Joining the PS2 Team

[Soothsayer]

Grats Malorn! Glad to see this gesture made for the community to someone who has contributed a great deal to our side of this project.

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Thanks Tatwi!

The phone I am currently using is an HTC Trophy running WP7. A few years ago I used an iPhone 3G, then got frustrated with AT&T and got a Droid Incredible from Verizon. I liked android a lot more than the iPhone. I switched to WP7 because it was free for me from the company and I wanted to see how it compared to the competition. I consider the WP7 a good cross between iPhone and Android. It has the structure and vision of an iPhone but with more Android-like flexibility and better usability.

Still undecided what phone I will go with next. The HTC Windows Phone 8X is what I will likely get. Though I may want an Android so I could use the PS2 app. Apple hasn't innovated on the iphone much at all in the last few years and I find their user interface inefficient and obtrusive. Android allows you to customize that interface and the Windows interface is more fluid.

When I read that you work for MS, I was wondering if you were still using the free WP7 that they gave out to their employees (which is what prompted me to ask! ). Before I upgraded from my previous BB, I tried a WP7 Samsung for a bit. It was super fast and responsive, with a huge 4" screen. Browsing the web and looking at pictures was great, but I have to say that I absolutely loathed the UI (camera included), particularly how in many places it's a lot of words in odd locations with different font sizes. Compared to the Blackberry OS that I have used (ver 4, 5, 6, and 7), getting anything accomplished on a WP7 was a needless chore of sifting and swiping and backing up... BB work flow is so straightforward and effective (BB Key = Menu, Mouse = Select or I could touch the screen). I don't know why the media hammers RIM about the Blackberry being garbage, because it's a fantastic communications device and not too bad for media. The Bold 9900 is also built like a freakin tank, but the same cannot be said about the equally priced Torch.

Anyhow, "smart phones" are neat and its always interesting to hear the things people use them for, why they chose a particular device/OS, and their experiences with them!

[Rolfski]

Congrats Malorn, I'm sure you will have a blast designing games

My question to you: Besides PS what other games do you like to play? COD/BF style shooters? MMO's? Strategy perhaps? Name a few titles you enjoyed. Are you on console platform as well?

Btw: In case you're familiar with shooters like BF3, consider the following idea for your map designing assignment. One, big particular map in that game (Caspian Border) has proven to be working extremely well for all sorts of combat because of design principles like:
-infantry centric in the middle: relatively close bases, good infantry cover.
-vehicle oriented on the outside: wide open & exposed, more spaced out bases.

I'm not sure if such an idea would work on a PS 2 continent scale but at least I would be very excited to test out such a continent design as it would be a welcome deviation from the standard travel distances, deploy, travel distances, deploy -routine we mostly see in the current game.

Btw, I used to be a colleague of you (Microsoft Netherlands)

[Zulthus]

Congrats on the position, Malorn.


Now help us, you're our only hope....

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

My question to you: Besides PS what other games do you like to play? COD/BF style shooters? MMO's? Strategy perhaps? Name a few titles you enjoyed. Are you on console platform as well?

I've mostly played Shooters, RPGs, and strategy games for the last fifteen years or so.

For shooters, I was an old UT player, Quake, then into the newer shooters. I was big into Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, and Natural Selection (really enjoyed NS and its blend of RTS & FPS). Then the BF Games. I never got into COD much. Really enjoyed BF2142 and BFBC2.

Early college I was horribly addicted to EverQuest and Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo. WoW of course off and on. Dark Age of Camelot is one I kept coming back to. Warhammer. Rift. I played EVE Online quite a bit in GoonSwarm. It was amazing seeing how effective that group was and coming off my small/elite viewpoint in PlanetSide I saw the value of casting a wide net and having a larger mass. It's one of the things that led me to try out the Enclave in Rift.

Strategy games - Starcraft of course, Age of Empires was one of my all time favorites. I like all of the Civilization games and was playing Gods and Kings just prior to PS2 beta.

I generally like anything that is strategy, shooter, and RPG. One thing I enjoyed about PS is that it is a great shooter with a larger strategy element and some mild RPG elements.

I haven't played consoles in a long time because once you go mouse/keyboard it's hard to go back. Strategy games, RPGs, and shooters are all better to play on Mouse/keyboard than on a console. But I enjoyed the old school metroid, metal gear, final fantasy, and of course puzzle fighter console games.

Btw: In case you're familiar with shooters like BF3, consider the following idea for your map designing assignment. One, big particular map in that game (Caspian Border) has proven to be working extremely well for all sorts of combat because of design principles like:
-infantry centric in the middle: relatively close bases, good infantry cover.
-vehicle oriented on the outside: wide open & exposed, more spaced out bases.

I'm not sure if such an idea would work on a PS 2 continent scale but at least I would be very excited to test out such a continent design as it would be a welcome deviation from the standard travel distances, deploy, travel distances, deploy -routine we mostly see in the current game.

Btw, I used to be a colleague of you (Microsoft Netherlands)

Cool! MSFT is a big company, the diversity and integrity it has is awesome!

I've spent a lot of time staring at Indar over the past few weeks watching how it behaves, being in and among it, seeing where the fun fights are. I don't want to go into all the aspects, but I understand what you mean about Caspain Border. There was a BF3 blog a while back talking about how they designed one of their new maps around the idea of balancing the infantry vs vehicle combat. I found that very informative about how to create the right balance. That one is here:
http://blogs.battlefield.com/2012/07...t-bf-map-ever/

There was another one specifically on Caspian here:
http://blogs.battlefield.com/2012/08...aspian-border/

I find these very insightful reads and agree with the idea that some places are better suited for infantry and others vehicles. BFBC2 had Atacama Desert that was a marvelous blend of these two. I think PS2 naturally has this sort of balance in between the outposts, depending on outpost type. Outpost distance and terrain changes that balance. I'm curious to see how Esamir plays out since they are further apart and how it compares to the Crown where the outposts are closer together.

So outpost density, outpost distance, outpost type, population density/funneling and terrain of course are the big levers that control the experience. Its not easy to get that right, but I think fun maps from the BF Games (Karkand, Atacama, Caspain, etc) can teach a lot about creating the right experience that people enjoy and creates variety.

[Rolfski]

I saw those blog posts as well, great to hear you're already that deep into it :-)
Impressive gaming experience I must say, a few of those games I enjoyed as well over the years.

[Flaropri]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Hey PSU, as some of you may have gleaned from a few of Matt's recent cryptic tweets, I have been hired by SOE to be a game designer on PS2!

Congratulations! Now don't screw up

[Canaris]

congratz Malorn!!

more TR on the team the better, even out those numbers a bit

[Shogun]

wow!

congratulations malorn!
livechanging seems to be the right word
and dream coming through would certainly fit for almost everybody here if they weee hired by soe.

i am glad, that soe seems really dedicated to get this game right! they listen to the fans, and now they even hire them and put them into the dev team. great move!

with you they made an excellent choice! i totally love most of your posts and the manifesto. and most of the time a totally agree with your opinions. and as it seems, the majority of the psu community shares these feelings. knowing, that someone with those opinions now is part of the dev team, really eases my mind.

now help the dev team to boost ps2 to its full potential!

[brighthand]

I am so vey thankful that they brought YOU on board. I've read some of your posts including your "brain-dumb," and I have to say, if there is one person that should be involved in the designing of PS2, it should be you. You know what it will take to make PS2 the epic legit successor to PS1 that it can be. This is extremely good news. Congrats.

P.S. any chance you can be involved in making those bases more closed and defensible? They are kind of simple and porous right now.

[Laraza]

Congratulations Malorn on getting the job, especially with the economy the way it is.

Several questions:

1. Any workable solutions yet on the "rich get richer"/"poor get poorer" problem?
2. Are people happy with the game as a FPS from an E-sport point of view? Meaning is skill really a factor considering TTK, gun accuracy, player movement?
3. Shouldn't there be a new player tutorial or VR for us before we go onto the battlefield?
4. Is the progression model intuitive? Example: why do you get the same amount of xp for an empty outpost as you do for a hotly contested base? Shouldn't the rewards be based on participation rather than flipping territory? Isn't there a lot of cert bloat?
5. As far as game balance do the natural counters have the correct effect?
6. What is the measure of the war itself? Is it simply a K/D ratio for the player and a glance at the map for the meta-game or is something else coming down the road?
7. Are there any more capture mechanics coming or world design that will make this less of a simple numbers game?
8. How's the immersion factor for everyone else? Does the game's internal rules make sense?

[Adversary]

Congrats!

[Figment]

Sincere congrats Malorn, we may have different philosophies on life, but on PlanetSide I think we pretty much see eye to eye. If you ever feel like brainstorming on them there world conquest plans, feel free to poke me.

Originally Posted by Malorn

One of the coolest experiences for me will be knowing what its like to be on both sides of the eternal struggle - the diehard rabid fan, and the developer trying to make everyone happy and create a great game. A few months from now I might have some insights!

Now if only you knew what it's like to be on the side of European liberals!

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by brighthand

I am so vey thankful that they brought YOU on board. I've read some of your posts including your "brain-dumb," and I have to say, if there is one person that should be involved in the designing of PS2, it should be you. You know what it will take to make PS2 the epic legit successor to PS1 that it can be. This is extremely good news. Congrats.

P.S. any chance you can be involved in making those bases more closed and defensible? They are kind of simple and porous right now.

Thanks brighthand! I might be involved in some base design, though from the changes that have been made over the last couple months it's clear that the world design team is working hard to get it just right. It's come a long way and I'm sure they'll land where it needs to be. The design streams Matt has up on twitch show their thinking and give good insight to that if you want to know where it might be headed.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Laraza

Congratulations Malorn on getting the job, especially with the economy the way it is.

Several questions:

1. Any workable solutions yet on the "rich get richer"/"poor get poorer" problem?
2. Are people happy with the game as a FPS from an E-sport point of view? Meaning is skill really a factor considering TTK, gun accuracy, player movement?
3. Shouldn't there be a new player tutorial or VR for us before we go onto the battlefield?
4. Is the progression model intuitive? Example: why do you get the same amount of xp for an empty outpost as you do for a hotly contested base? Shouldn't the rewards be based on participation rather than flipping territory? Isn't there a lot of cert bloat?
5. As far as game balance do the natural counters have the correct effect?
6. What is the measure of the war itself? Is it simply a K/D ratio for the player and a glance at the map for the meta-game or is something else coming down the road?
7. Are there any more capture mechanics coming or world design that will make this less of a simple numbers game?
8. How's the immersion factor for everyone else? Does the game's internal rules make sense?

1. I've seen quite a few great ideas to solve this and its definitely a top concern. There isn't a silver bullet here, it will take several small things and will likely be an ongoing process of tweaking to get it just right.

2. Can't really talk to the esport thing. Its entertaining to watch!

3. Tutorials are tricky, many people skip them or roll over them, and so personally I don't think you can rely on them to hit every player. To me the key issue is getting new players out of the warpgate and into the fight as soon as possible. Most other games like Battlefield series just throw you into the fight in multiplayer and you figure out the details later. As long as you are in the game enjoying the massive fights I think most of the rest of the other stuff will come in time. So I would say the two things here are to always have good massive fights going on at all times, and then get new players into squads and into those fights as soon as possible.

There could be some mini-tutorials to illustrate specific concepts like how to use an equipment terminal, how to use instant action, switch continents, etc. I would expect those to be anywhere from 15-30 seconds in duration and be primarily voice-overs, like if you had a friend standing over your shoulder telling you the important high level things about the core elements of planetside 2.

4. Progression model is also tricky. You want to reward playing the objective, even if nobody shows up to defend it because you're still doing something good for your empire. I think it would be better to help encourage more fights and some better funneling so fights are more likely. I always liked PS1's system though where capture experience scaled with the number of enemies in the area during the capture. I can see them having some scaling effect here to give increased rewards over larger captures, but 500 points for a capture seems right to me, even if undefended. Of course on the other hand if it's defended you are getting more...in the form of points for kills, assists, and supporting your teammates. In some cases having a simple model is easier to predict, so I actually think the current model is reasonable.

5. Not sure what this question meant...

6. I certainly dont' like K/D as a measure of anything because it doesn't measure overall effectiveness. Score / Time is a measure of contribution and effectiveness. Measure of the war is a good thing to consider. There are several ways you can measure that. One is simply number of hexes controlled per unit time. Another is number of continents dominanted. Another is number of bases assaulted or defended. Another is resource intake or the empire-wide amount of resource accumulation per unit time. You could also factor in population, so it could be hexes per unit time weighted by population distribution during that time.

I would expect there to be possibilities of using these metrics to create weekly or daily contests and have empire winners based on them, or perhaps there are multiple winners. The VS might be really good at captures and defenses, the NC might be better at holding more overall territory, and the TR might be better at holding the most valuable territory in terms of resources. Could be rewards for achieving these different things too, like titles or bragging rights, or temporary boosts or auraxium rewards. No promises of course but all that stuff is certainly in the realm of consideration for encouraging the larger war effort and measuring its progress.

7. I dont' know if there's capture mechanics on the way for the purpose of allowing the overcoming of numbers, but certain areas and mechanics might favor numbers more than others. And the whole rich-get-richer thing involves a counter to that sort of thing and getting underdog empires to fight the big dog as opposed to each other. So I believe there's a lot of subtle things that can be done in that space. At some point though you have to acknowledge that numbers matter, and they do in every shooter. 5 guys go into a room with 1 guy defending, do you really expect the 1 guy to win? Is it possible? Of course! Is it likely...not so much. Asymmetric warfare is a reality and it happens on large scale and small scale.

So I don't think we should go out of our way to undermine a natural advantage in games and life but there are certainly situations and places where small numbers can matter. Usually that's defending choke points (think 300) where the full force cannot come to bear. There's also tactical decisions....for example, when there are multiple objectives to take a facility a large force needs to spread out to cover them all, allowing opportunity for smaller force to attack the now divided force on more even terms. If there is just one objective then it's much less likely that the small force will make an impact like that. Those are subtle ways to spread out a fight and thin out large numbers so smaller forces can be more effective. The influence system is another way for smaller objectives and fights to have a larger impact on the overall war. I think there are some asymmetrical tools available to give small groups a chance to make a difference.

At some point numbers still have to matter, and the successful and efficient deployment of your forces makes a difference. Things like command and player missions can have an impact here as well. There are many ways to slice it, but being outnumbered is something everyone will have to face and learn how to fight against. There are ways to be effective but they aren't conventional. Just like in real life...when you're heavily out-gunned you don't follow the same strategy as the bigger force or you get owned.

8. No idea on immersion factor. Game feels immersive to me!