f13.net

I did a search, could not find the thread this was originally posted in, and i dont think it was a Panetside thread anyway.

Anyway, some new and old developments:

The official anouncement e-mail contents:

Some details:

Smeeds take on the original:

Reply to some comments that also hint at things....



Smed is ether just regurgitating what Planetside players have said for years, or, he really does get some of the reasons why it was said for years. Needless to say, this is exciting to anyone who enjoyed plantside.

I hope they're ready for a bunch of 300 page threads about how much lattice sucked.

It's not really that hard to type "Planetside", is it?

Maybe they're pre-emptive puns?

Pan-it side: After the reviews come out.

Plant side: after this iteration goes face down.

My bad.

I'd totally play Plants vs. Zombies Side.

Meh. The lattice was basically a reaction to the rampent back-hacking that was becoming a problem IIRC. It also seemed to force the battles down a certain predictable path which was kinda shitty, but it also gave rise to gen camping which was almost a type of spec ops mission in itself, sabotage.

 The LLU however.... yeah that sucked almost as much as BFRs and the disco caves.

No BFRs? Awww. Why not just make the entire game around BFRs? Then they could call it Planetside: Mechwarrior. :P

Not to derail, but before lattices, front lines did not happen. There is another MMOFPS that also uses this type of a system, it is slightly different, but it is used to create the same effect. In short, I do not agree the lattice system was "sucky", but I also played during the time it did not exist. Will they even need them in Planetside 2, who knows.

There was a suggestion that somewhat changed it from a lattice system, to more of a logistics system, even though the lattice did transfer connected bases specials to other bases.

I wasn't a Planetside player myself, but a good chunk of people I know played it and universally despised the lattice thing - my understanding is that it is sort of the Trammel of PS.

Not even. Its gave focus where there was NONE.

I think eliminating back-hacking and requiring territory control to only take place on contested fronts (or some similar mechanic to prevent lone hackers) would be a huge step forward. Keep everyone in the action and not have to worry about some ghost town outpost.

Well I started the game as an adv hacker cloaker and I can say that I was very happy about the lattice when it was put in. Before, I was atving over to back bases to attempt to either throw a random hack on to pull opposing forces away or to save a owned base from a back hack. The lattice provided a ton more focus and really resulted in some of the best battles in the game by providing one front - till the VS fucks on Johari figured out how to make bases go neutral.

That other bonus of base "abilities" being shared down the completed circuit was pretty nice as well in giving more importance to some bases (interlink OP!) but screwing the other ones out of any reason to go there (amp stations). I see your point in the lattice was shitty in that it was a tad too constrictive, a wider network might have worked with more connections... and god damn all of you making me reminisce.

Link (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=17457.msg710503#msg710503)
Also contains the contents of their survey under the spoilertag.

That's cause they were too stupid to understand it (people attacking bases that couldn't be capped was always a :facepalm:).

My impression was they didn't want to be locked into the 'zerg'. Former DAOCers mostly.

I hated how the "generals" or whatever they were called (BR5s?) got to where they were by catassing.  No idea on what a better system would look like.

I will at least give this one a shot.  When is release?

Even with the lattice system there were still multiple bases you could attack at any time.

Another part of the problem is that any given time, the experience for one side was directly related to the successes and failures of your side versus the other sides. It was possible to login and have things be extremely shitty and to login other times and things be like manna from heaven.

And other techniques to open a front.

Pretty much described any public FPS server.

Agreed, but in PlanetSide the effect was many orders of magnatude greater. In a 12 on 12 match, really good individual players can make up for half their team bieng crap. Not so much in 120 vs. 120 engagements ala PlanetSide.

Your right. It was the 12 that came in and did all the work while the other 240 were clashing.

God just killed a kitten. 

Sorta true... until you had 6 people trying to hack a terminal or CC without any skill points only to have a jackhammer or MCG come in and wipe out everyone.  :awesome_for_real:

Finally? (http://www.massively.com/2010/04/30/planetside-reveals-tantalizing-countdown-timer-sends-fans-into/)

My old WoW guild would be freaking out in chat right now if they haven't already headploded.

I imagine quite a few people got started with MMO's on Planetside.

"YES!"

I loved trucking my squad around in Planetside. The game had a hundred flaws but at its peak it was incredibly fun to play. I am very much looking forward to this!

Fuck Searhus man...  :why_so_serious:

In regards to a PS2... I doubt it. Probably some sorta re-bending bullshit and the release of a "Hey we now have a team -thinking- about the next Planetside and doodling stuff for it. See you in 10 years." You can call me a tad skeptical.

What are the odds that the big red button is marked "Cancel Planetside"?  :why_so_serious:

Didn't they do a big run-up to something last time and it ended up being a giant let down due to new vehicle, failed fourth race insertion, and other clusterfucks?

PS with Battletech skins done on WW2O scale.  This. Is. What. I.  Want.
Honestly though, 'twerent for SWG, PS would've done MUCH better than it did.  Everyone left to go be a Jedi, it's that simple.

I ran into this problem with World War II Online sometimes (insert WW2O jokes here, whatever, I liked it and I played it, and I go back from time to time).  You just have to find enjoyment in a variety of things.  As long as you have SOMETHING to defend, you're generally able to play, though I do believe its technically possible to have this not happen in planetside, I think most of the time there is something to do that can be fun.    In any event, in a game like this, the good SO MUCH outweighs the bad in my opinion.

The key, just like in WW2O, is having a strong and deeply involved Command Structure.  So, even if you're burnt out on everything else you can at least get involved on a strategic level.  Some guys are just "weapons" though and want nothing to do with command.  I used to roll with 1 dude that was the 2nd best infantryman in the entire game... to the point the Germans tried to recruit him heavily with all kinds of perks.  He wanted nothing of it and just enjoyed sitting there night after night sniping entire squads of Axis.

Both games (PS and WW2O) have plenty of ways to prevent the maps from being rolled, but that's at the command levels.  The regulars just lose morale and give up when they lose a bit of turf; which then it's up to command to counteract that.

PS had a bit more trouble pulling all of this off though because you could roll an entire map (to the point of making the game pointless) in one evening whereas WW2O it took weeks if not months; a few well-timed strat. bombing runs could shift the tide.  Time and time again people wish PS had WW2Os expansive play... then you'd have a serious MMO.

Really, the only reason I stopped playing was because I was tired of the European theatre, if not WWII itself.  And I had to stop playing PS because there were just no people for my high lvl commander to order around.   :awesome_for_real:

The old saw Darniaq and I used to use was that it would've been amazing if they could've put PS action into SWG's world. I didn't play ww2o long, I was in Lum's taxi to victory club there, but the command structure sounds interesting. Though it'd be hard to do worse than PS's command structure.

I'm definitely there for a Planetside 2, and definitely not for anything else they announce :)

Link is blocked at work.

What's the release date?

Timer doesn't finish countdown for another 13 days.  :oh_i_see:

So I should plan on playing Wow for another 6 months.

At least.

I think I just tied this thread to "the thrill is gone" thread.

If I can't play the game, I just play the one I can.  It wasn't always like this.

I think so too.  If you're an MMO fan like I am, you play WoW until you get bored and then either a) dance among the lesser titles out of boredom or b) quit playing MMO's until you feel like resubbing to WoW for another stint.  There's really nothing out there worth the energy as far as the MMO market goes.

I'm the same but sub in EQ2. Still can't get past the $60 to play WoW again, plus the monthly. I guess when you have a bajillion subs you don't worry about barrier to re-entry.

I pretty much posted the same thing in that thread in my big post.  New MMOs have to not only be good enough in their own right, they also have to have some element that is going to make you want to go through all the new MMO growing pains (both the game, and personal), by which I mean both the game maturing, as well as re-leveling, getting involved with a new community, and so forth.  I've tried to join communities in every MMO I've tried, but in the end most of them end up disintigrating in a month or so, and then I'm left feeling no particular reason to stay and slog through the game.

Found this on the PS site from the SOE Community relations guy:

All your hopes are dashed!!! Muahahaha.
My vote is that they're moving to F2P, at which point I shall "resub."

Dicks

I was going to tell you guys that, but, i didn't want to believe it myself. That counter is only for the anniversary.

Personally I hope they announce it as a FTP title, or they bring back the fodder program, or more modern engine.

Make it free...make it free...........then I'll try for a final PS push with some friends and f13ers.

And I'll be parking the AMS right in front of the main door to whichever base we need.  :why_so_serious:

F2P would be fun. Doing it at the beginning of summer is not fun.

If its F2P you can count me in on any F13 shenanigans.

I'd play it again for free.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=19187.0

If anyone wants to roll with ole Slay as Vanu, post other there por favor.

I'm a well established TR high rank, I will not join you :p (maybe I will)

I never tried planetside, was it good?

That's a rather subjective question.  I didn't care for it, but as you can tell, enough people here thought it was decent. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8GJUfhyLCA


I will stab you with bullets.










We really need to stop talking about Planetside, you are getting my hopes up.

Looks like the F2P vibe is most viral on the gaming sites.... now that most know it's not gonna be about PS2 or the server shutting down.
I figure they could look forward to at least doing as well as Global Agenda if they went F2P, especially if they're smart enough to parlay that into PS2.

If it IS indeed F2P I really hope they use the microtrans to push more strategic level play.  i.e. You get awarded RMT for rolling the map, etc.  To me, that'd be an ingenious way to give weight to the game - especially since campaigns typically dont last very long.  I remember long ago the game was practically nothing but organized xp zergs between friendly factions. (granted, the map was much smaller then)

Heh, I remember when my little brother discovered PS long after I'd quit and the server went quiet.  Damned game practically ruined his life.  He got caught up with some hardcore military types evidently... they took no prisoners.

It had more potential to be good than anything.  I played it with an f13 crew for a bit and found it to be fun in short bursts, though I never really understood what the hell I was doing.  

I rather enjoyed most pure FPS games a lot more (BF 1942 is still my fav).  Persistence didn't seem to do much for the game in my limited contact with it. 

I actually preferred WWIIOL to this title. 

I wonder what PS would be like if the zones werent "sharded" by gates (to prevent gatecamping) and if the world itself was seamless and much much larger.  Also, it might be nice to have only 2 factions.

No god damn you... NO!

And I am with Blood on this, TR was it; however...

And yes Planetside was that good, at least from late April till July. Quite possibly the best summer I ever had in gaming, considering I was unemployed and could literally waste 16hour days playing.

One of the very best parts of PS was when you were having some gaint slugfest between two factions and suddenly the third faction comes rolling up out of nowhere and throws in ye olde monkey wrench. Hell, that was the best part of our old LAN deathmatch games, informal teams would form and you'd always get a rogue faction that would break up the monotony of the duality. How many times have you been on a 2-team game server where one team is just dominating, people jump to that team, etc? Three teams mitigates that and I can't believe more games haven't gone to the three-team format.

I was employed when PS came out, but single with tons of gaming time and weed. The Station Pass with SWG (shush), PS and EQ2 was a good deal back then.

Plus, it always gives the loser an excuse,

"Man, we were tearing it up till the damn Smurfs showed up!" was a common thing you would hear after getting your ass kicked off a continent. Noone likes to just lose normally, it's better to lose to uncontrollable shit like that :)

I have absolutely no idea what makes people think this.

In an RvR game 2 is always always always the wrong number of teams.

While I'm not sure giving people an excuse when they lose is a good thing, at all, I agree that in any large-scale pvp game, having only two factions is insane.  There should always be at least three armies on the field.

WW2O has always been 2 factions, always will be.  It works fine and wouldnt work any other way.
The problem with 3 factions is it puts the game into a bit of a "diceroll."  Similar to playing risk with an odd number of people, the game devolves into guesswork on whether or not a lesser faction interferes and/or diplomacy.

And in PS's case, there just arent enough people to even fill out 3 factions (the game in its current state is nothing more than squad-level play).   Let alone on a bigger gamespace... which is what PS has always needed.  And having more than 2 factions muddies the waters when it comes to actually "winning" the map.  Who/how does actually win?  You can never truly win because there's always the 3rd wheel there.

I prefer one giant RvR game of chess, with guns.  Chess only has 2 players.

Sport VS. Simulation.

WW2OL has a logistics and front line system, Plantside is more of a sport actions game.

WW2O, while one of my favorite MMOs, is probably a bad example to use because it is SO vastly different than any other MMO I've played, its hard to apply what works there to any other MMO.

I don't know, maybe because every significantly popular competitive sport currently played is based around two teams?

Football, baseball, chess, rugby, soccer, whatever. Once you add more than two groups, any concept of 'fair play' gets shot to hell and you have too much variance. It becomes more about luck than 'may the best man win'.

The solution to having one side getting beat in an rvr mmo is to actually let the side get beat. Let them get wiped out, then reset the world. What's the point of having the sides fight if nobody can win?

Well, I think you've hit upon the important point.   What do you want more a "competitive sport" type game, or a huge battlefield simulator.  One tends to offer even matches, more fair games, and well, as you said, competition.  The other tends to offer gameplay that can be frustrating if it goes badly for you, but has the potential for insanely epic moments and stories that you literally end up telling for years.  "Remember that time we were dug into our last bunker, and X was attacking us, but then we heard the roar of Y's bombers coming, ducked our heads, only to realize they were carpet bombing our enemy!  We seized the moment, rushed from our positions and routed the enemy!"  Of course, you "pay" for those moments when you get similar moments on the other side of the equation.

Pretty much everyone has read the epic battle story from Planetside thats been circulating forever now.  I think it was even linked in this thread.  I think a "competitive sport" balanced game would not offer those kind of moments, and its those kind of moments that are going to make me want to play a game like this. 

Y's bombers could just as easily be another guild on your side of a 2 realm war. I'm just pulling this out of thin air, as I don't play it, but I'm sure WWIIO has plenty of stories like that, and it's basically just one side versus another.

All of which have very specific numbers of players on the field at all times.  If you like battlegrounds, fair enough.  If you like open-ended conflict, then the concept goes right out the window.

It has great moments, yes, but its not a great example to use, it has a number of systems in place that fans of the game love, but that wouldn't go over well with the general gaming population (hence why its so niche probably).  Those "unpopular" systems are actually in a large part what leads to those fantastic moments (and plenty of dull, sitting around guarding an objective for an hour and not much happens moments too).  I mean, its just a really very different game than a standard 2 sided RvR game, and while we can get into discussing it, its probably better to bump the WW2O thread to do it (maybe patch 1.31 is finally coming soon, I always did say I was going to go back to that game when they released the patch, but that was like 6 months ago now :))

Anyway, I think a game like Planetside and lots of normal RvR type PvP MMOs would benefit a lot from a 3rd side.

Planetside had a lot of flaws, but three factions was not one of them. Quite sure we are repeating ourselves here.

For the design they had yah.  Twasnt a flaw.
But that design didnt really produce great results did it?

Imo, the only compelling games that offer more than 2 factions (in pvp) are ones with extremely deep resource gathering, diplomacy, and alliance controls OR at least pits the factions against eachother towards a common reachable goal  (like 3+ players playing <insert random FantasyFlight game> etc.).  PS had none of those.  It was just 3 factions zerging around the map for the sake of getting better weapons... design didnt work Blood.

Actually yes, it did.  Maybe the reason you disagree is you didn't like Planetside in the first place, but it wouldn't have worked without three sides, and the core design was never one of its problems.

DAOC also worked well with three factions, because of three factions.  Again, it had other flaws, but having three sides was not one of them.  On a battlefield where numbers aren't even, three factions helps immensely.

The reason two sides works well in WW2O is because of all its secondary systems, logistics, and much slower pace.

I think that games would work well with three or more sides as this would add diplomacy.  PvP thrives on there existing mechanics to alter replay.  DAoC was known for this among the more serious players.  It wasn't uncommon to realm-hop or even server hop to find new fights, new environments, and new challenges.  I believe that having multiple factions also enhances replay value.  When you begin to believe the grass is greener someplace else, you have the opportunity to take a look. 

The more factions there are, the less personal the fight.

In a two-sided conflict, "the enemy" is monolithic. Either the conflict is entirely uninteresting, or the enemy is a bunch of lazy, cowardly fools with no skill who win by unfair advantage. If they dominate, they dominate completely. The grass is greener on exactly one other side of the hill, so traitors only have only two ways to flee: to the other side, or out of the game entirely. War is vast and omnipresent, but without alliances and rivalries the fighting can feel generic.

Alternately, a world without factions means that each guild, gang, or individual takes direct blame. Insults and injuries are more visceral, but less frequent... cooperation is safer than competition. Revenge, then, is simultaneously rare and satisfying because it's more specific. Tiny alliances and betrayals constantly alter the front lines in an unknowable tapestry of sharing and conflict. "Changing sides" is an almost meaningless distinction. Chaos reigns.

The continuum between these extremes dips asymptotically. Three sides feels very different from two. Twelve sides feels almost indistiguishable from twenty. I think the balance between the advantages of both extremes exists somewhere between 3 and 7. Few enough that the enemies are well known and the battle lines are drawn thick, but not so many that there's no reason to fight.

Still makes one wonder what would have happened if WAR had three sides.

With or without WAR's fatal flaws?

It would have been better, but still bad. 

It would have had a less overtly polarized structure, for one. Why stop at three? What if it had six? Play the early levels versus your neighbor, then graduate to maps with more options. Have the various NPC realm kings quasi-randomly shift alliances based on how completely one group is dominating. This week Chaos and the High Elves have established a fragile truce to take the Black Crag from the Dwarves. While in Dwarf lands they can group and communicate, but can't fight their "allies". Then allow Chaos and High Elf players to continue skirmishing in the battlegrounds, subtly altering the front lines between their territories, because some commanders still hate the others and WAR IS EVERYWHERE.

It'd certainly be more true to the mythos.

The only two issues I had/have with Planetside, is that #1. It wasn't sticky enough. I don't know how they could have made it stickier, but then I'm not paid to.
#2. Core Combat.

Other than those two things, Planetside was everything I could want in a battlefield FPS game like that.

WAR's core problems had nothing to do with the number of sides it had. In fact, limiting it to two sides helped concentrate players together so there was more fun to be had.

Given that most of the PvP in WAR was instanced and new factions can't crash an instanced PvP event, extra sides would have been meaningless for WAR. Hell, the biggest issue RvR issue would have been that keep flipping would have taken longer to do since you've have to wait behind two other teams, not just one.

Well when I played WAR, Destruction had a queue time something like 45min to Orders 5min.  A side effect was that anytime Order stepped out to RvR, we were swarmed by the Destros waiting for the queue exasperating the imbalance.  A third side could have made dropped to 5min the queues for everyone.

Not unless the third side increased the number of non-destruction players by a a factor of nine.

At least there would have been in-fighting between the Destruction realms.  It may not have helped their queues, but the imbalance might not have been as noticeable.

So in my mind: Empire/Dwarfs vs Skaven/Greenskin vs Chaos/Undead would work out pretty awesome.

a)  Not being sticky enough is exactly why the game had no subs. after a few weeks (that and SWG).  Kind of a big flaw for an MMO.
b)  Core Combat was a major xpac that drastically changed the game.  If that's an issue as well....  ur phucked

But yah, other than those things PS was awesome!   :why_so_serious:

Hey, I loved PS as much as the next guy (I led a LARGE clan in it)... but I wasnt ignorant of its flaws.  Debating the amount of factions is probably subordinate to the fact that other elements of the game just didnt jibe.  It's a small piece of the fail-pie I guess.

Core Combat is a bit vague of a reason - maybe he didn't like the theme.

Personally, I think it compounded the subscription problem because it took a world that was already becoming too large for the number of subscriptions it was hemoraging and it made it larger.

PS2 is going to need to be stickier, obviously, but it should also have some built in free to play option, similar to the reserves program... aaaand, for the inevitable expansions, it should have some way to elegantly merge servers, hopefully without instancing out the whole thing.

Planetside was about fighting over towers and bases and choke points. CC was a seperate area that people only fought over to get their BFR cert. And IIRC before the cert incentive, no one really fought in CC areas.

It was redundant.

Didn't they play some role in capturing bases? Like you had to go into them to grab something then you could take over a base?

To be 100% factual, the BFR cert thing didn't happen until the Aftershock release/patch, which was some time after core combat released. If I was going to strap on my armchair developer helmet, I would say that design decision was made to generate interest in the largely ignored core combat areas. In terms of overall game objectives, the core combat areas only served an ancillary goal of providing modules to buff up bases. What was left of the playerbase looked at what the core had to offer, shrugged, and went back capping towers and bases on the old game. After the initial aftershock "OMG, get the BEEEFUR" craze died down, the caverns went back to what they had always been - an empty place where a team looking for an advantage sent a few people willing to be bored to shit in order to get a buff.

In general, anything in a non-resource grind pvp game (See: EVE) that decreases player density below whatever your smallest "unit" threshold is is a bad idea. Adding more dimensions ala core combat was just that.

With regards to some of the other things that have been said here:

1) 3 sides is pretty ideal for this kind of game. Alliances cannot become stable(as might happen in a 4 side game) and are much more likely to be opportunist. It also makes it harder to have one side domination since the weaker two sides can get together.  Timezone issues are still a problem.

2) PS doesn't have any resource generation or usage. It was all about reinforcements. This made it hard to have any stake in winning

Looking at that second part seems like it was what made PS lack the stickyness. Games like Natural Selection can do the hybrid FPS/RTS gameplay well, but since the game is really about resource generation once one side gets a critical mass it tends to cascade pretty quickly. Instanced games can do this because they end. Non-instanced games cannot.

Reconciling these two points is hard, if not impossible. You both need the game to be all combat all the time, but at the same time you don't want a single side to gain enough resources that the other sides cannot win.

Thinking about solving this seems like you could have some sort of system whereby the better people did, the more resources they received, but the less resources their team received, with a cap on total resources.

I.E. Each side gets 10000 units of stuff and various items cost different amounts of stuff. Each player gets 10 units/hour to use draining from the main resource and can accumulate up to 100 units before it caps. Each side gets 10 units/hour/active player added to their total resources. As more bases are captured each player can drain units from the total faster (up to say 20 units/hour) but the main resource refills slower(down to say 5 units/hour)

So resources are limited per person(killing them matters), limited per side(Killing them matters), you gain an advantage by winning(each person can drain more resources), but only so far(main reserves can be drained faster). This means that there is a baseline amount of stuff a side will have per hour/day/whatever and a stalled attack can be very costly in terms of main resource units.

Not sure how well it would work out though.

PS bases do have resource usage -- NTUs. An ANT drop into a base under siege that was about to lose all power was one of the more fun events in the game.

Doesn't change your argument, though.

As a side note, later on when the lattice went into effect, the bases did have some strategic consequences in having an interlink base was full of win along with a tech plant for armor and amp station for shielding. Drop ship bases were less of a focus simply because galaxies were being used less and less and liberators were meh without a tail gunner.

The balance pass in which they fucked up the striker (and I was somewhat against the fire-and-forget part, but nerfing the rocket dmg was stupid) and nerfed the pounder max for the TR (well deserved for the most part) among other things was the fire shot across the bow. Core combat came out and within a week people in my outfit wrote it off as a wasted effort at an expansion. BFRs served to put people back in the caves but not for what the caves were designed (if there was one) for. You grabbed your cert if people were down there to kill and you left.

And for myself and my outfit, the goal was always to keep our home continents under our control and sanc lock the other factions. Granted, that type of goal has a short half-life - but it was a pretty motivating goal.

Personal or item resources. NTU's were all about making sure the base spawned its more or less infinite amount of stuff for you. Functionally its almost no different than if the base just "worked" once you had captured it. NTU's are probably better defined as capture conditions than resources.

Also, i don't think bases should have been able to spawn vehicles, but that is another point all together.

What?

NTUs are used every time someone spawns, every time a weapon is created every time a vehicle is made and every time the base repairs things like turrets, tubes, terminals or the generator. If a base runs out of NTU's it goes neutral , and thus regardless of the lattice can be hacked by any faction, also loss of lattice and cave mod benefits due to connection dropped. BFR's also had NTU drain arms as well that could be dissipated in an EMP wave.

Typical, large battle time before the base is drained from simple use, about an hour in a full blown fight. Shorter if various drains are used and or encouraged.

Killing an ANT on its way to the gate or base was sometimes the difference between capture or not.

Wow, the base goes neutral, you have seriously crimped the opponents ability to fight for a prolonged period of time... :roll:

Resources for the base don't matter much, in terms of the game, its just another requisite to holding, not any separate mechanic that makes fights matter.

Edit: i should clarify. Just because you call something a "resource" doesn't mean that it is. NTU's were requisites for holding bases and little else. Its as much a "resource" mechanic as making someone bring flags to capture points. In a game of TFC (the one where you brought the flags to the capture points) the resource was not flags, it was time. It is the same way here, except time is not a resource when its unlimited

NTU's are not resources, they're capture point mechanics.

Now would be a really good time for them to release, or announce the imminent release, of Planetside 2. With the experience they gained, the current interest in persistent shooters and the better on-line infrastructure they could make a game for which there is no competition. It would have the potential to massacre games like APB.

Of course it's SOE :/

And they're probably focused on EQ3. Great idea that. Another fantasy MMO is just what we need. And based around a world and Lore that will only have interest to those already playing EQ2. Or maybe they'll actually release "The Agency" some day.

Yes, it sure does. Especially if that base was in line, or was a Tech facility. It also allowed another side to enter the space with a foothold.

I guess I need you to define what you mean by resources.

You are terrible at making up appropriate alliances in warhammer.

Skaven/green? Jesus

But yeah, your actual point is completely right. There are a million ways to combine races for 3 or more realms which wouldn't sick half as much as green/chaos/delf.

There is an equal chance of the top two sides getting together to kick the crap out of the weakest.

Uneven number of sides are probably preferable, but 2v2 might work. Better than 1v1, anyway.

Unlikely. Consider the incentives where side 1 > side 2 > side 3

If side 1 and 2 get together to beat up side 3, once side 3 is down, side 1 has an absolute advantage over side 2. Side 2 would never make that choice, they would rather choose to attack side 1, since they can more reasonably make dents into that front.

Also possible is that side 1 and 3 get together. But this is less valuable to side 3 than side 3 choosing with side 2, since at the end of the fight with the other side, if they chose to side with 1 then they're going to get clobbered.

The incentives clearly point to a side 2,3 alliance in such a situation

That assumes rational choice and simultaneous combat initiative.

What about combat that has already started? In all cases the advantage is to choose to side with the weakest side if any alliance occurs. This means that there are still only two possible outcomes side 2 and 3 make an alliance, or side 1 and 3 make an alliance.

Both of the above assume no defection in battle.

What about if people aren't rational? That is the only time its random... BUT there are three possible alliances, 1,2/2,3/1,3 and only 1 of them is the two strongest. One of them isn't entirely optimal, but is still better than the "equal chance of the big boys getting together".

Now, completely random choice is unlikely, more likely is that combat alliances start based on who sees whom first, And in that case the first one to get attacked is likely to be the strongest force in the field.

All of this holds true no matter the duration of the alliance, so long as it is possible to "defeat" in some way, the other side. Even if no defection is possible.

3 sides is much more likely to produce an equally sided outcome

Aren't you assuming that one side is clearly strongest?



Also, in my experince, as long as curbstomping side 3 gives 'victory points', sides 1 and 2 will happily just continue doing that and won't bother with each other at all. They only take notice of each other when side 3 finally logs out in frustration for the night, or is so small in numbers they are inconsequential.

Yes. I did assume that the fight has to has an end at some point and a reasonably low value for present value discounting. I was vague on when that had to occur. However, if you consider defection a possibility then the situation that you describe is unlikely. IIRC in planetside the persistent drubbings were mainly when one side had a super-massive time zone advantage

Another problem that may reduce this effect is the inability to easily have unified fronts. I.E. if 3 is getting trounced by 1, then 2 can't intervene if they can't get there easily.

Re: The first part

One side doesn't have to clearly be the strongest so long as one side is clearly the weakest. Either would create likely collations. If there are no clear winners then while you may get lop sided allegiances they aren't likely to last long.

GOOD TIMES

<sob>

From what I've seen, the weakest is normally not picked on by the two stronger sides. Not to say it doesn't/hasn't happened, nor that it wouldn't happen again, it was just more of a rarity. If that rarity is the major opposition to the almost guaranteed dominance of one side over the other in a two sided war, sign me the hell up. I miss three sided wars as you didn't know what to expect since not everyone went along with unofficial alliances which always stirred up the pot nicely.

I think four sided wars would be interesting, but I'd prefer an odd number of sides since 2v2 isn't much different then 1v1 in this case (basically means less AE as to not hit your unofficial allies). Five sided would be even more impersonal and confusing for most, and that's why I wouldn't want to see five or more.

Consider EVE, which has an effectively undefined number of sides. Alliances are relatively stable compared to an FPS, and full scale steam rolling is more common. But once its over they tend to disperse.

However, that is more of a time frame issue. If you consider that the time frame in EVE for a "campaign" is roughly equivalent to the time frame in PS for a "battle" you can see how essentially infinitely mutable sides can produce the situation discussed. However, in EVE, the politics and allegiance has a much deeper pull. This actually serves to make the system less "swingy" with everyone teaming up on one person until their dead. (it still happens, but you do get cohesive power blocks fighting each other one relatively even grounds)

However, absent that the more sides the harder that is to maintain.

Consider the incentives in a 4 sided fight where everyone starts out without an alliance and everyone is as strong as each other. If you ally with one person you double your strength and pretty much guarantee your chances of survival. Random alliance selection can produce either 2v2 or 3v1. But if we acknowledge that the choices are made only semi-simultaneously (I.E. there is some sort of negotiation in between, even if its fast) then the 3v1 option looks more likely. Why? Because 2v2 is a 50/50 chance of winning the first engagement then a 50/50 chance of winning the second. 3v1 is a 100% chance of winning the first engagement, a 33% chance of being selected as the odd man out and loosing 100% of the time(so a 66% chance of surviving to the winning side of the 2v1) and then a 50/50 chance of winning the next engagement. (so in a 2v2 alliance, each side has an incentive to deviate to the other and make it 3v1) Since .33(chance of winning if one of 3 in 3v1) > .25 (chance of winning if one of 2 in 2v2) 3v1 is a more likely occurrence.

What about uneven sides with 1>2>3>4. Ironically in that situation you're more likely to have 1 and 2 team up to kill 3 and 4. Why? Because the 3v1 situation with 1 or 2, and 3, 4 vs 1 or 2 devolves into 3,4 vs 1 or 2 after the 3v1 wins. Since team 1 and team 2 won't like this they will opt to crush 3/4 by teaming themselves and then fight against themselves for the final win. Alternately you could have a 1,2,3, vs 4 option(then 2 and 3 v 1, then 2v3 if 1 loses) since 1 may not defect to join side 4. (note: i am probably missing possible combos, I am not going through to check them all)

As we keep adding sides uneven fights become more common rather than less common.

Of course, all of the above assumes geography is not an issue(I.E. everyone can always get to the fight) and only one side can win.

Consider the Eve Chinese (or whereever it is) server, where all the fighting is in Empire and anyone that tries to take territory is zerged by the rest of the server.

Indeed, and great post. That said, I'm not sure that the desire to eliminate uneven fights is the reason folks want extra factions. Uneven fights are inherent to non-sport competition. Ganking by zergs is a rational effort to seek reward at minimal risk, and the honorable are typically suckers. It's best to make sure you are as strong and your opponent as weak as the environment allows. Worse yet... if losses are severe and only one side can win, then unless the odds are overwhelming the smartest choice for both sides is not to play.

With only two sides, that's precisely what happens.

In multipolar competition, then, the strongest competitors tend to sit back and sustain their power, skirmishing with eachother and slapping the weak when they get uppity. If any of them were to jump forward and waste time and energy wiping a smaller opponent off the map, their stronger competitors might take the opportunity to flank them in their moment of weakness. Everybody major is waiting with a knife for the moment when somebody else's back turns.

It's not that multipolar environments are more "fair" or less "uneven", it's that they're more interesting. The Chinese gamers understand that this interest creates a lot of unhappiness, so the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. American gamers tend to think happiness is for pussies.

I agree time and geography would play a major role in this discussion as to what would play out (and has played out for people's previous experiences) and what would be better. Though I think that time and either a persistent world or non persistent world are the two biggest factors for how many sides a game should have. Fast games and non persistent worlds I'd agree that people would gang up strategically to better their immediate odds (the 3v1 examples).  Persistent worlds with communities building over time normally had people rotating against the strongest and more battle royal situations then anything else (in my experiences and most people I've talked with as well). So in the persistent world it usually wouldn't stay 3v1 for long since the 3 aren't gaining much of anything fighting the 1 (persistent worlds have development, so why waste time for minimal/no gains?). The 2v2 though, with even forces vs even forces (good luck getting that), is again, a larger 1v1 in the persistent world since long term relations are actually important. In the non persistent world I'd agree that the 2v2 would never happen.

As for EvE, that is a bit different. I was talking about non-sandbox with defined "sides."

I am curious where you saw this. In my experience in DAoC, it was exactly as Fordel described. The weakest realm (my realm, Midgard  :awesome_for_real: ) was pretty much the punching bag for the other two until we all logged out. Then the other two realms finished taking all our keeps unopposed. THEN they started smacking each other around in Emain. Then Midgard would log back in (we had a really hilarious SET TIME of when we'd be active, we basically had two shifts of when we'd have enough people to be even the slightest concern, US "prime time" and eventually "when the Italians logged in"), take back our empty, undefended keeps. Then get rolled over again and again and again until we logged out.

It's less "the two bigger realms wouldn't fight each other," it's that "nothing would stop them from beating the shit out of the overwhelmed third realm." And you will definitely get third realms that are so outnumbered, even if they WANTED to call a truce with one of the other realms, there'd be little reason to do so. Mid DID try to work truces on occassion, but when the realm you're trucing with has more people opposed to said truce than your realm has PvPers, who are also not all in agreement, it's ... pointless.

I guess what I'm saying is more-than-two realms is fine in theory, but unless you have some really, really, really strict population controls, and I'm talking the kind that are so strict that they'd never happen because players wouldn't stand for it, it falls apart in practice. I liked three realms in DAoC, it just doesn't do what people think it does.

On top of Population control, you would need some way to insure participation equality. Having all those people doesn't help if they never enter the RvR zone.


No idea how you could do that without making your game complete ass though.

I recall reading about the forth empire in both those games: the people who would switch to a character on the side that appeared to be winning.

I was also playing a heavily outnumbered Mid on DAoC. I've also played against underpopulated Mids on a few servers since, let's face it, Mid was underpopulated on all but a couple servers. At no point was the mentality on any server that anyone I knew or myself played on "let's gang up on Mids for crappy RPS." Again though, I'm not saying it doesn't happen or that it wouldn't happen at all as that would be a very dumb comment, just that it wasn't the norm for most.

Or, as was said in a different thread, you have to have multiple victory conditions. If winning is a search for uneasy equalibrium rather than a PLAY TO CRUSH there's a lot of room for underdogs to undermine the absolutist ambitions of the overlords. If conquest is a continuum rather than a switch, there's a lot of wiggle room.

Just off the top of my head: dimininshing returns. It's DAoC in reverse. The first victories would be the easiest to capture, the hardest to defend, and give the largest advantages to the winners without actually harming the losers much. Those advantages would have to be hard to share so they'd change hands a lot. Imagine the DAoC relics being kept in flimsy keeps atop the milegates. The deeper invaders strayed into enemy territory, the more terrain and gameplay would work against them... and the more they'd have to defend the tempting territories (and supply lines) they've advanced past from scavengers arriving behind them. Meanwhile the advantages gained would become more complex and abstract.

Perhaps a deep advantage might be a sacred cave. It contains a unique ore that must be mined as a high end crafting material. First it has to be captured so the guard NPCs stop spawning... this is a great insult to the shamans who control it, so they gain assorted attack buffs until it is recaptured. The ore is corpse lootable by anybody, carrying it debuffs your speed, and puts an aura around you that further buffs shaman attacks. Plus you have to fight your way back through the white knights who have captured the milegate relic keep behind you.

That sort of thing.

Or make a game where the people on the smallest unit of land belong to a fiefdom (small guild), are conquered and pays a portion of their daily resources to a barony consisting of many fiefdoms (large guild), which in turn swears fealty to a royal family which has been victorious over several baronies (hardcore guild), who contest each other to become the emperor (reeks of catass).

When a territory is conquered the status of the people holding it may change to reflect how much land they hold (if you conquer a neighboring fiefdom, you become a baron and cast off your old superior, conquer a shitton more and you challenge your king, ditto for the emperor).

I don't think it was a specific "let's gang up on the Mids" thing. It was a "they're easiest to beat the shit out of, therefore we will beat the shit out of them" thing. Like they weren't taking our keeps because "ha ha, suck on that you underdog LOSERS," they were taking them because they knew there'd be very little resistance. If they just wanted to fight for no reason, it was the Emain zergfest, but for the "winning the game" stuff? Beat up Midgard, because Midgard is a lot easier to beat up than Albion or Hibernia.

Percival, where I played Alb, was a lot more balanced RvR-ing population-wise (although if you woke up the Alb zerg, forget it, because the zone was going to be crashing), and probably played closer to what people like to imagine three-sides games always play out, but once the populations start to skew, it really fucking blows chunks for that third realm.

On my server, Hib had a decent population, but a lot of them seemed to be not interested in PVP. So we were almost always outnumbered. I remember the one night when we managed to capture a Relic, run it back to our keeps, and then the server crashed.  :oh_i_see:

Our Albs once killed the Hib relic stealing team and then left the relic there.

We just played with a guy who's computer was so bad it would "chug" whenever a stealther got in range. We curb stomped.

Was there pop locking in DaoC?  I know when I played fodderside you'd get that on occasion.  Also had the ~1% xp shifts for global population.

Clearly the incentive structure of "winning" and "losing" is important. As is the population dynamics. A 1v1v1 game with only 2 sides online really isn't 1v1v1 anymore, if populations are disperse enough that any one side gets enough of a population advantage it breaks down as well.

The answer to that is probably a method to shift new entrants to certain sides depending on the general population dynamics of the server that will be expected.

Or, have some sort of side switching mechanic that only works in the direction that has the lowest hour average population for that players(or outfits) mode hour play time.

I.E. if during the hours of 8 am and 9 am Vanu consistently has the lowest population, and TR has the highest, people can change sides, but only if the character/outfit they're in is in TR and plays most often during the 8 to 9 am time slot.

It shouldn't be hard to compile weekly/monthy averages and then compare them, and while its certainly game-able, its not as easy as other systems

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Or rather, how much fun the competition is. Sure, you know the zerg is going to roll over, but the pussies that run to go nab undefended bases rather than stand up to the zerg (and oh, have some fun and crazy firefights) are the real problem, not the zerg.

And adding experience points so people play to maximize experience rather than to maximize strategy is also one of PS's biggest problems (imo).

Also, switching only came in PS when they merged servers. Bad idea.

Yeah, not sure where this winning or loosing thing is coming from, you do not get loot for taking a base, you do not gain "levels" and power, a bad day can gain you just as much xp as a good one.

I think some of you are attempting to put DIKU/RPG behaviors on something they dont really apply to. IMO.

Regardless of their mindset, your experience on Mid wasn't enjoyable, I get it. Again, I'm not saying that doesn't happen only that it wasn't the norm. I do find it interesting that even while I played on one of the worst servers for Mid population we still had such vastly different experiences.

This seems to be the average experience, Alb zerg crashing the zone when it wants to and all. It's not how they always play out sadly, but the ratio of servers that turned out like this compared to the amount of servers that turned out like your Mid server was definitely for the better from personal experiences and all the chats and reminiscing I've done with people over the years from various servers.

I've been there before. To me, that felt worse then being underpopulated because you have the people sitting right there, able to fight, online even, and they just didn't do anything. At least you know you have an uphill battle when always outnumbered and are dealing with overcoming the odds, not with overcoming the odds due to lack of participation.

And this is one of the things that has kept PS from falling into the traps that others have. Keeping a close eye on the incentives is a big deal. The question simply comes down to "are players more likely to want to steamroll or have good fights provided no other incentives"? and "Is it possible to structure incentives such that "good fights" are more likely without having it be exploited?"

As a rule, the whole "diminishing marginal returns" on conquest should do a good job. As would real logistical requirements. (rather than "capture a base and you get shit right at the front line") But I am not sure precisely how that should be structured and frankly without knowing anything else about the game it doesn't lead to many answers.

Mainly I think that my point is that game designers should hire or consult with more economists. Specifically in the field of Game Theory. Because all the god damned time I see structures/systems/balance/design that is totally ignorant of the way that strategic incentives are likely to pan out. And that makes for games that aren't fun(specifically games that have easy solutions, and games that don't have mixing strategic solutions)

I agree games should leverage the lessons learned from mechanism design in economics, but I can see how it could quickly devolve into a complex formulation with unforseen emergent behavior.

While the players involved are rational in some sense, different types of players have different utilities for the outcomes. To make things worse, there is a lack of transferability between these types of players that can make it difficult to identify stable strategies based on some common currency. For example, you can't really assign the same value to players that play for a challenge versus those that play to be with friends versus those that play to powergame and get the maximum experience in a given encounter. This leads to a complex form of a Bayesian Game with different types of players that interact within the factions themselves. There are also simple responses that would likely fall outside the assumptions of rationality in a game theoretic model, such as thinking a faction has cooler weapons or liking a group of people that play on a faction, that can significantly affect the balance of power and would be difficult to capture in a formal sense.

I have a group of friends who never played Planetside that I am already getting pumped up for PS2 with stories of epic glory from yesteryear. If they screw this up I will lose all of my nerd cred and may never recover.

I think they should make it free to play, and any accounts logging over X hours gets 5-10 bucks off Planetside Next when it comes out. That gives incentive, raising the population to the levels needed for truly fun PS, and added interest to the new title. Everyone loves getting things on sale!

True, but.

1) I am willing to wager that unforseen emergent behavior will be less of a problem than systematic problems that could be seen. At least in this situation.

2) PvP games (and other essentially 0 sum games) suffer from those problems dealing with multiple player types less. Especially if you separate XP from combat.

I've been thinking on the topic of PvP being a zero sum game and come to the conclusion it doesn't work if it is. Mainly because there is always the option to quit, which is the last thing devs want players to do.

http://planetside.station.sony.com/news_archive.vm?id=67984&section=News&month=current

Is this it? If so.... ZZZZZzzzzzzz

Of course it is.  :awesome_for_real:

I knew, just KNEW they were going to use the god dam retarded black ops.

RETARDED.

No one like it the first time, except those picked to be black ops. Wake up Planetside team.

EDIT: Reading further, the count down timer has 11 more hours.

Well they already had the code, thus cheap lame event!

Someone revive this when its f2p or Planetside Next actually has a future.

Black ops were introduced I think, what 3 years ago by now, maybe 4? No one liked them then, and just went to a different continent.


Who the hell enjoys playing VS people that have the health/stamina/armor of 5 people. Its like playing VS hackers.



"While I understand your concerns the fact is we are rather limited in what we're able to do so we don't exactly have the opportunity to switch the lattice around, adjust home continents, or bring back Old Oshur. We'll work within the boundaries that we have access to and have fun with it for sure. " -Raijinn


AKA: We have Zero developers on this title. None. That's what you get for not revamping the engine years ago. Even members of the community were able to change the god dam engine and assets. But you banned them.

http://planetside.station.sony.com/news_archive.vm?id=67981&section=News&month=current

Godjoey?

God lord pink baby Jesus. Why would you even... NVM.

I'm sure it will be an amazing all-day event. On a Tuesday.

What's funny is the damage this did to their PR. People got excited, news posts were made, discussions started. What a perfect opportunity to actually do something, since people are actually interested in a PS2. Now they cried wolf and it's all the same old disappointment we've come to associate with what should have been one of the best MMO experiences, and should also have been a flagship of how to put the massive in mmo.

Inept.

If they had half a brain they would have AT LEAST activated all accounts for 7 days for their 7 year Anniversary. Get people back, maybe get a few subs after. Make the event big!

I think I played Planetside once, ever, in 2005. Well past the glory days. *I* was excited by the announcement. I don't even know what this is.

Black ops = "You'll have 1000 armor points, 500 stamina and regenerate stamina at twice normal." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKFpGzu5zVo)

That video was bad and they should feel bad. Additionally I don't even know why you'd think giving a few players a massive buff so they can pwn whoever they like would be a good idea. Best case scenario you get a load of catasses fighting each other, massacring normal players that get caught in the cross-fire and feeling awesome while everyone else quits until it's over.

The best thing would be a game type they would throw into Subspace, called chase the rabbit I think it was. Basically, rabbits had super guns and bombs and showed up big and red on your map. If you scored the last hit on one, you became the rabbit and got to fuck people up.

These guys just basically wade around killing people? Over and over?

What a shit announcement... Reminds me of my life: disappointing at every turn.

Picked by GM's, yep.

Like I said, one of those is the equivalent to about 5 normal players. It was a retarded idea about 3 years ago when they made them, its still retarded. It is exactly like playing against hackers.


Thats what happens every time they do this event. Or, the rest of the player base floods one continent planet so they can't come in (good luck with that thees days) But IIRCC, they can drop from anywhere and drain bases.

Oh, shit. That's bad. Why not give them wall and speed hacks while you're at it. Even if they gave away a free week resub, I wouldn't bother with garbage like that.

We should get a class action suit: gamers vs the PS dev team (such as it is).

Yeah, can't say this is in any way a good idea for a game on basic life support. Such fail.

ftfy

Is this crap for planetside 2 or just the current version? 

Time to let this thread die. I see it a part of me smiles and gets excited, then I click on the topic and watch as the reality-part of me gets the hatchet and mace and tears into that hopeful part.

Well, who's up for making a PS emulator!?   :awesome_for_real:

(http://screenshot.xfire.com/s/97728738-4.jpg)

I am sure that was fun for everyone attempting to take the generator.

Oooook. At first I didn't want to get upset over this PS thing. It's a lame event, but so what, right? Then I saw that picture.

So you've got an event that takes some of the best players anyways. And you give them stuipid amounts of HP, armor and stamina. And then they all decide to camp one of the most easily defended areas in the game.

 :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :uhrr: :why_so_serious:

Who cares.  They might as well have turned everyone into flaming humanoid poopsicles in this event and it still wouldnt matter unless they went F2P or had some other nifty design trick to re-invigorate the game.  Complaining about the content of the event itself is pointless; and would only truly matter if the game was at least somewhat popular.

+ any weapon they want from any faction. look at the backs.

Meh, I've pretty much got that already in my equipment locker.


It's just disapointing. Mostly because I really enjoyed this game once upon a time. This was the one game that SOE made between EQ and EQ2 that deserved to be more popular than it was. To see it used in such a way is a little disheartening. Basically it's like dead person porn.  :oh_i_see:

Dead-person porn wherein both people are dead.  An event, but a non-event.  Now, zombie porn or resurrected dead-person porn, that's different.  Then the actual porn quality itself starts to matter.

I'd say one of the best events was before the Bending when they spawned an artifact on the continents. That fucking rocked - cruising around with my skeleton outfit crew and ICP. I miss that... This one? no

And here I was looking at the picture and all I could muster was "Holy crap, Djinn still plays?"...

March 2011?

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105953-Sony-Online-Strongly-Hints-Planetside-Sequel-Coming-This-Spring

Not much in the article, just discussing the title "Planetside Next", Smedly saying Everquest II was a bad name, and how excited he is about Planetside Next.

Glad this is still alive.

:drill:

They're releasing in a little over 3 months and we haven't heard about this yet? No beta? I call bullshit.

I call SOE.

I concur. Release? Seriously... :facepalm:

It never said it would be released in spring.

My guess is that's when they officially bust it out and begin marketing it?

Well, if they start hyping month in advance people bitch it's too soon. Maybe they're taking notes.  :why_so_serious:

Given that they are basically going to have no competition, I can safely say I'll play this unless its absolutely so riddled with bugs/crashes that it is literally unplayable.

Note: do not hold me to this.

Depends on what Smed means by "launch."

- from the article.

Launch the publicity machine? Dunno... launch to me in the gaming world means game release. *shrug*

And this better not be something about The Agency...I'll be pissed

Unless they make a Battlefield Online or Call of Duty Online I'm thinking Planetside 2 is about the only hope for a large scale combined arms game.  I'm hoping Battlefield 3 isn't screwed up and comes out on time...hey I believe in Santa Claws too!

Planetside Agency, coming to you in Spring 2011 from SOE.  :grin:

If the DCUO beta is any indication, those notes are written in feces on the padded walls of a cell somewhere.

This better be good, and by that, I mean the game I have in my head.

APB again?   :grin:

No, two different styles of games there.

So, who's the designated f13 'press ganger' this time?

It will still end in tears.

This whole thread has me wondering if anyone could invent a persistent FPS game sticky enough to fit a subscription model.  I just can't see how you could get players to stick around without offering achievements or advancement pathways that would rapidly imbalance any game mechanics.  

Short answer: no.

Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

WW2Online.

Edited to add: To clarify - A large persistent ongoing war, there are ranks to go up in army, navy and airforce (that allow you to access new kinds of things to spawn as, i.e. sniper).  This remainds balanced because there are a limited about of kinds of spawns in any given army that is stationed in a town. So there are say, 100 submachinegunners available, if you are high enough rank to use it, you can spawn in as one, when 100 people die playing as it, you are out of them until that area is reinforced with a new army or it respawns (7 hours after it dies it is replaenished I think?).  The campaigns reset when one side wins, with campaigns lasting from a few weeks to a couple months from my experience.

WW2O is clearly as much Sim as shooter, but I don't see why you couldn't apply more action oriented gameplay to a similar system.

I should have added the word "successful" to my statement. 


Edit: I really enjoyed WWII Online, but it is a very small niche. 

I think the niche arises from the sim aspects more so than the overall structure.  Its hard to play, its unforgiving, and the pace is relatively slow compared to most shooters.  But like I think I said earlier, why wouldn't a game like this work with say, CoD pacing of combat?  Or even Battlefield Bad Company 2, to pick something slightly slower but with vehicles that more closely approximate WW2O.

A well designed FPS with advancements never imbalances the game due to the simple fact that organized teamplay trumps all.  Go play 2142 or Arma on a tacticalgamer server or some such and see what I mean.  Gear imbalances only matter (much) in lone-wolf situations, which are contrary to the MMO (or most modern FPS's post doom/wolfenstein/quake) to begin with.  And only a dumbass brings a knife to a gunfight.  You lone-wolf against someone with a tac-nuke, you deserve to have a bit of 'game imbalance' shoved up your ass.  :awesome_for_real:

I feel your concern though.  The key to me is offering advancement that also doesnt have a direct effect on mechanics.  This usually ends up being some kind of strat. metagame or quasi-HQ situation wherein many times you're not even shooting your gun...  you're shifting men and materiel around, training officers, managing VOIP, etc.  In this sense, there needs to exist an officer corp along with 'ribbons' perhaps denoting individual achievement.

Above all this.  The game worlds themselves need to be large and compeling enough for one to even WANT to persist in the 1st place.  Having maps that can be rolled in a day are no fun unless theres some kind of overarching mechanic that it influences.

As for WW2O, it failed for one reason alone.  ONLY ONE MAP.

I disagree.  Sure, a pacific theatre that emphasizes the navy over the army would be neat, or east europe theatre that has snow rules in effect, blizzards, etc would be interesting, and so forth.  But if that game added those things the brutal learning curve and pretty slow pace would still drive a lot of people away.

The failing of most MMOFPS is the use of power progression and numbers. This is where Planetside was ahead of its time, and got it right.

Every item had utility. There was no +1. There should never be.  You do not make guns with numbers, you do not make items that have no utility (AKA Fireball, and fireball called something else but more powerful). Progression is in the number of available options at even given time or encounter. Not piling on more and more power. No headshots. Large "health pools" that allow for shootouts (Where APB went wrong, but GA is doing right).

Other combination's will fail.

The difficulty that I see being hardest to overcome is the love affair that MMO gamers have with the time = power paradigm.   Most people (including myself) will only ever be average at best when it comes to an FPS environment.  That will require some creativity to level the playing ground between most gamers and the elite few.  Otherwise these games devolve into nothing more than a shooting gallery for gamers with crazy FPS skills.

Planetside had a huge support for those with lesser twitch skills (Engineering, Medic, driving, flying, Hacking, ADV hacking, Support vehicle). This was also key for much of the love for the title. Something else APB got wrong (it had one, driving).

The main point though, Utility, not ever increasing numbers.

It's like I played a completely different game.  I tried to like planetside for 2 months.  The problem I had with the game was that I was relegated to roles that I found neither fun nor interesting.  I also hated that I had to switch gear builds all the time.   Give me an inventory and let me manage it in real time. 

Why would you have to switch cert load outs all the time? Did you mostly PUG or something? Unless you mean gear load outs, ala Equipment terminals (where you could have 10 presets).

Limited equipment and limited certs are part of balancing the game. It was team based after all. (until the end)

A bunch of us led by Stephen Zepp (where did he go? I'd like to get his take on GG/Instant Action/Torque folding) played planetside for a few months. It was a ton of fun, though the game was already semi-dying at that point. It did a lot of things right. Mostly, though, it was who you played it with.

I want Planetside 2 so badly, but I suspect this won't be the grail I'm looking for.

Game designers need to repeat this 100 times. 

If you want to charge a subscription fee, you need to find fun and interesting ways of getting your players to want to play together.  My personal inclination in games is to avoid other people at all costs.  If they can create a mechanism to enhance my fun through positive reinforcement in cooperation, then they've won my $$$. 

Planetside, like other MMOs, encourages players to form elite warbands.  That makes for a really fun game if you already come to the game with a group of like-minded gamers.  If you're someone like me that will need to find a group to play with, the game becomes unfun in a hurry. 

Well, thats kind of the nature of team based games.  Team based games are not ever really suitable for PUG or solo gameplay. Nothing needs to change there. With exception of, yes cooperation should be reinforced, and it was in Planetside.

Stop thinking there is a grail to begin with. I doubt anyone on these boards can ever find it... Just chalices we will drink from and gauntlets we throw at people. But it IS nice to dream.

PS was insanely fun from beta till the first :uhrr: expansion.  It was starting to lose its grip before the dumb ass superman caverns came out, but it still was the only game I was loading up at the time. ...and that was even with the imbalanced stuff (f-n-f Stryker, AI pounder max  :ye_gods:, surge-ile jackhammers w/triple shot, Magmowers, etc).

I give SOE some leeway here since they have PS's life history to draw from. Not that they won't find a way to fuck that up... but that is to be determined. Inevitable? Probably.

My lil' bro's 1st foray into the world of MMOs was PS.  He was one of those people who didnt have 'like-minded' gamers to play with.  He just logged on and proceeded to find a worthy squad to join up with.  He did, and they so happened to be ridiculously elite wherein he wasnt, but given time and some training from them he became so (regardless of gear or rank).  To this day, it's still the best gaming experience he ever had.  This, to me, is the essence of what a non-sandbox FPS MMO should be.

And realize this, PS's only real failure was having to compete in the new burgeoning Diku-MMO renaissance.   There wasnt a chance in hell it'd hold subs against SWG and WoW.  I lost my whole fucking Clan to SWG.  A high lvl commander with literally nothing to do, let alone anything to shoot at.  So I /ragequitted like everyone else and never came back 'cept to peak in now and then.

This time, there isnt much to compete against once they release 'cept for Rifts.   :uhrr:
(rinse, wash, repeat is repetitious)

That's the thing though, me and the then missus played as a sniper/spotter duo for a long time and when we didn't play with each other, we tended to solo as that lone harasser that roamed around the hills popping your CE shit and hacking your towers. We still had a blast. PS catered to a lot of different playstyles. We were't fucking TRX, but we were still a force that could draw out an entire squad at times and put them down.

I didn't say it was impossible, I guess it depends on your expectations and personal skill level.

I agree, and was trying to point this out before, PS catered to many many play styles. Had something for everyone. It was brilliant in this regard. Even in my outfit, I ran with a small subset in a marauder. We killed biffers and ran stick and move assault. our certs complemented each other, and we had spare gear in the trunk as well as shields and cloaks. In this way we assisted the commander (for that evening) goal.

Was good times.

Speaking of, I really hope this new version has a command structure.

Jesus, you've thought a lot about that, haven't you, Sir Bruceworth?  :drill:

Where the hell did you get that flowchart?

I am not a hardcore FPS person at all and I had lots of fun when I played PS with an organized group. I think there is a market for this and with the MMO market now stratified into WoW and everything else, a tightly budgeted game should be able to make money at 100,000 subs.  The one thing it has to have is a way for the game world to change.  Structural and geographic stasis led to tactical repetition in PS.

Iv posted this all before.

http://www.planetside-idealab.com/index.shtml

That is years worth of player base designs and additions that were never used SOME were used, but not enough mostly due tot he way the engine and game were originally crafted.

One thing I loved in PS, much like bf1942: roleplaying.

In bf1942 it was straight crazy taxi. Pull up behind the lines near a spawn and start beeping the horn until someone jumped in, drive them to the front lines.

In PS, I tended more toward Bubba's ATV Adventure, just riding a four-wheeler around the battlefield like a redneck on crank; shoot, don't shoot, who cares. Jumps!

Also, hours and hours of playing Inf vs Inf.

This is what I want.  Infantry battles.  None of that tank/mech/ship/plane shit.  Lengthy and strategic ground wars.  I loved the maps in BF1942 that limited tank and plane contact as territory was decided by the better infantry tacticians. 

I also want rainbow unicorns and flying bigfoots. 

 

He meant infiltrator. (quite sure)

There were lots of infantry battles. Technically thats what the caves were, urban combat. It was just too alien and added way to much to the landmass.

I hated the caves.  I'm not exactly sure why.  I always felt like I was just running around in there without any purpose.

The zip lines, and the vertical nature of the map did that. like i said, Technically urban combat, just WAY to alien for us humans.

Thinking about it more, I think the reason why PS never appealed to me was that I never felt like my actions had any impact on the world or the battle.  From a reality standpoint, this makes sense as each individual soldier is just a pawn.  From a gaming perspective, it left me cold and uninterested in logging on.  

The last few weeks that I played were just mostly to bs with the other people in ventrilo.  DAoC kept me much more interested and engaged in the pvp war between factions.

Infiltrator vs Infiltrator. Like spy vs spy. Two infs, trying to track down each other's supply line, tackle towers and disrupt the other's placements. Lots of fun.

I don't care about impact, it's all illusory anyway. I get into it for the cool situations, part of why I like three factions, so you get that chaos factor thrown in. Being at a stalemate over a piece of land, trying to outflank each other or try a new tactic and BLAM in rolls the third faction.

I can definitely understand that. But, from what I have read from you in the past, you had a rather stable, stable of people in DAOC.

Wanted to say in the last post, I was never really a fan of the caves, I did like the mods and guns however. Just not the caves themselves.

Fair point. 

More often than not it's the people that make the game fun.  Broken people with broken toys is indeed a very apt comment (stolen from another thread).  My fondest MMO memories have far more to do with human interaction than they do with the games.  It's really a matter of the game allowing the people to create those moments.  Something which may be lost as games become more linear in nature. 

Well I'm sure Sony-Verant-whatever will have learned their lessons from the original.  Much like EQ2 was superior and more of a success then EQ, PlanetSide 2 Next will be a better game at launch and more successful.

Ahahahahahahaha.

Good one!  :grin:

In all seriousness, I read the article on MMOGAMER and I got the impression that the main lesson that Smedley learned from EQ2 is not to call mmo sequels GAME2, so he changed the name to "Planetside: Next".

As much as I want to like this game, if that's all he learned then ....

My problem with PS was that it wasn't very sophisticated as a FPS. At the time I remember being heavily into BF1942 and PS just did not hold up well in comparison in just about every area.

Movement and physics felt clunky & limited, only 1 hitbox on people & vehicles, hit detection was this weirdass client side system (lagger/hacker dream), terrain was boring and generic, so were the base objectives, even the weapons & explosions were mostly dull.

Why pay 15$ per month when I could get better FPS gameplay for free? 64 player BF1942 servers were massive enough, you had tank columns colliding, bombers raining death, urban ruin battles, artillery, amphibious assaults with naval support, with planes dogfighting all over the map above you, all happening all over the same map.

I loved the concept of PS but execution-wise the whole thing was amateur hour. From the FPS mechanical aspects being fairly primitive & boring compared to genre leading games, to the MMO aspects being lacking, updates slowly forthcoming, & barely justifying the subscription. Then moving on we find out that the whole world was basically hardcoded, making it extremely difficult to patch anything to fix and refresh things which really needed updates.

I'm glad the whole thing has a champion backing it at SOE who wants to give it another go, hopefully they can learn from previous mistakes.

If Planetside Next just starts off with the same features but built so they can change and add to like any other current MMO it will work.

Mixing up the maps\content is going to be key to longevity for me.  Four base layouts are fine to start with but remove\change\add a few every month will slow down my typical burnout.

Many roles are something I expect them to continue with.  Half the original ones were beyond my skills but I found three or four I was ok at and could rotate through.  The more one can do in more the places the better as long as the population funnels work.

I was informed a lot of the "clunkiness" and same-style of bases and terrain had to do with the scale the game was going for. Same with the client-side hit detection. Back then, there just wasn't the computing power to pull off those massive battles with infantry, vehicles, air support, etc without sacrificing a lot. I could cope with the simplistic graphics and "shooterness" of PS given I was a soldier trying to help my army take over continent after continent while keeping our own home continents under our control. That was enough impetus to keep me playing and poopsocking it all summer when PS was released. It really was not about leveling up or unlocking more certs for me. There was just a general sense of global domination on a team/army scale.

...and for some reason, the battles that always stand out in my memory were the ones that took HOURS to fight. Gunuku started as a simple hack and flip which erupted into a massive NC/TR battle complete with everything you can think of, which then lead to the VS taking bases behind both factions resulting in a final 3way at Gunuku with NC having the base and TR and VS each having its own tower. ANT runs and stopping them were insane... just a full day of fun. Haven't had that type of experience in a game since...

1) no sub.
2) massive differences in play style between the sides.
3) more options for bad fpsers to contribute.
4) certs and equipment layouts merged, Eve's power grid vs CPU model would work well here

I can't agree with this. There was nothing wrong with the cert system, or innovatory system (that was attached to armor type if you recall, also affected speed, and gun load out slots, and vehicle limitations). I also absolutely hate "Kits". Mixing and matching what YOU want was one of the greatest things about plantside.

Considering I bet most that complain about equipment space never used trunks, or all the manners you can ship/store/gain equipment in the field. That and you would be removing a big chunk of utility from hacking.

Certs (like skill load outs in games like GW) are necessary for the team aspect, and game balance. The game never needed Rambos or jack of alls (See black ops fiasco). They are the basis of allowing ever expanding content, while leaving it being temped and not falling into the power progression pitfall. As far as the power grid CPU system, why? Certs make so much more sense when you are talking about soldiers and do the same thing in essence.

For the most part, the design and systems of PS classic was a close to perfect as one can get. What it needed, was modern graphics, more solid net code, and a more manageable pipeline to add new content regularly. IMO. It died not because of any flawed systems, it died because it stagnated, EARLY.

As for difference. Massive? I don't think so, Meaningful and distinct differences, yes. I rather liked what they had.

I'm likely horribly biased.

I agree that you needs restrictions to prevent FPS version of tankmages.  I just think you could achieve the same thing without having the certs and more sophisticated Equipement system.  I cite EvE because it differentiated roles without requiring you forget the skills allowing you to do the other roles.

I don't see how you response is related to #2.  I thinking like how Tremulous, Natural Selection, Starcaft have side substantially diffident.  Maybe a less obvious example would LoL.  Where you really need to adjust equipment and strategy based on who you opposition is.  This sort of variety will keep the game fresh longer.

Ah, I get what you mean about certs now.  My response to number two was basically saying i thought what they had was enough. As for fresh, I think if they had been able to continue to add things at all, that would have followed the faction rules would have accomplished that. "Massive" differences just sounded way to much I guess. There were already some great differences, mostly in the VS though.

Speedy Cerviche:  Planetside was really quite complicated, its complication was in utility or real effects. Not numbers like other games. Vastly more complicated than BF1942 or other games of its time. From the tech used to the rule sets and game mechanics.

just because I love linking it, and I think it embodies what planetside was about. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8GJUfhyLCA)

Asshole.  :awesome_for_real: I wish I could have captured Planetside Shortly After Release, in a magic bottle, and be able to play it again today.

Back then, I wish I could capture EVERY MMO shortly after release and be able to play it again.
All such magical moments of late have been lost.   :heartbreak:

 :grin:

That goddamn expansion screwed it.

I blame the LLU bullshit for starting the death roll. Lattice, ok. Run blinky run...not so much.

The xpac had nothing to do with it.  It was the typical nouveau-MMO whack-a-mole A.D.D. that killed it.  Too many titles trying to share too small a niche back then.
You could say the xpac screwed it for the hardcore types, but that's as far as you could go with that argument... and by then, the playerbase was so /crickets that it didnt really matter anyways.

It certainly didn't help. In hindsight, I think more support for Outfits was the direction they should have gone. Terminals and billboards at home base that allowed you to track the achievements and exploits of Outfits kinda stuff.

I liked the LLU variety, actually. 


I was not a hardcore type and I played regularly as a random squaddie until the expansion. The caves were much harder on PUGs and sucked population from the surface battles just as the game population started to decline for many reasons.

SOE would have been better served forcing everyone to upgrade the game engine to support a changeable world map and focus on Outfit stuff as Ratman said.  I wish there had been a way to actually look at the action from a bird's eye view from home base in real time.  It was a high tech world yet the only good recon required actually deploying.

I loved the combat mechanics which gave poor FPS players like myself a chance to compete, but still allowed really good FPS guys to excel. All three sides were excellently balanced as evidenced by the constant complaining from everyone about everyone else.

Oh well.

I also enjoyed the LLU stuff. Perhaps just not the caves. Game needed more logistics.

Game needs a lot more than that. Game needs soldiers to follow orders. Military command structure & player freedom in a game are in direct opposition to each other. The side that follows order is the side that's most likely to win... but is that side having fun? This, I think, is the central problem of the game. It never reconciled that basic issue.

I think players went in expecting to blow shit up and realized that isn't the best way to play the game. They came in for fun, not competition.

You hit on part of what the game missed for me.  Players are willing to put up with less gameplay fun if they win strategic victories.  The problem that I saw was that you would give up personal freedom and fun for a battle victory only to find out that the victory was pretty meaningless. 

I think that the key to making a game like this worthy of a subscription fee is in making the game fun in both the short and the long term.  The difficulty then comes in how do you create long-term fun that isn't also terribly unbalancing.  Herein lies the problem that has plagued pvp MMOs.

Following orders versus just dicking around and short term victories pretty much describes the issues with any non deathmatch FPS.

Planetside just had larger teams and a longer round than a Battlefield server, but the "gamers have little reason to obey some dude they've never met before" aspect remains the same.

Very true unless ou are in a guild/outfit with people you chat with via Voice Programs. I for one hated leading anything in any organized FPS game I have played. I am much more a "take orders" kinda guy and was happy to do it. But there are a ton of console players that are hardwired into their 10-15 minute fights in which they are all alone on a team. These are the people that tend to get shredded in the game by teams that actually organize - and they are also the people that bitch the most on the forums, IMHO of course.

While this is very true, the monthly sub from the solo console gamers still counts the same in the coffers.  You need to find a middle ground to appease both crowds if you want to keep your game alive.  Wolves need sheep and all that stuff. 

PS catered to the guild/team crowd and couldn't garner enough regular subs to be successful.  PS2 needs to adapt to this or it will suffer the same fate.  No matter how pretty the game is, there are just too many other options out there for FPS gamers.  PS2 will have to satisfy not only the hardcore niche that they have already attracted, but also bring in some fresh blood.  If they fail, PS2 will suffer an identical fate.

More accountability  , f2p and more fluid gameplay and I bet PS2 (heck even PS1) would be a smashing hit . Look at WoT - it makes good money ,being released only in russia so far,  action multiplayer game, with f2p model.

Imagine if PS was made on same scale but  with polish of WoT and F2P model. I just dont see how it wont work. Surely it wont reach WoW numbers ,but it would definitely will have its audience.

Compelling single player aspect where completion of missions contributes to persistent war effort. Unfortunately, the amount of content necessary given the fast pace of an FPS to satisfy a solo player must be extreme. If it takes you 30 seconds - 1 minute to kill a mob but only < 5 seconds in a FPS...

Here's the thing: an MMO game needs to stand on its own and satisfy ONE player to have a solid core with which to prosper. Moreover, players want to login and have a minimum expectation of the experience. If they login to find their side handicapped and being shat on... that's not going to rally them, they are just going to stop playing.

The game is *made* for competitive people loyal to a cause, their outfit, and with the fighting ability and structure to pull off short-term and long-term victories. That's a very, very small segment of the gaming population. For the rest, you have no time to make friends except in the heat of battle, and your usefulness and the reason people might recruit you is only equal to your ability to perform, so socializers are DOA. Achievers have the achievements but they will be beaten down by battlefield losses (which are always prolonged sieges in my experience because of how much of a bitch it was to take down a base with "respawning".) if there's no competitive fight to them. Explorers have *nothing* to check out. Most of the battlefield between bases is dead space.

The game got what it was designed for. That doesn't mean it's going to be a financial success. A sequel needs to be vastly different to its predecessor to enjoy any high-scale level of success. Otherwise it needs to be built as, and exploited to the fullest, a niche game.

Free to Play, I agree, would be a necessary component if they keep on like this. If they want to churn out large quantities of content, they need subscription. I don't understand "more accountability."

Oh I agree with ya on this. It sorta worked in PS in that the lone wolves were always the ones to go blazing ahead and provide the distraction, albeit inadvertently, for organized squads to roll in or flank or do something other than a frontal assault. Those ramboes got their fill of kills and deaths unless a squad was organized to defend...then they were just fodder. I do recall my outfit assimilated a few of the lone wolves when they saw how things actually worked. So those people and guilds/clans/outfits can coexist and function. Retention is an issue for everyone, but more so for the wolves given their shelf life is shorter in games like PS. Outifts can help retain some of those, but the game should have a cushion to keep the others around a little longer.

What about allowing outfits to be open? When someone creates a character, at the end of the process they are given a list of open outfits (sortable by player numbers) with a short description. You can choose to decline, pick one, or click RANDOM. Seems like it would be a decent way to get people at least in a (bad) group.

In world war 2 online you can do basically just that (minus the random part).  If you set your squad recruitment up, it'll show people without a squad what squads are looking for people when they sign onto the game.  Of course, you can just close it if you don't want to join any, but I think it probably helps.

That sounds pretty sound to me.  EQ1 was hugely successful, so making an EQ2 that varied a lot from the mechanics of EQ1 was a mistake, because EQ1 players went in thinking it was the same as EQ2 when it really was an entirely different MMO (lore-aside).

In contrast Planetside wasn't largely successful, but even so the mechanics of a PlanetSide sequel won't be that much different than the original.  The differences will mostly come in a macro way (e.g. the FPS mechanics, skill system, and vehicles will probably be quite similar). 

People going into the PS sequel will be able to come in with expectations of how the game will play, where as people going from EQ1 to EQ2 had to totally change their expectations because the games differed so much.

If your game needs other people (players) to show others why it is fun or how to play, then you've failed in your role as a game developer and will only see the hardcore, niche players with new talent being left to their own devices as only a few mentors are available to train the masses.

Why would established players give any kind of a shit to take a random under their wing and show them the ropes? You'd need to create massive incentives, and even then, you're relying on players to not fuck it up and be GOOD teachers, and the ransoms to take their role seriously and put in the required effort to succeed.

It's the game's job to be a good teacher! If you as the developer can't interest people in your product from the get go... you designed it wrong!

The trick is to make your game accessible enough that its easy to get hooked on, and hard enough that you don't get bored with it after a month.  Thats been my problem most games I've played lately.  Even if they are great to start with, they just don't seem to go anywhere.   If there is a reason, despite my occasional rant, why I just can't put Starcraft 2 down, its because its constantly evolving and changing and I am constantly challenged by it.  Of course, a game like SC2 at least has a ladder, so not everyone is playing together off the bat. 

Doesn't mean it needs to require other players to show you how to play, but let me put it another way - any game I've played long term, I've pretty quickly ended up turning to other players to learn how to play better, in everything from Counter-Strike (original) to Starcraft 2 to WoW, to EVE, to WW2O. 

That's a natural desire in trying to get better: seeking objective opinion or another's perspective to compare against your own. That's a compeitive trait though.  Most people have an unrealistic impression of their ability and aren't honest with themselves to seek help or listen to it if they find it. Players not having fun and getting curbstomped won't care to learn and will just move onto something more fun that eases them in better.

When someone logs into the game, it's for them and their buds and nobody else. There is no recruitment and socialization aspect in game. An outfit leader would need to make an effort to train new recruits, but most would rather poach the players that are good and have proven themselves by actually succeeding at what they are doing.

My opinion of most Outfits / Guilds is that they aren't organizations like the military that takes anyone and trains them up, but sports teams that recruits and invests in top talent. You still need to design the game that people at all skill levels can participate... but those at a higher level need to face similar opposition.

WoW succeeds because you can train on your own, socialize on your own, and learn on your own and succeed. Planetside can tea h you the wrong lessons when you're on your own and doesn't have the environment to train and encourage new recruits. It is literally a "die enough times and you'll figure it out because hey you can't die anyway." Like giving a new 18-year-old recruit a gun and telling him to go fight.

War isn't fair. *Good games are.* Planetside and games like it aren't destined to last.

Well, I look at something like World War 2 Online (which is my favorite MMOFPS to date, though I must admit, its towards the sim side, so its arguably a slightly different genre), and it feels very fair.   Granted, there are systems in place that help it be fair, but there is still a pretty huge difference between someone who knows what they are doing and someone who doesn't and there is also almost no difference in available "gear."


Thats a very accurate analogy I think, but I also think that there is much more willingness to "train" new but dedicated players in an MMO atmosphere than in say, a competitive FPS atmosphere.  In a 6v6 TF2 league, you can't carry dead weight with you, but its a lot easier to bring an extra guy to the fight in an MMO.

Planetside is also hideously overpriced for what you get.  $5 a month is pushing it.  $15 is insane.

There are artificial barriers and aids you can put in place that mitigate some of it. You can put in aids to 'herd the cats', like planetside attempted to do with it's command channel, and natural selection did with assigning groups and waypoints. You can also put in artificial walls that protect new people, like WoW does.

Really, the difference between organized squads/clans/whatever and random people is just that - organization. In general, it doesn't matter how good you are if you're significantly outnumbered, it's simply a logistical problem to solve in the game's development. There's plenty of room to create systems that channel the 'pickup' crowd.

And, as for the "unfair/unbalanced games aren't meant to last"? I think all the call of duty games have about 10 million reasons why that statement is wrong.

This.

'Unfair' PvP games still do fine as long as they're fun; where MMO devs fuck up is removing the fun to try to make them more fair.  Then the Fail/Quits/Firings happen.  I can't remember if it was a sub or preorder of PS that I cancelled, but myself and three friends did just that when they nerfed Magmowing.

You're taking a statement I made about a specific genre of game (persistant open-world war games) and applying it to instanced, loosely balanced, fast and fun non-persistent online multiplayer.

Call of Duty is a horrific example to show as a counter to my statement. Call of Duty, ideally, starts with the same number of people on each side in a neutral balance of power and wraps up the sessions in a period < 10 minutes per match. If things get "unfair" (one side dominates), you won't be in that situation for long, or can go find another lobby. The game tries to match you against similarly skilled people. There is an element of randomness that no good matchmaking system will ever be able to account for, especially in a team-based game, but CoD does its damnedest. It makes more of an attempt at fairness than Planetside ever could. When I say good games are fair, I'm not just talking about balance of the mechanics.

I would ask what your definition of "fine" is.

Also: if only one side is having fun because they are winning, is that the fault of the losers for not being better, or the developers for not giving the losers a heads-up / entertaining experience as well? (Team Fortress 2 huge example, CoD Kill Cams as well) PvP games where only the winners have a good time because they are winning (maybe because they're beating the shit out of the losers instead of facing actual, real competition?) are also eventually going to bleed players until only the most skilled are left unless they do something else to counteract the bleed or give the losers something for their trouble.

Losers are paying customers too. It's in a developer's best interest to help them because there'll be far more of them than winners.

Maybe I shouldn't have quoted what I did; I agree that the popularity of certain unbalanced games/maps/levels/etc does indicate that 'fairness' isn't the end-all/be-all of PvP games, regardless of genre, but mainly I was trying to say that persistant team-based MMOs like Planetside *can* be sustainable, even if unfair.

Planetside didn't fail because of uneven teams; Planetside failed, at least for myself and my friends/family that tried it, because it played like watered-down shit, and was steadily being worsened while I played (which I think was the end of beta... been a while).   I think most people, if they had to choose, would pick fun over fairness, even if it meant losing more than winning.

Good example; I actually had a lot of fun, even while losing, in Warhammer BGs... until Tor Anroc, even while winning.

Fuck Tor Anroc.

There are many, many, many reasons Planetside failed, all interconnected, all reinforcing each other. That's the best way I can deal with a statement like "This is why X did this." without turning it into a "No, MY reason for X is the real reason!"

Then again I think fail might be too strong a word. It's still running. So it's "fine" if you ask me. But it's never going to outgrow its current trappings. A sequel without clear, fundamental changes would be financial suicide. I don't think Sony has it in them to revolutionize on that level.

People would choose fun over fairness. For added drama and entertainment, they would also choose their fun to come at the expense of others in a consequence-free environment. "If you're not having a good time, you should get better at the game!" Not a really healthy environment, that. But a game designer should always choose fairness in a competitive environment if they want their game to succeed. That is, if two players of equal skill were to fight, the game should make it an even contest, not skew in favor of one player because of some selection they made that's different from the other player, where fun was a primary factor of it instead of fairness.

Single player games? Fuck fairness. Fun all the way. Also, what most people seem to enjoy.

Well, PvP is always going to have losers, thats the nature of it.  If people can't handle losing well, they shouldn't play a PvP game. 
I don't see why the developers need to go out of their way to making losing easier on the losing side.  At the end of the day, you know you are going to lose sometimes in PvP.  No matter how "fair" the game is, one side loses, possibly more than one side if there are more than 2 factions.   It seems to me that at the end of the day this comes down to "how do you make losing not be really sucky?"  The answer is that if you are a competitive person losing sucks - even if the devs give you a lollypop after the battle. 

As for fairness, I totally agree that fairness is good and necessary.   But what is an example of a mechanic that makes it fun for people who just plain aren't good at it?  I know you used the "get better" thing to be snarky, but at some level...really you need to get better if you want to enjoy any competition, video game, MMO, pick up basketball at the local Y, whatever.

Great points. I think some game devs try to implement the "pat on the back nice try, EVERYONE WINS A TROPHY" bullshit that kid's sports do these days. PS is not a great example because if you lost a base/foothold on a continent, you were forced to go back and organize. If you didn't want to, well for were fucked. No "you did your best Travis, here's an achievement for being you" shit.

I sucked a PS for the first few weeks. Some of that had to do with the controls and some had to do with the lay of the land and using it to my advantage. Until I started getting a feel for it, I did support shit, laid mine fields, set up the fuck-you turrets, repaired shit, etc. Not once did I feel those contributions were worthless so there was incentive in doing other things than pew-pewing. Hell, AMS driving was one of the most thrilling things I ever did and continued to do even after I got a taste of being successful in combat.

If I have learned anything from these boards, its that there is not overarching video game that appeals to everyone. PS:Next (or2, or whatever the hell they call it) will be a niche game, and once game devs realize this and shoot for that mark instead of the convulsing blob of masses that WoW has dined on, they'll do much better. Sure you need a good number of subs and something worth subbing to in order to keep your game going, but I think too many times people see WoW's insane numbers and believe they can reach into the bucket and pull more than they really are able.

Actually, I don't think devs do enough of that.

Shadowbane, for example; sure, the main culprits of SB's demise were shadowbane.exe and server-side lag, but on the War server, immediately after launch, Purity Council wiped out the Jade Empire and a few smaller states... and those people just quit when they lost (for the most part).  Winners won too little, and losers lost WAAYYY too much.  Even without the technical issues, the punitive design of their PvP would have prevented SB from becoming a truly big hit.

Even WoW is guilty; I really don't see the point of awarding losing sides in BGs less honor.  My progress is held hostage by mouthbreathers that want to /dance naked at the GY?

PvP MMOs should reward individuals for *participating*, not winning.  "Winning" and "Losing" should only be on the macro level (Guilds losing funds/Cities being lost, etc).

That's not the only way in which WoW is guilty - in GC's latest post on the next patch the topic of the high-end PvP gear comes up again (summary): it's too easy to get, only the really skilled players and teams should be getting the good stuff.

So WoW's PvP design is to reward the more skilled players with better equipment.  It would make more sense to me if the more skilled players were given access to convenience and bling items.  Only giving the most skilled players access to the items with the best stats seems counter-productive if you are hoping that more folks will participate in PvP.

It's like they simply do not grasp how having a larger population of subscribers enjoy PvP is a more cost-effective way of keeping subs than just having folks who enjoy frequent content releases - content being significantly more expensive to produce.  Yes, you do want to reward the better/best players with stuff, no you do not want that stuff to give the better players a bigger advantage.

Edit: fixed grammar (hopefully) and and tried to have sentences actually mean something

Winning should be the reward.

Edit: And your reward for losing is that you have an experience you can learn from and improve upon next time.

If I had to say what I would add as a minimum feature to help a loser get better in a PvP, competitive multiplayer setting, as a developer, it would be playbacks, and to the level that Theater in Halo was implemented or replays in StarCraft II are enjoyed.

I'm not looking for "atta boy, have a trophy", but I am looking to be able to objectively look at my past performance and study it to improve. THAT'S how you can reward someone with inferior skill: be giving them more of an ability to study and improve. Also, having record of glorious losses (HOW THE FUCK DID I DIE JUST NOW? OH MY GOD THAT'S HILARIOUS! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKIOifaCT5A)) would increase visibility on the game when people share it.

Planetside... Planetside I can't think of ways to resolve the basic issues with it. There's just too much wrong with the formula, as fun as it could be under very specific circumstances. In fact I'm willing to believe the people that support it most have a rather disillusioned view of the experience, with all the high points remembered and all the sucky ones rationalized or deemphasized. They see POTENTIAL and not the realities of the formula. It's far easier to tackle stuff like WoW or other "PvP" (a.k.a. multiplayer) games. WoW has issues, ya. But ultimately Battlegrounds aren't serious competition. They're more like Battlefield games than Call of Duty (Arena would be CoD).


I think the issue is far more complicated and interconnected than can be summed up in a statement like that. There's a lot more going on than just that one statement. Arguably, rewarding a player for just participating means they don't necessarily have to support their team or the war effort and are just dead weight or even detrimental to the team as they help the enemy by participating their way. Then, if the enemy keeps winning because they are actually playing the game the way it was meant to be played, they take more control, morale is lost, people's entertainment prospects are reduced in a poor system such as Planetside and WoW Battlegrounds...

That's a competitive mindset.

I'm not saying change a competitive game to accommodate casuals, but you're going to have way less customers because casuals who aren't serious about the competition and aren't willing to put in the effort and focus make up a far larger percentage of the games industry market. How do I know? WoW's success.

Hell, what sucks is you can't even make a game that segregates the casuals from the experts because the experts will abuse that by going to where the casuals are and beating up on them for fun and practice. WoW comes pretty close to accommodating the four major styles of gamers, including competitive, which is I think one of the major reasons Battlegrounds / Arenas were added in the first place. It added a niche that was previously unsupported by Vanilla WoW.

I guess I look at it this way:  I think the persistence in an MMOFPS should refer far more to the game world than to the player.  I frankly don't care if an FPS has a single experience point to gain.  What I "gain" is a town or base or power station (or whatever) for my faction.    If you don't want to look at it from a competitive perspective, then the reward for losing is having played a fun game fighting over some objetives for a while. 

  I don't care if I ever unlock a damned thing or if everything is just available from the beginning - the game needs to be fun to play.   I think Tribes is a good place to look.  Tons of options for your character, and you never have to unlock a thing, you just pick your stuff and go.  Take Tribes 2 - as fucking is - and place it into a huge seamless world where there are 100 bases and 1000s of little stations/sensor towers all over to fight over, and I'd pay 15 bucks a month no sweat.

OK. They made a game just for you. It tanks, is a financial disappintment, goes on life support with minimal patching and updates, no expansions, and is questionable whether it makes any money at all, just like Planetside. Explorers are bored, socializers have no place, and Achievers see no point in playing as everything is superficial and meaningless. You might even lose the competitive folks when they see there is nothing worth winning or the game is unfair to the point that they can't get those wins because of the basic fairness issue of a persistant war landscape. The only people you have to play with are people exactly like you: hardcore gamers who enjoy a good rules system and like to challenge themselves. You might get some people that are good at the game and enjoy beating up on the newbs. Either way, the game dwindles to a small, select few, as marketing data and the success of other games has proven that there are a lot fewer of you out there than you seem to personally believe is out there to support a game.

Different people have different reasons for gaming. Accommodating more than one and giving different types of players reason to play will lead to success. See: Minecraft. Don't See: Dwarf Fortress.  I'm not saying fuck with a formula like adding Social support for Call of Duty (which is what I think they want to add with their sub fees -- a Battle.net for CoD). But CoD catered to explorers (Single Player), achievers (HELLA GOOD leveling system and challenges), and competitive folks in a style that all three could appreciate and excel at.

My simple question as a place to start: why would people care about some game world's empire, their goals and philosophies, or their power levels as an empire when they purchase a game? Didn't they buy the game for their enjoyment, not for the glory of the Vaanu? Didn't they buy it to shoot the electrical gun and drive the tanks instead of getting seriously involved in a conflict that isn't there's to begin with?

More or less for the same reason that when I'm playing TF2 I suddenly care a whole lot about the RED team or BLU team arbitrarily, because its MY team.  As for the last part - yes, I would buy it specfically to get involved in a virtual conflict/war (thats why I have an active subscription to world war 2 online!).  That is, in fact, the ENTIRE appeal of an MMOFPS for me.  Otherwise, I will just stick to normal FPS games (which I also play).

OK. I have no problem with your personal preference. I feel it is one that should be supported in a good competitive game along with other factors. The key thing is that you don't place importance on the other factors. That's OK.

I think the thing I worry about is basically Global Agenda.  That is a game that tries to please everyone.  I decided to check out the demo.  The shooter mechanics felt really solid, and it had a lot of potential.  I could even deal with instanced AvA combat with the hex map the way they have it set up.  HOWEVER, I quickly realized that they wouldn't even let me PvP until I got to level 5 or 10 or something.  And I saw /general chat mucked up with loads of "Looking for crafting material X"  and all I could think of was how fun the game had the potential to be and how unwilling I was to even get to that part because of all the extra crap they stuck in.

Thats sort of the "bad" direction I'm comparing my "Tribes 2 but bigger" idea to.  For reference.

The disconnect I'm having is that my viewpoint is of understanding the realities of selective focus vs. all-inclusive design and the effects of a persistent world in a competitive, war-type  environment, while your viewpoint, from my perspective, is "this is how I like my games, other people should like this, and game developers should make a game for me above all other priorities."

The first part of my perspective, absolutely no problem with. Parts two and three are problematic. Global Agenda, I haven't studied, but just because someone knows what they should do doesn't mean they will succeed in its implementation. Game development is *hard and complicated.*

Who ever said other people should like this?  I'm obviously arguing for my own preference.  Yes, I want a game developer to make a game like this, for me and the other population that would play it.    Yes, I'm not like most gamers, yes, I think most gamers have made MY enjoyment of games worse because I think they've gotten more casual over the years.  Is this selfish? Probably, but its fucking entertainment, we aren't trying to find a way to feed people while I make the argument that everyone needs to like my favorite food or starve.

You're making a case here for how other people should think rather than respecting how they want to play. Winning is the reward for you -- not necessarily for other game players.

If you isolate your statement to other competitive people, that makes sense. But I am speaking of *all gamer types*.

The moment you make a MMO shooter about the player, that's the moment it dies. Just to add to my crazy card.

Plantside showing your kills and K/d Was the beginning of the end. Nothing else mattered a majority of the culture after years of neglect made this true. If more such stats were presented at the empire level, it would have been different. The other major issue is in a lot of games, winning = Loot, this was a bad precedence to set, more so for MMOFPS. Its an expanding issue that just gets worse.

At the beginning, Factional pride was king, until people realized it was meaningless (Anyone remember when you could only make one empire toon? Of course not.). Then it just became about kills and less about "the war". I'm with Malakili  in a lot of what he is saying, however take that with a grain of salt as both of us are heavily invested in that level. I really don't care about how many kills you have, stop showing it to me, did you take the base? No, you are worthless. Thanks for that. Im not sure how many of you played in year 4 or 5 but that's just what it devolved to, endless tower camps and farming kills. And that has everything to do with the larger world game being neglected and well as an erosion of team based requirement.

I know there are lots of people who like to play alone, go Rambo, and have high stats. Plantside was not for you. It never should have been for you, and you are the reason it fell down (Among others out of the player control). There are about a billion better games for the soloist, A MMOFPS should not be yet another. I'm sorry. Explorers, socializers  and Achievers need not apply.


As for Wow PvP comparisons, Its laughable. Not a dam thing should be taken from WoW's PvG (Player VS gear) Time = better BS (Yes I am ignoring player skill to make a point) I hope, that Plantside 2 will be the team based game Plantside one started out to be. I won't hold my breadth though. Not in this day and age of everyone is special. Yes, I'm being draconian, yes I'm ignoring all the arguments in the world, No its not how I truly feel and i realize there are some nuances I'm stomping on. But some of this conversation is just retarded.  You want a MMOFPS that everyone can play, everyone gets a pat on the back, every one is told they are special. Fuck that.

/rant

Plantside 2 needs to be the same rule sets, new environments, a better world game, more solid feel (and that means netcode) and a more expandable engine. Everything else, why mess with it? The original game had tons for people to do and was extremely flexible with many many facets of play.

Just to be clear, my post was not intended to be rational. Lorekeep has very valid points.

So you want the same thing as before, except maybe less cheaters and better handling. Despite the fact Planetside is what it is because of what it is, and all the failures and niche-thinking that underlines its design.

I mean, you repeated, near verbatim, what I said about how a competition with no end, fairness not guaranteed, and meaningless victories will deter the competitive crowd. Of course focus would shift to personal accomplishment: that's what matters MORE to people.

Guys I think yours is a valid viewpoint but there is a "I am pro I want to have my power in game shown by curbstomping newbs" prejudice that this game allowed you to have and might have influenced your opinion on how good this game really is. Mr. B, I know for a fact that's why you threw out such praise for APB. Yeah, it's a lot of fun getting organized, working together, and beating up randoms and raping and pillaging for personal / team glory. That happens way more than serious competition. Why would a conquered / competitive type waste time on a challenge when there's perfectly good newbs to slaughter and is way more fun?  That doesn't make it a good game... that just means it's a personal empowerment simulator with real PCs instead of NPCs to beat up on.

The audience for the game you want doesn't exist. The amount of money to develop vs. expected return is bad business. If someone makes it without taking into account the realities of the design and the audience, then it is out of passion for the game rather than smart business. You can't expect a company to initiate development that will likely cost them money instead of making it.

Ill be the first to tell you I'm not that good, I played a mix of support and support fire. So, that's not where I am coming from.


Negative! Look at the stuff I listed after the my little rant. For me to agree that the core design was a problem, I would have to acknowledge that the core design was flawed. It wasn't, not in the areas you speak of. The failings came AFTER launch, and were just compounded by the constant erosion of the team focus.

To this day I still believe Planetside had more avenues of play, for more skill levels, or time commitments than any other game. That's about the only part they expanded on with great affect (like the hacking stuff, the gunships, the engineer stuff). You could be as mediocre as me and still contribute, until they started removing the team aspect! In fact you could have ZERO shooting skills and be competitive or at least, pivotal to the world goal.

No longer.

Persistent world + online PvP war = flawed at its core.

They are not popular with all gamer types. It's a solid concept... in a niche and when not measured up against other game designs. Like the world's best female poker player who only barely breaks the Top 100 when put against all available types of competition.

Thing is, I'm far from pro in WW2O, and I love the hell out of it.  I love playing infantry and assaulting an objective, looking up and seeing a dogfight.  I love the feeling of an airstrike coming in at just the right moment to save my ass from a tank line.  I love the feeling of seeing an armor column rolling out flanked by trucks to bring in infantry and mobile spawn points.  I love the feeling capping an objective with a really long capture time while under the pressure of having the enemy baring down on you and just trying to hold out another minute.  I love that there can be a long day long back and forth over a single town and even though I'm not online all the time being able to watch the progression on the campaign map on the website.

Yes, I'm in an good squad, but we accept pretty much anyone who is a reasonable person and willing to learn.  We are organized, but frankly the mechanics of the game and the way its shaken out now mean that we aren't TONS more organized than anyone else.  Curbstomping newbs means nothing because you have to take objecitves to actually do anything.  No one really cares about personal stats. there is the occasional post someone makes about a really nice sortie, but for every one of those there are 10 on our forums about how great a job the allies did in the fight over town X too nights ago and that we should be proud we contributed to that.  Thats what I mean when I say the reward is winning.  It isn't necessarily about the same kind of competition as say, competitive TF2 where the winning reward is a bit different (there are leagues and such).

My first 2 weeks of WW2O, and I swear this is no exaggeration, I can count the number of kills I had TOTAL on one hand.  I LOVED EVERY FUCKING MINUTE OF IT.  While I haven't kept my sub up every month since then, I do keep going back to it when I have the time and the feeling I get playing it is unlike anything else on the market right now.  Its that feeling I wanted replicated in PS2 or Tribes Universe, maybe with some faster paced combat as a sweetener.

You've had very positive personal experience with the game. That's not a problem. There's room for that in every game, good and bad. I can see how you'd want the environment that allows the possibility for you have such experiences.

The issues I'm looking at are macro and non-niche. I'd love to see a good shooter as much as the next guy. But there are so many more factors that must be considered besides anecdotal, biased evidence for a game like that to be successful. By successful I mean growing in popularity, profitable, and encouraging further development. Anyone that gets let go because a game didn't make enough money to support all the employees means it wasn't successful enough.

Given human nature, it may be impossible to achieve a successful MMO FPS! Niches will pop up, but nothing on the scale of WoW.

I Do know from what position you are speaking. I just had to get that (Rant) off my chest :)

It was very sad to sit there and watch over 5 years the developers neglect and remove the team requirement.

I think this is actually really important.  When I look back at my best times in gaming, they are all relatively trivial things from a mechanical standpoint, but they came about because the games allowed for them to happen.  These are experiences (just using recent examples) in things like Darkfall Online travelling across the game world on my first day to a clan city, truly awe inspiring and heart pounding...and barely anything of note happened, because the game allowed for the experience to happen.  EVE Online and being involved in a large scale industrial corporation and dealing with some war decs by mercenaries bought by a rival industrial corp, I managed to avoid conflict totally in the instance I'm thinking of an it was still 2 of the most intense weeks of gaming I've played...because the game allowed it to happen.

Along with that is the game allowing bad things to happen.  Getting ganked on day 2 in Darkfall by a couple travelling high level players, lost some gear.  Learned a lesson about paying attention to my surroundings though.   In EVE my corp had a bunch of POSs set up for capital ship production and a few of them got knocked down due to some poor decisions we made, lost a non trivial amount of ISK worth of stuff.   We recovered and rebuilt (which was a rewarding process on its own I might add, despite our losses!)

The scale itself, the part of being something bigger than yourself either a bigger group of other players, a bigger system, a bigger world, is what these games have.  It isn't just the "positive" experiences that make that scale visible, the negative ones do to, but as long as its that scale and that bigger than yourself context that is the attraction itself, setbacks aren't going to cause you to quit the game.

I would suggest an alternate perspective: that over five years, they wised up to what a majority of players wanted and changed the game as best as they could in order to keep the service running. They saw the future, and the flaws, but only after the ship ha been launched. The customer / gamer landscape has changed significantly as more people of all technical and skills levels have their barriers to getting the product removed. Planetside was a game of its time catering to an exclusive niche audience, but one that, in its initial design, was much narrower than it is today.

What they did sounds like a response to the player base, not necessarily something they desire. Catering to the majority instead of the minority (of which, I believe, you count yourself apart.)

I used to want the DAOC-style realm warfare that Malakili is describing.  Now what I want is to have absolute control over how much time I actually spend in the game.  I also don't want to be significantly penalized if I can't spend more than an hour a day in the game.  I want to get in and play, and I want to have very little downtime.  My days of putting up with 30 minutes of getting to/finding the conflict and a minute of fighting are over (DAOC).

The only game system I can think of that might accommodate both types of players would involve having "loyalists" and "mercs".  Mercs are players like me - get me to the combat right now, I don't care about what I'm fighting for, I'm rewarded for completing objectives, and win or lose, I'm off to the next battle within 10 minutes (procedurally generate an arena if there aren't player-controlled forces engaged in battle). 

Loyalists are invested in whatever faction they are fighting for, they are rewarded for how well their faction is doing... or not.

PS needs to reward outfits better. Outfits should get rewards/points for participation, and could use those rewards for stuff like control over bases which give them unique weapons/vehicles (not overpowered, but different) and other cool things.

In games with far more consequential PvP (EvE, Darkfall), there are plenty of well run large clans that take in newbies, there's also elite small clans. If the game rewards players for organizing, they will, and that includes mass recruiting into their structures.

Planetside basically had no rewards for outfit, and player impact on the gameworld was minimal. If the game was just a bigass public FPS capture the flag map in function, why expect players to act any better than they do on ANY random FPS public server? No proper incentives from the devs to play the game in a manner other than running around pew pewing, and since the game itself was an inferior FPS mechanics wise, little reason for people to stick around (especially being charged a subscription).

^^^^  :Love_Letters:

They have games for that style, they are called every non-MMO FPS ever made. 

No, not what I'm talking about.  Given your response, seems like you aren't interested in what I'm talking about, so I'll save myself the effort.

That really is pretty much non-MMO shooters.  The difference I guess is scale, but nothing you say seems to indicate that actually matters to you.  The Mercs/Loyalists thing makes sense and could work, but realistically speaking, what is it about the MMO FPS that is appealing to you, since basically everything you want can be attained in dozens of games that already exist?

Planetside adding in an EVE-esque resource and crafting structure would be an extremely difficult task and is highly likely not to work.

Near-infinte resources were one of the critical elements that made Planetside what it was and kept battles going as long as they were. All the game had *were* the battles. Sieges happened and kept prolonged battles going because it was hella impossible to drain a base's energy and choke points could be defended with it extremely favoring the defender. Just thinking of the mobile spawn points requiring crafting materials, and possibly forcing one side (are you implying that outfits would be out for themselves instead of their nation? The nations orders were pretty clear: capture and fight. You want Wild West meets Planetside, as the current theme wouldn't work at all) to never be able to advance upon a position because of logistics instead of making them only think of the strategic placement of a mobile spawn point and taking it from there.

Then again... isn't that what Global Agenda is doing? And not so hot at?

In war... should a soldier *care* about where their resources come from, as long as they keep coming? It's the commanders that need to be looking at resources at global strategy. Not everyone can be a commander.

Planetside even had that. Jump to Skirmish. You'd end up in the middle of a battle, doing your own thing, and not really helping anyone else but yourself.

Look, you want that Typhon, you're best served just playing single player games that don't have teammates. If you join a team, your responsibility to the team is to care about the game and the team enough to be good, or at least follow orders. You can play as long or as little as you want and your teammates won't care because they aren't human.

Don't expect other people who take the game seriously to be so kind to your desired playing habits.

This is another one of the things WW2O does really well.  There is a player run high command that controls the strategic aspect of the game.  Moving brigades in and our of towns, managing supply lines, giving and revoking attack orders on objectives.  Its an absolutely vital part of the game, but the average person can just hop in, find the hottest town and fight if they want.  Meanwhile, more organized squads can work on more complex tasks if they want to (organizing attacks on forward bases away from main battles in order to set up more long term favorable map conditions, for example).

it is definitely possible to run a brigade out of soldiers in WW2O though, and its a viable strategy sometimes to try and attack a town with an armored brigade deployed there with the express purpose of trying to deplete their armor reserves, setting up for a later victory rather than an immediate one.  The respawn mechanics mean that a brigade is always getting replenished and never totally out of commision for more than a few hours, but attrition is an important consideration.

Its definitely possible to keep those strategic mechanics in place while not making the average player have to fiddle with it or care too much about it, and the overall impact is, I think, pretty positive.

I think the system I mentioned in my post earlier today most resembles WAR's guild level up system, where by achieving new levels you unlocked nifty things that were cool but not essential, and guilds could claim ownership in keeps and upgrade them.

You obviously don't want resource control at the level of EvE, nor a national strategic command at the same level as WW2OL, but there is some merit in these systems. You can have certain bases be production or resource centres that not just go into the general faction resource pool but enable special resources/unlocks for outfits that control them.

if you want to encourage gigantic outfits that hoover up newbies, you can make outfits give pyramid bonuses like Asheron's Call guilds. The outfit's high command gets a cut of kills/captures, and the better the high command is at organizing and leading, the more successful and better equipped members will be.

There's obviously a limit of what victory can be, it's bread and butter is still the FPS crowd who are looking for something more epic than TF2 or CoD. Outfits could build up a faction headquarters into an impregnable fortress (that could be raided), they could gain blueprints and then acquire rare resources to produce unique vehicles, not necessarily overpowered ones, but COOL ones. Crazy spider tanks, mega tanks, teleportation networks, ninjas, flying saucers, tactical nukes, etc. This would give players a sense of team purpose, but not some kind of vulgar levels = power equation that would change it from a pure MMOFPS into a poopsock levelling game.

You're missing the point. The free FPS games do not have persistent factions that have strategic objectives.

And I agree that the hybrid model sounds like the ideal solution (and I think World of Tanks has something like this? Possibly even Eve's Dust). Let the dedicated, subscription paying poopsockers build and protect their virtual empires. In a battle they can choose to expend resources on opening up "mercenary" slots which get randomly filled. Those slots get filled by people who are interested in the battle elements of the game but not in the tying themselves down to CTA's and alliance politics.
 
Though for Planetside I tend to agree with whoever it was who identified the importance of the subscription fee. In a market where there are viable free competitors you probably can't expect 15$ a month subs to retain a large subscriber base unless your game really is just insanely better. Something APB and GA also got wrong and which WoT seems to have a more sensible approach too.

I guess I don't see the point of caring about strategic objectives if all your want to do is get in and fight and get out.  Typhon specficially said he didn't care what he was fighting for.

The strategic layer gives the battles a narrative which is lacking from the disconnected rounds of the free shooters. So when people recount the series of battles in which an empire collapsed you could still have been part of those battles. Not as connected as those in the alliance, but also without the tedium and commitment required to be a dedicated alliance member (shit like mandatory ops and alliance politics probably being the big two).

Besides, you need the strategic layer if there's any chance of charging subs. And you need some space for the casuals to inhabit if you want to be non-niche.

I don't think anyone is under the illusion that Planetside 2 will have a subscription. It just won't happen. Also, you guys should really stop talking about GA as if its dead. Its alive and well, and doing great, has even spawned a new title based on its findings and tech. Still a solid fun game. The measured approach they took really paid off, hopefully SOE was watching.

I will flat out not play PS2 if there's no strat. layer.  Not interested in a bland insta-pwn pointless map treadmill that's little more than bloated 2142.  "Full of sound and fury, signifiying nothing."
As MBW says, may as well play GA if that's your game...  which I might just do sometime soon if/when I can find the time.  Heh, and I was the one that got us into the GA Alpha.... and I never play the damned thing.   :oh_i_see:

I stated that GA failed as a subscription based game, which it unarguably did... though not quite as explosively as APB. Both games would have done much better if they'd based their model around free to play from the start.

You're implying that there were competent people behind APB that spent the appropriate amount of time analyzing the market and simply made a bad judgement call.

Far more was fucked up with Realtime then just the guys who were responsible for coming up with a sustainable business model.

I apologize for any implied suggestion I thought RTW were competent :)

Nor are they great evidence on that basis. But it still is true that all the example of persistent FPS games have had real issues demonstrating enough value to justify a subscription. Whereas the format is perfect for micro-transactions.

For that matter I forgot crimecraft... but it's an easy one to forget.

How would a good microtransactions system work?  The last thing I want in an FPS is someone to be able to buy their way to victory.

Who knows? It's not like there is one answer. That's going to be a balancing act between how much money you need to be bringing in. If you can survive on vanity items and selling new content I'm sure they'd like to. If not they can provide short cuts to normal progression, more variety in game-play options and at the extreme end force free to play people to realize they're the grunts rather than the stars on the battlefield.

But it gives a lot more flexibility than demanding 15$ a month unless your strategic layer is so deep and fun that the sub-free FPS games don't count as competition.

Bling, vanity, and club houses.

Had APB had a strat. layer (as was discussed long ago in RTW's design notes), would it have failed?

APB and GTA types are about as far as you can get from Planetside style. Its problems were numerous and one fix is only a band-aid on the multiple gaping wounds and dismemberment that was the product's health at launch.

Did this strat. layer include going microtrans instead of bizzaro-subscription?

Yes. APB didn't fail because it was a bad game, it failed because no-one watched the development budget.

EDIT: Removing the business failure of RTW from the mix: APB really did something greater than just individual battles between two sides. There was nothing to really 'win', nothing to fight over.

Yes.

Becouse most of that games problems was money management, as far as fixing/finishing the game.

(holidays got in the way of me responding)

What appeals to me about it being MMO, is that the the game would evolve based upon the strategic conflicts the loyalists had with other loyalist factions, rather than some tired plot line that I would be forced to watch cut scenes.  But, I want the game itself to have merc built-in - as a merc I want to be able to join an arena-type conflict anytime I log in.

I'd like that the loyalists would look to contract a merc outfit to augment their numbers.  This wouldn't be arena combat, this would be full on MMO combat (potentially asymmetric, need to hit on multiple fronts, attrition, reinforcements, etc).

I want my cake (instanced arenas) and eat it too (get a contract from a loyalist faction to engage in conflict intended to secure land).  The idea is that the merc experience should appeal to the casual player, and the loyalist experience would appeal to the more dedicated player.

There is a cheesy RIFT pvp guild, one of their more outspoken tards recently compared themselves to the viet cong. Seriously.

That's why wargames in general break down, there are people who see them as games and then there are those who see them as war. So you get griefing, cheating, etc.

I think the problem comes when games don't know what they are, or try to be many things at once.  No one REALLY thinks Rift is a wargame, ok some people do, but its obviously not.  Throwing in open world PvP server types is fine, but maybe just make it so you can't grief kill NPCs or something on a PvE server. 

Something like WW2O is clearly a war, and everyone knows it, and it has mechanics to make it function as such.   Even something like Darkfall has city siege mechanics and EVE Online has a war dec system, so while they aren't ONLY war games, they have mechanics that let people play that way within some coherent system.  Its when you go all free for all PvP when the game really isn't designed for it that problems arise because there can really be no resolution, so its just of a mess.

That's not really Sky's point though.

Some people treat PvP as if it were a real war, regardless of mechanics.  Those people will use whatever means are available to harass other players, and that is where the problems happen.  If a game has PvP at all, they'll find a way to abuse it.

Right, but if the game treats PvP as if it were a real war, those situations actually arise a lot less I think. For example, its impossible to grief in WW2O, it IS possible to grief in EVE or Darkfall - but since you aren't dealing with run back mechanics like WoW for example you'll never get corpse camped.

 I mean sure, there are people who will grief no matter what, he'll they'll grief their own side, but that doesn't strike me as as the same thing.  Perhaps its a definition thing.  What is our definition of abuse?  Something like corpse camping is, something like repeatedly killing quest NPCs is.  But I don't think just ganking someone is (especially considering PvP is voluntary in a game like Rift specifically).   In a game like planetside, is acting like the vietcong like that Rift guild abuse?  I don't think so.

When did PvP become about making sure no one is injured or everyone is guaranteed to advance?

I agree with blood that the k/d ratio definitely pushed the game in the wrong direction, but by the time they implemented that, it was mostly hardcores anyway so the developers were just giving the remaining players what they wanted.  I thought PS balanced soloing and group play pretty well. The biggest issue I had was that Gunuku was always Gunuku.  The maps need to change often and terrain should be destructible.  Let players dig and build on the battlefield. The map resets/refreshes every 2 weeks. That kind of stuff.

When developers decided that getting a regular pay cheque was more important than theorycrafting.

I typed out, "when development houses desire for continued existence crushed the fantasy that was 'The Vision'", but decided that MrBW was just trolling.

Just like in kid's competition these days, everyone gets a trophy!

If you don't get thrown a bone for losing, why participate? Especially when there's competition who do give out 2nd place prizes?

If you're not first, you're last!

Because the game is worth playing for its own sake...hypothetically.  Seriously, why did anyone ever play any game before these progression treadmills caught on?  Because we actually enjoyed it!

That's all well and good until the people who win get rewarded with things that make them win more.

Yeah, thats fine.  Make victories strategic victories.  Maybe if you take some critical factory from the enemy your side will get some extra vehicles to spawn or something, but in the end each battle v. said vehicle is still the same as it was before.   Since I like citing WW2O, there are all sorts of towns that if you can take you get a really nice long term advantage for your side (supply lines, terrain advantage, or whatever) but it doesn't ruin your day to day experience of the game if you are on the losing side because the other team doesn't get free gear or whatever that makes you die horribly.  Not to mention their campaignn map just resets when one team wins (which I'm fine with in general for Planetside 2 or whatever hypothetically)

Yeah, hoo-rah, play hard or go home, second place is the first loser!  I find it deeply ironic that lots of gamers will make noises about how FPSs shouldn't coddle people, while Tribes, the most skill-demanding FPS I've ever seen, had virtually no success whatsoever with barren empty servers.  Sure, players will say that they want hard games where real men can chew nails and spit bullets, but the market is clearly dictating a more Hello Kitty-esque direction.

It seems like we are having two parallel discussions at this point in this thread.

1)   Skill Based v. Accessible - Should the game be easy to learn, hard to learn.  How much should player skill matter.  How much should a winner be rewarded as opposed to the loser.

On the skill mattering front, I really want to know what a compelling PvP based game would be that DOESN'T have a skill based element?  Remember when WoW battlegrounds were owned hardcore by raiders because thats where the epic gear was.  Not to mention at that point people generally said the biggest problem with raiding was the TIME required, not the skill.  My point is, you go the other way, and its far worse.   I think skill has to matter.   On the reward front, I think the answer is just that there shouldn't really be rewards for either side, winners or losers, at least in the normal MMO experience/loot/numbers going up in some column somewhere.   If the game is so terrible to you that if you lose you aren't willing to keep playing unless the game gives you a new gun or some shit, just play something different.


2)  Should the game be fair - Should the game force even teams in terms of numbers and equipment, should it be a free for all where people who have the ability to organize 100 people are going to win all the time, whatever.

This seems basically totally separate from the first point to me.  Something like Starcraft, or Counter-Strike, or some other competitive game needs to be fair.  However, these aren't competitive games in the sense of sport.  These games are about *conflict* not *competition*.    Large scale conflict at that, I think asymmetry is one of the more important parts of replicating a war scenario in a game like Planetside.  I am not at all against some kind of mechanic that requires some sort of strategic advantage so that you can't just go bring 1000 people to the fight and win, or at least mitigates the effect of population imbalance.  Examples would be: WW2O supply lines and brigades which dictate how many units are available to spawn in and from where.  Controlling more adjacent towns lets you attack from more sides, bring in more brigades to reinforce, and thus sustain your attack longer.  Therefore, you have to actually play your strategic cards right to get the best advantage from a population imbalance, where as a lower pop side might be able to force you into one long battle so that you can't make use of your population imbalance (and in fact this is a common tactic when one side in low population in WW2O, get your opponent mired in a long battle in a front where they don't have the strategic advantage, so you mitigate their advantage the best you can).


I guess my point is, I feel like these two things are getting blurred.  For some reason one side is very "hardcore pvp/skill based/unfair" the other side is "casual,accessible, fair"   I actually think that its not so simple, and I'd go as far as to say that hardcore PvP/competition is actually much more "skill based/fair" and that the "unfair" is almost the entire point of a large scale MMOFPS.  In fact, some of my most epic moments in an MMOFPS have arisen from the fact that the game wasn't fair.  I recall holding out in a bunker for a solid 30 minutes with just a few squad mates due to some good shooting and a lot of luck before we were finally overrun.  We were hopelessly outnumbered in that fight, bound to lose, but we held out as long as we could, bought our side a little extra time to set up defenses elsewhere, and had a blast doing it.   On the other side of the coin, I've had a lot fun riding in a transport truck through the enemies factory towns on the last day of a campaign that we were about to win and was all but formally wrapped up, it was a kind of victory lap and simply wouldn't be possible in a totally "fair" situation.

"If I don't get a god damn trophy, I am taking my ball and going home"  :why_so_serious:

Bazingo. Either have rewards for all, or none.

Well, I am basically arguing for none, although a strategic victory gives you...a strategic advantage/"reward" and you can't really get around that if you game has a strategic element.

I think it needs to be more complicated than "everyone wins!" because that will turn off folks that want the victory to have more meaning than just, "we win! ... ok, next game".  I strongly agree that giving winners rewards that make it easier for them to continue winning is bad game design.

I think there needs to be a division between faction success and player success. A faction could be a Shadowbane city-state, or a DAOC faction.

I think faction success should make it harder to continue winning.  Example: The more land a faction holds, the harder it is to keep that land. 

I think if there is some sort of progression, player participation should be rewarded regardless of win/loss.

I think winning should be rewarded with "bragging rights" style rewards.

I wouldn't reject out of hand playing a game where losing might cost you your "bragging rights" rewards if you lose too much.

I think there is a way within all of the above, to encourage teams to be "the right size" rather than "big as big as possible".  Maybe your progression and "bragging rights" rewards are tied to your faction size - so the pool of winnings are divided evenly amongst all members.

lillbit.

I see the merit in this, but having played DAoC for years also see the potential for trouble.  Rewarding the winner makes the winner stronger in all cases.  It doesn't matter whether you reward the individual or the team. 

I think a better system is to reward the winner of a pvp encounter with something that won't imbalance future encounters.  Give them abilities that enhance combat options, give them resources, give them cash, give them titles, give them trinkets, give them appearance clothing... you get the idea. 

How do you do that and actually keep an open world PvP game? (maybe you don't).  If someone takes Fortress X because Fortress X gives you a good staging area for attacks on 3 different towns, and now the opponent has to split their forces to defend 3 possible attacks thats a "reward" for capturing fortress X, even though the game literally gave the team nothing for taking it over.  I think that is how it should work.  Anyone says "Hey guys we took the fortress, everyone get your snazzy new purple camo pants from the chest in the middle" and I'm already unsubscribed because thats just one step away from "lets trade the fortress back and forth with the other team so we can get the ENTIRE purple camo set!"

In war, the winners do get the advantages. You can't program against that logical truth simply because you are trying to run a game.

Malakili, I agree with you.  The problem that I see (a big one at that) is that you need some sort of reward system that demonstrates character progression in order to justify a subscription fee.  It's either that or you need to add content at an accelerated rate.  

The classic MMO model provides access to a "more time = greater power" model.  WoW has it, EvE has it, and every other successful subscription model game has it.  I think the key to success with PS2 is to provide both individual and group incentives for players to keep logging on without giving them so large an edge that it generates a dominant senior player population.  

Without this kind of incentive, PS2 will be little more than a large scale FPS battlefield set in the future.  That's all fine and good if you're happy with being a niche game.  I doubt that they are shooting for ~100k subs.  I'd bet they want more.


When you're trying to pay the bills, I think you have to mess with logical convention a bit.  In an FPS, most players will lose more than they win.  If they get discouraged, you money leaves with them.

Sure, but the only logical end result of leveling the field would be to punish the winners. Unless you could figure out a way to tie a handicap to a pyschological win, or a tangible increase, then you have a problem. In the worst case, you'd have two groups trying to out-lose each other.

One way to handle it is as Malakili describes.  Turn the game into a war of attrition.  Wins force you to defend larger and larger areas.  Eventually the winners get spread so thin that breaking their lines become possible.  In this way, the losers will "win" enough battles that it will take them longer to be discouraged.  Ironing out the details of the process is where the difficulty comes.  Perhaps class number limitations, vehicle limitations, etc could help keep the balance of power in flux.  Of course, balancing the sides from the start would be a huge improvement from PS as well. 

I definitely understand this, but for me the reason to pay for an MMO isn't the progression (I can get probably the best progression meta game out there STILL by playing Diablo 2 in my opinion) at the character level, but rather at the world level.  That big persistent world to fight/play in is what I like.  For example, the fact that I can go to www.lagus.org/webmap and check out the WW2O campaign status is the kind of thing that makes a monthly fee worth it. (Not the webmap itself, but the fact that such a webmap is worth having).

I'm with you.  We're a minority.  That being the case, there are no money hats to be made making a game that pleases us. 

I frequent these and other gaming sites with the hope that some indie house will develop a niche game like WWIIOL done better.  Barring that, I expect to see nothing more than large developers continue to make games to attract the masses.  Financially, I can't blame them.

Eve and Planetside already so this.  Even some maps in FPS games do this well.  This works well in my opinion.

I don't think either of you (Malakili and Nebu) are in the minority, I think there are many people (me included) that would like a persistent state war game (FPS, overhead, etc).

The problem is that every time it's been tried before there were too many unresolved issues that ended up making the game implode - 2am pushes against no opposition or having to schedule a battle with the opposition, population imbalance, making land/cities/castles worth taking and defending but not giving the owner an increasing advantage in the war.

I have no interest in playing a game that hasn't learned from mistakes of the past or games that require a large investment in time (I'm simply not able to do that).  I think the developer that can accommodate a persistent state map while allowing folks to log in and participate in the fray without having to dedicate >20 hours/week to the game will do well.

I think the tough part is that SOMEONE needs to be spending a ton of time in the game to make it work for everyone else.   

And how do you reward the people spending all that time without turning off the folks that aren't spending a ton of time in the game (or vice-versa)?  As someone that can not a great deal of time playing games (nor really wants to spend), I can't think of a solution that doesn't suck for one type or the other and spiral into another "casuals versus hardcore" pissing contest.

I rather have AI controlled factions playing something like a turn-based game against each other and the players (and player guilds) are conscripts/mercs that the AI contract as part of the number of 'moves' the AI can make per turn.

I was hoping that WoW battlegrounds were going to be RTS version of that.  The AI would control the serfs and cannon fodder and give orders to the human players (who would be the hero-class units).  It would all play out like a multi-player RTS game.  Boy was I disappointed.

Eve also has the aspect of accumulated advantage for the winners.  But I don't think it's a problem in that game, unlike other games.  I think a lot of the reason it isn't is the composition of two opposing sides is not static, in Eve.  People switch sides frequently, for reasons both in and out of game, and things like accumulated advantage, or disadvantage, are dispersed.

In the discussion I'm seeing here, the assumption being made is that a player's allegiance to their side is absolute.  I think taking that requirement out, and instead letting players be more mercenary in their support, is an option to consider.

One puzzle about a free allegiance world is how conflict is driven.  Eve China apparently had one monolithic powerblock, and effectively no warring factions.  Eve original does not have that, and the difference between the two may be illuminating.

By...removing progression from the game.  In WW2O those people who spend all the time are a very select group (that changes over time) of players that are promoted to High Command and run the strategic side of the game for their side.  They basically make everything  "go" but in the end nothing they do matters unless their are boots on the ground making stuff happen.  If you have 3 hours a week to play, you can jump in, ask where you are needed, and spawn in, no fuss no muss. 

Again, aside from "successful MMOs have progression" is there any reason to have it?   Does it add anything to the game? 

The reason there is progression is because players want it. I understand the ideal that it isn't *necessary* to the game, but games are made to make money, especially MMOs, not for the art of it, and players love to have some identifiable source of advancement to add value to their time and give them a sense of worth.

I prefer to play games with some sort of progression.  I understand that it's not actual progression, that it's just an illusion, but it still makes the game seem deeper.  I don't even really think that it would necessarily have to be tied to combat.  Maybe my social standing within the game was increasing, rather than my combat abilities.

The later COD games are more interesting because of the progression.  The last UT wasn't as interesting because it didn't have it.

Modern Warfare #1 set a new standard in a good progression system. Like entertainment crack!

To my mind, the answer is to reward the losers so that the power-gap becomes smaller. If, to put some completely arbitrary numbers to it, taking a Keep gives the winning team +100, and losing the keep gives you +99, then the winning team is only 1 out of 100 ahead. Not so bad. If taking the Keep gives the winning team +100, and nothing but a teabagging for the losers, then the losers are 100 behind.

I'm not gonna pretend that making specifics from an abstract like that is easy, but I think the idea is sound.

It is a central tenet of gaming that, when you start to play, things are fair for you and everyone else at the start of the game, and everything that comes after that is a consequence of your decisions or chance or whatever factors affect the flow of the game, *until the game ends.* The game *needs* to end at some point to reset the fairness.

"Winners" and "losers" are only determined *after the game has been played.* If you start a game already a winner or a loser, or at a severe advantage / disadvantage you had no control or influence on... how is that fair?

Example of a good system: EVE Online's High-Sec space helps mitigate the open-PvP nature of the rest of the game. You have someplace you can go where you are able to enter the more hazardous, winner-takes-all, fairness-not-guaranteed environment of 0.0... on your terms.

This is the central problem of an open-PvP world. Fuck, it's why I stopped playing Ultima Online. Winners LOVED Ultima Online. Losers hated it. But you know what Origin loved? Players paying a subscription fee regardless of status. The only way you get that is by being fair to all your customers.

WoW does this *in spades*: dungeons, raids, battlegrounds, arenas. You can start at an advantage or disadvantage but the game does the best job possible to make it fair for you. At the very least fairness is guaranteed (or attempted in the design - Alterac Valley and other non-mirrored environments) from non-player variables, such as environment, start position, mob positions, etc.

WoW also resets the game each expansion, which helps provide a cap on power differentials.

I'm increasingly of the mindset that it is impossible to have a non-niche open world persistent PvP game. There needs to be progression to keep people playing and paying. But given the lack of control over conflict, and the human ability to game any automated controls, power will inevitably flow to those who are willing to invest scary amounts of time, often at times chosen by the opponent and thus requiring some RL sacrifices, and thus freeze out the majority of the player-base.

Battlefields you can balance. Numbers and even gear / skill can be arranged to be equal and the results of many smaller conflicts fed back into some meta-strategy layer (the world of tanks and global agenda model). It also allows solutions for the problems of time-zone differences and zerg / server overloading to be formulated. You do lose the immediacy of a epic scale battle, but it's likely to be the more popular game.


No, Eve is pretty much broken as well. When the dominant determiner of strategic power becomes a 12 billion+ Isk ship, piloted by an alt with 2+ years of continuous subscription, power will naturally flow towards those holding lucrative space or already flush with such things. The possibility of a null-sec power who has lost that capability making a come-back, or a new power emerging, becomes increasingly marginal.

Good point on the first.

On the second, I'm confused. My point was that 0.0 is unfair, and that it is, ultimately, the player's choice to enter back into that unfair environment. But there is still some place where they can login and the conditions remain relatively stable and consistent from the last time they logged out, where no such guarantee is made in 0.0.

There might be details I'm missing, but I'm speaking to the concept rather than the exact implementation. High-Sec to 0.0 would be similar to, say, a WoW PvE zone with static merchants and consensual PvP to a perpetual battleground where territory is controlled by guilds. Not an exact comparison... but do you understand what I'm saying? UO might've been a better comparison: PvE vs. No Man's?

See, I pretty much am exactly the opposite of this.  COD Black Ops for instance, which I like from a mechanics stand point has an absolutely pointless progression system that acts as a cock block until you play an arbitrary amount.   There is no reason not to just allow people to play the game with all weapons available right from the beginning.   If you seriously feel like the game is any deeper because it makes you collect COD bucks before you can use a weapon, we are different on a fundamental and irreconcilable level.

Let me be clear that I'm ok with games that have progression, like RPGs.   But when you are tacking on progression because a bunch of rats like to press the XP gain lever over and over again, I start to develop a twitch in my eye brought upon from trying to control my rage.

Ok, so your point is that you are not a part of the majority, a majority that, as one possibility, wants to spend their free time shutting their brains off from the stress and rigors that dominant the rest of their lives because being good at a video game isn't that important to them.

Let me ask: Is the point of a video game to entertain?

I'm trying to make a point with Malakili, Nebu.

Post deleted.  My bad. 

I think the difference is you were talking about it as a safe-zone (you can avoid getting beaten) and I was more thinking of it as a place from which you can get back into the game. In Eve empire is a safe zone, and provides the bulk of their subscriptions I believe, but as a platform to become a competitor in null-sec not so much because the established null-sec powers (and to a lesser extent players) are reaping the reward for winning and investing (some of it) in stupid numbers of excessively large ships. So while a player still has some options because they can join established alliances the null sec space narrows as a defeated competitor is unlikely to make a comeback... barring perhaps internal rot on their part.

So it was probably my fault in not making it clear I was talking about alliances (and players to a lesser extent in terms of the expectations of what they personally can provide).

I see what you mean. A singular power could, theoretically, take over all of the null-sec space with enough people, and the only way to break that is if there is if a faction splinters and goes to war with each other. But all the experience and assets are being funneled into the big boys.

If someone "wins"... would they reset the game? Or does it become EVE Online: My Life In The Empire? I couldn't tell how possible it would be for an effective rebellion to form and exist with their system of mechanics.

Sure?  I don't really know what that means though.  Its not really entertaining for me to shut my brain off though.   No matter what I do, I try to improve at it, thats just how I roll, whether its professional or leisure.

What I remember from COD: MW that many of the earned weapons were actually not as good as the weapons you started with. (I could be remembering wrong, and there were some weapons that were better)
What I remember from COD: WoW the Tommygun was really all you needed unless you were going sniper and sniper opened up very quickly. (but I was a scrub player, so maybe there were better weapons at the top of the tree)

So, if a developer recognizes very good reasons why weapon progression doesn't make sense in his/her game, then it doesn't make sense and some other means of "progression" should be considered to appeal to the inner player rat so as not to break the game.  Achievements don't really appeal to me (unless they provide something tangible - even if it's just a vanity item), but they don't hurt anything, so I think they are worthwhile to tack on to games.

In a PvP game that focuses more heavily on player skill it definitely makes sense that all players have access to a base level of weapons that are as good in most situations as any weapon available.
In a PvP game where leveling is part of the competition it doesn't.

Whether or not there is progression is not binary.  It doesn't have to be weapons.  It doesn't have to be levels.  ... it's just been that way for 90% of the games that exist.

I think conversationally we both have our soft spots.  You hear "progression" and think Diku/WoW loot and say, "not in my open world PvP game you don't!".  I hear, "open world PvP" and think,  "one faction wins! (Shadowbane), population imbalance (DAOC) and 2 am raids (DAOC)".  Obviously I'm focused more on my points.

One of Planetsides rules was no power progression. Everything, was progression to expand options.

Not sure why you guys are debating it.  They had this in 03.

When you have all the systems it had to use for balance, you do not need endless numbers to fight or counter endless numbers on things. If they change this basic tenant in the new version, it won't be Planetside.

It'll be as much Planetside as EQ2 was EQ, anyways.

I know that you loved Planetside, but the most stupid thing they could do is to make Planetside 2 like Planetside.  Planetside wasn't the money maker that it needed to be.  It lacked a hook to hold subscribers from the mainstream.  It was very much a niche game.  If they target that audience again, this game will underperform... again. 

Yes, but that was not the reason.

The problems it had were: No update path due to engine and pre-development choices (Built as a one off game, Did you know the game had NO streaming from the disk and all assets were preloaded?). No command level or emphasis on empire level goals. "Quirky" Physics and shooting model (Due to the time it was made and how they overcame limitations of the time in regards to player counts). Unneeded expansion that added more terrain to an already huge world and had bad level design to boot. Erosion of the team based foundation. The subscription model. Stagnation due to all of the above. Emphasis on kill/death or appeasement of session based players.

There was nothing wrong with the game progression system, style of game play, balance, accessibility or variety of play.  This is why people LOVED the title. The above is why people left.

If you put a DIKU RPG combat/grind in my shooter, ill hunt you down.

Yeah I would agree with that.

Planetside was a solid concept, but it had a bad technical foundation and bad execution, making it overall a fairly poor game that did not compete well with other leading FPS games and did not justify a subscription.

With a better engine, some design and mechanical fixes, and regular quality/interesting content updates it could work.

I'll also have to agree with BW on that one.

I'm not arguing for this.  The Planetside 1 progression path that gave more options but not more power sounded fine to me.  What I heard Malakili describing was a game with no progression (although maybe he wasn't saying that).

I'm arguing that just saying "open world PvP" and not defining systems that prevent one faction from dominating the entire game leaves me cold.  I won't play a game where it's up to the player base to figure that shit out.  Population imbalances, 2am raids and making the winner more powerful are the more obvious pitfalls.  Counter to that, creating a game that is just about meaningless little skirmishes is the other side of that coin.  I also don't want a game that comes down to keep trading.

Somewhere there is a design that accommodates both (negative feedback on winning, but making players strongly want to win).  I think that the game I'm describing has another system with a power progression - but doesn't have a feedback to combat.  To progress in that system, you need more land.  To get more land you need to win at combat.  The more land you hold, the harder it is to hold that land (or get more).

That was already in with the addition of the lattice system, the bases having chained effects, and capital cities and locked continent benefits. There just needed to be more.

IE: You can't pull a heavy tank with out a tech base connected. ETC... It was also very a very good idea to cut the lines to any Tech base your opposition had.

I'm definitely arguing in favor of a game with no *character* progression, but progression in itself isn't going to make me stop playing if its done in a minimally obtrusive manner.  It seems to me that a lot of the pitfalls you are talking about can be AVOIDED if there is minimal progression.  Casual and hardcore players get no advantage in terms of gear or skills, so in a given fight you have more or less equal standing.  As for the design in the last paragraph there, I'd be perfectly happy with that kind of thing. 

As for the progression that gives more options instead of power, I'm ok with that in that it won't drive me away from a game and I prefer it greatly to power progression in a PvP game.  That being said, I'd still prefer just to give everyone those options from the beginning instead of arbitrarily making them play X amount of hours before they get access to it.

Entertain: (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/entertain) to hold the attention of pleasantly or agreeably; divert; amuse.

OK, so you take everything you do seriously. Why is what entertains you what should entertain someone else? That is to say: why would you judge other people based on how seriously they take their entertainment?

Addendum: I see you arguing a lot for what you want rather than what's best for the game... at least, a successful game designed to be played by a mass audience. If we were talking about a game designed exclusively for you and people like you, we wouldn't be talking about Planetside. We'd probably be talking about something like Football or Basketball or other games designed around personal and team skill.

It has been my experience that a large percentage of people do not play games for empire level goals. Your faction and empire are a cosmetic choice, one of expression or exploring the capabilities of the faction / empire (Ohhh, lightning gun!), rather than one derived from loyalty and servitude. WoW experimented with this for Silithus World PvP. It died shortly after the "new" wore off and people had no personal reason to be there.

Exactly, and it was balanced because heavy tanks, while cool and giving you more tactical options & a slight strength advantage, could still be taken down pretty easily by no-tech infantry taking cover and using easily available anti-tank weapons, so teched up teams didn't have a huge advantage vs no-tech teams. Add a good point reward system where taking down a heavy tank on foot, gives you a bonanza of points compared to sitting in a heavy tank and mowing down people, and skilled players will stick to basic but crucial roles like anti-tank, healing and hacking, instead of just bee-lining for killing machine vehicles. Voila, balance.

Success should give you access to cool, fancy tech items, vehicles, buildings & other prestigious gimmicks, but they shouldn't be overpowered to basic items. Also losing teams should be given incentive to gun for high flyers with their just as effective basic weapons, to keep them in check.

Voila, incentives & balance.

Apples and oranges. Can you please stop using Wow as a comparison, its faulty from the core. Wow for the most part is not PvP, Its PvG (player VS gear). It has had even less incentive for caring about your faction than Planetside did, its ENTIRE reward system is for the individual.

Planetside had, before same server cross faction alts were allowed, had a very strong loyalty base for the factions. Even propaganda machines. The Lack of commitment or caring as you put it, was because there was nothing to care about (anymore, it had one, but also needed more).

Thats the part of the point.

The other part is irrelevant to loyalty, and pertains directly to longevity of the game. If there is no empire level goals, there are no long term goals, only short term individuial, or squad/outfit level ones.

It is exactly what WW2OL address with campaigns, and it is what Global agenda addresses with the AvA seasons.

 When push comes to shove in real life am I going to judge people on their entertainment, no.  But on an internet forum dedicated to video games, in a thread talking about a specific game (an a bit generally a genre since there isn't much info to go on yet), damned if I won't argue damned forcefully for the kind of game *I* want, and throw around jabs at people who I think are driving games that could be the way I want them to be junk I'm not interested in playing

Whats "best for the game" is totally irrelevant to me if it isn't a game I want to play in the first place.  

Also - I don't think the game I want is anything like a sport, its in fact almost the exact opposite of sport-like PvP (e.g Starcraft).  I like those kinds of games,but this is totally different.

Don't blame me.  Blame the masses for preferring these mechanics.  The success of PS2 will depend entirely on how many people they can attract and keep in the game.  If that number of players is greater with a PS affixed to a diku grind, then what's to keep the developers from moving in that direction.  I'm all for making good games, but this is a business.  A business with a huge up front investment.  I'd think that market research would show that your greatest chance at success would be at linking FPS mechanics to a popular character development scheme.

In other words, I hope that you get the game you want with lateral progression that doesn't alter a power curve.  I want that as well.  I'm just not convinced that is what this game will ultimately be.   

Wasn't blaming you. But DIKU RPG Shooters have shown time and time again to not hit any sort of critical mass, RPGers get whooped, and Hardcores won't touch it. Again, Plantside was ahead of its time and extremely unique. Its problems was not this.

I think smead knows this, and because hes letting current subscribers in the alpha/beta first, they won't let him forget it.

Thats fine, I just won't play it.  But seeing as there is almost not a single other game on the market coming up that even has the chance to be something I *really* want (Tribes Universe I guess), this is one of the few hopes I have.

I don't see how the environment should give you a pass on how you conduct yourself. Are you implying you're a different person when you sit down behind a keyboard and write your thoughts?

If not, should I be taking you more or less seriously when you judge other people on their entertainment and speak only for your needs *while in a discussion about what would be best for Planetside?*

I was not under the impression this discussion had anything to do with that, this discussion is and has always been for me "What do I want the game to be." 

I'll be leaving now, and when you guys figure out the formula for the 100 million dollar earning Planetside sequel, let me know.

And that's the problem right there, and I'm willing to bet isn't exclusive to you.

It's a very compelling mystery what a successful "Planetside" would be like, one I'm certain the game industry hasn't solved. That's what I want to talk about.

OK, let's address empire goals. First, we need to identify not only how you can make an individual care for the group they are a part of, but why they should. Whatever the goals are is irrelevant. What matters is subscribing a person to them so that they put personal goals aside for the goals of their empire.

The disconnect I'm having is: What type of person invests their time in long term goals in a video game?

I know step one in creating a successful PS2.

"Embrace the niche"

If you try and pull a Trion, it ain't gonna happen. The fanbase for a PS2 is going to be a niche of several niches. It's a difficult sell to investors because you're looking at a WWIIOL or Eve pitch, rather than, well, anything else. With VCtards getting their panties all moist over ZOMGville and WoW-killers, good luck. But, if you can do it right (addressing many of the faults BW lists with the original product, mostly from a technical standpoint), you can stake out a solid five+years earner and enough goodwill for a PS3.

But, you know, the game development is not rife with good business decisions.

Ok - I'm back in this discussion, and I'll try to do it on your terms.  My response last time was a bit harsh because this isn't the best day ever and my temper is short.  Anyway, on topic:

Ok, I wrote some stuff up and didn't like it - starting over...

I don't know how you can "force" people to care about their team/empire/side goals.  I think its less about making them care more for the empire goals above their own and more about aligning the two.  Its incredibly difficult for me to think of mechanics to achieve this because for me its just how I am in a team game of any kind, I suddenly want my team to win regardless if its something like Team Fortress 2, Pinochle, Pick up Basketball, intramural floor hockey.  Maybe I've been under the illusion that people like these kinds of games for the team element, but I just always assumed that was the draw, because its why I play or played them.  

ETA:  This applies for me in games like WoW as well.  I liked raiding because it gave me team goals, take down this boss, learn this encounter, etc.  It even gave my crafting professions a bigger purpose (make flasks for the raid).  I could've jumped ship for some slightly better guilds if I wanted at some point, but my guild wat *my team* and I wanted to stick with them through good and bad (and we had plenty of both).   When I quit raiding in WoW there was already the heroics + badges meta game in place, but even though I could continue progressing my character, it just got stale and boring really quick because I didn't have that bigger picture to care about.

I'm open to suggestions, but I have to agree with Sky a bit.  I think if you are going to make a game like this you need to at some level assume a playerbase that wants to play your game, rather than trying to "trick" people who don't actually like your game (and by this I mean the empire v. empire game), into participating through some kind of hand waving.

You can make people care about the team in a FPS by having team success unlock new vehicles, weapons and other prestige items.

Your team captures X factory base and now you can make your own X model heavy tank assuming you have enough resource points or whatever. So if you want to drive around in X heavy tank, you need to capture and defend that kind of factory city.

You want to try a new experimental prototype heavy tank? Well now you need to capture the tech lab that's on the factory lattice. So when your commanders try coordinate an attack on this factory, you have some interest in following orders if it will help ensure success.

Bring back Sporkfire and Smokejumper and I'll be happy  :awesome_for_real:

And ant bombs.

Well for starter you force them into a team/empire/side.  PS and Eve already do this and it works.  PvP by default has an opposing team(s) of one or more.  Humans are drawn to groups from the planet, nations, cities, family, etc.  American pro sports is all about location.  Location\timezone draw is common in MMOs already.  Just put in some type of structure made up or real and people will join up.  PS already had a working system for balancing out number per side so one could join the zerg or find 5 to 1 or 1 to 5 odds.  There is a draw for team play as it provides challenges and rewards that are not possible for an individual.  American pro sports already breaks down team and individual rewards very well and the top of the list is the number one team in the world.   There is really no need to "force" people.  There are whole industries setup to supply people with news about teams in sports.  CAOD is a good example from Eve.  Make group A, B, C and someone from one of the groups with say their group is better then the other groups and rest is history.

I don't really disagree with this, but Lorekeep seems to think otherwise.

Allowing multiple factions on a single account is definitely on the list of PS fuck-ups. I know it was a tough decision with the server merges, but still.

Also, with the blood bowl stuff, I can't help but wish there were a game that played like PS with the WH40k license. I'm not sure GW would allow such awesomeness, though.

Silithus was excrement. WoW has bungled world PvP pretty goddamn badly.

It would be if the game was made specifically for people like you, was populated by people like you, and had no other type of gamer supported.


My immediate questions to you (and keep in mind this is in the context of a PERSISTENT, UNENDING WAR):
1. Why would someone join a poorly-performing team, assuming they know it's poorly-performing, when they can join the winners and get all the toys right away?
2. Why would you divide your player base between attack and defense? The ideal place for all players to be is on the front lines engaged in conflict.
3. What would you do to create an incentive for people to defend a base that grants an unlocked incentive that doesn't break personal progression or make the game boring for the player, assuming the front line has moved away from the incentive-granting base?

You can ignore all those and just answer me this: Why would a soldier listen to their commanders about what's best for the team? What stops them from performing an action *they* think is best for the team? Why would a person follow instead of lead?


Forcing a choice on a side doesn't mean they're obedient, which is what you need to support empire goals. A player picking a side is often an uninformed choice. The most logical reason someone picks a side is not because of subscribing to a group's ideology (why would they care?), but more personal factors, like what their character can do, what their character will look like, or how that group is performing (people want to be on the winning side). For example, in TF2, what would make someone pick Red over Blue, assuming they had no access to score, class composition, or any other data that indicates the performance of the team prior to joining? They're exactly the same. I would choose Blue because its my favorite color. Different people would have different reasons, but ultimately would be focused on personal preference.

Let's leave incentives out of it for now, because you're only reinforcing my point by giving a person additional data to influence their decision to reinforce a personal goal, which has nothing to do with giving them a reason to do things to the benefit of the team.

What makes American Sports Teams works is a structure wherein any player not acting as part of the team would find his ass fired or not renewed on his contract. They wouldn't be able to play or compete. You can't have that in a video game, though.

To sum up: when creating or managing a team to compete, does the team choose the player, or the player choose the team? What happens if the team had no choice to the quality or skill of the players it received, or its leaders, and was forced to keep people who didn't work for the team? (Answer: Planetside and every open-world PvP game of NPC faction vs. NPC faction ever)

I should define Commanders / Leaders as the representative of the team's interests and the one giving the Empire Goals to the player. And man, if that was a computer? Man.

Can we ditch the sports analogy for a game like this, it isn't even remotely applicable in terms of players. (I think the point about sports FANS might apply, why am I a NY Giants fan? For absolutely no other reason than that I grew up in New York)

I say dump people on the side with fewer players, maybe allow you to specify a friend at team creation, and if you know someone specifically that you want to play with, it lets you join that faction instead, I dunno, thats not well thought out, I'm just acknowledging the need to allow people to play with who they want.  I'd say the factions should be more or less equal anyway in terms of gear.  You mention choosing blue in TF2 because you like blue, but I've hit the random button every single time I wasn't playing with a person I know and been perfectly happy with that, it wouldn't even have occurred to me to join the team based on which color I like more.   Since the "teams" in this game are huge (basically "factions") we don't need to worry too much about individual skill differences because its fair to assume that across the entire faction it more or less evens out.  Even if you have some sort of elite clan on your side, they might win you a few battles, but they won't win you the entire war.

To answer your questions specifically:

1. Because the game is more fun when the teams are even then when one team is roflstomping, for both sides.

2. I just don't agree with this, it seems to me like any large scale strategic game would need some things attacked and some thigns defended at all times, I don't view this as a problem.  People that enjoy being on the front lines can spawn in there, people that enjoy defending can spawn in there.

3. Have enemy presence set of a slight early warning system so that people to spawn into objectives to defend in time if they are X distance behind the front lines, so they don't need defending at all times.   Surprise attacks would still be worth it because you'd have the tactical advantage of having a plan, and of catching them off guard, even if they are spawned in there.

4. Following is perfectly fine, I do it all the time in WW2O.  You should listen to the commanders because its fun to work as a team towards objectives, and you need a leader to coordinate people to do things quickly.  If this is such a big deal for you, don't play.   Yeah, I'm resorting to that for this one.  Why are there raid leaders in WoW?  Why do people give the tank lead in a heroic so he can mark targets in WoW?  This is perfectly common in MMOGs as it is.  If you give people reasonable objectives, they'll do them, if they can't, well they CAN do whatever they want, but they'll quickly find its a crappy way to play the game.   If you just want to be all john rambo and go I KNOW WHATS BEST LOLOLOL, then peace out and the game will do fine without.   

If we absolutely MUST come up with a mechanic to support it, how about something along the lines of  (but not necessarily specifically), "When following an order (like, in an area designated as an attack or defense objective, or something), you gain some sort of health and ammo regen."  Maybe commanders orders could be marked in the physical game world (not just on the map) with some kind of flag that "gives off" the health and ammo regen, call it "inspiration" or some jazz.

It is all video games that support player groups.  People apply, accepted and get booted from clans\corps\guilds\teams all the time.  That is really just part of the metagame and should be encouraged in an PvP game.

But yes that does not appy to the top level in video games beside the choice to play or not play which is made all the time.

In the end choosing to play at all and with whom are really not that far apart.  

You'd need to put in some dynamic balancing mechanisms to prevent pile-ons. Capping faction membership out of game, ingame stuff like supply lines could be modeled to make it difficult to push deep into enemy territory (more difficult for attacker to get heavy equipment, easier for enemy). This stuff has been done before.

I didn't necessarily mean sit around on sentry duty. Also I dont remember too well but I think in PS you couldnt just capture an enemy base deep in the rear too easily. If an enemy tried to ninja it, your side was warned and people would start spawning there. Sometimes players can be relectunt to defend objectives from assault in FPS games, and just want to roll around assaulting and moving on. Giving them some personal stake in a facility would discourage this (gee I like my heavy tank, maybe I should defend our factory).

Also I posted this before in the thread, but "outfits" (clans) can be given a bigger role. They could build up HQ fortresses which could be attacked, and could take responsibility for objectives (like in WAR when clans tookover and safeguarded faction keeps), giving members bonuses, outfit resources, etc. This would also add a layer of persistance beyond a normal FPS that would help justify a subscription model. Outfits (clans/guilds) have inbuilt & member accepted hierchies of course, by their very nature.

Outfits / Clans / Guilds are completely staffed by players. It would be exempt from any discussion about empire goals, because they are independent and not taking orders from the Empire -- the same as any player in the game. Who they are aligned with doesn't mean they are obedient, and the overarching goal (win an unwinnable war) makes a tough case to any player to care after they get enough meaningless victories under their belt.

Some people just want to relax and not take their games seriously. The only way you can make them take it seriously is to personally reward them to put in more effort and work as a team, but material rewards aren't appealing to their sense of loyalty -- that's just dangling a carrot. You have to make winning meaningful to them.

Games by themselves aren't meaningful. It's the personal experience you take from your entertainment that does it, but ultimately, you shouldn't take the game seriously because the Vanu are getting beaten down by the NCR. You should take it seriously because your buddies are in there fighting and need your help, and damn it that NCR bastard last week needs to get a cruise missile shoved up his asshole for what he did to you. That piece of gear? Yeah that came from an epic struggle between you and that bastard dragon where Leeroy ran in and shoved a stick of dynamite into its eye socket. God I love this piece of gear. Too bad I have to upgrade it.

You can't get someone to do what you want if they don't care, even if all you want to do is have them play your game. A positive emotional connection to a game is *not* guaranteed in open-world PvP, and because of this, you will bleed players until there is nothing left. It takes a steady stream of positive experiences to keep someone playing. You can't design to make that happen. You can only create the environment. It's up to your players to make that magic happen, and shit, have you looked around you lately at all the variety of players out there?

I think I get it now. You guys aren't pissed at Planetside -- you're pissed at the other players for leaving and removing the ability to pursue those positive experiences. You'd follow orders and do what's necessary because you have an emotional connection to the game. But I don't know if you see that Planetside's inherent flaws are what is driving the players away. I'm arguing on a platform that those flaws are damn-near impossible to remove with how Planetside is structured as a game.

Its not guaranteed in COD either, and yet it sells a bajillion copies, because people actually enjoy playing it.  There is no reason a similar principle can't apply to an MMOFPS in my opinion.  

You seem so concerned with tricking people into liking the game.  Just make a game they actually like.  I really can't say it any other way.
  

It is a designer's job to make a game someone likes (as many people as possible, really)... by using every trick in the book.  :grin:

COD has a different audience. They care because of their emotional connection to the game formed from positive personal experiences. The Kill Streaks are like CRACK for positive personal experiences. I always wanted to get that Chopper Gunner and blow the shit out of the other team. What's more, because the matches ended quickly, a loss didn't stay with me, and every new match was another opportunity to fuck someone up.

There are many reasons CoD is popular, and getting a player to give a shit about what they are doing is one of them.

I should say, liking a game is fine, make a game people will like, but what keeps someone playing when they don't like what they're doing?

Ah jesus, I think I get why Facebook games are popular, and why I hate them. It's all emotional connections.

Planetside was sweet from the get-go.  The only thing really crippling it is the fact that the original devs are long gone and nobody apparently knows how to modify the game to update content and fix problems.  The technical issues of an older game are hounding it now, and the lack of meaningful content updates over the last few years are making things terribly stale.  If the game was being kept polished and fresh, it would be worth paying a monthly subscription for and would have an easier time retaining players.

Smedley on a game "codenamed PlanetSide Next" and "we haven't announced a release date for it but you can expect it... We're looking at late first-quarter, early second-quarter [2011]."[url]

Has SCEI completely cut SOE's marketing budget? SOE promotions appear to rely on stealth launches atm.

Perhaps that strategy works for MMOs - launch day servers don't get pounded and players get to talk about how smooth the launch was, while word of mouth drives sales / downloads over a longer time period.  (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-17-sony-expect-planetside-next-q1-q2)

I am sorry but the more I read on this, the more my bullshit-senses start tingling. Release a game with what, only in-house testing and no server load testing with the likes of an open beta? I get this sinking feeling this is going to end up being Planetside reskinned and graphically boosted. No way they have a functional game on the scale of Planetside in under a year, let alone 6 months.

I'd play that.

From the artilce linked:  "The biggest thing that's going to change here in the next few years is the console MMO, and that's why I'm really proud that we've got the first big one [DCUO]."

Perhaps the SOE way will be the Cryptic way.  Release, get some box sales, and hold onto a decent amount of subscribers to run a few servers.  The only difference is they will be about the console userbase.

I would be very surprised if Plantside next had anything to do with consoles. Its not in its pedigree, and that would be a big switch for its pre-existing PC fanbase.

In fact, I would guess riots would ensue.

More like rageboycotts.

Not to mention, it would be in direct competition with some hefty titles.

This is SOE, so you might want to consider the possibility before getting your hopes too high.

It is also an open question if the Planetside 'fanbase' is large enough or important enough to really take into account.

Ah don't let a little thing like reality and business perspective get in the way of launching a Planetside sequel.

Yes, please do launch Planetside to a group of players who have never heard of it, on a platform that has a completely different input device, and make sure to place it on shelves right between Halo Reach and M.A.G.

That will work well.  :awesome_for_real:

Do you need a list of SOE blunders?

Nope. I have all the merit badges.

They have a bus for that.

...but it's a short one  :awesome_for_real:

That group of players is much, much, much larger than the handful of people who still sit around thinking about the glory days of 2003, and every once in a while they even buy a game that they've never heard of before, because it is a new franchise. The idea that they need to make the game for the handful of bitter old vets who sit around reminiscing about pre-lattice Galaxy crashes and such is silly.

This reminds me of all the arguing people did about Warhammer needing to cater specifically to DAOC vets, as if there were enough of them still sitting around wanting DAOC 2 to constitute an actual market segment worth courting.

And that group of players is exactly who I DO NOT want to game with. Egotistical and self-serving - I know, but I tried console shooters "online" and it is the Walmart of gaming. I may peek in and marvel from time to time, but I won't go there with intentions other than that.

Sup?

(http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/8/914628_front.jpg)

They should add "titans" like in BF2142. Slow flying giant ass airships basically that would add a "naval warfare" style element to the game. Add headquarter, battleship, carrier and maybe escort versions.

http://news.mmosite.com/content/2011-01-23/first_ever_image_for_planetside_next_emerged.shtml

Hopeful about keeping the three factions. And the skin looks nice on the vanguard, but it's still the same Vanny. I am leaning even more towards my assumption that this will be just a reskinned PS with (hopefully) better netcode and revamped base designs.

Oh my, could it be a prequel? That does not look like Vanu based tech.


EDIT: *EXPLODES*

(http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg611/scaled.php?tn=0&server=611&filename=c2dty.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640)

(http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg616/scaled.php?tn=0&server=616&filename=l78x.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640)

(http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg614/scaled.php?tn=0&server=614&filename=uhtym.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640)


Please tell me they are keeping the mounting animations, PLEASE.

EDIT2:


\o/

Hystory: T-Ray was PlanetSide's Lead Graphic Artist. He later worked on Neverwinter Nights 2

Well a prequel would definitely be in line with what Smed has discussed so far... my excitement meter just pinged off "fuck off" to "meh," but if this is set at the time of the first real war between the factions, it may climb more. I still keep the SOE thing in the front of my mind though.

I have much more faith now that I know its not just random nubs working on it. T-ray was pivotal on the first version.

If I can get a mosquito and just zip around very fast picking off snipers who always stand in the same fucking place, in between annoying reapers and out manoeuvring missiles spammed by some dick in a MAX suit then these guys will get an occasional month's money from me.

I have never been at all interested in the bases other than knowing that is where the snipers, reapers, and dicks in MAX suits will be standing. As a result the endless discussion this game attracts around how the map is designed never really impacted me.


I'm probably not the long term market for this, however.

Also, day one joystick support that works please.

OMG, if epic battles in the woods can be replicated from PS, I will play this. Stealthing through the woods, stabbing folks and running away...pure gold.

Also, walking around in a NC MAX with scattergun rolling, spamming "GREETS!" :why_so_serious:

Dicks fuck pussies & assholes.

This thread sucked up until now.

The most epic battles I remember from around launch were always over bridges. Around launch people would fight like fury for them despite them having no strategic value whatsoever.

Bridges had a lot of strategic value.

Unless you were fighting fucking barneys.  :oh_i_see:

QFT.

Also: Loyalty till death!

That was an instance of mechanics affecting player behavior;  in beta, the full xp value for a kill was given to all members of a squad.  this lead to battles EVERYWHERE, but the bridge ones were the most fun and we ignored the bases because there was no value to fighting there.  When they went live, they changed how xp sharing worked in a squad so that the value of a kill was divided among all members and they gave base capture an xp value that was better than simply killing;  This lead to more rambo fighting and base fighting stalemates, which was much less fun.

BRING BACK BRIDGE BATTLES!

Or they could just make every battle be as enjoyable as a bridge battle.

Bridge battles were epic because of the choke point, you could stall an army's ground forces at one bridge. (Barneys excluded)

Yeah a bigger problem was that base & tower battles just suck. 40 people spamming crap down corridors = not fun.

Base design needs to be way more open for maneuver, large rooms, more entry points for each one. The main battles should be taking place outside a base, not inside 4 foot wide tunnels & staricases.

I'm a fan of this thread now.  Is PS2 any good?

Well any hall/corridor is going to be a funnel point and a defender's best friend. I do agree...some of the best base battles were in the lobby areas - tech plants were good as well as dropship centers with many entry points and wide open rooms. Amp stations also come to mind, but you could plant a tank on the door and clear out a lot which was retarded. Backdoor areas were fine in giving the defenders a much easier time than attackers until the plasma whores got buffed - then it became stupid as well.

Different people like different fighting environments. Not sure that equates to a game flaw. Most customization of your toon was to accent your style of play, this includes where you like to fight. Dont like hall and base fights? I'm sure there is an AMS around here somewhere.


I have always preferred Pc's cover and shoot base designs. I wont say they were perfect, some had more shitty spots than others, but thats the thing about games like this, you adapt.



(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i30/TheRealStinky/PS/Irsich_avatar.gif)
I also love me some radiator.

The sheer variety of the kind of battles you could have in PlanetSide was one of the best things about it. I'm really stoked for this remake/sequel.

Those vehicle images make me think this is more than just some hot air blowing around the SOE offices.

Goddamn them. I want PS2 now.

Given that DCUO wasn't the hard drive melting disaster we all thought it was going to be given the short development time they may very well pull this off, at least if pulling it off means a halfway decent game. At least I'm more confident than I was at announcement time.

more entry points bad (unless its more entry points on the same side). It makes it too easy for attackers to surround the defenders and win

Large rooms good. It gives everyone room to maneuver.

Ideally the capture point in a base should be at the end of a long wide corridor so that enemies must come in a certain way, but have cover and space for which to engage the fire fight.

Coincidentally kinda like a bridge.

Also fuck yall, i drove a hover tank.

Fuck you barney...

DCUO took 5 years and cost over US$50m dollars. Right now a lot of issues that a longer beta would have shaken out - broken power / weapon combos, exploits, etc - are being seen by a large group of paying players. This is a big issue for DCUO since PvP appears to be its cornerstone.

For PS:Next, there is an existing template to work from. Depending on the changes - and I'm pretty sure this will be a PlanetSide relaunch rather than a true sequel - a shorter beta might work. Or might see PS:Next see the problems that DCUO is experiencing.

Goofy grape beotch.

That said, bases are generally designed by and for defenders. Big, wide corridors are just not a good idea.

What was that about factional loyalty?  :grin:

So I read that beta invites will be given to those still subbed to PS. Does that mean the beta is going to be outsourced to China?  :why_so_serious:

Not that I have been paying attention, but I thought they stopped the china version.

It was more a jab at the swing PS took awhile back when chinese outfits were pervasive and, as read in my forums, hacking the game. I know when that group hit the server(s), many people quit out of disgust for SOE's neglect to do much of anything about it.

Yeah, flying tanks. Not fun.

I disagree. (http://wiki.onlinegamers.org/index.php?title=TAXI_TO_VICTORY!)

My NC MAX was fine with guys holing up in a hallway...toss on the shield, maybe get a guy to rep from behind, and just unload with the scattershots.

1st generation Pounder MAX.

/fin

Smurf 'til I fucking die. And then still a smurf.

Represent.

I'd pretty much go elsewhere when 2+ pounder MAXs decided they wanted to hold down a tower.

Magmowers weren't OP, they were fun! WHY DOES EVERYONE HATE FUN!!!?!!?!?

Vanu for Lyfe

The part that was OP, was the lack of checking if people were behind walls or not. Kinda sucks just to be able to drive by a tower and kill the first floor :/

I would not mind some "run over" damage in the new version. As long as inf get tank traps again.

I loved Pounders.  TR  :heart:

Funny thing about the Pounder MAXs... When I first started the game I always thought the grenade MAX was AV since it made more sense and more in-line with the other factions and the DC MAX was the AI since bullets, to me anyway, were for soft targets. Turned out I was correct months later...

I think one of the most important lessons they can take away from PS1, especially with a short dev cycle for PS2, is to make the game with extensibility in mind. Ship a small, fun core and then develop your core fanbase, adding as budget allows. And the big lesson all mmo devs need to learn: keep your budgets small and your designs focused.

I'd also add one little tidbit: Make your game fun from level 1 (if the game has levels).  Grinding to "get to the fun" is a disaster waiting to happen...

Vu is NC.  I like the 'Hippies'.  This will cause friction in our household. :sad_red_panda:

Fraggle Power!!

Plus the guys from KAAOS (Hedron's outfit) were great to play with, miss the massive random battles.

I doubt they get it right, but then again if it doesn't suck and I can still drive some cool vehicles it will be fun.

I started as Vanu, but when the servers merged I ended up playing my TR guy. The grenade launchers and the badass 4x4 pickup were just too strong a pull for me.

My friend group rolled marauders almost exclusively. We kill Biffers with marauders. With enough stuff in the trunk to deploy a mini ammo depot and hidden nest.

NC Biffers had it the worst, a marauder can go right through the legs.

Wish I had been using voice comms so folks could've heard my rendition of the Jerry Reed classic East Bound and Down.

I liked those guys.  Even the mandatory training was fun.  They never treated me like the FPS peon I was (am).

Mere mention of that song is enough to get it stuck in my head for about a week. Thanks so much.

You're most welcome, my good man. I would also like the horn on my badass Bronco in PS2 to play Dixie and have lots of bridges to fight jump over.

Triple Liberator runs were pure love.

Also, when I played Vanu, I killed a few BFRs solo...just sprinting behind them and nailed them in the shield generator...they mostly tried to just run away.

3rded for truth.  I had some great times in that outfit in PS.

BEHOLD!

The new Reaver.

Hotlinking fail.

Link is a tad fooked. That said... I does not like dis new fly fly. Looks more like a skeeter actually so I sit with the rest of the crowd echoing that... I liked the heavy feel of the reaver and that just doesn't scratch the itch. Intrigued by the comment on new physics... Hopefully that will keep everyone and their mother out of them just for the sake of kill spamming infantry.

Now...Bring on the Prowler.

Really?

Try this then.

I like that flying will be an art/skill.  I just hope other vehicles have similar dynamics.

They claim that flying will require skill.  This will not be the first time I've seen such a 'oh you'll have to be elite to do this' claim about something from a MMOG that later turned out to be pretty much a lie.

Did you play the original? Because, uh, kinda took skill there too.

Most of the skill in dog fighting was camera/PoV management though.  It was reasonably easy to fly tight through and around obstacles.

But could you hit anything.

Not me, heh.  My skeeter cert was just for transportation.  I was one of the worst Reaver rocket spammers in PS history.

I was a decent pilot, horrid gunner. I used to just like flying through trees and doorways and shooting rockets. Living wasn't as important as style.

But I saw driving an ATV as a redneck trying to find jumps and yeehawing across the battlefield as one of the more fun past-times in the game.

I guess I was a roleplayah, yo.

I was up there. My record for popping infantry in a reaver was abysmal.

I wasn't too bad with the reaver...esp when hunting those lone snipers and coming up behind them. Little overkill to bring a fighter "jet" to the knife fight, but hilarious. Actually got pretty good with the off set guns and rarely used rockets on anything without armor. That said, BRING ON THE DAMN PROWLER ALREADY... and the AMS since that was my bread and butter.

Where's my NC MAX at? Someone has to bring the beef!  :grin:

I am getting a sinking feeling that this game is going to be a lobby and at the most 32v32 instanced type game. Not sure why I get that feeling, but I do - and it's becoming more prominent.

I don't see a problem with Tribes meeting Chromehounds in a non-subscription, F2P format.

I really hope you're wrong. Especially considering how long ago the tech was there to do massive battles.

From the comments from John Smedley, I do not this this is the case at all.

Needs external engine wing pods. That thing looks like a ford escort with skis.

If we're lucky, the wing pods will be modular and changeable depending on mission profile.

The Game Archaeologist goes PlanetSide: The highlights (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/02/08/the-game-archaeologist-goes-planetside-the-highlights/)

Fun trip down memory lane.

And some stuff from the originals pre-birth (http://jratcliffscarab.blogspot.com/2007/08/planetside-screenshots.html)

PlanetSide was the game that made me break down and buy a PC, I was strictly a console gamer before that.

So, you only found porn in 2003?  Poor man.

Hah, yeah, before then I was still old school - magazines and vhs tapes! Kids these days and their on-demand free 'puter porn will never know how we struggled back in the day - but we appreciated it more!

Those alpha shots were always viewed as how the game should have been. Maybe SOE kept those files for use now - given the computing power advances since 2003. Be nice to see what lies ahead was really there all along, but my interest meter is still at meh.

One of the coolest things about alpha/beta testing is seeing things with insanely high-res textures and poly counts, before they pull things back to run on modern computers. Unfortunately, I understand why they do it, people are retarded and complain if they just dropped 2500 on a new pc and can't run everything maxed out. (EQ2, GTA4). No matter that it's all psychological, by cutting it back they just move the halfway settings to max and remove the headroom from the game. I like the ability to tweak things to the balance point myself and have it look as nice as possible without worrying that my penis got insulted because all the sliders aren't pegged to the right.

But to bring it back to PS: no matter how much cool stuff you put into a pvp game, most people will dial it back to minimum to get the best framerates in a furball. Putting in clutter density has to be mandatory or everyone will have to run with it off, it's laughable to have someone think they're crawling through tall grasses when everyone else has no grass and sees the guy crawling in the open.

I'd love to see some kind of programmatic solution to this, say the server checks your graphics settings and if you are not displaying any grass it doesn't send you information about the player hiding in the grass until you are at much closer distance, effectively making you unable to "see" him.  If you are showing grass, you get updates at regular distances, but actually have to notice the guy hiding in the grass.
 

I think that new reaver model looks like crap.  That wierd shit behind the cockpit is awful and makes it really topheavy, and the wings look like the production factory said "fuck it, we're done" half way through.


I loved the old reaver model though.  Change it, sure, but keep the fact that it looked like it was actually carrying enough hardware to do something damaging.

I would be very happy for modular aircraft, for some reason, even if it means the base design is the same.

Scalped from Planetside-Universe. The Mossy... Now I am torn.

Yeah, I'm thinking modular wing pods. That's the only explanation for the little "arms" on both the mossy and the reaver.

There's also a shot of a TR trooper on PSU. Of course, PSU is so paranoid about people hotlinking that they've fucked their own shots as well.

Man - its going to be tough to fight with that small of a depth of field.

Not sure if kidding.

Kidding. The depth of field in those screenies has been thoroughly fucked with.

I like all the new models.

They better have kept the mounting and demount animations though, that was part of the winning formula of planetside.

New Information of PlanetSide Next Revealed (http://news.mmosite.com/content/2011-02-11/new_information_of_planetside_next_revealed.shtml)

I hope Smeds hint at it being March is true. Missed PS the first time around and wouldn't mind getting into it this time.

Do want.  As much as I worry about a game that hasn't had a public beta, well frankly, most of the games that do a have a public beta have ended up sucking, so whatever.

Define "features".

Doens't seem to say much except that "we're launching". Frankly kinda makes me think they just recoded the graphics engine and networking and are going to relaunch the same game.

Fine with me.

No, i can't say that i particularly mind either. (not that i have the time to play or money to play at the moment). But I was kinda hoping they would do some sort of audit on what made Planetside work and what fell flat.

Well, to be fair. AFAIK: BFR's are gone. "Galaxies will play a larger role", "New physics" lead me to believe there are some fundamental changes for the better going on, as in, removing some of the annoyances or rough edges of the original.

Are they still going to try and charge $15 a month?  That's all you need to know to predict its long-term success.

Agreed. I love PS, but I can't swing $15/mo for pretty much anything at this point. Isn't it odd how I had more disposable income before I had a career?

And I had weed back then. And free time.

BFR's gone?  Wow, you know I never hated them, just hated how they were dropped in, the stupid cavern grind made me say fuck it real quick.

I miss driving shit all over the place, and having the certs to be that utility guy who would drive the Prowler, drive the Truck, or grab an ANT or Galaxy and drive it so we could mess some shit up or get a resupply in time.

Maybe we will get light, medium and heavy tanks for real this time, along with say a true APC and mech artery (that isn't some wierd ass spec). 

I think its more like planetside 1.5 than a full new version of the game. Improve graphics engine tweak some game play elements like BFR update stuff to more current levels and fix a lot of the long standing hack bugs that they have been itching to slap down.

The rumbles I have heard indicate that they are planning more of a micropayment f2p type billing model which probably makes a lot more sense for something like planetside than a flat sub cost.


I can understand peoples initial hatred of the BFR due to how they were first implemented but the last versions I played with against were fine. Its a future based sifi war there should be big damn mechs running around. The most current version they are strong if you know what you are doing with them but they are GIGANTIC targets and snipers and foot troopers who know what they are doing can ruin your whole day.

Great. Everyone will be wearing goddamn sombreros and oversized sunglasses.

Jeez.

I can't wait for Planetside to come back so I can play it vigorously for a month then drop it in disgust.

Then again F2P might make a huge difference in its popularity by providing the necessary fodder I mean player base to keep it alive.

Cool wonder if F2P means it will partner with Dr Pepper and I can get neat loot to run around shooting people and running them over with a plane.  Seriously you guys hated BF Heroes because it was a cartoonish campy shooting game that was free, because it was a cartoonish campy shooting game that was free?   :headscratch:

There were a lot of reasons to hate BF Heroes that had nothing to do with its cartoony art. Gameplay sucked it pretty hard.

Agreed. I was pretty excited for that title, too. I liked the cartoony direction, actually. The gameplay, not so much. Not sure how much of that was due to RMT or 'earning' items or whatever. Didn't stick around long enough to find out.

Actually, now that shooters are moving toward power-differentiating unlock grinds, I don't like them anymore, either. Damn this "achiever" (cough grinder cough) generation.

The game was "scheduled" to be released this month right? Without anything more than a few models of vehicles out, when do you think they'll announce the delay?

Who knows. He just said something was releasing this month that was an FPS. For all we know it's a new free realms type game and they used PS to garner some kind of attention.

Released? I never read it that way. Start the hype machine and possibly beta? That's how I read it.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Planetside-MMOFPS-EverQuest-MMORPG-SOE,11783.html


Sure they could be "launching" the hype machine, but its kind of loaded terminology.

I agree. I just dont think there is anyway it will launch ( go gold ) this month. Beta has not even happened. I'm going with he used the wrong term.

He actually meant to say they have a big lunch coming up.

(http://www.fohguild.org/forums/attachments/mmorpg-general-discussion/163242d1297211557-planetside-2-ps12345.png)

 :grin:

Dangit, I thought there was actual news.

Too bad almost all the guys that made PS for me don't play anymore, myself included. But hey, good for those still playing - hope they test it well enough to bring the gang back to a good game.

Zero casual input, testing done by the most hardcore of the hardcore, outfits still playing after all these years?

Hmm.

No, they just get first dibs at beta.

APB didn't kill that deep font of optimism, eh?

No, as I still think APB was a fun game.

A Smedley approaches!

He says, "Planetside Next is seeing its team expand (http://www.planetside-universe.com/news-planetside-next-team-expanding-2462.htm), but the layoffs mean that we've decided to switch game engines (http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/04/04/soe-layoffs-affect-timetable-for-planetside-next/) and now Planetside Next is delayed but I'll totally keep you in the loop about what is happening, promise!"

You are confused!

Yay new engine, booo Delay ( IMO )

Too bad about the delay, the closer this launches to Battlefield 3, the worse it'll be for sales I suspect.

Lame. Fuck Smedley. I bet this was all planned.

Jesus christ, switching the engine?? See you in 5 years.

SOE might as well admit they are a vaporware company at this point.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36152

Smed should give Jacobs a call before he gets too far under. However... Smed does suggest it's a sequel and all 3 empires are in play. Makes for a very good story, but alas, mostly fiction.  :oh_i_see:

New engine is good. The crappy engine was the downfall of the game last time.

If they released a poor quality FPS game mechanics-wise again, it would get killed by BF3 anyways (like the way planetside did not match up well to BF1942).

Did they pick a new engine because it allows more functionality and better performance, or because making it in-house is ultimately cheaper.  The 'why' is important.  It'll probably also delay things more than the "end of the year" they expect.

Original was also in house. I have serious doubts that an off the shelf will work for Planetsides unique requirements.

<points at various shooter games with multiple vehicle types>

Yes.  So unique.

Not comparable.

You need some goddamned pom-poms.

Um, ok.

New engine? Yeah, fuck it, we won't see it this year. We may never see it the way SOE is laying off people and shuttering studios. I'm still amazed they kept Planetside Next and ditched The Agency.

Pretty sure the bend on BW's post was about the population in a fight. Now let's get down to the point everyone wants to know:

Lean?  :awesome_for_real:

Lasher-ball-target.  :grin:

I agree.  It's probably dead.

New engine is not correct.


DO they mean the original, or the one they have been developing on? I have no idea.


Ah, more info on the subject. Let the doom casting resume.

I look forward to Duke-NukemPlanetside Next

The Agency would have been more single- and multi-player as a title (lobby / hub and instances) because there is no way you could set up a 'cinematic' event for 100 players. Plus it hadn't any SOE legacy. SOE is all about the legacy titles at this point.

PSN is in the realms of the MMOFPS that has a bit more scope for mass battles, but 1) it has to be F2P  to keep server populations up and 2) it will need a huge amount of player testing and 3) a huge amount of anti-hacking work (2 ties in with 3 here). Does SOE have the guts to release a title like PSN as a F2P (or Buy-To-Play, with no sub fee)? I'm not sure they do, because sub fee money is just so attractive. And I'm not sure how much they get from it, but if PSN is F2P / B2P, then the sub-based Planetside is basically dead. They'd have a few stalwarts and zombie accounts left, but the majority would transition to the non-sub-based alternative.

As for player testing: not enough was done on DCUO and players were complaining about hacks / exploits all the way through beta, but a substantive patch was released about 20 days prior to launch that changed quite a bit of the combat systems but left no time for testing. PvP was one of DCUO's highlights, but exploits quickly drove away a lot of players. At least DCUO had PvE to fall back on - PSN doesn't (well, not to my knowledge).

I'm not sure if it is fair to use the DCUO team as representative of SOE overall, but it certainly contained a lot of their more experienced devs. The fact that DCUO still doesn't have any public test servers, so that Live is the first time players see the new content / find all the new bugs is a worrying sign. As was DCUO's "we only need a short beta, our game is super-fun" attitude. Makes me wonder if SOE doesn't value (or can't afford) public testing and thinks they can get players to pay for the privilege.

Literally all they need to do to get a few months subs out of me is update the engine, remove CC, add a few novelty changes, and give the game a marketing push so it isn't full of hyper organised vets.

I don't see me permasubbing no matter what, but equally this should be a fairly cheap project to run.

It's almost as if SOE has a legacy of releasing half-finished, broken shit dating back as far as 1999.  :why_so_serious:

New engine?  Jesus fuck, we won't be seeing this until 2015.  How hard can it really be to reskin this, remove BFRs, remove all that cave shit, and call it a day? 

And fix long-range TR accuracy, while you're at it.  :oh_i_see:

Here we go... First it was the striker 5-clip FaF, then the pounder...

 :grin:

Thumper for life!

This is SOE. There is no design so imperfect they can't fuck it up even more.

 :awesome_for_real:

I remember when they nerfed XP gain at launch and I was not disappointed so much as just tired of their ineptitude.

XP when the game started was nice, but I agree, reluctantly, that it needed to be changed. As an infiltrator the day of release, there was no way I could killwhore for xp and that 5k base flip was bread and butter to leveling up. I loved doing the sneak sneak hack on bases or the sneak into the spawn room and hack out a term into a pounder max for the lulz, but once SOE switched to a more "contribution" xp model, I was screwed. Luckily I leveled to cap before that happened, but still. And yes, this was before I found the magic of "boomers in the spawn room" or "boomers on the ceiling for tank kills."

I doubt this game will see the light of day before the end of the world comes, but I will definitely be in line for beta if it does.

Hell, I played tactically and never worried about xp whoring...and paid for it. I forget how levels worked, but I think my 'main' guy was halfway to the cap after years of playing on and off. I ended up making alts for different roles because it was the only way to do it without xp whoring.

The model should be a $25 box, $15 sub for 3 months with micro-trans for vanity stuff.  If you have a sub active, you get any released expansion at the time. If you come back after expansions, you pay $10 to catch up on top of your 3 month sub.

Businesses have to set a price based on what they are offering, not based on their costs.  I don't know if SOE has that mentality.

 :headscratch:

 :cthulu:

Yeah, Planetside was always too expensive at full MMO price for a shooter.  Back when I was still playing EQ I could get it as part of the station pass and everything was chill, but it wasn't worth the full monthly fee on its own.  $5 monthly and I'd bite, though.

I think that if they came up with a reasonable way to charge for time logged in, it would feel better than plopping down 15 bucks a month. More work for the billing department though.

No-one is a huge fan of pay-per-minute though. APB fell over before there was much evidence that modern FPSers would pay for blocks of time instead of a sub fee.

If SOE wants large player numbers, F2P is the best option. However, they'll need some kind of revenue system, probably coming from tiered abilities, cosmetic items and maybe some power-ups.

Multiplayer FPSes need population to survive, along with the cash revenue. A sub fee explicitly locks out a lot of that population. Even box cost and microtrans is a better option than a sub fee in this area.

This is at odds with - "we've created a game that is only fun if there are people to play with".

It think FPS either need to go the GW route, or be F2P and have a vanity shop. 

Or go niche, but go full on persistent with factions and battles mean something and the possibility of losing the war.  Make it so that each full war lasts no more than a month, charge users per war (i.e. per month).  End of the month, the world resets.

I feel almost exactly the opposite to be honest.  I like paying a flat fee and then not worrying about it all month.  The fact that I would know I was being charged for every moment I was playing would stress me out, even if the price ended up being cheaper.

I would enjoy seeing a model like LOTRO.

F2p with restrictions OR A monthly fee granting full features. A kin to the fodder system. This way those who want to pay jack squat can, and those who don't like to count coins while we plan can.


You just described the (New) Global agenda model (Sans monthly payment). Only thing you lack is the boosters ( + to "XP"/loot gain for X time ).

PlanetSide Next Producer letter!

Why would you feel the need to copy and paste that? I just read that fucking thing and there is zero actual interesting content in there.

Its what I have always done. If I find news, lame or not, I post it.

:facepalm:

Do you ever question if that's a good idea? Curious. I understand you're fulfilling some sort of need in yourself to share this stuff, but I don't know if you're considering the audience when you do so.

I'm sorry, a producers letter was posted, I brought it here.

I do not see the problem.  If you don't care, don't read it? Thats what I do.

I don't see an issue with what BW did.

My issue is more that the producer's letter said fuckall about anything interesting whatsoever. Nothing about the game's design features. It was a "I work here now!" post. Why copy and paste that? It was barely useful on the site it was posted on where only Planetside fans go. When I look at this thread being updated, I hope that it's at least updated with something interesting - or it's another MMOFPS is/isn't viable discussion.

You don't have to post useless producer's letters that say nothing about the game development. Post that there is a producer's letter that says so and so is now Exec. Producer, then post a link. You should only be posting the whole story when there's actually some sort of story to post.

It put a number of conjecture points to rest, and included some info about the team itself and its development time. It was relevant to me.

I now return to you to the ongoing MMOFPS is/isn't viable discussion.

It did contain something interesting to me. What they didn't say about planetside.  Actuallly they should put in some sort of guildwars hall of monuments thing and watch their subs rise while they milk the franchise before they crash and burn with the sequel.

I don't doubt others took some value from it. That's reason enough to post something. But I think your perspective on what is actual relevant information and what is just marketing fodder for a fanbase crazed for updates of any value is a little skewed. I won't presume what the majority is here.

While I agree that letter is worthless, it does give us a heretic to burn when PS2 goes vapor. Now we know precisely who to throw stones at... or at least one more person.

Or hey! We could make fun of where he couldn't even get an informationless self-introductory puff piece right.   :awesome_for_real:

My favorite is this line: "Since then, the development team has been pining away on a new graphics engine, building art assets and designing new content."

Nevermind that they hopefully weren't working on a new graphics engine for any significant part of that year and a half since the game was announced, or is this their third try now?  The real gem is his use of "pining away".  How the hell do you "pine away" on anything?  I don't think that word means what he thinks it means.  :why_so_serious:

Amped?  Really?  I have yet to meet a person who used that in conversation.

With any luck, his poor use of language means he's got actual code monkey experience!  He's bound to get good results from his fellow code writing humans!

 :awesome_for_real:

Smed is still your primary target.

Never forget.

It's interesting insofar as the producer was the EP of Clone Wars Adventures. I, for one, am thankful I'm able to lower my expectations some more.

Yeah, but having some of the original developers from PS1 Counters that for me.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/bugs_drinking.jpg)

You been snooping on my hard drive Yeg?

He should said "Over the coming years ,weeks and months, you can expect to receive a lot more detail about what we have in-store for PSNext."

Masturbating over every little development isn't going to make it come out any faster. Seriously detached from the hype machine. When it happens, it happens. THEN I'll care about it. Meantime I have more important things to do with my time.