Joining the PS2 Team

[Tapman]

One thousand congratulations to you Malorn! You have been a large inspiration for me to contribute my thoughts and ideas to the community, particularly your Manifesto. I have felt sometimes that my (albeit infrequent) number-y/wordy posts/threads have been less appreciated but your effort and the feedback/discussions generated have been an inspiration for me to take the time to share them anyway. I am extremely happy that someone has been brought on to design Planetside 2 who not only spent years playing Planetside 1 but obviously spent a large amount of time, focus, and creative thought in analyzing why certain parts worked so well and how other parts could be improved. Furthermore, you have continually shared and grown your work in conjunction with the community. I am confident that your contributions will not only help Planetside 2 feel more like Planetside, but will improve the overall gameplay experience.

I will admit that I am EXTREMELY jealous, I regularly feel like there is little else that would excite every fiber of my being every single day than to wake up and get the opportunity to go build the game that I have been craving and dreaming about for years. I would apply in a heartbeat if I thought I had an icicle's chance in hell of being hired as a remote employee because managing a tech support office by day and serving food by night doesn't quite do it for me but it gladdens my heart to see the team hire someone as committed to creating the best damn game ever made as you.

My top question is based on your experience in PS1 and PS2 thus far, what are your top five goals for this project in order of importance and why? What do you think the current or previous builds have done the best? Do you have any recommendations for someone who would like to get a job in game design? What is your favorite beer, or other alcoholic beverage if you don't enjoy beer?

[Fenrys]

This announcement pleases me.
AFAICT from forum postings, when it comes to game design, Malorn has good judgement.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Tapman

One thousand congratulations to you Malorn! You have been a large inspiration for me to contribute my thoughts and ideas to the community, particularly your Manifesto. I have felt sometimes that my (albeit infrequent) number-y/wordy posts/threads have been less appreciated but your effort and the feedback/discussions generated have been an inspiration for me to take the time to share them anyway. I am extremely happy that someone has been brought on to design Planetside 2 who not only spent years playing Planetside 1 but obviously spent a large amount of time, focus, and creative thought in analyzing why certain parts worked so well and how other parts could be improved. Furthermore, you have continually shared and grown your work in conjunction with the community. I am confident that your contributions will not only help Planetside 2 feel more like Planetside, but will improve the overall gameplay experience.

I will admit that I am EXTREMELY jealous, I regularly feel like there is little else that would excite every fiber of my being every single day than to wake up and get the opportunity to go build the game that I have been craving and dreaming about for years. I would apply in a heartbeat if I thought I had an icicle's chance in hell of being hired as a remote employee because managing a tech support office by day and serving food by night doesn't quite do it for me but it gladdens my heart to see the team hire someone as committed to creating the best damn game ever made as you.

My top question is based on your experience in PS1 and PS2 thus far, what are your top five goals for this project in order of importance and why? What do you think the current or previous builds have done the best? Do you have any recommendations for someone who would like to get a job in game design? What is your favorite beer, or other alcoholic beverage if you don't enjoy beer?

Thanks Tapman! Five goals...hrm.

1) Fun. If the game is boring people won't play it and it dies, so #1 is keeping it fun. More specifically I think that means lessening downtime/waiting for stuff to happen, keeping the action always going, making it easy to find that action, and avoiding boring/tedious things.

2) New player friendly. New players need to be hooked on this game within 5 minutes, because new players are the future of the game. The vets and people who read this forum seldom think about this, but I consider it extremely important that the game is easy to jump into and immediately start having fun.

3) Reasonably monetized. While the game is F2P and F2P will help it long term, it still needs to make money or it'll stop getting developed and die. That means that it has to be reasonably monetized so we are willing to pay the money, feel like it's worth it, and not feel like we are being taken advantage of (i.e. no pay-to-win).

4) Play to the strengths. The big thing about PS2 is the scale and the persistent world. Those are two things that other shooters can't offer and the unique edge of PS2. To me that means there always needs to be big fights and a sense of conquest where it's more than just a simple session shooter.

5) Variety & Freshness. This goes to fun factor... keeping the game fresh is important, like seeing new continents or seeing the same content in a different context. The day-night cycle helps with this, and weather will help also. Cross-continent warfare is another way this will stay fresh. Having a unique fight and seeing places the player may not have ever had a fight before, or perhaps a very different fight from the last time. Keeping the battle moving along is a bit part of this and not letting every day devolve into the same fight at the same place. New weapons to unlock, new certs to try out, having something to look forward to. This is all what I would consider essential to long-term success so players don't get bored of the same thing all the time.

So those goals all amount to having fun in PlanetSide 2 and ensuring it thrives and is worth playing for the next decade.


Current/previous builds have all done a great job prioritizing the important stuff and addressing the biggest pain points of players. If you go back to tech test its come a long way and every patch added something significant that players asked for or complained about.

Job in game design? Honestly look for something else. I never expected or planned to be where I'm at now and couldn't have anticipated it. If you ask Matt or Clegg though they'd tell you to get your foot in the door by doing QA. It worked for them so it can happen. I'd say have a plan A first. Plan to not be in the games industry but still do computer-sciency things. Develop your core skills and then use your off time to develop your game design/programming specific skills. Look for opportunities and see if those you get fit with where you want to go and are worth the tradeoffs.

Favorite beer is Smithwick's Irish Ale.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Originally Posted by Malorn

5) Variety & Freshness. This goes to fun factor... keeping the game fresh is important, like seeing new continents or seeing the same content in a different context. The day-night cycle helps with this, and weather will help also. Cross-continent warfare is another way this will stay fresh. Having a unique fight and seeing places the player may not have ever had a fight before, or perhaps a very different fight from the last time. Keeping the battle moving along is a bit part of this and not letting every day devolve into the same fight at the same place. New weapons to unlock, new certs to try out, having something to look forward to. This is all what I would consider essential to long-term success so players don't get bored of the same thing all the time.

I highly recommend reading your new boss's ideas on that.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...-fu/#continued

I agree with Smed that players are eating through content at a much faster rate than can be produced. We've gotten better at breaking down games and there are more of us for better parallel processing. Making new content should be looked at how to maximize effect. Let's take some quick looks at examples from the past.

Battle Islands, when they were released they were actually quite fun to play on and people would jump at the chance to fight on one that lined up with their desired game play. (This was before the last rule change that homogenized their rule sets and effectively made them terra non grata) The thing that drew players to them was not the territory but the rules that went along with it. New ground can be scouted out and processed in a very short amount of time by any old commander but the restrictions on the tools available made specialists hunger for fights there. Quick example would be the tank fights that raged on desolation where the only AV was other tanks as aircraft were banned. Actually, I can think of salient examples from each of the 4 BI right after release.
Good times gone, ne'er to be again.

CE update, firstly can I just say I really hope that we get CE, infils, and squad exp soon because those are things that fight against needing good frames per second? Anyway, the update added the aegis, field turrets, cloaking turrets, flack turrets, and anti-tank traps. People came back to try these things out like you would expect from an update so you don't need large radical things to draw people back to a game they already like. These new tools allowed for greater creativity and leveraged PS's greatest asset of non-linear combat by which I mean that it is rare to be in a situation more than once. These new deployables added more variables that players could come into contact with in the field.
Chalk up another argument for CE being in PS2 in a larger role than it is now.

Caves. Let's not go into too many details as the caves on a whole bring up a whole range of emotions (Annwn anyone? It's Tubular!). The question is which added more gameplay to Planetside, the caves or cave lock? I'd say Cave lock as it could change whole fights around and added a lot to the meta game players had to consider.



There is something that occurs to me, in PS the speed of the game could swing from absolutely breakneck speeds to slow ambles through the countrysides. In PS2 there seems to be a much greater homogenization of speed and now I'm going to tell you that's bad because I'm a PS1 vet who hates change. No, just kidding. I'm going to tell you its bad because in those breathing spaces you can stop and look at the map and pick where to go or do what's even more important from a player retention point of view: Shoot the Shit.
We aren't here because Planetside was a flawless gem. Planetside has flaws. We are here because of each other and them.

I would like to see Planetside 2 learn from history.

If you find flaws or want me to try to elaborate on anything feel free to pick my brain.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Captain1nsaneo

I highly recommend reading your new boss's ideas on that.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/10...-fu/#continued

I agree with Smed that players are eating through content at a much faster rate than can be produced. We've gotten better at breaking down games and there are more of us for better parallel processing. Making new content should be looked at how to maximize effect. Let's take some quick looks at examples from the past.

Battle Islands, when they were released they were actually quite fun to play on and people would jump at the chance to fight on one that lined up with their desired game play. (This was before the last rule change that homogenized their rule sets and effectively made them terra non grata) The thing that drew players to them was not the territory but the rules that went along with it. New ground can be scouted out and processed in a very short amount of time by any old commander but the restrictions on the tools available made specialists hunger for fights there. Quick example would be the tank fights that raged on desolation where the only AV was other tanks as aircraft were banned. Actually, I can think of salient examples from each of the 4 BI right after release.
Good times gone, ne'er to be again.

CE update, firstly can I just say I really hope that we get CE, infils, and squad exp soon because those are things that fight against needing good frames per second? Anyway, the update added the aegis, field turrets, cloaking turrets, flack turrets, and anti-tank traps. People came back to try these things out like you would expect from an update so you don't need large radical things to draw people back to a game they already like. These new tools allowed for greater creativity and leveraged PS's greatest asset of non-linear combat by which I mean that it is rare to be in a situation more than once. These new deployables added more variables that players could come into contact with in the field.
Chalk up another argument for CE being in PS2 in a larger role than it is now.

Caves. Let's not go into too many details as the caves on a whole bring up a whole range of emotions (Annwn anyone? It's Tubular!). The question is which added more gameplay to Planetside, the caves or cave lock? I'd say Cave lock as it could change whole fights around and added a lot to the meta game players had to consider.



There is something that occurs to me, in PS the speed of the game could swing from absolutely breakneck speeds to slow ambles through the countrysides. In PS2 there seems to be a much greater homogenization of speed and now I'm going to tell you that's bad because I'm a PS1 vet who hates change. No, just kidding. I'm going to tell you its bad because in those breathing spaces you can stop and look at the map and pick where to go or do what's even more important from a player retention point of view: Shoot the Shit.
We aren't here because Planetside was a flawless gem. Planetside has flaws. We are here because of each other and them.

I would like to see Planetside 2 learn from history.

If you find flaws or want me to try to elaborate on anything feel free to pick my brain.

PlanetSide 2 is another game where the players are the content, but there is still content provided by the studio, namely the continents. However, even that is something Smed wants to see player driven in the future where players build outposts, probably something along the lines of EVE Online's 0.0 space. Will be interesting to see where that goes.

Weather and day-night cycle and mixing up the starting positions & continent links are great ways to keep adding freshness to the game and getting the most out of existing content.

PS1 had the same 10 continents yet it kept us interested for many years due to the occasional mix-ups of the connections and restructuring of the lattice.

As far as caves go, I have a feeling that this naval combat and inter-continental sea travel will end up being the rough equivalent to Caves. Instead of fighting in caverns you are capturing islands and sea lanes that open up new attack avenues to continents and provide supply lines (aka "cave lock"). Just speculating, but it fits.

I like having variety with continents. Some of that can be achieved with resource distribution. For example, suppose Esamir had few Aerospace materials and they were all around Eisa. Or a continent where there's a small amount of mechanized resources aroudn the warpgates and that's it. I can see different rulesets too like the Battle Islands where certain vehicles or weapons are not permitted. Might be confusing for new players who end up there though.

[Ritual]

Or instead of vehicle restrictions on continents,

you make weather storms.

If you make it windy up above a certain altitude making flying extremely hard, that would limit air vehicles without restricting them. And with weather, well it can come and go to dynamically change a continent's playstyle.

Fog, Rain, Snow, Icy Road Conditions, Wind.

All of this I hope is being worked out.

[Ritual]

Also Esamir could be the VS home continent because their tank would be least affected by these slippery road conditions.

It would be their home turf advantage.

That sounds cool to me even though I am TR

[Illtempered]

It's good to hear that an Outfit Leader is on the dev team. The game seems very unfocused on outfits and teamplay and more on the zerg. I can't even figure out how to chat in Outfit yet....

[basti]

Gratz man, and well deserved.


Now, a few things you gotta do once your hooked up:

1. During your time getting up to speed, means level design stuff: Delete the crown!

2. Once your actually in the whole meta game fray: You know as much as any of us vets that Planetside is in fact a pointless game, even more than any other FPS. YOu cannot win the round, as there are no rounds.
So, you know that having a goal is important. Not something you want to archive personally, but something your outfit, and your entire faction, wants to archive. We had that in PS1, global domination.
Something like that is needed in PS2. I trust you to get that done, once you are able.

3. Mind the shift. People will be bitching at you for various stuff, they will yell, insult, whatever. THe usual crap a Gamedev has to put up with. Dont let that get you down. Remember that us old timers who knew you from PSU, reddit and the official forums before you went Dev are still here. And even tho we will bitch at you just the same way as the new folks, we actually like you!

[Captain1nsaneo]

Originally Posted by Illtempered

It's good to hear that and Outfit Leader is on the dev team. The game seems very unfocused on outfits and teamplay and more on the zerg. I can't even figure out how to chat in Outfit yet....

/outfitsay

It was messing with me too because the command list says that /o should work but it doesn't last I checked. Talking in the outfit tab will also automatically create the command.

[Frotang]

/os is the short version

[thegreekboy]

Keep fightin for us Malorn!

[Marinealver]

Hope you can fix what they are doing.