Something im worried about.

[ChrisL]

Im a Planetside virgin so to speak. I never played PS1 so maybe vets can reassure me. But with so much space to fight over, how likely and often will we get ocassions in which we are able to participate in MASSIVE battles? IE the 2000 player battles that are always talked about and like the trailers showed?

This game is like my dream come true for a game. BF games look like specs of dust beside the scale of this game and it makes me weep with joy. To be standing among you fine folks as 1000 of us line the walls of a fort for the oncoming enslaught heading our way...it will be incredible.

[Mox]

Thats a good question. Since there is no lattice grid, it isn't sure we'll see a lot of zerging.

[Quantum Spices]

I'm assured there will be no lack of huge battles taking place, as long as there are 3 outfits in different factions, there will be huge fights!

[Ivam Akorahil]

the empire priority system should ensure you have at least 2 or 3 hotspots at anytime with large scale battles taking place

[XxAxMayxX]

their will be something like 2,000 players per server and the frontline bases will probably be populated by 3 quarters of that so unless you go all the way to kingdom come you willl most likely find a fight.

[Rivenshield]

I'm worried about the population density problem too. Not only are the bases twice as big and this distances between them greater, we have three XBAWKS HUEG continents instead of eight-ten smaller ones. The smaller conts in old PS were 166x3, and later 133x3... but they filled fairly rapidly, and they were all linked together by the lattice system. That channelized the zerg, and you were guaranteed to find a knock-down king-hell fight.

What I've been privately figuring is that yes, there will be two or three bases per continent that each empire will be trying to claim as its own.. but in order to get the same degree of awesomeness, you need twice as many people. To *improve* on the awesomeness, you need half again that many. So 133x2x1.5 = about 400 combatants per empire per continent, or 1200 total. They need to deliver that many minimum or see this new game collapse, IMHO. If they can't, simply sawing each continent in half would be the best quick fix there is.

All told, I'm a lot more optimistic than I was a few months ago, though. Don't worry, OP -- you'll get your epic battles, one way or another. And I promise you something else: what PS1 vets call the 'Oh My God' moment... that moment when you look out and see a couple hundred people coming to kill you, and your monkey brain freaks out, and you feel that one stark moment of irrational physical fright.

I promise you epic, OP. And I promise you fear. One way or another. The new Planetside is in good hands.

[Stardouser]

It depends on what you're getting at. If you mean that there must be 2000 people within range to shoot at, I don't think anyone has ever claimed 2000 per battle. What they have said is 2000 people per 8X8km continent. 2000 players in the same square kilometer(ie, the same battle, that is to say, the fighting at Zurvan and the fighting at Hvar are actually separate battles) could cause slowdowns or crashing even with today's technology.

[ChrisL]

BTW are there gonna be any large aircraft capable of transporting like 30 men at once?

It would be epic flying over with 30 people...all nervous with excitement. As we reach the battlefield at night, suddenly all hell breaks loose, the transport door opens, the senior commander player yells good luck, and we all get dropped over the battle, every colour of laser imaginable firing all around.

[Comet]

I think Galaxies are getting a cert that allows you to carry 2 squards ChrisL. I think. If that pans out and they change squad size to 12 players, you're looking at 24 per galaxy potentially.

Make sure you have air superiority before making that drop!

[Carnage]

I don't think there will be any issue, the Map may be huge, but fighting will be done along border lines (the meat grinder lines) of each empire, so that narrows the area down a lot.

[super pretendo]

Rest assured that any epic battles will be ignored for the stale eSports that will inevitably supplant it

[Wumpus]

Originally Posted by super pretendo

Rest assured that any epic battles will be ignored for the stale eSports that will inevitably supplant it

Don't be so quick to judge. What I've heard from the devs so far imply they know full well what made PS a legend and why no true MMOFPS has been released since then. And that is the massive scale warfare. There will likely be smaller scale maps for squad and platoon level e-Sports, but in the end this will just boost the popularity of the primary game = a win win.

[super pretendo]

Popularity itself is a meaningless metric. If its populated with people that don't give a shit about PlanetSide 2 the epic MMOFPS, then we become worse off due to the dilution of the spirit of the game. Non-players will only see PS2 through the lense of fauxhack game announcer dude, instead of cool, community-made videos of community-made battles

[Wumpus]

Originally Posted by super pretendo

Popularity itself is a meaningless metric. If its populated with people that don't give a shit about PlanetSide 2 the epic MMOFPS, then we become worse off due to the dilution of the spirit of the game. Non-players will only see PS2 through the lense of fauxhack game announcer dude, instead of cool, community-made videos of community-made battles

Why all the doom and gloom? Why would people who don't give a shit about PS2 continue playing it? One thing I know of for sure is Planetside is only fun when there's a lot of peeps to shoot at. If the original was originally released free to play it would have been a lot more successful. It sounds to me that you actually think PS2 should be a subscription-only game with no ties to e-Sports at all. Look at what e-Sports did for Starcraft in Korea. Get a clue.

[AThreatToYou]

I don't expect battles in PlanetSide 2 to often exceed the epic battles we saw in PlanetSide 1 due to the hex system that should, in theory, disperse the 2000 players over multiple territories. However, the capacity is there for a gigantic battle and it's most likely to happen around the final territories.