I’m a big fan of Planetside 2, but two months after release it’s clear the game is not the blockbuster hit many thought it would be. FPSers are arguably the biggest selling games out there, so you would think a MMOFPS would do pretty well, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead of growing, Planetside 2 has been losing players almost immediately after launching.

At the very top of the list of why PS2 is failing remains frame-rate, although an upcoming update on January 30th will be addressing this issue making the game run better for those on mid to low-end PCs.

Number two remains the fact there are absolutely no tutorials explaining anything and considering the amount of info displayed on the interface, it can be very overwhelming for new players, causing many to quit without giving the game a real chance.

For those able to get past the first two issues, they are then confronted with the fact that there are more players piloting vehicles than there are running around. Over the last few weeks it’s not been unusual for me to go over an hour without seeing more than a handful of players as opposed to dozens and dozens of tanks and air ships. It seems 3 out of 4 base take-overs involve only tanks and airships with just enough infantry units to stand at the hold points. The fact the I play the sniper class most of the time further compounds this issue for me as I’m unable to do anything in a battle, unless I can get into a turret.

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Having hit the level cap almost two weeks ago, my focus, aside from the on-going Mad King Halloween event, has been World vs World. I touched upon it a bit in my Guild Wars 2 review, but it really deserves it’s own review since it’s a completely separate system then PvE. So here we are.

As I stated in that review, my currently relationship with WvsW is a love/hate one. It solves a lot of problems other MMORPGs have with RvR, but doesn’t get in quite right and makes a few errors itself.

I’m going to start off by talking about map size as I feel everything is in some way influence by it. The World vs World area is split into four deceivingly large maps and while they feel and appear to be large at first, they’re actually very small and the source of many of WvsW woes.

Currently the primary, and really only successful tactic, is to form massive armies to attack structures around the map and while this type of tactic is expected, it ends up being the only tactic used. I’ve tried soloing or running with smaller groups, but they don’t last long; you’ll run into a massive army after taking a camp or two and will be forced to retreat. The problem is that maps are so small, these zerg armies are able to go after small bands of players while on their way to larger structures. There’s no decision to be made whether or not to take a camp as it’s only a few seconds off the path and players that separate can quickly regroup with the zerg in a few mins.

If you expand the size of the maps, these zerg armies will be forced to break into smaller groups to go after small hold points or bands of players. Creating a greater variety of combat other than massive scale.

Moving on, lets discuss towers, forts and castles. Towers require small armies to take over, while castles are the crem della crem of massive PvP combat, with forts being somewhere in the middle. Sound good, right? Well the problem again comes from the small map size. While towers should be objectives taken by smaller groups of armies, it ends up being large scale combat most of the time. The problem is that 2-3 defenders can successfully hold off a group of 10-15 attackers fairly easily to give enough time for reinforcements to arrive. So what ends up happening is people get discouraged, join the zerg, then attack the tower. The problem again stems for small map sizes. While a group of 10 attackers might eventually overwhelm the defenders, they can’t take over the structure in the speed required to avoid reinforcements.

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One of the things that makes Eve Online unique is that it’s one of the few MMORPGs where players can actually destroy other players items, in this case ships.

According to Eve-Kill.net the most notorious killer in the Eve universe has caused more than 2 trillion ISK in damages to other players. To put that into perspective, you can buy 20 billion ISK for about $370, according to one of the many Eve ISK sites I found. Which means that this one player has caused about $37,000 in damages and loses to other players.  Mind you this doesn’t include items obtained or stolen during these attacks, only the actual value of the ships destroyed.

If you count the top five killers, they’ve caused more than $127,000 in damage to other players. That is no small sum of money.

World vs World in Guild Wars 2 is good, probably the best PvP system of any MMORPG in the last 5 years, but it’s certainly not perfect. Think of it as the common merry-go-round system where objective points are flipped between factions, but on a much larger scale and between three factions.

While the Guild Wars 2 system is quite a bit more complex than other PvP systems, the basic gameplay mechanisms are the same. Go to a hold point, take it over and move on. What I’d like to see is a little more sand added to the box, so below I’ve outlined my wish list for Guild Wars 2 World vs World.

• Guild controlled hold points – Instead of everything being controlled by factions, think of what would happen if individual guilds held the points instead. There would be more incentive for guilds to hold and control points if they received the rewards themselves. There would be more guild vs guild competition, even between friendly factions, to hold or take over new points. Guilds would also fight a lot harder to defend and hold their own points as opposed to players who might not care enough to defend a faction point because, hey, someone else will go defend it.
• Quick travel – Having to run back all the way to where you were each time you die is more than annoying, it’s a game killer and I can’t stand it. The penalty for death should not be wasted time. If you die, players should be able to respawn at the closet keep, with the only exception being if you died in a keep, then the next closest one. So you still have to run back to where you were, just not all the way from the beginning.
• Looting – Yes looting. There still needs to be a penalty for death and I think one randomly equipped item should be dropped when a player dies. There can be 2-3 safe slots so you can protect your most valuable items, but everything else should be free game.
• Breakable gear – All gear should eventually break. This would create a huge demand for crafted weapons and armor and yet another additional penalty for dying.
• Mounts – While I can understand the reason for not having them, I’d still love to see mounts someday make it to GW2 and WvW.

The ball is in your court ArenaNet :)