided experiences second to none, organising galaxy drops was amazing (galaxys are fat airborne troop carriers which you could bail from and drop into combat from great heights) and you'd arrange about 150+ people into 10-12 galaxies and sail over a well defended enemy base and it would just rain people and light vehicles.

It may have been too far ahead of its time, it ran a bit slowly for most, you needed a good internet connection and servers sometimes struggled in heavy battle. Today most of those things are no longer issues, Planetside 2 could honestly be something big with the right investment and direction.

Since then the only thing that has come close in Warhammer Online where you can muster up battles almost the same size as planetside used to have, about 300 total on a good night. One of the reasons I like Warhammer Online so much is because it feel like an exact cross between WoW and Planetside.
 
loved this, and your right princessfrosty it ran sluggish on my rig that I almost built a new one just for this game alone
 
God damn you, Sony, for raping my dreams by letting Planetside waste away. Such an awesome game. Gal drops into towers or bases. Two hour long, three-way sieges over bases. BURSTER MAX! Even the BFRs were great, although I didn't care for the cavern grind to unlock them.

C'MON VALVE, MAKE THEM AN OFFER THAT THEY CAN'T REFUSE AND THEN RELEASE PLANETSIDE 2!
 
This is the first game that I played that needed 512mb ram to run good. It was so slow with 256 :eek:
 
BDV said:
This is the first game that I played that needed 512mb ram to run good. It was so slow with 256 :eek:
Click to expand...

Ha. That was always the first thing I asked people when they complained about slow loading times and bad performance.
 
All that wait for a Happy Birthday? And 7 at that? Argh.

Less I missed something, that is a serious letdown.
 
Augh, the way you guys talk about PlanetSide makes me want to play it too! =O I'm an old C&C Renegade player, and firefights with 64+ players can be amazing and memorable. PlanetSide supports 484+? O_O
 
I think it was 400 players per continent... or maybe 500... and 10 continents per server, and 5 servers (2 west coast, 2 east, and 1 europe)... they had to merge them all done because of lower player counts and now it's a single server I believe.

But yes, they were some fucking epic battles. Nothing has matched Planetside and it's sad :(
 
This might be a little too hardcore for PS players but Battleground Europe is a MMOFPS that beat planetside by 2 years. Large battles and teamwork a must.
 
I think I tried it, if I remember it was kind of like a super-scaled Battlefield game... I don't remember much about it but it seemed "too" big... I hate games where you spent more time running/driving than fighting. Which did happen in Planetside if you didn't grab a vehicle certification / didn't get a ride.

Wasn't as much fun... Planetside was just the right scale I think. Where almost every night you could get into an epic battle and kill some baddies, capture bases and towers and it was pretty awesome. Then wake up the next morning to have the other empire steal all the continents you fought over last night... *shakes fist* ... not like it really mattered but it was funny.

There were some times where 1 empire captured all 10 continents... which is ridiculous..
 
WWII Online is meant as a simulation, not an action shooter. And Europe is big. For what it is I think it's great. Certainly the best combat flight sim on the market. Lot's of strategy. Just hook up with some players.

They are also reactivating all former subscribers accounts this weekend for an open beta testing of a new patch. Good time to check it out again.
 
So how's the population with this game? I'm seriously considering firing it up again! I played it for way too long.
 
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