Malorn's Planetside Manifesto. Anyone Have it?

[james]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I know they will add more to the game, I just wish they had pushed release back to 2013 to release it right. It's to late for many people.

Gamers have short attention spans, most won't stay around to find out what they added.

This is how i feel, if it was still in a true beta, all this problems would be fine. But its not beta.

F2P games only have short window to draw and hold people. And based on the steam numbers, player count keeps dropping. I haven't run into a server that was full since release week. From what i'm seeing even the paying people are slowly walking away. Servers need to be combined asap, as the game does not work well without high population on servers.

If there isn't major improvements in the coming month, the future is not good for this game. 2013 is a crazy year for gaming, and a game that shouldn't be out will get left behind

[p0intman]

i don't really care to go through 54 pages and fix it so wordpress's shitty formatting doesn't mangle it, so im sidestepping the entire problem altogether, its now located here, in raw text form: http://www.ps2.riptidegaming.com/wp-...manifesto1.txt

[RykerStruvian]

Due to the state PS2 is in, it isn't about gamers having short attention spans as much as it is the fact that the game doesn't have much to pay attention to. There really is not much going on at the moment aside from killing internet soldiers and standing on points. The only reason to play daily consistently is only to accumulate XP and out of faith that the game will become better. It is currently meaningless.

[CrazEpharmacist]

"This is an archived post originally posted by now planetside 2 developer Malorn, when he was a member of the Liberty outfit, on Planetside 1."

Is Marlorn really on the development team of PlanetSide 2?? This just gave me a bit of hope for the future of the game. When was he hired? Was his hiring a direct result of him posting that manifesto? Are there any interviews with him on PlanetSide 2 design philosophy? What is his exact job?

[CyclesMcHurtz]

Originally Posted by CrazEpharmacist

<edit> Is Marlorn really on the development team of PlanetSide 2??<edit>

Yup. He started late last year and he sits within nerf-dart distance of my door here ... speaking of which ...

[Figment]

Originally Posted by CyclesMcHurtz

Yup. He started late last year and he sits within nerf-dart distance of my door here ... speaking of which ...

Do iiiiit.

Nerf the TR!

Originally Posted by CrazEpharmacist

What is his exact job?

Mostly level and world design me thinks (base layouts, capture mechanics, linking stuff and map representation, etc).

[Shogun]

Originally Posted by CrazEpharmacist

"This is an archived post originally posted by now planetside 2 developer Malorn, when he was a member of the Liberty outfit, on Planetside 1."

Is Marlorn really on the development team of PlanetSide 2?? This just gave me a bit of hope for the future of the game. When was he hired? Was his hiring a direct result of him posting that manifesto? Are there any interviews with him on PlanetSide 2 design philosophy? What is his exact job?

i am sure this manifesto had some influence on soes decision to hire malom, but he was a very active psu member and all of his posts were very constructive. go and search for some of his posts. he really understands how games work and what the players need to have fun with a game.
when it turned out that malom even had a gamedeveloper background, soe just had to hire him no matter what.
i really hope, his ideas and views get the attention they deserve!
and every dev should have read the manifesto at least once.
i know it is a real book, but it contains the perfect game. ps2 still has the potential to become the greatest game ever if some of maloms thoughts are considered.

[p0intman]

Originally Posted by CyclesMcHurtz

Yup. He started late last year and he sits within nerf-dart distance of my door here ... speaking of which ...

Do it. He's a traitor to the NC. Do iiiiiit.

[Malorn]

When I get home I'll see if I can dig up the word or PDF version. The lack of formatting makes it look like something dredged up from the 90's internet.

I was in the process of updating it back in tech test with a ps2 scorecard to discuss how it compared on each point. The short of it was that I thought it compared very well. Matt had a post about a month ago on the official forums that our goal is a continental conquest system similar to PS1, so lots of good stuff coming.

This isnt a fire-and-forget game. It'll be around a long time and you will see some great stuff. The team listened to the players in Beta on a lot of things. We haven't stopped! Please be patient, it does take time to make changes. I was hired for metagame and environment design, and I can assert that I am paying attention and I feel the same pains you do. I play the game tons, and I watch streams while I work to keep on top of current events and meta. I want this to be the game I play for the next decade, if not beyond.

[SGTalon]

I think this Malorn guy is "Going Places"

I have been trying to exert a certain amount of sanity to the Official Forums lately. For some reason people are just freaking out over there. I must have typed "The game is just over a month old!" about 20 times today.

People just have no patience for anything anymore.

I am also planning to play this game for a long time. The potential is endless. In the meantime. I enjoy every minute of it.

Thanks Malorn, Cycles and the rest of the team.

[Fear The Amish]

Please hurry SOE my Outfit is already suffering from the effects we are down from 2 platoons almost 24/7 to scraping by with 1/2 - 1 platoon luckily we are a multi-gaming organization so they are still around just playing something else until the next updates but i know some other Outfits are REALLY hurting and will have trouble bouncing back.

[gunshooter]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I know they will add more to the game, I just wish they had pushed release back to 2013 to release it right. It's to late for many people.

Gamers have short attention spans, most won't stay around to find out what they added.

This is true but it's hardly the fault of the players and their attention spans. The developers could have looked at the failed launches of, oh, I don't know, every MMO released in the last 5 years. It's the same story every time; big hype followed by a botched release which the game never recovers from. I'm afraid PS2 was no different.

[xboxerdude]

Malorn I hope you the best, It's time SOE hired someone with a vision and a real drive. Someone from the community. I cannot stress how much faith this will restore to the player base.

[Malorn]

Well, I have a bit of a treat for you. I was digging around for the old .pdf and .doc file, but I couldn't find them. They were on my website but it expired and I didn't renew it. But stashed away in my dropbox....I did find that updated version I mentioned earlier...

IMPORTANT
Everything you see in this document was written 7/10/2012, based on information known Pre-Tech-Test, and thus obviously predates my time on the Dev team. It was my attempt to take what we knew as of 7/10/2012 and compare it to my original document as an exercise in how PS2 was shaping for those curious about how I thought it was delivering.

Nothing in this document is reflective of current, planned, or even potential future design, as it was written by a fan, not a PS2 designer. It may or may not coincide with things you see in the future.

I release it so folks who were interested in my way of thinking earlier in the thread can get a more recent set of information and so you can get a properly formatted version of my doc. Also, this is an updated version of the document originally written even before PS2 was announced. I did update some things based on GDC/E3 information, but it has not been updated since.

I was too busy playing PS2, providing feedback on beta forums, and then helping make PS2 to go back and finish writing this. Only the first 3 sections have been updated with comparison commentary. And no, I don't have any plans to finish updating it, it is as good as it will ever get.

The opinions expressed in the document are my own and are not necessarily representative of my current thinking or SOE's position. Etc, etc.

That said, here is a window into my mind 6 months ago when I was just another PSU poster.
http://sdrv.ms/S84Ydo

Feel free to save to another location if you wish.

[Electrofreak]

I've said it before but it really bears repeating. I'm so glad SOE hired Malorn.

I appreciated his thoughtful posts back when he was just a community member and I appreciate his feedback now as a developer. He knows how it is to be on this side of the window trying to see what SOE is doing and scrawling desperate messages on the glass not to forget about us.

A lot of people are worried about the way this release happened. You know when Hamma, who is ever the optimist, starts sounding worried, all is not right with the game.

We tend to get into this mindset frequently that the devs are idiots. The reality is that the playerbase, as a whole, are geniuses. Wait, wait, hear me out. They have an amazing ability to find ways to exploit the game in ways that were never intended, in ways that nobody can predict.

There were definitely some worries that what has happened to PS2 would happen, but what I find surprising is how quickly it happened, and how dramatically it affected the way the game played as a whole. Timing was rough; the developers have vacation time just like the rest of us and SOE couldn't keep them all chained to their chairs through the holidays.

So here's hoping SOE can move quickly enough to stop the hemorrhaging before it gets too bad. I know I'm pushing for some changes to the XP system (link in my signature folks, give me some support!) but it'll take a multi-faceted approach with changes to base design, the resource system, weapon balance, aircraft / vehicle / infantry balance, etc.

Just remember you guys at SOE, your players are smarter than you are. That's NOT a dig at your intelligence; remember I called the playerbase geniuses. They will find a way to cleverly turn your work against you by finding the game mechanics they can exploit in extremely clever ways, and spreading that knowledge until everyone is doing it, destroying the balance and entertainment value you've worked so hard to achieve.

Anyhow, you guys already know this stuff, but here I am, peering in that window and writing on the glass...