Planetside 2: SOE details its 3-year plan

Guys i doubt any of this blog was real.

This was during beta when Smedley wanted to sound "trendy".

Please no Esports. This is not the game to do esports and it already sounds like you'll neglect development for it.

eSports are fine. You may not want to participate (and you don't have to), but the fact is that it will grow the brand. If eSports make PS2 popular, more people will play the game, and that means more people to shoot for a longer span of time. It's win-win.

That is an old post. I don't put much money on that happening. Sort of like the plan to have naval vessles in Planetside 1. Some how the battleship turrets ended up on a big robot instead.

But anyways here are my opinons on the mentioned.
Good
Okay
Bad
Smedley then listed the team’s ideas:

• Player Owned bases – we plan on releasing continents that are empty or partially empty where players can build their own bases. These are open world bases so others will be able to attack them. We’re also planning on having these continents heavily resource based with new resource types that will be very rare..and lots of cool new stuff that can be built out of these new resources.
  • I would actually perfer Outfit owned bases where outfit leaders can choose a base as a home base and officers can choose what upgrades to get for that base with outfit resources. As for the whole open world base Maybe bring back the AMS only make it more of a base building vehicle such as a MCU from command and conquer. New resource that is rare? Hmm the return of Araxium, not needed.
• Harvestable resources – imagine SC II style resource harvesting with physical vehicles doing the mining or the harvesting.
  • Wouldn't mind a mission where a convoy of resources apears from all bases gathering all nearby base resource and travels to warpgate. Minning would be cool but not needed that much.
• Water between continents – seamlessly – this is really hard tech, but our goal is to make the whole planet seamless and allow water based vehicles.
  • Much needed. The fact that water is completly off limits is disapointing. Not to mention that out of bounds are also irritating. Was in a full sundy that accidentalyl traveled in the out of bounds hex on the contenant and was given only 5 seconds to go back after he traveled a full 30 seconds into the off limits area.
• Lots more vehicles and weapons – just what it sounds like. Many of these will take very rare resources to make.
  • More vehicles are a must. Still do not have asault buggies and we need some sort of self propeled SAM/Arty platform. New Resource not needed. Maybe bring back the cat polymer catalyst and alloy and make some vehciles have a primary resource cost and a secondary resource cost. sort of like minerals and vespene.
• NPC enemies – I don’t want to call this PVE. That’s not exactly what we have in mind. More like a global invasion that goes after everybody. This isn’t a bunch of quest givers saying “go kill 10 rats” – this is bad *** aliens that want to gut you.
  • Maybe som player control patrol drones or the return of spitfire turrets or auto wall turrets. But no Tabula Risa Aliens. PvP is exactly what is says. PvE should never interfear. I would rather have the 10 rats but once I make a hot spot fighting the other empire those rats better scurry away.
• NPC armies – imagine as the commander of a base sending an NPC army towards another base MOBA style except it’s in the middle of the Planetside 2. This isn’t another game mode. It’s all part of the same game.
  • No No No NO! We do not need NPC armies. even if the populations goes away and the game is abandoned (that just means we need a new planetside and one that is done right this time)
• Esports support – we plan on doing this pretty soon after launch. We plan on making this a big big thing and putting a lot of our resources behind it.
  • To me ESports is the WORST thing to happen to FPS. All this twitch bunny hopping got to get the headshot and make every weapon exactly the same ******** is what ruins most multiplayer experience for games. I was hoping for HAL0 to have more then 16 but Bungie sold out to ESports with the whole "more intimate experience". BAH... I want epic mass person battles and imersion not some court and ball game. ESports does not have vehicles in a FPS, ESports dose not have faction diffrence between the teams. ESports takes the fun out of all games and all we end up with is another Call of Duty with kill streaks OFF.
• Weather
  • Definatly needed. Add this in. I miss my sandstorms, blizzards, and thunderstorms. Also make it viewable on the map. If the bases were not so much a flipfolp tactical movment within a weather system would be prety cool.
• Mac version (soon after launch).
  • A given, MACs should be allowed in the game as well. Just don't make a MAC only server, bring them in with the rest of us. And don't make a Play Station 3 verson of the game.

I think the NPC system would be better if it was just considered a 3rd faction. Give players at/above a certain BR the option to play as the "alien" race and put a queue system on it, only allow a certain amount of them at a time if they're markedly more powerful then normal players. I'm thinking like the Black Ops that used to be in PS1.

I want harverstable resources that actually deplete so factions have a reason to fight over areas. It would be cool if these resource sources would refill back to 100% only after all resource sources on a continent are depleted, this would give a huge advantage to the faction having access to the last resources on the continent.

Dynamic weather also sounds great, I hope there would be thick fogs or snowstorms, these would make fighting much harder and would give an advantage to the vehicles with thermal vision. (I don't know if night vision is effective in these weather conditions, I don't have much knowledge in optics)

Harvesting resources is actually sort of a cool idea. I like to think that it would be like a Capture and Hold sort of point. You go in and you take some sort of huge cool mining rig thing. Imagine a big laser drill or grinder drill or digger or oil rig thing, or whatever.

Now while you hold this, you gain resources, so everyone wants to have it, so people go in to take it and you have a big fight over it to see who gets the resources. It should only work while X number of people are there so its not basically always pumping rare resources or whatever in downtime. Or maybe you need someone to operate it or something, whatever. But at the same time you are creating a new sort of base mechanic.

except it inevitably will.

look what happened to WoW. they balanced the game around PvE just fine till BC rolled around, then they added arenas

all balancing, PvE included, began revolving around arena.

the ONLY MMOx I've ever seen where small scale, instanced pvp didn't influence all balance decisions was ff11.

Vanu: our boats can strafe!

I love all these ideas. Especially the idea linking all the continents by sea. Imagine, naval battles and ocean-based invasions! We could re-create D-Day in PlanetSide 2!

SPACE COMBAT

Why would you bring a thread this old back from the dead?

It is worthwhile doing so.

This post is from 2012 near the launch from over a year ago.I had a lot of hope based on the early version. Not so much now.
Everything but the e-sports seems awesome.
Esports support – we plan on doing this pretty soon after launch. We plan on making this a big big thing and putting a lot of our resources behind it.

IMHO Esports needs to be thought of after it's all done, if at all. You need to get your foundation and your game solid first. Once the money starts pouring in because you made a kick *** game with staying power and cred, THEN you can open up the pro league. Just pissing time and money away otherwise.

The rest of the plan seemed like a really decent meta game was thought of perhaps even coded....then suddenly silenced.
The hex/lattice fiasco cost them big time.
It seemed like MANY of the ideas were made that were scrapped because of their business model. Why harvest resources when you can charge for them? Why craft weapons from resources you harvest for free when you can charge for them? SMEDLEY!!!

Craftable bases and weapons....well now we know where the shooting terrain and buildings glitches came from
Also why so many of the bases look cut n paste...it's because they are.

"Keep it simple" is what I'd say to all this. It sounds great, just like the Orbital Strike and the battles in orbit, aboard large cruisers and all the other interesting ideas the Devs often rant about. But let's focus on making PS2 bearable first - We don't even have real ES traits any more, balance is not where it should be, population problems are still a major concern and so on.

Please no water.

I can't stand water in BF. Swimming around in the water and not being able to shoot is not fun.

Locking this one up as the topic is very old. If the content is still something you wish to discuss, please feel free to open a new topic. Thanks!