social integration & 3rd party apps

NapalmEnima · 2011-10-02, 10:09 PM

PS2 is the first MMO I know of that will incorporate social networking hooks right out of the gate. It will also be exposing a huge amount of data/stats/etc.

What sort of things do you expect to see?

I personally think we'll see a lot more offline interaction between players resulting from being able to look up Player X's facebook/twitter/g+.

We'll be much more likely to discover other friends who are also playing, find them online and blast-them-in-the-face or squad-up-and-kick-ass. There might also be some sort of recruitment incentive. "Every time one of my friends signs through a link from my page, I get N station cash/resources/XP/whatever."

We'll be able to create grudge lists of people who killed us the most. Gratitude lists for folks who have helped us the most (repairs, healing resupply, whatever).

And this data could be collected on the company level, or even for the empire as a whole.

Legion · 2011-10-02, 10:34 PM

I just want a web portal to check messages, look at and maybe update my certificate queue, look at my outfit stats, etc.

Edit - Also maybe lookup other players in a search function. Look up stats about the continents, real time, etc.

Captain B · 2011-10-02, 10:44 PM

Part of the reason Facebook games work is because it binds people together and allows you to share things easily and on-the-go. Success with WoW was in part due to Blizzard's reach outside of the mmo market, where suddenly cheerleaders who liked Lost Vikings and the biggest Diablo fans alongside Warcraft gosus were intermingling at the local level. Facebook provides that sort of "local" feel online amongst lots of people due to its social nature, and I think being able to allow for "I just dropped my balls on TR's drop ship base! Come join me here!" updates as opposed to "I need a bucket of water for my stupid cow in Farmville!" would be not only more interesting but also get people talking.

"Captain B, where'd you get that Facebook game?" "It isn't a Facebook game, but it is F2P." "Do I have to have 40 friends to harvest my grain??" "No, but you'll have 40 folks around you to help you take a dump on Vanu Sovereignty." "Shaweet! Sign me up!"

Besides, it wouldn't be nearly as annoying as "Can you come click this house in my town so that I can get leet gold to buy cabbage?" I'd totally accept offers if they were "We need some air support on Indar. Would you please log in and curb stomp some Magriders?"

NapalmEnima · 2011-10-02, 11:30 PM

Originally Posted by Captain B

I'd totally accept offers if they were "We need some air support on Indar. Would you please log in and curb stomp some Magriders?"

A: Oh no you di'nt! All your vanguard are belong to VS!

B: Precisely.

Outside of FB, an outfit's private web page might be able to list The Current Mission, who's on & where they are, and so forth.

Within your social network of choice, you might have scheduled events (Meet-up for PS2: "Blow Up"), recommended skills based on what you've already trained, suggested cash shop purchases (with pix), whatever.

I really hope the stat mining can help to foster friendly, ingame outfit rivalries. "So-n-So's Roughnecks" gave us quite a pasting last week, with a x/y kill-death ratio and a total of Z kills. Lets go get some payback."

OTOH, granting access to your g+/facebook/twitter/etc account names makes it possible for some twit who took a death or three personally to go all cyber-stalker on you. I can see them not giving out that information to folks from other empires on a given server specifically to prevent that sort of thing.

Legion · 2011-10-02, 11:30 PM

I don't know if I want to interlink my Planetside 2 info with my facebook account, but I would like a similar type system designed specifically for the game. Recently I have been playing the Battlefield 3 Beta and I must say that the Battlelog is one of the best new features. Something like that would be great.

You would be able to have a friends list, create outfits on the website and join them on the website, look at your stats for each weapon and vehicle, look at your medals/trophies/achievements, etc.

Sirisian · 2011-10-02, 11:58 PM

I'd like if their REST web service exposed APIs to get the full state of the game at certain times if only to keep backed up copies for replays. This thread here explains what's really needed from SOE.

This allows players to query for things like the full kill/death/support history for players along with what they used and where they were standing and aiming when they performed such an action. This will allow for nice data mining for common strategies and how the maps are utilized. Not to mentioned the more obvious playback feature so you can watch any battle as it happened and record a video at a later time to show friends. (Or tell them to open up the game's replayer and watch at X time and Y location).

Yeah that's all I'd want since it would give me the data required to do pretty much anything.

kaffis · 2011-10-03, 08:36 AM

I'm not that enthused about Facebook hooks, because frankly, I don't need to spam Planetside 2 updates to my coworkers (for the same reason I seethe with rage whenever I see a new Facebook game from some friend show up on my wall), and Facebooks groups are a real afterthought and not core enough for external APIs to be aware of them, AFAIK.

Google+, on the other hand, would be ideal. I'd totally hook G+ into Planetside 2 if I can set up a circle for my gaming buddies to let Planetside stream updates to. Especially if PS2 allows me granular control over what in-game actions will automatically feed updates, as well as let me push (custom) updates on demand if I don't like the auto-feed.

NapalmEnima · 2011-10-03, 12:09 PM

Originally Posted by kaffis

Google+, on the other hand, would be ideal. I'd totally hook G+ into Planetside 2 if I can set up a circle for my gaming buddies to let Planetside stream updates to. Especially if PS2 allows me granular control over what in-game actions will automatically feed updates, as well as let me push (custom) updates on demand if I don't like the auto-feed.

This. I was just checking out the Google Plus API last night. It's Easy to pick out circles when you want to generate a post. So a given app could let the user pick out one or more circles to use by default.

The G+ post UI also has a built in "change the circles" section, so you don't have to stick to the default every time.

Personally, I'd like to get an email when my training queue runs dry, but that's not really "social media". I suppose it could come from a server-specific (and empire specific?) twitter account, but that kind of spam might be Frowned On by the folks at twitter. Then again, maybe not. >shrug<

LZachariah · 2011-10-03, 03:57 PM

One thing I definitely want is an Android app that lets me interact with my skill tree while I'm away from my computer. Yes, I know that I level slower when I'm offline, but I would save plenty of time if I were able to slot new skills the moment that a previous one is done training. Besides, I'd feel like a badass taking out my cell phone and qeueing up more skills that I want. Technology equals might, bitches.

It would also be great to have an app that was a skill/time calculator. Like, I want to know how much XP (and how much time-to-train) it would take to cert myself to where I want to be (at which point, everything else is frosting).

~Zachariah

Xyntech · 2011-10-03, 04:21 PM

Originally Posted by LZachariah

One thing I definitely want is an Android app that lets me interact with my skill tree while I'm away from my computer. Yes, I know that I level slower when I'm offline, but I would save plenty of time if I were able to slot new skills the moment that a previous one is done training. Besides, I'd feel like a badass taking out my cell phone and qeueing up more skills that I want. Technology equals might, bitches.

It would also be great to have an app that was a skill/time calculator. Like, I want to know how much XP (and how much time-to-train) it would take to cert myself to where I want to be (at which point, everything else is frosting).

~Zachariah

How about the ability to customize your loadouts from outside the game? Or being able to private message with someone in game who is on your friends list/in your outfit from outside the game?

Things like that, along side being able to see in real time where the battles are happening from an out of game map view could go a long way towards getting you ready to fight in advance of actually logging into the game.

Talek Krell · 2011-10-03, 06:14 PM

Originally Posted by Xyntech

Things like that, along side being able to see in real time where the battles are happening from an out of game map view could go a long way towards getting you ready to fight in advance of actually logging into the game.

+1 to that out of game map view idea. I'd use that app.

Bruttal · 2011-10-03, 06:29 PM

am hoping for an app that will let me improve via shots fried accurccy and where i get killed the most at so i know where to stay away from. and even more so see who am healing/fixing the most over a 30 day period more then likely me and that other person should be squaded more.

Vash02 · 2011-10-03, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by Xyntech

How about the ability to customize your loadouts from outside the game? Or being able to private message with someone in game who is on your friends list/in your outfit from outside the game?

Things like that, along side being able to see in real time where the battles are happening from an out of game map view could go a long way towards getting you ready to fight in advance of actually logging into the game.

Adding to that, there could be a tool for outfit leaders and officers to be able to direct their outfit squads using phones/tablets with an overview map. just be able to draw directions with their fingers that appears on the players maps. Maybe also even join the players voice chat.
Something for the control freaks.

Actually thinking about it I dont think they would allow two way stuff on the scale I'm thinking of.

Xyntech · 2011-10-03, 07:15 PM

Originally Posted by Vash02

Adding to that, there could be a tool for outfit leaders and officers to be able to direct their outfit squads using phones/tablets with an overview map. just be able to draw directions with their fingers that appears on the players maps. Maybe also even join the players voice chat.
Something for the control freaks.

Actually thinking about it I dont think they would allow two way stuff on the scale I'm thinking of.

Yeah, that could be a problem to be sending stuff into the game from outside of it.

Hopefully most of the outgoing data won't be a problem though. I could see a map view being seen as a small advantage if you had your phone or laptop/tablet open while you played, but you can open the map view so easily that I don't see it being a bad idea.

Who knows though, maybe some out of game input into the game could work out. As long as it was secure.

NapalmEnima · 2011-10-03, 07:33 PM

Originally Posted by Xyntech

As long as it was secure.

It would have to be tied to a particular player account & character. Then as long as you're not leaving yourself open to "man in the middle" stuff with some basic crypto, I don't see a problem.

OTOH, with F2P account spamming, it would be fairly simple to get in on empire-level information. As such, I doubt they'll give information like "where all your empire mates on continent X" out. Limited to an outfit perhaps, but I shudder to think how exploitable empire wide player location info would be.