Something im worried about.

[ChrisL]

Im a Planetside virgin so to speak. I never played PS1 so maybe vets can reassure me. But with so much space to fight over, how likely and often will we get ocassions in which we are able to participate in MASSIVE battles? IE the 2000 player battles that are always talked about and like the trailers showed?

This game is like my dream come true for a game. BF games look like specs of dust beside the scale of this game and it makes me weep with joy. To be standing among you fine folks as 1000 of us line the walls of a fort for the oncoming enslaught heading our way...it will be incredible.

[Mox]

Thats a good question. Since there is no lattice grid, it isn't sure we'll see a lot of zerging.

[Quantum Spices]

I'm assured there will be no lack of huge battles taking place, as long as there are 3 outfits in different factions, there will be huge fights!

:D

[Ivam Akorahil]

the empire priority system should ensure you have at least 2 or 3 hotspots at anytime with large scale battles taking place

[XxAxMayxX]

their will be something like 2,000 players per server and the frontline bases will probably be populated by 3 quarters of that so unless you go all the way to kingdom come you willl most likely find a fight.

[Rivenshield]

I'm worried about the population density problem too. Not only are the bases twice as big and this distances between them greater, we have three XBAWKS HUEG continents instead of eight-ten smaller ones. The smaller conts in old PS were 166x3, and later 133x3... but they filled fairly rapidly, and they were all linked together by the lattice system. That channelized the zerg, and you were guaranteed to find a knock-down king-hell fight.

What I've been privately figuring is that yes, there will be two or three bases per continent that each empire will be trying to claim as its own.. but in order to get the same degree of awesomeness, you need twice as many people. To *improve* on the awesomeness, you need half again that many. So 133x2x1.5 = about 400 combatants per empire per continent, or 1200 total. They need to deliver that many minimum or see this new game collapse, IMHO. If they can't, simply sawing each continent in half would be the best quick fix there is.

All told, I'm a lot more optimistic than I was a few months ago, though. Don't worry, OP -- you'll get your epic battles, one way or another. And I promise you something else: what PS1 vets call the 'Oh My God' moment... that moment when you look out and see a couple hundred people coming to kill you, and your monkey brain freaks out, and you feel that one stark moment of irrational physical fright.

I promise you epic, OP. And I promise you fear. One way or another. The new Planetside is in good hands.;)

[Stardouser]

It depends on what you're getting at. If you mean that there must be 2000 people within range to shoot at, I don't think anyone has ever claimed 2000 per battle. What they have said is 2000 people per 8X8km continent. 2000 players in the same square kilometer(ie, the same battle, that is to say, the fighting at Zurvan and the fighting at Hvar are actually separate battles) could cause slowdowns or crashing even with today's technology.

[ChrisL]

BTW are there gonna be any large aircraft capable of transporting like 30 men at once?

It would be epic flying over with 30 people...all nervous with excitement. As we reach the battlefield at night, suddenly all hell breaks loose, the transport door opens, the senior commander player yells good luck, and we all get dropped over the battle, every colour of laser imaginable firing all around.

[Comet]

I think Galaxies are getting a cert that allows you to carry 2 squards ChrisL. I think. If that pans out and they change squad size to 12 players, you're looking at 24 per galaxy potentially.

Make sure you have air superiority before making that drop!

[Rivenshield]

"Out of bounds" being triggered to shrink the map during low pop is the only obvious solution as of right now that my tiny brain sees.

Nah.

Saw one continent into thirds. Have each fragment serve as a de facto home continent. Then saw the other two into halves and connect everything via rotating warp gates. That way you can fight different enemies from different directions every once in awhile. That'll keep things fresh. That'll keep the population density up.

I mean... in the beta footage we watched the other day, I got awfully tired of watching Higby zerg his way up the same damn hill and hide behind the same damn tree for half an hour. With the existing system -- I hate to say it -- each empire will be fighting the same enemy over the same terrain FROM THE SAME DIRECTION for all freaking eternity. That'll get real old real fast.... and it's something old Auraxis didn't shackle us to.

[Zar]

"Out of bounds" being triggered to shrink the map during low pop is the only obvious solution as of right now that my tiny brain sees. horrid Idea. As a person who work's night's id rather fight on a massive field then play on a small map cause i work night's. I doubt server's will ever reach less then 3000 people at one time anyway and small tactical fight's are part of this game as well so no we won't be doing that least I hope not

[Carnage]

I don't think there will be any issue, the Map may be huge, but fighting will be done along border lines (the meat grinder lines) of each empire, so that narrows the area down a lot.

[Electrofreak]

The old servers could only hold a few hundred players at a time (300-something I think?) and the maps were nearly as big, and we had MASSIVE battles. PS2 increases the total player count on a map by many times.

Players tend to gravitate towards large battles, and it tends to snowball... a target-rich environment can make for some pretty sweet kill streaks.

TTK is what has me worried. In PS1, the TTK was long enough that if a few people started shooting at you, you usually had a chance to get your butt behind cover or at least fire back. From what I've seen, the TTK in the Beta seems too short given how many people we're going to be packing into a battlezone.

[Rivenshield]

From what I've seen, the TTK in the Beta seems too short given how many people we're going to be packing into a battlezone.

I agree. That's another pet concern of mine. But it's an issue to be straightened out in beta, if it's an issue at all.

[Wumpus]

You all are being a bit ridiculous with this unfounded worrying. You remember Planetside's lattice system where what bases your faction controlled determined which bases you could attack next right? Well Planetside didn't implement the lattice until a month before end of beta (about a month after I started playing the PS1 beta back in March 2003).

It was a HUGE improvement. Before it, base back-hacking was rampant and resulted in smaller battles over bases with a segregated population. After the lattice, you could easily tell from looking at the map where the enemy was likely to attack next and you could solidify your defense. Unfortunately this usually meant defending the base itself and most major battles were played out between the base and it's nearby towers.

The hexagonal territorial control system of PS2 is light-years ahead of the lattice. Now you'll have a reason to battle over the land between bases and you'll be able to easily see from the continent map where the front lines of your and your enemy's forces are likely to be. Savvy commanders can engineer a feint where entire platoons can appear to be launching an attack in one area only to have them hop in a Galaxy and attack a completely different section of the map.

Mark my words - in the same way the lattice system forced sides together for massive battles - the hex territory system is a natural evolution of this. Expect some major battles as we've already seen in some of Higby's live feeds recently.

[super pretendo]

Rest assured that any epic battles will be ignored for the stale eSports that will inevitably supplant it

[Wumpus]

Rest assured that any epic battles will be ignored for the stale eSports that will inevitably supplant it

Don't be so quick to judge. What I've heard from the devs so far imply they know full well what made PS a legend and why no true MMOFPS has been released since then. And that is the massive scale warfare. There will likely be smaller scale maps for squad and platoon level e-Sports, but in the end this will just boost the popularity of the primary game = a win win.

[super pretendo]

Popularity itself is a meaningless metric. If its populated with people that don't give a shit about PlanetSide 2 the epic MMOFPS, then we become worse off due to the dilution of the spirit of the game. Non-players will only see PS2 through the lense of fauxhack game announcer dude, instead of cool, community-made videos of community-made battles

[AThreatToYou]

I don't expect battles in PlanetSide 2 to often exceed the epic battles we saw in PlanetSide 1 due to the hex system that should, in theory, disperse the 2000 players over multiple territories. However, the capacity is there for a gigantic battle and it's most likely to happen around the final territories.

[Wumpus]

Popularity itself is a meaningless metric. If its populated with people that don't give a shit about PlanetSide 2 the epic MMOFPS, then we become worse off due to the dilution of the spirit of the game. Non-players will only see PS2 through the lense of fauxhack game announcer dude, instead of cool, community-made videos of community-made battles

Why all the doom and gloom? Why would people who don't give a shit about PS2 continue playing it? One thing I know of for sure is Planetside is only fun when there's a lot of peeps to shoot at. If the original was originally released free to play it would have been a lot more successful. It sounds to me that you actually think PS2 should be a subscription-only game with no ties to e-Sports at all. Look at what e-Sports did for Starcraft in Korea. Get a clue.

[Smed]

Im a Planetside virgin so to speak. I never played PS1 so maybe vets can reassure me. But with so much space to fight over, how likely and often will we get ocassions in which we are able to participate in MASSIVE battles? IE the 2000 player battles that are always talked about and like the trailers showed?

This game is like my dream come true for a game. BF games look like specs of dust beside the scale of this game and it makes me weep with joy. To be standing among you fine folks as 1000 of us line the walls of a fort for the oncoming enslaught heading our way...it will be incredible.

massive battles are happening all the time in the main bases. smaller battles happening at the smaller bases. With the new hotspot instant action system you can find a fight immediately.

[Looopy]

gotta love smed stoppin in ^ Thanks!! :)

[Salad Snake]

their will be something like 2,000 players per server and the frontline bases will probably be populated by 3 quarters of that so unless you go all the way to kingdom come you willl most likely find a fight.
I'm actually wondering precisely the opposite. Even with 600-something to a team, what incentive is there to guard a base that's not seeing any action at the moment? Will there be a lot of instances where a platoon that decides to attack an out of the way base finds it completely undefended? I hope not but I don't see where you could give motivation to guard every hex of your territory.

[SpottyGekko]

I'm actually wondering precisely the opposite. Even with 600-something to a team, what incentive is there to guard a base that's not seeing any action at the moment? Will there be a lot of instances where a platoon that decides to attack an out of the way base finds it completely undefended? I hope not but I don't see where you could give motivation to guard every hex of your territory.

My understanding is that capping takes longer the further away you are from your own faction controlled territory.

So, for instance, cap time could be:
5 mins in a hex adjoining your faction territory
10 mins in a hex 2 hexes away from your controlled territory
20 mins in a hex 3 hexes away, etc.

If there is an alarm triggered when someone initiates a cap sequence, then it gives the defender time to respond and neutralize the capper.

The "depth defence" theory also encourages factions to try and keep an even frontline. If your borders are very jagged, it will give the enemy plenty of opportunity to do deep strikes in your territory.

[Salad Snake]

Ah, I knew it would take longer, but I guess empty bases wouldn't be a problem if it alerted the faction getting base-jacked.

[GhettoPrince]

The problem is that they don't have a lattice system, if you watch the streams you can see the entire map changes hands every 20 minutes. If anyone can cap anything than what's the point of having amp stations and tech plants? It doesn't look like you are even at a disadvantage for not having a tech plant because a single burster max can nuke any aircraft in the game and even a main battle tank will lose 1/3rd of it's health to the battle rank 1, uncerted , dumbfire rocket launcher. :eek:

What I'm saying is, we are looking at a very, very early beta. I think 2 or 3 months from now we will see something really interesting, but right now it looks like they still have to get the netcode and the bones of the game finished before they can even begin to work on balance and nail down exactly how the map can be captured,

[Wumpus]

The problem is that they don't have a lattice system, if you watch the streams you can see the entire map changes hands every 20 minutes. If anyone can cap anything than what's the point of having amp stations and tech plants? It doesn't look like you are even at a disadvantage for not having a tech plant because a single burster max can nuke any aircraft in the game and even a main battle tank will lose 1/3rd of it's health to the battle rank 1, uncerted , dumbfire rocket launcher. :eek:

What I'm saying is, we are looking at a very, very early beta. I think 2 or 3 months from now we will see something really interesting, but right now it looks like they still have to get the netcode and the bones of the game finished before they can even begin to work on balance and nail down exactly how the map can be captured,

Yes they will definitely have to tweak how long it takes to cap certain structures and terrain hexes (and tweak the time to kill algorithm). But as far as I can tell you still need to cap the terrain hexes leading up to a base so in essence there is a lattice system of sorts - you can't just Galaxy drop into the center of your enemy's territory and cap a base that's totally surrounded by enemy controlled hexes.

[Boone]

It's an early ass/raw Beta with no organization, clueless players, and the servers probably aren't even at full tilt yet. I'd calm down, we have plenty of time to worry that's for sure.

[Hunterzen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ49o7GA0O8&playnext=1&list=PLCE14FD46770727DB&feature=results_video

Check this out.

[Cyrane]

The OP mentions 1000 people standing on the walls of a fort defending it etc.. sort of like in Planetside 1. However what is preventing people from just running all over a base without proper walls or other defenses stopping them, from the footage I have seen so far there seems to be a noticeable lack of walls or other defenses that prevent people from running all over the place.

Hopefully Smed is still reading this thread and could give us some insight, or any of the other people in this thread of course :)

[Antihero]

horrid Idea. As a person who work's night's id rather fight on a massive field then play on a small map cause i work night's. I doubt server's will ever reach less then 3000 people at one time anyway and small tactical fight's are part of this game as well so no we won't be doing that least I hope not

Yea! I LOVE going behind enemy lines or engaging in a small battles for a tower. Restricting player freedom would kill the game.

[Hunterzen]

The OP mentions 1000 people standing on the walls of a fort defending it etc.. sort of like in Planetside 1. However what is preventing people from just running all over a base without proper walls or other defenses stopping them, from the footage I have seen so far there seems to be a noticeable lack of walls or other defenses that prevent people from running all over the place.

Hopefully Smed is still reading this thread and could give us some insight, or any of the other people in this thread of course :)

I agree that what I've seen so far of the base designs I don't like that much there's no sense of castle like defenses of people defending walls, and only a few entrances, but in fairness I think we haven't seen most of the base designs. I would like to see the PS2 bases resemble more of the PS1 bases.

[Broadside]

Trust me when I say that I can neither confirm nor deny that at any given time there is an epic 3-way siege taking place at The Crown. I can also neither confirm nor deny that it's hard to look in any one direction during these battles without seeing huge tank columns getting blanketed by volleys of 105 mm shells from liberators in the face of impregnable AA defenses.

I can neither confirm nor deny that this is the most fun [the lucky players in the beta] have ever had, and that the sunsets in this game look disgustingly beautiful.

[Sick Boy]

Trust me when I say that I can neither confirm nor deny that at any given time there is an epic 3-way siege taking place at The Crown. I can also neither confirm nor deny that it's hard to look in any one direction during these battles without seeing huge tank columns getting blanketed by volleys of 105 mm shells from liberators in the face of impregnable AA defenses.

I can neither confirm nor deny that this is the most fun [the lucky players in the beta] have ever had, and that the sunsets in this game look disgustingly beautiful.

what you are neither confirming nor denying sounds awesome

[HeatLegend]

Just watch the Higby streams, thats some massive warfare there- and that isn't even organized into outfits; just wait till the release.

[BlackOriOn]

I believe you will see some exquisite battles. With all the veteran players coming from PS1 the game will have a great foundation of experience. Just wait when you see a column of 20 tanks, dozens of reavers and mossies, and a fleet of galaxies fly over all heading for the same base. It brings a tear to your eye.

[Broadside]

what you are neither confirming nor denying sounds awesome

It does sound quite awesome. Rumor has it that when you swoop in on a huge armor battle in the middle of a canyon and take out a half dozen tanks with one barrage it is the most satisfying feeling you'll ever have in a game. Apparently it looks really pretty too, especially at night.

[DiabloTigerSix]

Nonsense. The maps might be too small actually. Project Reality has 4x4km maps, only 64 (sometimes 128) players and there's plenty of action when played properly. 2000+ players on 8x8km maps - that's more than 5 times more players per the same amount of space. I'm hoping for some 16x16km maps.

[ringring]

The old servers could only hold a few hundred players at a time (300-something I think?) and the maps were nearly as big, and we had MASSIVE battles. PS2 increases the total player count on a map by many times.

Players tend to gravitate towards large battles, and it tends to snowball... a target-rich environment can make for some pretty sweet kill streaks.

TTK is what has me worried. In PS1, the TTK was long enough that if a few people started shooting at you, you usually had a chance to get your butt behind cover or at least fire back. From what I've seen, the TTK in the Beta seems too short given how many people we're going to be packing into a battlezone.
At the beginning of July it was 600.