News: Community Interview with Jon Weathers

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Bags

Oh jeeze, when a base is attacked there's going to be an automatic mission suggesting you go defend it.

Fucking hell, what's next, farming dragons for loot?

I always wanted to drive tanks in the Karanas in Everquest, or down the hallways of Muramite Proving Grounds

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

I always wanted to drive tanks in the Karanas in Everquest, or down the hallways of Muramite Proving Grounds

[QuantumMechanic]

I don't think they're going to allow your alt character to hide cloaked somewhere and just collect resources.

They haven't mentioned how long apart these periods are that you get resources (no doubt it will change during testing anyways), but most certainly your idle character will be kicked due to inactivity after 5 minutes or so. Which will probably happen before you get your serving of free resources. And if you decide to move your character 1 meter every 4 minutes... well then you are awfully desperate. And a dodgy rat.

[Timealude]

the only thing more awesome then that interview would have been hamma and jennyboo using a drop pod from the plane to land ate SOE's studio.

[Athanasios]

Nice interview, i assume more coming up in the next days?

[headcrab13]

Great vid Hamma/Jennyboo! I really liked having the running gameplay feed during the interview.

Definitely can't wait until tomorrow for more interviewage!

[Kurtz]

Hamma, thanks for the interview.


I think even T-Ray would agree with me when I say if we sacrificed ONE net connection to make room for VOIP than it was ONE too many.

Lots of you are screaming about the "dumbing down" of planetside but yet you are jumping for joy that VOIP is added to the game.

What random newb do you really need to talk to?

I'm saying that VOIP isn't necessary and that you should be in an outfit with TS3 or Ventrilo. This will keep VOIP out of the game and make room for more necessary strain on the net code...IE MORE PLAYERS.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by xXGumpXX

Did i just hear right or was my mind playing tricks with me , now in ps2 there will be automated missions that squads can do to complete an objective , i thought planetside was all about pvp or are they now introducing a campaign into a pvp game , because ifso i don't like the sound of it , thanks but no thanks

There will be automated missions in addition to player generated missions.

Originally Posted by Timealude

the only thing more awesome then that interview would have been hamma and jennyboo using a drop pod from the plane to land ate SOE's studio.

Couldn't get it on video

Originally Posted by Athanasios

Nice interview, i assume more coming up in the next days?

Yep.

[KTNApollo]

Originally Posted by Bags

Oh jeeze, when a base is attacked there's going to be an automatic mission suggesting you go defend it.

Fucking hell, what's next, farming dragons for loot?

I hope so. Raiding was my favorite thing to do in WoW.

[DviddLeff]

Great work guys, loved the intro!

[Higby]

Originally Posted by Kurtz

Hamma, thanks for the interview.


I think even T-Ray would agree with me when I say if we sacrificed ONE net connection to make room for VOIP than it was ONE too many.

Lots of you are screaming about the "dumbing down" of planetside but yet you are jumping for joy that VOIP is added to the game.

What random newb do you really need to talk to?

I'm saying that VOIP isn't necessary and that you should be in an outfit with TS3 or Ventrilo. This will keep VOIP out of the game and make room for more necessary strain on the net code...IE MORE PLAYERS.

Connections to a VOIP server have no adverse effect on your connection to the "game" server except for potentially on your end if your connection was unable to handle having both open. The game server isn't processing voice at all.

As for why you'd want to talk to a random player, maybe to help them learn the game? Maybe because you want ammo, or you saw an enemy squad around the corner and want to warn them? Maybe to coordinate fire on an enemy tank? Maybe because they're going the wrong way? There are lots of reasons.

Planetside is a complex game that focuses almost entire on massive player coordination and cooperation, having experienced players who can say "Hey come over here the command room is this way" to someone whos lost without having to jump through hoops to do so goes a long way towards getting the player community more closely knit and ultimately make the game work as well as possible.

If all you want to do is interact with the friends you already came into the game with and the entire rest of the playerbase is just background noise to you, that's fine, you can turn it off, but I think you'd be missing out on one of the more unique aspects of Planetside.

[Atheosim]

Uh, I'm assuming there will be a window you can open to look at available missions. It's not imperative to anything that you ever open that window once.

[Hyiero]

Originally Posted by Jennyboo

No that was a Maxs tking me in a cap point area

Awesome then that's what I like to hear

[ringring]

Thanks Hamma/Jennyboo and not forgetting Jon.

The takeaways for me:

• we saw the DC Max!
• there's such a lot still to be done that can't be done without larger scale testing
• VOIP sounds better or at least the plans for VOIP sound better than I imagined. But remember it's not just who you want to talk to it is who you don't want to talk to and that you may need to keep out folk such as: the angst ridden teenager, the guy with verbal diarrhea, the guy who keeps on contradicting the squad leader and anyone generally annoying - I assume there will be tools to manage who can join your squad which will help
• I am less sure about the mission system, for me it shouldn't be complicated as it sounds like it will.
• nice to hear a realisation that platoons are necessary (it's probably a higher tactial organisation level will be needed
• 10 man squads are fine, they don't have to align with the capacity of a gal, from experience having exactly 10 people online and all in the same squad is rare you're more likely to have 2 squads of 8 and 2.

A bit more on the mission example that Jon gave:
scenario: VS have attacked one of your bases and an automatic mission is created.

Question: At what point is the mission created? When a capture commences or when it completes (can captures on all capture points in a base be startd simultaneously?). Hopefully it is not simply when a few VS arrive in the vicinity of the base otherwise that would give their attack away before it got properly started.

Is This Too Handholding? I think probably. It's kind of having the AI man tapping you on the shoulder to say 'did you know you're being attacked' while in PS it would be upto the CR5's and senior players in the outfit to monitor their own bases and form a response. On the other hand having a mission created and awarding XP on a successful completion may not be bad, kind of like resecure XP in PS1 terms but maybe it should be done manually.

Personally, I'd prefer the motivation, where possible to generated by players and not by Mr AI.

I think my problem is I don't understand the purpose of the mission system if it is for more than giving new people something to do before they understand the game properly.


However all in all I'm happy.

[Hyiero]

Originally Posted by Higby

Connections to a VOIP server have no adverse effect on your connection to the "game" server except for potentially on your end if your connection was unable to handle having both open. The game server isn't processing voice at all.

As for why you'd want to talk to a random player, maybe to help them learn the game? Maybe because you want ammo, or you saw an enemy squad around the corner and want to warn them? Maybe to coordinate fire on an enemy tank? Maybe because they're going the wrong way? There are lots of reasons.

Planetside is a complex game that focuses almost entire on massive player coordination and cooperation, having experienced players who can say "Hey come over here the command room is this way" to someone whos lost without having to jump through hoops to do so goes a long way towards getting the player community more closely knit and ultimately make the game work as well as possible.

If all you want to do is interact with the friends you already came into the game with and the entire rest of the playerbase is just background noise to you, that's fine, you can turn it off, but I think you'd be missing out on one of the more unique aspects of Planetside.

Someone please get this man a cookie...what ever kind he wants...man is a damn genius in my book