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Unstable, Lousy Technical Support, certainly Massive

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: August 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

In theory, PS could be a great game. The squad system is finely tuned, the social aspect of the game is great, and it's ripe with potential and possibility to keep a player hooked.

However, my experience with PlanetSide was inundated with crashes and bugs. I once spawned as a wall. Drops to the desktop and forced reboots were frequent, often only 20 minutes of play in between. My hard drive is still trying to recover I think. At one point you could get stuck in a spawn tube, then they fixed it, then they broke it again.

Worse - the technical support basically won't pay any attention to you unless offer your problem in the right "format", basically digging around for log files (which PlanetSide sometimes doesn't generate) and posting them up - and even then they usually just add you to their ever growing list of "information". Complaining about this lack of service online will get your posts deleted or your account cancelled (the only response I ever got from Sony was to tell me I was being inappropriate).

For those who don't have to deal with the bugs, it's a fine a game. I wouldn't recommend taking the risk or supporting a beta with a $13/mo fee.

I've been conned

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 7
Date: November 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've been playing Planetside for a while now - and I really feel as if I've been conned, sucked in by the marketing and spat out when I've paid my subscription.

I'm lucky enough to have a machine powerful enough and up-to-date enough to run Planetside smoothly and without any problems so my issues are not with performance. My issues are with the game-play itself.

You're promised enormous battles with thousands of other online players - but these never happen - you get a few dozen in the scrum at most.

And what is the point of fighting anyway? You get involved in a battle to take an installation only to find that the next time you logon - it's been taken back buy one of the other empires. So why did you bother?

You can never make a difference to your empire's influence on the world and you can't advance your own avatar into someone who can. So you'll always be a grunt in an army of grunts.

There is no sense of satisfaction of playing Planetside. You fight. You gain a bit of ground. You die. You re-spawn. You fight for the same bit of ground. Ad infinitum. Oh, and Sony charge for the privilege too.

I've been conned. Clever Sony. Stupid me.

Save it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: June 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The game was never ready for release,so many bugs and server side issues. Sony pushed the dev's and the damn dead lines, because of marketing BS. The bottom line here, NO ONE FROM SONY, reads what there customers write them about the game, they never respond, they have 0 and I mean 0 customer service.

John

Why Are We Fighting Again?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: May 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'll admit it, when I first started playing this game in open beta, I thought it was pretty fun. If you ever played or enjoyed Tribes 2, this game is very much like it, which was my main draw to the game. Planetside is essentially a squad-based game in which your empire battles two opposing empires in a persistent online world. Sound fun? It is, but Planetside quickly begins to lose its charm.

There are three empires that you can choose to be a part of. All of the empires are basically the same, with the following exceptions: they each have a different main battle tank, their MAX units are all different, and they all have a different heavy and anti-vehicle weapon. All of the other weapons, armors, tools, and vehicles are all shared between the empires. This lack of diversity between each empire is very disappointing, and after fighting against one empire for a while, you've basically fought against each one.

An interesting aspect of Planetside is that as you participate in different battles and capture enemy bases, your character will go up in rank. As you go up in rank, you earn certification points that you can use to learn different skills, which in turn lets you use different armors, equipment, and vehicles. Four certification points are given to you in order to get started, and each empire has the same set of skills. There are no classes, so anybody can learn anything. This has its benefits, and its shortcomings. By not having different classes, every character is somewhat unique, and is defined by the skills they have learned. However, since there are only so many "useful" skills and vehicles, everybody chooses the same certifications.

But as long as the game has good gameplay, who cares about diversity right? Well, prepare for another disappointment. In Planetside, I haven't seen one battle that was won due to skill. Instead, whoever has the most players in an area will capture that area. Also, capturing an area consists of fighting into the enemy base, and then hacking into their control console. Some fights are exciting, which result in the satisfaction of just barely capturing a base against impossible odds. Most fights are very boring, which consist of about one hundred or so members from your empire walking around the base while it's being captured so they can earn experience. Since hacking into a control console takes fifteen minutes to do, be prepared to be standing around doing nothing for most of these fifteen minutes, as there are usually so many people waiting around to get experience from the capture that the enemy has no chance to defend the base.

What promised to be the ultimate online first person shooter turned out to be rather disappointing. At the moment, the game is plagued by lag, uninteresting gameplay, and a nonexistent story line. And with a $... monthly fee you may be forced you to ask yourself "Is this really worth my money?" Unfortunately for me, it wasn't.

Good idea, poor implementation, horrible community

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: March 15, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Whenever getting into any SOE game, beware. The community is the low point by far. SOE forums are known for laughing over the deaths of pets and even players. Recently when a player of planetside had a brain hemmorage and died, the customers thought it the funniest thing in the world. You would be horrified to hear their position on the death of a pet.

And that is usually the problem with SOE products. Although they have the technology and the financial resources to back up creation of top of the line products, they continue to fall far short in customer service and community management. In all internet forums there are jerks, the difference is that other forums (such as Atari's Unreal Tournament forum) actually get rid of the filth and manage the forums. The only things that disappear from SOE forums are posts that decrease sales of the product through exposing weaknesses in them.

As for the game itself, it is a great idea and poorly implements. Client side hit detection in the game is a hacker's paradise. Furthermore, the company seems more interested in slowing down the achievement of players than making an enjoyable experience. Their recent expansion, Core Combat, was yet another example of their incompetence.

There are many players in the MMOG industry. The days of the EQ monopoly are over and I suggest you check out their compeditors instead.

Save your money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: May 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I went out and bought this game the first day it came out, and I'm regretting it already, for many many reasons. First off, this game is VERY unstable. I have a system that exceeds the required system apecifications, and the game crashes almost every time I try to enter a new continent besides the Sanctuary. There have been many many times when I have spent quite a while trying to find a squad only to lose it when the game crashed to my desktop and refused to load again without a restart. Secondly, the support is horrible. If you go to the support website and search for your problem, you will either come across one of their Everquest solutions, or (in my opinion) solutions to questions that they think will sell the game, such as "What is Planetside like?" Yes, that question is really in their "support" area. It really doesn't seem to me like the game was ready to be released at all. It's such a simple but wonderful idea, and the producers have done such an impressively awful job on it. So, my suggestion, do yourself the favor I wish I would have done myself and stay well clear of this game, for a little while at least. They might get their problems fixed, but if not before my one free month is up, I'm out and my Planetside CD's will be retired to my 'other' CD case.

SUX SUX SUX

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: October 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It seriously is good for two weeks, then u get tired of the stupid deaths that are consistantly seperating you from your team

where's the single player mode?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 10
Date: March 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I consider myself a true, dedicated fan of all sci-fi and fantasy games. Usually when a game comes out that has on-line/campaign mode, there is a single player mode for those of us non "on line" player, people who just like to play against the A.I. So to speak. So when I seen this game and the beauty of it I said, WOW! Looked for a sign that said single players.....NOPE! After I bought it I got a surprise of my life...Just on-line and for on line use only! I know some of the on line games such as never winter nights or half life are either single player or multi-player....boy I wish this was! I would've been happy if it would have been. Now it just gathers dust in a corner somewhere. So thank you Sony entertainment for nothing!

SO Much Fun.........Then boring as hell

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have owned this game for 2 months now and I thought when I got it, it was the most fun ever. Then after doing the same thing over and over and over the game goes downhill.

Pros:
-Lots of different things to specialize in.
-If you mess up your character you can fix it
-Vehicles are fun to use
-Great PVP

Cons:
-Lots of downtime waiting for things to happen ie. Waiting for the capture of a base... takes 14 min for each base capture.
-You NEED 512 Ram and a decent processor
-Vehicle controls are hard to use
-Very Repetitive... Get Group..take base..take base...take base..take base..take base..take base or Get group..die..die..die..die..
-Not a lot of awesome battles
-Races are not evenly matched Vanu are extremely at a disadvantage

If youýre looking for quick fun then buy this game, but as a long term game.. This isnýt going to get far.

Great game? Well.... It could be, but it's not.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: August 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've had this game for about 2 months. I've played to battle rank 20 and command rank 5 (the highest levels possible). I've played all three factions and used all the skill sets and equipment. After literally days of my life spent on this game, I can honestly say that it was worth playing it for about 20% of the time. The rest, wasted.

This is a game with an identity crisis. It's a RPG and a FPS. I love both genres, so I thought combining them like this would be great. Oh well....

It does the FPS part very well (very VERY well), but the RPG elements actually take away from this game rather than add to it. If it was just an FPS, the players would act accordingly and live only to fight. With the RPG rank system, players often do things only for experience. For example, a team of players may take a base through stiff opposition in order to capture the experience. Then they will actually fall back to allow the other side to retake it so it can be recaptured for the experience again. Players seek experience in order to don differrent armor or a bigger gun or pilot a air or ground vehicle, but the new abilities really don't add to a player's capacity to kill. You can't get strong enough to really become a power player, and while that's fair, it means that there's really no reason to attempt to do things for the experience. After weeks of playing and climbing ranks, if you get wasted by some noob who just logged on 5 minutes ago, why bother?

So people play this FPS like they would an RPG, but they don't get RPG rewards. The RPG element directs how people play, but its never more than a really massive FPS. It's a nice idea, but before I'd recommend people buying it, I'd have to see Sony solve their identity crisis. Either strengthen the RPG elements or eliminate them. I applaud Sony for trying to make the first MMORPGFPS, but it's a weak, WEAK effort. Just enough to claim the title.

I'd recommend Battlefield 1942 or Star Wars Galaxies (an acutal effort by Sony) long before I'd recommend this game.

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