In the tutorial-free battles of the PlanetSide 2 beta you only get by with a little help from friends.

The ease with which you can be part of something huge, just hopping into a group, is genius.

Our Liberator class air-beasts spun around and around the giant spire of the enemy base.

Think of F11 as the BFF button: one press and it'll put you in a group with a squad of soldiers who will take a bullet for you (at least, if you properly position yourself to use them as meat shields). When PS2 goes into open beta, will you try to lone-wolf it or immediately sign up with a platoon?

F11 is the most important key in PlanetSide 2 . More important than shoot, or talk, or map, or that one everyone keeps pressing to kill me the second they see me. F11 is the key that makes PlanetSide 2 actually enjoyable. F11 is the key that fills in the hole where the tutorial should be. F11 is the insta-squad button.Being ornery, I tend to solo MMOs and shooters. But you can't solo in PlanetSide 2 -- not even a little bit, just to learn the basics. At most you can figure out what the buttons do, and then get shot and die. I spent days grumpily prodding at the grandest FPS I've ever seen, attempting to make my own way, before finally admitting that my usual tactic wouldn't work: in a world built for PvP you need backup, and in the tutorial-free battles of the PlanetSide 2 beta you only get by with a little help from friends.I started without friends, gaining access to the closed beta before everyone but PlanetSide veterans. (I am not technically a veteran, but I resubbed just to be part of pre-release party.) I joined the Vanu Sovereignty, perennial underdogs in PlanetSide 2's three-way battle for the planet Auraxis. I like their egalitarian viewpoint, and I look good in purple. I spawned and walked out into what appeared to be a full-scale military exercise. It wasn't. That's just how the spawn looks. Hovering dropships whined off into the gorgeous, purple-hued night while groups of infantry rushed about, some blasting around with jetpacks, others stomping around in ground-pounding mechsuits. It was an intimidating first glance: everyone seemed to be moving with a purpose, while I stood frozen in awe. I was grasped by the scale and the activity. It's huge and lively, an open world full of control points in continual flux, with 360-degree angles of attack. It drags you to and fro as you have to decide the most important place to defend or assault. I hadidea what to do.I wanted to play a part in this never-ending and ever-evolving war, but every attempt wound up in failure. Spawn, attempt to figure out what was needed, die, respawn, then not have a clue what the best place to attack was. The map is huge, and knowing where you need to be is an art in itself: even with the Instant Action button dragging me to any number of flashpoints, it was tough to make headway. Then I hit F11, as PlanetSide 2 was continually prompting me to do, and was placed in a squad with eight other players. Everything that was missing as a solo player filled in, and being in a squad helped make sense of a constant, continual, exhausting war: the group becomes the focus, either requesting backup at a control point that's being overrun, or gathering everyone together for a big assault. Or just running around together, asking questions. The ease with which you can be part of something huge, just hopping into a group, is genius. If it were me at SOE, I'd go one further and make auto-grouping a default that you opt out of. It could be based on proximity, or a mixture of seniority, but when you're part of an army waging a war, being lost in the shuffle is entirely detrimental. F11 saved me.My ability to enjoy PlanetSide 2 improved immensely with people by my side, because it shook me out of the confusion of having to decide what to do. I just followed. I headed to a waiting ship that was marked on the map and we took off to somewhere I've already forgotten with people I don't remember. But I'll never forget the action.Our Liberator class air-beasts (I was told) spun around and around the giant spire of the enemy base, moving as if caught in an invisible hurricane, bombing the hell out of the ground below. They were preparing the base for our gathering forces to invade (it was mentioned). Our Galaxy, basically a mobile spawnpoint (I was informed), dropped in below a ridge to hide from the base's static defences, and we all spilled out (I'd gotten it by now).I'm not going to say I didn't still die a lot, because I did. But it was the good kind of death: the kind where I made progress towards capturing each control point, and where there were times that I was dragged back to life by a medic. I'd die in service to the cause, a very Vanu trait I should point out, beside my purple brothers. We expelled the occupiers after an hour-long struggle. My first victory.A few days ago a friend was complaining about the beta on IM, telling me how he was struggling to have fun in the beta, how he was constantly lost and getting killed. "Have you pressed F11?" I asked.