PlanetSide Universe - View Single Post - Top cause of players leaving PS2 (2014)
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Old 2014-07-28, 08:18 PM   [Ignore Me] #23
BlaxicanX
Sergeant Major
 
Re: Top cause of players leaving PS2 (2014)


Originally Posted by Mordelicius View Post
Sure. Using your own definition of the the word source, list as many possible 'sources' - that you can think of on top of your head - that can satisfy your question.

I'll pick the correct one from your list.
I ask because this seems less like "these are the reasons players are leaving the game" and more like "these are things that I don't like about the game but if I present them as more than just my personal opinion people will be less inclined to question them."

So I'll just ask you again. Do you have any data that would distinguish these grievances as being more than just your personal issues with the game?

- - - - -

As far as the current discussion, I think there's a difference between why people are bitching about the game versus why people are leaving the game. People complain about the game for a myriad of reasons- the game is not perfect and its issues are many- however, there is no game, especially competitive games, where that isn't the case.

The reason for why people are leaving the game in droves is the same reason for why people always leave popular MMO's in droves... because there isn't new content. People get tired of doing the same shit every day, and Planetside 2 is set up in such a way that it really emphasizes how much of a grind every game session is. On a macro level you quite literally do the same thing, with the same general goal every single day. That's true for most MMO's, however it tends to be hidden from the player longer by virtue of giving him a constant sense of accomplishment- in most cases, this sense of accomplishment is gained from completing quests. Meet the NPC, get a plot blurb from him explaining why the quest is important within the context of the universe, do the quest, meet the boss NPC who talks shit to you and kill him, then go back to the first NPC, get an earful about how your actions have made the world a better place, and collect your XP/gift reward. The objective of the quest, along with its locale and the NPC's within them almost always deviate somewhat- you don't often do the exact same quest twice, and you rarely fight the same enemies twice. In fact, as you level up you can even go back to told areas or do old quests and casually destroy enemy NPC's that you once found challenging, physically displaying to you how much your character has grown.

All of these things together give the illusion to the player that he's doing a variety of things that all contribute toward some final success, or destination.

In PS2, by comparison, it's never explained why these bases are important, and we can't even infer why they're important because the benefits of owning most of them are literally non-existent. So there's no real practical benefit of owning a base, and there's no in-universe implication that the bases are important either. That's a strike. Next, as capturing a base is basically our "quest", with each base being its own quest, there is no variety in our quests. Our objective is always the same, "kill everybody inside of it and hold onto the point until the base is yours", and our enemies are always the same. They may act different, since they're People and People can use different tactics, but the types of enemies are always the same. There is never a chance that we might fight a giant robot, or a weird monster, or something unique. It's always going to be predominantly chumps with guns, supported by tanks and planes, and they and their bullets always come in one of two color schemes. No variation-that's strike two. Strike three is that after completing a quest, we're given some exp, a 5 second voice over telling us good job, and we're then pointed in the direction of the next quest, which is exactly the same as the quest we just completed- with the exact same objective and the exact same enemies, perhaps just behaving a little differently. It's the same fucking quest, and you realize that, woah: it doesn't matter how many quests I complete. There will always be another quest to complete after it, and that quest will always be the same quest I just completed.

For some people, that's not game-breaking. I myself still play the game almost every day, and have been for almost two years now. But for looooots of people, that shit gets old eventually, and so they get bored and leave the game.

This isn't an issue exclusive to Planetside 2, in fact it's a common issue for most MMO's. The problem is that you feel it more with Planetside 2 because the game is exclusively a shared experience. In WoW, where you can only have X amount of people in a raid, or you can only have X amount of people in a PvP match at one time, there is no difference between 50,000 players in the game and 10,000 players. You interact with NPC's 90% of the time anyway. But in a game like Planetside 2, where are there no NPC's, and the only way the game can engage you, in any way shape or form, is via human players, it becomes very noticeable when the population dips and rises. Bases are either devoid of enemies and your time is spent capping empty buildings, or your faction is out-popped and you're getting reamed at every turn. Both capping empty base after empty base and getting pushed back by enemy zergs in battle after battle highlight to the player just ultimately pointless and repetitive this game is. It's only when we're in the middle of a good fight do we temporarily forget how ultimately meaningless the battle actually is.

So with that being the case, the game direly needs to do two things: A) it needs to compensate for the lowered population. This means it needs to merge servers (which it's already done), and cut out half the fucking irrelevant bases so that the already reduced player base isn't stretched so thinly across a continent, and B) it needs to focus on retaining what player base it still has, and the only way to do that is to improve the game's ability to hide the realization that you're basically doing the same thing over and over again. MMO's do this by providing fresh content- giving the illusion that there's always "something to new to do", and by making everything you do seem like an achievement and a progression. Alerts and continent-locking have done a lot to give us that latter feeling, but it's not enough. And the other half of the equation, new content, is sorely missing in this game. I understand that the PS2 dev team is undermanned, and I understand that it takes time to make new vehicles and new continents, but there comes a point where one has to simply realize that the video game industry is an extremely competitive environment, and gamers don't care about developmental problems. They're fickle people, and will jump ship to any game that looks more promising.

Last edited by BlaxicanX; 2014-07-28 at 09:10 PM.
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