can we have cities?

[Trolltaxi]

Originally Posted by Draep

The way you're talking, it would detract from the massiveness of gameplay. A global war on pioneer world sounds boring.

Don't forget the respawn, that effectively multiplies the number of the combatants! 100.000 immortal, unkillable soldiers can make pretty large conflicts!

[Baneblade]

Human psychology would put the growth rate up to third world standards on a frontier world so far from earth. So Auraxis should be designed to have supported millions.

And even a million people would create a pretty large city.

[EVILoHOMER]

As long as they leave the horrible Core Combat bullshit from Planetside out and keep the cities on the surface then it might be good. Saying that I did love the zip lines...

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

As long as they leave the horrible Core Combat bullshit from Planetside out and keep the cities on the surface then it might be good. Saying that I did love the zip lines...

I wouldn't mind it if we had maybe one area more like CC with the ziplines and such, maybe with a few additional interesting touches like being able to walk on certain walls/ceilings, like in Prey. I think at least one environment could support this kind of alien environment, although I wouldn't try to make a bunch of them if I were developing the game.

I wouldn't mind seeing some different, more plain, naturalistic caves to fight in though. Maybe an entire area that has places that you can capture, but no dedicated spawn points. Force everyone to bring in their own spawn equipment No ziplines, just winding tunnels and cliff faces.

Between realistic caves, alien caves and city ruins, as well as regular base fights to a lesser degree, I think urban combat would be pretty well covered.

On the other hand, I'm not getting my hopes too high until we hear them talk about putting stuff like this into the game. For now, I'm expecting to only get base fights out of that lot. At least at launch.

I kinda hope that they add new areas more gradually anyways. If they did add a more alien cave, why not just keep it to a single one? Put extra work into it and make it really awesome, but why force several alien caves when just having one would probably be enough? As long as it's a large enough environment for large numbers of players to enjoy it at once.

It could add a lot more sense of story if they very deliberately revealed one new location at a time, instead of just being all "Hey, this new thing popped up, here's a handful of new areas to fight in", it would be more like "Such and such location has been discovered, explore it's depths, unlock it's secrets, take control of it before the enemy does" and incorporate some story elements specific to that one cave, instead of to a bunch of mostly identical caves.

The same could be done with a more naturalistic cave environment. Maybe that cave was never built up much by the aliens or settlers, but some alien artifacts or pockets of resources were still buried away down there to be fought over by the three factions.

I'm not sure how you would go about introducing ruins of a human city after launch. Maybe the area was quarantined by all three sides and only recently becomes survivable. I guess city ruins are the most likely of the three to be in at launch, but hopefully they aren't off the table if they don't make it in by launch.

They could also introduce new continents in a variety of ways, without even having to resort to going to other planets.

Do a sunken, Atlantas style continent that rises out of the ocean.

Have a continent that was previously cloaked by a stealth field, or was out of phase with the rest of the planet, but then it becomes visible/tangible and it's warpgates activate.

Obviously other planets or stellar bodies are another viable place to expand into. I hope if they do this, that they get more creative with it than just being like another continent on Auraxis. Do a lower gravity environment where things fall slower (that doesn't = jumping higher, lrn2physics). Maybe make an area that has no atmosphere, where anybody in something lighter than Heavy Assault will start to take environmental damage every time their shield is down to zero. Ideally, each offworld area would be more unique, instead of a half dozen areas with the same alternate rules and conditions.

Of course space combat could be another one of these environments. Something like Shattered Horizon maybe. Space combat may be one area that would require too much development time to relegate it to a single area though. You would at least have to make alterations to every character model, while you would probably need entirely new models for space vehicles.

The same goes for naval combat. Putting in a bunch of sea vessels would be too much work to relegate it to a single one water zone.

Hopefully, with having entirely new equipment options, space and naval combat would be interesting enough to warrant a few different locations without becoming stale.

Naval combat could have one area that's entirely water, with a few capture points, floating bases and floating towers, and maybe some rocky barriers to break it up. Another area could be largely water, with a ton of tiny islands, a couple of bigger islands and the occasional bridge. A third area could be more like most regular continents, but with a ton of waterways that provide naval vessels with plenty of options to be useful and important, more waterways than Cyssor, but still largely land oriented.

My brain isn't thinking of much in the way of diverse space environments to fight over, but I'm sure there would be some good options.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Space environments can include radiation fields, gravity wells, asteroid packs, and magnetic storms.

Actually space is freaking terrifying. There are lightning bolts longer than our galaxy out there just traveling along. Then there are magnataurs.

[Raka Maru]

I'm sure if we find semi habitable planets that are worth fighting for, they would be in the goldilocks zone. Unless they were rich in some resource we need.

In Eve online, this means mining and transport vessels. On PS2, this seems to be just have control of this sector and the resources are yours.

But I like your ideas Xyntech, in how to expand this game later. To me, MMO means continual development, upgrades, more land to explore and things to do, so the sky is the limit once this is stable and balanced, and the world flocks to it.

[Tatwi]

Urban, like Counter-Strike urban, would be fun. Many of the best CS maps were build as a combination of corridores and larger rooms, with some windows and ladders here and there. The theme/skin changed on each map, but the principle was the same. PS bases are like that inside, but the outside of bases are much more open. It would be fun to have a few large (1 mile square) out door urban areas that mix the tight spaces and windows of CS with the large base court yards and indoor bases of PS. Tanks and airecraft woud be harder to use, due to the tall buildings and thin streets, so effective use of them would be a show of skill for sure.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Urban, like Counter-Strike urban, would be fun. Many of the best CS maps were build as a combination of corridores and larger rooms, with some windows and ladders here and there. The theme/skin changed on each map, but the principle was the same. PS bases are like that inside, but the outside of bases are much more open. It would be fun to have a few large (1 mile square) out door urban areas that mix the tight spaces and windows of CS with the large base court yards and indoor bases of PS. Tanks and airecraft woud be harder to use, due to the tall buildings and thin streets, so effective use of them would be a show of skill for sure.

Urban, like Battlefield 3 urban, Seine Crossing style to be precise would be even more fun.