PlanetSide Letter

Ive been playing this game in beta and from my experiences, sony really needs to add something to this game. Currently there is no "goal". In normal FPS games you kill each other till time runs out, or capture flags or whatever...and yes, I realize PS is not just a shooter.

In Planetside the game never ends, you capture buildings...which is fine, but thats ALL you do. But no matter what you capture, you can never 'win'. You can have a half-hour (or more) long fight to capture a building, but like all human beings, you gotta sleep sometime. Next time you login, that building probably wont be yours anymore. Some buildings you can just simply walk in and capture it with little or no people defending it.

The problem is, I get the feeling of "why bother fighting for this building? Its just going to switch hands by the next time I log in." All you do is level a character so you can capture buildings that you will never keep. There is no real goal, no quests to do, and pretty much no story. I dont know about you but I've got better things to do than sit around and babysit a building that my side has captured.

I will definately buy the game (preordered with next day shipping) I love it. The game really starts to shine if you can get in a group of 3 or more people. for the lone gun man I must admit its lonely and unsatisfying, but squads are extremely easy to find or form and once in a squad the game is nothing but pure fun against other squads, As for the 1 gig requirements dont believe everything you here. the games runs fine on my athlon 1800 A7v133 with 256mB ram and a 64mB radeon 7200. I do have to run the game at low settings though, but if the gameplay is there who cares if I can't see a patch on someones arm. this is going to be an excellent game. there are some more small gameplay issues that have to be worked out and I have to say I doubt it will be fully ready in 18 days, but they are cranking out the patches daily so who knows.

I have no problems with the game requirements, even on my lower-end PC. I will be upgrading to a new top-notch system for Doom3 and HL2, though. This game, however, is BORING. Playing in squads is BORING. Shooting the crappy weapons is BORING. The only fun thing is driving the quad and getting lots of air over the hills. I barely want to play this for free, let alone shell out $12 a month.

Ok, I will be the sole voice of dissent.

1. Game requirements are insane. It *needs* a gigabyte of RAM to run properly. 512 megabytes are the *minimum.* This is just nuts. I have 512 megs; Battlefield 1942 performs well on it. PlanetSide runs like Windows on a 128 meg machine. The game runs so poorly on my computer (P4 1.8, 512 RAM, Ge3 64 meg) that I'm forced to run 800x600 with all detail sliders HARD left. It still gives horrible CPU/video lag - frequently. The engine created for PlanetSide does *NOT* degrade gracefully unlike many other shooters. My Battlefield 1942 experience is excellent with most video options on and sliders in the middle.

2. This is not an FPS. It's an RPG. The gameplay is ploddingly slow. Running or chatting with other players is what you will do with 95% of your PlanetSide play time. My beta playtime so far has only served to remind me of everything I abhorred about Tribes 2.

3. Look & Feel. The look.. Well, it *looks* decent enough. Any satisfaction with the environment around you disappears the second you fire your weapons. They feel flimsy.. insubstantial. The timing is .. wrong. See: Tribes 2. The guns do not feel "violent" or "lethal". They feel like pretty purple-plasma beam spraying Super Soakers. Running for nine minutes only to spray 43 "bullets" at one opponent to kill them !=fun. I find the "feel" to be wanting.

4. Compromise. This is the operative word here. There is not enough RPG content to keep a hardcore RPG player captivated. Three political factions, each of which have the same certifications and equipment that (while looking different) does the same thing. The network code, weak feel of the guns and excruciatingly slow pace will not interest diehard FPS players.

I know alot of people spent an insane amount of time working on this game. It really pains me to say this, but .. I'm sorry. This game is not worth $12 a month in it's present state. I don't know if I'd play it for *free.* It doesn't offer the precision, solid deathmatch feel of UT2k3, CS or BF42, and is far from offering the deep RPG experience of DAOC, AC2 or others. I will drop $500 into my computer for Half-Life 2 or Doom 3, but PlanetSide will probably get passed over here.

Am I the only one that finds this game decent at best? I just don't have that much fun spending oodles of time running around looking for bases to capture that I just captured like 3 hours ago. The gameplay doesn't make it fun enough for me I guess, and the sucky graphics don't help. I guess I'm spoiled by BF and all the Half-Life mods(not in terms of graphics, in terms of gameplay). Not to mention Tribes, which had much more entertaining physics than PS.