By the way, Smedley made a big post on Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/3582el/the_way_forward/

Well, I... what? Good news?

Aaaah, sweet-sweed Smed words and promises. I heard them since Beta... no, since Alpha!

Alright, let's see if that's not just empty promises we had before.

A gamemode?

My bet is infantery-only TDM on battle isles.
Not too much interest in that, but I guess a little bit of variety is nice.
I'm a little worreid that charging for a gamemode has even been considered enough to be mentioned.

Regarding the rest - that is exactly why my subscription is running out.
I've dumped quite a lot of money in this game simply because I enjoyed it, but the quality and broken promises got to a level I am unwilling to support. Change that and you might get paying customers back.

And yes, I fear PS2 has it's best days behind it.
I fear that we have hemorraghed too many players because of too much inaction for far too long.
As the word goes - this might simply be too little, too late.

But I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong.

Speculation right now is a 'last man standing' match like Battle Royale in H1Z1. Makes sense considering how popular it is over there and how some people have been asking for it to happen at the end of alerts.

Then again I don't think it makes much sense in this game.

Cant be that important if he didnt bother to post it on the "official" forum.

My problem with the roadmap was that it didnt matter at all.
According to voting on the roadmap, nobody wanted implants in the game but they forced it through anyway, because it was a quick way to suck more money out of the game.
Then there was things that people really wanted, like re-cert tokens. I remember it being the top most wanted thing in the roadmap but was quietly removed without any explanation at all, hoping nobody would notice.
Things like that makes me question the point of the roadmap in the first place. Whats the point of having a system like the roadmap if they are just going to do what they want anyway?
The roadmap is the manifistation of the word "broken promises".

Its nice that they promise to finally move out of phase 1 with the resource system, though i fear its a bit too late.
Whenever there are balance concerns regarding vehicles/air/maxes/grenades etc there is atleast one person saying "dont worry, the resource system is just phase 1. Its going to be balanced"
You cant release a half-way done game mechanic and expect people to play the "broken" version for over half a year before getting fed up.
Point is, releasing large content in phases work in theory, but not at the speed SOE does it.

Its good that they want to change and its great if they manage to do it.
But seeing the same mistakes being repeated for over 10 years with promises to change, its hard to get excited about this.

Ah.. Smed... one day I hate you but then you post somewhere... and I immediately forgive you!!

My sentiments exactly. I am over Planetside 2 until they actually deliver on stuff like this, which I assume will be never or best case scenario after the population is too low for me to play (I play at off peak hours).

Provided the new game mode is IN ADDITION to the existing alerts (which I and plenty of other people still really enjoy), I've no objections. Keep the alerts.

Also, what part of the capture process is 'overly-complicated'? I mean, wtf? How complicated is sitting on a point (or a couple of points), or destroying a generator etc etc. It takes like a day of play for a new player to get a grasp on these things. Not complicated (and in any event in a MMOPFS you actually want complicated, as it gives room for growth and learning etc).

My bet is CTF.

Feels like a kick in the teeth tbh.
Instanced battles is not planetside and if we get players just logging on for these battles then logging off it will only further reduce an already dwindling pop.
Not sure why they didnt just create an instanced game like BF from the beggining, it was clearly the target audience anyway so why bother with the whole mmo thing?

And then theres the obligatory why reddit? Seriously ive yet to see 1 good reason not to post someting like this on your official forum, realy wish id saved a copy of Radarx's absolute bull**it about them posting just as much info on the official forum...
Why does it take a player to post this?

Thinking about it, I really hope the new mode is not instanced.

Quite clearly instanced play does not fit with the PS2 overall theme/aim/game. The whole point of PS2 is that everyone logs on to one big world and then fights with the same rules and in the same world. That is the main attraction. If I wanted instanced play with teams or controlled numbers I would just play Battlefield or Counterstrike. THE WHOLE POINT of PS2 is the absence of instanced versions.

Breaking up the community by offering silly instanced sub-games etc is just not in-keeping with the game.

"looking at the overly-complicated capture system which can be pretty obtuse at times."

I don't even know what this means. Is he referring to existing system or some future system that they've been working on?

He uses 2 adjectives "overly-complicated" and "obtuse" to describe it. It makes no sense to call current system overly-complicated, yet obtuse (lacking intelligence) could possibly fit....

Besides, bases are fairly well balanced for capture mechanic that's in right now. They won't have time messing with it significantly as it would mean redesigning every base. No way they're getting that done by September (maybe 2025).

Outfits are already doing this on the PTS. If anything, this mode might retain the players(thinking of all those BR100s who suddenly feel like they've got nothing to do) who constantly say "this is just a never-ending TDM." Assuming the resource/territory revamp, this might just mean we end up with a deeper gameplay overall.

The instanced competitive mode might actually spice up the meta game as well, coming up with new ways of playing, therefor enhancing the world PVP.

Atleast they didn't lie that updates would continue around April - May as they said when SOE was bought out to become DGC. So personally I'm looking forward to this as the current resource system is so broken it's not even funny (may aswell have infinite by this point)

I'll look forward to that september patch if it arrives on que

I suspect any instanced mode will do little, but draw people away from the main game, unless it has some direct connection with the main continental battles (and I don't mean +1 on nanites or something).

Its a slightly different context (because most MMOs are MMORPGs), but instanced PvP has always seriously hit non-instanced PvP in MMOs (simply because there is finite pool of players and whatever you take away leaves less in the general pool).

For PS2 this could be devesating, because without continental battles there really is no PS2.



It would seem they are still trying to move PS2 to be Battlefield/CoD without realising that 1) it isn't & 2) doing that is only likely to hurt the core game.

That's not to say if couldn't be pulled off, but it would be tricky to say the least.

Any new mode that pulls ppl away from the actual game = bad imho, and If you make so that outfits will Battle on that mode, the main game will just be there for the randoms...

The game is actually instanced into 4 separate areas. But yeah, this step has to be taken carefully.

''Outfits are already doing this on the PTS'' - Why????

Nothing youve said is at all planetside.
Planetside was always different to these sort of games, these games that i do not enjoy tbh.
I started playing planetside over a decade ago to escape this exact sort of thing.........
Im a BR100 (have been for a long time now), theres plenty to do, my gameplay didnt change at all when i reached some number that basicaly says 'ive played this game for x hours' and nothing else. I think if people are bored its because they play too much, no need for additional game modes, we already kinda have 3 modes; infantry, ground vehicles & air.
Thats why i say its a kick in the teeth, if daybreak want to make an instanced game why not make one, instead of splitting the planetside playerbase and creating some hybrid 2 games in one mess.
I suppose i can laugh now when i read smed saying crap like 'innovative' and 'trend setting' i now know they just follow the most recent trend instead of trying to start a new one.

TBH im lazy, i dont want to have to find a new game to play, i like the open world mmo aspect, i like the combined arms, problem is the playerbase is already a fraction of what it was, sending 50% (or indeed any %) of that pop off the main servers and world and onto an instanced session will only cause the remaining players to get angry / frustrated, its bad enough when an alert starts on another cont and the excellent fight you were having fizzles out into nothing, but at least then you can go to where the fight has moved, imagine suddenly what little players are left just disappear because an 'instance' has started.

Then thers the new players who've joined an open world mmo for that exact reason only to find the 'real' action is instanced just like the 1000s of other FPS games out there, id say that player probably wont hang around very long, especialy if this instance causes main world pop problems.

Personaly i think daybreak should be focusing on events / alerts rather that segregation. If outfits want to compete more openly against each other then create a new set of stats, weekly kills per outfit leaderboards, or facility caps per outfit leaderboards.
They could even have tournaments, eg:

• 24 hr killathon, the outfit with the most kills after 24 hrs wins
• 48 hour facility capture
• 12 hour xp grindathon
• 4 hour vehicle destruction

The possibilities are almost limitless, could even have different outfit catergories eg:

• up to 20 members
• up to 100 members
• 100+ members
• Average BR

This would allow the smaller outfits to compete against each other and not just be stomped by the zergfits, and would also have the benefit of outfits purging their ranks, maybe they wouldnt want 3000 players since they dont get to compete because there is no other 3000 player ones. Maybe a small squad of 5 wants to create a small outfit and compete with other elite small outfits.
All of this could be listed in a schedule, and events staged at acceptable times depending on server location.

Theres imo just plenty of things they can do with an open world, multi continent mmo without segregating players into different game modes.

Why oh why is this only posted on reddit AND NOT HERE .
Its like a Im hitting my wife and write an apologize letter to the gasstation guy so he can call her and tell her that I am sorry.
At least copy and paste it here Smedly its not THAT hard.

Aside that I feel kinda indifferent about the new "gamemode" the other stuff sounds nice on paper. This gane does need alot of fresh air thats for sure