Smart poster on the OF!!!!!!11!!

[Navaron]

http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/p...ML/009604.html

This guy seems to be asking some of the same questions I have...

Read into it all you want, but Spork replied so it's worth at least a look.

If you are not Spork, please keep your replies to a minimum. Better yet, if you're not Spork, please don't reply, except to say, simply, "bump" if you agree. Just in case, I'll email this message to whatever Planetside dev/support addresses I can find. On to the subject:
What, exactly, is Planetside supposed to be? Is it a standard first person shooter with lots of players on the server at a time and where you can use futuristic weapons? Is it a sort of futuristic sporting event, where the only thing to win is gloating rights? Is it a money-making scheme by Sony to make money by pandering to the lowest common denominator and fixing immediate problems for as long as people keep paying for the game? Or is it a simulation of a war, where, hundreds of years in the future, the inhabitants of the very first colonized alien world have been cut off from Earth and now fight amongst each other to decide the very fate of the planet?

Despite what the box and the manual say, Planetside's current incarnation could be described as any of these EXCEPT the last one.

If this is a war between three factions on an alien planet, where are the cities? Where are the civilians? For that matter, besides the Vanu hover/beam weapon technology and the spawn tubes, what is so alien about this planet?

If this is a large, multiplayer, first person shooter set in the future or some sort of future sport, why is there no real purpose to capturing a base, a continent, or the world?

If this is a money making scheme, why are you making so many people unhappy by adding a "capture the flag" idea so many people are obviously opposed to, as well as waiting to address bugs until the fix can be included in a patch that also adds little "features?"

Someone, somewhere at Sony HAS to know the answers to these questions, and I as I suspect many of my fellow players, very much want those answers. You can't simply try to do all these things. You have to choose one, or two at the very most. As I see it now, this game is an attempted amalgam of all four ideas.

Please, Spork, tell me what the developers want this game to be. I signed up to be a soldier in a grand war in the future. NOT to be a paying subscriber to a shooter/sport/money making experiment of a game set, arbitrarily, in the future. The only thing currently keeping me going in battles is my own imagination; willing myself to imagine that we are actually fighting for something worth having.

Now, with the above stated and out of the way, here are a number of ideas which could be (and in some games, already have been) implemented to both give the game a "purpose" as well as give the game the feel of being a real war set in the future.

Before I begin, however, let us get one thing straight. This is not a wish list. These are things which, I feel, myself and others were promised by this game, and which we did not get. If nothing of this is implemented or even considered, I will be, at the very least, canceling my subscription. If even a fraction of the ideas I mention ARE implemented, you will have earned yourself a very loyal customer, to say the least. Now, on to the ideas.

First, give an empire bonuses for capturing entire continents. If an empire has taken a continent, wouldn't they then, logically, be able to use the resources of that continent to further their war effort. I know this could create a balance problem. After all, once an empire starts getting bonuses, won't they become even more powerful, thus letting them get more continents in an endless cycle until they have taken everything? Well, there are a number of ways to solve that problem. You could give the losing empire or empires different bonuses. You could have the empire who is winning have defensive bonuses. Their base turrets could do more damage (their advantage in resources allows them to use more expensive, but more effective ammo in bases), the time it takes for an REK to complete the hack on various facilities of their bases could be dramatically increased (their IFF identifiers don't have to . The empire who is losing could get offensive bonuses. They could have knife damage increases and a weapon accuracy bonus (desperation and fervor give a desperate edge to their fighting techniques), or they could have increased ammunition capacities (since they are losing, they are likely closer to home. On their own, more friendly ground, their ability to supply themselves is enhanced). The details and the implementations are limited only by your imagination.