What Ever Happened To These?

What ever happened to these ideas?
Empire Specific Buggies
These are real concepts made by DayBreak Games and were showcased during SOE Live about 2 years ago. NOT FAN-MADE
TR Marauder



NC Enforcer

VS Thresher


Intercontinental Lattice
This was on the roadmap years ago. The idea was to link all the continents via warpgate routes that must be captured to access them. Basicly how bases are now but on a larger scale, with a uncapturable home warpgate so you still have a place to spawn if a empire actually manages to capture the world. However recently theres been talks to of sanctuarys to possibly replace these. So far all DayBreak has done is add the continent locking part...


Battle Islands
These were maps about a third or a quarter smaller than the continents to be added in with the continents and as shown above had a role in the intercontinental lattice. They had a 1v1 faction battle compared to the continents 1v1v1 faction battles. They release a trailer for the Nexus Battle Island about and was also secretly on the Test Server 3 years ago.



Inter-link Facility
A new facility type that use to be on Hossin during its time on the Test Server.





Searhus
Was never really confirmed but hints by the Dev team has been giving out for years. By people like Higby, although like half of the original Dev team is gone. This was a new continent from PlanetSide 1 that had tropical jungles on the edges and a giant volcano torwards the center.


Other Ideas at Launch

Maybe these were probably never to come and just brainstorm ideas by Smedley. However they were cool ideas.
https://www.vg247.com/2012/11/30/pl...ear-plan-wants-to-run-until-2025-if-possible/
Now for people who dont want to click the link the ideas were:

• 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 guess you can say they some-what did this with "outfit controlled bases". However theres still a chance this could happen with the new ANT vehicles, Im not sure about the empty continents though.
• Harvestable resources – imagine SC II style resource harvesting with physical vehicles doing the mining or the harvesting. - This is most likely the new ANT and construction system they are working on. What else would it be?
• Water between continents – seamlessly – this is really hard tech, but our goal is to make the whole planet seamless and allow water based vehicles. - Something like ArcheAge, this was a really cool idea. Probably will never come.
• Lots more vehicles and weapons – just what it sounds like. Many of these will take very rare resources to make. - Valkyrie and the Harasser is all we got. New weapons yeah, although some Empire Specific Weapons arent very good and too many NS weapons ruin faction unique stuff. "resources to make" is probably a crafting system that I doubt we will ever see.
• 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. - Godzilla vs Empires, take my money... if it ever happens...
• 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. - Im imagining a Battlefront or Mount Blade-like scenario here. Would be awesome don't ya think?
• 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. - I dont think I really care about this one...
• Weather - Would make the world so much more immersive. Sandstorms on Indar, Rainstorms on Amerish and Hossin, Snowstorms on Esamir. Tornadoes and hurricanes during or in the middle of the map somewhere.
• Mac version (soon after launch). - Lol do people really play this on Mac?

Most of it died long ago.

Most of most of it simply won't work, too much strain on peoples potatoes(See: Snowstorms, weather, etc.)

Only things I am aware they are working on right now is the new ANT vehicle and actual resources in the world to harvest. That and new empire-specific cosmetics: http://imgur.com/a/dHgNT

I really think they should just redesign all the NS vehicles to look more empire specific and make that the default look.

Well.... aside from more vehicles, which I think would be problematic seeing SOE/DBGs history of not understanding how balance works, the one point that would get me REALLY invested is...
The NPC armies.

Imagine, every empire base spawns a certain "supply" of those on a regular basis and sends them to the front. In a sunderer or galaxy/valkyrie if the base is not directly at the front. That means holding more (and better) bases suddenly has a very meaningful strategic advantage.
Of course those guys don't respawn. If they don't get revived by a medic they're gone.
Your enemies on the other hand get more (and propably easier) targets to shoot at.
Even better, new players can easier get a feeling of success, because they have those bots to shoot at and don't get curbstomped by level 100(+) guys literally ALL the time.

If we take it to the next level - the ANT is coming.
Harvest resources and stash them.
And then unleash a wave of NPC drones upon your enemies who follow a simple marker on the map.
Maybe even equip them? 25 res for a basic soldier of random class, 35 if he has NW level 5? 150 for a MAX?
Or maybe 300 for an MBT?
Do you unleash a lot of small waves?
Or do you risk losing everything you've worked for by stashing up tenthousand resourcepoints to unleash a single huge NPC army of doom?

Bah, not gonna happen.
But damn would it be sweet to be proven wrong.
But to answer the question:
AFAIK its pretty much all died the way good ideas die when money is involved: Long term investments are out, short term gains are in.

7:12 in the interlink video he uses the drop pod squad deploy that has been removed. Some things I fully understand because of man power and development changes; but other changes just boggle my mind.

Why was the drop pod for squad deploy and instant action removed? Did it break in the updates like Nvidia Physx and they never bothered to fix it? Or did people actually complain about it so it was changed?

Just as a counterpoint to this line of thought:
The Silent Hill series used fog and weather effects to increase performance on the lower end hardware of the time.

Budget cuts, my friend. They never had control of their own budget. When they were SOE they had the backing of Sony. When they got bought by Columbus Nova they had do make to with a fraction of that, in addition to giving Columbus Nova some kind of ROI (return on investment).

This means that Daybreak Games Company is not fiscally solvent. They are hanging on by a thread. The amount of time they can dedicate to a given project is dictated to them by their venture capitalist owners at Columbus Nova, and right now that company is only focused on one thing: Getting every dime they can out of Daybreak while the company still has any assets to speak of.

So, all of those ideas have been shelved, and will likely never see the light of day. Daybreak is on a downward spiral right now. When their existing titles are no longer profitable Columbus Nova will pull the plug and liquidate their acquisition. PlanetSide 2 will cease to exist. It's only a matter of time.

In the off chance that Daybreak manages to pull a hat trick and grow profits on their existing titles then and only then will Columbus Nova consider further investment.

I think you really need to do your research. They just opened up 3 Everquerst servers this past year. The first one caused them to have to invent a queue system that never existed nor was needed. In addition those new servers have higher capacities than any server for the game ever did (5000, 2-3 times that of even a PS2 server).

Most of the budget issues were from the downsizing. When you lose people, progress slows down. You can't simply throw money at a development team and it sh-ts out content. It doesn't work that way. Hiring more people doesn't neccessarily mean it will go faster either. As long as no one has to play double duty (artist coding for example), then things actually don't slow down.

PS2 currently has 4 programmers, 2 Game Designers, Level Designer, Sound Design, 4 artists, and 2 directors. Those people's salaries have been accounted for. It doesn't cost Daybreak anything for them to make something except the salary and the costs to keep the lights on.

So the resource is time. Time for them to code, design, create art, and implement, then test again and deploy to test server. Get us to test, fix stuff, and deploy to live. That's it.

Money is only an issue if they have to cut someone that is needed for further development. Being as they still have people for art, sound, coding, ui, and so forth. I don't see money slowing anything down. If you have evidence showing otherwise, feel free to show it.

Ok. When people sit down to work on a given project, they do so within the confines of time (personnel hours) allocated to that project. Salaried or not. Companies want to keep an eye on where their human resources are going. So, for example, me as a programmer may be paid a static salary, but that doesn't mean I can work all the hours I want. I have x number of hours for this assignment, y number of hours for this other one, etc. etc.

All of these ideas that have been proposed are all "projects." The game itself is not one big gigantic project. The labor required to run it and develop it, and grow it, is all divided up into individual projects.

The downsizing is not the cause of budget cuts, but a symptom of it. Along with downsizing, personnel hours allocated to various things also gets cut. Daybreak is in survival mode. They were already moving resources into Everquest projects before they were sold off to Columbus Nova. Those extra servers aren't an indicator of growth, but rather a reflection of hardware being deployed that was already in the inventory.

The reason Daybreak is in survival mode is because they were acquired. Anytime a company is sold the new owner seeks its ROI: profit taking. Revenue is literally reallocated to pay off the acquisition cost. Until that cost is recouped the new owners are in the hole.

What this means is that there is no way Daybreak has turned a profit for Columbus Nova yet. Until they do we should not expect any substantial investment.

Everyone I described is assigned to the PS2 project. That is NOT Daybreak in its entirety. Everyone that is needed to add new things to PS2 has been allocated to PS2.

PS2 doesn't need a huge dev team. It needs an artist or two, a coder or two, someone to do sound, and a person to direct it all. They've got that and then some. Adding more resources won't make things go faster.

A good example of a project that would go faster with more human resources would be the project I'm directing currently. I have people working double duty which means I'm getting half the productivity out of them. PS2 doesn't have that problem.

Quite right, it is not Daybreak in its entirety. This is not a matter of people, either. You and I actually agree on what the problem is:

Time.

Where we disagree is on just what we mean by time. What I'm trying to explain to you is that those people assigned to PS2 by Daybreak are literally only allowed to work on certain things and for certain periods of time. When that time is used up, work ceases until more time is made available, or until the next day, or the next week, or whatever interval of time Daybreak counts their personnel hours.

Another thing I am trying to explain is that the total cost that Columbus Nova paid Sony for its SOE subsidiary must be paid back. Daybreak literally owes Columbus Nova whatever money Columbus Nova spent on them. No matter how much money Daybreak makes, if they cannot meet that cost--and then make their promised return on investment--then Columbus pulls their money out. They liquidate.

On the ground that looks like this:

Everyone gets laid off, the offices are sold, along with everything in them.

That's where Daybreak is right now. They are in a very deep hole and are trying to dig themselves out. They were effectively given a loan by a different name, and owe their creditors.

Remember old roadmap? All these things plus everything we have gotten so far should have been in since at least a year ago.

this thread makes me sad

Make Searhus bases totally customisables and everyone wins: devs save time not having to test bases and players have fun building their owns. Worth pulling this continent once ANT out!

Lolz, you believed the words that came out Higby's mouth.

Reflection map of Searhus, old stuff.


Something that looks related so Searhus. Some speculate it's a reflection map, others a loading screen.

btw what is this ?

Where you find?

This is actually a pretty interesting idea...

Roadmap is dead all this point, half the "upcoming" features with it. Sad really..