Very old school gamers ranting about stuff they love, but mostly about stuff they hate. Be sure to check out the debate in the comments!
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Jumping on a bandwagon
When it comes to Planetside 2, my biggest problem is with the gaming media, gamers in general and the term 'I played this to death back in the day, and therefore I have this opinion that you must listen to <insert idiotic opinion here>'. No, you almost certainly fucking didn't play Planetside in any meaningful way 'back in the day'. If you played Planetside for 10-20 hours, that's about the total time I spent at a terminal weighing up certs. If you played for 6 months, that's about the total time I spent at sanc in a Gal waiting for people to load up. (I suppose in hindsight that this complaint applies to any game that was so awesome you lost a whole swathe of your life to it).
Suddenly, somehow, it became trendy to pretend you played Planetside 'to death', yet the population was never strong enough to support the notion that so many people played Planetside regularly. I know this because I was there for 6 or 7 years and I don't remember any of these people. It's as if the skinny, unpopular guy with glasses grew up to found a very promising tech company and now all the people who stole his lunchbox are pretending they were great mates 'back in the day'. Fuck those people. I almost hope no-one plays PS2, just so I can continue being so elitist about it.
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Are you making reference to anyone in particular?
ReplyDeleteNope. I just feels like most Planetside 2 articles or blog posts in the universe can be boiled down to "I played Planetside soooooo much, it was soooo ahead of its time. Why haven't they made more games like this!". What they really mean is "I retrospectively think this is cool now because everyone else is making a fuss and wish I had done more than just play the original for 30 minutes then thrown it in the bin and forget all about it".
ReplyDeleteWhat happens next is they play Planetside 2 for 30 minutes, quit and say "ugh, too big. Too much travelling. Not enough pwning. Too much thinking. I'm off to Team Fortress 2 again". Then in the bin it goes.
I think it's a bit of a lie to claim that PS failed because of internet speeds or high system requirements. I played with my 28k modem from Australia and, while I felt there was a disadvantage in straight up fights, I never found that tarnished the experience. There was simply too much going on to dislike the core game just because of a little lag. The whole high system requirement thing is so dishonest I'm not even going near it.
No, the real issue here is how PS straddles two genres. For an MMORPG buff it is too twitch, for an FPS player it adds too many layers of complexity and it takes too long to get into a firefight. Only a specific type of gamer enjoys a melding of the two, and I can't see PS2 changing that.
I believe that PS2 will be considered a 'cult classic' just like the original, but will fail to capture the attention of the gaming masses and attract huge numbers of regular players. In 8 years or so it will be plodding along much like PS does today, an obscure niche genre that no-one dares replicate.
Oh and here I was thinking this was going to turn into a penis swinging competition about how you played more PS than me, and that you are more entitled to your opinion on the game than I am.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it has much in common with MMORPG's other than the MMO part. Just look at BF3 and COD, a leveling / unlock system is considered a mandatory addition now days to FPS's. The same sort of gamers that play these games are going to try PS2. The only thing that will keep them coming back is the gameplay, with the right population that is going to be easy.
Even if it does end up niche, with enough regular content updates, the game will still be awesome and considered successful. The F2P model lends itself more to content updates than a sub model.
Do you feel insecure about my shiny CR badges and superior playtime?
ReplyDeleteNo, you just never failed to remind me about how little time I spent playing the game compared to you.
ReplyDeleteI resisted this time. Thanks for bringing it up though.
ReplyDelete