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?

[Bags]

>How did you get picked as the face of PS2
Dude, have you seen his hair?

- What are the main lessons learned from Planetside - where did things go right, where did things go wrong?
- How will salvaging work without inventories?
- Will entering vehicles be delayed like it is in planetside1, even without animations?
- Will implants still exist, or will they be replaced by specialization?
- How powerful are grenades and other hand held aoe weaponry?
- How do the uncapturable footholds on continents work?

I'd also love to know about dates, payment plans, stuff like that; but they've been tightlipped about those kinds of things for a while now so I doubt you'd be able to get anything out of him about it.

[Raymac]

Wow, you lucky dog. Remember in your questions, that if a detail isn't set in their development process then he likely won't be able to answer it except for extremely vague generalities.

One question that I'd like to see answered is, what are some design concepts they are using to improve base design for indoor battles? For example, narrow hallways and stairwells get a little crowded with the numbers of players in PS1, let alone for the increased numbers for PS2.

[Mirror]

Just ask the following 10 questions

When is beta?
So..when is beta?
and so on
Final question..can you confirm when beta will happen?

Of course he is answers the first questions then you are screwed.


Good luck

[Duddy]

I have a question for him:

Is he aware that at 0:33 in the reveal teaser you can see a mouse pointer in the bottom left of the screen? (Forgive me if people already spotted this, but I just noticed it just yesterday)

[Miir]

1. Are there anymore details he can release on the new flight model?
2. Edit: Thanks Sirisian
3. Are they planning to release any in-game alpha footage? or any type of demo with the new forge light engine?
4. How big is the development team now?
5. What is the largest group they have tested with so far?

[SavageB]

They mention the ability to buy items that also can be obtainable through playing the game, although nothing has been confirmed yet about microtransactions, we can definitely see that there will be indeed MT's. In saying that, if one player decides to log in the first day and purchase an HA variant , will this be possible?? Or do you have to have the unlockable main HA completed first through the time spent in game.

The way I see it atm, first day login, create a HA assault class, buy the weapon right off the bat and spend more time certing on other things. I need clarification on this. If it is possible to buy the HA variant right off the bat, wouldnt this be considered buying power.


Also, if he can answer this question, will there be any sort of premium sub at launch, maybe a year sub, 6 month sub, 3 month sub etc.


I know the game will feature mainstream weapons throughout each empire, are they considering re making HA variants for each empire instead of the trusty ol MCG, crappy JH, mediocre lasher.



Lastly, this is more of a recommendation than anything, ID like to see a maelstrom nade implemented ontop of the frag ,plasma etc. Maybe even a freeze nade ( CC ) that can effect the players abilities for 1-2 secs. Many more ideas, to many to list.


Just sayin.

[DviddLeff]

Will a jump jet troops be able to also fill support roles for their highly mobile squad?
Will vehicle pilots/drivers have to wear a specific armour type?
How many people will fit in a Galaxy?
Will players be able to apply to join outfits rather than wait to be invited?
Will outfits be able to upload their own logos?
Will merits make a return?

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Miir

1. Are there anymore details he can release on the new flight model?
2. Has he flown any aircraft? If so what's his favorite.

Mosquito is his favorite. He answered this in the recent PC gamer new article. It's on the front page of the site.

Get rid of the fluff questions and keep them realistic. My two questions:

1. Are boomers making a return? Can we attach them to vehicles and maxes?
   
2. Is the liberator 1, 2 or 3 person?
   
3. What can be purchased with resources. How fast can you accumulate resources and what for? (Does it take 5 hours of play-time to purchase an upgrade?)

Also can you keep an updated list of questions at the top of the page so we can comment on them. I noticed some of the questions asked aren't specific enough so Higby and Smedley will dance around them. (Dropped items for instance).

Originally Posted by NapalmEnima

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

Perfect question. Make sure this one is asked!

[DviddLeff]

Good question; sticking explosives on vehicles for the win.

[Graywolves]

Ask him about all the stuff everyone's bitching about.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

Ask him about all the stuff everyone's bitching about.

You'll have to be more specific than that.

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by NapalmEnima

You'll have to be more specific than that.

Well I'm mostly content but alot of people are concerned about TTK's, spawn time, friendly fire, etc.

TTK - We have the idea of it being something between BC2 and PS. Only further we could get is specifics which are probably being worked out now, such as 3-5 shots to kill with shotgun or so.

Health system would be something nice to ask. Will we have health and armor like we did in the previous game and will any of it rejuvinate overtime as health/shields do in so many modern games.

Spawning - Mostly just the general idea of when we will spawn and how. We know that we can now spawn in galaxies and on our squad. Will there be more facility/locations to spawn and will we select these spawn locations as we did before? How long will our spawning be? Will we reenter the battle in under 10 seconds or wait a whole minute after dieing 12 times?

Friendly fire - Right now there is none in their closed testing. What are their current plans and thoughts on this in the future? Clearly there needs to be friendly fire for this level of warfare or else the clusterfuck is just rediculous. Will the same grief system from the previous game be implemented or should we expect something different?


Extra stuff
Voice - Extra voice commands(what kind of new v-commands can we expect? While on this note, what are their expectations of the in-game voice they are implementing? Personally I'm just gonna mute everything and use TS3)

Character customization - aside from the skill tree, how much will our characters be customizable? In the previous game we had the voice macros, some faces, merits/achievments, uniforms upgrades, and the BR25 customization. What can we expect from PS2 in pure aesthetic appeal of our own characters?

Consumables - Will there be anything besides medkits that can be consumed on the battlefield? Like Stimpacks.

Music - Have you heard Don Ferrone's recent work? What can we expect for music in Planetside 2?

edit-- Oh and I know Higby loves the idea of two empires duking it out then the NC taking the tower between them and making it a big three-way but I've always loved the 3empire fight on the large scale, like NC and VS fighting on one contineant and NC has more contineants and larger empire so I attack them on a new front. Will PS2 have any incentive for empires to attack the more heavily populated one? I've personally felt that the gameplay was lacking when my empire had no pop and both of the others are attacking mine. The VS got sanc-locked the other night and I felt very sad for them.

edit edit --- OH I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING! Smedley said something about drops. What does that mean? wtf?

[Sirisian]

Ask them why they decided to go F2P. Did they do a survey to see how much people were willing to pay for a subscription to an MMOFPS? Where did they get their information that F2P would be a better choice basically? (Word it in a nice way though that's not biased).

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Ask them why they decided to go F2P. Did they do a survey to see how much people were willing to pay for a subscription to an MMOFPS? Where did they get their information that F2P would be a better choice basically? (Word it in a nice way though that's not biased).

Mr. Higby, we know that there was alot of thought and discussion into the business model, what lead towards the decision of making the game a free-2-play model? Was this a decision decided from other MMO's/FPS games or did some other form of research come into this decision?