Improvement: What many games get WRONG when dealing with a TEAM environment...

[Reni]

What many games get WRONG when dealing with a TEAM environment beyond your small groups.

Most games tend to put too little focus into the guild/clan/outfit aspect of gameplay. We see very little when it comes to them beyond the basic essentials.

Let’s first look at where Planetside started. I personally feel that given the technology at the time it was developed, it had the essentials and it worked. Unfortunately, the essentials are it that most game development companies put in place.

Planetside 2, however, has a great amount of potential to go beyond the essentials.

Let’s start with the essentials…Team chat, guild chat, guild page with news features, roster, and ranking system, and limited administrative functions. With an MMOFPS, command and control are HUGE factors in a war. Outfits, like in Planetside, will be a key to the success of Planetside 2. With that, outfits should have a vast amount of tools at their discretion to help with management, communication, overall teamwork, and ability for more command and control both in and out of game.


Below is a list of ideas:
Outfit Area of Operations Map – Displays location of outfit members. You can zoom in to show details and pull up information on what each member’s status is to include loadouts.

Outfit Missions and Orders – Ability for commanders to assign specific missions to members of the outfit, to include customized mission sets.

In-game Outfit Forums – In-game forums system that allows for planning of battles and other private in-game communications.

Advanced Rank System – Allows for even minor outfit functions to be assigned as permissions to each rank.

Outfit Owned Facilities – A place where outfits have ownership. Can be constructed/built by the outfit. Environments can be more interactive with an outfits Command Operations Center and what not. More of a social but can hold tactical elements to it.

Battle Reports/Lessons Learned – A useful tool. Fill out reports that can be filed and categorized. It’s a learning tool where a players can submit detailed reports of how enemies fight, what the outfit did right or wrong and how it can improve.

For example, let’s say TR Outfit A is fighting Vanu Outfit E. Vanu Outfit E notices TR Outfit A uses drop ships 80% of the time to start and sustain a raid on a base/facility. They drop MAX’s in the courtyard with the first Galaxy, and then they drop a Recon element with the next. Then comes a third with ground support elements and a Loader with an AMS. Vanu Outfit E knows this because intel provided showed that the majority of the enemy force was TR Outfit A and they look at the Battle Reports within the outfit to see how they tend to fight.


These tools can then be shared between outfits as well. Providing a new element to how we fight and how we must evolve in combat to survive.

I would like to continue this thread topic by adding other player’s thoughts and ideas. Please post constructive comments, ideas, thoughts, critiques and I will update my original post accordingly.

Hopefully this can be a tool the developers can use and take into consideration.

-Reni

[Warborn]

Definitely some good ideas here.

Originally Posted by Reni

Outfit Area of Operations Map

I like this. Being able to see your friends on the map whether you're grouped or not would be excellent.

Outfit Missions and Orders

Will probably be able to be handled via the command system. Either way allowing objectives to be clearly displayed and broken down even into a general outfit-level objective and the objectives of individual squads would no doubt be beneficial to keeping people on-task whether they're on a dedicated op or not.

In-game Outfit Forums

For sure. How hard can it be to all something minor like a forum to be accessible in-game? Personally I think this is another valuable feature that outfits would benefit from. Especially the outfits that are much more casual and don't have their own external websites.

Advanced Rank System

Making rank too complex would be unnecessarily... complex. Allowing for a variety of ranks to be customized with various features (setting titles/ranks, adding members, removing members, moderating in-game forums, moderating chat, etc) would be good, but is more detailed rank features than that needed?

Outfit Owned Facilities

I'm not in favour of this specifically. I really like the idea of outfits having bases, but actual bases on continents are really very temporary holdings. In every game I've played where guilds could claim territory, you pretty much always lost it a day or two later as the fighting shifted. And you often were not even online to defend your base.

I'd rather see something different, more like having outfit... space stations, or islands, or something like that. Bases you can build up which grant bonuses to members and allow special abilities to commanders, but which are permanent or semi-permanent. I know City of Heroes allowed guilds to build bases and also to attack each other's bases, so maybe a system like that could be put in, too.

Either way, I like guilds spending money they earn from victory to grow and acquire cool stuff like territory. I don't like territory you lose in a day or two, as it doesn't have any real meaning then. I think there's a better way to do it, and I think separating guild territory from regular continent territory is one possibility.

Battle Reports/Lessons Learned

You can just do this via forum posts. That's how I've always done them for guilds/corps that have had AARs.

[DviddLeff]

Here are my ideas for PS improvements to its outfit system.

Relevant to PS2 are:

• Owned bases/stations
• Divisions
• Rank insignia
• Outfit uniform
• Ability to apply to outfits rather than have to be invited
• Automatic promotions/demotions/kicking
• Rank ability customisation
• Outfit alliances
• Outfit officer chat
• Performance graphs showing kills/experience/captures/active players/etc
• Multiple leaders
• Outfit mergers
• Enhanced outfit comparison
• Event log (who joined/left/promoted/demoted)
• Outfit deletions if it falls below a certain level of activity.

[Garem]

These are fantastic!

In regards to In-Game access to forums- these should be visible out of game as well! Better yet, just make an in-game browser akin to EVE. It works great.

I'm afraid Battle Reports may get convoluted. Perhaps this is best organized by the players to allow flexibility for preferences. The idea is great- I instituted a similar program within my Mount and Blade: Warband clan. I just don't see it working if strictly confined to "forms".

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

my ideas for PS improvements to its outfit system.

This thread is about Reni's ideas.

[Reni]

Originally Posted by Warborn

This thread is about Reni's ideas.

Feel free to share your ideas too! I apologize, it was a bit late when I posted and my intent was to bring discussion and have create a starting point for it.