What would be "next gen" for Planetside?

[DviddLeff]

Planetside as a game is still way ahead of its peers; massive combat, even playing field and a wide range of game play styles catered for. Most of the suggestions are mainly based around small tweaks or additions on different aspects in an effort to make the game better.

But what would the next step for Planetside be?

I have seen a couple of ideas recently involving what I consider to be next gen game play; systems that simply may not be possible with the current tech.

The two systems are:

1. Deformable terrain
2. Seamless world with travel between continents done using aircraft or naval units.

What other systems would you consider next gen for PS?

Sure its a bit pie in the sky, but hey, that's what this forum is for.

[Tikuto]

Probably something to do with this: --and you can almost visualize how fucking epic the battles are in this video.


There's a load of things that can be done. A Cyssor-whelming full of ideas. All things small and big together would just make me spam this thread that it'd be ignorantly assumed trolling.

[DviddLeff]

Do it!

[Rbstr]

That'd be quite something. Closer to real scale continents?

Or perhaps sort of do away with continents and make it one monstrous continent that comprises all of the environments. Think sort of Bethesda's recent titles, but with vehicles you can make them larger. You wouldn't care about latices so much as the barrier to back-hacking any more because it'd becomes a challenge to circumvent the front. I'd require a bit more robust un-manned base defenses to prevent a cloaker with a few hours on his hands to hike way back behind the lines without support but it could be really neat.

This would also help persistence. You lengthen the time around any given base because it's much harder to just side step it. Bases away from the lines could stay capped for significant periods of time ect.

You also open up special forces "behind the lines" kind of stuff. You would be able to cap things, but without a link that reaches back to the "home base" of the empire you wouldn't be able to get much in the way of equipment. And perhaps reinforcements wouldn't be able to spawn there unless they made it into the SOI by other means previously.


MMO playing fields (the bits between jumps or doors or whatever) tend to be fairly small, even to this day (WWII being the exception?). Having a one big old playing field with real geographical limitations to not just vehicle types occasionally but travel times. Would be a real innovation. You could get real neat regionalization of conflicts. Outfits that stake a kind of claim to the northern borders and such.

The key is some kind of mechanic that makes it easy to get to the battles at any given front, but fairly complex to travel between areas of conflict.

[MooK]

Dynamically destructive environments. Player re-engineering of environment. Larger continents and elimination of all instancing. I like the idea of continents, I would like it better if we could go from one continent to the other via water or air... or massive bridges (think of the battles!)

[Aractain]

I think a real next-gen feature would be player (in game) designed bases/urban enviroments.

I mean like putting down buildings like an RTS with resoruces that were collected by the players (by holding onto objectvies, maybe running a few trucks also).

While certain people would have standard layouts you allow for a more dynamic expreince.

Of coruse I fear PSN is going to be about as next gen as Vanguard was...
(note Vanguard the game not the tank).

[CutterJohn]

My personal favorite idea to take PS2 to the next level is to put fights on other planets, with distinct environments that force a huge change in equipment and tactics used. Alter gravity, amount of water, amount of land, maybe none of either(gas giant), hazardous environments, lack of or far too many aggressive native fauna, visibility(weather or foliage), or even just fighting over asteroid belts or space stations. Make it seem like we are fighting over alien planets, rather than a planet that may as well be earth other than the odd plants.

And of course add a bunch of vehicles, weapons, and armors, and design them to have different uses in different environments, being highly effective in some but completely impractical or impossible to use in others.

[Traak]

How about making ALL point-target weapons, of any sort, ballistic? Only weapons that aren't would be the energy weapons. It's easy enough, tower and base turrets already do it.

[Rbstr]

Originally Posted by Traak

How about making ALL point-target weapons, of any sort, ballistic? Only weapons that aren't would be the energy weapons. It's easy enough, tower and base turrets already do it.

I don't get what you mean by ballistic?

If you mean they follow a ballistic arc, I believe quite a few newer games do this. That wouldn't really make it an innovative or "next-gen" feature.

[Bags]

Oh let's make bullets be affected by wind too! And our characters can have random heart attacks! And let's eat food.

[CutterJohn]

because if you want a bit more realism, you must in fact want total realism!

Quit sensationalizing. If you think the idea is bad, just say so. It is, btw, if engagement ranges don't change. The great majority of combat occurs under 200m. The bullet drop would have to be crazy to be noticeable, especially with only one hitbox. Most FPSs that include ballistics only do so for specific weapons like snipers, rockets, and tank shells, to increase the challenge of using them(and make them less effective at range since those usually don't have damage falloff).

[DviddLeff]

Bad Company 2 has ballistic trajectories for its guns (except for the shotguns).

I nerd-gasmed once after using the ballistic trajectory in a sniper duel to curve my bullet over the top of the ridge into the guys out of sight skull.

[Hamma]

Nice.

I wish next Gen was something similar to that video posted above but I doubt it will be. We honestly can only speculate as to what kind of next gen technology will be used in PSN. We have seen some great stuff since 2003 in FPSs but we have not seen an MMOFPS though so it's hard to say what we are looking at.

One thing I hope to NOT see is any instancing at least on the battle front and combat areas. This seems to pass for MMO's these days and that is fail given recent technology.