Another successful outing in Planetside last night, with my ‘Florence Nightingale’ character, detailed previously. Some quite hectic fighting on Ceryshen – the awkward icy ravine-based one, and one of the stagnant three-way fights that seem to be quite typical of late.
It’s understandable of course – if 70-90% of all enemy troops are having a private fight between themselves someplace elsewhere, it does rather leave your own team with little to do but sit on their hands in Sanctuary, splinter off in to dozens of small squads and start hacking empty and unattended enemy bases, or just mount up and pile in on the existing war in progress. Although seeing overall advancement on the world-maps can be quite satisfying, the majority of players are primarily there to shoot stuff, and blow shit up, so option three is the usual course of action, and most nights, throughout prime-time, there will be one particular planet where all the action is, and only very rarely will a frustrated command chat CR5 ‘order’ manage to dislodge the entirety of one team off it to go pursue a strategically more important, but tactically less fun, objective, and even if this does somehow happen, the other two teams invariably show up in a fairly short space of time.
It’s okay though. The very dynamic of Planetside has always been designed to be an unwinable war. The third team always keeps thing interesting. That said, Planetside is also very much a numbers game to a great extent, so being where all your other troops are helps overall enjoyment and keeps frustration levels down a lot. This is especially true in this character’s case!
Lots of fun last night though. I was out in a squad with a long time veteran friend who has recently discovered how much fun Sniping is. It’s a long running argument we have going. Friend thinks that Snipers do nothing to advance the battle, and are just campers. I think that me keeping an entire base of troops afraid to poke their heads out of the doors and wall-tops can help our grunts get close for an assault unhampered and helps quite a bit. The trick is not to get bogged down with kill counts, and just go for suppression – one hit is easy – it’s obsessing about the second, killing blow that wastes time.
The irony of it all is that Friend, a long-time, an admittedly extremely skilful, ‘Air-Chav’ (Mosquito and Reaver pilot), ends up on the other end of exactly the same argument whenever I start ranting about being farmed from the air. It’s all good, although try as I might, I can never quite get the hang of flying whenever I try it.
Anyway, while Friend was out plinking away from ridge tops and rocky vantage points, I was scurrying about delivering respawn trucks, healing, resurrecting and repairing, and I think between us, we were managing to make a noticeable difference to the proceedings around us. I am having something of a crisis of conscience over it all though – last night I killed someone! My previously unblemished record as a Planetside pacifist is no more! I was careering along in a spawn truck, intent of getting it to the front line a.s.a.p, when some lone enemy trooper leaped out from behind a tree, firing. I didn’t have time to swerve or brake and squished the poor chap dead. A textbook ‘mowing’. We at Van Hemlock do not condone careless pedestrians! SPLINK! Annoying, but I’ve decided it was an accident, so don’t have to start again from scratch.
A good run in all other respects, finishing 1/9 K/D, and 99 Assists. I gained BR5 somewhere in the confusion as well, which will let me swap AMS truck for Lodestar flying repair depot. Last base we assaulted had at least 6 other friendly AMS trucks deployed around it anyway, so those are probably covered enough now, and Friend has that cert anyway. With the Lodestar, and Friend in an AMS truck hot-dropping out of the big bucket scoop at the back, much more daring and decisive beachheads become possible!
And best of all, I got a badge! Combat Medical Qualification – 35 kills scored by troops healed by me. Not a huge number, but a start! These support badges do rather hinge on the people you help not then just getting killed right away. The trick seems to be to just help as many people around you as possible - someone is bound to get lucky sooner or later!
Being in a squad was interesting as well – I rarely do it to be honest, and this outing reminded me why. I tend to get too intensely focused on the action around me to pay much attention to the chat window, and carry out any orders given there. Also, without some degree of preparation, such as going out of your way to set, and keep updated, manual bind points for respawn, it can become very easy for squads to become scattered upon death, popping back up at different spawn points entirely, based solely on where the nearest one happened to be when you died. The temptation then, is to just start fighting the nearest skirmish, rather than try to rejoin your squad through enemy lines.
Much like any other MMO, it takes a deliberate and consistent effort, on top of normal play, to stay with a squad, and work well in one – skills I probably need to practice more.
All good fun though, and still not bored yet.