Idea Of The Month (July 2011)

[Vancha]

These were the 5-star rated ideas as of the end of July. I'll do another one at the end of August if this gets a decent number of votes (and so on, until the "Idea Of The Year"). Over time, we could build up a reference that could be fairly useful/interesting to look back at.

Mission Chat
Gameplay

The Mind: Basti

The Idea: A person who issues a mission can communicate with those who've accepted it. Additionally, a squad leader channel, a platoon leader channel and a continent leader channel will exist.

Physics, Ground Vehicles and Mowing
Game Engine

The Mind: Malorn

The Idea: Mowing down infantry inflicts serious injury or death, with certain death in the case of tanks. Larger vehicles can push smaller vehicles out of the way, if not crush them completely, and vehicles traversing terrain will interact with the environment appropriately (driving over rocks, knocking down smaller trees etc.).

Geographical Names
Storyline

The Mind: CidHighwind

The Idea: PS2's landmarks are named in order to feel like you're fighting for a place of importance, rather than a characterless location on a map.

Continent Benefits & Differentiation (or Why should I fight on Hossin?)
Storyline

The Mind: Malorn

The Idea: Different continents are abdundant in different resources to vary gameplay and add additional tactical choices. Additionally, continents yield global resource bonuses for your empire by owning the largest percentage or majority of it.

Recording Battles
Systems

The Mind: Tapman

The Idea: People can record Halo 3-style replays that are either entered into "Battle Of the Day/Week/Month/Year" contest, or used as footage to make videos with.

Sounds of Battle
Improvement

The Mind: CutterJohn

The Idea: Ambient sound effects are evidence of a battle occuring in the distance (thunderous booms and explosions for example). Additionally, during night battles there are flashes on the distant horizon in the direction of the fight.

Facility Benefits, Function and Importance
Gameplay

The Mind: Malorn

The Idea: Factilies award two significant benefits - one locally and one continentally. There are an adequate number of factility-types to keep the value of these benefits high, but with no additional bonus for owning two of the same facility-type.

Web Access/Portal
Systems

The Mind: Tikuto

The Idea: Out-of-game web access/portal that keeps you in touch with your character and in-game events. You can edit your skills queue, manage your outfit, observe the state of Auraxis, stay updated on live events, check the server status, manage your Planetside 2 SOE account and much, much more...

[321]

The poll desperately needs a "Continent Benefits & Differentiation (or Why should I fight on Hossin?)" option.

[Elude]

Recording replays(AKA demos) would be problematic I think for an MMO to the scale of Planetside 2.

Maybe clientside demos could work but I can't see serverside demos working at all lol.

[Bags]

Voted mission chat, half of those it would be silly to not be in game (phsyics, web access, sound etc).

[Sovereign]

^Indeed, most of these are just a given.

If this poll wasn't so elitist in discrimination we would have more options ffs bloody idear fascist I tell ya!! (jesting here of course just in case someone starts getting the false premise that I'm being serious)

Fine I'll go with Continent Benefits & Differentiation because it was either that or mission chat...

[Vancha]

I wasn't sure what to put as the question, so I just put "Idea Of The Month?", but I suppose you need to consider it as "If only one of these ideas could exist in PS2, which one would it be?"

Though I don't agree that they're "duh" ideas. "Physics, Ground Vehicles and Mowing" isn't proposing physics in general, but that getting mowed necessarily take you to very low life or no life at all, while being able to crush vehicles and trees under your wheels/tracks. Some aspects of "Continent Benefits and Differentiation" and "Web Access/Portal" are the only things I can see definitely existing in some form in the default game.

[CutterJohn]

Rather a statistically meaningless selection process. There are so few votes on some of these ideas that its impossible to judge it 'popular'. One has 4 votes. 2 others have 7.

The poll itself seems redundant on the forums. The star system already pushes ideas to the top.

[Raymac]

I think I gave all those ideas 5 stars so it's hard for me to pick just one. Since I have to, I went with Mission Chat because I remember my reaction to it was more immediate and stronger than the others. Like Bags said, I really hope all that stuff is in the game, but we'll see.