First I'd like to say that I've noticed your increased communication and I really appreciate it. I also appreciate that the game seems to now have a much move visible producer. Welcome! I don't know how many other posts of mine you might read but I am reasonably certain you will read this one so I will just quickly outline some of my thoughts for your consumption. Like others I think relying on reddit (something not officially attached to the game) is a terribly idea when you have your own forums that you could, if needed, modify to facilitate communication in the most effective way you envision. I second (times a million) the idea of using in-game polls to gather meaningful data on how the majority of players feel. However, I'd like to add that once you feel like you are up and running, I'd suggest sending a follow-up poll (probably via email) to anyone who ever played the game and then stopped so you might know how to address things that will help bring in new players. Let's be honest, everyone still here likes it fine enough on some level. I can't say enough that I think the fun in this game rests more on the shoulders of the player commanders than I think your team has previously acknowledged or maybe realized. They give the other players direction and purpose which this game is utterly devoid of without them. I suggest you invest heavily in tools for allowing commanders to coordinate with each other, better organize their force, and give requests to the players more easily so that the meta-game is stronger. I feel like the immersion factor of this game is in the toilet right now. So many things happen as if by magic without any sort of justification and everything that is missing (like not seeing a pilot in his ESF) destroy credibility with the player subconscious belief in this persistent world. I don't think that matters as much in other shooters but you have a persistent world MMO on your hands here. Overall, I am very disappointed in the level of NS or common pool in the game. This feels like the designers couldn't come up with good ways to balance 3 different factions a la Starcraft so whenever they get stuck they just make an NS weapon or vehicle. The factions are too homogeneous. However, I realize that having asymmetrically-balanced factions inevitably leads to feelings of OP / UP for different things which leads me to my next point. In complex multiplayer games often there is no true balance, only counters. Communicating to players that something isn't actually unbalanced, they just don't know HOW it's balanced is sometimes more important than the actual numbers. Because of this I would suggest some modifications to either the forums or the website that allows players to post what they think is unbalanced and allows people to respond with information on how to counter. If this was better organized it would stop players from making re-posts of common things as they can always look up the feedback. While I like that you guys do streams of information, I feel like many of those are during work hours PST and as a result if you can't watch it live you miss out until they get uploaded which is sometimes much much later. Also, there is valuable info conveyed in them or questions answered that not everyone has the time to sit through an hour video to get to. Maybe if the relevant info could be pulled and posted that would make communication much better Please for the love of god do something about the mobile app. There are so many missed opportunities for this game to have a stronger out-of-game connection to the players with something like that (alerts, outfit broadcasts, sales, store purchases) that have just been dropped on the floor. You could be revolutionary in this space but right now it's crap. Sorry this was so long. Again, welcome and I look forward to seeing how this goes.
Good luck Mr Carey, I personally wish you the very best. The Planetside 2 concept is groundbreaking. I have dreamed almost precisely of this game since I was 9 (39 now), it was more 2d then, but it was the same premise. Being able to play it now makes me giggle like a little kid between swearing like a sailor. I am very refreshed to hear your thoughts on Mr Higby's intellect. A game like this needs post-humans making the calls at the top. From the legions of people who love this game thank you. From the legions of people who know that SOE is working on something insanely complicated we apologize in advance for what the community has and will put you through. Most of them mean well but have very different levels of being able to express it in a positive fashion. Always remember that their rage is a reflection of their love of the game and its many wonders. No one, no one would post if they didn't care. I have worked in the service/retail industry for many years and I must say I am stunned by Soe's want to interact with its customers in such a transparent way. It's a very challenging job to take on and no way of ever, ever winning every battle. Smiling whilst people throw their venom at you is hard to accomplish, but you guys do it pretty well. May i suggest that you have casual jobs, 1 for each server in which you hire players like 'Wrel' to do discussions, vids, game suggestions, lead events, etc. Outsource the wrath of the people by becoming one with the people. It will save you time and $ and actually generate the massive amount of positive data you require to wade through the games current problems and evolve it in to a world dominating trend for a decade. The game has had its challenges but it is still the best game I have ever played, with the most potential, AND with the biggest ability to take on player suggestions to be in-game mechanics as it evolves. A few well known pc gaming heroes would bring people back to the banner,.... a new clean banner, (put the last one in the trophy case, it is stained with the blood of heroes). It would use few resources for a lot of traction. I do not wish to be overly bold, but I feel obliged to say that 'tech guys' are not marketing guys. Current battle is all about combined arms and information. One or two troop types do not do it all. The best commander knows what type of troops to use in what scenario. Start recruiting sir.... you will have many non-expensive or free people who will spread a new vibe. Just love them and lead them from the front and you will have legions of supporters. personal recommendation: read Sun Tzu a bit. and then some more. If you wish to truly talk to the people you must become like water and take on their true shape, not what you think it is. Not saying that you don't know what it is, just that every engagement costs the brand and you must have clearly defined victory conditions soonish..... the judgement of the people comes quickly and forgiveness slowly. Rommel was an exceptional commander because he would touch the earth at the front, smell the sweat and cordite. You need to be the same, both internally and externally. truly the best of luck to you and your team Sir. It is an honor to be a tiny, tiny part of what you have created. Highest Respects to you all. Dredd74, SchwerePanzer1, Foenacious.
Before changing anything to the gameplay, please play the game for a while I mean.. you have a great power, you need to have the very knowledge to match it. I personally hope you're already an advanced player
Take a mug and an action figure. Bang bang - this is how the collisions should work. You get what you ask for if you're very hands on, but the specialist usually can think up of a better solution - if the mindset is right. That failed water shader might end up as a cool explosion sweeneter. Empowering the team is a good way to go, just make sure everybody's on the same page as far as production quality is concerned. Most importantly, have fun. This isn't a logistics database. If you and your guys aren't having fun, at least a little bit, neither will we. --- PS: You know the kind of guy who, when going shopping, is carrying 2 concealed guns, three knives and a medical kit? The kind of guy who, when the internet goes down practices gun stripping and reassembly, and spends more on bullets for the range than on gas? You need more of those people on your team. I don't think your team is very much into guns and military stuff, at least that's the impression I get by the results of your work.
waitwaitwaitwaitwait. TRay made the god damn pipboy?! anyway, we hope you the best in your role, d_carey!
Hi there. I hope you get as much out of having the job as we do from having you there I'm glad the forums here are getting at least some love. I really don't want to have to sign up to Reddit to have my voice heard.
Welcome to PS2. Good luck as Producer. Excited about what fresh meat can bring to the game. Liked everything until about halfway through. Too bad they are stuck on this "lets use a bunch of different ways/websites to convey information to people". In my opinon spreading stuff out just makes things unnessecarily confusing. The last thing the PS2 playerbase needs. Just 5minutes ago i read a a post saying "what are directives?" Shouldnt directives be something that SOE wants to advertise and get people excited, like in the launcher where "Welcome to Hossin" is or something? The point is that saying "go to twitter and reddit to stay updated" there will always be people who doesent get the message and assumes the "official" forum is where they get information. There is even a whole section called "Official News and Announcements" that has a really misleading title for new people who are not used to SOEs way of doing things yet. Resulting in people tearing their hair out looking for information and feeling left out, second rate customers and punished for using the PS2 forum for information. Its probably not your fault though. There is always someone going "you have to do things like this if you want to work here" I understand the reasoning for using twitter, reddit, facebook, youtube, secret homepage, but dont like it and think there are better ways to handle it using the "official" forum. But thats just my opinon. (Edit: Someone from SOE should be paid to repost important stuff from reddit/twitter/etc. on this forum. You can even make a new tab under the "Annoucements" section called "Reposts" or something)
Nice approach! I'm happy to be a SOE Planet Side 2 customer, because I can see there is a very passionate and dedicated team actively working on renewing and revamping diverse aspects of the game, without mentioning the new content, always bringing the best <3 Keep it coming!
Asides from the standard congratulations, I feel that I should voice some of my concerns with Planetside 2. And I mean real concerns. Not "Buff the X and Nerf the Y." As someone who bought and played Planetside 1 on launch day, I've been here and see the good, the bad, and the potential. Planetside came out at a time that SOE was taking "chances" with a lot of interesting ideas and concepts (I also played Star Wars Galaxies from SOE which I believe is the greatest MMO ever created, other than certain flaws that were...dealt with incorrectly). Moving on to the major issue. Net Code. I complained a lot about Planetside 1's netcode back in the day. But Planetside 2's netcode issues are really...design decision issues. The netcode is incredibly important. It's the reason why I played more Battlefield 3 every week than I have played Battlefield 4 since it came out. For average/mediocre players, they don't understand latency. Or rather, they don't understand the importance of it. But even they are affected by it. But because they don't believe themselves to be the best FPS player out there, they take a loss as a loss and move on. For myself, I find it to be frustrating. Currently there are 2 issues: 1) Your server routing is terrible. A lot of players are having trouble with Level3 and other peers. A distance of 1300 miles for myself is resulting in 110ms-150ms latency in the game. Previously, I could directly ping the servers at around 60ms. And now, it averages 95ms. And of course...in-game latency is higher than just pinging the IP. This issue is one that should be remedied as it is a technical matter. But here we are at the bigger problem: 2) Regionalization. I appreciate and understand the need for an "International Server" in Planetside. But I also understand the need for a Region-Locked/Ping-Limited server. The Connery server, because it is listed as a West Coast server, has been the preferred server for a lot of players in Asia who view the west coast as obviously being the closest location to them. A lot of European, Russian, and South Americans also play on the server. And that there is the issue. During the latest call to report issues with Level3 routing, you could see tons of people from around the world posting about how they normally have 300ms-400ms ping times when they play. These are unacceptable ping levels for *competitive FPS's.* I complained about this issue from the time Planetside 2 launched. SOE didn't want to lose these foreign players as it would result in a smaller overall user base and paying customers need fodder to shoot at. The problem with this strategy, is that it actually ended up pushing a LOT of really good players away. I look at the friends on some of my characters. Lists that used to be stacked with the top-end players on the server. The majority are just gone. Because the lack of region/latency limitation means that you can play Planetside, and it's fun, but you can't truly be competitive in it. In a game like Battlefield, you can select a server close to you. Some servers have auto-kick for high ping players. It is an option. But in Planetside...it's not. So I fear that the policy of worldwide inclusion has led to the exclusion of many players who are tired of seemingly being insta-killed by another player, simply because their client is half a second behind that other players client. This is my current biggest issue with Planetside 2 and its future. I'm always going to advocate more options for infantry-centric smaller scale fights. But those are simply preferences. What I've written about above...is a serious issue with regards to your plans for Planetside's future. Without addressing these problems, I feel Planetside 2 may go the way of other MMO's like SWTOR. Even if a game is *free* so to speak, it needs to be enjoyable for people to stick around. So make an international server. Or at least create one region-locked American server and one region-locked European server. I would gladly resubscribe and pay to transfer to that server as I've probably put a good $1000 or more into Planetside 2 already. Hope my words don't fall on deaf ears.
I know how much attention is paid to both these forums as well as to twitter already, as I have personally seen things that were done or posted shortly after I posted a communication on this forum or had tweeted to dev accounts. However many people seem to believe this forum is toxic, or that no real intelligent discussion can happen here, there are still those of us who for various reasons still come here (in my case, I would rather use the official discussion forum for multiple reasons, and for unknown reasons am unable to log in or retrieve info at reddit.) In any case, keep up your tireless efforts to provide us with as amazing and incredible a game as you can manage to, despite the large amount of negative comments from those who don't believe that any of you care, that you just want money (well, employees, electricity, internet access, et cetera doesn't come free or anywhere close to cheap) and so forth. I would also like to personally make a point of saying that Matthew Higby not only plays quite frequently (on Connery like myself) but accepts friend requests from people (he really does) and any time I had a problem with a bug, or issue to bring to his attention, or even occasionally to ask him how he's doing and what auraxium he's working on, he's been a pretty decent guy every time. With bugs I ran across, or things along those lines, he has literally dropped what he was doing to come investigate personally, like with the Drakon Armor bug with MAX suits for a small time after cosmetics applied on armor. I also can remember being revived by him, as well as having myself or my friends killed by him when he's playing a different faction. I will continue to have faith in your dev team, and will continue posting suggestions, bugs, and feedback here, twitter, or if warranted privately just like I have in the past. Also, is it coincidence that the New Conglomerate colors are the same as a Vault Jumpsuit?
I for one would hate to see restriction on connection regions to Connery, since I know my outfit chose it specifically for it being centrally located for our global membership. I would lose friends I enjoy playing with from across both the Atlantic and Pacific as well as some from South America. Also, Planetside 2 isn't designed to be competitive in the normal sense. That is why we have entire continents to fight across, with air, armor, infantry, et cetera, as well as 3 factions simultaneously. I use these traits to use strategy, and a massive range of tactics to play like this was a real combat environment... the saying "all is fair in love and war" comes to mind. I enjoy being able to almost always fight on my terms, and with as much of an advantage as I can manage. This may have aspects similar to a first person shooter, but this is a science fiction warfare simulation with actual living people engaged in the kind of engagements normally seen in real time strategy gaming. It is infinitely unexpected, constantly changing, and with very little artificial feeling limits or restrictions. This game isn't ever going to be 'fair' or 'balanced' in a traditional 1 on 1 or pure infantry sense... which is exactly why I love it and I know I am not alone. I do however agree that perhaps a core rewrite of the game or such could be a beneficial investment, similar to when Blizzard Entertainment did something similar to WoW for patch 4.0.1 for example. I would also point out that often it is incredibly easy to overlook how much of a massive undertaking something as 'simple' as a netcode rewrite or engine revamp really truly is, since something as trivial as a misplaced press of spacebar can render a program completely broken but also be incredibly difficult to find and correct all the same.
On the other hand, I recall a conversation with Matthew Higby that started in game and lead to me sending a WinMTR diagnosis to your address, and saw the launcher request for information about Level3 shortly afterward. This is just one of many times where I saw that I was important, of which I have a rather respectable list to have it from my own personal input, not including the other massive evidence of other times, including among other things the login issues with Briggs to simple cosmetic things like armor decals on armor models.
That is not at ALL what I am saying! Read it again. I'm saying that the issue with Connery is that it's open to the world. I say that it's important to have a "world server." I said that a NEW region-locked server should be made. So Connery can continue being what it is. It would be unreasonable to expect server locks on a server that has been played on globally for over a year. I also never said the Netcode needs to be re-written. As I specifically stated in my post...Planetside 2 doesn't have the same issues that plagued Planetside 1, and that the problem was in a design decision (back to the previous paragraph...global server & local server). And ties to MLG definitely disagree with your assessment that it's not meant to be competitive in a "normal sense." I think you misread what I was saying...then decided to go against everything I said simply for that reason. Please don't misquote me again. You don't do anyone any favors when you argue against something that was never said.
Hello and welcome! I think right from before beta SOE have done a great job with communications with players and it's great to hear that you will continue with that. I think the official forums are good (far better than the old PS1 forums) I think the 'roadmap' is good but even so there are features we know are on an internal list that aren't there, e.g. viewcam for e-sports, Players website is still in 'beta' and of course new continent Searhus. I don't like reddit. It's far too confusing (imho) and you can't really get a good conversation going. I generally look at it on a daily bases but then pass on quickly. The things that don't worry me are balance type issues. I also don't worry lot about bugs (unless they become annoying). Those types of issues will always exist. Dealing with them is an everyday chore and I'd rather think about other game issues such as base design etc. Although I have a playtime for the game of around 55 days I have to confess that right from the beginning I have been frustrated by the direction the game has taken and I am no longer playing. The issue that has bugged me is the grand motivation, the reason for playing. A game like this should hook you in on many different levels but it's only really good at the base level as an fps. It's almost the opposite way round from PS1. Not getting this:-> https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-inter-continental-lattice.82996/ was a blow and the fact is that that feature should have been a day 1 feature. I don't understand how there could be a Planetside 2 without 'that' or without an equivalent. Events were a pretty good substitute and WDS, I'm sorry to say, wasn't good in the least. What they both did/do by providing rewards was to making existing population imbalances worse. Funnily enough I think the dev team agree to some extent but they can't seem to do the metagame job properly and so have created a series of 'quick' fixes. (Speculation: the team doesn't have the tools or resources or time to create a feature that was present in day 1 of PS1). But still, I wish you all the best. Good Luck.
Here's to hoping Planetside 2 could be steered out of the nosedive yet. I don't envy your job, mr. d_carey. Good luck!
100% agreed. I was around since PS1, in PS2 beta, and the main things that bugged me: 1) Missing continent lattice (Fixed, thank god) 2) Missing intercontinental lattice (Still waiting for it) 3) Gendrops, nanites, ANTs, and generally base mechanics other "kill the gen", "kill the SCU" and "stand near point" 4) Base captures via REK instead of just standing in the general vincinity Point 4 is mostly a gratification thing, I get no gratification from standing near a point and being rewarded for attendance. PS1 felt like you're really hacking a base. When PS2 beta started I thought the "stand near point A and wait for the flip" was just a placeholder. Little did I know we wouldn't get a REK or something equivalent for years. Point 3 and 2 are the biggest ones for me, and really what I define as "metagame". The metagame discussion is as old as PS1, but PS2 really missed the boat on this one - and it's only now that more and more people recognize it. Please give us consequences (continent locking is a start, but not a final solution), and give us multiple means to achieve our goals. Give us stuff to do behind enemy lines (gendrops, draining, similar mechanics), give us tools that enable these task (ANT, etc) and give people who are not THAT good at shooters meaningful things to do (Improve combat engineering, deployables, ANT driving, base upgrades, etc) Hossin is GREAT. However, while you work on new continents as well as finishing up Hossin, please consider improving the gameplay depth via the things I mentioned above, or similar things. Make turrets upgradeable. Give engineers more mines and deployables. Consider bringing back the deployable turrets from PS1. They worked AND they could be countered, yet they did make a difference.
