Massive layoffs at SOE?

[01101010]

If they can capture the glory of the original, but with modern resources and work out some of the old games issues. It will be money hats.

Why do you think this?  It's essentially a large scale FPS and most FPS enthusiasts can play other, prettier titles to their heart's content without incurring a sub fee. 

Assuming a sub fee, I have yet to find any FPS game, console or PC, on the same scale and scope as Planetside had. I enjoyed the hell outta BF2142 as well and caught some good moments, but it pales in comparison. To each their own though...

hell, we are all assuming PS:2 is actually going to be released as well.

[Mrbloodworth]

Smed: The layoffs had nothing to do with PS Next being delayed a bit. That's simply a function of us updating the underlying technology to allow some cool new things we are doing.

[Paelos]

Smed: The layoffs had nothing to do with PS Next being delayed a bit. That's simply a function of us updating the underlying technology to allow some cool new things we are doing.

It's never coming out.

[Mrbloodworth]

I hope you are wrong.

[Lantyssa]

Assuming a sub fee, I have yet to find any FPS game, console or PC, on the same scale and scope as Planetside had. I enjoyed the hell outta BF2142 as well and caught some good moments, but it pales in comparison. To each their own though...

I have yet to find any FPS game worth a sub fee.

[Nebu]

Assuming a sub fee, I have yet to find any FPS game, console or PC, on the same scale and scope as Planetside had. I enjoyed the hell outta BF2142 as well and caught some good moments, but it pales in comparison. To each their own though...

hell, we are all assuming PS:2 is actually going to be released as well.

Successful?  I could accept that for the niche that PS 2 will attract.  BW said "money hats".  When I see "money hats", my pea-sized brain thinks 1 million + subs.  I just don't see PS 2 doing that.  

[Mrbloodworth]

Assuming a sub fee, I have yet to find any FPS game, console or PC, on the same scale and scope as Planetside had. I enjoyed the hell outta BF2142 as well and caught some good moments, but it pales in comparison. To each their own though...

hell, we are all assuming PS:2 is actually going to be released as well.

Successful?  I could accept that for the niche that PS 2 will attract.  BW said "money hats".  When I see "money hats", my pea-sized brain thinks 1 million + subs.  I just don't see PS 2 doing that.  

Eh, semantics. Yes successful and profitable. FPS, or rather competitive shooters in the MMO space still have an uphill battle in the RPG combat dominated world.

Unrelated to above conversation.

We wanted to share this information with you all directly, rather than having you read about it on another site. What does this news mean for the squads of seasoned fighters in PlanetSide? There are few occasions when we see Vanu, NC and Terran all aligned in game, but we see it every day when we come to the PS forums or read about your campaigns in blogs, videos and other sites. We are listening; the community’s long-term and unflagging support of PlanetSide has ensured that it is one of the franchises that SOE will focus on going forward. I know that you’ve all seen a few cryptic and veiled messaged here and there regarding a new evolution of the game… while most of this development is still highly classified, we hope to bring you at least a few words from the Producer next week to whet your appetite and anticipation for the future.

~Linda “Brasse” Carlson

Director, Global Community Relations

[Paelos]

I hope you are wrong.

What do you think will happen, though?

[Furiously]

Plantside was one of the best experiences in MMOs for many people. Those coming out of the woodwork when the sequel was announced reinforces this. It also has a built in audience, and is 100% SOE owned.

If they can capture the glory of the original, but with modern resources and work out some of the old games issues. It will be money hats.

If they can get good reviews and word of mouth. Otherwise I see an APB.

[Mrbloodworth]

I hope you are wrong.

What do you think will happen, though?

I am perhaps to much of an optimist to answer. However I do know that the game is mostly done, the GUI is done (Baring any tweeks needed, this was confirmed by a SOE GUI artiest/programer), and assets are being added. With the switch of engine, it will take time to convert all of that. Unless SOE is in dire straights financially, I believe it will be finished. Its an original IP ( No money loss ), its the second attempt, and it can be sustainable as a boutique game, using all in house tech and resources and pipelines, and sans initial design phase I believe they can keep overhead down. Its also being handled by members of the original pre-launch team.

I believe it is unlike the EQ to EQ2 sequel as EQ2 was way more than just a modernization, it was a completely different game, tech, and pipeline.

[kildorn]

"the game is mostly done" + "we're switching engines" means "we're essentially starting over, but with most of our planning and art design out of the way already"

One does not simply hit "import" in their new engine and see their old engine's file formats listed.

While I wouldn't bet on it never being released, the fear is that any management team willing to throw out half their work when the game is "done" just to add some new tech widget in a different engine.. is a management team willing to fall into the trap of repeatedly doing this until you become an internet meme, then trollishly released by a competitor after your studio fails.

[Mrbloodworth]

Switching engines was my words.

[Ginaz]

I don't know why people keep saying fps+mmo=success.  It hasn't so far and most people are content to get their online fps fix with the multiplayer side of games like COD, Battlefield, MOH, Halo and the rest.  And unless you play on XBox Live, you can do it without a monthly sub fee.  Until that changes, any fps MMO (unless its absolutely spectacular) will be, at best, niche.

[Mrbloodworth]

I don't believe most hardcore fans of Plantside care about the masses. Niche is fine.  If you are thinking ANY FPSMMO will be the next Wow, it won't be, and you are crazy. There is an inherent wall built right in.

It will likely fare better this time with the lack of a sub fee. Also, i would like to remind everyone what games dropped months after Planetside launched.

[UnsGub]

It's essentially a large scale FPS and most FPS enthusiasts can play other, prettier titles to their heart's content without incurring a sub fee. 

The only large scale FPS on the market is Planetside.  No other FPS on today's market mix the scale and the number of different roles that can be played.  No one has even taken all the game play possible in PS and made it work for a 32 server.  No body has take a basic shooter and made it work for 100s on a side.  PS still does two things nobody else is doing.  People will pay for that.

[HaemishM]

If they can capture the glory of the original, but with modern resources and work out some of the old games issues. It will be money hats.

No, it won't, because SOE is doing it. And they've amply demonstrated over the years that EQ1 was a perfect storm of converging factors, because everything else they've done has been deeply flawed even when it's been enjoyable.

[schild]

Everyone and their dog tries to compete with Zynga. Even companies that have nothing to do with gaming.

This comment had me snorting up some soda.   I have no doubt Zynga and their ilk will create a huge (beyond what it is already) industry.   That industry really has nothing to do with what we call online gaming though.

It would have nothing to do with hardcore online gaming if hardcore online gaming companies weren't futzing around with Facebook trying to grab a piece of the pie. The only major dev that hasn't tried to jump in is Blizzard, but I'm sure Activision, somewhere, has plans. I wouldn't be shocked to see some weird Blizzard app as well (and it'd probably do well).

Point being, resources and time are being lost by hardcore gaming companies trying to compete in the mainstream facebook gaming market.

Ergo, it has everything to do with online gaming.

Edit: I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, this is just the current nature and trajectory of the market.

[Lantyssa]

RealID.  Blizzard did try to capitalize on the social media craze, they just wanted it to be all internal.

Planetside though... how many servers are there?  Y'all are talking about battles of 100's of players, but how many are actually playing right now?  Even during the Reserves program I don't remember seeing hundreds of people on one battlefield.  Maybe dozens.

[Paelos]

Too bad heading that direction is shitty and derivative.

I quit playing the Rift demo when I was already bored and noticed the "Tweet" buttons. 

[Rendakor]

WoW also has a facebook Armory thing that can spam your friends with achievements and shit.

[Mrbloodworth]

RealID.  Blizzard did try to capitalize on the social media craze, they just wanted it to be all internal.

Planetside though... how many servers are there?  Y'all are talking about battles of 100's of players, but how many are actually playing right now?  Even during the Reserves program I don't remember seeing hundreds of people on one battlefield.  Maybe dozens.

I came back on the wave of "OMG beta slot", but I found at least one major battle on a pop-locked continent. But still you are talking bout it in its current form.

[Lantyssa]

Yes.  I am talking about the game in its current form which is run by the people who will put out the sequel instead of the game people remember nostalgically.  Which one do you really think Planetside 2 is going to more closely resemble?

[Mrbloodworth]

Yes.  I am talking about the game in its current form which is run by the people who will put out the sequel instead of the game people remember nostalgically.  Which one do you really think Planetside 2 is going to more closely resemble?

Its not that simple, stagnation was directly tied to the original engine. Something they are attempting to address with the modernization.  I believe if it sees the light of day, it will be like Planetside one, but  more extensible. A MAJOR complaint of the original, from both players and developers alike.

[Moosehands]

Edit: I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, this is just the current nature and trajectory of the market.

While it is true that the immediate future has switched from "wow killer" to "farmville killer" I think the extremely rapid dev cycles of Facebook gaming will keep it from having much of a long term impact on the big publishers behavior or resources.

Big Game Company X can turn out a few flash games of that type in a year, but they'll also see how many of those flash games scrape for 3 digits of player count and don't sell a single token and it will be much easier for them to wipe those games back off the books and return to what they "know".  Zynga seems like their business model is all Facebook gaming and the shotgun method so a couple completely profitless titles doesn't make the kind of waves it might for a company just dipping their toes into the water.

[Lantyssa]

Its not that simple, stagnation was directly tied to the original engine. Something they are attempting to address with the modernization.  I believe if it sees the light of day, it will be like Planetside one, but  more extensible. A MAJOR complaint of the original, from both players and developers alike.

You mean the new engine they just switched out was going to solve those MAJOR complaints?  The engine which was apparently worth delaying a year for because they were otherwise finished?

So now the new-new engine is going to solve the complaints now?  Uh huh.  Not going to hold my breath.

[Mrbloodworth]

Generally in house engines share the same components across titles. See Turbine/Funcom. As to your question, The old engine was unable to be updated in any meaningful way ( Thats one reason all new items added, with exception of BFR, used textures from other items, as an example. Engine was 100% front load, and packed, streaming was removed in alpha. ), it just was not built with expansions in mind. Yes, the new engine ( or even modernized engine) would alleviate this. Version 1.0 or 2.0 is still better than the original.

It was just one of many issues surrounding the original title, but stifled correction of anything else, especially stagnation of content, or even changing the maps.

[kaid]

Generally in house engines share the same components across titles. See Turbine. As to your question, The old engine was unable to be updated in any meaningful way ( Thats one reason all new items added, with exception of BFR, used textures from other items, as an example. Engine was 100% front load, and packed, streaming was removed in alpha. ), it just was not built with expansions in mind. Yes, the new engine ( or even modernized engine) would alleviate this. Version 1.0 or 2.0 is still better than the original.

It was just one of many issues surrounding the original title, but stifled correction of anything else, especially stagnation of content, or even changing the maps.

There are also some apparently really nasty to fix bugs/hacks that were possible in the old game engine such as flying maxes that really need to get ironed out.

When they did their 30 day account reactivation thing for free a while back almost my whole guild went back to it for a while. Fights were pop locking and it was some old school massive warfare. Really going from some 32 person server to seeing a planetside continent fight in full swing shows how very good planetside did. Nothing today matches the size of the conflicts and diversity of units you could bring to a fight that planetside did. If they can move from a subscription based thing to something like a league of legends type micropayment system I think planetside could do very well again.

[Mrbloodworth]

I will never forget the day I had seen a prowler fly.

[Paelos]

Its not that simple, stagnation was directly tied to the original engine. Something they are attempting to address with the modernization.  I believe if it sees the light of day, it will be like Planetside one, but  more extensible. A MAJOR complaint of the original, from both players and developers alike.

You mean the new engine they just switched out was going to solve those MAJOR complaints?  The engine which was apparently worth delaying a year for because they were otherwise finished?

So now the new-new engine is going to solve the complaints now?  Uh huh.  Not going to hold my breath.

They are designing it to run on the Phantom, obviously.

[NiX]

They are designing it to run on the Phantom, obviously.

Hey! The Phantom would have made a BEAUTIFUL center piece!

[Fordel]

I always felt that Planetside was just Tribes2 with persistence between matches.

[Nija]

PS was a pretty shitty fps, lets get that out there on the table right now. Forced inaccuracy all over the place. If it actually was Tribes 2 on a massive scale people would have actually cared about it.

[Chimpy]

Ok, they have Hexen, Duke 3d, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein on there but they left out Quake?

[Venkman]

I say all of the below with love. I loved PS. I loved my Reaver. Warts and all, it ranks in my top 5 experiences on line, especially when I was running with KAOSS.

But the major issues then still exist today.

Its not that simple, stagnation was directly tied to the original engine. Something they are attempting to address with the modernization. 

Something doesn't become successful because it's easier to update. It's either successful enough to update or it's not. Yes you hope the dev team can be replaced by a live team. But a wonderfully successful but hard to manage product keeps the dev team and the live team if that's what it takes. They used the "it's hard" excuse to launch EQ2 as well. And what are they on now, the 47th expansion for EQ1?

In-house engines built by the company can/do share assets and pipelines. But recall how much of SOEs catalog was acquisition.

PS1 was not unsuccessful because the world geometry was too hard to manipulate. I still blame the amount of the subcription fee. Calling PS1 the subs-fee equivalent of EQ1, especially back then, was the very essence of niave or hubris or both. It's not a world with a long progression of time sinks designed to keep you rolling along on content rails. It was just a game you played until you got bored and moved on to the subsequent succession of FPS games that didn't have fees. And adding this to the All Access Pass was another crazy assumption that people playing fantasy MMORPGs would leap to an FPS.

Business killed it, not tech.

They had a lot of really awesome ideas unfortunately killed by lack of success. Happens often. Even in this genre. I'm still waiting for certain no-duh things from CoH to become core to MMOs.

The only large scale FPS on the market is Planetside.  No other FPS on today's market mix the scale and the number of different roles that can be played.  No one has even taken all the game play possible in PS and made it work for a 32 server.  No body has take a basic shooter and made it work for 100s on a side.  PS still does two things nobody else is doing.  People will pay for that.

Very little has changed since 2003. The market is basically the same. Few missed the offering that PS1 had then, and nobody is clamoring for it now. It's actually surprising to me. FPS games have largely not changed at all except adding XP meters and more recently some MTX crap. Still can't always expect even vehicles, much less very large assaults like PS had. That tells me nobody cares enough about it as a selling point to provide major funding into.

Maybe if this was Bungie with a bottomless pit of MS cash launching Halo MMO right after Halo 3 and it was multiplatform, then we could see if the game mechanic has wide spread appeal. But PS is no more widespread a brand as this large scale combat mechanic has widespread demand.

I want to be wrong.

[Margalis]

Just make it FTP and it will do fine.