[RobUK]

The most frustrating thing about PS2 right now is that you can almost taste the potential it has. It's frustrating because when things fall into place, and the game works as intended, it's an engrossing time sink that eats up the hours just like PS1 did.

A good example being that the best thing that can happen to the TR on Indar is to get pushed right back to the foothold warpgate. Everybody is then forced to push out together to Camp Waterson and then usually on to Mao Tech Plant. It's huge fun and highly reminiscent of the original game. It's almost like having the Lattice back.

From then on though things tend to go down the pan as various groups zerg off in different directions and what was a huge battle quickly dilutes down to loads of uninteresting skirmishes with no real shape to the frontline.

One of the things that I miss most is Command Chat. Annoying as it could be at times, it's where we looked for direction and battle flow instructions. I hate the current text based communication system. The way it quickly fades and is gone makes it seem like it's only there grudgingly. Like many other things in the game it encourages the lone wolf mentality. I often feel lonely in this game, even when in a squad.

Most of my play time in Planetside 2 starts off OK, but pretty much always ends up with me asking myself "Why? Why are we doing this? Why are we heading off to this base? What purpose is there in taking it? Why bother defending it? What's everyone else doing? Where are they going?" After about an hour I'm fatigued with it all and I log out. I can't abide the constant zerging around in circles.

Hopefully these things will be addressed in the future. I feel more positive about PS2 when I hear influential people like TB and Hamma voicing pretty much the same concerns as the rest of us. I often feel bad about giving negative feedback about PS2. The devs are such nice people. Higby especially comes across really well and his obvious enthusiasm and energy for the game is infectious.

But, like other people, I want the game to succeed and I sometimes get a little over zealous with my feedback and end up regretting saying anything at all. I hope it all works out though. I will support the game with what is currently my PS1 subscription, and I will use the item shop a lot as well. Hopefully our continued support will encourage the guys to keep on developing PS2 into the game that we all want it to be.