News: Higby talks Continental Lattice eSports and More

[AThreatToYou]

Indar is the best continent more or less because it's undergone lattice. Prior to lattice, I would have said that Esamir is the best cont.

[Hamma]

Honestly this is an extremely good article it has tons of information to chew on for some time.

First off, continental metagame. It's something everyone has craved since the beginning, the devs have said numerous times once we have more continents we will start to see if flesh out. This is the first concept of that idea using the new "Battle Islands" as gateways to other continents. They serve a double purpose as well, with MLG competition taking place on them. This allows them to serve multiple roles and allows everyone to be able to see the battle islands without the need to be in competition. I think the home continent idea could be a solid one, provided constant rotation of home continents (similar to thw WG rotations we see) it does not account for population however as basti said but it's still very conceptual.

Next up: eSports.

Matt talked in more detail about how eSports will work, also explaining that the battle islands will have different play mechanics based on whether or not it's normal open world play or competition. They are talking about having an accelerated metagame which will allow people to purchase and upgrade weapons during the course of a match, starting out as a basic character. That will be another level of strategy depending on what outfits decide to spend their points and resources on. People want to know how PlanetSide 2 will work in eSports? That's how, a contained area with specific rules and systems specifically for eSports.

I consider it to be our biggest challenge; contextualizing the action in PlanetSide 2 to make a compelling viewing experience is an enormous challenge. It needs two things to come together really well, that is the observer camera system; allowing you to see not only an overview of where the world is, but also first-person views of what the player is seeing. Being able to, at a glance, see a scoreboard and the mini-map, to understand where the players are moving and what they’re accomplishing, all those pieces are really important and that’s entirely on our end to develop.

To me it’s the most important thing for us from a game development side. The maps are really important and we have a really good handle on it. The observer system is something we continue to work on and make better. At the end of the day, the players are on the map, but the viewers are watching the observer system, and both of those things have to be really good.

The other piece is the commentary. We need to have commentators who not only know the game in depth but also contextualize all of the things that are happening to the viewer. Making sure they can explain “Hey, this is the strategy that these guys are going for,” so the drama can be conveyed to the viewers.

These few paragraphs are huge in terms of making PlanetSide 2 eSports entertaining. This proves that they know how important it is to have good tools to show the battle and good solid commentators who know the game and can talk about specific strategies for success. With everything above, I think a battle island competition has the potential to be a hugely entertaining event.

Another big piece of eSports in PlanetSide 2 is it's going to be something that is more open to your regular Joe player. Just think you will rank up while playing the game normally with your outfit. During a competition there will be 48 people involved, including many back at home playing. This will put eSports within reach of more players than most games.

The issue is, will the game have enough interest to support a ton of 48vs48 eSport teams? Time will tell. Making the game funner to watch will be another step towards building interest.

All in all, a very exciting and thought provoking article to be honest. Lots of information was revealed about how the game will work in the future and Matt was very honest about what is needed.

[SadlyJack]

mite b cool

[Sarloh]

While doing that they could also work on making 'portals', for example, I could fly a fully loaded galaxy into a different continent along with it's passengers, or a teleportation pad.

And what about a big warpgate, an extra big one that wouldn't have any battlefields connected to it, like a big rally point for platoons, squads and outfits to gather together and that warpgate could then have the teleport ability. Also it could have some empire specific structures in the background, or it could be located in the empires home world, for example the TR could have a big city in the back and the base would look like a big military base, with tanks, boxes... The NC could have like a commercial area or something, the VS could have like a big temple, well I'm not so sure about what the NC and the VS could have.

Otherwise for tactics making players travel in two warpgates, possibly getting stuck one one because the other one has too much people in it, and basicly different loading speeds... So I don't think that idea is so good.

[Phantomdestiny]

Originally Posted by Sarloh

While doing that they could also work on making 'portals', for example, I could fly a fully loaded galaxy into a different continent along with it's passengers, or a teleportation pad.

And what about a big warpgate, an extra big one that wouldn't have any battlefields connected to it, like a big rally point for platoons, squads and outfits to gather together and that warpgate could then have the teleport ability. Also it could have some empire specific structures in the background, or it could be located in the empires home world, for example the TR could have a big city in the back and the base would look like a big military base, with tanks, boxes... The NC could have like a commercial area or something, the VS could have like a big temple, well I'm not so sure about what the NC and the VS could have.

Otherwise for tactics making players travel in two warpgates, possibly getting stuck one one because the other one has too much people in it, and basicly different loading speeds... So I don't think that idea is so good.

Is it just me or you are just describing how it worked in planetside 1 ?

[Cooper]

Basti's right about the problems with populations on home continents if factions have nowhere to go. But the BI bottlenecks make me shudder.

I can see it now. Outfits filling their factions 48 people pop on a BI and sending /orders along the line of "Do not capture anything on [enemy faction's home continent] so we can mantain the BI farm"

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Cooper

Basti's right about the problems with populations on home continents if factions have nowhere to go. But the BI bottlenecks make me shudder.

I can see it now. Outfits filling their factions 48 people pop on a BI and sending /orders along the line of "Do not capture anything on [enemy faction's home continent] so we can mantain the BI farm"

you're missing some information.

In normal play the BI's will have a pop cap of around 250. That's quite enough for a good 2-wsay fight. There will also be 4 (probably) islands.

When in tournament mode (instanced) the pop cap will be 48x48.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Cooper

Basti's right about the problems with populations on home continents if factions have nowhere to go. But the BI bottlenecks make me shudder.

I can see it now. Outfits filling their factions 48 people pop on a BI and sending /orders along the line of "Do not capture anything on [enemy faction's home continent] so we can mantain the BI farm"

Yea, because that would totally work...

[capiqu]

I see 2 possibilities.

A) Battle Islands with Fix Links:

The BI's will connect to all none home continents via smaller warpgates on their central maps.

B) Battle Islands linked via rotating geowarpgate to all continents like the
Planetside Core Combat link system.

In my opinion B would be better to keep the larger outfits and factions from
claiming any BI as a home continent and holding on to them for extended
periods of time.
In example b, the 2 warpgates on Nexus will connect to 10 geowarps on
the continents. Making the geowarpgates rotate about every 5 hours.
would keep the maps dynamic.

Another thing about example A is that you will need little home continents defense
since most battles will be at Hossin, searhurs and Nexus. With B you would have to defend
your home continent more frequently since the number of entry points increase from 2 to 4.

Sorry about the bad art and worse PC skills.

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by Cooper

Basti's right about the problems with populations on home continents if factions have nowhere to go. But the BI bottlenecks make me shudder.

I can see it now. Outfits filling their factions 48 people pop on a BI and sending /orders along the line of "Do not capture anything on [enemy faction's home continent] so we can mantain the BI farm"

Im not seeing it like that, yea there will be bottle knecks on the BI, but hossin is another way onto the enemy continent. Granted I believe Hossin will be lockable, but as long as the enemy has a warp gate thats untouchable then Esimir, Indar, and Amerish cant be locked completly. But I do see the bottle kneck issue with the BI's but honestly I say give it a try, see how it runs, I know that when they finally start adding new continents all this will change, to somthing bigger.