News: February Road Map Discussion

[Hamma]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/n...ssion-2945.htm

Today is the first day of February and while we haven't seen the January patch quite yet we wanted to strike up a discussion on what's coming in February! We have broken down the roadmap a bit for direct discussion about what's on tap. Currently they are ranked in order of votes, with only the last one receiving a Zero (Spectator Mode).

1. Account Level Unlocks - We would like items purchased with Station Cash to be unlocked across all characters on the account that can utilize them. This change would be retroactive to prior purchases.
2. VR Training Area - Learning how to play the game under live fire conditions can be pretty daunting. To help address this, we’re planning on adding in a VR Training zone that will be a safe haven for players to try out weapons, practice piloting vehicles, and get comfortable with basic game mechanics.
   
   • Initially, this area would be more of a sandbox for players to experiment in, but down the road we’d potentially look to leverage it for in game tutorials.
     
     Highlights include:
     
     • Your faction only
     • Friendly fire disabled
     • No vehicle spawn timers or resource cost
     • All weapons available for use
     • Areas set up for firing ranges and vehicle courses
   
   
3. Community Grief Reporting - We're investigating ways to improve the reporting tools available to the PlanetSide 2 community at large to help identify and call out hackers and other griefers.
4. Improved Item Preview - We want to add the ability to preview an item on the player’s current Loadout for their class/vehicle so everyone can get a better idea of what it's really going to look like in context. This would apply to Camo (tint), decals, wearables, and vehicle attachments.
5. Empire Specific Rocket Launchers - We'd like to add Empire-specific rocket launchers, including things like player guided rockets, multiple lock-on swarm missiles, and a charge fire mode into the mix.
6. Loadout Screen Revamp - We want to take a pass at cleaning up and enhancing the Loadout screen. Specifics are still pending, but the goal is to make common actions more convenient. For example: Changing tints on your weapons, vehicles, and uniform should be easier than it is currently.
7. Regional Empire Priority System - The intent for this system is to allow the game to set "priority level" for regions based on what activities are taking place there. These areas would come with score/XP bonuses to encourage fights in underutilized areas, spread population, and create hotspots.
8. Vehicle Update: Flash - We want to add new abilities and weapons to the Flash.
   
   Current ideas include:
   
   • Adding additional weapon types
   • Wraith (cloaking the quad) option for infiltrators
   • We're still brainstorming, so call out any ideas you have that you think would be cool for the Flash.
   
   
9. Increase the number of vehicle cosmetic slots - We offer a bunch of sweet cosmetic customizations for vehicles, but we only let you equip them one at a time. We'd like to add additional slots that will allow you equip multiple customizations on your vehicle SIMULTANEOUSLY. We have the technology
10. Separate Score from Experience - At the moment experience and score are tied too closely together, so if you buff your experience, you end up buffing your score as well. That’s misleading and not really fulfilling the intention for the scoreboard, so we'd like to make score and experience two independent (if still related) numbers.
11. Daily Medals/Achievements - We'd like to add in daily achievements/medals for weapons and tools which could include things like:
    • "Kill 10 enemies with the CARV" or "Revive 10 allies with Revive Grenades" would net Experience or Cert rewards
    • These would reset daily
12. Pump Action Shotguns - We would like to add a new weapon type, the Pump Action Shotgun. These shotguns would fill a similar role to the existing semi-auto’s already in game, but trade rate of fire for increased damage.
13. Spectator Mode - We would like to add a Spectator Mode for live gameplay observation.

Full Roadmap:
http://www.planetside2.com/roadmap/

[Phantomdestiny]

i'm still confused about the spectator mode ; it seems like it can be abused easily by outfits

[MrBloodworth]

I like everything but..Spectator Mode.

I see no need. But I'm not a fan of the E-sport aspect. However, I think it could be useful to Machinima, but that would require it not be on a delay, and I don't think that's going to happen.

[Phantomdestiny]

Originally Posted by MrBloodworth

I like everything but..Spectator Mode.

I see no need. But I'm not a fan of the E-sport aspect. However, I think it could be useful to Machinima, but that would require it not be on a delay, and I don't think that's going to happen.

League of legends is an e-sport and the spectator mode is in a delay

[Bags]

Not sure why you'd want to use a pump action over auto in a game like this.

@Phantom did you not read? They said "live" viewing in the description, lol

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Phantomdestiny

League of legends is an e-sport and the spectator mode is in a delay

No shit?

[Phantomdestiny]

Originally Posted by Bags

Not sure why you'd want to use a pump action over auto in a game like this.

@Phantom did you not read? They said "live" viewing in the description, lol

Bags you are perfectly right there i did miss that word xD therefore the spectator mode should have either restrictions or be on a delay .

[ShadetheDruid]

People would probably use pump action shotguns over automatics in PS2 for the same reason they use bolt action rifles over semi automatics, they have advantages (assuming the devs get the stats right) that make them not automatically inferior/obsolete.

Edit: Anyway, the VR room should be good! Trialing is good and all, but sometimes you don't want to waste 30 minutes per 8 hours just to see the controllability/recoil/effective range etc of a weapon first hand while getting shot at.

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Phantomdestiny

Bags you are perfectly right there i did miss that word xD therefore the spectator mode should have either restrictions or be on a delay .

Live does not imply a lack or addition of a delay.

Delayed is still live. However, the focus on E-sports does imply a Delay, thus making it near useless, or at the least problematic, for Machinima, but not so for E-sport.

[Rothnang]

I would really like it if you could upgrade your flash with an ammo box which you can use to resupply your current class like an infantry terminal would. (No class change though), that way if you keep a flash nearby you can use it to access your stockpile of grenades, mines, medkits etc.
It would add a bit more of a sense of having a vehicle that can carry extra equipment into battle to it.

Another nice upgrade would be a windshield, which would be an actual shield like on the Mana turret that protects the driver from fire. The flash would take the bullets instead.

[Tatwi]

Switch 7 with 4 and 10 with 5 and that makes a pretty good top 5.

1. Account Level Unlocks
2. VR Training Area
3. Community Grief Reporting
4. Regional Empire Priority System
5. Separate Score from Experience

The rest of the things on the list are fluff, with the exception to the loadout screen. I made a post in beta (in the UI dev's feedback thread) about it having too many "new page loads", like an old web page, which makes for an exhausting "click down > click down > click down > click back > click back > click back > start over" on new item scenario when changing small things. The cert tree layout is a better design, with the scrolling list of expanding/collapsing categories, because it keeps all the data right there. Even better than that was Planetside's loadout screen, which uses the now familiar-to-all tabbed browser design, "click tab, scroll down to see/use all the contents of that tab". Anyhow, while it is functional the way they made it, the loadout screen in PS2 is not very time efficient.

Put me down as another supporter of Hamma's idea for spectator mode being given to limited and trusted people. SOE's been doing applications for helpers since the early days of Everquest, so making an application and reviewing the submissions for this would not be anything new to them. Sure it would be nifty if anyone could do this, but I think it's better to have some control over and organization of the system. Something as simple as the listing of PS2 twitch channels that they already have, except for spectator mode rather than first person mode, would be useful.

[Stanis]

Has anything on the february roadmap been postponed ?
Has anything on later months been brought forward ?

It seems the plan is each month gets a weapon/vehicle/class update or new release with wide appeal to encourage cert/sc spending.

Personally I'd rather they dedicate 100% of effort on getting us the spirit of PS1 back. Warpgate Traversal, Continent Locks, Additional continents.


Anything that takes development time away from those gets a big downvote until they're in and working.

[ShadetheDruid]

Originally Posted by Stanis

Anything that takes development time away from those gets a big downvote until they're in and working.

It's not, though. They have different teams working on different stuff, not everyone works on continents for example.

And the reason that stuff is lower down on the roadmap is because they're the most time consuming. I feel like i'm repeating something the devs have already explained.

[Dreamcast]

Pump Action Shotguns - We would like to add a new weapon type, the Pump Action Shotgun. These shotguns would fill a similar role to the existing semi-auto’s already in game, but trade rate of fire for increased damage.

Those shotguns already kill so fast that people can't even react.

[bpostal]

Originally Posted by Hamma

http://www.planetside-universe.com/n...ssion-2945.htm

...
[*]Daily Medals/Achievements - We'd like to add in daily achievements/medals for weapons and tools which could include things like:

• "Kill 10 enemies with the CARV" or "Revive 10 allies with Revive Grenades" would net Experience or Cert rewards
• These would reset daily

...

Full Roadmap:
http://www.planetside2.com/roadmap/

Still not a fan of this daily quest bullshit. I was hoping I'd seen the last of this when I quit playing WoW.
To be fair though, I will always have the ability to kick someone from the platoon if they're fucking about with their dailies instead of actually putting in work like the adults.