Planetside: Newbie Tips

With it looking more and more likely that there will be a Planetside 2 coming out (hopefully SOE will listen to their subscribers about what they want in games), now would be a good time to hop over to the Planetside homepage and give the game a whirl with the free trial.
I tried a free trial and had a blast even though it was Cyssor non stop (say it isn't so.)  It may be a little dated but PS is unmatched for the sheer epic feeling of large scale MMOFPS playing.  Bridge battles still are awsome, specially fighting against the VS since they do all the hovercraft stuff on the water.

'Spot the Free Kill'

I posted this stuff on Mmorpg.com a while ago for new players who found it overwhelming in, what can be, a very steep learning curve of a game.

A Battle Rank 1 can kill a maxed out 5 year+ vet easy in many situations.  Find your favorite form of combats and keep at it..indoor and outdoor.

Sift through the new player help posts on the official forums for some info..although reading and doing are not often the same.

Grenades are pretty useful..jammers for outside (stops the tanks etc from firing for a good few seconds), plasma inside before engaging enemies if you cannot see them but know they are hiding (softens them up)
Combat Engineering is a good Exp farming tool..Mines can net  awsome exp at times and you can repair turrets and vehicles for support exp.

'The Terran Republic Grief Point Brigade'

Filling up base Ntus with an Ant is also good exp and vital if the base is like at 20% or so (just remember to check for enemy mines at the Silo or drive very slowly if your not being attacked once inside the base walls)
Uni-max  is a exp farming cert for low levels although if you dont like maxes its not vital. (Tr maxes are a little harder to use well than some of the VS, NC ones also)
Medium assault is nice if your smart and outdoors..using trees, rocks for cover etc and trying to keep the cone of fire as tight as possible with short bursts from the gun can be deadly especially if the enemy doesnt see you.

Using Mosquitos or Reavers is harder than it looks especially for a total new player..Anti-Air is very rampant and unless you get the jump on the AA you wont normally survive unless you afterburn out of there There are some real dangerous Dog-fighters out there also that can destroy you in air combat super fast. (sure hot-dropping on towers via a Skeet is pretty killer but for a new player you wont have a high sucess rate usually)

Remember friendly fire is in effect so charging up a set of stairs past your empire mates who are shooting usually nets you a quick death

Save in your equipment favorites a different set of armor to what you usually wear at the bottom or someplace you can find it easy in the favorites list like standard or whatever..changing outfits quickly when your armor is shot to peices is faster than manually repairing if your near terminals (plus its a quick reload of your ammo and med-packs)

'Dirty NC clamping AMS tactics'

Find a good new player friendly outfit will be a huge asset..you will learn a ton of tricks and tips if they are experienced. (heck i played for just over 5 years and after joining my outfit 447th Ranger Elite a couple of years ago it majorly boosted my skill level) Plus playing in a regular team can be hugely fun

Find a cheap form of transport like the Harrasser or ATVs unless you are becoming a pilot or tank driver..running from base to base kind of sucks when your new especially if some random enemy plane/tank spots you near the end of your 5 minute cross-country run
Also try and gun all the different tanks, bombers for people..TR have 3, 4 man gunner variants so the more the better (prowler, galaxy gunship gunning = huge exp if the driver, pilot is good.
Understanding the Map is very useful...know where your enemy is attacking or going to attack next can help alot, same goes for the bases you attack.

There is no single form of total domination..for every weapon, vehicle there will always be at least 1 form of counter, often though several.
There is alot to the game and a million more tips/tricks but like i started with..find a form of combat you enjoy and keep at it....i can kill 20 people before dying sometimes and then get totally owned for the next 30 minutes.  Just gotta be patient and learn from your mistakes..dying can teach more than killing alot of the time.

'Situational Awareness'  is my favorite term for planetside

Fallen Earth: Part 1 - Random Rambles

"Which way to Barter Town please?"

Fallen Earth is a brand new Mmorpg from indy company Fallen Earth, LLC set on Earth in a post-apocalyptic future of the year 2156 AD.  If you are familiar with Resident Evil or Mad Max even Fist of the North Star you can imagine the world.  Desolate wasteland with small pockets of humanity still managing to hold on against toxic air, lack of resources and warped creatures, roving bands of mutants and more nefarious humans and of course the undead. 

Out of the blue in India or Pakistan, we will say Kashmir to be neutral, a bunch of villagers came down with a virus that pretty much wiped out everyone and their goat who came in contact with it.  The later stages of the infection caused muscle contractions that made the soon-to-be-dead sick person look like they were dancing.  This reminded someone (probably the guy with the goat) of the multi-armed Hindu goddess SHIVA and so the virus got a cool name.  I am guessing this turned some people into zombies and other mutated types.  THE VIRUS ALWAYS DOES.

Human nature being what it is..some smart government decided it was a good time to drop nukes on its neighbor while the virus was making a mess and so in a few days most of South Asia was an irradiated wasteland.  Like any good human designed recipe, add in a few more invasions, a sprinkle of nukes and pretty much the entire planet got screwed.

In America  Global Tech (Umbrella corp. types) starts buying up land and eventually turns into some corporate-feudal state owning the Grand Canyon region and surrounding areas. Global Tech + technology + scientific experiments = bad to sum it up. Naturally the rest of the world was busy blowing each other up at the same time while the US Government, actually doing some homeland stuff instead of abroad, was in a state of civil war with the Federal Emergency Manement Agency (who had US Military support).

                       "Hungrrry Neeed Brainssss"

Somewhere amongst this Cloning was discovered, maybe before, i don't know.  But anyway nanite technology is a wonderful thing.  And this is where the player comes into it.  Yep starting life afresh as a clone.

The starting area i believe is undergoing a change to help new players acclimatize more with various aspects of the game, but even so the original starting area got me hooked to the game.  A story driven walkthrough escaping from the Hoover Dam while it is under attack by the CHOTA faction (like the bad guys in mad max with axes and warpaint).  During the tutorial you start at level 40 but along the way you get shown how to equip new weapons and how to raise skills to equip said weapons.  I won't go into much detail as that would ruin the experience of the escape.  Needless to say it was enjoyable.

Once you get out the dam you are down to level 2 (not sure why not 1, i guess so you get free points to raise some of your skills right away).  You will get given a choice of 6 starting towns.  This is really nice since there are 2 Combat, 2 Crafting and 2 Support orientated towns.  Even if you want to purely PvP and never craft you can start easily in a crafting town.  These towns really just set up what kind of missions and items are mainly rewarded.  Like crafting towns you will get a lot more craft goods and recipies whereas support towns are Medic Labs etc.

The Gui is pretty clean and layed out not much different from other mmorp's.  One difference is the single hotbar that you actually resize by dragging the corner to make it however many rows and columns you want.

Personally i used 12 x 5 but the lack of moving less used skills to say a sidebar was a little annoying but nothing game-breaking.

Quest givers are marked with radioactive icons over their head with different colors depending on what part of the Quest you are on and they also appear on the Mini Map and Strategic Map (aswell as resources and merchants etc) so it's easy to find them.  There is a quest tracker also but it only 'tracks' one quest waypoint at a time which is nice if you really want to explore and not be lead around by the hand.

The Gameworld so far consists of 3 Sectors all set in some part of the Grand Canyon, having never been there i don't know how close it is to the real place but needless to say there are lots of cliffs to fall down and a ton of desert and dry areas in the beginning.  Sector 2 is way more pastureland and Sector 3 is at least 50% if not more forested.  *shakes fist at trees that autorun will always run you into when you go /afk*

For only 3 sectors its a huge place.  On my Franklin Rider Horse (Kevin Costner mail delivery services) it took over 2 hours non-stop to ride from East Sector 3 to South Sector 1! and that was without stopping to scavenge resources (my bag was full)  i hear there will be some kind of fast travel system implemented but it will be expensive and probably between the large towns only.  For me this is great as why go to all the trouble of building a huge world if you can port all over it.

      "Hey Jeff why da hero always get a Gyrocopter?"

There is a wide variety of vehicles available ranging from the trusty Horse to Interceptors with mounted macineguns to Electric Motorbikes.  These all have their own stats which cover fuel effiency (you run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere then enjoy your walk), health, turning speeds and storage etc.  I only tried the horses since i spent all my crafting time building my Wife a Dune Buggy and Interceptor /wrist but Motorbikes were way faster than my pony.  Horses have the advantage of grazing and for example my Quest rewarded Postman Horse, i never had to buy food for it since he ate grass anytime i stopped.  Heck it even ate rocks and sand i guess when there was no grass where i was.

There are no multi-person vehicles yet although hopefully this will change in the future.  You know a Clan owned School Bus would rock.

Well i have gone on totally random tangents so i will finish this first part with my less that great system specs and how i really didn't have many issues with everything at 80% maxed out. Cities are a little laggy at times and i did experience a couple of freezes but the Development team is really on top of the performance updates and optimization aspect of the game.  Actually the whole staff seem awsome with support for the customer...nearly always a GM online who answers questions and helps with bugged players nearly 24/7.  This is super refreshing compared to a 6 hour queue then generic email reply.  Fallen Earth is really great game.

Played on:

Windows Vista Ultimate 32

Core2 Duo 2.13ghz

GeForce 7950gt

4 Gig Ram

1920x1200 rez