I think it would be really fun, and fresh, if maps were randomly generated every 2 weeks-month or so. You could just redo the lore, so you aren't invading a "continent" but a section of a continent. So indar maps are indar, esamir esamir, and a random hossin map could potentially be fun! (Theoretically of course). This could be combined with the construction system too. Maybe even a fog of war that necessitates actually scouting the map. All the bases could be player built. With the fortifications we have now being unchanged, but the old prefab buildings being capable of being built on a longer time scale. Imagine finding a sweet spot, with UNIQUE LOCAL FLORA, and defending an area while a biolab lands. That sounds kick ***. Muh flora... Defending an amp station being built, to power a tech plant (hello new meta). And once a zone's time is up, the final battle for it begins, then it's locked... forever. Then the nuance of the old random map is gone and starts anew. It makes the fleeting stories of old battles better. And sharing old stories of things that are gone is fun. And new general terrain would keep things a bit fresh. And add to exploration engagement. Right now I know things like the back of my hand, which is great when I lead a squad, but finding all these new lanes and avenues of approach is fun. And if one random seed generated a really kick *** map, they could always use the seed again and schedule an invasion of the locked zone. The other two teams come crashing down at some predetermined time, and try to wrestle it from their hands. Sounds cool. I am of course, ignoring the technical and coding limitations of the team. Generating a random heightmap is easy, but making it look like terrain every time could take a seasoned coder up to two days! ==Technical Crap== There are tons of tools for procedural terrain generation. And almost everything in game is a prefab anyway. Generating new maps frequently would also allow for many different changes to be tested frequently. Map size, good spots for bases and how close they are, scale of flatlands, tons of stuff. I think being able to tweak those settings more frequently and on the live servers would allow good settings to be found, so we get new fresh maps that have a fun mix of terrain and resource distribution. Since event heatmaps are already collected, you could potentially add permanent features to maps too. giant tank battles keep happening in the same spot? Add in some permanent tank wrecks. Lots of air deaths? Add wrecks. Artilery shelling an area all the time? Darken the terrain there and depress it a little. Not a lot, just little stuff so that by the end of the maps life you can look back at screenshots or video and tell, "that's when it all started." Also, let us blow up trees.
Sounds like an awesome idea for Planetside 3. Destruction mechanics common in Battlefield games would be nice, but is difficult both technically (100's of players all in the same area as hundreds of destructible objects!) and mechanically: This works on an instanced game where you can destroy everything and then get a fresh map. Planetside 2 has such a slow pace compared to even BF4, where games last as much as hour but usually only 15 min. Continents can stay unlocked for hours on end, and are of course gigantic. Making every tree destructible, even in one way, would be too many things for the server to keep track of, and too many things to load up and render. I could be wrong, technology may change, but right now on PS4 rendering issues already exist in large fights. The epic set pieces also seem pulled from BF4's "Levelution," they may be possible as long as they can't be interfered with and complications, like collisions with players, are dealt with. Again, some of these things are features of games with instanced matches, rather than a persistent world (sometimes infrequent continent locking notwithstanding). So what happens when you get a Bio Lab, or other base? Does it have capture points, or are you advocating scrapping the mechanic in favor of being able to destroy all bases like with Construction? What about territory? The lattice system? It's a cool idea, and may reduce the stalemates and repetitive fights we have now, but it may dramatically change how the game is played. Especially given the construction was in part designed within the basic premise the territory control was necessary and or the point of building bases.
i like this idea too. since we're at it, i always though a puzzle type continent, where the hexes were interchangable, and randomly rotated periodically.
Personally, I would like to see the lattice of each continent change with each warpgate rotation. Having different iterations of the lattice system would also freshen up the game a little bit now that the construction system has died down a little bit.
I would rather keep current maps and have the bases and links be interchangeable. Some system in the background simply makes sure every 1/3rd of each faction area gets the same stuff as the others. You could have small bases, medium bases, facilities and empty lattice links. Empty lattice links are there to be build on with the construction system. This way you can have the familiar layout but with different bases and setups each time. This has far less technical limitations, except of course that the current bases are all hand-crafted and balanced depending on vehicle interference etc. We don't want a Quartz Ridge again where 2 MBT's could beat a 96+ infantry team.
I Like the idea of Randomly generated continents it would really spice up the gameplay but i think the they would have to be pre-set I think it would be rather tedious if the Devs had to switch the bases positions every 2 weeks.
I like the idea of randomly generated terrain. That would be great fun. It would certainly help spice the game up. It would be a bit problematic with the more iconic bases (think The Crown) which are huge, land encompassing monsters, with bridges and everything. Other bases could just make sure that the ground generated beneath a building is flat, and that the buildings will adhere to the ground level underneath it. Otherwise we'd have some floating bases, which, although extremely cool for some, would not be appealing to the majority. If that can't be done, make the Hexes interchangeable. That would add at least a little variety to the game. You'd still have all the Tech plants and important bases evenly distributed, but if they were all moved around a few Hexes, and the random bases thrown in completely new spots, it would be a lot more interesting. Of course, this could have a major impact on things such as roads and mountain ranges.
I don't think it would cause rendering problems. The problems with people pop in are for people, which are updated very frequently with netcode. You already have the trees and buildings being rendered (sometimes with lag, as the program streams files from the hard drive), but making trees turn off or on would not change that. You could also possibly have the trees be put in a location to block off base building, necessitating clearing them before building something, so you would be clearing destructible objects to allow for the placement of more destructible objects, possibly slowing player building expansion. There are like what, 4 servers? One big 'landing event' would not be so much. Don't let the size fool you, biolabs are still just a prefab. If it's really a probem have it take more time, after it's sent down have it take 20 minutes before it's even in atmosphere. Then by the time it's landing it's pretty much all clientside as there was 20 minutes to sync everyone's animation. Animating it landing would probably even use a model without the internal structure too. Just have it fall slowly and crush everything. You could keep them the same. I think things should be destructible, but what we have now as permanent shelters should have actual importance or use. To such a degree that they are worth more to capture.
Well the idea was that they just give a procedural landmass, that all factions simultaneously invade. All bases would be player built, allowing the players to build actual defenseable positions.
The issue with procedural generated terrain is battle-flow, the maps we have now are designed very specifically whether you think it or not, perhaps not the buildings but the terrain itself is. With procedural generation this concept goes out the window and maps could descend into utter chaos. As well it doesn't really fit with Auraxis, though not entirely impossible from a scientific point of view... the universe is a big place, it could be that there is a planet out there with such frequent and rapid continental shifts that entire landmasses seemingly change monthly. If your idea was ever to be a reality it likely can never take place on Auraxis, though perhaps a neighbouring planet... lore-wise Auraxis is the only suitable planet for life in these uncharted regions of space, but perhaps with the idea of this procedural planet it could have recently developed an atmosphere. This still leaves the issue of the land itself, I don't think it would be wise to have everything change, but perhaps key locations do with each iteration... as well the planet could go through climate shifts instead of being multiple continents resulting in desert, tundra, forest, or swamp all capable of existing in the same geological location. If your idea was to consist primarily or entirely of player-bases then the construction system would have to grow exponentially to allow for a large array of buildings, modules, turrets, generators, and terminals, all in order to make gameplay more diverse... because currently we have limited options with construction. Massive buildings could costs thousands or even tens of thousands of Cortium to build and potentially take ages to construct, though would consist of near impenetrable amounts of health, otherwise we are left with bunkers and walls... this is simply not enough.
Yes, battle flow is indeed a concern. There are algorithms that could address this. With frequent new zones they could be tweaked quite frequently. And if one map is notoriously terrible, it won't be around long. Lore wise, I didn't mean it to be as if the entire continent is shifting, rather that the battle is taking place on a small part of the continent. How big is the map? 10x10km? A small supreme commander map? Instead of saying it's an abstraction of a whole continent, we just say to ourselves that it's an actual 10x10km square of the overall continent. Yes, the construction system would need to be expanded. It would be awesome.
Yes it would be quite awesome, I would love more structures to build at least(Even ones such as I described), however it's still an issue if there is a poor map layout, I feel as though this system would be very expensive to create and would need to be monitored quite frequently by the DBG team, I don't think that is worth it. The expanse of the construction system alone would be quite costly I feel. Perhaps instead of a procedural map, there could be a "construction" map, one that has much fewer facilities and extremely high amounts of land with which to build on, the goal here could be generally to generate VP using HIVEs(Lattices are still needed to influence the percentage of course), facilities on the map itself would be major ones(AMP stations, Tech Plants, Biolabs) as to give bonuses to your empire.
Here's some of the minimum requirements you need to accomplish this: 1: A well balanced gameplay. At no point should the random generation accidentally make a base that can be completely dominated by vehicles or the like. Since right now bases require a mass of walls to keep the infantry from being curbstomped constantly and vehicles can't participate in the complete battle (you know, those walls) you need to rebalance the vehicle vs infantry game first. 2: Find a way around the current rendering solution. The current rendering solution for tree's, rocks, buildings and other base buildings is done through one single object. This means that the load on the PC for having 20 trees of the same type is almost as high as a single tree of that type, there is some extra processing power required to load every single polygon but other than that it cuts down heavily on the amount of rendering objects. Adding several hundred new rendering objects just because you want to have destructible tree's... Seems a bit much of a tax on the current system. 3: Make sure the base designs and environment work well together. You can say "this is possible with an alogarithm" but that's cutting things short. There's far too many variables to think off. The terrain limits the building placement, the building placement determines the amount of places you can fight, move, place Sunderers or create a fire lane on your enemy. This can go both ways and make it impossible to defend or attack.
I'd like to see maps/areas like Lost Planet 1 & 2 Those games had some awesome interior and exterior maps - with large complex buildings. The buildings in PS2 are almost like shipping containers that have just been dropped onto the surface (which is pretty much what they are). But it makes the game feel very samey. Failing that - better base design would be a bonus. It makes no sense to have a base with high walls, cliffs etc that the defenders cant get up on to (LA accepted). Bases should be built with defenders in mind and high ground, ramparts etc should be accessible via ramps, steps etc.
