Mission system, squads and specialisation

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Ruwyn

The only thing this mission system is for is to attempt to spread people out, instead of having 300 vs 300 over one tower/base. I think they fear Forgelight will not handle it and we'll be back to 50 vs 50 in general areas without lag.

Well, at least the worst case is still the biggest shooter out there, bar PS1

but I doubt that will happen.

[Shanesan]

Alright, here I go, again.

The mission system in PS1 was dirt simple and didn't need extensive tools for two reasons:
1) There was no more than five bases on a continent up for grabs at any one time. These bases had at most two forward command posts each. The commands were simple. Some examples:
-> Take that base.
-> Defend our Generator.
-> Attack the Air Tower.
-> Do an ANT run.

Pretty basic ideas which can be understood very quickly by looking at the map.

2) Bases and forward command posts took up 10% of the map, max. A simple waypoint in a general direction for all three of your squads and off you went to win the game, or lose it.

Back in its heyday, there were upwards of 100 squads looking for people at any given time and good luck finding one that wanted to do what you wanted to do AND were competent unless you were in an outfit.

-----

Instead, The Planetside 2 team appears to want to take it a different route. If it's more like the Battlefield 2 route, this game will be better than any game every made. Here's why.

The issue with Planetside 1 was:
[Global] Higby: We need support on Oshur.
[Oshur All] Higby: Push Zal. Take the back door.

Amazing. Incredible, in fact. That was the whole thing. That was empire management. Did it work? Yeah, of course it did - we had to make it work. Was it the best thing that SOE could put out for empire-wide squad management? Are you fucking joking? Someone took 10 minutes on this and then scrapped the UI together. The blue XP beam didn't even DO anything.

There will be some 40+ locations to capture on EACH continent. I'd have to guess 40-60% of the land will be utilized in some way. This game will require a little more micro-managing and a lot more top-down RISK aficionados. It will require plotting and planning and the teamwork of the Commanders on top to figure out how to utilize forces that may not even listen to them, because they don't know how, or because the Squad Leader thinks that they know more than the Commander, or what have you.

Commanders will need information from their men and women on the ground about the turning tides of a battle and those on the ground will need their Commanders big-picture insight to be successful on the field of battle.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by CuddlyChud

I'm not sure where the idea that platoons are gone comes from, but Higby mentioned platoons in the mmorpg interview.

Excellent ... my post earlier, Higby said no platoons at the moment at GDC, but if there are platoons now, great, he's listening.

[HitbackTR]

You know, the outfits which are worth their salt are probably not even going to use the mission system and just stick to voice comms.

[ringring]

Edit my message, platoons are in (FPSGuru interview).

[Shanesan]

Originally Posted by HitbackTR

You know, the outfits which are worth their salt are probably not even going to use the mission system and just stick to voice comms.

Then they will be disadvantaged on both resources and experience.