[Lore] Where do we live?

This is something I have wondered about since the creation of PlanetSide 1 and has now carried into PlanetSide 2. In PS2 SOE has made a focus on the backstory of our stay on Auraxis by employing a writer to give us an account with the state of things leading up to the point we are at now. After reading the lore provided I was given a greater appreciation of what has been going on, and I hope that the PS2 design team can reflect that in future landscape of the game.

Which brings me to the point of this thread; we have been living on Auraxis for nearly 200 years, and started the colonization of this world with 60,000 people. But why is the planet so barren, where are the sings of civilization? Look at your town (or city) what changes have been made in the past 10-20 years? Look at New York City, 200 years of development and population growth has put it amongst the largest and most developed city in the World.

A Series of questions:
Why are there no cities or towns?
Where are all the houses?
Why are there no farms?
Why are there no stadiums?
Why are there no theaters or other entertainment facilities?
Where are all the civic buildings?

The vast majority of the planet is empty, and the only structures that appear are mainly military in nature. There are small outposts which do look the part for what they are designed for. Bio labs, Tech Plants, and Amp Stations, they all serve a purpose, and fit the story, but they have limitations. Auraxis is not a barren moon scape, it can support life. I understand that the Bio labs are probably a left over remnant from the years we spent as a wondering space fleet in search of a home, and continued to be used after the initial settling. But in 200 years, with the population expanding, they could not feed the whole population. Also very little space in the Bio Lab actually used for food production (if you walk around and look)

The Terrain Republic was voted into power and given complete control to rule the people to keep them safe from the rebel factions forming in the fleet. In the lore provided they restricted the freedom of the masses and forbid them from having privet meetings. But where are the meeting halls that the TR would have needed to give information to the populations they controlled? Where are the civic buildings from which they ruled?

You could take everything I have talked about here in this thread and simply say there is a war on, and things get destroyed in wars. But not everything is destroyed in a war, look at London, Berlin, and other cities from WWII, there are pictures of the ruins. If war has destroyed Auraxis, where are the ruins?

I would like to draw your attention to this thread for a moment, which is a topic on the tools and models available in the game that have been accessed by some very fine modelers and builders.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...ls-planetside-tools.54360/page-6#post-1033916

I would like to point out the user Visk, as his models have inspired this thread, and made me ask the question:

Where is the world we live in?

Because right now all I can say, is that we are on a world, but we sure don’t appear to be living there. This is not an easy task, or something I expect to show up tomorrow, but as the game expends maybe a settlement or two can be added. As the game expends cities could be added to newly opened continents allowing for new styles of play. Huge city fights that could take place on the streets, and in skyscrapers.

I hope you enjoyed the read, and forgive my ramblings.

Well, on Amerish are a few farms. But it is true, why are there no civil buildings on a whole continent?

hmm if theyd be continents, planet auraxis would be the size of a large comet.. but i sure would like to see more civilian buildings and more urban environments for sure

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE, THERE IS ONLY WAR.

More importantly, why do none of the buildings have bathrooms? It ruins immersion when my character never has to "go".

Wrong future dammit.

Making NC's ideals sound even more stupid! Freedom for the people on this miliary planet!!!

Joke aside. Lore is something PS2 is not strong at. It does not need it so I don't care

Do we not fight for our Glorious Emperor to crush the conglomerate Rebel and burn the vanu Heretic?

The simple truth is that all three sides are locked in bitter conflict and the respawning technology has eliminated the need for soldiers to eat, sleep, urinate, etc. In fact, the average soldier does not live long enough to do anything else other spawn, shoot, die, respawn. This brutal cycle eliminates the need for any consumable or structure unrelated to spawning, killing and dying.

Of course, there are exceptions to this which causes some soldiers to suffer more than others. In particular, Liberator pilots and their gunners have been known to shoot themselves in the head after spending days protected in their heavily armored cockpits without any food or bathrooms to sustain them. Rather then endure the pain any longer they return to their warpgate, pull out their pistol and shoot themselves so they can respawn and continue their utter dominance over all things Auraxis.

I could get behind that too, for the exception that we lived peacefully on the planet for 200 years before the war broke out. What did we do up until then?

Seriously though, I loved the original Planetside lore, how at first we didn't know about the nanotech on Auraxis and all the stuff about core imprinting. They'd discovered the warpgates and how to use them, then the Republic decided to execute a guy and the next day they found him alive and well at the nearest warpgate. Executed him a few more times until it finally dawned on them that the planet's system kept reconstructing him at the warpgate every time. Then we built the whole spawn tube and matrixing network to direct the flow of reconstruction, thus we have the spawn/respawn/deconstruct system.

ahaha this is great...i thought this too...they have to take showers to right?

Well, you see, Auraxis is a sentient planet that tolerates our existence simply because we provide constant amusement. It especially loves our canned macros where we tell someone "that was painful to watch."

What it doesn't like is any alteration to itself in the form of farms, dwellings, stadiums, etc. (apparently they are like an itch that can't be scratched - or something akin to that). So, when the war first broke out it allowed all the civilian structures to be destroyed so it could replace them with natural landscapes and thus eliminate the itch.

The one exception to this effort was to allow the construction of the military bases because the planet valued the amusement we provide it more than it hated the itch.

Thus, we find ourselves where we are today, with a sentient planet that spends great effort to keep our military bases unharmed so that we can continue to run about, killing each other as it laughs silently at our folly.

I was trying to spark a serious discussion on this. Where about on Amerish are the farms?

You are reconstructed by nanites.

Wouldn't surprise me if everytime you got hungry/tired, you just put a bullet in your head and was reconstructed at the nearby terminal, fresh and rested!


Besides, if there ever lived any civilians anywhere near the battle zones in Planetside 2, they'd been dead a long time ago.
This war never ends

Nanomachines and eternal war economy. This is truly the bad future of Metal Gear Solid.

I figured being a total, war that 100% of the population was drafted to fight. But where are the ruins?

I would also be very interested in knowing this. Games can be fun on their own with gameplay alone, but lore behind the gameplay and a story really raises the value, at least for me. If, the lore is in fact worth the time it takes to read in the first place. (When that time could be spent doing something else.)

Maybe the ruins were used as target practise?

I would agree, the advantage is, the lore would build new environments to fight (for, through, and in). A city fight style of battle is going to be different than assaulting a military complex designed to withstand a siege. Also a city street style guerrilla war would fit more with a rebel faction fighting for freedom.