#planetside 2

This used to be my game, my home, my safe haven. my mid day distraction, my late night habit. PS2 means so much to me. But just about a year ago, I met someone who showed me sights I had never seen before. We played so many games. co-op shooters. MMOs. survival games. more years than I ever played in the many years past. doing it with another creature, helped me get over the feeling of emptiness I always felt with singleplayer games.

And now, whenever I launch PlanetSide, all I feel is, why? why bash my head for hours against poor netcode, outfits ruining fights with big numbers in seconds, sundy killers, a2g, and slow netcode, just on the chance that I may eventually stumble on a good fight or two?

Basically, why let my fun be determined by other players? it's so easy to to feel bad when I get mowed down a lot, just as it is to feel good when i get a lot of good kills. those good moments happen, and the dopamine hit is unlike any other, but at my skill level, it's practically gambling. I go online, chasing the rare dopamine hit, just to mostly be presented with disappointment. And all I think about now, is why. why am I here, when I could get guaranteed, unconditional fun, by simply starting another game

It's hard to believe this is happening. There's still so much to like in PlanetSide 2. I have so many good memories. I still feel the rush of getting kills from the years of experience properly controlling and timing my shots. All the time spent adjusting my sensitivity, hardware, peripherals, to make me into a better player. And all those years in game. So many important times in my life, I spent there, in PlanetSide.

But PS2 isn't "here" anymore. It's "there". I feel scared. I want the grounding, familiarity, and stability of a game I'm so intimately familiar with, to call my home, a refuge to turn to. But I've walked greener pastures, and my hometown doesn't feel like somewhere I want to be anymore.

How do you move on from this? am I griefing a video game, a different time? with time, I'm sure I'll feel better. but there's nothing scarier than to walk an uncharted path.

but, I'll do it. im not alone. not anymore. PlanetSide brought me so much. I'm thankful for all those years.

The most memorable moment I had like this was in Elder Scrolls Online. I was in the PVP area and I came across a raiding party and joined up we got into a casual conversation with everyone, started talking about work and finances all while tearing down a fortresses walls and slaughtering everyone inside. It was such a tonal dissonance between what was happening and what we were doing.

Another game is a cult classic game that’s been going since the ps3 era of games called PlanetSide 2. If you need to know what it is imagine Helldivers except it’s on a single planet across 3 continents and it’s three player factions fighting each other. You actually travel across the continent taking bases and outposts with the goal to dominate each continent. Really fun, really simple and I’m shocked that sort of gameplay never caught on.

The Black Camo is mine.