Would an expansion revitalize the population?

Just curious what people thought.

Hypothesis/TLDR:
What if the devs stopped releasing new content/fixes and spent the next 6 months or so building an expansion/planetside 2.0?

This would be a huge content release. Items that could be included:

3 new smaller continents.
Continental Lattice.
Hex/Lattice hybrid on the continents.
Improved base design on many of the terrible bases on existing continents.
Ability to warp vehicles across continents.
Improved and expanded VP system.
Mission system phase 2.
Resource system phase 2 with ANT release- resources now play a vital role in strategy.
New leadership and communication tools. Outfit management tools.
Outfit bases and faction/neutral sanctuaries.
3-4 new vehicles: ES Humvee, ES Attack Heli, Radar/communication Van, ES AA trucks, Artillery vehicles, Colossus.
Revamped Vehicles. Buffed Valk. Remade ES flashes.
New ES Lib cannons, ES MBT cannons, ES Lightning turrets, ES ESF abilities and weapons.

Player built bases and fortifications. I know these are planned but with time and using some of the EQnext code this could be greatly expanded and improved.
More base defense setup and base defense tools. I.e. Placeable mini turrets that are actually useful. Gas traps. Destroyable radar rooms, electrified floors that can be turned on and off, Placeable Ai/Av shields. Better mine field creation.

Class updates:
LA Tools
ES LA weapon
Infil tools for recon such as the Drone which was previously in the works.
Infil laser pointer/spotter. No vocal call out when infil spots something with these devices to make infiltrating/recon more effective.
Medic grenade launcher which has the ability to switch between healing and revive nades. Has an underbarrel SMG(a weaker PDW or something so medic isn't helpless in combat)
NS Max HMG, NS Max Flamethrower, ES Max Heavy Melee weapons,
HA Beserker "Shield"= more damage, ROF, ect at the price of being easier to kill.
ES Engineer weapon.

When this expansion is released DBG should advertise and market the hell out.

Thoughts? Anything you think should be added/removed? Do you think this would increase and keep people around? Is it too late?

Some preferred rules: Please don't turn this into a huge balance debate. Instead let's have a conversation about what could be added to the game to to bring back pop and increase rentention of pop once they are back. I tried to add a bit for every class and vehicle, but I'm sure I left some out and if I did it wasn't intended or personal.

Please share anything you think will help.

Six months? It's a skeleton crew and it takes them 4+ months to make one set of ES vehicle weapons. At least 6 months to make one vehicle. At least 3 months to make a battle island that has very few unique assets.

I said 6 months "or so"

Plus this is a hypothetical question, obviously most of this stuff Is never going to be done, but I wanted people's thoughts on whether something like this would work, not if it was technically possible.

An expansion...but at least that expansion is free or we going to pay????

No to 3 small continents.

Yes to a new big one that is urban and built up, like a city.

Any kind of content update/addition would indeed help the current state of the game imho.

I love the ideas you've proposed. Some of them already existed in PS1 but didn't make the transition over sadly.

I think you forgot updated capture mechanics to make all classes more viable and increase the tactical capabilities of both attackers and defenders when either attacking or defending.

Instead of hiring 20+ people for that, take those resources and advertise on TV! A top-notch commercial.

Then, with the influx of new players (and hopefully more revenue), then hire more people for more content.

I thank you for your effort, however, problem is, like Pikachu said, is with the current state of staff. The game's current state is still unstable, and the community can't wait more than 1-3 months for a large expansion to happen, they will get bored and leave, and as per the expansion, if this were to happen and received well, this game would last MUCH longer and have a larger fan base. Games like Planetside 2 come from innovation, and this kind of game is a gem that's especially one of a kind, it needs careful planning and polishing. It's not so simple as to "make" all of the things you wish come true, but it is the thing that the game seriously needs.

Is this not the current state anyway?

To answer your question, yes. But this is not realistically possible.

The Planetside 2 dev team has struggled in terms of resources for some time now, which has impeded the progress of content development. This is essentially a snowball effect, where they get funded less and less from their product, which impedes development, which in turn causes revenue to drop.

People have lost interest in the title. The hype in Planetside 2's infancy was great, and we must commend Higby and the dev team for sustaining the project for the first 6-12 months of the game. The loyal playerbase is still there and very grateful to the developers for a great game, but it doesn't have enough appeal to attract newer players anymore.

Honestly, the best move right now is to rebrand the series. Maybe rebrand it to 'Planetside 3', or if they're feeling really courageous, completely do away with the 'Planetside' series and go down a new path. The lore, concepts and mechanics of the game have great potential, and I would really hate to see it die.

See, Planetside 2 has been sucked into a quick-sand pit. It needs to be pulled out. Two options exist:
- Boost content development to attract (back) players, however this, as stated, is not realistically possible, or at least extremely unlikely in this instance
- Revitalise the series. Give it a new face that is not associated with the past stagnations and disappointments of the Planetside 2 development

An expansion pack is tied to the first option, and therefore the chances of that happening on a scale that would rejuvenate the game is not very probably.

Like I said, I still love the game, but I feel that others don't, and the latter is much more critical to the survival/success of the game.

They need to hire a dedicated PR person just for this game.

Cold call gaming media, push the crap out if it on steam, print advertise in magazines (yeah no one reads them, but it's cheap), run promotions with mid-tier video cards, run promos with anything, special codes for unique weapons, came or helmets, I dunno anything.

Yes. DBG needs to realize they have a winning, niche genre in Planetside 2, and treat it with long-term development potential - even on into Planetside 3 in the future. They need to take a page out of Bethesda or Blizzard and develop highly lucrative, fully developed winning titles. DBG could be the next Planetside/Everquest developer like Bethesda is the Fallout/Elder scrolls developer.

Again with the advertising bit. This is backwards thinking. You can't advertise a game that is underdeveloped. Ask yourself these questions: Would you like them to spend $250,000 developing the Searhus continent which would create a huge surge of interest for 4-6 months, which is better than advertising, or would you like them to waste $250,000 on advertising? Would you like them to spend an extra $250,000 on finishing coding battle islands, intercontinental lattice, vehicle warping, over-ocean aircraft flying, with a PS1 Deliverer-type amphibious new vehicle......... or spend it on advertising so new players can experience a whole host of 3+ year broken promises they don't realize aren't there but definitely feel something is missing in their cert farming and just leave? Would you like them to spend money developing better bug squashing, optimization, and patch delivery that is relatively bug free, or would you like a whole host of advertised players to come in to experience less than 30 fps in big fights, hitching,hitbox detection issues, and the presence of more hackers then there should be?

Advertising is not a wise use of funds especially when we have an over-abundance of new players coming into this game already, but poor player retention. SOE already determined this is based on lack of proper tutorials and getting killed without knowing why, or getting repeatedly killed without knowing what to do to circumvent that. (And they already removed their tutorial trying to replace it with Koltyr when they should have them running linear. And possibly dumping players into the VR after Koltyr, or with a choice every time they login from BR1-15. Koltyr, VR or all the other continents.)

That.

Playing over on ps4 we are watching this great game die only ten months into it's release on console. The main problem I see with this game in player retention as far as people whom I've talked to is this, no end game content, nothing. It feels like the movie Groundhog day, same thing every time with no reward, no thrill.

Maybe something like Dust 514 did for base captures with a timer and set battle time. when a base becomes available for attack an outfit may set an attack order. Then an outfit from the faction holding that base accepts the defense contract, and the battle takes place 48 hrs after the attack is order is placed. Numbers of players per side limited to 48 and vehicles and aircraft having limits as well.

The winner of the battle now owns the base, the base cannot have an attack order placed for 24 hrs allowing the victor to prepare defenses using the ANT system. Meanwhile they are attacking other bases while waiting to defend. This is one way to stimulate new interest in existing playerbase with a bit of competition as it takes the zerging out of it.

It just bites to work your azz off to lock down a continent only to have it reset after an alert. The fights are fun but they have no goal or means.
And ADVERTISE for god's sake...

Would a well advertised expansion (or re-launch even) help? Yes, it would. Is such a thing possible with the current level of investment that the owners of the company are willing to make? Nope.

Would an expansion help the game population? Yes, absolutely, at least in the short-term.

Chances of PS2 getting an expansion in the next 18 months? 0.00000%

Chances of PS2 ever getting an expansion? 0.00001%



Although the reality is PS2 isn't actually finished, so an expansion would seem strange anyway, finishing the game properly would help.

Make a single player game, with 3 campaigns (nc, vs, tr), allowing the player to play through the history/lore of the game, while familiarizing them with many of the mechanics and leading them at the end to continue the battle online. Give a few free unlocks for players that complete the game (some camo, a weapon or something).

They won't, but it would be nice.

But as has been stated, there's not the revenue for this. Which is a shame, EQ is on its 20something'th (27?) expansion and has been going for a long time (and is still their lead money maker I believe) - because EQ got it right, I still play. PS2 had a good core concept, and got some things right, just not enough to be sustainable for a long time.

lol, true that

give the code to the modding community and let them make small team based CTF and TDM maps, host them on the DBG servers. DBG gets new content with no time investment. We get balanced maps with no 80-20% battles

in response to OP's idea, yes, new content would increase player base... just not hossin again (facepalm)

New creative director sort of addressed this in a Reddit QA:

So they're open to it, but they have to resolve new player retention first.