[Xyntech]

I agree about the intercontinental strategy being lacking at the moment, but I'm not worried just yet. We've been concerned about even just continental level strategy in the past, but it seems to me that their heading down the right path.

Just like with the rest of the metagame discussion, it's important that they build from the ground up. Making sure that the game has good moment to moment gameplay first, with things like improved gunplay and flight physics, then work on making continental strategy more rich and dynamic. As everything takes shape in beta, I think there will be plenty of room to start adding intercontinental strategy. We've already got a lot of good ideas on these forums for simple changes to the game which would add global strategy, some of which would even work with just the initial 3 continents.

In the end, all gameplay is pretty meaningless. Even if you capture the entire world, it's really just one big flag you took. One big round. I understand that psychology is an important part of game design, and that capturing one big global flag really is 1000x more awesome than capturing lesser flags, but as Malorn says, it's really not an essential gameplay element.

The depth of the game, the metagame, and global strategy are much more important to the longevity of the game than they are to the day to day gameplay. I do believe that the game will suffer the longer it has no global strategy, but I just don't see this stage of development as being the time where it's essential that it get finished ASAP. Hopefully the devs aren't paying global strategy zero attention in their current design ideas, but it really is something that can wait until the other core gameplay elements are solidified. Just look at how many PS1 staples were added shortly after launch.

The metagame is mostly up to the community, and the rest is up to the devs to support what emerges from the community. The best we can do is make sure to elevate global strategies importance at the right times during beta.