Malorn's Planetside Manifesto. Anyone Have it?

[SGTalon]

If any of you have ever read Malorn's Planetside Manifesto it was an AMAZING example of someone thinking critically about a game and how to not only play it right but take it to a whole different level.

And this was from a stinkin' SMURF!!!

Sure he is properly a TR now but still..

Does anyone have it? I would love to have something like that posted permanently for reference.

It has been a little while since i read it but it seems to me that somewhere in there he explained how the Meta-Game that everyone is using as some kind of Holy Grail was created by the players, NOT the devs of Planetside 1.

I have been commenting to this effect quite a bit lately, but no one seems to get it.

Planetside 2 is worlds better than PS1 was when it came out. It was months before Planetside was anything more than a blind zerg with a buggy game that had actual game breaking lag, not the pseudo-lag people are complaining about in PS2.

Anyhow, I would love to see something like that posted permanently somewhere, like here on PSU so we could point people that are truly interested in learning about the game. Too many people can't see past their pet issues to see how awesome Planetside 2 is already and how it could be even better if people just stepped back and looked at it.

[p0intman]

I come with gifts from the legendary vault of NC Intelligence...

I may have a significant archive of very old ps1 stuff that i have yet to post to my personal hosting. This thing is so huge, it cant be copypasta'd here, its 154k characters, largest post allowed here is 19k. If you ask nicely and I have it, i may be willing to find and make public other stuff that is collecting virtual dust.

edit: because i dont care to go through 54 pages worth of text and fix wordpress's job of mangling it..

http://www.ps2.riptidegaming.com/wp-...manifesto1.txt

[Rockit]

Yeah I think he tried to find a publisher for it but since it was so long it required a hardback binding and proved too costly

[SGTalon]

Pointman, you rock. Do you mind if i post this link?

[p0intman]

Originally Posted by SGTalon

Pointman, you rock. Do you mind if i post this link?

go right ahed. it'll remain permanent for as long as i care to pay for the hosting, and ive got other archival projects im working on that im using it for, so unless things get real bad for me, its not going anywhere for a very long time.

[SGTalon]

Hey, you aren't bad for an NC

Thanks man I am going to use it. I doubt most people will actually read through it. But who knows. Maybe we can get some converts.

[EightEightEight]

Interesting Information to be sure.

the formatting seems a little off though

[p0intman]

Originally Posted by EightEightEight

Interesting Information to be sure.

the formatting seems a little off though

Yeah, I had to reformat it once in open office to remove a bunch of URLs and some other text anomalies (mostly punctuation conversion, etc) and it turns out, it fucked up in formatting how i had it in wordpress. ill fix it eventually.

for example, this is what it looks like in the editor

Purpose

This document is intended for those who wish to know what was awesome about PlanetSide, some
history about how it played out, what was terrible, how to make it better, and ultimately what
PlanetSide 2 should look like. It is my hope that the great part of this game will be preserved and carried
on while the perils of it will be lessons learned for game developers so they may never repeat those
mistakes.

I firmly believe that PlanetSide was one of the best gaming innovations in MMO history. Mistakes were
made that doomed it from a business perspective, but the game design had some great innovations and
it is a shame that it ended up the way it did. This document is a tribute to the great designs of the
developers and for all those who love the game.

Also, this document is written in the context of the first 4-5 years of PlanetSide. Developments over the
past year or two may not be accurately reflected.

Who I Am

You should know the credentials of the author of this large document. PlanetSide players on Emerald
know me as Malorn. I played NC mostly, with a brief stint on VS.

I had the honor of leading Liberty - one of the best and most famous outfits in the early years of PS. We
had some of the strongest talent in the game, attracted members from opposing empires and were part
of some amazing accomplishments and strategic inventions. We had dominant names on the
Leaderboard (before it broke) such as Halogod666, Xfactor, Chizow, Trevin, Timmy, ttt, and many others.
We played with friends and foes and participated in some of the greatest achievements in PS, such as
PlanetSide’s first world-lock; performed by the NC (we helped turn it blue 3 times). We participated in
organized efforts with other outfits such as Freedom Guard, TCF, and eventually the Enclave in creating
coordinated response to defense. We pioneered Rapid Response and changed the face Emerald forever.
We devised the A-S-S strategy which led to the “Golden Age” of NC dominance for nearly a year and a
half. We had epic clashes with foes such as Ahriman Corps and KAAOS. I am a part of and represent
players from all factions who love PlanetSide and have full command of every aspect of it.

while what you see doesn't look like that. in other words, i have to get rid of a bunch of extra spaces created by formatting.

[RobUK]

Reading Malorn's manifesto makes me feel so sad. I loved that game so very very much. More than any game that I've played in a gaming "career" that now spans several decades.

I really wish that Planetside 2 was even halfway like Planetside 1. That would be a start. I still don't understand why the PS2 dev's shunned everly last ounce of the good stuff from the first game

[bpostal]

Shit like this has got to look good on the resume he sent up to SOE. Hell, I've never even read through it in it's entirety, let alone draft something this in depth.

Awesome link p0intman! ty, you've got a couple good things in here don't you?

[p0intman]

it might be a few days before i fully fix it, im about 1/10th the way through it, but the first large portions of it should be easier to read now.

[Emperor Newt]

Wow. I have only read the first few chapters and I cannot imagine why so many of those design philosophies and designs are absent in a sequel.

[Sconna]

That was very interesting to read.

It's sad that many of the things in the manifest are overlooked in PS2 such as interesting base designs as in PS1 and fighters being killing machines in both air and ground and many other things.

I hope they'll add the right patches to the game to fix the many issues.

[SGTalon]

I think we just need to be patient with the game. From the stuff that Hibgy and Smedly have talked about in the past, there is still a lot of stuff coming. Keep in mind that this game has really only been out for a month! You can't count the holidays nothing ever gets done then.

So we have had from launch Nov 20, Until Dec 21 when everyone took off for vacation. And in that time we had a TON of bug fixes and performance tweaks, and even some content additions.

The beginning of the year has already been slated for a new continent, and i am quite certain with that a lot of additional content and mechanics updates to make it all work.

There is no denying that PS2 is a damn fun game. As a combined arms shooter it is better than Battlefield and COD in my opinion. I am sure that is one of the leading factors on why they released it in December rather than wait until January like the original plan was.

I am perfectly content to let the updates roll in and enjoy every one of them, just like i have been since June when i got invited to the Tech Test.

It is interesting to me how different my experience has been compared to what i see all over the forums. I have been playing since June as i mentioned and I can honestly say that i have never had a bad time playing. There have been some rough nights when patches jacked things up a bit, but i just looked at that as an opportunity to report bugs and stuff. But i still had fun.

Since launch, I have put in over 120 hours (according to Steam). I can honestly say that most of that time was filled with amazing experiences. Easily as many as I had with PS1.

When i think back to PS1, sure there were a ton of lifelong memories in it, but there were also a lot of times when it was just boring. Run around, looking for a fight, capping empty bases, gen holds that no one responded to. LLU runs that had 1 or 2 reavers try to stop and that was it, Endless, mindless farms...

I look at every aspect of PS2 and see how it is an evolution of what we had in PS1.

I look at all the things that are soooo much better than PS1 too. The biggest and best is the gun game. Guns feel real, bullets go where you point them (of course there is recoil), everything just feels right to me. Way better than Battlefield weapons for sure. Maybe not as good as COD.

The Air Vehicles are at least 10x better in PS2. I mean there is a real physics engine involved! How about jets perform like real air vehicles are supposed to!

Everything about the game just feels tighter, more controlled, less floaty, less server side i guess.

And then there is the beauty of the game. Every time night rolls in and the moons come up I am amazed at the detail and beauty of the engine. The moon shadows from vehicles and terrain just amazes me every time.

When i see the shadow of a reaver fly over me, it just makes the game for me. Sight lines go on forever.

I know there are issues with the game but I think they are not oversights. I think that most of these things are holes that are waiting to be filled by elements of the game that are just not quite ready yet rather than omissions on purpose.

Ok, done babbling.

[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.