Let's play Devil's Advocate for a bit...

I agree with what you said. I wasn't pointing out how the game should change, I was pointing out what will keep it from being a game that draws in a large population of players like other more casual / successful shooters.

Like you said, you either like it or you don't. The problem is when too many fall into the don't category you end up with a stale population in a game that entirely relies on fresh players coming in and spending X amount of time playing.

I blame society for that, specifically the boomers and how they raised/disciplined their children. For some odd reason they thought it was a bright idea to treat their kids 'better' then their parents (the greatest generation) treated them. And the trend continued.

Basically what happened is people lost the idea of personal responsibility as well as a drive to win. Now its someone else will take care of their issues (asking for a nerf instead of finding their own solution), they're special because they exists (they're entitled to everything paying members have, as well as vets), and participation is more important than winning (the zerg and farm mentality, and excuse that they play 'casually'). The last one is what applies here of course, but it is related to the other issues.

To put it shortly. the issue starts well beyond PS2. And some people's grandparents should have taken a switch or belt out more often. Course there's way more to it than that, but I'm trying to keep the conversation from going political (in a historical sense, not the fiascoes going on currently).

I made mt first separate faction alt yesterday. I left koltyr immediately, and then realized that I was schizing a little as all of the color schemes and noises were now opposite and I wanted a few minutes to normalize. I went back to Koltyr.

Within 10 minutes I left again. Granted, it was fun running people over with a sundy and having 90% of the people not able to instantly see through deep cloaked stalker, but watching them play, being quite obviously very new or very bad (and I'm a bad player) I just couldn't sit there and farm. It felt dirty.

So I went and farmed Emerald VS for a while, to my everlasting shame. But that was more challenging. And I still am a new player going up against vets.

This. They could absolutely make AI stupid bots so that the bases don't feel like such a ghost town. As I think of it, I've never seen an MMO with 0 NPCs. How hard could that possibly be? Even if you had a ridiculous NPC sundy cruising around sending out some silly bot troops in a squad to take a small base, to be met and stalemated by the NPC base defenders, it would be kind of fun. And if you could spawn at the NPC sundy, even better.

Now thats an idea id like to discuss

If youll make a thread of this id love to hear more

Actually, I would place the blame at the Dev heads on up. They as a group are the ones responsible for setting and keeping targets or making sure the right people are in place to do so.

Sometimes you'll have an issue come down to 2+ Dev heads 2+ Departments disputing a target or direction, and one will win out. So in those cases, you can't blame the loser for the quality of the outcome (unless they sabotage it). We did see lots of that at Sigil, and you can't blame the head/department for a decision they disagreed with and were overruled on.

Very, very true. You HAVE to know the experience your competitors are giving their users. Because that is the bar you will be measured against.

Actually, it doesn't quite work like that.

There typically is a lot of talent at Devs. But talent comes in many flavors: vision, quantity, quality, grunt work, communication, process, leadership, collaboration, teamwork, depth vs. breadth, management, budgeting, pipeline development, oversight, awareness, etc. And a lot of times you get a hodge podge of that onto any particular area. The quality and quantity of content is often heavily reliant on both the direction/management/oversight from higher ups as well as the proper skilled people being plugged in at the lower level. The more the higher up on an issue is lacking in awareness or care about that issue, the more likely it is going to be improperly staffed or handled or vetted.

Also, there is a LOT of pet agendas in a place like SOE/DBG. And these pet agendas consistently warp the quality/direction of content created. We had a Designer at Sigil keep a massive number of Weapon models unshared (he was in charge of making them availble for Designers to use) so that his team alone could have the best looking stuff. We had a higher up who liked furries, so he had the game launch with 3 furry races. Etc., etc. This is the fault of management not being more aware of their product and keeping pet agendas from warping the game.

There is also a lot of in-fighting between people trying to get/keep control over things, often just to have more power/prestige by being the one in control. This is rampant in companies across all industries.

I think this is just simply having a person(s) in charge of balancing who just cannot do the job well (competence, laziness, whatever). Either both the guy handing it and the guy supposed to oversee them, or a meddling high up who is wrecking the process. The balancing in PS2 has been glacially slow even during meltdown OP situations, and when it's finally implemented it is extremely crude and typically either ineffective or simply removing the offending unit from playability.


But in the end, it all comes down to management. In a long Dev cycle, management has the time to assess things and make changes. And for PS2, management has not done their job well. It could be parent company Sony slashing budget or otherwise throing a wrench in the process, it could be a higher up derailing the process by sending staff to work on other games, it could be higher ups who are not keeping heads on track or reassigning people in positions not being done right, it could be heads who are bottlenecking the process or who are chasing pet agendas, etc. I don't work at DBG and I don't know the people who are on PS2 (I knew one from Sigil, but I barely knew him and I've never really talked to him).

Because this game took more cues from COD than from PS1, I think that it doomed itself because it tried to still be an MMOFPS, which lacks one essential thing: matchmaking.
Think about it: matchmaking would solve almost all of the game's problems.
- Constant zerging? Matches ensure even team sizes.
- Noobs getting stomped by vets everywhere? Matchmaking based on skill level helps keep teams balanced and players with those of their own skill level.
- Lack of 'good' fights? Matchmaking ensures a good fight, even if there are only enough players online to fill one room.
- No metagame / purpose for playing? Matches create a short-term goal that players can be excited about.
- Certain weapons/vehicles/abilities/classes are OP, cheesy, or frustrating to play against? Matches with custom parameters/omissions fixes this.
Honestly nearly all of Planetside's problems stem from the fact that, instead of players fighting in neat little tightly controlled matches that keep everything fair, fun, and fast-paced, everyone is just thrown onto a giant map with no meta and nothing stopping them from cheesing it the hell up.

So.... no. The problem is not that this game is going out with a bang. It's that it's going out with a whimper. There is no mass exodus of the player base.... it's a slow decline. What's the cause of this decline?

Slow and sloppy development. With emphasis on the sloppy. The devs are also completely deaf to their player base, which is incredibly disheartening.

I could probably list 1-10 problems with every aspect of this game. Ranging from each individual weapon to over-all cross-faction balance.

Honestly. Look back over the last 3 years and tell me. What has really changed? Was the change for the better and was it executed well?

I can think of only 2 big changes to the game that changed it for the better. But both were executed piss poorly. Those would be the map lattice and the resource revamp. Everything else that has been developed in the past 3 years was IMO either a cash grab or just garbage.

Unfortunately, it is not my original idea - most things I propose are amalgamations of good ideas I've read from other players, edited into the context of what I think would be achievable for the development team and satisfactory for the majority of the playerbase.

That said, it has been debated numerous times on this forum and others (Reddit). A search for "bots" on this forum will take you to threads dating all the way back to beta on the topic.

Not so much that I don't want to open a new conversation about it - I just personally feel much has already been said on the topic, and have lost hope that ambitious ideas from the playerbase will get implemented. I feel anything beyond some database changes and new weapons and cosmetics is out of the picture for Planetside 2 now... atleast in terms of "player vision".

The current development team, for better or worse, has set their focus on player made bases and a nebulous 'plan'. I am personally excited for the base building aspect and hope it is implemented well, but am prepared for another Phase 1 fiasco.

I feel we are pretty much on the same page; just placing the blame at slightly offset positions from eachother. Likely from differences in our own personal experiences.

I certainly won't deny that Planetside 2 likely suffered from Dev "infighting" (for lack of a better term). To some regard I can only imagine Higby's enthusiasm for the e-Sports angle was not shared by the entirety of the team, and that would have dominated much of the first year.

As an alpha/beta tester, I also know somebody there is sitting on a literal treasure trove of content - a good part of which was tested to some degree in alpha and beta - for whatever reason. This is above and beyond the various models that have been shown off by various team members on twitter, or datamined by the playerbase.

I think the meat of PS2 could have been (and still can be) made into a very successful game. I'm not saying it would resemble the incarnation of PS2 that current Devs/Players have in mind, but it would be a successful game.

SOE/DBG have consistently underperformed industry standards in serving their playerbase and striving to make a better game tuned for that playerbase. PS2's development since launch has been very schizophrenic, seemingly as if they never really knew what (or how) to do with it post Launch. The gaming community responds much better to a consistent play experience that is expanded over periodic marketed and polished additions.

Even now, it is unclear what direction or goals the PS2 Devs are chasing. Their current Dev feels much more like a small pool, closed mod community than a company pushing/supporting/growing a product.

I'm not saying that PS2 was a surefire easy hit and SOE messed it up. I think lots of companies could have messed it up. And in some ways, only SOE could have created the creative wonder that was PS2's birth. But neither of those dismiss that SOE/DBG have and continue to drive PS2 into the ground.

What are their goals? What is their plan? What is their budget/staffing? Who is monitoring things, and who is in charge of changes based on that monitoring? Working at guessing these from past releases, it seems like a train wreck.

Say you've got 6,000 people on a server.

That's 2,000 shotguns.
That's 2,000 Gatekeepers.
That's 2,000 ZOEs.

I think it would be glorious.

nope

This seems like an accurate summary.

http://puu.sh/lGoTZ/45be137ef4.webm

But phase 2 missed..... That should have been a Vanguard AP taking half the HP all by itself imo...

Its not the devs. They're doing fine. They code/model/texture/draw whatever they are told to, they do it well, and get results.

The issue is the Producer.. or in PS2's case the lack of one. They haven't had one since they let them go earlier this year. They help with the direction the game goes, its goals, and aid with getting those devs the tools and resources needed to make things happen.

Without a direct producer, they have to go up to Daybreak main and get permissions and requests from the Creative Executive Director. This person does have an active role in PS2. Which is good.. sort of. He's also working with everyone else, and is only one entity. This is what I've said before in other threads and this one about acting like a big company, yet is actually a smaller LLC.

Having a producer would not be a fix to the game everyone here wants. But it would give the game a consistent goal and direction.

No, AI in the game is a bad, bad idea. Not only because of all the extra server resources it takes just to operate them. Not to mention the devaluation of a kill (which is already pretty damn low). If you can start farming dumb AI infantry somewhere and get the same rewards as killing players, people would farm them all day. If they don't give such rewards they still cause problems for players as you are required to go in with squads rather than be able to function independently.

I consider a Producer (and anyone at the Game Development company) a Dev. So the pecking order I'm familiar with goes:

1) President/CEO
2) Producer (1 for each title, though same 1 can over multiple titles)
3) Department Head (1 for art, 1 for code, 1 for design, 1 for production [though he is the "Producer" above and outranks the other Heads)
4) Department Leads (1 for each Department Subgroup area: in an MMORPG those Subgroups could be 1 for crafting, 1 for classes, 1 for quests, etc.)
5) Team Leads (1 Lead per Team, 1+ Teams per Department Subgroup)
6) Team Member (1+ persons)

Also:
* Specific Individuals are often in charge of specific tasks that are not a part of their core role. Like a Team Member or Lead could be in charge of making the Art Assest available to Designers, or making a Beastiary on Excel that visually displays available Art Assets for Designers.
* Sometimes there is a "Creative Director" in charge of creative decisions. Often they rank around the Producer at #2 above. Sometimes the Producer also handles the Creative Director role. Sometimes the Lead Designer handles the Creative Director Role. Sometimes they share the role. Sometime each Department Head handles the Creative Director role for their area (with some level of power difference between them such that disputes get resolved by one group over another). Sometimes the CEO/President will be involved in the Creative Director role. Sometimes it bounces between these or is various combinations.
* There are also lots of other positions at Devs, that either fit niches or fall outside this pecking order. Or even other roles that are inserted along the Pecking order.
* Department Subgroups can be even just 1 person: Lead, Team Lead, and Team Member (at Sigil we had the Lead for Classes do all the Class work, and he knocked it out of the park for the released game)

Producer or Creative Director? Both?

Not having an active lead can go different ways. Sometimes it locks up the system because their absence becomes a bottleneck. Other times is just means more decisions (and self-management) trickles down the pecking order.

In a non Alpha or Pre-Alpha game, each of the Dev is gonna have fully built out tools and the ability to create content within their area and below, and sometimes across departments if they communicate and collaborate. So even with no leadership, Devs can keep creating stuff (though a lot depends on their ability to lead/collaborate themselves, their initiative, their morale, and their personal agendas).

At Sigil we routinely had MIA leadership, but we also had the green light to work overtime to develop ideas or make content, with the understanding that some level of review down the road might edit or veto whatever we created (but often didn't or didn't much).

But I can imagine a game where the leadership mandates that all work must come through them, then can lock up the content creation in a massive bottleneck when that leadership then goes MIA. Is that what happened with PS2?

Ok, so their content creation pipeline is routed through higher ups? And at this point it is routed through someone who has too much on their plate to process it smoothly? So it bottlenecks?

Do the PS2 lower pecking order Devs not have any wiggle room to create content on their own?

I know with the layoffs and change of ownership and change at leadership positions and downsizing of dev crew and rerouting of staff to work on other games, it can also wreck havoc on content creation and the game dev pipeline (or morale). Didn't any of that hit PS2?

Also, this is a tricky on to grade.

You're looking at quality and quantity of work in both theme and mechanics and performance. I have lots of criticism for Design in some of their balance decisions. Likewise with art world builders for Esamir and Hossin. And for code I have a lot of criticism in removing bugs.

Also, how far up the pecking order do you place this group? Is this group also in charge of UI design or graphics experience bundle at each graphics level? What about handling Directive rewards or Implant crafting process?

I have little doubt that most the Devs are talented. But a lot happens when you assign something niche to someone who struggles at that niche. Or when you give open ended creative direction control to someone, especially if it involves creative decisions that impact areas well outside their purview.

At one point Content Design got handed 2 different caverns made by 2 different world builders. One had a tan sand floor with darker brown rock wall and ceiling. It also had passages that snaked recognizable combinations of left, right, up, and down so that you could develop a sense of navigation by the direction variations. And the passages opened into rooms that have uniquely identifiable objects or dimensions, so that it was easy to tell them apart. The other had the same color rock floor, ceiling, and walls. It only had uniform straight passages with no up or down. And the passages opened into similar rooms of the same color with similar decor in each.

They were both done at a high level of actual aesthetic art in terms of each individual component. But the design impact and game experience quality was radically different. The first cave was great to play in. The second was a nightmare of confusing redundancy. I don't know who was involved in each, but I know that the second cave had someone making decisions that were outside their ability to create good content.

You have to realize that that independence is the issue though

Hossin is the greatest victim of this ghost cap war where players will fly around and cap bases not even for the exp. Just get anything that isnt being watched

And other players have to hop from base to base keeping up with it or ignore it and let the continent be lost so they can get back to Indar

Thats no way to play

There has to be some counter to this. Maybe NPCs arent the best idea but they certainly arent bad

Rather than countering the problem of people ghostcapping, why don't we find a way to combat the reason why people ghostcap?

No one enjoys sitting in an empty base while a timer runs down to a capture. Yet they do it. Why? I think it's because there's a lack of objectives to complete in the game. There's one official objective: Capture bases. And one unofficial objective: Get the best stats possible. Players aren't engaged enough to create elaborate stragetics to compete, and those that did have given up after the gazillionth time of doing king-of-the-hill in a base that barely matters more or less than the next base in any way.

By creating different objectives and different ways to complete them I think a large part of ghost capping could be negated as players will find other things to do to support their team. Things that will pull them into more varied and engaging gameplay that everyone will enjoy more.

People would use NPC's to increase their stats, moving the farm from locking in players that just leave to any empty base, causing more people to ghost cap, if they cap at all! They might just hang around the spawn and camp it all day long killing the AI coming out. AI would be the favourite way to aurax those tough weapons that normally only get assists.

If NPCs dont affect stats then the problem is solved isnt it?

What would you suggest that would be more helpful than NPCs?