The Meta Game Discussion

[Xyntech]

The most important part to remember about the metagame is that it is pretty much impossible for the developers to predict it or create it artificially. All that they can do is create an environment that fosters a rich metagame and then add in features which support it further.

I'm with Malorn on this one. It's most important for them to get a really rock solid shooter first and foremost. Planetside 1 had a lot of longevity from it's depth, but it never had the populations to support that longevity to the fullest. Part of that was infrequent and often detrimental updates, but another part was that some of the shooting aspects could get really dull. Having a F2P game where lots of players will frequently come back to the game because they enjoy the moment to moment gameplay is really a big step in laying the foundation for the game, which will then have the populations to back up the longevity of a deep metagame.

Once a significant number of people get into beta, then we can start seeing what emerges. We already have some exciting possibilities with the current systems they have in place, but it will be up to the playerbase to define the final direction.

Fortunately we have a development team that actually seems to listen to the community, while not making knee jerk reactions to the community either. I believe they will do a good job of following the communities lead on the metagames development, and add systems in that make it more and more deep while never sacrificing the simplicity of jumping into the game and shooting things.

I actually think that the metagame will be pretty strong by launch, although it will still have plenty of time to grow after launch, whether it is robust or still fledgling at that time.

Still, in the meanwhile, feedback is valuable. We don't need to be in beta to kick ideas around, and obviously a lot of those ideas have made the dev team think of things in a new way.