Producer's Letter

XD I feel you on that. Tbh the game needs a bit of work in that department, and even if activity does decline for a 6 month period as a result, it's not like we haven't weathered that kind of thing before. I just hope that once they go full-on feature mode again they try to focus on the meta and expanding systems like command and outfits. The team has focused too much on moment-to-moment gameplay so far in my opinion. They don't seem to realize that improving the moment-to-moment gameplay is never going to make the game better than titles like CoD or Battlefield in that department. They need to focus on what Planetside does that no one else can do, which is a blending of common FPS gameplay with the more complex inner systems of traditional MMOs. While polishing the guns and moment-to-moment play is all well and good, it does not make the game nearly as appealling as updates like outfit progression or a better resource revamp would make it. I'm not saying they chould abandon developing m-t-m stuff, just that they've kind of plateaud on the appeal that developing it adds.

That's why I said those are pretty words. Summing it up, it is a promise of a future and hope. I could reject that promise, but chose not to. Soon we will see what really is behind the pretty words.

Interesting. What's the difference between Producer/Director, anyone?

It seems like Producer is a more managerial position while Director... is like a Super Creative Director?

It just amazes me to have never heard of him.

we've heard those words before

but to think that even this message hasn't been read a second time, by the writer, to spot an obvious mistake ('think' instead of 'thank')... it's worrisome but expected

"Andy" could be a guys or a girls name, how are we supposed to put a label on you if we don't know your gender?!
This is a joke btw

Well if we assume that definitions from the film industry apply here:

This is almost all new information; we've passed around a lot of speculation, and come to our Logical conclusions, but it's nice to have that confirmation officially, especially from the director, who most certainly has a very busy schedule.

So you're the guy that's gonna link the warpgates with battle islands and so forth huh? Coming soon you say? Excellent news!

This is just bad news plain and simple. Don't expect the game to have any real updates for a LOOOOOONG time. Canceled my membership for now.

The film industry is different than video games and most other industries when it comes to these terms. Director of Development is the manager of the engineering team (manages the managers if you will). The producer is the voice of the consumer = the players. It's the product person who coordinates all the different teams to bring you the best experience they can.

See a description of the producer from Blizzard http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/careers/roles/production.html

Since the director of development is addressing us it stands to reason that no updates other than technical tweaks will occur. This is not an insult to the engineering team who has brought us a great game, but game design and innovative game play is not generally why engineers are hired. That's the job of the game design and production team. If they have been let go, then we can expect this game to stagnate. As players we should expect the same game play we've had for the past two years to continue until Columbus Nova decides it's not profitable to maintain (since subs/transactions will decline) and then ends it.

By the way Columbus Nova has never invested in gaming before, so good luck with that. Sure there has to be a first and CN is popping their proverbial cherry with Daybreak Game Company. I sincerely hope they are committed to Daybreak and let them do what they do best - create amazing games. However, gutting a company of it's talent has never "...aligned [it]...for future growth..." as the PR piece would have us believe.

To Andy and team - keep up the good work. The player-base is with you.

I've been waiting for something new, not more bug squashing. Game polish is secondary to me as bug fixing/tuning/balance is an on going thing and can never truly be completed. The moment something new is added it's going to need a balance pass anyway once it's been released to the masses after a few weeks. The only thing that bothered me was the update that ruined sniping with people warping all over the place.

I know there's been a transition and a fair few people have left, however, I've been playing the exact same game for near two years without any major changes to how the game plays. The moment to moment gameplay is solid, but it's at the point that playing more than an hour or so gets repetitive. Tell ya what, change the layout of one, just one, bio lab so it's more indoors-y and less of a courtyard that vehicles can't get to and I'll be happy for a while.

Thanks for talking to us Andy!

You guys make the game better and we will support you with memberships.

Always good to see updates! Cant wait to see the fixes!

Having been though such transitions before, I hope the new powers that be will give the PS2 dev team sufficient freedom to make this game great. PS2 has a lot of unrealized potential with regarding to creating a meaningful persistent MMO experience. IMO other than a few bugs, game performance is good and what is needed is more diversity in weapons choices with different mechanics, more vehicle choices, and most importantly improve the global metagaming to be meaningful and give people more of a reason to participate. (eliminate redeployside, encourage air/armor clashes instead of only infantry battles being important) Do this and more people will play, have fun, and spend more too.

Thanks for the update, Andy.

I personally look forward to hear more from you here on the forums, and I bet most of Forumside would agree. The previous dev team has a serious communication meltdown with the forum community because they refused to use the forum, and with a fresh start it's a better time than ever to correct it.

The EU servers needs to be updated i am lv 90 on Connery and all that with no lag latly i started playing in Cobalt as it has better ping. But that server has tanks and players flying all over the place with ping of 50 and not that many players on server as the US one has that works nice on a ping 150-200. As my hardware can handle this game easy it has to be the EU server

We will see. I've been in the house of soe for a while now so let me be honest when the devs for swg said they were not going to sunset us we got sunsetted so if your road map is true and over the next few months show promise. Than I think I will be comfortable with this change of leadership until than I'm just one person who loves what we got and I would like to stay another few years with a healthy game.

The major problem with PS2 at the moment in EU is not updates or base design it's the fact that the game is unplayable. This post https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...able-since-maintaince-03-02-15.213933/page-10 highlights the problem.

Let me put this in perspective form my point of view.

I played PS1 for a long time (still do occasionally).
When PS2 came out I built a rig JUST for PS2
I have subbed and played every day except for the appalling visual C issue which locked me out for weeks

i TRY to play now but the wildly fluctuating latency from 80 to 5k and the packet loss makes it very difficult.

I have no issues with any other internet applications, my line tests are all fine, http://www.pingtest.net/ shows grade A.

The most fundamental issue for an ONLINE ONLY application is that the ONLINE bit works. Without that solid foundation everything else is irrelevant.

So while it's nice to hear that a roadmap is coming out, that PS4 and Xbox one will be supported, that "good things will happen" all I really want to hear is that someone(s) is working on the issue, that you have an idea of where the problem lies and a plan for implementing a fix.

If so he's been the one with the most control of Planetside 2's direction for as long as he's been director, which is a big surprise.

Man behind the curtain, so to speak.

planetside needs 3 things imo .

1)for the community ->
network stability on all servers.
the occasional event based camo's and weapons are nice but cosmetics are not wanted that much i believe.

2)for the devs ->
a way to make money and keep there job?
why not try to make battle royal for ps2?
free for members, non members pay x amount of SC.
it could be a form of endgame for BR 100 characters, in that way it would give players motivation to reach BR100 faster.
and when there is an incentive to reach BR100 faster they will get membership and buy boosts.

3)bring back luperza