[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

I highly recommend reading your new boss's ideas on that.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...-fu/#continued

I agree with Smed that players are eating through content at a much faster rate than can be produced. We've gotten better at breaking down games and there are more of us for better parallel processing. Making new content should be looked at how to maximize effect. Let's take some quick looks at examples from the past.

Battle Islands, when they were released they were actually quite fun to play on and people would jump at the chance to fight on one that lined up with their desired game play. (This was before the last rule change that homogenized their rule sets and effectively made them terra non grata) The thing that drew players to them was not the territory but the rules that went along with it. New ground can be scouted out and processed in a very short amount of time by any old commander but the restrictions on the tools available made specialists hunger for fights there. Quick example would be the tank fights that raged on desolation where the only AV was other tanks as aircraft were banned. Actually, I can think of salient examples from each of the 4 BI right after release.
Good times gone, ne'er to be again.

CE update, firstly can I just say I really hope that we get CE, infils, and squad exp soon because those are things that fight against needing good frames per second? Anyway, the update added the aegis, field turrets, cloaking turrets, flack turrets, and anti-tank traps. People came back to try these things out like you would expect from an update so you don't need large radical things to draw people back to a game they already like. These new tools allowed for greater creativity and leveraged PS's greatest asset of non-linear combat by which I mean that it is rare to be in a situation more than once. These new deployables added more variables that players could come into contact with in the field.
Chalk up another argument for CE being in PS2 in a larger role than it is now.

Caves. Let's not go into too many details as the caves on a whole bring up a whole range of emotions (Annwn anyone? It's Tubular!). The question is which added more gameplay to Planetside, the caves or cave lock? I'd say Cave lock as it could change whole fights around and added a lot to the meta game players had to consider.



There is something that occurs to me, in PS the speed of the game could swing from absolutely breakneck speeds to slow ambles through the countrysides. In PS2 there seems to be a much greater homogenization of speed and now I'm going to tell you that's bad because I'm a PS1 vet who hates change. No, just kidding. I'm going to tell you its bad because in those breathing spaces you can stop and look at the map and pick where to go or do what's even more important from a player retention point of view: Shoot the Shit.
We aren't here because Planetside was a flawless gem. Planetside has flaws. We are here because of each other and them.

I would like to see Planetside 2 learn from history.

If you find flaws or want me to try to elaborate on anything feel free to pick my brain.

PlanetSide 2 is another game where the players are the content, but there is still content provided by the studio, namely the continents. However, even that is something Smed wants to see player driven in the future where players build outposts, probably something along the lines of EVE Online's 0.0 space. Will be interesting to see where that goes.

Weather and day-night cycle and mixing up the starting positions & continent links are great ways to keep adding freshness to the game and getting the most out of existing content.

PS1 had the same 10 continents yet it kept us interested for many years due to the occasional mix-ups of the connections and restructuring of the lattice.

As far as caves go, I have a feeling that this naval combat and inter-continental sea travel will end up being the rough equivalent to Caves. Instead of fighting in caverns you are capturing islands and sea lanes that open up new attack avenues to continents and provide supply lines (aka "cave lock"). Just speculating, but it fits.

I like having variety with continents. Some of that can be achieved with resource distribution. For example, suppose Esamir had few Aerospace materials and they were all around Eisa. Or a continent where there's a small amount of mechanized resources aroudn the warpgates and that's it. I can see different rulesets too like the Battle Islands where certain vehicles or weapons are not permitted. Might be confusing for new players who end up there though.