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Ok so here we go. I hope that this makes it`s way to some of the developers attention, and I hope it ends up being somewhat helpful. But first, 2 things we need to get out of the way.
- 1 : All of you reddit haters, before you shower me with your amazing opinions about how the game should be, by commenting on this post, please try to keep it constructive, not toxic and actually useful. Saying that the updates sucks is feedback, but is not useful for improving it in any way shape or form. So lets keep it positive and try to help ourselves as best as we can.
- 2 : If any of the developers actually ends up reading all this, keep in mind that it is direct feedback from the first session on Esamir directly after servers opened. It is also from the perspective of a public platoon leader. So my focus on the game is centralized around a combined experience for a big group of players instead of a specific playstyle so I believe it is useful feedback cause probably represent a good portion of the player base.
So for starters. About the CAMPAIGN mission.
- Icons were a little too small on the HUD. The plants and other objectives were kinda hard to find at first, but after you find it once, it gets easy. Will probably be a little bit harder for first timers, so maybe increasing size or brightness of the icons would be a good idea.
- The terminals on the abandoned bases are literally inside the building grid. We had an amazing fight earlier with player made bases literally growing towards the terminal and enveloping it, creating a unique environment for player made bases that we never experienced before. The only problem is, you can still place a spawn tube directly in front of the terminal, and you wan also hit it with artillery. So you can either have one faction with a spawn directly on top of the terminal, rendering it inaccessible by other factions, or you can have a terminal under literal constant bombardment from Flails. Don`t get me wrong, I personally appreciate the chaos that it creates, but you are definitely going to have some severe backlash for that.
- I LOVED the one where you collect plants in the jungles, and you literally have people running around with knives duking it out in a very dense environment. Amazing experience, and it will definitely lead to some great things, like infiltrators crawling around the area to ambush enemies, and things like that. Problem is, in several occasions the plants spawn inside of the trees. Literally inside of the models, making it impossible to access, much in the same way that happens to cortium nodes. I am not sure how the system for respawning these plants work, but if they only spawn after a certain cap, we could get stuck with plants being inside terrain indefinitely, rendering the mission impossible.
- The campaign dialogues from the NPCs appearing only in the chat window makes it almost impossible for you to actually follow through with what they say. Chat is usually going crazy with platoon and outfit messages and all the FAT LORE and details get lost in the chatter. Maybe adding another window for NPC dialogue or using the one already in, instead of game chat.
- MORE LORE PLEASE. I NEED IT. GIVE ME MORE NPCs, NAMED CHARACTERS, AND TELL ME ABOUT THEIR HERITAGE AND LIFE DEEDS AND THE STATE OF THE WAR, AND THE FACTIONS IN IT. cof cof sorry. That was my lore junkie, I will lock him back down in the basement.
Ok so that about covers my view on the campaign so far. Now for MISSIONS overall.
- So, the elephant in the room is the lack of rewards. The problem with removing alert rewards is that missions have to make up for that. I mostly play for alerts, and I am almost always platoon leading when I do (and most of the times I win CAUSE I AM DA BEST PL YOU`VE EVER SEEM), but as soo my A7 and ISO gain was huge. Winning 3 alerts every session will never compare to the mere 50 ISO and not a single A7 that I got from my missions pool. And it also limits the free time. So, when I had a free day, I would play planetside for 10, maybe even 12 hours (I don't have a problem ok, you play it too), and I would get an equivalent reward for participating in lets say 5 or 6 alerts during that time. Now even if I have a day off, my reward gain is limited by the mission pool with the time cap. I cant get 2 hours of playtime every day. But I can get 10 hours in one day. And I think that is the same problem for several people. I don`t have a solution for this one, but it definitely need some looking into.
- The confusion that is being generated by the missions is mostly related to the option to pin the missions to you HUD. Most people don`t know how to do it, and it gets very confusing if you don't have the right missions pinned. That will need some more flashing out, maybe moving the option from the right bottom to the top center, or making it bigger and easier to access. I assure you that most missions are working correctly, and half the bugs that you are getting are because people have the wrong mission, or no mission at all pinned.
- Some of the missions feel a little too empty. Driving a sunderer from one base to another literally feels like cheating to get a free gun. At least give us some interactions to be made, or a zone to park the vehicles, and keep them there for some time to deliver the supplies or download the message with your harasser. They need some improving to make them feel like actual meaningful missions, instead of just getting a little XP for free.
- More variety, less randomization. Maybe make all of the missions available, and lock them once you completed the same one 5 times or so, and tying the rarity to it. First time you complete a convoy, you get a purple one, second time a green and the other ones are just normal. That will make it possible to get things like squads doing the same missions, and will also give us better choices for playstyle. Not sure how to implement, but having a limited number of them, and ALSO having them be randomized highly limits the possibilities with the system.
Now for other changes.
- Maybe bumping up alert rewards just a little bit could help out a lot. Despite campaign being here, alerts are still the win condition in planetside, and it just feels extremely frustrating to see that win condition devolving instead of evolving in development. Not sure what you guys have planned for the future, but alerts DEFINETLY need some revamping or rethinking, both for rewards, starting conditions and overall relevance.
- Mentor chat is not what we needed. We need rewards for being a good mentor leader. I deal with new players everyday. I am always running public platoons and I always keep them mentor. The best thing a new player can get is a good leader. Many players get to BR 20 without even knowing about voice coms, because they are literally put into ghost squads, and have no idea on how to get into a proper squad, or what even is a proper squad. Give good leaders actual rewards, to improve the mentor system, and tie it to a rating system for the new players. That way people cant just cheese the system. Come and ask any new player, and they will tell you, they decided to stick around only AFTER they found a good platoon with a decent leader.
- Battle flow on Esamir is extremely messy at the moment. Alerts are extremely easy to trigger by the looks of it, and considering the fact that we want to be on Esamir all the time, maybe would be good to consider making it harder to start alerts on it, or even consider keeping it open at all times. Hard to balance with the pop swings but definitely need some looking into.
- Not being able to convert resources make it extremely wasteful. My outfit is currently completely full on greens, and we have no blue nor purple, and there is nothing we can do about it. All the resources we are getting are being wasted, and there is absolutely no reason for us to be using war assets that only cost greens. We need the conversion system back, or at least another way to NOT WASTE RESOURCES, for god sake.
Overall I really enjoyed the update, and I cannot describe how happy I am that planetside finally got to this point. To the team at RPG my undying gratitude, and the best of luck for all of you in the future of this fantastic game.
I believe these are most of my points. If you have any other ideas, feel free to comment, but keep it constructive.
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