Skyscrapers

[Traak]

I would love to see skyscrapers. Huge ones. With varying flavors of combat on each floor, due to amount of wreckage, structure damage, holes in walls, blown-out windows, differing ceiling heights, garden levels with artificial lighting, waterfalls, etc.

By limiting the size, by having it indoors, the computational power to render extremely interesting environments could be kept manageable, allowing waterfalls, birds, fish, rivers, whatever.

I'm thinking 120 stories of mayhem. Each floor individually hackable, so it can become a VS-, TR- or NC-owned floor. With the planes being able to hover, you could even guide your favorite plane into a floor and park it, through a blow-out section of the building. Elevators would not open for you (or against you) on floors owned by other empires. Stairs would be natural chokepoints, but having a few of them would create some combat approach options, along with the elevators shafts.

I think it would be a MAX-combat haven.

Have mainframes on each level that determine who controls the alarms, etc.

The buildings can be sized so that its footprint allows good-sized battles on each level, without being so vast that you couldn't run from one side to the other in time to stop one of the hacks from going through, as the hacks would be on very minimal timers.

Neighboring buildings could be used by snipers, AA, whatever.

Vertical warfare. Overall building capture yields benefits such as whatever Nanite Systems was developing in that particular building. This building is the Augmented Armor Lab, this over here is the Extended Weapons Range Lab, that one is the enhanced wound recovery technology Lab, etc.

Skybridges between buildings could be natural battlegrounds, with the added penalty of dying if you fall off.

[NewSith]

Cool stuff, but sadly I don't see it fit to PS... =((((

[NivexQ]

I like this. Honestly, know one knows how big this game will get. Imagine this game getting to be as big as WoW. If Planetside 2 gets the subscription and/or fanbase that WoW has then the room for expansions such as this are nearly limitless.

[fuzzehthehydra]

Meh, it's not really practical in planetside. Even if there were these urban areas of which you speak we're implemented- and that doesn't seem likely at this point in development- then some of the mechanics need addressing:

1. Number of floors.
120? Do you realise how badly that will effect performance, rendering everything? The dev team said they were aiming for five to six year old machines for the minimum requirements, and that's just not feasible.

2. Floor ownership

Shouldn't ownership be split into larger chunks, maybe three or four floors each? Otherwise, defence becomes too difficult, and floors are too easily lost. If there are larger chunks, however, battles have more significant consequences.

3. Class imbalance:

This will cause absolute chaos with balance. Mech's and AI aircraft turn into OP spambots. Infiltrator becomes useless of there's barely anything to infiltrate, especially considering tight stairways signalling the end of cloaking. Drivers are useless because they're stuck on the ground. And these are just off the top of my head, I could go on for days.

Maybe, if all of these issues are sorted, you could be on to something. Also, it takes a long, long time typing this all out from an iPod, so you guys better be greatful