So, this afternoon I booted up Planetside 2 again because I hadn't in a while.
I remembered why.
It's not just unfun. It is frustrating. Almost every time I died it felt cheap and undeserved, and any kill (or more likely assist), of which there were hardly any, felt like I was lucky rather than like I'd done anything. The colossal lag didn't help either. My framerate hardly went above 20, and often wasn't even in the double digits; and that's in an almost-empty area. When in a large battle or moving to a new area the framerate dropped to 0.2 fps or so. Fucking awful.
Then there's the weapon unlock system; it would take almost a week of playing for hours a day to get even the cheapest guns. I cannot think of a single other MMO that has such a fuckpendously high ratio between time and reward. Especially considering that you need to spend certs on specialised weapons and utility items to be at all useful beyond being an ammo-sink for the enemy.
And then when you're done eating a quarter of a clip full of bullets or so, you have to spend 10 minutes trudging back over to the front line to diligently get shot again. Poor game all around fuck this.
Dude, join an outfit. The entire game is based around the concept of teamwork. So yeah, if you run into 50 or so organized guys using voice comms, you and the greenies (all the other guys not in cohesive units) are going to get wrecked.
If you aren't supporting and being supported by your team, you are sure to fail. It's simply how any game works where you have dozens, if not hundreds of people fighting. Oh, and 100 certs (unlocks for the cheapest guns) can be made in no more than a couple of hours without premium. Yes, the shit that's 1000 certs is expensive and annoying to get.
That said, the weapons you start out with are still functional. Since I play mostly Heavy Assault, I can tell you the following: The Orion LMG, while being a noob gun, is incredibly effective in close quarters, allows 75% movement speed while aiming down sights (25% more than most other weapons), and feels more like a carbine than a machine gun.
The T9 CARV, the TR's standard LMG is generally good all-round and also has quite a high rate of fire, though seems to be rather inaccurate on full-auto as evidenced by myself often caught out in the open while a hail of red tracers fly by, hitting absolutely nothing.
The NC's Gauss SAW is arguably the best long-range machine gun in the game due to its high damage.
They are all perfectly functional and usable weapons, but like all weapons in PS2 require time to get used to their strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. Each of the many options available to each class is designed for specific types of combat. Using an Orion full-auto in a running gunbattle over flat ground is a recipe for failure, while the Flare or Ursa would fare better there but suffer to some degree in CQB due to their lower rate of fire. The SVA-88 is often favored because of its low recoil and high rate of fire, making it a bit of a jack-of-all-trades.
Shameless plug: Welcome from Mattherson's own Azure Twilight, turning the world purple since 2003.
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3770158 times)