Battles in space for the future

[thegreekboy]

-disclaimer, have not read all 7 pages-

How about whenever a new continent/planet is released each faction needs to battle for the ability to land and fight on the ground. For example, two years into development the devs release a planet, and it is originally owned by the TR. The NC and VS need to fight the TR to get through to the planet in space. The defending faction would have numerous slight advantages to make it balanced and it would be a fun couple day long distraction from regular play to mix it up a bit.

[Sledgecrushr]

Yeah that was pretty much what I was thinking only slightly bigger. What if "space" is what connected all of the servers together. So traveling through space you might fight through a lockade, take on a defensive platform and then drop from your spaceship planetside and carry on the fight there. This could both expand the game and unite the playerbase.

[cellinaire]

Originally Posted by Sempars

No No No No and No to Space Combat. IF i wanted space combat I play Star wars or play Eve Online. As "Full of Fail" said Core Combat was one of the main killers of PS1. Why repeat history people. Say no to Population splitting!

Both BFR and Space combat are, as concepts, good. At the end of the world, the quality of these will be based on implementation and planning.


So, you think a sci-fi game shouldn't have lasers, robots, space elements or your personal taste just can't stand the introduction of a whole new dimension in PS2?

[maddoggg]

I would absolutely love space battles .
But i doubt it will happen in ps2,who knows maybe in ps3?

[Rago]

Yeah we should Play Phobos :P

[Bruttal]

If theres a space addtion I want it to be like another game in itself with its own player base but based off planetside and maybe have some kinda intergration

[Daffan]

Originally Posted by cellinaire

Both BFR and Space combat are, as concepts, good. At the end of the world, the quality of these will be based on implementation and planning.


So, you think a sci-fi game shouldn't have lasers, robots, space elements or your personal taste just can't stand the introduction of a whole new dimension in PS2?

Valid answers

Waiting eagerly for return shot :P

[Sempars]

Originally Posted by cellinaire

Both BFR and Space combat are, as concepts, good. At the end of the world, the quality of these will be based on implementation and planning.


So, you think a sci-fi game shouldn't have lasers, robots, space elements or your personal taste just can't stand the introduction of a whole new dimension in PS2?

Only way Space Combat would work. Like someone else said, if TR controlled a whole planet. Then say that opened up outer space outpost. IF NC wanted to attack that planet NC would have to take control of the Space outpost first.
But after taking the outpost and invading the planet then space combat would end not keep going.

But if they added it just like Core Combat, game population will split. People will stay playing Space Combat and people will stay playing on the ground. It just wont work.

[Artimus]

Space battles would be fun as long as it was set up like planetside, attack/defend colonies, stations, ect. But like it was said pop. Splitting does not seem to work, personally I think naval combat should come first.. What is the benifit of fighting in space? Arent they lost in deep space if they did have space ports howd they get there?

[roguy]

Originally Posted by cellinaire

So, you think a sci-fi game shouldn't have lasers, robots, space elements or your personal taste just can't stand the introduction of a whole new dimension in PS2?

No, like others have said population splitting doesn't work. It's also a waste of development ressources to build a whole new game with different gameplay/rulesets instead of building upon what's already there, THEN trying to sell it to players who were drawn to your game to play an FPS rather than a space combat sim.

Every time this has been tried it it has either completely bombed (Core combat) or are hands-down inferior to competing games that "specialised" at what they're good at (like SWG:JTL vs Freespace 2 or X-Wing Alliance // SWTOR on rails space combat vs Starfox 64....)

[Stardouser]

There is nothing that will require people who want to continue to play FPS on the ground to play anything else. People could argue that having multiple continents with anything different about them at all, is population splitting. Or, people who go behind the lines to attack, or people who set up defenses at different and varying locations instead of all zerging into the same fight at the same time, could be considered population splitting. That argument does nothing but hold back game development.

And I can't imagine who would even think that SW TOR's on rails thing could possibly deserve to be mentioned alongside actual space games.

[roguy]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

And I can't imagine who would even think that SW TOR's on rails thing could possibly deserve to be mentioned alongside actual space games.

Yeah. That's the point. Do you honestly expect any potential space combat in PS2 to "deserve to be mentioned alongside" proper space games? And don't just cherry pick the worst example, take Jump to Lightspeed or Star Trek online who probably did the 2 games in 1 MMO thing best. The former was a piece of arcadey xp grinding poo, the latter has such terrible ground combat half their playerbase just want it flat out removed.

Originally Posted by Stardouser

If it wasn't a false argument, then people could argue that having multiple continents with anything different about them at all, is population splitting.

People playing on different continents are at least playing the same game, like you know, an FPS. Rather than one side playing an FPS and the other a Space-Sim.

Even Blizzard admitted regretting PVP alongside PVE to World of Warcraft. You just end up splitting the community in two, trying to endlessly solve a balancing nightmare while providing less content to the "core PVE game" because half your dev team has to keep up updates for PVP while PVP stays eternally broken. Everyone get's screwed.

Even Core combat did a good job at diluting PS1s population.

So no it's not unfounded, your turn to bring up counter-examples, in this post I've given 4.

[wraithverge]

I would like to see parallel development of a space game, like dust 514 in reverse of eve. However things of note: I want a space sim fighting game, ala x-wing, wing commander etc, not wow timing and button pushing in space while auto aim does everything.

After all if you can handle 3k people in one game instance per server with a twitch based game, you can rapid develop a space game out of the engine FAST. Once ps2 and Forgelight is out, I would be very surprised if SOE doesn't release a number of huge scale pvp games. Intelligent enemy AI is one of the most complicated things to do in game and one of the few things that would slow this.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by roguy

Yeah. That's the point. Do you honestly expect any potential space combat in PS2 to "deserve to be mentioned alongside" proper space games?



People playing on different continents are at least playing the same game, like you know, an FPS. Rather than one side playing an FPS and the other a Space-Sim.

Even Blizzard admitted regretting PVP alongside PVE to World of Warcraft. You just end up splitting the community in two, trying to endlessly solve a balancing nightmare while providing less content to the "core PVE game" because half your dev team has to keep up updates for PVP while PVP stays eternally broken. Everyone get's screwed.

Even Core combat did a good job at diluting PS1s population.

So no it's not unfounded, your turn to bring up counter-examples

The idea I have been pitching is instead of creating a space game and glomming it onto a server as extra content. You create a space game that combines all of the servers. Instead of splitting the playerbase we would combine it. Instead of conquerable continents we could very well have entire conquerable planets. We could strive for dominance with an entire solar empire.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by roguy

Yeah. That's the point. Do you honestly expect any potential space combat in PS2 to "deserve to be mentioned alongside" proper space games?



People playing on different continents are at least playing the same game, like you know, an FPS. Rather than one side playing an FPS and the other a Space-Sim.

Even Blizzard admitted regretting PVP alongside PVE to World of Warcraft. You just end up splitting the community in two, trying to endlessly solve a balancing nightmare while providing less content to the "core PVE game" because half your dev team has to keep up updates for PVP while PVP stays eternally broken. Everyone get's screwed.

Even Core combat did a good job at diluting PS1s population.

So no it's not unfounded, your turn to bring up counter-examples

Yes, I do expect that space combat can be well done in PS2. Especially since many space games that do exist are single player oriented and don't do PvP well. The thing is, you think it's a problem that some people are fighting in space and some are fighting on the ground. I don't. The argument is covered from all angles - first, it's not a real problem, and secondly, to any extent that it does present minor issues, Planetside 2 should have a much larger playerbase than PS1 did, and accordingly, there will be enough players to populate everything. Who cares if, out of 10000 players on a server, 2000 are in space? You still can't have more than 2000 in your own individual continent at once, and you probably won't be in a battle with all 2000 of them anyway. Think back to PS1, you couldn't even have more than 450 or so and now you can have much more.

This is an MMOFPS, and MMOFPS is the best vector to introduce multi-faceted combat to a game world. There is no other type of game that could possibly incorporate these things. And FPS should not be taken literally, otherwise "shooter" would mean nothing but infantry.

And since there are no real MMOFPS other than PS and WW2OL, which did not have space combat, no true examples can be cited, either for or against, to demonstrate precedent that an MMOFPS can't do space; although I do think that if we took a game like Battlefront which had space combat within the confines of limited map size, and consider how much better that could be done in the larger combat areas that an MMOFPS can provide, that it can be done just fine.

As for PvP in MMORPGs, while I agree that there are lots of problems balancing PvP and PvE, how is that a population splitting issue? I have not played WoW, and don't know how WoW does PvP so maybe there is something different about how WoW is set up. But from what I know of the other MMORPGs that I have played, my expectation of a standard MMORPG that has PvP but is NOT PvP focused, is that they have PvE servers where there is no PvP unless you agree to a duel or go to special or Arena zones, and there are PvP servers where PvP is fully enabled. I don't see how that splits communities. I mean, if a standard MMORPG needed 30 servers to handle its population and 5 of them are PvP enabled, so it's split 25 PvE and 5 PvP, that's still no more split than it would have been?

And I take this issue very seriously because as a 10 year EQ player, I prefer to play on the PvP server. I am aware that balancing issues mean that, for example, a melee focus class gets dominated by caster classes. I know it's difficult to balance both, but I'd rather have somewhat unbalanced PvP than no PvP. You join a guild or run in groups with your own healers and casters, and work as a team and get past that, it's better to play on a PvP server than not - much more exciting. Nothing in this final paragraph here has anything to do with Planetside, I'm just saying since we're talking about it and because I do prefer PvP in MMORPGs.