Population in Planetside is in something of a precarious state these days. Each map allows a maximum of 133 players from each team on it, then locks the rest out, making 400 in total, give or take a few.
Once upon a time, when it was new and interesting, and the majority of players hadn’t been so comprehensively owned that their spirits, and patience, had given up completely, it was a more thriving place. The empire-lock was higher, around 166 per team, making map fights of 500 players a common thing, and sometimes on as many as four maps at once.
Time takes its toll however, in this most quirky of MMOs, being too harsh for most MMORPG folks, and too soft for most FPS-Lan folks, and like any other MMO, numbers fade over time. Nowadays, there will be one full map, and depending on how many other people are left on your team, small to middling skirmishes elsewhere. As a Reservist, I tend to end up on these, unless I get lucky with the Instant Action button. I don’t mind too much, but the other night there really was no other fight to go to – it was Cyssor or bust. A lot of players just stoically sit in the Warp Gate queues and wait. Some have a go at soloing entire enemy continents or caverns, but are swiftly beaten back by the enemy overflow-queue people, (often more numerous – NC seem quite upopular of late). Some just log off altogether, or try their luck on one of the other two servers, with a higher ping.
I came up with a better plan though. My current fixation with the Merit Commendations had me going through my award progress screen, in a very ‘Mutley-esque’ manner, and I realised that I hadn’t gotten around to doing my Exploration badge yet. This is a curious one, as it involves no killing at all, at least not directly, and is perhaps the only bit of PvE content in the entire game, apart from the VR shooting range.
Back when they introduced the Big Robots, they did an event. It was a sort of capture-the-flag kind of thing, and nine ‘Monoliths’ appeared, one on each above-ground map. Various flags needed to be collected as they spawned at these things, and eventually someone won, or lost, or something. I forget exactly. (No-one wins Planetside...there is always Tomorrow...) But these monoliths remain to this day, and if you visit each one, you get a badge! In addition, each one reveals a little snippet of Planetside Lore and Backstory – something most people neither want to know, nor care about that much really.
(If you’ve already accidentally triggered these and weren’t paying attention, you can review them by finding the Monolith: [Map Name] item in the Training ticklist in the Character panel and double-clicking it…it’ll pop the little window up again so you can see them.)
I found them quite refreshing to be honest, and anyway didn’t have anywhere better to be at the time. The easiest way to do this badge is to cert something airborne and fast – Mosquito for preference – and then just fly one, two, three, four, etc. I didn’t have the spare points, and anyway thought it would be more fun to do them on a quad-bike, overland. Quite a trek, but a fascinating one, as the Monoliths are not always near the main travel routes between bases. I know most of the maps off by heart now, or at least very specific parts of them – the half-mile wide strips of land from one base to the next.
This time however, I had an actual mission, and was trying to avoid any fighting, and reach some quite out of the way places, all of which had the effect of showing me entire tracts of countryside I’d never actually seen before - three years in, and which almost never see any kind of fighting at all. A shame, as some of these abandoned valleys, plains and shorelines would have clearly made for some pretty epic battles, and in a way, it did feel a little like I was seeing whole new maps. Entire armies could happily park there, and without the 'Show Enemies' CR ability, go undetected for days! Also a shame that some team of developers, way back when, had put a lot of time and effort into creating these places, only to have them largely ignored. Most MMOs have similar ‘wildernesses’ – sub-optimal levelling-grounds, awkward to reach places with no facilities, and so on. Lovingly crafted corners of worlds, which few people ever see…
(Next time you’re stuck in a Warp-Gate queue, why not grab an ANT or ATV, and try driving from one villa to another, across Sanctuary. I doubt the much clamoured for ‘Sanctuary Strikes’, and hinterland fighting across Sanctuary, will ever happen, but it’s certainly a change of scenery.)
Predictably enough, I got all eight visits done on the various empty continents without too much trouble, although several times I was almost spotted by lone Mosquito patrols – probably out doing the same tour as me, and almost got wiped out by an abandoned minefield at one point. The ninth visit, on the near-full map, Cyssor, was much trickier, and I had to abandon the bike in the end, using a drop-pod to land on the Terran Occupied central island of Gunku, where the monolith is. Both of the bridges leading on to it would have been camped and mined, so dropping from space seemed the way to go.
The visit went unmolested and I even managed to hack a tower, and use it to rejoin our main forces, picking up the glue-gun and getting back to work after a surprisingly interesting galactic tour, one medal up!
Anyway, to celebrate, I’ve added a new sidebar link, in the Planetside Boot Camp section, where you can all point and snigger at my lack of meaningful progress or skillz in PS:
Van Hemlock: My Medal Case
It’ll be updated as and when I get new badges!
Edit: reply to #1 below, as my comment system seems to be giving me grief.
The best place to go for a full list of the merits is here:
Planetside Syndicate Wiki: Merit Commendations
At present, only two units need Merit Commendations to unlock, although if PS gets anything new, it's likely that some kind of pre-qualification via these merits, will be a requirement.
Vulture - Anti-Tank Liberator Variant: Needs Bomber Ace merit, Bronze level (400 Assist Kills by the bombadier or tailgunner of a Liberator you are piloting, and a streak of 4), and still requires Air Support Cert.
Flight Variant BFR: Needs Advanced BFR merit (100 driver kills, streak of 7)
Streaks are a required number of kills/assists without you dying in between, and are suprisingly tricky.
I've never put that much time into Liberators really, but working over the VT and walltops of an enemy base from 400m up, in the window between them losing their tower, and acutally being driven inside the base buildings, ought to net you the most kills, and make sure the Bombadier understands the difference between the cluster bombs and the anti-tank ones. Avoid hovering over specific targets, no matter how juicy they might be - plenty of ground based AA about these days, and hovering, even wall-turrets can cause trouble for you.