The Countdown Begins

[Versus]

ramirez, s that d

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

I play that game IRL....wait.....

[CaffeinePowered]

Karrde link=topic=4569.msg150479#msg150479 date=1272934251]
Yet you still insist this game is worth playing?   Almost makes me NOT want to play it.  If I do get it, you'd better walk me through how to make a char that doesn't suck.

Yes, despite all its flaws PS is still the largest and most ambitious FPS ever released, 10 people can, in effect, man two cloaking blackhawk helicopters and royally fuck some shit up

Best Moments
- Breaking long stalemates with an indestructible router-in-a-box
- Mass carpet bombing formation
- Tank Column Rape
- Air Squad Rape
- Ducklings
- Surprise Buttsex
- Precision artillery strikes from a cloaker
- Last second re-secures
- Dicking the other two teams over in a fight which has absolutely no bearing on your team
- BFR Ganking
- Phantasm Ganking (see BFR Ganking)
- Picnicking

Edit: Strats I posted on the PS Forums, I completely forgot AMS Repo

Not the best video but some examples of phantasm drops

Phantasm Ops

[quote author=Caffeine link=topic=4569.msg150419#msg150419 date=1272917823]
[quote author=Maxon link=topic=4569.msg150417#msg150417 date=1272917245]
The voice really makes that list.

I could give a detailed backstory for each item on that list.
[/quote]


do it, do it
[/quote]

Pick and ye shall receive old man rant style

[MajorAngry]

[quote author=[fr31ns]Karrde link=topic=4569.msg150479#msg150479 date=1272934251]
Yet you still insist this game is worth playing?   Almost makes me NOT want to play it.  If I do get it, you'd better walk me through how to make a char that doesn't suck.

Yes, despite all its flaws PS is still the largest and most ambitious FPS ever released, 10 people can, in effect, man two cloaking blackhawk helicopters and royally fuck some shit up

Best Moments
- Breaking long stalemates with an indestructible router-in-a-box
- Mass carpet bombing formation
- Tank Column Rape
- Air Squad Rape
- Ducklings
- Surprise Buttsex
- Precision artillery strikes from a cloaker
- Last second re-secures
- Dicking the other two teams over in a fight which has absolutely no bearing on your team
- BFR Ganking
- Phantasm Ganking (see BFR Ganking)
- Picnicking

Edit: Strats I posted on the PS Forums, I completely forgot AMS Repo

Not the best video but some examples of phantasm drops

Phantasm Ops

[quote author=Caffeine link=topic=4569.msg150419#msg150419 date=1272917823]
[quote author=Maxon link=topic=4569.msg150417#msg150417 date=1272917245]
The voice really makes that list.

I could give a detailed backstory for each item on that list.
[/quote]


do it, do it
[/quote]

Pick and ye shall receive old man rant style
[/quote]


Here's my list of things I loved doing in this game. This thread almost makes me want to go back.

- Breaking long stalemates with an indestructible router-in-a-box
- Ducklings
- Phantasm Ganking (see BFR Ganking)HAWT DROP!)
- Dicking the other two teams over in a fight which has absolutely no bearing on your team(And receiving hate tells for it)
- Picnicking
- Surprise Buttsex
- Mass carpet bombing formation
- Precision artillery strikes from a cloaker

[zaneyard]

kinda wanna play now too

maybe enough to sub
maybe

[copulatingduck]

kinda wanna play now too

maybe enough to sub
maybe

nobody plays anymore moron

[CaffeinePowered]

[quote author=zaneyard link=topic=4569.msg150541#msg150541 date=1272948047]
kinda wanna play now too

maybe enough to sub
maybe

nobody plays anymore moron
[/quote]

If part of their announcement is a free week or month (from time to time they'll let all accounts play-for-free) we'll likely do something, but I won't be resubbing, you should have paid more attention for the like year we did PS Saturdays  :-\

[rumsfald]

1) John Smedley story, nao.

2) what scares me is how caff had that list off the top of his head.

[CaffeinePowered]

1) John Smedley story, nao.

2) what scares me is how caff had that list off the top of his head.

John Smedley was the lead developer and creator of Everquest and later president of SOE. After the success that was everquest this guy pretty much ruled the MMO market. Planetside was not his brainchild but it was a product of his company.

I do not remember who the original developers for PS were, I'm pretty sure these guys were subs about half way through development. See Smedley kept pulling competent devs and coders off of planetside to work on other projects, namely Everquest 2, and who is going to question the creator of the ever powerful  #1 top MMO (at least until WoW ate it for lunch).

Now amidst all this resource shuffling, he pulled critical resources off an MMO that was just launched. And while I can't find the original thread where it was quoted, the rumor that leaked into the PS community was that during a meeting someone mentioned the resource siphoning and questioned him directly, to which he responded "Planetside, whats that?".

This was the first instance that the community got word of but it would not be the last, at SOEs yearly conventions, even when PS still had ~25,000 - 35,000 subs it was left out entirely, no panels, no demos, no Q&A sessions, not even a press announcement. And it wasn't until years later that it even got mention at their yearly con, a bit too late at that point.

Now where did these resources go you might ask? They did go to develop great games like The Matrix Online, Starship Troopers battlespace, Everquest 2, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Vanguard, or a game entirely for children.

Meanwhile PS has managed to live on, and while not all of the aforementioned MMOs have died, Smedley has done just about everything in his power to set it up for failure.

[zaneyard]

[quote author=Duck link=topic=4569.msg150545#msg150545 date=1272950122]
[quote author=zaneyard link=topic=4569.msg150541#msg150541 date=1272948047]
kinda wanna play now too

maybe enough to sub
maybe

nobody plays anymore moron
[/quote]

If part of their announcement is a free week or month (from time to time they'll let all accounts play-for-free) we'll likely do something, but I won't be resubbing, you should have paid more attention for the like year we did PS Saturdays  :-\
[/quote]
I work every single saturday of every week
i don't get weekends

[rumsfald]

CSR Dan B, I choose you.

[at0m]

[quote author=Maxon link=topic=4569.msg150417#msg150417 date=1272917245]
The voice really makes that list.

I could give a detailed backstory for each item on that list.
[/quote]V-V-F

Also, lol @ that RFW video, yellow box + suppressor = win

I hope it's more than just an announcement, I hope they managed to ninja code the whole thing, and the countdown is to a _release_.

[wangmauler]

I'm probably an id10t, which I know I am, but I have to ask. Is there a difference between the original planetside and planetside players(the first link on the first post in this thread)?

The link doesn't give any info and the site doesn't give any details about what the countdown is for either, which kinda bothered me.

[CaffeinePowered]

I'm probably an id10t, which I know I am, but I have to ask. Is there a difference between the original planetside and planetside players(the first link on the first post in this thread)?

The link doesn't give any info and the site doesn't give any details about what the countdown is for either, which kinda bothered me.

They're just different URLs, players.planetside is for people subscribed to the game, and the regular planetside.com is just the main info page for the game.

CSR Dan B, I choose you.

CSR DanB was one of the worst CSRs Ive ever seen in an online game, not that Im an MMO expert or anything, but there are times when what should be obvious solutions for customer service where shit goes horribly awry due to policy or simple stupidity.

Now a CSRs job is to deal with a few things in PS, hacking, exploiting, and harassment. Much like EvE, the latter part is very hard to define since there's no "rules" in planetside. As long as you aren't exploiting bugs to do it, its completely legal. So you can take your complaints about spawn camping or other legal griefing and shove it.

CSRs generally stayed out of player politics as well, as long as you weren't globaling racist or other foul language as a CR5, you were generally safe from ever encountering them. Despite the shit storm (in VS at least) caused by played like Bamelin or NemesisOrion, the CSRs would just let things be. On numerous occasions DanB got involved in these disputes, usually spending and even banning some people (most of which were later overturned).

He also banned people for attempting to replicate bugs for the developers, for spreading bug reports they were trying to get noticed, for disagreeing with him, and for suspicion of hacking when they (SOE) could not verify that the person was indeed hacking.


Contrast this with a model of CSR-JohnnyA, he was the CSR you hoped to god you got instead of DanB. He would joke with people, troll exploiters before hammering them, never got himself involved in player disputes unless someone violated the aforementioned rules about racism/profanity over globals (in which case this almost always would just get you a gag or a warning rather than an actual ban).

In fact JohnnyA would moonlight with players quite often, we had him on our ventrilo a few times and would shoot the shit while he played on an alt account. He wouldn't give us any special favors like what CCP did in EvE, but it gave the groups he played with for a night or two a nice inside look into things and it meant a lot to players to have that kind of a connection. I also know that as a prank he actually got "in character" with one outfit leader and for a night they jokingly RP'd on their vent while the rest of the group laughed at how absurd it all was.


Sadly, JohnnyA got pulled and reassigned (to EQ2 I think), while DanB continues to be the only CSR for planetside, though he uses a different moniker now and is the only active CSR assigned to planetside (hence why sometimes it takes a long ass time to get a hacker report filed and acted upon).

[Dtrain323i]

Rant about Smoke Jumper plox

[CaffeinePowered]

Rant about Smoke Jumper plox

Smoke Jumper is one of the worst developers I have seen ever, you see in an MMO, you have to take a lot of things into consideration with a live game. Will the update be meaningful, will it fuck up balance, is it something players actually want, how much work does it take, and do I have to listen to anyone around me about what I'm about to do.

The three worst things that happened in the lifespan of the game happened under his watch, the first big balance patch, core combat, and BFRs. I don't want to get into the specifics of each since they could each encompass a rant on their own, like a trifecta of failure.

It just violates so many basic coding principles....you test shit before you push it out the door, not just for bugs, but in terms of games you have to test balance. There was a fucking test server for a reason, so you could run massive play tests, and not once at any point did they think to themselves "Hm....maybe this shit isn't the best idea" or "Maybe we should go back and rework this".

With MMO content in a PvP universe you have to get players engaged. For example, in EvE there is a player advisory board, The board is ELECTED by the playerbase and the developers actually have to answer to them. CCP is obligated to submit reports of what they are working on for EvE to this group of players, this of it as a permanent focus group. They can then recommend changes or tell them to scrap shit entirely.

On top of this, the council as a whole or individuals can submit petitions for gameplay features, balance tweaks, or added content ideas. And once a year the company PAYS for these people to fly to Iceland (provided an angry volcano god doesn't intervene) and has to hold a face to face meeting with the group on the same issues stated above.

Now, Smokejumper did state what they were "working on" but never gave updates, or even a hint of what they developed to fit the concept they talked about. The only thing ever mentioned by name was the phantasm, something that never actually came until long after he got canned and was actually a pretty good fucking idea. I will use BFRs to illustrate this point...

The initial concept mentioned was "heavy tanks", the tanks that everyone was driving were called MBTs, most people thought that stood for "Main Battle Tank" but this was clarified by developers to actually stand for "Medium Battle Tank". Upon this announcement many ideas floated around as to what they would actually be. Most prevalent among these was a slow, but heavily armored beast that would take between 4 and 6 people to fully man all of the guns, sort of like a death bus that could actually kill things.

One of the concepts I remember being posted was a heavier version of the magrider, its railgun beefed up, the driver lost his gun, but the same gun would get mounted on each side for secondary gunners to attack infantry and on the top there was a "light" (33-50%) starfire AA weapon to scare off aircraft. It would be slow and a huge target, but it would also require TEAMWORK to be an effective fighting unit.

Instead of looking into the myriad of player ideas, they decide to make walking 1 man death machines with no counter, literally the initial build of BFRs, you could have two gunner variants crouch and fire at each other and you could not batter the shields down they recharged that fast. By the time they realized what a steaming turd they had produced it was too late, upper management leaned on them to use it as a marketing gimmick so they could relaunch the game retail as "Planetside: Aftershock".

In the end he got canned after Aftershock lead to even lower populations, already hurting because of the release WoW, the older player base left in droves due to BFRs, subsequent developers tried to clean up the mess by nerfing them into near oblivion, they now occupy a key ecological niche as a prey item for phantasms, but far too little too late.

The last rumor that circulated on the boards was that he got a job as a caterer and was unable to get anything in the video game industry.

[[fr31ns]Karrde]

New Front Psge Content: "Caff's Rants: The History of Planetside and the Amazing Fuckups Therein."  I'd read that all the damn time   (No, seriously)

[at0m]

I like it. A once-weekly rant on a different facet of Planetside each time, I'd +1 that all day long.

[KarthXLR]

Sorry, but the title of Angry Video Game Nerd was already taken. :<

[wangmauler]

so whats the countdown for if there is no new game?