[Suggestion] Daybreak Could Crowdfund Planetside 2 (or 3)

Daybreak Game Company could/should think about crowdfunding Planetside 2 (or 3) and revitalize the franchise. I will make my case as to why, and I will keep it simple

Introduction

Daybreak Game Company could/should go to crowd funding to revitalize the Planetside video game property. In doing so, they will gain the money needed to expand staff and deliver a game that people want to spend their time and recreation in. If done right, this will help attract/add new players and give loyal Planetside vets something they deserve after years of loyalty. After reading forum posts and checking out some numbers it seems that Planetside 2 is slowly dieing. I say "get up soldier, this war's not going to fight it's self!". Planetside has a bright future, and I think we the people and Daybreak should step up, create a relationship and solidify Planetside as a force to be reckoned with.

Body

Let's look at the facts, take it in and come up with a plan. Lately Planetside 2 has a stigma that it is bleeding players, and it may just be.

PC Stats

As you can tell, the numbers are slowly dropping since Jan 2014. Keep in mind weather, most people stay inside in the winter which spikes player base. However it is still lowering. Let's check the PS4's numbers

Playstation 4

A steady 3000 players a night, not bad. Playstation 4 seems to keep the players butt's in the seats...for now. However PS4 players will eventually come to the conclusion that the PC players already face, boredom and lack of content. Right now it's fresh, sure. But a year from now, they will move on just as the PC players are.

REASON #1

With staff layoffs, Smedley stepping down and the population slowly declining due to burn out or lack of content, we can see that the future for Planetside 2 is a little bleak. I am sure Daybreak has some good stuff coming and plan on keeping this game going, however perhaps they need a little push, from us, the players. Obviously the membership fee and money spent on in-game items is not sufficiently funding the project, so how do we keep this franchise alive? Funnel money into it.

REASON #2

Money talks (unfortunately) and the more Daybreak gets, the cooler s*** we get. And if Daybreak can make a good case, we can fund them and make it a reality. If Daybreak listens to the peoples wants/needs, studies the trends and habits of the game ect we can expand the studio (create new jobs) and ultimately create a Planetside franchise that is fun, entertaining and a worthwhile recreational investment. Right now we can get at least 4500 people playing a day....I challenge Daybreak and ourselves to turn that 4500 into 4,500,000 players/day.

If Daybreak does do crowdfunding, they should ask the community what their dream Planetside game would be. Put it to a vote democracy style, soak in the information obtained and make a solid case (with gameplay footage of prototype) and some solid stretch goals.

Perhaps we should look at the payment models of Star Citizen used for it's kickstarter, perhaps player can buy personal tanks/aircraft, outfit ships, personal armor sets, mech's etc as backer items? You buy one of these items (depending on the cost) and you get the game and the item. Food for thought.

REASON #3

Can you think of another game that takes 2000/6000 people of all ages and have the digital duke it out? Planetside 2 gives me an experience like no other. I played Call of Duty, Battlefield, Star Wars Battlefront, Halo etc and now that I drank Planetside 2's koolaid, playing thous games now just feels too small, not social enough or not enough freedom that Planetside has given me. The large maps, the EPIC 100+ Manned air, armor and foot battles with team work is special and like no other. I have personally logged over 1000+ hours into this game since 2012. I have NEVER done that to another game in my life. I am sure many of you reading this has the same or more.

Conclusion

Let's face it folks, it's a game like no other and it deserves a better shelf life. If Star Citizen can pull out 85 Million from crowdfunding, I'm sure (based on a solid demo reel of gameplay footage created by Daybreak) we can pull in a few million to help progress this franchise. Planetside was a hit, Planetside 2 is fun and ground breaking but got a bad rep from poor optimization. Perhaps Planetside 2 v3.0 OR Planetside 3 could be the WoW of FPSMMO. Perhaps adding RPG elements on top of the FPSMMO to create a FPSMMORPG? (try saying that 10 times fast).

Personal Side-note (Things that would make Planetside have some staying power and create revenue for Daybreak)
-Figure out how to mesh forgelight engine with "No Man's Sky" engine. Do this, and people will play for YEARS. It's a dream come true to be in space and fly down to a planet to join a bad battle seamlessly. If Daybreak can pull it off, they will be all kinds of winning.
-Give players more faction story, perhaps even an in game campaign/missions that changes as the months go on. Episodes perhaps. Something players can band together in their outfits, platoons or squads to accomplish.
-SPACE BATTLES we got to Auraxis in spaceships, let's fight in them for space dominance.
-Faction space/land bases with npc characters that say things story related things or make goofy comments. It would give the universe more life. Plus people LOVE novelty, it's what's been keeping WoW in business for years. Because it's light hearted people can relax during break time, bio breaks at the base and chill.
-Outfit Ships, imagine pooling your vehicle resources and pulling out an outfit ship. Your buddies in the ship in space and coming down to the planetside and doing a orbital strike requested by a ground team! Just the sight of these massive outfit ships hovering over a base gives me chills.
-The ability to change weapons on your vehicles after you pull them. Like a garage loadout.

I like but the devs have said before for various reasons why they will not be doing this but with a new director who knows.


Also good formating.

Thanks!

I feel that Planetside has a future, but it's in our hands along with the dev. A game like this costs lots of money to run and create. People want content, well, we gotta pony up.

We just have to make sure we don't get stiffed by Daybreak.

Daybreak may not be as big and powerful of an entity as EA. But Daybreak is big enough that asking for crowdfunding on one of their games would be frowned upon and even a little offensive to the gaming community. Especially on a game that's already officially launched, and even has a console port.

people like you are ruining the games industry. games are products, not collaborative efforts. companies develop products, if they fail to meet your expectations, then don't buy them, if people show little to no interest in them, then someone else will make it better.

there's nothing bad about products dying, if anything the discussion shouldn't be of how to keep the dead alive, but a discussion about the relevance of copyright protection on products companies see no use in supporting or distributing anymore. specially when we are talking about dbg/SOE... swg anyone? the folks running the private server still have nightmares every time the IP changes hands.

Crowdfunding destroys the rationale behind the making of a product, it results on an endless feature creep paired with cushion effect covering for poor management decisions, name me ONE instance where this effect didn't result on the **** ups compounding. just one.

and above all, it forces the company to lose control over their own product. allowing the community to fuel false and deluded expectations... just like the ones people have of a game like Star Citizen.

games are products, they been fine like that for decades. its been only on this last few years that games became some sort of identity people take on. its one sad trend happening also with movies and even books...

Possibly, perhaps it's in the presentation. Bottom line is they want to stay in business creating games that are fun for themselves and others. Planetside 2 will be slowly snuffed out (unless they pull something out of their butt's soon). I don't think them spending time on Planetside 2 v2.0 is going to help but like a bandaid on a cut. They need to shed off the Planetside 2 name and make Planetside 3 for this crowdfunding idea to work.

The Planetside franchise needs a big studio to make it work, but it also needs the players (backers) to want to be in that world. Get the community involved and good things will happen.

Layoffs are a pain, and if they think about it, Daybreak can hire back old staff, create new jobs and make more revenue with crowdfunding then the traditional investors or money allocation. As long as they make a REALLY impressive gameplay case to the public that is.

Plus, they can use the assets/ class actors/ engine physics and many animations to move forward with, so it's not like they are starting from nothing. It is possible. They just need to find time between current projects to go deep into it.

Your statement is bold I give you that haha

Some good points though. You have to understand that "times are a changing".

" games are products, not collaborative efforts"

How are games made if it not for a collaborative team of programmers, designers, artists, sound engineers etc. Most businesses get investment by stock holders or other businesses that fund the projects these studios come out with. That is pretty collaborative to me. Heck even presidents get lobby money so they can get better advertising....that is collaborative right.

Tell me, you need a bank to give you the money to buy a house or a new car right? That's collaborative is it not? Daybreak seems like they need the money to help keep the jobs going and to keep our valuable Planetside alive. I don't know their whole financial situation, however if they are letting people go, and a game is dying, why not invest in them to make another game? (as long as they make a solid case for themselves)

Look, I know this is going to come across as jaded and defeatist, but this all sounds dreadfully optimistic for a game that has been simplified over the course of a couple years just to keep it in profit. I could probably write a good amount about my own experiences and why I believe this game has been going in the wrong direction for too long to save it, but I'm not quite in the right frame of mind to be as robust and eloquent as you have been in your proposal to respond with due quality.

Suffice to say that the focus of this game has turned far too much towards individual pursuits and selling gimmicks; it has diluted it's vast teamplay and community aspect to the extent that there is little motivation that I can see for anything more organised than farm squads on TS and handfuls of isolated platoons filled with randoms, following shouts and waypoints. There is very little purpose behind strength of community these days, other than to argue the toss about apparent balance issues and whatever else. It's all been lost in favour of making money in the short term. That was what the game was good for, and to bring that back won't keep the studio in the green.

IMO, that's a problem with gamer culture not with the idea. They're used to seeing it used by small companies that struggle to get investors but come up with a great idea. That's still not a reason why it's bad for larger companies to do the same. As for being released, that's not as important now-a-days with ongoing developments for years afterwards. Ultimately you are still directly funding development of things you wouldn't otherwise be able to play.

Look at all the complaints that devs aren't implementing their grand ideas for PS2. Yes, we've got the 2.0 release on the way, but we have no info so we'll have to wait and see how it pans out.

They've said themselves (Malorn in particular) that these big systems - missions, resources, platoon tools etc. are viewed as "very risky" because they take huge amounts of effort with no guarantee of game play benefit (in their minds anyway) let alone any return on investment. They have direct encouragement to produce simple things like weapons which they can monetize.

What incentive do individual players have to buy items when they know it won't change this conundrum? Only a large influx of money would give them more resources, and only a sudden drop would make them concerned. The slow trickle leads to them playing it safe, cutting back on staff and goals to guarentee profit.

Putting up their Roadmap plans as crowd funded would directly address this:

• The developers know exactly how much money they earn by making such features.
• The players know their money is all but guaranteed to go to the larger systems (unless we're worried about lying etc.)
  • They even get rewards for spending which is easy as heck with all the items in-game. Essentially, it reverses our incentive to spend money, instead of paying for a weapon and getting a better game as a side benefit, you pay for a better game and get a weapon.

I've never seen any such comment. Source please.

I came to the same conclusion a while back.

Monetizing Features And Large System Changes - It CAN be done!

Well would i Invest into an aging game that has declining player counts, the simple answer is no. Do i have faith that the game would improve with money, no because even after an update the striker is shocking even comical, certainly after the first re-vamp and who ever thought that was a good idea quite frankly is on a different planet.

They have had many years to advertise the game but yet they have failed to do so, not with lack on money but poor business strategy.

I like the game and agree with what you said, their is nothing like it but you cant let emotions and sentiment take over simple business judgements and this game is not a good investment.

To keep the game going you need more players but they will only come if you advertise the game but to keep them you need to improve the game which can be done without a huge investment but who ever is running the direction of the game i feel is not in touch with what the players want and i back that up with their statement.

" to improve the game for all players we are going to adjust the cert pricing structure" Great we thought but all they did was increase the costs lol. For me it says everything.

Every game has a shell life, but i still feel PS2 will be here for a good while yet, not with the same amount of servers but still populated enough to have a great game. What they should be doing is, planning for PS3 and with the backing of DB, they could make a better impact into the market with a finished product which players will pay for.

Are people here voting with their money or just voting?

In other words... will this be:
1) For every dollar you put in you get one vote.
2) Everyone gets one vote and the dollars come after.

This could be tricky because of PS2's F2P status. Which means that a lot of people play who don't contribute anything financially to the game.

With the first option, you are sure to gain financially-sound projects because they are supported by people who have money to spend. But at the same time what is worked on might not be very popular, or even worse might harm the greater number of people in the game (say super-powerful giant robots that have an extremely high cert barrier).

But with the second option, you could have popular projects that don't really attract the backing of PS2's financiers. Say a simple balance update that isn't sexy enough to get backing.

Sure there might be some projects that are both popular and financially effective... but that is a bit more narrow than just the broader category of "good ideas".

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...ng-planetside-2-features.225506/#post-3177322

There's your source. Search bar is pretty useful.

No need to be snarky.

You seemed to imply that the developers have gone over in detail why they will not be doing this. Stating "there are no plans" doesn't have any reasoning. Further, not having any current plans is not at all the same as saying they will never do it.

That's the whole point of threads like this, to convince developers who haven't ruled out the concept (it's obviously a long shot). If they WERE already planning it then the thread would be pointless.

And, just to be clear, the rest of the thread was a misunderstanding. Smedley didn't comment on crowdfunding PS2 at all, only Radar did.

Some solid discussions here on this topic. Keep it up!

I still stand firm that Daybreak should think long and hard at crowdfunding PS2 v3.0 OR better yet Planetside 3. There is no shame for Daybreak in bringing the community together to ensure that enough "resources" (money) goes towards a project of this scale.It's winner/winner. Daybreak expands their studio, creates jobs and gives them a chance to make something amazing. For the backer, it let's them get a game like no other and feel good feelings for helping the game they help make come to life.

They almost got delt a sh*ty hand by acquiring Planetside 2 in the state it was in. Sure they are working hard to revitalize it no doubt. However I vouch for a new start, this time with the help of the people that want to be in this universe.

A relationship between dev and player is the new wave of game making and I see it as a great thing. It creates trust, loyalty and a better game.

It's a business sure, but in the end, we all want to be a part of something cool. Both dev's and players.

Isnt Columbus Nova some billions worth? Why should they need our money?

True, they are.

"The company is a multi-strategy investment firm with over $15 billion USD of assets in its own funds and affiliated portfolio companies, including Daybreak Game Company, Fiverr, and Rhapsody.[2]"-Wikipedia

However at the same time Daybreak is laying off people left right and center. The money is just not allocating towards Daybreak and the lesser extent Planetside 2.

Well my basic thinking is that in order for Columbus to allocate more money into Daybreak and the lesser extent Planetside 2, there needs to be a NEED for them to do it. The only thing I can think of is more ps2 population and a Planetside 2 culture like Call of Duty or Battlefield.

Currently there is not, just thinking out loud now, but perhaps Higby already came to this conclusion and steered the game towards MLG gaming to create a Planetside 2 culture. However that failed due to (at the time) high system specs and bad optimization.

More people need to play for this company to shell out the money. This is a weird situation eh guys?

Yeah, but the point is if they feel like employing the whole BF4 Dice Team because then PS2 will be a profitable success they could

Simply put they've done a horrible job managing the game at this stage which is why population continues to dwindle. It's why a lot of us quit within the first year of the game. They simply are uninterested in advancing the game. We get lots of promises like Smedly's last words on Planetside 2 about "remembering the end game" but it's all words and no delivery. They spent years basically "optimizing" the game which was basically tantamount to making this amazing looking game look bad so it'll run on PlayStation 4. So much for a MMOFPS game that still looks great 10 years down the line like they talked about during development.

The entire setup of Planetside 2 has basically been to design a game where there is no win scenario. In Planetside I could play for hours and eventually win and lock out a continent. I could win because battles weren't a perpetual 3 way meat grinder and often times were a 1v1 against another faction with 3 way battles actually only happening once in a great while. In Planetside 2 this is pretty much impossible and when populations are equal it's impossible to win at all.

Adding in a bunch of Player Studio created content doesn't encourage me to pay nor does it encourage me to want to log back in and check out what's going on. That's pretty much all they do these days. They tweak something a bit (Invisible AMS) and then release more cash shop cosmetics. Neat. All it takes is 15 minutes of logging back in, get into a battle, and oh look here I am back in my human farming simulator with no purpose or aim other than to farm each other which the only measure of excellence is the ratio in which I farmed people compared to me getting farmed.

If they want people to come back, or perhaps more importantly they want people to bring their money back, they need to deliver something for that money. Cosmetics, boots and otherwise aren't it. Give me advancement in GAME PLAY and we'll see about bringing the cash back to the game.