Hey so, kinda interesting question here - How do people who have played NS2 feel about planetside 2?
Haven't played it, but I've heard a lot about it.
I'd say my biggest reservation in playing it (besides the fact that I generally despise MMOs), is how chaotic and uncoordinated it is.
I was telling a friend: People in an actual army go through months of discipline, training, and exercises in order to work together in a cohesive group. They learn teamwork, determination, and how to follow orders without questions. They learn how to march together in formation, how to react to unexpected situations, and how to accomplish an objective during a heated firefight. Usually, after their training has ended, they continue to train for the rest of their military career at least several times a week, brushing up on these concepts for thousands of hours every year.
They get to know their squads, and their platoons, and their platoon leaders. They understand the way their fellow soldiers, and leaders communicate, and they react accordingly.
And yet, as a person who has been in the Army, you can put these same people in a war scenario, and things still become extremely disorganized and chaotic for everybody, even with all that preparation, teamwork, and training.
So here we have Planetside 2, which is 50 people who don't know each other, who have had no formal training on how to work together whatsoever, who have no leader or commanding officer, who are, quite frankly, probably pretty bad at using their weapon, and you put them into an intense combat situation where they're all supposed to work together for a greater objective?
I'm not even going to waste my time. And the reports I've heard from others seem to reflect my own fears.
Natural Selection 2 is a much small group of people (between 6 and 12). The maps are much smaller. You have a commanding officer who has an overhead view, and who can give you orders. Not only can he give you orders, the orders neatly pop up on your interface, leading you to your destination. There is built-in voicechat. Newbies have a green name so that you know who they are. The maps are all conveniently labeled by each area, so it's easy to tell where you're supposed to go, etc.
Without playing it, I'd say if you're looking for a more understandable, consistent, organized, teamwork experience, stick with Natural Selection 2. If you're looking for a glorified Call of Duty with objectives, play Planetside.
Of course I realize I might get a lot of flak for this post, but after being a gamer for over 15 years now, I've realized I don't have to play every game to know what it's all about. Diablo 3, for example, was a disaster. I know it sucked, everyone said it sucked, and I'll never play it, and I still know it sucked. We as gamers literally don't have time to try out every single game on the market, but through inductive reasoning can kind of know already how we're going to feel about a game long before we try it.
