Several days later, the twitching has calmed down to the point where I can put, er, finger to keyboard and recount some of the horrors of war that took place on the previously mentioned Massively Planetside walking tour. As expected, it did indeed turn out to be quite a harrowing ordeal, but interesting, and quite a lot of fun too.
For some reason most likely rooted in deep-seated masochistic tendencies, a large gang of the staffers over at Massively decided not only to have a go at Planetside, but to do so in such a fashion that everyone else on the server was out to get them, in the form of a Black Ops event, which I got drafted in to help with. I can only assume that because I sometimes blog and podcast about the game, that they somehow took this to mean that I'm actually any good at the game, which doesn't necessarily follow!
We all turned up as our normal-team newbies, zerged about as normal for a bit and then shortly before the off, were yoinked to an out of the way base by Joel "Raijinn" Sasaki, Community Manager for the game, who I must say, shepherded us about throughout with a unreasonable amount of patience, all things considered. With the wave of a magic Dev Wand, he turned us all green, granting us Black Ops status for the next few hours of mayhem.
The Black Ops team is quite interesting, and while artificially made powerful, they are by no means godlike figures. Black Ops do get some hefty buffs: 1000 base Health (Compared to the standard trooper's 100). 500 Stamina (vs 100). All vehicle and weapon certs unlocked for free requisition of anything they want (with some exceptions).
Black Ops also get some hefty restrictions though; no access to the MAX or Infiltration Suits, leaving us with Agile and Rexo armours only. No Access to the BFR mech robot things. No implants, and they spawn in Agile, but only have a Suppressor, REK and Plasma Grenades until a terminal can be found. No Command Ranks (and associated toys) that the original character didn't already have beforehand - in our case, CR0's all round. Black Ops do not have a Sanctuary to recall to, and instead, Recall directly to the Dropship Deployment Map. Black Ops are restricted to one continent only - all the others are locked.
The Black Ops don't capture bases or towers, but instead, can hack them 'Neutral'. Once Neutral, the Black Ops can use their equipment terminals, as if they had captured them. Interestingly, there seemed to be a limit on the number of bases that the Black Ops could turn neutral at once - three I think. Black Ops are unable to communicate with non-Black Ops, even in private messages, which was probably a blessing, all things considered.
All of the above puts them firmly in Special Event territory, and clearly, the Black Ops team is unable to play the game like a normal empire, instead just being there as mobs, of a sort - there to harry all teams, mix things up and generally make a nuisance of themselves; content, rather than contenders. Quite a novel way to see a game that I thought I'd become more than familiar with.
Team Massively (including yours truly) got to work, generally kicking up a bit of a fuss on the southern end of Solsar, a TR Home Continent. Somewhat unfortunate timing actually; I'd started on NC, and a few of the others were on VS. We'd got chatting on Skype before it got underway, and it quickly transpired that we'd arrived just in time to find a quite organised and somewhat underhanded attempt to 'Zero-Base' the Terran Republic - effectively driving them out of play, if only temporarily.
I've never been a fan of this particular gameplay strategy, seeing it as a bit contrary to the point of having three teams in the first place, and usually when playing for real, will just ignore command calls to pitch in, and go attack our 'allies' instead. It can't be much fun to be ganged up on like that, and I'm not sure having the Black Ops shove the boot in helped much. Black Ops adding to the fray on a rousing three-way on Searhus is probably more in the spirit of the thing, but unfortunately, the event had a set time, and we had to go where the most fighting was; the largely NC dominated planet of Solsar. I guess the only other alternative would have been Hossin, which was in pretty much the same state of domination, only by the VS instead.
We roamed a bit in a special green-painted Leviathan Short-Bus, and got stuck in at a few bases, and word travelled fast that Black Ops were out and about. I was quite awed by the response times to our incursions actually, typically having seen a much more sluggish zerg in my usual playing. Matters were not helped by the realisation that killing Black Ops provides not only lots of xp, but also ticks toward a special merit badge medal thing, which is probably one of the harder blanks in the medal case to fill in.
While Team Massively did have a few PS veterans on board, the large part of our eventual twenty-man mini-empire had been playing for less than a week, and HP buff or not, really were quite badly outclassed, when faced against the massed ranks of the Gemini New Conglomerate, some of whom have been honing their skills for more than five years. Listening on on the voice chat was at once painful, and yet strangely uplifting, as these mostly brand-new players learnt how essentially harsh the basic game is, and yet faced it all with a good-natured cheery resignation which I was quite envious of, at times.
Me? I've played lots, if not always that well, and kind of knew what to expect, what each gun and vehicle did and how to use it, how to avoid some of the most meticulous spawn-camping I've seen since launch, and where to go and when. It was still pretty harrowing though - the 1000hp would help me win one-on-ones, as you'd expect, but it would only take three or four troopers working together to make short work of me. Also, 1000hp takes a very long time to heal with the Medical Gun, which worked for us the same way it works for normal troops! We still had standard Rexo and Agile Armour and Mitigation, mind you, and once that was gone, well, 1000hp just means you have to hold the trigger down a bit longer, that's all...
My main normal playstyle involves lots of support work and for kills, extensive use of the upgraded wall turrets, so it was a bit of a shock to find that you can't upgrade Neutral Base turrets! I should have been rolling AMSes, rolling Armour, laying CE, all that, but must admit, fell into a somewhat frenzied pattern of basic newbie zerging, which must have appeared more comical than threatening. Still, I sort of knew I was there as a target drone, and certainly don't begrudge any players their Black Ops Hunter Merit points. It was a bit of a shame that the NC had by this point, gotten most of Solsar in an iron grip, but I did make a point of throwing myself at the few VS and TR holdings when the opportunity arose, trying to spread the pointage about a bit.
Having a GM on the team helped a bit, and throughout, Joel was doing what he could to mitigate the horror somewhat; spawning vehicles for us out of thin-air, patiently explaining what guns did what, what loadouts would be useful and where, and when the massed zerg surrounding one of our many Last Stand Towers got too hectic, flinging devastating ground-shaking meteor storms about the playfield with gleeful abandon. We may not have had Orbital Strikes, but having a direct line to the man with the meteors is just as good!
I think he was even trying to help some of our newer newbies out of some of the harshest spawn camps with even more huge boosts of HP, 10k and the like, which may sound unfair, but at one point, I accidentally got dropped from Black Ops, to find myself NC again, and in an NC base. A quick trip to the spawn room showed at least forty troopers and MAXes in there, all pointing guns at the tubes, and actually team-killing anyone who looked like they were trying to put us out of our misery and destroy the tubes. Poor show!
Still, despite all that, Team Massively seemed to be enjoying themselves, and the server seemed a fairly busy place, even before we got started on our little rampage. This could just be because it was Saturday Evening, and it in part because the server, Gemini, had recently been merged from Emerald and Markov. My time as an NC before it started showed a surprising level of empire-wide organisation and individual competency, compared to my previous flings as TR Werner; merely an observation - make of it what you will.
We lasted about two hours before the spirits began to flag a bit - by this point it really was down to farming. Two hours is a decent length of session in that game, I find, especially with all the Heavy Assaulting we were mostly doing; much longer and the tunnel-vision and mouse-hand cramps start to set in! Here in the UK, it was getting quite late, so I made my own excuses. I have no idea what my final K/D was, as something about the Black Ops event seemed to cause a couple of unfortunate server crashes - possibly something to do with spawning to an AMS which was destroyed before the spawn completed, leaving several of us standing at the bottom of the sea on the corner of the map, or maybe a bit of over-enthusiasm with the meteors - hard to tell. I expect my total K/D was quite laughable though, but I don't mind - it wasn't really why we were there, I think.
The Black Ops events seem to have something of a mixed reception on the forums, with many seeing them as an unnecessary interference with the basic game they like, and where already expert FPS players get god-moded and go on a rather unbalanced spree. I've no idea how this particular one was received, but like to think the innocent 'have a go' incompetence of Team Massively helped dispel that a little bit at least. The usual game of Planetside goes on, as ever it does, but for two hours or so, we provided a bit of something different, a brief change of scene.
In a way, I'm glad it was as harsh as it was, and I'm not sure a player-base wide conspiracy to 'go easy on the journalists' would accomplish much, instead creating a false and unrepresentative impression of what Planetside is like. It is harsh, and it is brutal, and frankly, it takes a good few weeks of solid play to learn the ropes, to find your own niche and see improvement. It isn't a game for everyone.
It might be a game for some people though, people who have never heard of it, and never tried it, and while I sometimes bang on futilely about it here, having it spotlighted by Massively can only be a good thing for a game that traditionally has had very little publicity at all, by SOE, or by outsiders.
Anyway, buckled hat off to the folks at Massively, and to Joel Sasaki. I certainly enjoyed it, and I hope some of the folks on Gemini did too!