Questions. :)

[~Mobius~]

Ok my last thread sort of turned into a whine about who is the best faction to join so I will ask some questions here.

NO FLAME!

1) Is any faction more overpowered and one the underdogs?

2) How much staying power does the game have? I mean could you see yourself playing it in a years time?

3) How do the vehicles control? And is it laggy? The vehicles look like alot of fun to me but I cant imagine alot of vehicles on screen...must get laggy or something.

4) I heard that someone who has just entered the game has as much chance of killing someone who has been playing for months as he does of killing the newbie, is that true?

5) How much fun is it solo? Or do you need a team to really make an impact?

6) Do you really feel your helping your faction and helping in the war? (e.g. keep taking)

Oh also would my system run it smoothly or is there lag no matter what you use?

Athlon XP 2500 (New Barton Core)
Asus A7N8X Motherboard. t Nforce 2 Chipset also includes 5.1 Dolby surround sound.
1gb PC2700 DDR RAM (2X 512 DDR RAM)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Graphics Card (128Mb DDR RAM, AGP 8x TV Out).
16x DVD Rom Drive
52x24x52 CD RW
120Gb HDD Space 2x 60Gb HDD.
2x Hard disk Cooler
2x Case Fans
2 Exhaust blowers


Thank you.

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

1) Not at all - that's what I like about PS: every faction has their strenghts and their weaknesses. There are flavor of the month faction, of course. Like all of our Jackhammer-wtfpwn-kids left for VS when the Lasher got boosted. Good riddance.

2) For me personally - alot. I like the casual style of playing. If you don't play for awhile, it won't matter. You can still group with your outfit without any problems - unlike other MMO-games.

3) Vehicle control is sometimes tricky at the start (like the Reaver or Mossie) but as soon as you get used to it - great fun. Ground vehicles are even easier to maneuver.
Mouse + keyboard controls btw.

4) Very much so!

5) Soloing was no real fun for me at the beginning - meanwhile, if no one else is on, I'll go out and hunt Barneys by myself or follow the zerg. Stealther soloing is supposedly even better.

6) I don't really care about how good or bad NC does as long as my outfit mates and I have fun.

And your system specs will very much be ok.

 

[[PS]Nova]

1) Is any faction more overpowered and one the underdogs?

It depends. Sony are at the moment balancing the realms, so it tends to vary. At first, the NC's heavy assault weapon definitely kicked major ass, but to be fair to Sony they have balanced the VS heavy assault up a bit to try to match it. However, you will find that a LOT of people have very strong opinions on this and will tell you yes, X is overpowered and Y are the underdogs. For example, although I'm not saying I believe it, the one I hear the most these days is that Terrans are overpowered and VS are still the underdogs (especially when you consider that one of our two only real advantages - hover vehicles - will be going common pool in the expansion).

2) How much staying power does the game have? I mean could you see yourself playing it in a years time?

At the moment, if the game stayed as it is, probably not. However, they have enough planned "for two years" apparently, and some of the stuff they have planned sounds really fun, so I personally will probably hang around for those, and the expansions.

3) How do the vehicles control? And is it laggy? The vehicles look like alot of fun to me but I cant imagine alot of vehicles on screen...must get laggy or something.

The vehicles control imo very simply. Dependent on the vehicle, most are controllable from the keyboard (arrow keys normally or whatever you set it to). The vanu hover vehicles and air vehicles are mouselook, with left and right arrow keys being a strafe function and up and down being accelerate and decelerate as with all vehicles. On air vehicles you also have an up and down key that allows you to go straight up and down - useful for landing. However, landing aircraft can be tricky as if you're trying to land on terrain that isn't completely flat, sometimes it refuses to let you

4) I heard that someone who has just entered the game has as much chance of killing someone who has been playing for months as he does of killing the newbie, is that true?

Yes, technically. Everyone has the same amount of HP and (dependent on certifications) the same amount of armour. It's down a lot more to skill. However, a higher BR (battle rank) character has far more versatility so may be able to heal himself or repair his armour after he's pounded the new character with a heavy assault weapon! You start the game with 3 certification points, and you can train in VR up to BR3 - which gives you a total of 6 available cert points to spend before you go into battle, if you want to give yourself the highest possible advantage. Considering that certifications cost between 2 and 4 cert points (Reaver and Heavy Assault are the only ones that cost 4 points, I believe) you can get a reasonable starting specification. Remember that some certs need previous certs before you can take them, ie. Heavy Assault needs the 2-point cert of Medium Assault, so you'd have to spend the full 6 points on that.

5) How much fun is it solo? Or do you need a team to really make an impact?

Depends entirely on your tastes. You will get more exp for your own kills if you are solo, but conversely you will get exp for squadmates kills if you're in a squad. As for fun, depends wholly on the squad. If you get into a nice organised squad that follows a tactical plan, you're likely to certainly succeed more, which tends to be more fun. However, those kind of squads are only LIKELY to be found in outfits, although you can get lucky. If you're going to go a support role (engineer/combat engineer/medic/advanced medic) you really can't go solo as you will only be relying on base capture exp to level on - altho if you're really not bothered by exp, you can do, but as a support char, it's far easier to be in a squad.

6) Do you really feel your helping your faction and helping in the war? (e.g. keep taking)

Hmm. This depends a lot on circumstances imo. Unfortunately, there is a lot of feeling that it doesn't matter how many bases you take, when you log for the night and relog in the morning, all your careful work of the day before will probably be lost. However, with the advent of Outfit controlled bases, it might get a little bit more patriotic, if you know what I mean!

Although I definitely agree with what sicko said, as long as you have fun...

As for your PC... you have a far better system than mine. The big thing is the RAM - you have plenty for planetside. Generally if you had less than 1 gig I might say you might get some problems.

The only thing to watch out for is that some people have had problems with the game with a Radeon 9700 - don't know why and don't know what the fix is unfortunately, sorry! Just something you should watch for.

Hope all this helps

 

[old.ivan]

Mobius !!! join teh PL on Werner you know you wanna, although we do not have that many active players anymore <which used to be 3 fs>.
Best bet is to try 3 different sides and decide which weapons work best for you imo. Theres no feasible way to predict what nerfs are upcoming from sony, so to put your faith in one 'uber' weapon just wont be right

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

What Ivan said - we are working on getting the whole 3fs thing working again, tho.

 

[Teh Krypt]

If your names Krypt you can't join PL tho !111

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Originally posted by Teh Krypt
If your names Krypt you can't join PL tho !111

Damn straight.

You have to be that "-" tall to in order to join. *cackles*

 

[Teh Krypt]

Well Jup has more power then UncleSick so...

 

[Jupitus]

... and I say you have to be over "-" that big to join too

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Class.

 

[shilak]

1) I think the empires are fairly balanced overall, although I think TR are slightly in the lead and NC are slightly behind with VS in the middle. I personally find NC most challenging as we dont have any really good long range infantry weapons, Gauss is okay but IMO Cycler and Pulsar are better.

2) Not sure about staying power TBH, you will of used most of the weapons/vehicles within the first month of play, but the real fun comes from the fights. Not sure if that can keep you occupied for a whole year though, unless they continue to add new stuff to spice it up.

3) What Nova said

4) Everyone has the same heatlh, armour, weapon and vehicle choices within the same empire. You can get BR3 by trying out all the stuff available to your empire in the VR shooting/vehicle areas, which gives you 6 certs to spend, which is enough to get stuck in and killing Once you reach BR12 you will find that you have most of what you need, and BRs above that just allow for a little more variety in your character. PS is far more dependant on actual skill than most other MMOGs, especially DAoC.

5) The game is definately aimed at team play, you can solo though, but you will miss out on a lot of tactical stuff and may find yourself just following a zerg about. Sniper or Infiltration are about the only viable routes for a soloer.

6) I mostly play for fun, so tend to leave secured bases in order to find some enemy to play with Although I do sometimes defend tower CCs when I cant see anyone else doing it, and remind our commanders when bases need ANTs or more AMSs are needed to support attacks.

Comp looks like it should be fine, although you will probably find yourself turning some of the graphics options off/down in order to squeeze a little more FPS out of it in the very large battles

 

[Faeldawn]

Other good ways to solo are Reaver, Mossie, Lightning, Magmower (if yer Barney).

 

[~Mobius~]

Ok thanks for the replies.

Think I will go for that rebel type one on Werner. Maybe start playing on Thursday .... I've got SWG here but I might save that for a couple of months.

 

[~Mobius~]

Ohh I just remembered some more questions I had.

Is there an ingame currency? Are there merchants?

Do you get guns/ammo from people you kill?

When you die do you just fire to release and respawn e.g. Counterstrike?

Is shooting in the head more effective than foot? Or is all body same damage?

 

[Turamber]

>>Is there an ingame currency? Are there merchants?<<

No & no. Equipment is provided at equipment terminals at sanctuary and out 'in the field'. Although you need to have a hacker do the business on terminals in enemy bases to get equipment from those.

>>Do you get guns/ammo from people you kill?<<

They drop weapons and ammo, yes. These items can then be put in your locked for later use.

>>When you die do you just fire to release and respawn e.g. Counterstrike?<<

You click a button asking if you wish to respawn, the map then shows various places that you can respawn at -- be it a friendly deployed AMS or a friendly tower/base. Or you can choose to respawn at your faction's sanctuary.

>>Is shooting in the head more effective than foot? Or is all body same damage?<<

Makes no difference, although a number of people have lobbied Sony about it on the official forums.

 

[Will]

The headshot thing is about bandwidth, if you have hitzones, then you have an extra bit of info to send to the server, therefore eating more bandwidth.

 

[[PS]Nova]

- Is there an ingame currency? Are there merchants?

No, there's no currency at all, the only thing that determines what you can get from an equipment or vehicle terminal is what certifications you have. There is a 4 or 5 minute time-limit (can never remember which, think it varies) for MAX suits and vehicles, ie you buy one, you can't buy another for 4 or 5 mins, but other than that, you can get as much as you want when you want. The only thing that emulates merchants are equipment terminals/vehicle terminals either in bases, towers or on AMS' which are mobile respawning and equipment stations, but you can't get MAX suits from them.

- Do you get guns/ammo from people you kill?

As Turamber said, they leave behind a backpack with their weapons and ammo in. People tend to loot some of the empire-specific weaponry when they see it, but you cannot get this from equipment terminals so if you use it, when you die it will go into your backpack and you'd have to find your backpack again to get it again. The only way to store an enemy empire-specific weapon is in your locker.

- When you die do you just fire to release and respawn e.g. Counterstrike?

Not exactly.. it's pretty much what Turamber said. On any one continent you will have the choice of one base, one tower and one AMS, all the nearest to where you died, unless you manually bound elsewhere, and also always Sanctuary. You have a small respawn timer, usually at most about 30 seconds. You will restart with a standard set of equipment including one empire-specific pistol, one rifle (Suppressor), a hacking tool and some ammo.

- Is shooting in the head more effective than foot? Or is all body same damage?

Nope, unfortunately it's all one big hitbox so you're far better off aiming for something like the chest, than lining up tricky headshots

Great, isn't it, when you post questions and loads of people answer with the same answers?

 

[Uncle Sick(tm)]

Well... I reckon getting a bolt driver projectile in your foot is just as bad as getting it in your head - ie. it would take the foot clean off, I guess.

I rather have a lagfree game (and high fps on full detail due to my snuggly new system :great than hitboxes.

Just make the hitboxes smaller on vehicles - ...