Planetside 2

[01101010]

Its obvious that the former will, but its also obvious that the former already exists.  So, PS2 should try to do something different, and well, and deal with the fact that they aren't going to sell CoD levels of boxes, rather than trying to be CoD + MMO and pleasing absolutely no one.

I believe we have been making the same argument with DIKU games. Everyone is willing to chase front runner and try emulating them as close as they can but try to wear a different mask. It's similar to going for the knockoff cereal rather than the name brand - technically it is cereal, but the flavor/texture is all wrong. Gaming companies have stagnated into chasing their own carrots rather than actually do something different/out-of-the-box. PS and the world war game are the only ones I know that attempted to make the shooter part a mechanic to a greater RTS war-style game where players were a unit of the whole. So SOE takes a chance, goes with the original idea behind PS and gets crucified as not paying enough attention to FPS players and solo-k/d artists, or they go with shooter first and skim down the war part to basic battle lines where killcounts > the war effort and get crucified by the PS veterans and slammed by FPS players for being just like the namebrand cereal but doesn't feel right.

SOE shows they are going with the second option so I fully expect them to implode in two months after (if) this gets released. A main glaring point that I feel is overlooked is the fact this is a PC game. No way you can keep a population up and gaining on a typical shooter when your primary competition is a full contingent of console shooters.

[Malakili]

Again, we're talking past each other.  I'm not trying to discuss what would be the most interesting or the best way to design the game.  I'm asking if this type of model can be a financial success?  I honestly thought that WWII Online would be massively successful... until I saw its implementation.  It's an incredible game with a very limited market.  I fear that PS2 will be the same. 

Well, it depends on what they need for a financial success.  If they are banking on millions of players, then I'm fairly certain they won't make a game I'm interested in playing.  If they aren't being stupid, and are making a game that can be successful with maybe 10% of that, then they can.  WWII Online is one of my favorite MMOs ever, and while Planetside 2 will need more subs than that (which I think it will, it isn't going to be anywhere near as niche as WWIIO regardless of which of these directions it takes), it can still really learn a lot from it, particularly its later life.   If you make a solid game that knows what its market is, you can have a financially successful game even with a relatively small player base.   If their financial plan is "we're spending a fuck load of money on this and hopefully CoD players like it" then frankly it literally doesn't mater what type of model they use, because they have already failed.

[Nebu]

I believe that some of this boils down to the psychology of today's gamer.  The larger the scale of any conflict, the smaller the impact of the individual.  People don't want to play a game where they're a pawn on the chessboard.  They want to be the hero.  If change occurs in their game, they want to play a pivotal role in it.  Few people have the ability to do what needs to be done to get the win for the team or play the unsung hero.  War requires many unimportant jobs to be carried out for the success of the overall plan to be ensured.  If you're going to get gamers to log on and play these roles, you're going to have to give them some reason to be happy with not being the QB of the team.  Clans have this built in.  Large scale wars will work fine for players that are already attached to a larger contingent.  The key will be in finding ways to attach players to those contingents without making them feel like temp employees at a corporation.  

Well, it depends on what they need for a financial success.  If they are banking on millions of players, then I'm fairly certain they won't make a game I'm interested in playing.  If they aren't being stupid, and are making a game that can be successful with maybe 10% of that, then they can.  WWII Online is one of my favorite MMOs ever, and while Planetside 2 will need more subs than that (which I think it will, it isn't going to be anywhere near as niche as WWIIO regardless of which of these directions it takes), it can still really learn a lot from it, particularly its later life.   If you make a solid game that knows what its market is, you can have a financially successful game even with a relatively small player base.   If their financial plan is "we're spending a fuck load of money on this and hopefully CoD players like it" then frankly it literally doesn't mater what type of model they use, because they have already failed.

This is SOE.  Do you think that they plan to have a successful niche title here?  I don't think they have the collective wisdom to develop a game for a small dedicated crowd.  I'm betting that they plan to swing for the fences... and that's precisely why I'm expecting to be disappointed by their implementation. 

[Malakili]

This is SOE.  Do you think that they plan to have a successful niche title here?  I don't think they have the collective wisdom to develop a game for a small dedicated crowd.  I'm betting that they plan to swing for the fences... and that's precisely why I'm expecting to be disappointed by their implementation. 

It seems unlikely, but then it leaves us all basically with the same conclusion: The game is doomed.

At that point we can talk about what we'd like to see in the game just on principle or just let the thread die...and well, I think we know which of those this community will do.

[01101010]

I believe that some of this boils down to the psychology of today's gamer.  The larger the scale of any conflict, the smaller the impact of the individual.  People don't want to play a game where they're a pawn on the chessboard.

This is primarily why I played PS, religiously, for 12-16 hours a day that summer. Because I could work behind the scenes and make an impact without having to be a star. Sure, I would have a crazy run now-and-then, but the most part, I was hacking towers 2 steps ahead of the battle and setting up defenses so we had spawn points and forward advancement points. Every so often, I'd get a tell thanking me for the AMS placement - but it was more about taking the base than the accolades. I know I am in the minority when it comes to FPS games, but that is why I played the hell outta PS.

[Malakili]

I believe that some of this boils down to the psychology of today's gamer.  The larger the scale of any conflict, the smaller the impact of the individual.  People don't want to play a game where they're a pawn on the chessboard.

This is primarily why I played PS, religiously, for 12-16 hours a day that summer. Because I could work behind the scenes and make an impact without having to be a star. Sure, I would have a crazy run now-and-then, but the most part, I was hacking towers 2 steps ahead of the battle and setting up defenses so we had spawn points and forward advancement points. Every so often, I'd get a tell thanking me for the AMS placement - but it was more about taking the base than the accolades. I know I am in the minority when it comes to FPS games, but that is why I played the hell outta PS.

Yeah, this is the reason the aforementioned WWIIO and EVE are 1 and 2 for my favorite MMOs I've played.   Maybe this also explains my propensity to play healers even in DIKUs.

[Mrbloodworth]

I got 5$ on medics will be tossing out packs on the ground. Also, ammo will never be an issue.

[Engels]

I alternated between solo play and squad play in PS1. I don't think solo play was a failure, if you were actually paying attention to the greater picture on the battle field and picked the right role for whatever was needed at the time. Yes, of course group play was more productive, but even as a solitary grunt amid the firefights you were still part of a 'team effort' unless you were being willfully blind and just did whatever you felt like.

In that sense, sure, PS1 didn't reward solo play. At the same time, do I really want to play a multiplayer game that rewards ononastic narcissism?

[01101010]

I got 5$ on medics will be tossing out packs on the ground. Also, ammo will never be an issue.

I got $5 that you and I will never play this game.  

[Nebu]

This is primarily why I played PS, religiously, for 12-16 hours a day that summer. Because I could work behind the scenes and make an impact without having to be a star. Sure, I would have a crazy run now-and-then, but the most part, I was hacking towers 2 steps ahead of the battle and setting up defenses so we had spawn points and forward advancement points. Every so often, I'd get a tell thanking me for the AMS placement - but it was more about taking the base than the accolades. I know I am in the minority when it comes to FPS games, but that is why I played the hell outta PS.

I'm with you and Malakili as well.  I was very attracted to WWIIO for this reason.  I like to be a cog in the machine.  I also agree that we are in the minority, though maybe the minority is bigger than I originally thought.  

I'd love to see PS2 turn out to be a great game.  I'm just losing my faith in expecting gaming companies to produce the kind of games that I'd enjoy.  They're after $$$ and I can't blame them for it.

[Trippy]

Planetside was balanced. It was a horizontal progression, there was no power increases*.

There is/was for commanders. Which is why when I played people in your own faction would get all pissy at you if you captured bases in an efficient manner.

[Engels]

I guess that I'm a bit puzzled by SOE if the doomsayers are right; why even call it PS2 if they are going to entirely ignore the original game's player base. Why not call it Battlefield of Duty : SOE Bad Company

[Malakili]

SOE Bad Company

 

[HaemishM]

Sub fee is not an issue for PS2. Stop bringing it up. Its about the only sensible thing about this design. Its the number two issue for many that tried the game, the #1 issue was responsiveness, compared to smaller session based games. The overall design was not the issue. Fodder system proved this.

Except when the fodder program ended, I still didn't see any fundamental shift in the number of subs for the game. Free brings lots of punters, but without microtrans, they didn't stay to pay.

Battlefield is about Soloists and personal kill counts.

You are wrong and your biases are showing.

[01101010]

Battlefield is about Soloists and personal kill counts.

You are wrong and your biases are showing.

He might have been a bit off, but there is a big fuck difference between winning a map in a timed event and moving an evolving battlefield over the course of a few days to a week.

[Mrbloodworth]

Planetside was balanced. It was a horizontal progression, there was no power increases*.

There is/was for commanders. Which is why when I played people in your own faction would get all pissy at you if you captured bases in an efficient manner.

What, the orbital strike? You know they nurfed the time on that so many times. Beyond that, you know WHY people got pissed if you capped a base efficiently? Because they were kill whoring. #sessionbasedmentality

You are wrong and your biases are showing.

I'm not. The games design is to reward solo play. Team work is possible, and powerful, but that's a rarity. Only time you see really tight teamwork is on private servers. Every other server is about kills, points, and Rambos and now XP.  The Design of those games is 100% geared to solo users. There is not one thing that requires cooperation pof more than one user. Stark contrast to games like Planetside, and even ET:QW.

Sub fee is not an issue for PS2. Stop bringing it up. Its about the only sensible thing about this design. Its the number two issue for many that tried the game, the #1 issue was responsiveness, compared to smaller session based games. The overall design was not the issue. Fodder system proved this.

Except when the fodder program ended, I still didn't see any fundamental shift in the number of subs for the game. Free brings lots of punters, but without microtrans, they didn't stay to pay.

The point it proved is not that they were going to convert people. But that the monthly fee was a huge, if not number one factor to acceptance.

[HaemishM]

I guess that I'm a bit puzzled by SOE if the doomsayers are right; why even call it PS2 if they are going to entirely ignore the original game's player base. Why not call it Battlefield of Duty : SOE Bad Company

Because the Planetside IP was always a favorite of John Smedley's, and he's convinced a group of someone's that the IP still has marketability.

[Ghambit]

This is primarily why I played PS, religiously, for 12-16 hours a day that summer. Because I could work behind the scenes and make an impact without having to be a star. Sure, I would have a crazy run now-and-then, but the most part, I was hacking towers 2 steps ahead of the battle and setting up defenses so we had spawn points and forward advancement points. Every so often, I'd get a tell thanking me for the AMS placement - but it was more about taking the base than the accolades. I know I am in the minority when it comes to FPS games, but that is why I played the hell outta PS.

I'm with you and Malakili as well.  I was very attracted to WWIIO for this reason.  I like to be a cog in the machine.  I also agree that we are in the minority, though maybe the minority is bigger than I originally thought.  

It's not that any of us are in the minority, it's that previous iterations of these designs didnt have the hardware/bandwidth to do what they were supposed to do.  Alongside that, they had to compete with a burgeoning DIKU market as well as a next-gen simFPS market.  Since both games live/die on the backs of their playerbase (there are no npcs and questie quests to do), if the playerbase doesnt consolidate around 1 game then the game dies.  Simple as that really.

So, what will get people to stick with the game?  They need to bring the grande strategy of ww2o and combine it with the smoother easy-to-play non-sim approach of ps1.  And that's it really.  All the other stuff is near meaningless (animations, cycler stats, etc.).  Beyond the former though, they're gonna HAVE to get used to regular content updates, namely which include changing the battlespace.  There's nothing worse then fighting for the same ground day in and day out.

Higby said they're combating this by utilizing terrain more than "points of interest" so that all that varied ground actually means something and can be useful, but it wont be enough to simply do this. (as ww2o has proven, no matter how big and usable your terrain is... people WILL get bored of fighting the same campaign).  They're gonna have to find interesting ways to change-up what people are fighting for.

I'd like to know also how they intend to combat playerbase fluctuations.  If an FPS game is devved for "x" amount of people and they get "y," they're gonna have to have an easy way of modding the game to accommodate the change.  WW2O lost a huge chunk of their playerbase when it took them the best part of a year to change the way the game worked...  no one wanted to play with the impending change looming overhead.  It was like raising a farmful of pets in SWG before they were killed off in the NGE/CU.

So PS2 needs to do all this more smoothly.  I know I'm not gonna get my sim-oriented scifi MMO, but I'm cool with that as long as I'm given a larger reason to keep playing.  And that's killing other people for kudos and taking their shit.  

[Ghambit]

Oh, and I wanna nuke from orbit, scribble on maps, and yell at other squadleaders and stuff and shit.   

[Nebu]

I'm also wondering how you combat the 3am attack strategy in these games.  War is all fine and good if your teams are playing 24/7.  What happens when your player population ebbs and flows like it does during work hours, prime time, and during school breaks?  How do you minimize the impact of these things so that players don't feel like the ground they gained in the last week was all lost in a 1h long, 3am raid?  

[Mrbloodworth]

You don't when it only takes one guy sitting on a flag.

/snippy

[Ghambit]

I'm also wondering how you combat the 3am attack strategy in these games.  War is all fine and good if your teams are playing 24/7.  What happens when your player population ebbs and flows like it does during work hours, prime time, and during school breaks?  How do you minimize the impact of these things so that players don't feel like the ground they gained in the last week was all lost in a 1h long, 3am raid?  

The only true way is server globalization.  You'll have your eurasia crowd that'll pick up the slack offpeak but obviously that means delocalization and ping issues.  This is why I really didnt care much about big hitboxes, because the reality is to make your wargame FPS truly "global" in a net architecture, you'll pretty much HAVE to have them.

Anyways, typically your command lvl stuff would always include a european contingent to make sure you didnt get rolled overnight e.g. you'd coordinate with overseas people before logging off.  At least, if your side was smart.  In this sense, it's really not up to the developer to try and micromanage the off-peak outcome.  Let the players do it.

The other way is metering attack orders, which I've already gone into at length in the thread.  Your AOs would be determined by how much player resource you have available at the time.  Don't have a lotta people on?  You don't get to issue that many AOs.  SOE hasnt said yet if they're going to institute this or not; I'm betting they wont.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm also wondering how you combat the 3am attack strategy in these games.  War is all fine and good if your teams are playing 24/7.  What happens when your player population ebbs and flows like it does during work hours, prime time, and during school breaks?  How do you minimize the impact of these things so that players don't feel like the ground they gained in the last week was all lost in a 1h long, 3am raid?  

IME Primetime Planetside was where the interesting stuff happened, Planetside After Dark was people picking apart the lattices and territories that Primetime left behind. PS was great at giving you goals, not necessarily having a persistent battlefield.

[shiznitz]

I have never played CoD and BF.  Do those games have your gear visible?  If so, then if SOE is trying to tap that market, it makes even less sense to abandon it.  Do those games have vehicles?  If so, do they have animations?

[Sky]

Last I played BF, you just popped into and out of vehicles.

[Ghambit]

In an FPS, most of the time you wont be able to see yourself getting in/out of things anyways.   

[Mrbloodworth]

Not in PS. A Cinematic cam was used. This played to the immersion factor, creating a sense of ownership with that vehicle. Onlookers also would see you. This made it so pooping into a vehicle was not instant protection. The problem with lack of them, also means you will likely be able to press 1-9 to switch around in seats instantly. Something you can't do in Planetside one. The Bail mechanism also ensured that in some cases, you could not just jump out to avoid death, as it could malfunction depending on the damage sustained.

http://artbyniraj.blogspot.com/2011/03/planetside.html

It was an extremely important element to pacing, and the team play aspect of the vehicle designs.


Sturmgrenadier Planetside Video

Black Widow Company PlanetSide Teamwork Video

DRUCKWELLE Planetside Teamwork Movie

 

[Speedy Cerviche]

I don't think it's a big deal... Outside of the small # of hardcore PS1 players I doubt many people care.

[Ghambit]

I care, deeply so.  I'd love to have it... but it's not what's going to get people to keep playing the game.
What I'd really like are high-res functional cockpits with TrackIR support, but gl with that request in a sci-fi MMO.

Tbh, the best military "MMO" in a hardcore sim-sense was and still is Falcon4.0 (after fanmade patches).  And it's not even an MMO.  How sad is that?
If someone wanted to, they could fire up a robust Falcon server and entertain a few dozen folks indefinitely in a neverending dynamic coop campaign.  Complete with changing theaters, materiel, enemies, etc.  You could even link the theaters to a global strat. map and go even further.
God I miss those days.  

[Mrbloodworth]

Taken individually, it may not seem like much. But together those things are part of what made Planetside unique. Its a big part of why people are so attached to the game.

[Slayerik]

I really do feel that the lack of vehicle animations does hurt this game. Part of it was the rush as you were repairing your magrider, and you saw that goddamn reaver coming in over the horizon.

FUCK FUCK FUCK GET IN GODDAMNIT

BA DOOM BA DOOM BOOOOM BOOOOOOOOOOM    DEAD


EDIT: And let me add that another thing that separated the good tank drivers from the bad was finding some tree cover to do repairs. All little things that made Planetside fucking awesome in my book. For 3-6 months anyway.

[Surlyboi]

I don't think it's a big deal... Outside of the small # of hardcore PS1 players I doubt many people care.

You keep saying dumb shit, why?

[Venkman]

Solo Planetside sucked. But it kinda needed to. They really didn't have enough to sink it into clever AI scenarios that mimic'd real world game play. I actually remember soloing not being all that bad if you were smart enough to watch what others were doing, didn't embarass yourself so they invited you in, and then paid attention to chat.

If you weren't willing to try and fit in, you weren't really right for the game. And besides, there's a whole other genre for you anyway.

huh? This is the hardcore mindset of someone playing a small/elitist game where everyone is a vet player...

Everyone else already responded, but let's be clear:

PS1 was multiplayer game by default. It wasn't a single player MMOG slapped with a multiplayer label and a few group-required content gates until you reached the rinse/repeat endgame. And it wasn't an FPS match where the only persistent thing was whatever XP you gained between worlds that ceased to be at the end of the fight.

Every fight was against a person, including anything they might have left behind. There was no soloing in PS1 in the way you would think of soloing in WoW. In WoW, nobody gives a shit when you took out some NPC rat. In PS1, there were no rats.

If you want to call that elitist play, you're misunderstanding the concept.

[Ingmar]

When I said "solo" I was talking about "guy who logs in and doesn't have a guild or set group of people to play with". Can he hop on a transport somewhere and go shoot dudes and have fun without just getting constantly rolled? If he can't, game is dead. The end.

EDIT: Essentially it needs to be possible for someone to play like a pubbie in TF2 if they want anything like a big success. The structure has to be there to enable those people to have some amount of success.

[Malakili]

When I said "solo" I was talking about "guy who logs in and doesn't have a guild or set group of people to play with". Can he hop on a transport somewhere and go shoot dudes and have fun without just getting constantly rolled? If he can't, game is dead. The end.

EDIT: Essentially it needs to be possible for someone to play like a pubbie in TF2 if they want anything like a big success. The structure has to be there to enable those people to have some amount of success.

There is no way to achieve this without either 1) Lots of servers ala TF2 that allows you to leave a server where some really good people are rolling you or 2) you have some kind of matchmaking/ranking system.   PvP in an open world MMO isn't balanced around the individual.  This is probably why it has historically done kind of poorly, but this is also why I say they should go for a smaller budget smaller pop game and do it right rather than spending a lot of money on something that isn't going to work. 

But, we've had that discussion already.  I agree with you for the most part, but I think I'd actually take it a step further, EVEN IF you can "solo" as you've described it(which I think is impossible, but for the sake of argument), the game is still hosed, because it still wont' be as good an experience for that kind of player than the other session based games anyway.  By definition these types of players don't care about the features that separate PS from those games, so that certainly isn't going to keep them around.