Is this ever going to become a thing? Like, a continent with a bunch of islands on it and a few ship vehicles, maybe some carriers that can house tanks so you could still use tanks and stuff?
SOE said they cant make water and it takes about 6 months to make a vehicle, for its aesthetics alone. It takes at least a year to make a continent and ther is already plans for Searhus being the next one. I doubt it will ever come. Also plans for Oshur after that (yeah right).
We can host our naval warfare on the lava. For whatever else reasons exist, SOE is of the mind that, if they can't get good high-quality water, they're not going to do it. Even PS1 water would have been sufficient.
I forsee an air based continent coming before sea. Maybe like 3 years down the road. Like the old TAC mod in Tribes.
Probably not. The tech isn't really in the engine (or it is and we don't know about it) and even so water is not the best use of developer time imo.
Naval combat would have one massive imbalance: Magriders. Ever played Supreme Commander 2? The faction without a navy (just hovertanks) COMPLETELY ANNIHILATED the other two factions with functioning navies on water. Every. Single. Time. Why? Because the hovertanks could easily avoid the slow, ponderous bombardment and swarm the enemy ships. While it wouldn't be swarming as such in PS2, Magriders have huge amounts of mobility. It wouldn't be a fair fight From another thread, I'm concerned that even naval combat functioning as intended would be disappointing, due to SOE's Nerf Train™:
Its not in the Engine, yet. Landmark (and Everquest Next) use the same Forgelight engine as PS2, they will be allowing for water and swimming. So the developer time is already being spent on the method.
True, but I have to wonder how much the two (well, three I guess) games benefit from each other's strides in development. And more importantly, how are features of the different game engines shared. I get mixed feelings on this because on one hand, weather effects are a "gonna add soon(tm)" thing in development and on the other the reason we don't have more water is because it is hard to do on forgelight (gonna need to find the quote on that though). Not to say I wouldn't want water and all the strategy that brings, but water battles between big boats? eh, probably not gonna happen. Gunboats, zodiacs, and skidoos running around on the auraxian rivers? A more likely outcome if we ever get an island archipelago for a continent.
God, how many problems does this game have because the Devs put LOOKING good over actually PLAYING good? Ah, but this is why they wouldn't give Vanu very good SUBMARINES! Most of your stuff would hover OVER the Water, but be blind to attacks from BELOW it. ...We seriously ARE the Everquest Next Beta, aren't we? Well the SHIPS would be used on Intercontinental Ocean Maps, where you'd have a bunch of small Islands on an up-scaled Hex Map System. You'd Capture a chain of Islands between two Continents to form a Global Lattice Link between them, and the Ships would either bombard an Island or duke it out in the open ocean in order to establish these links. Each Faction would probably get a Battleship, a Vehicle Transporting Landing Craft, MAYBE some type of Aircraft Carrier, and a Submarine on top of the boats you mentioned... ...In fact, one of my ideas to bring BFRs into Planetside 2 was to make them Amphibious Armored Assault Craft that lumber rather slowly on land, but can literally swim up to and walk UP beaches.
Took me a while to track it down but was sure I remembered Smedley mentioning it a couple years back: http://john-smedley.livejournal.com/2412.html He only briefly mentions it in the second section after describing the game. Some of the things on that list appear to be coming in, so maybe? Don't know if the same excitement and motivation exists today as back when he originally said that. I wouldn't imagine so, but dunno.
Yeah, "Seamless" map transitions are complete ********, and are probably half the reason we have to use Terminals to change Continents instead of the Warpgates themselves... Seriously, would it be so bad if instead of going "Out of Bounds" you instead started "Transitioning to ____"?
To be fair, loading a map of "middle of ocean, natch" is probably very cheap compared to the rest of the continents.
Mostly yes, because the terrain making up the ocean floor doesn't need to bother with any real "scenery filler" Objects like above water. The real issue here is the NUMBER of Map Loads the Netcode has to deal with. You know how you are stuck longer in the Loading Screen when you Spawn in on a huge Fight? That's the Netcode struggling to "hand out" all the Information to everyone in that Fight... Now imagine entire armies, including Vehicles, just Spawning and De-spawning.
