Ok, I’m in. Total noob. My handle in game in Zapa, TR on Genudine.
I’m Kinthalis (surprise!) on the same server.
My Steam overlay isn’t running when I play the game though 
Sold! I’ll download it by this weekend.
UK poster using the steam version. I had a lot of G37 errors when I first tried to run it around 22:30 (That’s when my download and install finished). I was up and playing about an hour later, looks like a server overload. Unfortunately most of the Smurfs were logging off at the time. Hope for better luck tomorrow.
So I’m totally lost. Any videos you’d recommend to a newbie?
Can’t even tell who’s friendly. I’m on the red team, so I assumed red markers = friends, blue equals enemies. Nope. Blue is friends, except on the map, maybe? Then there are some people without markers. Who knows what they are.
I did kill me a tank though!
The IFF colors are less than intuitive when you’re playing TR. The in-world hud icons have red for enemy and blue for friendly, but the map location icons are colored by empire, but the map contact icons are colored by hostility again, so…yeah. There was dev talk of adding a hostility-only color mode, but it probably hasn’t made it in yet.
I’ll be maining Vanu myself, but I’ll have alts of the others as well for running with friends and mood changes, so I’ll definitely be hopping in to yammer.
Yeah, I couldn’t figure it out either. I just gave up after being killed a bunch without really knowing what’s going on.
Mmkay. I’ve got “Mekhazzio” as Vanu on Connery, “MekhazzioTR” on Genudine there and haven’t picked a home for NC yet.
It appears the Genudine server has rolled over and died, too.
Add me on friends as LadyGagaSDMB. I’ll be the one in the tank.
Ok, I found something I really don’t like: friendly fire.
Not only is friendly fire on, twice I have spent minutes running into my position when I get ran over by some jackass on my team in a tank.
Xander, I believe Rand would like to have a talk with you.
Ye-up. Situational awareness is key. Accidents do happen.
Be very very careful where you throw that grenade.
I’ve wiped my own squad before. Cough.
Back in beta, I participated in some organized play. Some of the metagame strategy in big battles is to avoid killing long-living problem enemies, because friendly fire is so common they’ll inevitably get weapon locked.
Yeah I blew up one guy with a turret gun thinking he was an enemy before I figured out the color thing.
Collateral damage baby.
You have no idea how much I wish this wasn’t a F2P game because this is seriously an incredible game. I never played planetside 1 unfortunately - I really should’ve, but I wasn’t really aware of it when it was at its peak. And who knew sony could do anything good.
When I went up in an aircraft the first time, I pulled my trigger for like a 5 round burst just to make sure that my controls were set up right. The rounds arced away from me, off in the distance, landed maybe 1500 meters away. I was rewarded with a kill.
The world is so big and so full of people that a stray shot of test fire hit and killed someone. There’s nothing else like that in gaming.
The aesthetic is absolutely awesome. You might run up to take cover behind a big boulder with 20 other people. A sniper round from 300 yards away picks off the guy to the left. A tank round from a flanking tank 100 yards to your right takes out a few guys to your right. Suddenly the skies fill with some friendly air support and they take out that tank. Given some covering fire, the 15 guys you’re with charge out from behind the rock and at the enemy, storming their base, who meet up inside with 20 guys from another direction doing the same thing. Suddenly you’re fighting room to room in a building trying to disable some shields with 40 friendlies against 30 enemies.
You just don’t get that in other games, it feels like you’re taking part in an epic sci fi movie.
Sounds interesting.
How does the game handle injuries, healing and death?
What keeps the sides in “balance”? How many sides are there?
There are no injuries as far as I know, just a health bar. It uses a halo style regenerating shield on top of health. There are medics to heal your health, and if your faction controls the biolab on a continent you get continent-wide slow health regeneration to connected sectors. Medics can also revive casualties.
As far as balance - I don’t know yet. There are 3 sides, which keeps the power struggles interesting. They give an experience gain bonus to any sides that are undermanned compared to the rest, so that would tend to incentivize balancing out the player counts.
Less QQ, more pew pew.
The F2P nature means that you’ll never be wanting for targets, which is one big reason the original Planetside stagnated. They just couldn’t get new blood into the game.
There are three sides: The Terran Republic (red and black, specialize in high damage per second, tend toward machine guns), the New Conglomerate (blue and yellow, specialize in high burst damage, tend toward shotguns and slow but strong weapons), and the Vanu Sovereignty (purple and green, specialize in accuracy, tend toward varied energy weapons).
The triad style of factions helps keep them in balance, as everyone is fighting on two fronts. That said, it is possible for one side to ‘win’ by pushing both enemy factions back to their home bases. That side receives a bonus (I’m not sure what at the moment) until a new side conquers the field.
Health is tracked by two stats: armor, which regenerates quickly, and health, which doesn’t regenerate except under special circumstances. You can equip a limited number of personal healing items if you spend cert points (the primary method of character advancement), but typically you’re healed by Medics on the field.
Death is very deathmatch-style. You die, you’re forced to wait several seconds for a respawn, and then you’re given a list of potential respawn points your faction controls nearby. Mobile respawn points exist and are essential for keeping up a sustained assault on an enemy base.
Added after edit window: In general, there are a number of classes: Light Assault (light carbine, jump jets/mobility), Heavy Assault (better armor, significant firepower plus anti-vehicle), Infiltrator (cloakable spy/sniper), Medic (natch), Engineer (repairs vehicles, turrets, and infantry armor), and MAX (mechanized armor suit, configurable for AP, AV, or AA).
All have decent weaponry (I’ve died often to Medics and Engineers), all can pilot vehicles, and you can switch between classes at resupply stations at will. Advancement is controlled by cert points which you earn for kills and base captures, and while the basic loadout for each class is pretty viable, certs let you customize and upgrade to make yourself more efficient at killing in your preferred class or vehicle. You can opt to cert deeply into one or two trees, or spread your certs all around and swap classes as needed.
Additionally, on death: Medics have the capacity to revive you immediately on the field, which is just as useful as the mobile spawn points for keeping the fire under an assault.
The F2P nature of the game means that the developers have an incentive to make the game painful and unpleasant unless I pay them. They need to create an incentive to pay- ie making the game worse or unbalanced without it - in order to function.
This is inferior to a system in which the game developer is motivated to make the best game possible for the players.
Looking over some of the prices, the game seems way too grindy. For example, would you like to fly medium aircraft that have their basic functionality, either ground attack or anti-air? You’ll be playing for about 40 hours to unlock that. 80 if you want to be able to do either role. So if you play 2 hours a day, you’ll be playing for 3 weeks just to unlock the BASIC ROLE on ONE AIRCRAFT TYPE on ONE FACTION. In the meantime, you have to sacrifice everything else to save up for that - so you won’t be getting optics for your weapons, more health for your infantry classes, etc.
Decide you’d rather end up playing another faction? Well, do that grind again.
Now the starter infantry weapons are apparently viable, but basic functionality like mentioned above takes weeks of grinding. Sure, you could shortcut it by paying cash, but even then it’s ridiculously overpriced. You’ll pay $7 to have one faction’s medium aircraft doing one role, $14 if you want both roles, $20 if you want access to all their weapons, and $20 plus like 100-200 hours of grinding if you want to fully maximize that vehicle. Again, one vehicle type for one faction.
The gameplay thus far is fantastic, the grind required to actually be able to do what you want is ridiculous. Bad combination. And stupid. They could lower grind times and prices by 75% and it would only help the game - people like me who actually want to give the damn game money wouldn’t be so disinclined because it’s kind of ridiculous.