DBG Livestream AMA!(Can a mod please correct the thread title? Thanks)Get ready for a huge wall of text. If you are not interested in reading everything, just skim the questions that are quoted, until you find the ones that are relevant to you.Most of this will be paraphrasing and giving people a general idea of what was said during the 33 minute live stream, but I will be writing this side by side so I'll try to condense all of the relevant answers/information into a quick summary, and keeping everything true to what they said. High. They've been throwing around new ideas and concepts lately and resource revamp is definitely a "top major" change they'd like to see going out within the next several months. "One would say we already do cater a lot to the Hardcore audience." The team is made up of a diverse group of gamers of all intensities, with a few of the devs being Hardcore gamers themselves. They don't know if they could be financially successful if they catered 'more' to their Hardcore audience, but regardless they would like to also make casual gameplay welcoming and entertaining in it's own right (drop in, shoot things for an hour lone wolf or with some buddies etc. Not getting into outfit/platoon play). What was also mentioned was how awesome it is for the Devs to see the PS4 players experience the game for the first time and sort of transition into a more "hardcore" gamestyle kind of like the PC release all over again, because the PS4 audience realizes this game isn't just 'another' FPS game. So although they have to support the end-game, they need to continue to find ways of bringing new players to that level of play. They're going to be taking a good look at all of the weapons in the game as well as balance issues, analyzing metrics as they've always done (underperformers vs overperformers) and implementing fixes as needed ("I don't know"). "Yea we'll totally look into that. We do agree it is silly and is a directive that needs some tweaking for sure." They'll be looking at all Directives as a whole (soon), especially since the PS4 release is around the corner and changing something significant as that after (PS4's) release is definitely not a good idea. They're going to be hitting things that both PC and PS4 audiences will care about immediately. They want to implement new content everyday (lol). All jokes aside, they need us to understand content is not just 'wished' in or magically thought of and implemented, it takes time and serious thought. Furthermore, moving on through the growing pains of the recent Dev team restructuring, they are focusing on supporting the LIVE game first and foremost but they are "on track with new features and new content". Then Site brings it back and reiterates how just like he mentioned in his Community Letter, the main focus right now is stability and bug fixes. They are trying to "eliminate server issues, bugs, all the things that make the game we all love to play, more difficult to play". If they did decide to roll out new content without fixing bugs, people wouldn't be able to enjoy said features as much with the current issues 'getting in the way'. TL;DR - "Pretty quickly, but only when we feel the game stability is in a good spot." Their top priority is server performance **especially** the EU servers, they've done a lot of tweaks and learned about some of the issues that area causing the poor performance. They've disabled debris which helped out quite a bit performance-wise. Also in terms of client performance, the PS4 team has been working hard to improve performance across the board, and the PC will make use of those optimizations as well. It is a top priority to make the game perform better and more stable. They have been throwing around plans on changes to the Redeploy system and one of the ideas is having dynamic respawn timers in relation to the fight you're deploying into. They haven't forgotten about Territory 2.0, and the resource revamp on the old Roadmap, but they need to take into account the whole picture and the broad repercussions that are not immediately obvious when thinking about changing Redeploy(side). They don't just want to bandaid, they want to actually present a proper, well-thought out well executed system (so it'll take some time). They've already been making some changes. The PS4 is "basically DirectX11". They're going to be making changes to improve the back-end pipeline, but the changes will be big (understatement) so the priority is low. They are making headway though. Continent work/base work is longer term. Changes to geometry makes patch downloads gigantic so they're trying not do changes that would effect us in that way. Everybody who would be able to make those changes on Hossin are currently working on Koltyr and getting that new continent pumped out for the new players because it is a high priority. **TL;DR - Yea they will eventually get around to looking at Hossin but it'll be a little further out (after Koltyr most likely).** It's not a question they're ready to give detailed answers on. They don't know. QOL and Member QOL will improve when the game is more stable, less buggy and more fun to play. Buggies are on hold. They've got them pretty much done but they haven't finalized their role in-game yet. Art hasn't progressed since the last time they teased them to the community. 'When' is still a question. Sites mentions it will be on the new Roadmap over the next several days. Weather is on hold. Just as the buggies, we may see it in the future but they're evaluating what benefits it will bring to the player and what role it will play in-game. H1Z1 has experimented with it but it's just prototyped, it needs to be fleshed out more. Bill has brought it up a number of times (in his own words he won't shut up about it (thank ******* god Bill, TAKE MY FIRST BORN. WE LOVE YOU)), and if Bill has his way then **yes**, we will see it in-game. They hope to do it along with other capture mechanics. They were started, then paused halfway through development because they wanted to focus on the overall quality of Hossin instead of just a new facility. Content development for any MMO is resource-intensive and they had to pick between releasing a new continent, or a new facility. Hossin won out. They will be looking at bringing it back, but it needs a "decent amount of work to be considered done." So like the buggies/weather, it's on hold. They've been talking about this for a long time. It will be based around ways that Platoon Leads and Squad Leads can utilize more functions on the map. Just like in the old Missions 3 roadmap feature, they want SL's to be able to assign missions to their squads and the overall game as a whole. They still want to add changes, it's just a matter of making them awesome and priorities. They don't have a huge problem in doing that. "Maybe?" They've talked about it. No definitive answer on it. One of many possibilities that they've talked about, but they do not know. Bill thinks it'd be a nice game feature they could add to change meta. They actually just released some new events the day of the Livestream. They released about 500 new events. Every possible way to gain experience was released, about 18,000,000 events a day. Recursion stat tracker could only track kills/deaths, now it can track heals, revives, repairs, and any other metric you'd like to track. They're open to releasing more metrics to the community as long as we let them know what we want (So get to twitter if this is your thing and ask them)! If Brian has his way, hell yes! It's definitely something they've been talking about, and Planetside 2 was actually developed with it in mind. It's definitely being looked at for the long term. There's no "philosophical reason against it" and it is "just a matter of time" and making sure they can do it in a way that's awesome. Bill does not think there are any plans for the Galaxy deploy shield to come back (it's not a "no", just a "definitely not now"). The team has mentioned the flamethrower is a wanted niche weapon (highly situational) and Bill would like to see it in-game asap. Similarly to Hossin, they're focused on Koltyr and all of their resources are there. Once Koltyr is done they'll reevaluate what bases need to be redone and will proceed accordingly. Along with the previously mentioned balance tweaks, it's something on their list that they have to look into. Bill is not completely caught up yet with any of the air changes, or at least the stuff he hasn't done. Ultimately he's not quite sure what exactly the planned changes were, so he can't make a 100% firm comment on it. Someone else who is no longer at DBG was working on that balance change. He will look into it, follow him on Twitter. They are determined to continue development of Planetside 2. They want to bring it to PS4 and XBoxOne, and have long life cycles on those systems. They are absolutely planning on continuing to support the IP and they are not cutting development to the PC. Stay tuned for any "5 year, 10 year or 20 year plan". **YES!** **YES!** Jokingly they mentioned how during O:MFG Devs were followed around with GoPros to be as "transparent" as possible - bathroom creeping included! They want to continue being as transparent as they've been lately if not even more (monthly Dev streams might be a thing!? COMMUNITY WE MUST MAKE OUR DEMANDS KNOWN!) The armor is probably the best big thing we will see introduced to Player Studio. The devs have thought about adding in MBT turrets and things along those lines but it might cause issues such as changing the overall look of the vehicle so they have to look into it. Another idea they had was attachables, though they never specified or went into greater detail. I think that might open up possibilities for full-body bandoliers, customizable class-specific backpacks etc?---------------------------------------------------------With the questions over, the Developers mentioned how good of an experience the PS4 beta launch was. They were aware of how split the Planetside 2 community was regarding the future direction of the game as a whole, and so they went into the PS4 version with their breath held... and were pleasantly surprised. They are impressed with how our Hardcore PC gamers have been accepting of our new PS4 little brothers and attempting to educate them on how to better play the game, the features, the gameplay mechanics and what the game actually is (the bigger picture).The second beta pass will introduce the new tutorial, Indar/Amerish/Hossin as they only have Esamir currently and more content.They are very happy with how much progress has been made on the PS4-side and have been very open with the PS4 users on their closed-beta forums, Twitch, twitter etc. PS4 version is going well.**EU PS4-BETA WILL KICKOFF WITH 2.0 Beta launch**.And to confirm - the content they develop for Planetside 2, even if it's meant for the PS4, is **developed on the PC first, then brought over**.
Unfortunately I have been reduced to a complete PS2 cynic and wont believe anything they say until I see evidence in game.
