Planetside 2 is like surfing, and I think most people don't like surfing

Planetside 2. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.

Majora's mask is my go to favorite game of all time; it's just the best. However, if it weren't for that one, I'd easily say my favorite game of all time is Planetside 2, and that's one very unpopular opinion.

The game is dead, but don't get me wrong, you can still play it. There are still people to play with, you won't have trouble finding battles in-game, but the game is dead. How so? Well when does a game really die? Is it when the plug is finally pulled on the servers, or is it really when all hope of any life being injected back into or flourishing naturally within the game fades? I believe it's the latter.

That's where Planetside 2 is today; there's no hope for it's future. If it isn't already dead, it's at least undead.

It's too bad. Planetside 2 is a great game that's a ton of fun to play. Why didn't it catch on? I think the answer is actually really complicated, but it more or less boils down to the fact that, whereas playing most multiplayer shooters is like dancing, playing Planetside 2 is like surfing.

When you're surfing, you've got to wait for sets, the periods of time where a bunch of larger waves roll in, and in between sets there are lulls, where there really aren't any good waves. Also there are rogue waves sometimes that are just ridiculous, come out of nowhere, and are huge. Maybe Planetside also has those? Whatever, rogue waves are really neat though.

Does this image have anything to do with Planetside? Hmmm... you decide (hint: no)

Planetside 2 is exactly the same. Unlike a game like Battlefield 1 that's even still a combined arms multiplayer shooter, you don't play matches. There is a beginning and end to fights, but it's naturally dictated when either of those points are by the actions of the players. Battles rage and multiple fronts are pushed across the map (there are 4 large maps). From the player's perspective, this plays out as a fight rolling into a washing over a base like a set of waves. For anywhere from five minutes to maybe even an hour, a battle can go on in one place until one side gets enough of the upper hand to push it elsewhere. Once that happens, there's a lull, again just like surfing, where fights die down, players regroup, and some people move on to the next battlefield. It's an open-world Battlefield game, doesn't that sound fun? Doesn't that sound immersive?

Well it is, and that's the problem. With that immersion comes the responsibility to handle these extra systems lest they handle you, unlike other games where they are handled for you. Again, just like surfing, Planetside 2 requires a certain mindset to really be fun. Most shooters these days are designed to give you a straight up dopamine release. You kill a man, a sound plays (think the ching! noise you hear whenever you get a kill in Battlefield 1), and your brain, which has been taught through Pavlovian conditioning to value that sound, floods with dopamine. It's easy, but it's also really sick (and not in the surfer lingo way) but that's just how it works.

Surfing certainly isn't that easy. If you have ever surfed I'm sure you immediately understand. In reality the experience of surfing isn't like how it's portrayed in Lilo and Stitch or Point Break. It's not some immediately, constantly, and consistently fulfilling spiritual experience, it's only that way once two things happen: you git gud, and you get you philosophy sorted out. It's the same way in Planetside. Without the tightly structured and arbitrarily designed battles made to make you feel happy, you're left on your own to get something out of the experience of fighting as one soldier. Often the game won't help you with that, especially when you're losing. A lot of players will be stuck on the losing side and they'll just be depressed about it. They're running into the front over and over again dying to the same dudes and getting nothing done. The thing is, these noob players don't understand that this is Planetside, you don't have to keep your mind in "run to fight, kill man, repeat" mode all the time. You can switch to an infiltrator and flank the enemy, switch to a light assault and blow up their spawn point, or even just leave for another battle.

neat!

Because it's so much more of an immersive experience, gameplay-wise, Planetside leaves a lot of higher concepts up to you that aren't even a thing in other games like determining whether or not you should stay fighting in a losing battle, figuring out where a front is moving, and deciding what kind of soldier you want to play as. All of this is made a lot harder when you suck at the game, and there's really no cure for that aside from gitting gud.

So again, like surfing, it's not going to be a fun time unless you're in the right mind and can actually catch any waves, and sometimes the waves will even just suck.

Well that's not going to get anyone hyped about Planetside.

But I've rattled on long enough. If you've read all this and it sounds like a really interesting game, it's because it is. Planetside's the Metal Gear Solid V (open-world, lots or freedom to choose how you do battle, but also lots of responsibility to choose how you do battle) to multiplayer shooters' Metal Gear Solid IV (linear, way less freedom to choose, almost no responsibility to choose how you do battle). I hope you've at least got a better understanding of why it's often not really Planetside's fault when players find that they don't enjoy playing it. It's really their own fault, just like in surfing, and that's hard to take. But also just like surfing, playing Planetside 2 is an experience that's really rewarding in a really unique way.

And here's that old Planetside 2 trailer. The game is almost nothing like this, but it's a great trailer! (also it makes me yearn for a true successor to Planetside 2, which probably won't be Planetside 3 at this point)