Still quite enjoying Planetside, having settled back into my regular reservist character on Werner NC. It's the one featured in the Medal Case link to the right, and having gained a fair degree of competence with the Rocklet Rifle, I'm determined to get a medal for actually killing things myself. All my present medals are mostly from the Support Category, gained indirectly - by helping other soldiers kill stuff in some manner, reflecting the somewhat lazy and back-footed play style I normally enjoy.
For me, it's not really about charging out there, guns blazing and racking up hundreds of +1 to my Kills/Deaths ratio. If I wanted that, I'd probably be playing (or at least trying to play) Counterstrike, et al. I love seeing the overall progress - the various bases turning blue (or whatever colour I happen to be) on the island maps. Our team, winning, and making progress. I still enjoy a meaty, but doomed, base defence too though, and dashing about with the repair-guns and deployable landmines etc, helps slow the defeat a lot, and sometimes, even turn it around completely. Well, I like to think so anyway.
A 'kills' medal would be nice, but it's not really the reason I'm playing in itself. This isn't true for everyone, mind you, and came across a particularly unpleasant example of this last session. For many, the kills are all. Screw teamwork, logistics, base captures or Strategy; the only thing that matters is the K part of the K/D 'score', and to hell with anything else. You'll know the type - lone super-trooper action heroes, usually with Reinforced Exosuit, Heavy Assault, Special Assault, Mosquito (mostly used as a disposable one-man paradrop capsule), and rarely anything that could help others or be used as part of a team.
You'll be all milling around in your tower, 10-20 deep, gearing up for a big push out to the enemy base, clearly entrenched and unlikely to be overrun by at least as many enemy foot troops with an AMS parked outside, grenadier support and a front line of AI MAX suits, and in the lull between exchanges of fire with the base, one single lone Mosquito will zoom across the map, a red dot will detach, and 'Bruce Willis' lands on the roof, torn vest and superficially rugged eyebrow sutre. This gung-ho hero, stuffed full of Survivalist Implants (Personal Shield, Audio Amplifier, Second Wind) will then spend the next five minutes arseing about at the top of the tower, hiding behind pillars, picking off any one who comes so see what the fuss was, self-healing and repairing, booby trapping the corners, and so on.
Of course this might possibly be an attempt to hack the tower, in which case strategically valuable, but those people are usually in infiltration suits (invisible), and the last thing they want to be doing is letting anyone know they're there by killing people. No...this joker makes no attempt to go near the control console, instead just lurking at the top, ambushing people. This would still be quite useful if his victims actually stay dead at all, but less than 15 seconds run away is a Respawn Tube, and the guy he just killed now knows exactly where the gunman is, and what gun he's using most likely, and is coming back, with friends, and plasma grenades. Our Lone Gunman doesn't especially care, and caries on farming for as long as he can, and then more often than not, Boomers (a kind of remote detonation explosive pack) himself rather than be taken alive, having achieved nothing useful in the bigger picture of the battle, but with a great many more 'points' to add to his score.
The whole 'killing yourself rather than give the enemy the satisfaction, or points' thing is a particularly reviled part of Planetside culture, giving rise to the term 'Bailure', which specifically refers to someone who, when losing an air-to-air dogfight, will jump out of the plane, land on the ground, and kill themselves, using some kind of splash-damage weapon, or the Boomer, as a kind of spiteful denial of a fair kill. A hissy-fit of the highest order, and a cutting insult to have thrown at you.
Trouble is, I'm Special Assault now, and both the Thumper and Rocklet Rifle do a lot of splash damage to the user if you're too close when the round goes bang. So I'm out in the hills on one of the islands, having just turned up at an AMS truck. There's not many friendlies nearby, but enough to keep one lone enemy Mosquito pilot happily supplied with easy kills. He's farming away as my hapless compatriots try to make it from the truck to the base door and if he keeps going, he'll probably win a cuddly toy very soon. I take one look, grab my 'SA' loadout, and leg it away from the base. Hunker down in some rocks, stuff the Rocklet Rifle with air-burst flak, and wait for my moment. Air Cavalry pilots are generally very difficult to kill, unless they get complacent and stay hovering in place while hosing down grunts. This chap did just that, and I let rip with the six-shot Panic Mode. The sky around him explodes, he panics, and afterburns away. A minute or so later, he comes back and resumes his farming, all repaired. I repeat my flak volley, and he boosts away again. This happens three or four times, an eventually, he works out where I am. I fumble ot reload for another go as he closes on me, but instead of strafing me with the plane itself, he boosts overhead and jumps out. Clever guy. Oh well, I think, at least that's him grounded for the next five minutes, pull out my other gun, which happens to be the grenade launcher, and get ready to be pwned. Some circling around a tree ensues, and I'm firing frag grenades in the hope of damaging him enough for someone else nearby to finish the job. He leaps out, the next grenade goes off at his feet, and since I'm wearing less armour than him, I end up dying to the close proximity of my own grenades before he does.
Embarasing, but accidental and somewhat unavoidable. It was that, or just stand there and let him take free shots. Not a view shared by him mind you, and cheated of his vital '+1', I get to spend the next few minutes staring in morbid fascination at a blistering round of hate tells in the chat window, calling me all sorts of unpleasant things, questioning my parentage, my sexuality, the function of my dangly bits, my skill (might have a point on that one), and so on. Unlike the sensible policy adopted in WoW, players on opposing teams are allowed to send tells to each other. First reaction is to hit the reply key and respond with 'I am rubber, you are glue!' of course, but I'm no stranger to the InterTubes and know the best bet is just to slap him on ignore, and try not to think about it too much. That didn't stop me from composing all sorts of witty and cutting replies for some minutes afterward though - 'Oh yeah! I totally should have said that!'
Still, it is a kind of victory though. Planetside is very fast paced game, and you will die lots, and kill lots of people, often several times in a row, and most of the time, it's all so routine that hardly anyone ever seems to 'take it personally'. Sure, they'll come after you if it's convenient, or tactically important, but it's rarely ever a matter of 'I will hunt you and make you and your family pay a thousand-fold for what you have done!' To have annoyed another player to the point of apoplectic abuse tells then, means you've done something right.
Most people though, just bounce back up at the respawn tube, and get on with the next assault, and the above kind of hissy-fit is surprisingly rare, and the only one I've encountered in my recent foray. It did seem quite short-sighted though. I mean I'm a masochist, but a new person, faced with an already harsh basic game, receiving choice chat-gems like that, is probably even less likely to stick around. Maybe he was more calculated than that - in any PvP game, the only way to truly beat your opponent is to make them stop playing entirely...perhaps he was out to personally Win Planetside...