Landmark for PlanetSide 2

[Hyncharas]

As people may or may not be aware, the Beta for free-to-play MMO EverQuest Next is coming this winter, and an extension of this will be a toolset called Landmark. The purpose of this feature is to provide a sandbox and companion to Player Studio, allowing users to create their own ideas, with the possibility of seeing them added to EQN’s landscape of Norrath. The principles of this new toolset will also enable multiple players to put forth combined ideas to improve the game.

So how would this suit the universe of PlanetSide 2? Although the level of fan creation is currently limited, with the right application of this toolset, it could serve an important function to bridge the community with SOE in three areas – Create, Collaborate, and Instigate.


Example Production Cycle

Imagine for a moment Landmark was already integrated into PS2 as a creative support platform. Most of the time it would operate the same way as Player Studio, with players designing their own material to sell through the PlanetSide 2 Store. But during the year, there would also be exceptions…

Create
Every four months, the community would have four weeks to submit possible Proposals as part of Content Theme Events, with contests every six months to win digital and/or physical prizes. Each event would be divided into the categories of either Player Studio or Landmark. To demonstrate how this would work, we will use a popular concept since the original game; “WaterSide”, or the application of naval and/or underwater combat:

Player Studio – ideas for this might be equipment, weapons, deployables, and (possibly) exoskeletons worn over the player-classes whilst exploring or performing combat on the seabed, obeying certain gameplay challenges unique to the environment.

Landmark – ideas might be the creation of new structures for facilities, facility-based turrets, Territorial Resource Points for mining, Capture Points and surface/subsurface vehicles.

There would be a subcategory in both as well to allow for cosmetic items via the PlanetSide 2 Store.

Collaborate
Proposals would fall under the scrutiny of the entire PlanetSide 2 community, much like the Roadmap but “by fans, for fans”. During the course of these Content Theme Events, there is likely to be overlap from multiple players having similar ideas, enabling them to discuss, combine and tweak them into a better proposal...

This process would, thus, have the same effect as how game concepts evolve at the studio, where the developers gradually improve and build on the original idea into viable and balanced gameplay in the eyes of the community.

Instigate
At the end of these periods, all Proposals would be voted on by the community until the calendar mid-point between two Content Theme Events; i.e., the end of every second month in the rotation. SOE would then begin a selection process where they list the best by complexity and community interest, before announcing the winning proposals.

At this point, a supervisor would oversee work between the proposal's creator(s) and the PS2 Development Team to design and implement it in the engine. The lead-time of four months between events as a result would satisfy an early build, refining the ideas on the Private Test Server for balancing and bug fixes, until it is ready for launch as a Game Update. After this any more complex aspects of the proposal could then be released as subsequent patches, once fully tested.