PlanetSide Letter
There's a new PlanetSide producers letter on the PlanetSide website today. Dave Georgeson tells us about all the changes and improvements made to the game in the past few weeks as Sony gears up for the May 19 release date.
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scot_seese
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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.
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I agree with alot of what you wrote.
1- Playing a FPS where I have to use virtually every key on my keyboard (and more)to get a good experience is not my idea of a FPS.
2- It takes too long to get to battle points, I'm very picky about this, even 1 minute is too long for me, instant action means NOW, not 30-60 seconds from now.
3- It does have more of a RPG hybrid.
4- IMHO it is aimed at the average skilled player with its slow movement, can't jump/strafe effectively and off course the recoil. All this making a skilled player more average since he can't do his lethal jump/strafe/twist aim head instant kill moves (you get my drift if you've played Quake, UT or other similar games).
I wish SOE success, but I won't be a customer :( -
I have a 650mhz athlon, 384 pc-110 ram, and a 64mb geforce3 ti 400, and it runs fine,even in outdoor settings with large battles going on aside from the occasional hiccup, as for no action, I played for about 30 mins before the servers went down this morning, and I was always around the action.
Some guns feel flimsy, but its been a very positive experience so far... even for a horribly outdated computer...
