[Figment]

I think the main problem with SOE is the long term vision (you touched on that in the last point). I think that includes taking on too many projects and assigning inexperienced (though motivated) people to work in game genres they're not really familiar with.

And I've heard from many sources they don't have a good coding standard. Remember how messy the code was of PS1? Remember Beady commenting on how the code came without any notes about what parts of the code did?


PS2 often felt to me like RPG designers creating a FPS. The bases were designed around fitting in the landscape, but not to function defensively. Lots and lots of time has been wasted on creating then recreating and recreating the same continents.

They should have looked for experience they didn't have on the team. Personally I would have advised bringing in a military engineer as advisor for base design.

I also think that there's a big issue in knowledge transfer within the company. Where Arclegger was starting to create better bases (as I think we all agree), other devs were still making open boxes. There should have been a core principle on base design. Where all PS2 bases went out of their way to be different and nifty scenery (nice in itself for lore), there was no structure to it. In contrast, PS1 bases all shared the same principles through all base types, making it easier for players to "learn" how a base functioned and should be controlled in defense or attack due to its multi-linear battle flow, even if the layouts differed.

With PS2, not only did you have to learn each base lay-out and environment, each base would have different principles to capture, there were few ways to control a base as there was no linear flow at all. And jetpacks. I think one of the biggest flaws was adding jetpacks for regular infantry. Jetpacks in PS1 had limited impact due to being VS only and MAX only. Mossiedroppers were frequently hated and feared for very good reason: for taking the height advantage from the defenders and bringing the fight from just ONE new direction in a tower fight: above. Same goes for HARTing in on squad leaders (and overlooking the ease of switching squad leader).

I really don't think they had a thorough idea what impact jetpacks would have on every aspect of the game by handing over the height advantage to people (particularly taking it from the defenders) so easily, but just thought "it's the future and it's cool, let's do it". I'm quite sure they trivialised the impact it would have.