Producer's Letter

Hello Andy,

Thatt's good news. I can't wait to see the roadmap updated !

It's great if you also focus on Quality of Life improvments ; there was a tons of good ideas given by players a few months ago in one or two dedicated threads, and it will be nice to take thoses.

I hope we will see the WP connected and capturable, so bases near the WP will be more frequently attacked.

I have a big concern howewer : have you a level designer (base designer, environmental designer) left on the team ? How will you finish Hossin (construction sites) and the revamp of Indar's bases ? And Koltyr ? And the Battle island ? If you need to hire a new one, how long for him to learn the software and understand PS2 flow of battle ? If he is already in the team, which bases had he made ?

Thanks

I'm so pleased this has been posted on the official forums...

'network performance' you fix that so it was like it was a year ago and you got me.
This post and dcarys reddit posts, I tell ya, I'll throw another $40 at you and trust you'll you guys to get it done.
I'm tired of dealing with player warping, but if you can fix that back to the way it was I'll be happy.
go andy.

GO DAYBREAK!!! These small shortcomings can't hold back such an amazing dev team like you guys!

Thank you, hopefully PS2 people will post more often on the official forums.

With the drastic changes, I just want to make two suggestions, that I don't believe would require enormous amounts of coding etc:

-Mouseyaw option for flying: requested since Alpha according to several forum posts.
This will make flying an option for a lot of people, myself included. Yaw-rate can stay as is, it is not asking for a buff; it is asking for a Basic feature that good games have: customizable controls. It is a disgrace that 2 years out PS2 doesn't have it.

-Hire someone for marketing. this can be a consultant, as I don't think the "basics" would require a full-time job.
(Or, don't hire, but get better at it)
Now, I normally despise marketing. But you have near-zero effective marketing for the PS2 "shop".
What should be marketed far more heavily:
the PS2 bundles in game.
They're 50% off. All the time. (most of the bundles are 50%) They are only accessible in game, and being bundles, their value quickly goes down as soon as I acquire 1 item from the bundle.
Are these bundles mentioned on the website? Not really. On the login screen etc? No.
I was playing the game for a few months before I first saw these bundles. At that point, I had already cert-unlocked the skyguard; making the lightning bundle useless to me.
You don't need to hire advertising space, you don't need to make commercial videos.. so the expenses are "peanuts".
But there is most certainly a need to inform your clients about offers you make.
If I am a retail chain, and I have a special deal "buy jeans pants+ jeans vest; get 50% off", is it wise to only put it on small print on the jeans and vest themselves? NO! I put at least a big sign at the shelves. But, in order to draw people inside, towards the shelves, I also put a big *** sign at the shop window, maybe a sign posted outside, and I make sure the jeans shelves are very visible. I don't hide the shelves by not telling people I have the bundle offer, and then hiding the bundles behind "map-> depot-> bundles".
Regarding marketing again: I think the bundles can be looked at.
Some examples:
the LA/engineer pro bundle contains a shotgun, and a pistol.
1) do these classes not deserve their own bundle?
2) Would it not be better if that was a pump-action shotgun? I have the default.. I'm not paying for a slightly different one..
3) There is no "pro" bundle with a carbine inside.. The class-specific weapon for LA & engineer.
To me, it seemed like LA/engineer didn't "deserve" their own bundle according to someone. O-kay then..

4) Other reasons to relook at some of the bundles: stuff occuring multiple times, in different bundles. Big "offenders" are the underboss and comissioner. Again, I buy a bundle with the comissioner for example.. Now any other bundle that also has this pistols is worth far less to me.
The latest ES pistols have been out for a while, so this is not necessary.
Likewise for rocketpods, occuring in two bundles, etc.
Offering some cosmetic bundles are an option, ..
Put someone with "game knowledge" and a "marketing" guy together in a room, untill they come up with some reworked bundles, and a working document on how they want to promote the bundles (high visibility on the website,..)

First of all Thank you for the update. As many have said already in this forum we need a lot of of what you stated. I believe the primary 2 are as fallows. First and foremost, more open clarity on where this game his going. Like man me many of us have dedicated many ours into this game, I alone have 849 hours logged; However, I am a stay at home father which mean I have very little time per day to game.Overall its many of our favorite game and many of us have supported this game with purchases be them small or large, we have supported your game, I have spent around 25-30 bucks in game, But this is only what i feel the game is worth at this point. Do what you say and make it better and people will be more likely to pay for more in game items. This all leads me into my next point, Optimization! Two points, Those of of with really high end graphics cards are kinds getting let down. I mean I have a Radeon Tri-X OC R9290 4G 1300MHZ, if you don't know it look it up (Thank you Baby for my awesome Birthday present Love You) But I only get like 46 FPS AT 1920x1280 on Ultra with shadows on low and several other things turned of and particles on ultra to get there. This is not cool. I get rite at 73-75 in 4k with everything maxed out. I know what you will say "Well it runs primarily on the CPU". I have two points to this. First I have a AMD Phenom II Black Edition 1100T ^ core OC to 5.3 Ghz so it could be that. My second point is why not make a way the game could switch between the CPU and GPU depending on what is more powerful? I hate to think of what other gamers with mid to low range is dealing with I am sorry. Any way Thank you for your post I appreciate that.
Ryan G.

It would be great if record a video at once a week telling the roadmap to people on planetside 2 channel.And don't forget to ask those around youtubers.Why they left the game?

There ya go Andy, $45 SC, spend it wisely.
Now I'm going shopping for some shiny new hardware to blowup stuff.

As you're aware, I am one of the Older veteran members of the community and have been with PS2 Since Launch, Over the years I've had many things to say about the ongoing process, and have both supported the devs as well as chastised them when needed.

That being said,

What you have written above is nothing new, We've heard it from multiple people repeatedly over the years, and yet nothing changes, in fact many things get worse. Pretty words are one thing, actions are another.

* Player feedback is generally completely ignored,

* Devs and community staff do not post on threads except once in a blue moon,

* Communication between Your studio, and the Consumers who play your game is stagnant at best, Non-existent at worst.

* Development of things which should take weeks, and months, takes years, (Multiple years in the case of Hossin, which took longer to be developed then the entire game itself).

* The quality of the stuff that goes into the game is lackluster at best, (Common Pool Weapons and Vehicles "for example") In a game with 3 VERY different Factions which use VERY different Technology, is simply, Laziness.


You have a lot to answer for, and a lot of work to do if you want to pull this game out of the ashes. The first step you should take is making an OBVIOUS change to the game, One that players have been demanding for years, and one which will show that you are taking actions, to back your words up.

People have been losing hope in your studios capability for years, and changing it's name, isn't going to change who you are and how you do things. You need to choose to make that change, yourself, and then do it. If you're not going to, then all your promises and words mean nothing, and Nothing, is exactly what you will get.

~Mal

The EU servers have been broken for about 4 weeks now, pings in the region of 500ms to 150,000ms (yes, one hundred and fifty thousand) being regularly seen.

Right now at this very moment mine on Miller is showing as 6500ms......... the game is basically unplayable on the EU servers (and yet I swap to ESO and it is 50-80ms).

Nice words
BTW where is Higby?

Thank you that is good to hear

rumor has it he was thrown out of hell,
and is back in the real world, but his hair is messed from DaveC falling from heaven and landing on him.
(see reddit)

Thank you for the update, We all really did not know what to expect.

lol about time. So will we finally get the Planetside 1 sequel us PS1 players were hoping for? Not this Call of Planetfield 2

Words are cheap - how about you actually fix your broken communications with the community?

#1 - Member double-XP weekends are only advertised in a file cabinet, in the basement, behind a door marked "beware of tiger". Those announcements should appear on the launcher, in-game on the load screens, plus as a staff post here in the forums. And hey, why not Facebook and Twitter while you are at it.

In short, if you push out a message - it needs to appear in all these places at the same time or you have failed at communicating.

#2 - Stop treating the official forums as second class citizens. Developers who only want to engage with the community on a 3rd party site is evidence of dysfunction within the development team. It's obvious to outsiders that there are deep divisions within the development team about how to deal with the community and whether or not corporate rules should apply to certain people. In short, you need to get everyone singing out of the same songbook.

(Frankly, I'm not surprised you got sold - you should have made these changes 18 months ago when it was obvious that things were not going well.)

well, as a former player, I came back around after hearing of the sell off of SOE, and have to say, that this sounds like more of the same corporate post-acquisition drivel that has been seen for decades out of companies of every industry imaginable.. Now, I won't try and predict one way or the other, but for myself I will be paying closer attention to this game again to see if anything really is going to change for the better... Upon release I spent nearly $1,000 of my disposable income in the first 10 months of the game, and then as things started to unravel, and promises weren't being kept, I just stopped playing... all the pipe dreams the old roadmap had were not being met, more attention was being paid to "balancing" the game for all the whiny cry-babies, or to polishing the proverbial turd, and less to furthering the game development and fixing problems, and it continued to get worse as time went on..

Hopefully this really does help get things in gear again, as I still have disposable income that will be spent on something, and I would be just as happy spending it here as on the golf course.. so here's to hoping!

So far in the last week, new launchpad errors, servers falling offline, new desktop hangs - at least you'll have plenty to do.

I'm sorry to inform that I reported you.
I reported you for saying exactly how I see everything myself as well, how the **** really is so that whoever forum mod reads the report would forward your post to this "Andy".
Carry on dude, I'd vote you for the president.

He's gone: http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2vqcge/thank_you_to_the_planetside_2_community/