How to Choose an Outfit

What is an outfit?

In simple words, an outfit is a clan or a guild – a concept commonly found in many MMO games. Planetside 2 is a game that relies on team play, so a faction’s success in the game is mostly dependent on the efficiency of its outfits. They come in many different sizes and skill levels. Some are casual, and some are competitive, but while many are very active and play together regularly, there are some that may be unorganized nowadays.

Some Planetside-specific words that you may encounter when learning about outfits:

Ops – a session of playing together, organized by an outfit. Usually, an evening once a week when leaders run a less casual platoon with the goal of capturing bases and winning alerts

Zergfit – a large outfit that can range from hundreds to thousands of members. Each faction on every server has a few of them and while some may provide a decently fun experience to a new player, players who have learned the basics should usually avoid this kind of outfit, since it doesn’t offer much more than a casual experience.

Midfit – a medium sized outfit of around 50-300 people. A bigger outfit may still be referred to as a midfit if it’s well organized and active.

Elitefit – a small sized outfit of around 20-80 people, which looks for already-skilled membership.

Why should I join an outfit?

Planetside 2 is a complex game, and while it is an enjoyable experience as a lone wolf, you can get so much more out of it when playing in a group – be it a tactical squad, a platoon dominating large fights or simply friends goofing around with the wide variety of mechanics that this game has to offer. Essentially, some of the best parts of this game are inaccessible to solo players. New features such as Bastion, outfit armory and Outfit Wars are only available to players in outfits. Playing with an outfit even allows you to get merit points, which you can exchange for cosmetic items in the Sanctuary (normally unlock-able only with DBC or as alert rewards).

Outfits can also offer you training and significantly help you improve your skills, not only by improving your survivability while playing in squads but also with expertise and knowledge that may be inaccessible elsewhere – this is especially important when trying to learn difficult playstyles like dogfighting or tank combat.

Where do I find an outfit?

The basic tool to look for an outfit is the in-game browser which you can find in the outfits tab in the game menu. This is where outfits provide their descriptions and where you can apply to join them. The outfit browser can offer you basic information on what outfits are currently operating on the server, their size, active members, and whether they are even open for recruitment. Ideally, however, you won’t pick an outfit based solely on reading their description, but after getting to know them first. There are multiple ways to learn about an outfit and they are not limited to only in-game interactions. 

While playing Planetside you can find information about outfits by:

• Personally, observing a particular outfit’s behavior – do they capture bases? Are many of their members active? What are their playstyles? Do you see them playing in organized groups or individually?
• Joining open platoons offered by outfits to see how they operate.
• Asking around – you can send messages to players from outfits that you’re interested in to get more information.

However, your best sources of information may be available outside of the game:

• This game’s community is centered mostly around r/planetside forum on reddit.com but there’s also each server’s own subreddit. Those are the best places to directly ask for outfit recommendations, tailored to your specific needs. 
• Discord is another great platform to get in touch with other players that you can find on the global PlanetSide 2 Discord server or Discord servers dedicated to specific PlanetSide 2 servers (Connery, Emerald, Cobalt, Miller, SolTech)- many of them even provide separate channels for outfit recruitment. Here you can expect to get the most reliable and insightful opinions about outfits.
• If any outfit provided their Teamspeak server address on the platforms that were mentioned above or in the in-game descriptions then it may be a good idea to simply join them and ask if you can play with them – most outfits will gladly play with anyone that wants to join.

Which outfit should I pick?

It’s important to know what you are looking for before you join an outfit since they specialize in different playstyles, have different skill levels, and sometimes require their members to have a competitive mindset.

If you are just looking for a casual or semi-casual group of people to play together with no particular need for training in a particular playstyle, then you just need to look for an outfit with an active player base and people that you connect with. Size and skill level are less important than a good atmosphere in this case.

However, you may wish to take part in some more organized operations, fly in a Bastion or drop with a platoon to win a large battle. If that’s so then you need to look for an outfit that organizes ops and is effective while doing them. This time you should probably find a midfit that is large enough to gather a few squads of players but not too large to become poorly organized.

Some playstyles like dogfighting, tank combat or competitive infantry play require finding an outfit that is specialized and has experienced players that can help you train and improve in playstyles that would be hard to master alone. In this scenario, you would probably be best off in a small, prestigious outfit that offers expertise in a particular area of the game. You may still find yourself a midfit that offers you those possibilities but in this case you definitely should avoid zergfits. 

It’s worth noting that some outfits may require you to achieve a certain level of skill to accept you, but very often good mood and willingness to improve will be enough. Also, if you wish to explore the game and work on your skills you may end up moving through a few outfits on your journey through Planetside 2.

Tip: remember that the bigger the outfit that you join, the smaller the chance to actively use features like Bastions or abilities like calling an Orbital Strike.