Slashdot Mirror
PlanetSide Community Takes Action to Market Game
Enilk Libb VII writes "Frustrated by Sony Online's lack of dedication to their game, the Planetside community has taken the initiative and started a 'Guerilla Marketing' campaign designed to attract new players to the game. Players know that Planetside is good - perhaps even a genre defining title - but that it often goes unnoticed in the gaming market, saturated as it is with FPS games. Forums dedicated to the discussion of computer games, it was decided, are the perfect places to advertise. A template was designed with links to a spectacular video of Planetside (made by a regular Planetside player), a 7-day free trial of the game itself, and a downloadable installer. A thread was started on the Planetside Forums and the players got to work. The effect of the campaign has been noticeable. Populations are growing noticeably. Due to the influx of new players, many veterans of the game have volunteered to be part of a team whose job will be to contact new players and 'buckle them in'." Now if they'd only lower the pricetag...
This game sucks not because of the lack of players, it sucks because the developers/community wanted an eq-fps. It does not appeal to the hard core fpser. If sony would have not taken such a noobie friendly stance and tweeked the major problems of the game early on they would be in a much better situation than they are in now. For example, have actual objectives instead of "capture the base, run away, recapture the base, run to next base, capture another base, recapture first base...". Instead they focused on the leveling aspect of the game instead of the actual gameplay.
Many fps vets, including myself, were turned off before the end of beta. The lack of a good aiming system and the lack of area damage was inexcusable. This plus the lack of any true obtanaible objective was the death warrant for this game. Planetside had its chance, and it believed that by just being a mmofps would be enough to intice all the gamers to play and stay. Sadly, that is not enough to take the vets away from their free multiplayer UT/Quake/HL and pay for musical base death match.
Astroturfing
The term is wordplay based on "grassroots" efforts, which are truly spontaneous undertakings.
Some of you have valid criticisms for not liking the game itself.
- You would like to see your progress mean something
- You don't like the weapons or the art
But a lot of you really have only *heard* about the game, or played it early on and in limited amounts.
The primary reason *we* the players feel this game deserves attention now is that it is in a very good state of balance and is overall a great experience if you are looking for what PS has to offer. We all like big battles and many of them so we are all for getting new players to come join us.
The game itself is well done and provides battles that no other game can offer. The players who play it love it to death and I have personally trained 5 new players that will be subscribing this week.
The comments I read about the public CTF server are right on the money but they DO NOT describe a PS server. These people are serious about playing and working together to win territory and bases, even if it gets captured when they log out. The fun is in the process.
I'm happy this got slashdotted or whatever, I just hope people can see past the uninformed negativity of most of the comments.
If you had a negative experience early in PS, consider it once again for free and come kill me on Markov, I play TR as WuChild.
I really don't care if SOE backs our efforts or not, it's my $13 a month and I want more people to shoot.
A lot of the posts here are critical of the graphics, weapons or art style. These are valid criticisms. The game is almost 2 years old, a monolithic age for a first-person shooter and the community is already putting together "wish lists" for a sequel on the forums.
But if you're an FPS fan, you should still try Planetside if you've never played it. Because there is a secret ingredient that makes Planetside very, very special - the scale. It's huge! No other non-mmo first person shooter - including Tribes - comes close. A great number of huge military bases (that are easy to get lost in), set out across a huge continent - with forests, lakes, ravines, bridges, mountain ranges and fields in between. Then have huge battles with 700 players fighting against each other. Nothing else can come close. There's a genuine rush when you're advancing on a base with columns of tanks, wings of aircraft flying overhead and squads of grunts rushing through the forest.
In a game like Tribes, when the enemy takes your base the game is over. In Planetside, the enemy may have won that battle - but the war continues. You can choose to retreat to a nearby friendly base and regroup, plan a counter-attack, try and infiltrate to resecure - or any of a hundred different options. Unlike a typical FPS where all-out to-the-death charges are often the most effective, strategic play (where to respawn, where to regroup, where and when to attack, and even how to harass the enemy [with snipers, bombers, etc]) is also extremely important.
An analogy: Regular FPS games are like playing chess where the first piece taken determines the winner (then you reset the board and start again). In Planetside, you get to play through the entire game. In fact, the only time you're forced off a map (sort of an "endgame" condition) is when the enemy has occupied all of your respawn points and "locked" the continent (which disables moving to that continent from orbit or the "instant action" button). But then you either move to another battle, or regroup and come in on the ground from an adjacent continent to take back a foothold and launch a new offensive (or even stealthily sneak about and try to recapture bases behind their backs if they leave them undefended).
After Planetside, I'm even having a hard time getting into Half-Life 2 - the linearity feels claustrophobic and I don't have much interest in fighting against computer controlled AI fodder.