Seamless or Loaded?

[Alduron]

It has been talked about in a few threads, but I'm not aware of any definitive answers to the question.

Let me first state that from what I can tell, we will have to load into the continents and the entire continent will be "seamless." Basically, exactly like PS1.

What I'm wondering is if anyone has stated whether or not the entire world is seamless or not.. They've mentioned adding naval combat, and I believe they wanted naval capture-able bases down the line (someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure). It seems to me that the naval aspect would be severely limited if it were confined to the small area of water surrounding most of the continents (excluding river battles).

Forge Light totes the ability to have seamless worlds (no zones) as one of it's biggest bragging points, and The9's website pretty much states that Auraxis will be seamless and have a completely open world. I'm assuming that they are referring to the zones being seamless once loaded, but if the engine supports it, and you have gameplay that can sure as hell fill it - why not?

Seamless transitions between continents surely brings new challenges (population control) but it is definitely something I'd like to see if the engine was designed with it in mind. PS2 could only benefit from it.

Thoughts?

[Atheosim]

Yep, it would definitely be awesome as shit to have the entirety of auraxis seamless. Then again, with a foothold for each empire on each cont, I don't see why that's necessary.

[Sirisian]

Each continent appears to be a separate map that is not connected in anyway to the other continents. That is each has its own unconquerable base. So there is no seamless transition. You basically load/teleport to the continents if you choose to when spawning.

[Alduron]

Originally Posted by Atheosim

Yep, it would definitely be awesome as shit to have the entirety of auraxis seamless. Then again, with a foothold for each empire on each cont, I don't see why that's necessary.

I'm actually hoping they move away from foothold on every cont. if/when they bring deployable objects. I'd much rather see deployed forward bases from the other thread that recently talked about it.

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Each continent appears to be a separate map that is not connected in anyway to the other continents. That is each has its own unconquerable base. So there is no seamless transition. You basically load/teleport to the continents if you choose to when spawning.

That's pretty much what I assumed. It would still be nice to squeeze every feature out of Forge Light. :-p

[Biscuit]

would be interesting to see if all of auraxis was seamless.

but i wonder about the distance between continents. water could by chance cover alot of territory, maybe alot more complicated to secure.

[Kran De Loy]

Having Naval content and seamless worlds would be pretty awesome.

To me Naval Content should be an Expansion that gets released all at once at the same time of introducing new continents. These new continents would not have any warp gates or if they do they would be capturable.

No footholds on new continents at all please.

Anyway, place rare or slightly higher concentration of resources on the new continents. This would keep people going to the new continents and establishing a foothold.

However I would guess that by the time that Planetside 2 has this expansion there will be either 1) a lot more players, or 2) a waning enthusiasm in the populations. Or both even. Because...

Once the conflicts becomes too large, once there is much more land and resources to fight over, when resources are much more easily gotten by easily skipping from from one base capture to another, then the need for resources becomes less compelling to continue the fight. IE) Put something else in to the game on top of that to keep people interested in taking and hold territory. In other words put in a mechanic where Outfits can customize a base thereby 'owning' in.

Giving outfits the ability to customize a base would increase the stakes of a battle and it would also take the territory control meta game to an entirely new level.

This is of course assuming that Forgelight can be made to link the continents together seamlessly. If it can't I honestly have my doubts we'll ever see any continents without footholds. Which would disappoint me.

(If they can't make a seamless world they could still put a capturable warpgate onto each of the original continents and have those gates as the only access to the secondary new continents.)

[Bittermen]

Originally Posted by Kran De Loy

No footholds on new continents at all please.

I agree.

But keep the old ones the way they are.


Best comparison to this i can make it EVE online's High Sec vs Null Sec space.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Alduron

That's pretty much what I assumed. It would still be nice to squeeze every feature out of Forge Light. :-p

Being seamless when running/driving around is entirely different from being seamless when instantly being transported from one place to another.

Seamless when moving around means that the game is capable of dynamically loading surrounding areas as you move closer to them -- the loading still happens, and still takes time; the point is simply that it happens in the background and finishes before you arrive.

When you bring in teleports, or gates, or recalls, and whatnot, that throws a wrench in the works, because now you're loading something unexpected, and you've arrived before it's had any time to load.

That's not to say this couldn't be worked around in *some* scenarios. The game has an idea of what spawn locations are available to you at any given point, so it can include those as "near" to you, even if it's not physically near. Likewise, I'm sure the warpgates can be treated as "anticipated" movement, and so it wouldn't surprise me if they were able to make warpgate travel seamless.

Even if they cannot, however, that doesn't preclude being able to make "sea travel" between continents seamless at a future date.

[Alduron]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Being seamless when running/driving around is entirely different from being seamless when instantly being transported from one place to another.

Even if they cannot, however, that doesn't preclude being able to make "sea travel" between continents seamless at a future date.

I get what you're saying. I'm kind of hoping that the maps aren't completely different entities like they were in the first one. Even if we are forced to teleport between them at launch with a load screen to cover pop-in, I'm hoping that later we'll have a more unified Auraxis. Eventually I'd like to to gather troops and fly over the ocean in order to flank the enemy from somewhere they wouldn't expect.

It may never happen, but I'd like to see it.

[Talek Krell]

That would certainly be a thing to have. I'd love to see it but I wonder at the technical challenges.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

That would certainly be a thing to have. I'd love to see it but I wonder at the technical challenges.

The technical dificulties could be handeled, its pretty much just loading the stuff on the fly, rather than giving you a loading screen. More challenging would be gameplay issues. What happens if you have 600 people of your faction on INdar, and now 600 people just travel to indar by sea? Invisible wall because INdar is full?


As a matter of fact, seamless worlds only work in MMOs that could not potentially break completly because of players just getting together on a massive scale. See lineage 2 for example, or Aion. In a big bunch of people gets together, then so be it. The server lags, clients crash, but its mostly still playable.
In PS2, it would mean that the game becomes pretty much unplayable for everyone, as there would be no upper limit to populations per continent, and therefore per base/singe battle, unless you put limitations in. That would then destroy the seamless world again, making the whole thing a rather pointless thing to begin with.


So, i dont ever see us traveling seamless from Indar to Amerish by sea. But i see us fighitng big Naval battles around INdar or Amerish, or between the Battle Islands, or on a extra "continent" that is just open sea.

[Kran De Loy]

Originally Posted by basti

So, i dont ever see us traveling seamless from Indar to Amerish by sea. But i see us fighitng big Naval battles around INdar or Amerish, or between the Battle Islands, or on a extra "continent" that is just open sea.

Or series of small island, but then again I already know a Filipino and he's pretty adamant when it comes being racist on other Filipinos so I don't see the appeal of that..

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by basti

The technical dificulties could be handeled, its pretty much just loading the stuff on the fly, rather than giving you a loading screen. More challenging would be gameplay issues. What happens if you have 600 people of your faction on INdar, and now 600 people just travel to indar by sea? Invisible wall because INdar is full?

Well, maybe the distance should be enough to discourage that from happening. But how about this? Anyone who physically travels to an already full continent is allowed to do so, but cannot join the respawn system there? And squad spawning would be disabled as well.

[Pollo Jack]

Much rather see space combat before naval combat.


It would be easy to have an excuse for a loading screen. Transitioning from a capital ship to space entry.

[Brusi]

naval combat would be pretty sick... new water only continents, or transition between the current continents...

I expect small islands and oil rig style resource gathering points would make some pretty cool gameplay.