How many People?

[Kam]

Yes, the noobs would come. But they are easy to kill and I'm a loner, so bring em!

[I Hate Pants]

I wonder is the SOE team has anything planned for PlanetSide at E3 this year? That would surely help Planetside out.

[Lartnev]

Spork has said there will be a Planetside stall showing stuff for post 2.8 or something.

As for marketting, I definatly remember Planetside adverts on TV (which are few and far between in this country apart from EA sports games). Unfortunatly I also remember them sucking

[Onizuka-GTO]

Is it just me? or does Planetside Development team seem to be lacking in man power?
I mean even in games like Necron and Everquest they get new section, area to play in. It's like the server have alot of space.
But the PS attitude is like the gaming engine is limited, its hard to create new areas, and we can only add a few new items at irregular times with long development phases.
Maybe they should advertise for more staff so that they will have a seperate PR dept. and more help to bring out, polish, and fix the game with new stuff? perhaps?

[Red October]

...or perhaps SOE see's Planetside as the Ugly red-headed step-child? In other words, someone convinced someone to do it, but...the majority big-whigs didn't like the idea of the game. But their making a profit, so they keep it going, hoping it will die out eventually....scary to think that way.

[JakeLogan]

Originally Posted by Red October

...or perhaps SOE see's Planetside as the Ugly red-headed step-child? In other words, someone convinced someone to do it, but...the majority big-whigs didn't like the idea of the game. But their making a profit, so they keep it going, hoping it will die out eventually....scary to think that way.

I agree, it does often seem that way with the minimal advertisement, (I haven't seen any advertisement since release) and it does also seem the the PS staff is running on a skeleton crew with just enough people to make a new patch every 2 months. But I figure this game is more like a test. Sure things may get screwed up from time to time with new bugs and lag but with the next incranation(SP?) of PS they will have at least a game to look back at and study before making it

[Lartnev]

Originally Posted by Onizuka-GTO

Is it just me? or does Planetside Development team seem to be lacking in man power?
I mean even in games like Necron and Everquest they get new section, area to play in. It's like the server have alot of space.
But the PS attitude is like the gaming engine is limited, its hard to create new areas, and we can only add a few new items at irregular times with long development phases.
Maybe they should advertise for more staff so that they will have a seperate PR dept. and more help to bring out, polish, and fix the game with new stuff? perhaps?

Well, for a start EverQuest is SOE's flagship game, so you can see why they dump such resources into it.

Secondly, most of EverQuests new content comes via expansions (Omens of War will be the 8th I think and yes, it's beginning to piss off the players), which are done by a seperate team to the main developers. The normal patches come out at roughly the same rate as Planetside currently does, and that's mainly fixes to the new graphics engine and minor tweaks to weapons and stuff.

Thirdly I could play with a ping of 1 second in Everquest and it won't matter too much (although stuff could start warping), mainly because your character does all the hard work for you and the fact that only basic info needs to be sent to the client. Could you imagine playing Planetside with a ping of 1 second?

Finally adding new content to EverQuest is a lot easier than adding new content to Planetside. Taking weapons for example: Whilst the hard part in EQ is just adding what stats the weapon has, the hard part in Planetside is not only deciding on what stats the weapon has (RoF, CoF, damage etc) but balancing that against other weapons. You then have to deal with the animations, something EQ doesn't have to worry about too much (every 1 hand slash weapon has the same animation for example, and you can't see weapons in first person).

In summary, Planetside isn't a MMORPG, it's a MMOFPS and not only is it the only one but it is barely a year old. As a result comparing it to games which have been around for years, in a genre which has not only been around longer, but is also very different to that of Planetside isn't really fair on PS.