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"Planetside - The Saviour of Online Gaming?"

OK, don't get me wrong, I don't think that online gaming is in a downward spiral! However have you noticed that a lot of online shooters (CounterStrike, Quake III etc) essentially boil down to the same thing. Run around very fast, shoot, have a slanging match with some dude called 'player224' and whinge about the lag you're suffering. True each game has it's differences, CS has a fairly unique style of play, but lets face it, the Half-Life engine is looking a bit tired now. Quake III, very pretty, nice lights and so on, but it's all been done before (maybe a bit more brown..). There are more games on the horizon (when I say horizon, it's big far away horizon, seeing as some are over a year away), which promise loads of great things - co-operative teamplay, stunning graphics yadda yaddaa. When Team Fortress 2 was announced, we jumped for joy, worshipped Valve and couldn't wait to get our teeth into it. Now pushing 3 years later, we still can't wait, but we are not quite champing at the bit like we used too. This is because since then so many more games have been announced that promise the same thing. Our repsonse has diminshed from the 'WAAHOO yeah bring on man!' to a quiet 'hmmm could be good, I'll wait and see'. That was until Planetside surfaced. Not since the inception of Team Fortress 2 has the gaming community been in such a state of pant wetting anticipation. Whilst at a cursory glance it appears to be a pretty Team Fortress, further inspection reveals the not so hidden depths. Levels are huge, and complex. Outside theatres are very much outside (no towering buildings or high walls to fence me in). The world is persistent giving a high level of interaction, making it more captivating. You will have a more consistent role, with a long term aim and sense of purpose. No longer is it just a case of seeing your name at the top of a score board after 10 minutes. Whilst some games promise fully user defined worlds - which wonderful in theory, would be very hard to administer and manage - Planetside offers a realistic framework, which makes the game appear more tangible. A cynic I may be, but when I hear about some of these new massively multiplayer games, I start to count down the time until the project is dropped or radically altered to something completely different. Planetside seems to offer something achievable, yet different and very exciting. News may have been around on Planetside for a while now, but, ever the cynic, I wait until something more solid appears before I start champing at the bit.

Console, on-line gaming is exelent, BUT. this has to happen
1. NTL provide FREE on-line access
2. T 3's are used (T3 is about 8 times quicker that a 56k)

Ah I see (except the villagers part). Anyway, it seems a little unfair to disregard something just because you don't trust the people who make it. It would be a good idea to at least keep your eye on it, this might be something they turn out to be really good at.

gronti_v wrote:
> I'm still not sure why you keep saying VERANT and causing pain to villagers... Could you explain that? It's probably something obvious but I don't know. <

Sorry, it's an online gaming thing: I go to many sites that are specifically set up for the analysis and discussion of online gaming. Verant *hush, villagers* has a horrendous reputation among them, which is where a lot of the hardcore online gamers go. Most of the people who go to these sites, from what I can tell, couldn't care less about Planetside, because it's made by Verant *villagers, stop*.

I'm still not sure why you keep saying VERANT and causing pain to villagers... Could you explain that? It's probably something obvious but I don't know.

gronti:

I'm certain I could debate brilliantly back with a stunning reply to the last one you just made, but I just...can't. It's the length.

I'm a moderator on a messageboard elsewhere and I've commented before that, whenever I'd like to end a debate, I just post something incredibly long and get people to agree with me.

Anyway...in this spirit, I agree. But I still say Planetside's going to see very little success in its life. Excuse me...VERANT. *the tribesmen holler and writhe in agony*

Yup. Still got it. =)

I know what you mean Grix, i'll put two spaces between my paragraphs in future. I just tend not to feel the need to start a new paragraph that often, since i'm usually writing on the same topic.

Did you manage to read the whole thing?

I don't mean to be rude Gronti, but reading something like that is quite painful to the eye!

Not because of it's length so much, but because there are no spaces between paragraphs, and the paragraphs are too long.

Sorry to be pedantic! :0)

It's true what you say that losing all the time can become boring, but I find that being new doesn't mean you always lose... How else would beginners luck exist? The thing is that a lot of people have played single player FPSs a lot before going on-line, so they may have picked up a lot of skills and tactics, which means they might actually be better than you would expect when they do go on-line. The problem with this of course is that fighting the computer is nothing like fighting a human opponent, for one thing a human is not usually predictable while you may learn patterns of movement a computer player can make. Another problem with this practising offline is that nowadays more and more FPSs are multiplayer only (with the option of bots) which means that most people will want to jump straight in with other human players, which is where they will be hated for their lack of practice.
One of the problems which this newbie hatred is that it may lead to the end of all on-line FPSs. If the only people who play on-line are those who have gained a lot of experience already and they go about scaring off new players then they run the risk of being the only people who play on-line. If newbies just don't want to ignore the unpleasantness directed at them (and who could blame them?) then they wont gain the experience needed to not be a newbie anymore and so there will be less and less experienced players simply because they wouldn't let their young grow. One day, there will just be no-one left to play on-line FPSs and it will be unprofitable to make these games meaning that there will be no more opportunity to revive the community. So on-line FPS players should beware for they are dooming the continuation of their own race.
Anyway, getting back to my first point about new players not always losing I have a relevant tale to relate... Being the type of person who prefers RPGs and RTSs I rarely buy FPSs. I even managed to ignore the hype around Quake leaving it squarely on the shelf. However, one day I was happily flicking the pages of my PC Games Magazine when I noticed a review of this game I had heard a little about before... It was called Half-Life. So I decided to read the review and something in it just told me "This game sounds great, go forth and buy it!" So, not being one to ignore the voices in my head, I did. I was not disappointed, it was one of three FPS I had ever been bothered to complete (the other two being Dark Forces and Jedi Knight) and it really gave me a whole new interest in this branch of games. To be honest, I only played the normal multiplayer game a couple of times, being new did make it less fun than it maybe could have been. But then, I heard of a mod called Jailbreak and I thought that I would give it a try. When I had it downloaded and up and running I logged on to my first game. It was great, blasting my enemies, breaking out of jail if I was captured (when you died you were put in jail and by climbing on each others backs you could escape through a vent and go back to free the others) and stopping the enemy from getting free. The strange thing about this game was that I was actually very good at it from the start, I got more kills than a lot of people and it was often me breaking the people out (or assisting by letting people climb over me). This carried on through many of my games, I was actually quite good despite my limited history in on-line FPSs. Now all this may sound like bragging, but it proves my point that even newbies can do well and even experienced players can make mistakes. Since playing Half-Life I have tended to look out for new FPS and I am gradually becoming a fan. Although I must admit that since Half-Life I haven't played another on-line FPS and I stopped playing it a while ago. What I found was that the teamplay element of Jailbreak allowed me to enjoy myself whether we were winning or losing and my teammates never put pressure on me to be the ultimate player of the game or get out. So really the thing that made me play an on-line FPS was the fact that the community I was playing with were all very receptive of newbies and it is exactly this that people should be striving for. A friendly on-line gaming community will hopefully be the future of on-line gaming and not those newbie hating veteran players who are risking their own destruction. The strange thing is that teamplay can work both ways. If your team is helpful and understanding it will lead to an enjoyable time on-line that will allow you to play the game without feeling bad, however, if your team is full of newbie haters then you will probably not enjoy yourself much and it will sour you on the whole idea of on-line gaming.
It seems unusual to me that some newbie haters hate newbies who play free for all games on-line. Why should they care if someone is new and inexperienced when they aren't even on their team (not that they should complain anyway)? Still, they seem to hate newbies for the sole reason that they are new and nothing else matters quite so much. I think that these people hate newbies so much because they think that they must teach newbies everything because they believe newbies can't find anything out for themselves and they just generally seem to hate it when someone asks how to do something which these veterans take for granted. As I said in my previous post though, it isn't as if these veterans never asked the same question when they first started. Infact really, it's as if there is a class structure in the on-line gaming community in which newbies are the absolute bottom and veterans are "better than them".
The thing is that there seems to be so many people who are happy to help newbies (people like you) that you would think it would just be a select group who get exposed to newbie hatred but it seems that wherever there's a newbie there will almost certainly be a newbie hater. It's as if they hunt newbies down just so that they can insult them and become infuriated with them for no good reason. You would think with all the increasing equality in the world that people would be more likely to accept newbies but it just seems that the on-line gaming community is going to have to go through a reform for equality of newbies. Newbieism is something that has to be stamped out for the good of all on-line games players or else there will be no one left to play with and games for newbies will be no fun.
As we have already said, Planetside may actually manage to change the problems which newbies face. Another way in which it could do it would be to have specific newbie meeting points and possibly a way in which newbies will have the option to play missions against other newbies only. They could, for example, have a boot camp in the various cities which only newbies could enter (or should enter, but since there will be a kind of experience system they could directly restrict access). In this boot camp newbies could band together to fight each other and collect missions which link up with those of newbies in an opposing boot camp. It would be a bit like a newbies only game or channel. Now I know you are thinking that experienced players could just start a new guy (or gal, or other) and go in and mess with the true newbies, but people who do this would be kind of stupid because the main point of newbie haters is that they can't get away from newbies. I think that this would be a great addition to Planetside and would certainly help solve the newbie hater problem.

You're about five hours behind us... maybe more?

Nope. Due to my work hours, I have very strange sleeping schedules depending on what day it is.