Sr. Producer Josh Hackney Talks E-sports and PlanetSide 2

[Pella]

Sounds good to me, And the only way i see this working within PS2.

Heres the interview.

Ricoxg: You guys have just announced that PanetSide 2 is partnering with MLG. How is that going to work?


Josh Hackney, Sr. Producer, SOE
Hackney: PlanetSide 2 is a competitive game, but more importantly it’s a team competition. There’s a skill side, which we definitely have, but this is a team game where you play as a team and where you roll with your outfit or your squad. FPS games have had e-sports for a really long time, and there’s a team aspect to it. Typically in PlanetSide 2 there are hundreds of players verses hundreds of players. We’ll have to work with MLG to figure out a way to scale that down and still support squads and platoons. I think this is going to be an awesome fit and will bring something fresh and new.

One of the things that’s really important to us is how to integrate the two. We think that the main game is going to be a really good feeder, giving people the opportunity to play with their favorite teams or outfits that are doing well competitively and allow there to be crossovers.

Ricoxg: So you’re doing this in the live game. How do you integrate that with the current system for new players, protect against trolling, and things like that?


Hackney: It will be on its own server, like when you zone to another continent. We’ll have a queuing system that takes things like rank [into consideration] and will limit players. We’ll be working on the layout and things like that. For instance, the continent will be smaller to accommodate the size of the teams. We’re going to work out more of the details on how that’s going to be.

Ricoxg: So when we hear about continents coming down the road, some of those will be tied to this new effort?


Hackney: Some of the new continents we do will just be purely adding more game space relative to Indar, Esamir, and Amerish. Searhus and Ossin and a couple of the other continents are in progress. It’s going to be the same team building that space, but the e-sports space will be unique unto itself.

The Road Map lets fans interact with the PS2 devs.
Ricoxg: What’s the player feedback been like so far?

Hackney: Actually, we just put up something we call the Road Map on our forums. It’s up and rolling now and a number of folks have been going through it. What we’ve listed in there are our idea of what we think make sense in the game and there’s everything in there from adding another continent, to e-sports, to adding tutorial zones, all those kinds of things. There are something like sixty or seventy ideas that we’re looking at. We’re putting it out there so people can up-vote or can down-vote, and give their feedback.

"There are something like sixty or seventy ideas that we’re looking at. We’re putting it out there so people can up-vote or can down-vote, and give their feedback."
We kind of put a description in how we think these things would work and what we’re already seeing is that players, who are a really dedicated and involved, and a lot of these things they like or they don’t like. They’ve been thinking about how things they like should be implemented. So before we start rolling and getting the team involved on them, we’re going to be going through and reading that feedback.

Ricoxg: So, what’s an example of some of the feedback you’ve gotten?

Hackney: Well, we’ve been talking about ramping up the xp from when you spawn. For example, you wouldn’t be worth as much when you spawn, but after maybe 30 seconds, you’re worth more as a kill. [The players] are already jumping in and talking about the idea, but some of them are saying that 15 seconds might make more sense. I was talking with some of the guys from Black Window Company, and they have some great ideas. They have a lot of older gamers who have been playing games for years, and a ton of military guys too, who go through and diagnose designs and come up with solutions on their forums. Those are the sorts of things that make the game better.

Ricoxg: Speaking of adding things, when can we expect to see SMGs and new base changes come into the game?

Hackney: Hopefully, we’ll see tunnels to the Amp Station and the Tech Plant, and we’ll also be seeing some murder holes and we’ll be closing up some windows. We’ll also be closing up some of the windows on other smaller outposts as well. It’s one of our hugest changes, and I’m really excited about that because it’s giving a little more support to being able to defend.

Most of the main bases will see a number of the changes. We’ve taken a first pass at all the windows to see if it makes sense to close them up, and to adding the murder holes. You’ll see a good amount of changes for sure, but as we take a look at how people play and the patterns they run. As we put stuff in we’ll take a look and see if we did it right and if we need to make some tweaks and over time we’ll just continue the saga.

Source,

[Mastachief]

Unless they common pool everything there can never be balance for esport to work. We saw this in the original outfitwars where vs could simply choke out a draw due to base design and weapons.

[Pella]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

Unless they common pool everything there can never be balance for esport to work. We saw this in the original outfitwars where vs could simply choke out a draw due to base design and weapons.

Yes that is going to be essential.

[Prosecutor]

Originally Posted by Pella

Yes that is going to be essential.

Even more essential would be fixing the FPS issues even users with High end machines experience. (since the last patch i sometimes drop down to 10fps in empty bases and have steady 50 in primetime zergfights while recording.)
If you die in competetive play because of things like that i would absolutely freak out.

And as for the common pool stuff. I think they should create a 4th empire for that (like they did with the Blackops in PS1) and as long as you're in "Competetive mode" you have all certs all weapons unlocked.
For me the CORE of competetive gaming is that everyone has the same chances. And if you'd have a BF3 clan testing this game wanting to participate in a Tournament or something like that they'd have a pretty big disadvantage if they go up with 30 BR10-40 against 30 BR 50-100
TL;DR everyone has to have everything to make this work.

[Stellarthief]

It will be on its own server, like when you zone to another continent. We’ll have a queuing system that takes things like rank [into consideration] and will limit players. We’ll be working on the layout and things like that. For instance, the continent will be smaller to accommodate the size of the teams. We’re going to work out more of the details on how that’s going to be.


That needs to be expanded upon for sure... When I read that, it seems like anyone can just try to zone in and get a spot. I can see this leading to people just taking up slots and not contributing, either because they don't know what to do or purposely are wrecking 1 sides chances.

You have to take the random element out to make this an e-sport. Should be squad/platoon Q only. And then you still will have random players that need to work together that are possible all on separate coms.

[Rahabib]

Originally Posted by Mastachief

Unless they common pool everything there can never be balance for esport to work. We saw this in the original outfitwars where vs could simply choke out a draw due to base design and weapons.

gernerally games that have uneven maps or factions/teams, you play halves. Play as team 1 for round 1 then team 2 as round 2. It works, for shorter games but for this game, honestly I dont see how this game is going to be truly fair or competitive.

[Mox]

They design at least one unique continent for this esport shit...
I cant belief it... They dont have enough conts to allow a proper meta game but they really want to waste time and money outside the main game. WTF... This is a stupid decision. The pops are going down because of the lack of numerous game mechanics and content. Nevertheless they focus on something totaly else. I think at SOE a retarded monkey is handling the steering wheel.

[Stellarthief]

Originally Posted by Mox

They design at least one unique continent for this esport shit...
I cant belief it... They dont have enough conts to allow a proper meta game but they really want to waste time and money outside the main game. WTF... This is a stupid decision. The pops are going down because of the lack of numerous game mechanics and content. Nevertheless they focus on something totaly else. I think at SOE a retarded monkey is handling the steering wheel.

Would imagine it's a separate team who works on the MLG aspect of PS2 and it shouldn't detract from the development of the main game. That would be the smart thing to do.

[HiroshiChugi]

Originally Posted by Stellarthief

Would imagine it's a separate team who works on the MLG aspect of PS2 and it shouldn't detract from the development of the main game. That would be the smart thing to do.

If I'm not mistaken, they said in the interview that there's a seperate team working on the e-sports continent...

[Stellarthief]

Originally Posted by HiroshiChugi

If I'm not mistaken, they said in the interview that there's a seperate team working on the e-sports continent...

I reread it and I thought he implied it would be a separate team. But I guess I missed this part:

"Hackney: Some of the new continents we do will just be purely adding more game space relative to Indar, Esamir, and Amerish. Searhus and Ossin and a couple of the other continents are in progress. It’s going to be the same team building that space, but the e-sports space will be unique unto itself."

Seems the same team developing new continent stuff to the general game is also going to be building the space for the MLG aspect.

So, maybe still a separate team working on the ruleset, mechanics, balance, etc. but the world building team is the same..

[HiroshiChugi]

Originally Posted by Stellarthief

I reread it and I thought he implied it would be a separate team. But I guess I missed this part:

"Hackney: Some of the new continents we do will just be purely adding more game space relative to Indar, Esamir, and Amerish. Searhus and Ossin and a couple of the other continents are in progress. It’s going to be the same team building that space, but the e-sports space will be unique unto itself."

Seems the same team developing new continent stuff to the general game is also going to be building the space for the MLG aspect.

So, maybe still a separate team working on the ruleset, mechanics, balance, etc. but the world building team is the same..

They should change that. There need to be be different developing teams when it comes to continents. Team one works on the main continents and team two works on the sub-continents that will be used for the so-called "e-sports." this is ridiculous...

[Mox]

Originally Posted by HiroshiChugi

If I'm not mistaken, they said in the interview that there's a seperate team working on the e-sports continent...

You know how that works? The boss go to the world design team anf pick out three guys and tell them that they are now the new esports continent design team. Et voila... Here is your seperate team. Do you really think they hire more staff now? That wont happen normally post launch.....

[bpostal]

I got to the first paragraph when I ran into what I think is the core issue with PS2 and eSports for me:

"Typically in PlanetSide 2 there are hundreds of players verses hundreds of players. We’ll have to work with MLG to figure out a way to scale that down and still support squads and platoons."

If you scale it down you no longer have Planetside. You have some bastardized futuristic version of Battlefield. Why not just do MLG for Battlefield? It's balanced and set up around smaller engagements.

Size Always Matters indeed. Are they going back on that already?

Like I said the first time I saw that slogan...Fuck that weak ass shit. For Land. For Power. Forever.

[Ghodere]

Originally Posted by Pella

Black Window Company

Pfffhahahaha

[Hamma]

That is definitely true.