Only 2 Continents this Year

[Stanis]

Not so sure that this was spotted when it was initially poste.


.. ? 2 New continents are coming this year one of them in the next couple of months. ..


See this thread for the original post (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?postid=892597#post892597)

Fairly clear that the continent design roadmap is planned for the coming year.

It was mentioned in that thread, and I had meant to highlight that fact as it seemed to go uncommented at the time.

I was hoping for stable game. (ie: doesnt crash).
Fixing warpgates/cont locks to mean something.
A continent every other month until we've got 10 to really give PS2 the size it needs to fight a 3 way persistent war without fighting in the same places and same bases day after day.

Perhaps this could be something to add to the official roadmap.

[Sturmhardt]

I don't know, maybe they find a good way to make cross continental warfare work with only a few continents. I really don't have much hope that they can spit out more continents than they announced, they seem to be pretty slow on that side. I can only hope it will work with less.

.sent via phone.

[Sledgecrushr]

This isnt minecraft. Apparently these continents take a lot of work. I would be very happy with continental conquest when they introduce the fourth continent in the next couple of months. Because to introduce continental conquest we would have to have working warp gates and sanctuaries. I hope that this is going to happen because a lot of the posters are right, there is no meta to the combat. People need a reason to leave the crown and the risk of actually losing the entire continent because you parked your ass at the crown all night will make people re evaluate their game play.

[HiroshiChugi]

The design process for making a continent is very constraining and lenghty. It normally takes about at the LEAST 3 months to make a single continent (if I'm not mistaken, but correct me if I'm wrong). I too want more continents, but they will only come as fast as the Devs can work on them.

[Paperboy]

So, most of us will be back playing the game when they finally added sanctuaries in a year or two from now.

Until then, unless Battlefield 4 is more fun :)

[Phantomdestiny]

i'm sure they found a way to it with only 5 . again if a third continent isn't coming in the 1 year plan therefore other big thing are in that plan either sanc or something completely new which might change everyone's minds

[Ghoest9]

"only"

I dont have a problem with this. Sure more is better I guess but we dont even use the 3 we have and 2 more should add significant variety.

I am more interested in mechanism to encourage us to spend more time in areas we already have but ignore.

[Koadster]

"A continent every other month"

Its not like a easy job to make a whole new continent plus we dont have players to support 5 continents much less 10 unless we merge into a super server. Even when we get all 10 I see it as... 3 conts locked by TR, 3 locked by NC, 3 locked by VS and we will still be busy fighting over Indar.

[Stanis]

I struggle to see how a continental warfare or metagame will be meaningful with 4.

It will either limit the fights or the devs will go down some form of lockout timer and a small fireworks display ..

That is not a continental metagame, it is a reward for having more population on one map because the enemy gave up the fight realising they were losing.



I'm very sad.
They must have been working on Amerish and Esamir for much longer than indicated as at one point in tech test it was "we might only have one continent at launch " which soon became two .. and we ended up with three.

As for continents being difficult or time consuming.

Time is a resource of man power.
If they are working on other things - they aren't working on continents.

I kind of expected the 'map' team to be standalone, dedicated and if necessary bigger now for the next 18 months than it will be in 5 years time as the game needs continents.

[Dodgy Commando]

Try making a continent for the game then see if its as easy as you make it sound.

I'm not too worried about the amount of continents. Sure we need more, but we don't need tons of them. A system to make fighting for them more interesting and which encourages us to rotate the ones we play on is required though.

Add on all the other stuff and the devs have a pretty hefty list of things to do. Sure the game wasn't released in a perfect state, but at least we can get a real feeling of progress as time goes on. Business dictates a lot of things in video games these days unofrtunately. Besides, I find it fits in nicely with the devs' premise of integrating player feedback (although we must always keep in mind that it remains their game when they implement things differently from what we expected/hoped).

[Phantomdestiny]

i think you are just being unrealistic. making a map is not just putting down the assets on a 3d space

[Sturmhardt]

Psijakas thread here has some good ideas regarding cross continental warfare with only a few continents:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=53050
.sent via phone.

[MrVicchio]

Slow and steady done right beats "rush it out", so I have no issue with this at all.

[psijaka]

I'll be happy if they turn out 2 well designed fault free continents.

Quality >> quantity

[bpostal]

Give us cont locks. Give us a reason to fight (or keep fighting) and the actual number of conts won't matter.
And what does it matter the number of conts? Quality is what we're after.

[Bocheezu]

I just think they spend too much time working on outposts that no one ever fights at. I mean I remember this post by Malorn

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=50236

look all the shit he's talking about as far as infantry combat and flow and all this crap. Who has fought at these bases? Nobody! I have never been to Cobalt Communications. I went to Jaeger's Fist once when we were capping Esamir and nobody was there.

It comes down to the fact that continents are way too big and have way too many useless outposts that are nothing but empty speedbumps.

[psijaka]

Pella thread here has some good ideas regarding cross continental warfare with only a few continents:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=53050
.sent via phone.

Thanks for the bump!

[Sledgecrushr]

We also need a carrot to go out and take these other continents. I think a 10,000 xp bonus for capping a continent would be significant enough for people to let go of the crown. There also needs to be defending bonuses as well.

[Thunderhawk]

The problem isn't with the quantity I think (10 continents maybe way too much for the current population) - Unless we merge all servers into 3 Massive ones a US - EU - OCEANIC.

The issue is reasons to go to other continents, rather than personal choice.

The problem currently with Planetside 2 is that it's purely down to Player choice where they want to fight, and the mob mentality is keeping everyone on what they know best, Indar.

-----------

Now what needs to happen is some form of maintenance for the facilities you have, or else you lose the facility through neglect. That way, people have reasons to go to other continents.

First, give a reason to own as much land as possible:-

1. Mining facilities provide "Ore" for something.
2. Tech Facilities provide "tech experience" for something (MBTs was a good start)
3. There are all sorts of bases (not just the main ones) but small bases dotted around the place that can be given meaning, purpose, reason. Not so much to make them as important as bases, but more an additive to the benefit of main bases.

(Will need to think more once I sobered up - Liquid lunch today at work)

-------------------------

Secondly give reasons to go back to maintain this land:-

(I am not clear on what form of maintenance this will be, NTU worked well in **The game that shall not be mentioned** but we could come up with something newer for Planetside 2, something more modern, more catchy)

People login looking for a fight, and the reason people dont go to some continents is that there's no one to shoot at. What if there are players having to "maintain" a base that Outfits, even small outfits, can go and disrupt.

Example:-

Group of players maintaining a tech plant on Amerish for some cool reward like Certs or more importantly upgrading their character with an implant slot or something, I dont know, lets figure this out together later. Anyway, A small outfit could specialise in disrupting these maintenance operations, be like a pain in the rear of the empire.

You end up getting small skirmishes everywhere, or you lose your facility (empire owning it) due to lack of maintenance. it goes "neutral" and it could be anyone's game.

Small outfits could even specialise in making bases go neutral and taking it over. and opening up footholds in the middle of locked continents....

Hell, even make it so adjacency doesn't influence hack time, thus giving a more linear timescale for when a base goes neutral to when it's acquired...

-------

Anyway some ideas, either good or bad, just throwing it out there.

[Sledgecrushr]

The problem isn't with the quantity I think (10 continents maybe way too much for the current population) - Unless we merge all servers into 3 Massive ones a US - EU - OCEANIC.

The issue is reasons to go to other continents, rather than personal choice.

The problem currently with Planetside 2 is that it's purely down to Player choice where they want to fight, and the mob mentality is keeping everyone on what they know best, Indar.

-----------

Now what needs to happen is some form of maintenance for the facilities you have, or else you lose the facility through neglect. That way, people have reasons to go to other continents.

First, give a reason to own as much land as possible:-

1. Mining facilities provide "Ore" for something.
2. Tech Facilities provide "tech experience" for something (MBTs was a good start)
3. There are all sorts of bases (not just the main ones) but small bases dotted around the place that can be given meaning, purpose, reason. Not so much to make them as important as bases, but more an additive to the benefit of main bases.

(Will need to think more once I sobered up - Liquid lunch today at work)

-------------------------

Secondly give reasons to go back to maintain this land:-

(I am not clear on what form of maintenance this will be, NTU worked well in **The game that shall not be mentioned** but we could come up with something newer for Planetside 2, something more modern, more catchy)

People login looking for a fight, and the reason people dont go to some continents is that there's no one to shoot at. What if there are players having to "maintain" a base that Outfits, even small outfits, can go and disrupt.

Example:-

Group of players maintaining a tech plant on Amerish for some cool reward like Certs or more importantly upgrading their character with an implant slot or something, I dont know, lets figure this out together later. Anyway, A small outfit could specialise in disrupting these maintenance operations, be like a pain in the rear of the empire.

You end up getting small skirmishes everywhere, or you lose your facility (empire owning it) due to lack of maintenance. it goes "neutral" and it could be anyone's game.

Small outfits could even specialise in making bases go neutral and taking it over. and opening up footholds in the middle of locked continents....

Hell, even make it so adjacency doesn't influence hack time, thus giving a more linear timescale for when a base goes neutral to when it's acquired...

-------

Anyway some ideas, either good or bad, just throwing it out there.

Bing stuck "maintaining" empty bases doesnt seem like a lot of fun to me.

[Sledgecrushr]

What I would like to see are incentives to go to another continent rather than being penalized for not going to a continent.

[endikoa]

ATM on Woodman, there are not enough people on Esamir or Amerish to create intense fighting, then two more continents, I do not see the interest.

Disable Indar for some times, force people to play the other two continents and kill existing bugs...

[Thunderhawk]

No I actually agree with you that it is tedious, hence there needs to be a reason worthwhile to do it, but I cannot think of what that would be.

Theory of maintenance is long term though, what I mean is from capture to going neutral, a base would take (without intervention) say 3 hours?...6 hours? some sort of time frame for it to go neutral.

Either way its purely a reason to get people on a continent, maybe even not have it maintainable, but rather time limit of ownership so that people go to the continent to take it again.

Also, the defending team needs a reason to defend, I just cant think of what could be warranting them do it.

Rgds

Nayer

[Sturmhardt]

Thanks for the bump!

Oh shit, had your name wrong, I'll correct it ;)

.sent via phone.

[Blynd]

tbh the continents shouldnt be that hard to do they have the size and basic shell for each continent as soon as indar was created its about the landscaping and base positioning that again shouldnt take too long as you do that before you put in the landscaping and lastly is the visuals ie trees etc

what id like to see it the number of conts moved up to 4 per year and the out posts thinned out a bit they are to numerous and too close. jesus you can shoot from one outpost to the next,thats way too close - they want massive battles but they need to make less outposts and then there will be bigger fights over those outposts as it is zergs can miss each other nicely because its too easy to move around on opposing zerg because of the amount of outposts.

base design also is already done ( basics anyway) there will always be some tweeks to a base or outpost per cont but basically they are the same. so making a map shouldnt be too hard.

remember the massive battles over laka where the closest outposts were the other sides of long bridges which forced attackers to stage large scale armour battles to get across the bridges if that was put in ps2 we would have an outpost at either end of the bridge negating the forced armour columns that were needed to get to the base let alone capture it. plus towers didnt allow you spawn vehichles only bases making the ebb and flow of battle and supply lines more criticle in ps2 you have too many bases where you can get all vehicles from .

bring back air towers in their true form only air vehicles and make the tanks have to come from a base including sundies and we would find much more interesting fights as you couldnt just spawn at the closest outpost and pull a mbt or sundie.

[psijaka]

An xp bonus for fighting on a low population continent might help. Say 20%, or more if the population is really low.

[psijaka]

ATM on Woodman, there are not enough people on Esamir or Amerish to create intense fighting, then two more continents, I do not see the interest.

Disable Indar for some times, force people to play the other two continents and kill existing bugs...

Forcing your custmers to do what you want them to, rather than let them choose is never a good idea. Carrots not sticks needed.

[Stanis]

Don't believe I said it was easy.
In fact I believe I quite clearly said I expect a large team working on this. You know front loading the effort of developing map, texture, art, assets, base and continent design at the beginning of the 10 year game period.


Anyhow .. perhaps we are lucky on Miller you can find a fight on all 3 continents.
The nature of the fight is different. The cert farm remains the Crown.
Those of us that want more than that struggle to find it - or discover Amerish is pretty good.

To answer why you need more continents for those that don't see enough fighting.
Should you take a continent that means the enemy loses a foothold on it.
This means to get that continent back they have to get through your forces on another continent.

This means over time the fighting is intense over 1 or 2 continents out of perhaps 10 and evolves as the front lines of battle change and evolve.

We have three giant deathmatch arenas right now. This is one reason it has no meaning - victory for a reward means little when everything can be a 3 way cluster. There is no hope of victory is all 3 factions choose to keep spawning in the same places opposing each other.
A good continental metagame allows that - but gives the players strategy that through organisation can prevent it happening and allow for 'victory'.

The reward has to include certs.
Anything else in the game is transient. The game is quite clearly cert driven for a lot of players so if we want them onboard, certs reward it is.

100 certs for achieving a cont lock.
So long as you've earned >10,000 XP on that continent in the preceding 3hrs.
(no last minute hops to get a fat bonus).
It's fairly low and spread out because a lot of players are going to be standing around doing not much to control terrain - and thats how some players want to play too.

[wasdie]

The continents we have are really large and have a lot more contested area to fight over. It's not just base sieges until you push one faction out like it was in PS1.

5 continents by the end of the year is absolutely fine by me if they find some way to link them together.

[Qwan]

Welcome to PS kids this is how its going to be, Its going to take time, this is how it was in PS1 this is how it will be in PS2. I see planetside being up and fully running in about 2yrs. Thats bugs fixed, continents laid out, and possibly added sancs, training grounds and any added weapons or vehicles. IMOP

[MrVicchio]

What planet are you from exactly?

He's from "Complantia". A planet populated by people who are never satisfied, always demanding more, and never do anything but point out the faults of others. Pessimism is a spectator sport there, and their major export is misery.

[Silent Thunder]

He's from "Complantia". A planet populated by people who are never satisfied, always demanding more, and never do anything but point out the faults of others. Pessimism is a spectator sport there, and their major export is misery.

Sounds like my New York really.

[ringring]

What I would like to see are incentives to go to another continent rather than being penalized for not going to a continent.
Indeed .....

which is what the mooted warpgates, continental lattice, home continents and hopefully sanctuaries will bring.

The small number of continents are at the root of the most serious issues in this game. That there will only be 2 additional continents this year, it seems, is a great disappointment.

[AThreatToYou]

I believe Indar should be given the Oshur treatment once we have sancs and cont locks, tbh. That is, Battle Islands. There are already 3 sections of Indar that have well-defined borders and paths of combat. Splitting them up would for sure take some effort, but I think it would go a long way for the game.

[Baneblade]

It is okay to have continents see no big battles for a time, there doesn't need to be a drive to see every server have 10 full continents 24/7.

The problem we have now is only partially a population problem. The other part is the lack of Viability Parity among the theaters of war.

[Xaine]

The main reason people have a problem with this, is because at this rate is going to take at least a year to have the game in a state where cont. locks can be feasible.

They're missing the boat here. This game isn't that new anymore. No one is going to care about Cont. 7 coming out in 2016.

[Ironside]

I'll take 2 if they are well designed with total revamp of base design, can't see this happening though

[Snipefrag]

We don't really need new continents, matter of fact its kind of pointless until some fundamental changes happen that promote fighting on the two that are barren for the most part.

[Mox]

We don't really need new continents, matter of fact its kind of pointless until some fundamental changes happen that promote fighting on the two that are barren for the most part.

I agree that we need some additional mechanics.
We need an intercontinental lattice.
We need real continent locks (also locking the warpgates)
We need real incentives for continent locks.
We need an homecontinent for each empire (with an unlockable warpgate)
Sancs would also be a nice thing.

But to do so we need more continents first.

[Sledgecrushr]

I agree that we need some additional mechanics.
We need an intercontinental lattice.
We need real continent locks (also locking the warpgates)
We need real incentives for continent locks.
We need an homecontinent for each empire (with an unlockable warpgate)
Sancs would also be a nice thing.

But to do so we need more continents first.

I dont know if we HAVE to have more continents. Right now we have enough continents for each faction to have a home continent. We could very well do a three continent lattice. Tie that into a 10,000 xp continent cap bonus and I think people will have incentive to get away from the crown.

[BlaxicanX]

I can't see why people would even want more continents, when 2 out of the 3 we already have are ghost-towns.

[Mox]

I dont know if we HAVE to have more continents. Right now we have enough continents for each faction to have a home continent. We could very well do a three continent lattice. Tie that into a 10,000 xp continent cap bonus and I think people will have incentive to get away from the crown.

You are right. it could be possible with only three conts. Nevertheless to foster strategic intercontinental warfare it would be useful to have at least one more cont.

[Ironside]

i wish they'd stop resisting the lattice and just throw it in and trial it

[Mox]

I can't see why people would even want more continents, when 2 out of the 3 we already have are ghost-towns.

It is not the goal to have a battle on each contionent at the same time. The battles should wave between the continents. But therefore we need mechanics to focus the battles on certain points (e.g. intercontinental lattice, cont locks, even continental lattice would help).

[Baneblade]

I can't see why people would even want more continents, when 2 out of the 3 we already have are ghost-towns.

Because the continent I want to sell my soul to is still yet to come.

[Stanis]

I can't see why people would even want more continents, when 2 out of the 3 we already have are ghost-towns.

The battle rages on Indar .. for weeks.
It is finally won. Let's say the TR conquer it.
Because of the continental metagame the continents are now connected like hexes.

The links to Indar now require a certain part of Esamir be captured.
That part of Esamir because it links back to Indar is now a TR stronghold.

So to get the fight back to indar you have to effectively conquer Esamir.

We now have an epic battle raging on Esamir.


This flow of battles across continents is the 'continental warfare' that is mentioned. It usually means there are three major fights across the continents.

TR V NC.
TR v VS.
NC v VS.

As each empire pushes out from it's home warpgate or currently held territories they have a naturally forming front line against an enemy empire.
The mechanics of continental lock down make it very difficult for the enemy to casually turn up and start capturing bases wherever they want to.

This is why we want continents. We have major battles and fights. They have a purpose - victory secures this continent and moves the fight on.
Over time battles rage across every continent - with certain hotspots based on how the devs link them together.

I miss this part of Planetside.
My veterans miss it to - right now we have only have a deathmatch.