PSU Interview With Higby!

[NapalmEnima]

I'm taking Matt Higby to Lunch this Thursday. In exchange, he's going to answer some questions.

What would you like to know?

EDIT: Matt would like me to point out that he simply cannot answer some questions.

I have a few questions I'd like to know myself:

"Creative Director" sounds more like "Head of Game Design" than "PR". How did you get picked as The Face of Planetside 2?

How is the information mined from Planetside helping you to design PS2?

Do you have a "rule of thumb" duration for how long it will take to train to the last skill on a generic skill tree, and if so what's the ballpark figure? 6 months, a year?

Will MAX armors still be relegated to weapons platforms, incapable of support actions such as repairs (likely, given the class system) and hacking?

Speaking of hacking, will it be as pervasive as it is in PS1? Will everyone be able to, and often "need", a hacking tool or will it be something less common that is limited to one or more specific classes?

Has the resource system reduced or removed the need for equipment/vehicle timers?

What kind of balance are you aiming for with the resource system? Will a successful outfit always be able to trick out their members with the best of everything, or will the more expensive gear be seen relatively rarely? Will vehicles be more expensive to upgrade than infantry? I'd expect that over time it would work out to be about the same, given that vehicles tend to live longer than individual troops.

The numbers 500 vs 500 vs 500 have been bandied about. I'd also heard that you'd only have one continent at launch. This leads me to believe you're going to have a lot of different servers. Are you going to have a system in place to migrate characters from one server to another so I can play with my buddies' established characters, or will I need to create a new one?

Will we be able to train multiple characters on different servers in parallel, or are you sticking closely to the Eve model (IIRC) of only allowing one skill to train per player account?

I'm a Bolo fan. Will we see anything larger than the main battle tanks and Bang Bus on the ground? A Continental Siege Unit might be a bit much, but how about a 5-man tank spewing death in all directions?