News: Further preview article from PCGamer

[Tikuto]

Needs moar awesome.

[vampyro]

What was all this talk about no subscription and Sony bringing a new era to MMOs.

[Knightwyvern]

Originally Posted by kklkit

As opposed to PS2 , neither EQ2 nor DCUO was meant to be a F2P game in the first place. Native F2P games have a very strong advantage that their player progress systems are tailored to the F2P model. For native subscription based MMOs, when switching to F2P model, many compromises were made (cutting core features from free users) so as to increase paying incentives for the players.

That guy from extra credits has nailed it:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/microtransactions

Really worth watching for both developers and players to better understand what micro-transaction should be and could be.

Agreed, and that is a really excellent vid to watch for everyone. I would be perfectly happy if PS2 had that type of F2P plan. For some reason I just can't make myself like the payed XP boost thing though.

[Tasorin]

Originally Posted by Mod

Regarding the premium features, things like a small amount of station cash per month and longer offline skill queues I could easily see as possible incentives.

With a price point of $9-15 USD for a monthly premium account SOE is going to have to bundle several things which return value that matters to players in order to get the monthly nut out of people. While a possible revenue stream and even though I would consider it personally, the more time that passes the less certain it appears that SOE has a solid handle on what the business model is going to actually transpire as. At least that is the appearance with the minimal amount of solid information we have now.

To little data in the answers column and to much data in the questions column. Higgle's and Smed's still have a lot of information to still parse out before I can make any type of informed comment or decision.

I still think if they allow the client to be free its going to enable a lot of gaming of the mechanics and allow for people to diminish this game by several factors. I still believe whole heartily that SOE should charge at least $9.99 USD for the Client in order to keep people from farming intel and griefing due to a FREE client.

[Quovatis]

I don't see why the whole vehicle skin would need to change if you hacked it. You could still put it in the game and avoid the memory requirements. You'll be able to tell if it's enemy by the lack of a tag and that fact that it's shooting at you. Of course, if you don't have the appropriate certs, you can't drive it or use the weapons on it. Other modern games allow you to take over enemy vehicles without a skin change.

I'm really going to miss having access to enemy vehicles.

[Mod]

On the other side of the coin, the whole "empire tech for 48 hours" events would hopefully need to be re-thought

[Whoknowswhat1]

Originally Posted by Quovatis

You could still put it in the game and avoid the memory requirements. You'll be able to tell if it's enemy by the lack of a tag and that fact that it's shooting at you. Other modern games allow you to take over enemy vehicles without a skin change.

I'm really going to miss having access to enemy vehicles.

we are all going to miss driving enemy vehicles. From what the devs told us, it isnt the vehicle skins/ memory requirements that are the big problem, it is the balancing (i believe they said balance nightmare) of all the vehicles and AV weaponry.

What modern game (preferably MMO to keep it on the same scale) has come out allowing you to control enemy vehicles?

Originally Posted by Quovatis

I don't see why the whole vehicle skin would need to change if you hacked it. You could still put it in the game and avoid the memory requirements. You'll be able to tell if it's enemy by the lack of a tag and that fact that it's shooting at you.

As far as im concerned this would be a nightmare as well for the following reason:
if stuff is shooting you, that looks like its on your team, causes people to not shoot back (especially if they are thinking of not putting Friendly Fire in, then faction members will just shoot each other just because they can). With the massive battles they are talking about having, who can tell if 1 tank out of 30 is an enemy, especially if they all have the same colors and basic design.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Quovatis

I don't see why the whole vehicle skin would need to change if you hacked it. You could still put it in the game and avoid the memory requirements. You'll be able to tell if it's enemy by the lack of a tag and that fact that it's shooting at you. Of course, if you don't have the appropriate certs, you can't drive it or use the weapons on it. Other modern games allow you to take over enemy vehicles without a skin change.

I'm really going to miss having access to enemy vehicles.

It could be exploited a lot.

Create a bunch of second accounts, train them up enough to pull a certain vehicle, get your friends and the second accs to a secure space, pull the vehicles, hack them all, and mayhem with enemy colors.

If the enemy cant tell from a distance that the friendly looking tanks coming along are actually enemy tanks, then we got a problem.

[Shogun]

the form of the vehicle is now the main distinction aspect because we will get camo coloring options. if we could hack nmy vecs that use camo there would be no way to tell if friend or foe is coming at you.

[Quovatis]

Originally Posted by Whoknowswhat1

What modern game (preferably MMO to keep it on the same scale) has come out allowing you to control enemy vehicles?

Seeing as Planetside is really the only FPSMMO, that's an unfair question. But BF3 is a FPS that allows you to get in enemy vehicles without even hacking it. I never had a problem identifying enemy vehicles in BF3...just look for the lack of a friendly tag and a red blip on the minimap.

It's no different than how you tell a friendly and enemy cloaker apart in PS1. Or even a VS/NC mosquito...I certainly couln't tell the difference between blue and purple unless I was very very close.

Originally Posted by basti

It could be exploited a lot.

Create a bunch of second accounts, train them up enough to pull a certain vehicle, get your friends and the second accs to a secure space, pull the vehicles, hack them all, and mayhem with enemy colors.

Sure, and I've seen plenty of players do that in PlanetSide 1. So what. And even in PS1, it was difficult to tell if a vehicle was enemy at long distance, even with the skin change.

I don't see the problem from a balance standpoint either. If the vehicle you hack has very specialized weapons on it, and you don't have the class/skills to operate them, then you can't use them. Simple as that. It worked fine in PS1. For example, if you hacked a vanny, and didn't have it certed you couldn't drive it. Or you hacked a BFR and it had AA pilot weapons, you couldn't fire them without the cert even though you had the vanilla BFR cert. The only potential problem would be in the specs of the weapons (ROF, COF, etc enhancements). But I guess you can just make all the weapons the default (i.e. lowest) upgrade setting when hacked.

Now if each empire had asymmetric cert trees, there would be a problem, but I haven't heard that mentioned yet (i.e. unique add-ons to vehicles that don't have the equivalent skill tree in another empire).

[none]

Yessssssssss!

[nathanebht]

Players who are online during their skill studies will see them unlock faster, but there are more immediate rewards for those keen to invigorate their learning process, as Matt confirms: “You’re able to shortcut your skills by burning resources.”

Resources themselves are earned by engaging in battle against the two oppositional empires: capture an area on one of the game’s continents and you’ll gain resources. Matt explains further: “You’ll also gain resources while your empire holds that territory. So if you are a member of an empire and own 50% of a continent, you will gain resources just for playing on that continent all the time, even if you’re not capturing anything new. You can use those resources for doing things like upgrading your weapons, getting new weapons from an equipment terminal, or buying things from the store.”

This is interesting. Defend captured bases and get more resources for yourself? Then spend those resources to speed up skill training?

[Vash02]

Originally Posted by basti

It could be exploited a lot.

Create a bunch of second accounts, train them up enough to pull a certain vehicle, get your friends and the second accs to a secure space, pull the vehicles, hack them all, and mayhem with enemy colors.

If the enemy cant tell from a distance that the friendly looking tanks coming along are actually enemy tanks, then we got a problem.

I'd give those guys about five minutes of havoc before the opposing empires wise up. its a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of risk (account bans) with little reward.

[EASyEightyEight]

Originally Posted by nathanebht

This is interesting. Defend captured bases and get more resources for yourself? Then spend those resources to speed up skill training?

For what it's worth, I hope they don't pool in game purchases and store purchases into the same resources. I mean, I plan on paying, but I feel freebies shouldn't need to ever pay and still get just as far as any paying player, but it takes them much longer to do so.

Soelliside could be a material found in every hex all the time, but it's very slow to accumulate for example, yet it can be used to purchase cash-shop goodies. However, it should be rewarded for taking hexes, and the amount based on the amount of competition for that hex, and then again after a set time for taking that same hex (for example, take a hex, no more rewards from that hex for X amount of time, even if the enemy takes it before then.)

It would kind of encourage freebie players to keep playing without feeling like they need to pay for anything, since with enough dedication, they won't have to, but also prevents trading hexes to exploit the system.