Planetside NEXT on PC and ... ps3

[DviddLeff]

I reckon you can fit all the controls onto a console, just not fast typing unless the console owner has a keyboard.

Don't forget that all the menus can feed into one another; there's no reason the Character, Squad, Map, Implant, Outfit and even the Inventory cant all come off one key press combined with a direction.

[Vancha]

With that system, I'm guessing implants and weapons would work the same way? Considering you need one thumb to look around and the other thumb to move around, that leaves you with four buttons available on the top of the controller. One to fire, one to crouch, one to jump and one left for zoom, medkits, implants, weapons...plus whatever functions I forgot to include (change ammo button, MAX ability/deploy/cloak button, squad/platoon/outfit invite and kick commands, bailing etc.)

Console controllers have come a long way, but I they they have a little further to go before they can cope with Planetside.

[DviddLeff]

Im thinking of the D pad on the PS3; use it as a weapons select/implant system and just have all the info panels come up when you press select.

[Vancha]

So that means you either have to stop moving, or stop being able to look around in order to switch on an implant or take out a weapon.

[Furret]

Vancha: Also, mouse+keyboard gives you the ability to be holding 5 keys and 3 mouse-buttons at once, while still being able to look around. I can be strafing sideways, moving forward, crouching, reloading my gun, firing and use a medpack without needing to move my fingers to different buttons/keys (W+A+Ctrl+R+Mouse 1+Mouse 4). Granted, not a situation that will come up all too often, but still...

too lazy to quote...

umm, I'd like to see you reload a gun and fire it at the same time

Anyway, I think if a company made a game for both console and PC, they'd have to design it for PC then dumb it down for console, because PC has so many more options. I think in a standard keymapping, there would be 27 keyboard buttons, and probably 9 mouse buttons (left click/right click/scroll up/scroll down/mouse wheel click/two left side buttons/two right side buttons)

That's a total of 36 possible key presses (one button at a time)

For a console *pulls out PS3 controller*, you have (From Left to Right) L2, L1, DPad left/up/down/right, left stick N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW and L3, select, start, right stick N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW and R3, Square, Triangle, X, O, R2, R1.
Total of 30 possible button presses.
Unfortunately, 16 of those are null and void, because you'd be using them to move and aim.

Now we're down to 14.

However, if we look at the list vancha posted, lets try to map each action with a button press or button combination.

Foward/Back/Strafe-left/Strafe-right -=- Left control stick
Move vision -=- Right control stick
Jump -=- X
Crouch -=- Circle
Fire -=- R2
Alternate fire -=- Triangle
Enter vehicle+Use terminal (G) -=- Square
Character screen -=- L3 + Right Stick N
Squad screen -=- L3 + Right Stick NE
Map screen -=- L3 + Right Stick E
Implant screen -=- L3 + Right Stick SE
Outfit screen -=- L3 + Right Stick S
Inventory -=- L3 + Right Stick SW
(Space for 2 more screens -=- L3 + Right Stick W/NW)
Weapon 1 -=- DPad Up
Weapon 2 -=- DPad Right
Weapon 3 -=- DPad Down
Weapon 4 -=- DPad Left
Weapon 5 (Melee) -=- R1
Medkit -=- L1
F1-F8 -=- R3 + N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW
Zoom -=- L2

The Medkit would not be placed in the F1-8 section of the HUD

Also, all of the screens (Character Screen - Inventory) could be accessed from hitting start, then scrolling through the options.

[Sifer2]

They wouldn't have you pressing L3 for all that they would have you hit start to bring up a menu with all that stuff on it an then you would have to scroll through it. An then us PC crowd would get to complain about the slow cumbersome console interface they went with like we do with most ports these days.

Inventory would be simplified too I imagine no more drag an dropping an trying to cram lots of goodies in there. Would be something simpler an more dumbed down. Honestly unless they made two different versions of Planetside Next I see no way they could pull it off without really pissing off the PC players.

[Furret]

not necessarily.
Why couldn't the game be designed where you can change the button layout. It would come with an Xbox Layout, a PS3 Layout, and a PC Layout.

And why couldn't you use the controller as a mouse-ish. Click L1 to select an item, hold L1 to drag and drop. R1 opens up a menu for drop/destroy/etc.

It might not be as easy to do the decimator trick, but the game should be dumbed down for the consoles, but in a way that doesnt effect the PCs

[2coolforu]

Console ported games
- Black Ops (Horrible stuttering, restrictive servers, massive CPU load issues, no patch support, no technical support, no care about the PC Platform, Lack of customisation in graphics settings
- Modern Warfare 2 (Horrible issues, No dedi-servers, No developer care *Comes with inbuilt mouse and keyboard support*, obvious punch in the nads to pc gamers)
- Bad Company 2 (Performance issues involving dual gpu and quad core systems, huge CPU usage for no reason etc etc)
- Crysis 2 (Graphics reduced over Crysis 1, no technical improvements, development stale)

On all, lack of customisable servers, serious restrictions on number of players (18 max on MW2/Black Ops, 32 max on Bad Company 2 compared to 64 on exactly the same games that were done properly for PC. Graphics don't stress powerful PC GPU's, bad company Frames per second are generally 160-200 on all settings maxed.

Non-Console ports
- ARMA 2 OA (Uses multigpu efficiently, utilizes multicore CPU's efficiently, complex ai, huge mod support, regular development, regular patches, fully customisable servers, dedicated modding community, regular good mods, very high end graphics, massively customisable settings, trackir support, peripheals support, Field of view modification, proper multimonitor support, anti aliasing, 100's of players in a server)

- Empire Total War (No units limit, dedicated community, state of the art graphics, complex gameplay, et cetera et cetera)

Consoles are the average tech from 2005, a good gaming PC is high end tech from 2010. There isn't a competition here, PC's have more power, more freedom, more software, cleverer software, they play at far higher resolutions with far higher graphics, they handle more players and more complex control systems and more complex games.

There's a reason professional competitive gaming isn't nearly as massive on consoles as on the PC, it's because the level of skill is nowhere near that of the PC as there is less control (5000+ DPI mouse, on the fly sensitivity, antighosted keyboards, hotkeys etc etc - far, far, far superior to a controller) and far more 'stuff' can be put on. How do you go about doing a 1GB patch for a console game which runs it off the disk? How do you get a console gamer on the 360 to pay 5 quid a month just to get access to the internet, then another monthly sub for internet providers and then a $15 sub to an MMOFPS.

Anyway I digress, consoles will always be less powerful than a Desktop and anyone who says otherwise is demonstrably wrong in the highest degree. If you put Planetside on console there will be no feasible way it will remain the way it is with 500 players in a single area duelling it out. Those consoles struggle to run MW2 at 30 FPS with 18 players, a game a substandard PC of today can run on far higher settings at higher resolutions with the horrible performance issues at 100 FPS.

If the game goes to console it will be severely disabled, if not killed.

Here's a few problems I foresee

i) VOIP, it was horribly laggy and unreliable in Planetside 1. How are console gamers going to work as a team online, if we have the 5000 or so people logged in at any one time all screaming in voip in global the game will just die, and they can't type very quick so they'll just end up being soloers and turning the game into a ghost town like it is now where the pops are so low the vast majority of people speak different languages. Not only that but it would take a while for a PS3 player to open up a dialogue box then type /invite xyzplayername, hell it would be near impossible for them to have hotkeys or even ask in broadcast for gunners or ask for a tank to stop to gun. Is this the kind of gameplay we want?

ii) Teamwork - There was a competition in BFBC2 to unlock a new map, whomever completed the most team actions on a format unlocked the map for that format, the target was 64 million team actions (around that amount anyway). PC dominated, with fewer players we unlocked the map in a matter of days and had over double the team actions of the nearest console (which was the PS3 funnily enough) it was such an embarrasment that they just unlocked the map for everyone.

iii) Skill - It's undeniable that PC Gamers will have an advantage, the keyboard mouse setup is just better for gaming. Pure and simple. Not only that but they run at higher FPS, higher fidelity and higher resolution, all this puts them at an advantage. PC Gamers will also be more easily able to enter into squads and function as a team given the abilities they have (Teamspeak 3, Ventrilo, Text communication)

Believe it or not Microsoft tried PC/360 cross-console play (why wouldn't they, both formats are theirs, it would be beneficial for them to combine them and make the 360 online experience better by having more people) they trialled it by having a selection of console players play a selection ofPC players. The PC players dominated them in a murderfest, it was a massacrel. So they tried it again with the cream of the crop of console gamers, and a random selection of PC Gamers. Once again the console 360 players were dominated. It was so extreme it forced them to abandon the project. It's cited all over the interwebz (not the best source I know) but here's a source from a programmer/computer engineer + builder who was present and heard about it from his sources

http://www.rahulsood.com/2010/07/con...-against-pc.ht

[Hamma]

Interesting post well thought out I agree 100%

[Raymac]

2coolforu, that was a very thorough explanation, and I certainly agree. Frankly, it's hard not to.

On the other hand, while I'm not a huge fan of console ports, they don't really bother me that much. In my extremely humble and non-expert opinion, I don't feel it is an extreme drop off with the current generation of consoles. I mean, it's not like it's dropping down to the Atari 2600, right?

While PC's are clearly better, the consoles arn't that bad. It's like instead of being in a hot tub with 5 beautiful blondes, you are just in a hot tub with 2 beautiful blondes. So sad.

While the game will have to be adjusted (dumbed down) to conform with consoles, there is an upside with that. In a game like Planetside, the more people that play the game the better. So if it gets that console-PC-gaming-event marketing power behind it, I think the game will gain in players much more than it would lose players who are walking away from massive battles because it "feels like a port".

So, while I'd prefer it to stay PC only, it's not the end of the world if its for PS3 too. If they capture the same grandeur, then I'll play.

[2coolforu]

It's always nice to have more people in the game but with Planetside the old numbers of 50,000/75,000/100,000 (That's the range I see the max pops cited as) were maintained from about july/october 2003 to early 2005 and during that time it seemed plenty to me. There are only so many continents on the map ^_^.

The biggest battles I saw were multiple pop lock + several empire locks and I'd say that's about the top limit for playernumbers. You don't want everything locked and you want at least 1-2 Major fights with some special ops/tactical squad combat going on in another 2 continents. Obviously they can put more servers up but its a matter of is it worth getting the extra 25000 subscribers from PS3 who will probably move on to CoD Modern Warfare 3 or the next title released and paying the price of a dumbed down game - or having a full PC version with no dual production and all the trouble of porting it and making it work + playtesting and getting reliable PC Gamers who are less fickle and tend not to flow to the next IGN 10/10 game of the month.

Anyway wouldn't the millions of dollars it would cost cross-developing the game be better spent on some bad-ass TV ads or a huge ad campaign? Maybe even spend that money reinvigorating Planetside 1, hell its good enough to be a good taster for Planetside Next, it just needs more players (and the BR cap moved back down to 25 at least) that would be a good marketing campaign.

If anything SOE is trying to hinder advertisement, searching Planetside Next brings up thousands of results on news. Looking on Twitter I see journalists sending Smedley messages asking if he wants an interview/article put up on Kotaku and many other sites. A lot of the hardcore gamers that are in the PC Gaming media remember Planetside and love it, just look at Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer hell theres a huge list of gaming media that loved Planetside. I remember PC Gamer giving Planetside near monthly advertising, they even made a trial for it complete with an installation disk and then did some brilliant, well written articles about how awesome and revolutionary the game was.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Vancha

So that means you either have to stop moving, or stop being able to look around in order to switch on an implant or take out a weapon.

Welcome to Console commands. Just check the countless FPS games on them, they all got the same issue.
but im pretty sure SOE wont do cross platform playing. They could have done that for DCUO, it would have much better potetial to not fail at that. A FPS is like RTS games on consoles: You cant do cross platform with them, console players wouldnt stand a chance.

[Infektion]

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

I hope that very soon we see PC, PS3 and 360 games all playing in the same online space.

Sorry, but that's just completely unfair, for PS3 and 360 owners. Reason being is that i'm using a keyboard/mouse, and your head is on my sights. It's just really unfair if you think about it. No way controller will have the speed and accuracy of real-time twitch gaming.

[Grimster]

Well as far as FPS games goes I doubt we will see that unless mice become a standard equipment for consoles which honestly imho kind of kills the purpose with consoles from my perspective.

For exampel I want to get Black Ops so badly but my PC is probably not going to be able to run it properly and I don't want to buy it to my Xbox since FPS games just don't feel the same way on a console as it does on a PC.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

You could never fly between continents.

I have seen it done when poplock was in effect. Before the Bending of the Game Out of Shape, that is.