YMMV / PlanetSide

• Abridged Arena Array: The Crown in PS2 is this, complete with all the features of a major base. However, it's atop a mountain bristling with defenses. Its location at the center of Indar and its reward of the rare Polystellarite resource means it's always going to be under siege. Close range slaughterfests are the norm. The TR loves the Crown and always attacks it when possible. Among the playerbase it's also cursed; whoever holds it will lose the rest of the map since the players on said faction will stay at the Crown and farm kills rather than fight across the rest of the map. Continual nerfs made the Crown ridiculously easy to capture since 2/3 of its capture points are in the facility outskirts, though this is a slow process to only hold 2 points. It's now a constantly shifting objective that frequently changes hands until a faction can push forward and capture the surrounding bases.
  • In some cases, the Crown can become The Load for the faction that holds it, as the huge battles that rage around it constantly sap large amounts of players from that continent's population. It can get bad enough that more than half of a faction's population can be uselessly fighting for the Crown while the rest of their territory is getting overrun by the other two factions. Unless their population is also basically stuck in the Crown as well.
  • This also applies to biolabs. For those who just want to fight infantry in controlled chaos, this is THE spot. Biolabs would be a sink for entire armies of infantry, and it would be unsurprising for these fights to last for hours. On Esamir it was so bad that they were later removed entirely.
  • On Indar you also have The Crown's neighbors, TI Alloys and Ceres Hydroponics. Fights for these bases are a slugfest that could easily rival the Crown, such was the desire for a faction to capture and hold these bases. The sheer infantry-farming potential that the defenders could enjoy was what made these bases so popular and deadly.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Are the New Conglomerate rebels, freedom fighters, or terrorists?
  • Is the Terran Republic truly a Republic fighting to maintain order and preserve what's left of civilization on Auraxis? Or are they power-mad despots who've alienated anyone they couldn't intimidate into submission?
  • Is the Vanu Sovereignty trying to elevate humanity into something greater via alien technology, or are they a crazed cult who worship technology?
• Awesome Music: Terran Republic Combat Theme #4
  • 'Payback' New Conglomerate's Recruitment Theme
  • Not to mention the main faction select theme for the New Conglomerate. Especially at 1:20, where a trainload of freedom brutally assaults your eardrums.
• Bragging Rights Option: Auraxium weapons, infantry armor, and vehicle trims. Limited-time rewards like the Auraxium Slasher, seasonal titles, and other rare items count as well.
• Broken Base: The community will either see the use of certain tactics and weapons as fair-game, or cheap bullshit that ruin the game. Examples include the Heavy Assault, shotguns, zerging, anti-infantry mines, destroying deployed sunderers as quickly as possible, using overpowered weapons, sniping at infantry terminals, planting mines at vehicle pads, ghost-capping, and much more.
  • The introduction of the Archer heavily divided the playerbase between MAX users who thought it ruined the game balance and non-MAX users who thought it provided a counter to MAX crashes.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Anti Tank Mines and their usage. There is exactly one spot most players place them, that being right in front of the other team's vehicle spawners. Seeing as vehicles have to drive straight off the spawners, this effectively causes anyone who does try to do so to promptly lose their ride, and their life just as they get in. Given that it costs Nanites to even deploy mines, and how unpredictable players tend to be with driving around, it's the only way to really make things work.
  • Any weapon or ability that is extremely good or overpowered is also spammed by much of the playerbase. Examples include nanoweave armor, the NS-15M, and the heavy assault to name a few.
• Creator Worship: Players in each faction in 2 worship a particular developer.
  • The TR worship Malorn ("PRAISE MALORN, BUFF THE CARV"), level designer and former member of the infamous Enclave.
  • The NC worship Matthew Higby, creative director and NC fanboy.
  • The VS worship Tramell Ray Isaac (T-Ray), art director, though to a lesser extent compared to the other factions.
• Even Better Sequel: How at least some critics see Planetside 2. Shooting mechanics were vastly improved (being similar to Battlefield 3), vehicles have more realistic physics, there's more customization, much better graphics, and the netcode is far, far better than the joke of a netcode in PS1.
• Fan Nickname: Generally, they're either persistent ("Bangbus" below) or temporary ("Lagsher" for the first game's Lasher heavy infantry weapon and how its projectiles, when fired, caused framerate drops).
  • Each of the factions has a bunch of common, derogatory nicknames:
    • Terran Republic: Elmos, Space Commies, and Space Nazis (though the latter two aren't quite as applicable in the second game).
    • New Conglomerate: Smurfs, and in PS2, Space America and the Nickelback Conglomerate - due to their theme music. The term 'NeoCon' also applies, not only because their ideology is rather neoconservative, but because it is a correct abbreviation of their actual name.
    • Vanu Sovereignty: Barneys or Ding Dong Vanu, after the Stanry Woo TORtanic meme. "Spandexes" after their favorite attire.
    • Disorganized pubbies are often called "greenies" or, in the New Conglomerate (which attracts lots of inexperienced players), "blueberries". "Raspberries" and "grapes"/"eggplants" haven't quite caught on.
  • The Zerg, for the herds of aimless, uncoordinated players pushing down a lane for no reason other than the fact that a lot of other people are doing the same. Some "zergfits" (zerg outfits) are derided for having no tactics except numbers. Many high-tier outfit tactics are specifically about manipulating zerg behavior, such as luring hostile zerg into "pop traps" - lengthy slugfests over relatively-unimportant locations, which ties up a large chunk of a faction's population. "Tank zergs" and "air zergs" are common for masses of vehicles.
    • A less derided variant is the "MAX Crash"; usually a last-ditch effort to defeat an enemy force with a lot of MAXes. Popular with both beleaguered defenders cornered in their spawn rooms, and frustrated attackers hoping to overwhelm entrenched defenders.
  • "Clegged" for parking Galaxy in odd position. The name came from one of the Planetside 2 developers.
  • "Bangbus" or "Funbus" for Sunderer.
    • "Battle gal" and "battle bus" for sunderers and galaxies (transport vehicles) configured with the armor and firepower for combat.
  • The VS Magrider tank has the nickname "Magmower" due to how it could easily mow down enemy infantry in seconds (see Car Fu on the main page for more info on that). Unfortunately, its just as effective at mowing down friendly targets.
  • Grandpa Vanu (Or, Papa Vanu) for the Vanu announcer.
  • "C4 Fairy" for light assaults that hover over the battlefield dropping C4 onto passing vehicles.
  • "Sky Knight" or "Sky Samurai" for fighter jocks who want other pilots to follow their code of honor (e.g. to not use air-to-air lock-on missiles).
  • "Airchavs" / "Skygods" for high-tier players that farm infantry, tanks, and other aircraft with ESFs and Liberators.
  • "Lolpods" for the infantry-obliterating air-to-ground rocket pods. The name persists even after several nerfs.
  • "Sky whale" for Liberators and especially Galaxies, due to being big, slow, and vaguely whale-looking. Galaxies in the second game even got a horn sound that sounds like a whale.
  • The Gauss SAW got the nickname "God SAW" for being able to mow down half a squad in a single magazine. Again, the name persists even post-nerf.
    • Became an Ascended Meme when an update included Auraxium weapons, that you can only use once you've got Auraxium medals with enough weapons in that category (LMG, Sniper Rifles etc.). The New Conglomerate Auraxium LMG? The NC6A GODSAW.
    • Since it has the same high damage output and similar insane recoil as the SAW, the AC-X11 carbine is sometimes refereed to as the "Pocket SAW".
  • "Pizzas" for tank mines, due to their triangular, pizza box shape and (before being shrunk) size. Players say "Pizza delivery!" after getting a mine kill or to describe a tank mine-laying operation.
    • "Pizza delivery" also refers to running up behind infantry or vehicles and throwing mines of either kind directly into traffic.
  • "Christmas presents" for C4 bricks, which look like little boxes that bring explosive joy to all the good little tanks and Sunderers. During Christmas time, there's even a reskin option to make the bricks look like gift-wrapped presents.
  • "Spawn room hero"/"Spawn room warrior" for players who hide safely behind the spawn room force fields and shoot out, padding their kill-death ratio, instead of pushing out to defend the base. There's a few cases where this tactic is viable; the NC-specific Phoenix camera-guided rocket launcher is very effective from inside spawn rooms thanks to the shield protecting the operator while he's guiding the missile toward its target.
    • "Coward Box" for the spawn rooms and teleporter rooms that said spawn room warriors hide in while trying to shoot anyone that walks by, particularly ones that provide good fields of view.
  • "Ghost-capping": sneaking into unguarded bases and flipping the control points, hacking terminals, and switching turrets to get free certs. Frequently they are Stalker-cloaked Infiltrators who repeatedly sneak in and out of control points to harass and irritate the defenders, and often require several people with motion trackers and darklight flashlights to smoke out.
  • "Redeployside" for the practice of coordinated squads and platoons rapidly using the redeploy option to bounce between hotspots across a continent to reinforce vulnerable bases or overwhelm a defending force.
  • "Jesus grenades" for the Medic's revive grenades.
  • "Planetmans" is a general term for the players in general.
  • "Big Game Hunting" for Engineers carrying an Archer, ideal for dropping MAX suits and swatting ESFs out of the sky.
  • Pub-stomping refers to veterans who always prefer to go into fights where there's lots of 'noob' players.
  • Fan names for some of the faction tanks exist. Magriders are called Maggies, and Vangs are of course short for Vanguards.
  • The servers are jokingly referred to as 'Hamsters'.
  • Spitfire turrets are called 'Spitties', and has become so prevalent that an NSFW smutfic called 'Spitty Bae' was made. Due to this story being an Old Shame for the creator, it's much harder to find the smutfic.
  • That low battle-rank NC sniper that just killed you with the bolt driver, and also seems to have had Improbable Aiming Skills? We refer to those as 'Bolt Babies'.
  • Stack-fits are outfits filled to the brim with veteran players, who are virtually unstoppable unless they encounter another stack-fit. They have gained particular infamy in the outfit wars.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Vanu Sovereignty MAX ability in PS2, Zealot Overdrive Engine (ZOE), greatly boosts their movement speed (roughly equal to infantry), increases their damage by 20%, though it increases their damage taken by the same percentage. In practice, this turns VS MAX units into infantry blenders that run around at Mach 10 and "ADADADAD" strafing, breaking the netcode and therefor negating their increased vulnerability. It was nerfed slightly (strafing no longer breaks the netcode, and flak weapons receive less of a damage buff), but one can still expect VS MAXes to clear entire rooms of infantry on their own, and then escape due to their ZOE walking speed being the same as infantry sprinting speed. Got nerfed into the dirt after breaking infantry combat for over 6 months.
  • The VS anti-armor Magrider/Harasser coaxial gun, the Saron. It's a nearly hitscan rapid-fire railgun with nearly perfect accuracy on the first shot, one-hit-kills infantry, and is more dangerous than the tank's primary cannon. The Saron and ZOE actually sparked Matt Higby to complain on Twitter that "VS players only use a weapon if it's clearly overpowered" (paraphrasing), in response to entire battalions of Magriders annihilating anything in sight, with the VS often having more than 40% of the server population on the US East Coast servers. The Saron was eventually nerfed to deal less damage against infantry and fire slower.
  • The Terran Prowler tank was for quite a long time after release, a mobile infantry blender, especially when loaded with high-explosive cannons and the Lockdown ability. Twin-shot cannons which could one-hit-kill infantry with splash damage alone, which would fire even faster when locked down. Combined with a M40 Fury or the TR Marauder grenade launcher, and basically any infantry in sight would be turned into a fine red mist. The HE cannons were later nerfed to require two shots to kill, making it less ridiculous to fight against.
  • The New Conglomerate's coaxial Vanguard / Harasser gun, the Enforcer. It's a rapid-fire launch-assisted rocket, which hurls heavily damaging high-explosive rockets at extreme speed and with extreme accuracy. It is also fed by a ten-shot magazine. One magazine is enough to kill or critically damage any vehicle (aside from Galaxies) from effectively any range. The Enforcer is much more dangerous to any target than the 150mm main cannon on the Vanguard. Unfortunately for users of this gun, it has since been nerfed heavily.
  • The New Conglomerate Vanguard's Shield ability, especially in a 1 versus 1 Main Battle Tank scenario. The shield allows it to be completely invincible to any and all incoming fire for 5-8 seconds depending on rank. While the shield can be broken early, the enemy tank would need to spam both guns with perfect accuracy to even have a chance of doing so; and it typically isn't enough! Worse, the loss of time due to reloading just gives the Vanguard about 2 more volleys. It's pretty much a Xanatos Gambit button for any competent Vanguard crew. Even after being nerfed repeatedly, it's still a win-button in most cases.
  • The NC Phoenix is a terrifying murder machine in the hands of a skilled player, and even moreso in the hands of a skilled tank-hunting team packing several of them. The rockets are camera-guided, so the Heavies carrying them can shoot from behind cover and maneuver the missiles around cover to hit infantry or tanks and guide them in to hit aircraft. Sure, the infantry and tanks can take cover, but their cover needs to be such that they basically have to completely disengage from any line of sight on the area the missiles are being fired from. A good team of Phoenix-toting Heavies can thus negate an entire armored push simply by forcing them to hide from Heavies they can't shoot back at and whose missiles they cannot evade... and thus letting friendly tanks or other anti-tank infantry flank and take them out.
  • Not long after the release of Amerish in Planetside 2, the Liberator gunship received a sweeping set of buffs that made the already strong (but difficult to use) aircraft absolutely game-breaking, particularly in small fights. The Composite Armor upgrade was buffed to the point where a Liberator could tank the damage from two or more dedicated Anti-Air tanks and win, laugh off any ground-based weapon bar an anchored Prowler AP cannon, and it was still fast enough to flee anything slower than a fighter and repair with impunity. This effectively killed open field engagements because a single Liberator could wipe out an entire armor column. The Dalton belly cannon didn't even need to hit tanks to damage them, had enough splash to be useful against infantry, and could One-Hit Kill fighters with careful aim. Most of these changes were reverted a few months later and in some cases nerfed to be less effective than they originally were.
  • The Vanu Phaseshift sniper rifle used to be a joke of a weapon, its sole redeeming factor being its use of Overheating instead of requiring ammunition. Its charge-up feature was effectively useless, requiring the Infiltrator using it to stay out of cloak (and thus an inviting target for enemy countersnipers), and uncharged shots were woefully underpowered. After the January 12, 2017 hotfix, however, the weapon was changed to have a low-power, low-heat semi-automatic fire mode and a high-power, high-heat bolt-action one - which, like all bolt-action sniper rifles, was a One-Hit Kill on headshotting any non-MAX infantry. This on a weapon with no bullet drop (unlike other snipers) that will never run out of ammo. Can be taken up to eleven by installing a suppressor, which does shorten the rifle's maximum kill range to a still-respectable 240m. The only drawback the weapon has in this configuration is its Painfully Slow Projectile, with a travel time to maximum kill range of about 0.7 seconds - still enough to pick off careless hostiles and especially turreted Engineers.
  • The Pre-Nerf VE-S Canis, or more specifically its unstable ammo. The unstable ammo attachment made the projectile much bigger than a normal bullet, making it much harder for the user to miss their target. Said projectile, enlarged to attain an unnatural level of accuracy, also had the same 2x headshot multiplier as most projectiles as well. The outcome? A weapon that could EASILY land all headshots regardless of the user's skill. In the hands of noobs it became a nightmare, and in the hands of skilled players it became unbeatable. It was nerfed to near-oblivion in less than a week of its release, but players had farmed THOUSANDS of kills with the Canis beforehand.
  • The initial iteration of the Firestorm implant was More Dakka incarnate. The implant gave an 8% buff to a weapon's fire rate after your first kill, with a small cooldown. Imagine a GODSAW with a much higher rate of fire, or a Lynx that somehow fires even faster. Having this implant made you unbeatable against your opponents, and the community outcry was swift. It was later nerfed so that the implant also severely hurt your cone of fire bloom and recoil, which actually made it all but unusable outside of point blank range.
  • A glitch on PlayStation 4 allows someone to have the health of a MAX and the abilities of a Light Assault. The only way to kill them is with explosives.
  • The wraith cloak flash is seen by many players as blatantly overpowered. A flash with the right weapons (like the Starfall or Fury, another set of controversial weapons) can sneak up behind enemy vehicles and delete them, especially if the cloaked flash also has a decimator-wielding heavy riding along. It can also do a number against infantry thanks to the S12 renegade. What makes this particularly egregious is the cost. A flash is basically free at just 50 nanites, and won't even put a dent in someone's resources if they were to be killed. A 50-nanite vehicle can do the work of vehicles many times its size and cost. Some nerfs have mitigated the power of the invisible flash to an extent.
  • TR and VS players have always been angry at the strength of the NC MAX weaponry, due to their ability to instagib players at close range. NC players defend their MAX weapons having such power on the basis that as shotguns they're supposed to be good at close range, and also state that their shotgun-based weapons are useless at range. TR and VS players however argue that this range restriction is irrelevant since most of the meaningful combat interactions happen at close range, where shotguns would be overpowered. At one point, the NC MAX weapons also had slugs which extended their instagib range tremendously and got rid of the one thing even trying to keep them balanced. To this day, NC MAX shotguns are still fearsome at close range and have moderate power at a distance thanks to recent buffs by the devs.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Mosquito aircraft is very common (cheap, fast and easy to use) and sturdy enough to harass players who didn't bring anti-air weapons with them.
  • Infiltrators are designed to be this way in a strategic sense. A good, skilled Infiltrator's entire job is to harass, irritate, and frustrate the other side by hacking their turrets and terminals, planting mines deep in their base, sniping players who hold still for a few moments, light up enemy players for their team, flip objective points that aren't being guarded, and generally be a colossal pain in the ass for the other team.
  • Light Assault Troopers are this for many vehicles, especially Sunderers. Miss one jetpacking over to you and their C4 will be your end.
  • Spitfire turrets do chip damage that can become lethal if not dealt with, but that chip damage can end up helping an enemy get a kill. Multiple spitfires can also be deployed at once, and the robotics technician implant can give those shields if an Engineer is near them. These turrets also alert enemies to your presence.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Planetside 2 has a bug where if the the treads on the Prowler or Vanguard get hung up in the air, they have no RPM limit, causing them to spin at the speed of sound and produce an ungodly loud noise. If the tank is then rammed and has one of the treads (spinning at several times the speed of sound) touches the ground, the tank goes flying into the sky.
  • PS2 has an animation glitch which occasionally causes corpses to twitch violently up and down with their animation stuck in the "falling down" movement. When these players are revived, they will sometimes continue to twitch up and down and slide around on the ground, without any animations.
  • The "crazy legs" that accompanied the December 12th patch became an instant fan favorite. Then it got patched, to the disappointment of pretty much everyone. However, it still occasionally occurs on Light Assault troopers who are spamming their jetpack.
  • Equally amusing, and still around on occasion, is when a MAX gets revived but doesn't stand up on your screen, so there's a floating, dead MAX skating around on your screen, shooting things.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The biggest complaint towards directive weapons is that they have very little features that make them different from their default variants.
• Memetic Mutation: "What side?" "PLANETSIDE!" ...and countless others.
  • Vanu Jesus died for your tech.
  • "Do you have any batteries?"
  • The VS on Mattherson (particularly the GOKU outfit) have a tendency to spew "GINYU FORCE RULES!" when they capture a base or win an alert. Of course, the TR and NC mock them by spamming the same thing when a VS offense falls flat on its face.
  • "Bonus checks!" Generally shouted by NC players in victory, as the default thank-you voices mention "The suits should cut you a bonus check."
  • The New Conglomerate's penchant for teamkills - due to more newbie players and their weapons requiring less hits to kill - has caused them to become memetic teamkillers. A Reddit proposal for concept art of a Vanguard railgun would give the ability to two-hit kill any tank, but each shot would sacrifice a nearby NC. Other people then asked how the second part was different from the NC tanks in the first place. Another common joke is that the Vanu and TR don't actually fight the NC, but rather they just stand around while the NC kill each other.
  • Terran Republic players' penchant for complaining about their arsenal has lead to the "TR Victim Complex", where every change to the TR arsenal is a conspiracy to nerf the TR.
  • "No tank should immediately feel at a severe disadvantage in a tank battle because they chose a different primary weapon." ^ExplanationThis was Wrel's reasoning for the infamous Combined Arms Initiative. It was promptly met with near-universal ridicule, and spawned endless derivatives as a form of mockery to the original statement's line of logic.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Converting an Amp Station to your side rewards you with a ten second long powering-up noise.
• Obvious Beta: PS2 launched with a plethora of bugs. The game launched very poorly optimized unless you were on a very specific type of computer (Intel I5 processor with a Geforce graphics card) - players who had even more powerful systems but had AMD processors often suffered from terrible performance. Other major bugs appeared throughout beta and early release, such as players falling through the world, or the game not rendering enemies mere meters from you. While many gamebreaking bugs have since been fixed, the game remains questionably stable for many players, and optimization issues have been mostly ignored. At least until recently when the devs announced "Operation: Make Faster Game" which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. They have released a handful of videos on their YouTube channel discussing some of the issues and hiccups they're hoping to address.
• Paranoia Fuel: Infiltrators in general bring this about. Come to a stop for a moment to do something? You'll probably be sweating for the seconds it takes you to as you wonder if an Infiltrator is about to put a bullet through your head. Gets even worse with the Stalker Cloak option for Infiltrators, who can now go invisible and stay that way as long as they hold still. There could be an enemy Infiltrator right next to you, and you'll never know it unless you're packing a darklight flashlight attachment... or the Infiltrator grabs the Idiot Ball and starts marking targets, which announces their presence to anyone listening.
  • The possibility of running into mines if you lack the means to detect them.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Planetside 2 basically copies the vehicle handling from Battlefield 3. In short, vehicle wheels are basically welded onto the body, creating a bone-shattering ride which constantly shakes the screen in first person mode (which is the only way to get a crosshair or lock-on warnings) when moving faster than 15kph. The Flash and Prowler suffer particularly bad from this - the Flash has the driver totally exposed, and the gun can only be fired forwards, forcing the driver to come to a stop to reliably hit players. With the Prowler, its shape (very wide, but very short) causes it to smash into every bump on the road, without the mass or length of the Vanguard to cushion some of the impact; when combined with its speed and light armor, it is very hard to use on the move, especially on continents like Indar. The only vehicle which has a proper suspension setup is the Sunderer, instead has the suspension of a 1950s Cadillac land yacht - the body swings alarmingly from side-to-side from any kind of bump, and it's not uncommon to see Sunderers propped up against walls sideways because the suspension is so hilariously bouncy and squishy.
  • Thankfully, stabilized turrets were later added to vehicles. It's now possible for tanks to fire semi-accurately while on the move.
  • The flinch mechanic; unlike othe games when you have at least a window of opportunity to escape or counterattack when you're under suppresion fire, this game doesn't give you any: If you're being shot at, not only your movements became extremely slow, you rate of fire also is reduced and killing anything in that condition, let alone escape, is almost impossible. The only way to escape from such condition is either dying, waiting for another player to kill the culprit, so he could receive a "savior" bonus for helping you to escape from flinching or using a MAX unit, and even those units aren't completely inmune from flinching either. This also has a very nasty side-effect with priorities as well. as if you get shot first, chances that you will be killed first in 95% of cases, as your rate of fire will be reduced first.
  • Button delay: The game adds a half-second delay between when the eject button is pressed and the execution of the action. When this may not seem like too much but, due to the above mentioned flinching mechanic, this time increases exponentially to one second, and sometimes, when receiving a lot of enemy fire, it can increase to one and a half seconds, depending on many factors, which can cause many players to end up being killed before they can get out of their vehicles, even if they press the eject button in time.
  • The new Esamir storm. It was made by the devs to break up large fights and zergs, but it does this by gradually killing anything in its path. That's before mentioning the tendency for the storm to prematurely kill big fights that were fun (AKA the game's main selling point). It also induces framerate drops or outright crashes the game on Playstation 4. The only way to survive the storm is to either relocate or endure a grindy and tedious campaign to get storm-resistant gear. And speaking of which...
  • The campaign itself. Many of its missions consist of tedious and monotonous tasks that keep you from the action and are vulnerable to outside interference. Highlights include harvesting 50 plant cores, harvesting another 50 plant cores, and then returning to harvest 50 more plant cores. The rewards are insultingly pitiful, as the campaign standing you painstakingly acquire will buy you useless gear or mediocre cosmetics.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Vanu Sovereignty's Beamer pistol in PS1, which was hilariously underpowered, slow to fire, not particularly accurate, and had an incredibly obvious tracer. It had an armor-piercing mode which (as described by FPSGeneral) made it highly effective at being purple; and that's it. Being killed by this thing is tantamount to the worst form of humiliation ever.
  • The Terran Cycler rifle in PS1 was a nearly useless rifle. A saying goes that "NC cert Medium Assault to get the Gauss Rifle. VS cert MA to get the Pulsar. TR cert MA to get it out of the way for Heavy Assault". It was woefully underpowered, suffered from a huge cone-of-fire bloom upon taking any damage, and it lacked any real sense of "oomph". Terran players were better off taking the Suppressor sub-machine gun for longer-range engagements - it was more accurate, did basically the same damage at most ranges, and had more powerful anti-armor ammo.
  • Terran MAXes in both games get the Anchor/Lockdown ability, which greatly increases their rate of fire at the expense of not being able to move. In the first game, Terran MAX suits were built entirely around the lockdown ability—a Terran MAX would always lose a fight against a NC or VS MAX if they weren't locked down. This made them terrible for offensive attacks, but good at defending (like most Terran weapons). It was commonly said that the Terran MAX ability was to become a bigger target. Mostly averted in PS2, where the TR MAX is just as good as the NC and VS MAX when not locked down, though the ability is (generally) less useful than the ridiculous VS ZOE ability or the practical NC Shield ability. This has led to it being referred to in both games as "Sitting Duck Mode."
  • The TR Vulcan coaxial gun for the Prowler and Harasser. It seems awesome (Gatling gun!), but in every respect it is inferior to the VS and NC anti-vehicle weapons. The Vulcan is wildly inaccurate, being incapable of hitting infantry more than a couple meters away (and vehicles more than ~50 meters away), the magazine is tiny even when fully upgraded, the projectiles are slow, and it needs to be spun up before firing. It was eventually buffed to be more accurate and do more damage, though it's still nowhere near as broken as its VS and NC equivalents. And then it was nerfed back to being worse than the default gun - again - with the worst damage dropoff in the game - beginning at 10 meters (about 5 of which is used to reach the edge of the Prowler) along with a nerf to its damage and cone of fire.
  • The TR T2 Striker MLRS. Unfortunately overpowered when introduced, it is a 5 shot lock on only rocket launcher. It was the best anti vehicle weapon in the game: fire and forget lock on against both air and ground and 500m lock on range. After the nerf: you have to maintain the lock on, the lock on range is ridiculously low and the missile velocity has been decreased so a quick burst of afterburner gets the fighters out of range easily, leaving it as a mediocre choice against tanks. It was reworked and generally agreed to be another nerf. It has become a fully-automatic 6 shot dumbfired rocket launcher, whose missiles will automatically lock onto aircraft that get within 10 meters. While it seriously hurts fighters (two mags kills, almost no warning of incoming missiles), it has atrocious missile velocity, the longest exposure time to empty its magazine at an enemy, negligible splash damage, and has no guidance against tanks or MAX units.
  • The NC6 GODSAW, not to be confused with the NC6 Gauss SAW, has recoil so bad it is nearly impossible to hit anything, and cannot equip any recoil dampening attachments, due to its status as a directive weapon.
    • The GODSAW has since been buffed to have recoil akin to that of a Gauss SAW outfitted with all its' recoil reducing attachments. The GODSAW also has higher bullet velocity, better moving accuracy, and have been given the ability to deal a little damage to heavy vehicles at the cost of some ammo capacity. This has moved it into Difficult, but Awesome territory, which is more appropriate for a directive weapon.
  • The Magscatter was once this. With only 4 rounds per magazine, low RPM, and pathetically inconsistent damage even within its optimal 5 meter range, this sidearm was all but unusable. Thankfully it was buffed to allow attachments that would alleviate the aforementioned issues, turning it into the CQC powerhouse it was designed to be.
  • The MG-HBR 1 Dragoon. Its unique full-auto fire mode is worse than useless since it makes the Dragoon uncontrollable and will burn through its measly 8-round magazine. You can add 2 extra rounds to this magazine, but it’ll cripple its hipfire. Its explosive ammo attachment gives you weak splash damage after a 10 meter arming distance in return for requiring an extra direct-hit to kill. Unlike the other 3rd-gen Battle Rifles, the Dragoon lacks the wealth of attachments that can greatly bolster its performance. Worse still, discrepancies in how the game handles fire rate at different frame rates means that 8 rounds on full-auto from the Dragoon are the equivalent of 9-10 rounds from other faction Battle Rifles. Someone with a steady 60FPS can exceed the Dragoon’s damage output by at least 334 damage if they use the other 3rd gen battle rifles. What the TR ended up with is a statistically inferior battle rifle that can’t even pull off its own faction-specific traits correctly.
  • The MG-S1 Jackal. The devs were intending to make this weapon the TR equivalent to the infamous Cyclone SMG. However, the Jackal trades fire rate (which is key to being competitive with the Cyclone) for accuracy. At first glance the Jackal instead becomes a jack of all trades, but it’s outclassed by NS SM Gs in that very same role. In the end, the Jackal is good at nothing and out-done by the guns it was made to compete against. Its BX Adaptor (or Boomstick) is also a meme-tier attachment, and you’re better off without it.
  • Where should I start with the MG-A1 Arbalest? Its weak damage model forces you to burn through seemingly unnecessary amounts of ammo just to secure a kill. This means lots of reloads, but the gun has a slow reload time. The Arbalest’s unwieldy recoil at the best of times kills any ranged potential (which it was MEANT to have) and drives up its time to kill. That’s before mentioning that despite being a 6-round burst rifle, it has a poor fire rate. If you didn’t think things could get worse, attachments considered mandatory for use on the gun actually subtracts 6 rounds from your magazine and cuts your rate of fire! The Arbalest is everything a burst rifle shouldn’t be, and a failed alternative to the justifiably more popular SABR-13.
  • The MGR-L1 Promise was this from the start. Players expected a beefed up Gauss SAW that embodied traditional NC traits taken to its logical extreme. Instead, they got a gun whose stats ripped off VS traits. Even the LMG’s designer D0ku took a jab at the controversy, proposing that the gun be renamed the ‘Atlas’ and be the heaviest LMG in the game. Initially the devs called the gun the ‘Ballast’, but player derision caused it to be renamed the still-derided ‘Promise’. The Promise is currently a gun not only worse than most LM Gs across the board, but an inferior clone of the VS guns it tried to copy. Its mediocre DPS is a handicap in CQC and 1v1s against equally skilled enemies. Its increased accuracy during sustained fire isn’t enough to compensate its many downsides.
  • The MGR-C1 Charger. Its gimmick is the first 5 rounds hitting harder than the other rounds in its magazine, in an attempt to emulate the vaunted Cyclone SMG. The devs decided to balance this by cutting its magazine down to 25, which was ill-informed due to the lackluster damage model. Not helping matters is the fact that the charged shots don’t kill any faster than the non-charged shots unless you’re landing all headshots or hitting wounded targets. The Smart Feeder can give you 5 extra rounds to make your magazine size normal, but extends an already punishing reload time that players must endure if they want to start a firefight with charged rounds. A later buff made the first 7 rounds charged, allowing it to actually match the Cyclone’s power if you land all 7 shots. Unfortunately, its fundamental issues regarding the damage model and reload time weren’t addressed and the Charger is merely serviceable.
  • The Gauss Prime. The Gauss Prime’s high velocity ammo did nothing to boost its bullet velocity, instead only making the bullets drop 1 damage tier (which didn’t actually change its effectiveness at range) at a cost of increased recoil. It also has a compensator that slightly reduced its recoil but severely worsened its hipfire. The fore grip is the only thing that is actually a net benefit. It’s a lengthy process to auraxium 5 different A Rs, and the fact that your reward was a worse version of the default AR just added insult to injury. Later patches finally gave this gun increased accuracy and bullet velocity. The Gauss Prime’s 3 headshot-kill range and maximum damage range was cut by 2 meters however, a debatable tradeoff at best.
  • The NSX-A Muramasa earns its spot on this list. This rocket launcher fires its rockets one at a time, unlike the Masamune which fires all 4 at the same time. You need to direct-hit all 4 of these rockets on infantry if you wish to kill them, and be close enough to ensure a decent level of accuracy (which is required just to have a chance at hitting your enemy). Not even the glowing grey finish looks cool enough to justify getting it as a status symbol. To add insult to injury, you have to buy the NSO faction and play as them just to get this directive. Then you have to complete the rocket launcher directive for said faction, which is mind-numbingly difficult and tedious unless you buy the Decimator variants.
• That One Level: The cavern areas introduced in PS1's Core Combat, though some players have warmed up to them since their introduction. Like 'em or not, they do have some tactical importance, so a certain amount of spelunking is inevitable. PS2s more heavily contested territories also get this from some players, as they tend to be meatgrinders which put Operation Metro to shame:
  • Bio Labs, as they don't permit any vehicle or aircraft use in actually capturing the points. Even Sunderers are practically useless... unless they are parked at one of the surrounding bases next to the teleporter. Clever platoons and outfits actually use bio-labs as "pop traps" to draw in disproportionately large chunks of a continent's player population to fight over the lab, while other squads and platoons push other, more valuable bases while the the zerg is distracted fighting over the shiny labs.
  • Auraxis Firearms Corporation on Amerish, at least for the attackers. The only real route to access it, aside from a few narrow and exposed trails, is over a very long and easily-defended bridge. This turns most attempts to take it into brutally-long slugfests in which the defenders sit back on the base side of the bridge and mow down the attackers. The only thing that makes it less problematic is that the base sits fairly deep in the southern third of the map, so the only time it would come into play is if one of the other factions has pushed very deep into the defenders' territory. On the other hand, if the base is taken by an invader, the southern faction will have a bitch of a time retaking it and pushing north...
  • Abandoned NS Offices on Indar before it was removed. As the name indicates, its basically a few offices sitting out in the desert, between two large, well-armed and fortified bases. It also sits underneath hills that surround it to the west and south and open ground the the north and east. And it has no walls. What this amounts to is the base effectively becoming a no-man's land between the other two fortresses where the base is constantly being hammered by tanks on all sides and any attempt to reinforce or mass manpower on the offices to take them gets pounded by heavy weapons from the fortresses. If one faction manages to take the offices, they'll get pushed out or locked down by massed tank and heavy weapons fire almost immediately, turning any attempt to take the base into a lengthy, brutal slog. It has since been replaced by the much easier to assault Sunken Relay Station.
  • A double example for any attacker is the Quartz Ridge Camp and the Indar Excavation Site. The former is an multi level fortress with its back towards a mountain, the other an equally fortified tower in the middle of the desert, and between them there is nothing but a few empty buildings and a few large boulders. It's not uncommon to see neither being taken during an entire match because booth faction will just keep pushing back and forth.
  • Related to the above is the nearby Indar Comm. Array, which as per its name, is basically just an large radio mast situated on top of a mountain that can only realistically bee assaulted through a winding road on its south slope. Faction will many times just skip assaulting it outright in favor of going around it.
  • The entire continent of Hossin. As a swampy, jungle-like environment, vehicles become much more difficult to use. The ground, constantly broken up by trees and roots, is nearly impossible for inexperienced players to drive over to reach a good position in any reasonable amount of time, and the tree canopy blocks sight for any pilots hoping to strafe the ground forces. It's not a great time for the defenders, either, who have to protect installations by firing blindly into the treeline hoping they hit any besiegers. The attackers regularly use the massive foliage to surround bases in difficult to find Sunderers.
  • Subterranean Nanite Analysis was once this for Amerish. A multi-level subterranean laboratory, entry into the underground area could only be made through a pair of small hatches with gravity lifts (with the capture point one level lower and similarly chokepointed), leaving attackers no choice but to literally fall into the firing lanes of entrenched defenders, causing stalemates that stretched for hours without overwhelming attacker numbers of highly-coordinated MAX crashes. SNA became such a notorious meatgrinder that the developers eventually removed it completely.
  • Lithcorp Central is this in spades for attackers. To get to the base, you have to bring a sunderer along an uphill road. You can expect to be engaged by infantry lying in wait in the hills and mountains, mines on the road, and other enemy vehicles. If you survive getting past that point, you and your teammates will then have to climb a very steep incline while under heavy fire by the many defenders. The A-point itself is in a confined space with plenty of cover and angles that benefit the defenders. Lithcorp Central is a slog at the best of times, and effectively unwinnable without massive air support and population advantages.
  • By God is TI Alloys that one level. Attacking from any direction is a no-win situation. If you attack from The Crown, you need to fight your way across a land bridge with rough terrain. Said bridge has NO cover against enemy airstrikes, and hordes of infantry are waiting to tear apart any advance you make. Want to try and attack from the sides? Snipers and vehicles can shoot you from the side, so you have to make a frontal assault on a narrow bridge or try your luck with the C4-fairy tactic. You also have to bring sunderers on this bridge in order to maintain said assault, but on top of all the other obstacles you have to watch out for enemy vehicles that can shoot your sunderer from the metal bridge at TI Alloys. If you're attacking from Ceres Hydroponics, you have to make a massive uphill assault where the defenders are relentlessly shooting you from above. Attacking from the Allatum region requires a push across an open field, and then an assault against the front of the base that's guarded by tons of defenders, vehicles, and a base turret. All approaches are also vulnerable to orbital strikes that can wipe out your entire push and potentially even your supporting vehicles. Then you have to assault the interior of TI Alloys itself, which is a meatgrinder in its own right. The Shattered Warpgate update removed the land bridge from The Crown, but not even this would remove the hoops that attackers must go through.
• That One Sidequest: The annoyingly tedious task of harvesting plant cores in the campaign easily fits the bill for players. Tasks similar to this also qualify. It is lampshaded by FL-34 in the Sanctuary, who says 'You should've seen the look on your face!' shortly after he asks you to harvest said cores.
  • If you can get Auraxium medals for the flareguns (and their candy-corn or snowball equivalents), knives, and pistols with your sanity or desire to play still intact, you are one tough planetman.
  • The Valkyrie directive, due to the requirement for your crewmates to get 300 kills from their rumble seats. The devs were kind enough to add an option to avoid this by making you get roadkills with the Valkyrie instead.
  • Getting the Auraxium armor for the MAX required 1200 melee kills with it. While hard, this was easier when the MAX dash ability existed as you could use the speed boost to close the gap. With this ability having long-since been removed, this directive was a ball-buster. The devs threw players a bone by adding an option to get damage against vehicles, allowing them to bypass the MAX-punch kills.
  • Part of the requirement for getting Auraxium medic armor is killing other medics. This wouldn't be an issue if so few people played medic in the first place. Savior kills are also hard to come by.
  • The rocket launcher directive used to be extremely easy, as all dumbfire rocket launchers could 1-shot all enemies who didn't have flak armor. All you needed to do was be accurate and/or close enough to score a direct hit. The combined arms update nerfed rocket launchers so that only the Decimator could still 1-shot enemies without flak armor. The launcher directive has since become one of the hardest in the game. On an unrelated note, purchases for the black and gold variants of the Decimator (which count for the directive) soared...
  • Getting the engineer Auraxium is a particularly hellish directive. Have fun sitting idle on your situationally useful MANA Turrets or relying on your incredibly weak Spitfire turret to get the necessary kills.
  • The bounty directive used to be one of the hardest directives to complete, as putting bounties on other people cost Daybreak cash (only acquired by actually paying money). Many of the people who completed this directive boosted in order to obtain it, such was its infamy.
  • The Galaxy Auraxium is disproportionately rare compared to other vehicle Auraxiums for a good reason.
  • Getting the black camo for free is a top contender for the hardest directive in the game, since it'll require getting an Auraxium medal for knives, flare guns, and their holiday-themed variants.
  • Some directives are outright locked behind a paywall. You have to buy the appropriate weapons in expensive bundles in order to work on them and get the rewards.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Updates that dramatically change the game meta, continents, or bases are prone to receive this reaction. One example is the Combined Arms Initiative, which brought sweeping changes to vehicle combat and how vehicles and infantry interact. Another example is the Shattered Warpgate update, which heavily changed the entire map of Esamir and its respective bases. In both cases, player reception is polarized to say the least.

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