3 Continents under construction

[ringring]

We have heard that there are 3 continents under construction which at present are only in the conceptual stage.

Do you think they'll be fed into the game as they're ready, ie one by one or will the devs save them up, add in the meta-game changes and bring them in all at once, perhaps to coincide with SOE Live in Sept/Oct 2013?

[Littleman]

I'm pretty gosh darn sure SOE can't afford to make people wait a year for brand new continents. We won't get sancs that serve any functional purpose and actual continental lock outs that won't potentially shut people out from playing until at least 6 continents are in the game, of this I'm pretty damned sure, but I would not bet on SOE holding out on adding any lands in tandem with others. I fully expect to see them implemented as they're finished, or near enough so that all they'd need to do is tweak a few aspects as issues arise.

The meta game and other core variables will be adjusted as more areas to fight over are opened up and there is actual room from strategy on the intercontinental scale. Right now, we kind of need all three continents to be open at all times, especially once release hits. @_@ ugh...

[Brusi]

Considering the game is free to play and doesn't rely on selling expansions, i spose it would make sense for updates to happy as regularly as possible.

[Fafnir]

They need to add 4th continent fast to introduce proper metagame - cross continental warfare.

[SturmovikDrakon]

A continent can take up to 4-6 months to create... I very well doubt they'll be releasing them in batches

They'll release them as they're ready

[Sifer2]

They need to add 4th continent fast to introduce proper metagame - cross continental warfare.


They said the cross continent warfare wont go live until 6 of them are in unfortunately. Cause they don't want to bottleneck players at the warpgates too much. Which is kind of what would happen if each Empire had a home continent but not much land to fight over.

On the main topic no I think they will release the continents as they are ready. In an interview one of the devs were talking about Searhus being the next continent they were already making right now. It will be Volcanic, and have a focus on tight pathways for ground forces with lava so you don't have much room to stray off the main paths.

[SpcFarlen]

They did get a lot of good data when releasing Esamir and Amerish. Indar was kind of a shot in the dark and the amount of change we have seent there shows it, also why it has three distinct climate/topography areas. So to that extent i wouldnt really expect to see any new continent in the next upcoming months.

I also think they will need a bit more data, the continents are still changing and getting what they have perfected is much more important. Having 3 continents that work well, having people play on the for hours without getting bored, is much more important than just straight numbers.

[PoisonTaco]

Well hopefully they make lots of money after the game launches so they can make the team bigger. More money = more devs = more and faster updates.

[Jammie]

They said the cross continent warfare wont go live until 6 of them are in unfortunately. Cause they don't want to bottleneck players at the warpgates too much. Which is kind of what would happen if each Empire had a home continent but not much land to fight over.

On the main topic no I think they will release the continents as they are ready. In an interview one of the devs were talking about Searhus being the next continent they were already making right now. It will be Volcanic, and have a focus on tight pathways for ground forces with lava so you don't have much room to stray off the main paths.

Cross-Continent? What exactly does that imply? I'm new to Planetside so excuse my ignorance but I'm unsure how it can be cross continent, will you be able to shoot from one map to the other?

[Timithos]

They said the cross continent warfare wont go live until 6 of them are in unfortunately. Cause they don't want to bottleneck players at the warpgates too much. Which is kind of what would happen if each Empire had a home continent but not much land to fight over.

On the main topic no I think they will release the continents as they are ready. In an interview one of the devs were talking about Searhus being the next continent they were already making right now. It will be Volcanic, and have a focus on tight pathways for ground forces with lava so you don't have much room to stray off the main paths.

Yeah, Searhus is in a more advanced stage then these other two concept continents.

[Sifer2]

Cross-Continent? What exactly does that imply? I'm new to Planetside so excuse my ignorance but I'm unsure how it can be cross continent, will you be able to shoot from one map to the other?


It will be as it was in Planetside 1. Where you Empire can conquer every piece of territory on the continent including its warpgates. When you conquer the warpgate you can then use it to teleport to another continent that it connects to, and continue fighting an taking land from there. With the goal being global domination.

The developers have said as a new twist though for Planetside 2 they hope to add water vehicles, and the ability to move from continent to continent across the oceans. Which will be a game changer if they manage it.

[ChipMHazard]

As far as we know they plan to release 3 new continents in 2013, no idea how they will be released.

[Ritual]

I asked SOE this very question in one of the developer chats.

They said that as soon as each continent is ready, they will be patched in.

No waiting for "batches" of them.

[Minor]

Consider 1 year to be the timeline for 6 continents.

Having beta'd a few other MMO's like star wars and world of tanks, I can tell you that world of tanks has just introduced british tanks, 2 years after launch...the 5th or 6th nation of tanks.

By November 20 2013, 6 continents should be close to existing the 6th being put in around that time.

The game should run 2 or 3 times better than it does now by then. Massive profits will have finally brought AMD optimizations in place around the 6th month...having been freed from Nvidia slavery.

The above is just a wild guess-timation based on experience.

[Littleman]

C

The game should run 2 or 3 times better than it does now by then. Massive profits will have finally brought AMD optimizations in place around the 6th month...having been freed from Nvidia slavery.

The above is just a wild guess-timation based on experience.

Well, between better drivers and people caving into getting better hardware, yeah I expect people to experience better FPS :p There is no magical fix for the fact we have hundreds of things happening at once, unlike every other game though. I wish people would stop thinking 150-300 guys in one area is no more demanding than 64.

[TheStigma]

You know - they don't HAVE to necessarily wait until they have at least 3 more continents before they rejigger the gameflow for cross-continental warfare. It would be trivially easy to just make a duplicate of each of the 3 continents we already have (with swapped warpgates just to mix it up a little) and thus make it 6 continents in actual play.

That would make it very easy for them to later on just swap in newly created continents seamlessly with one of the duplicates - without having to re-write the whole strategic metagame like a year after release...

-Stigma

[Bartowski]

It will be as it was in Planetside 1. Where you Empire can conquer every piece of territory on the continent including its warpgates. When you conquer the warpgate you can then use it to teleport to another continent that it connects to, and continue fighting an taking land from there. With the goal being global domination.

The developers have said as a new twist though for Planetside 2 they hope to add water vehicles, and the ability to move from continent to continent across the oceans. Which will be a game changer if they manage it.

That would be insane if they did that lol. I didn't know about the cross continent play until now, but i was worried that there would be to many maps, and not enough people, if they did this, that would make alot more sense.