Joining the PS2 Team

[Mechzz]

Well done Malorn, you're joining the team at an important time. Hopefully your sensible voice will be heard in the big pool that is the PS2 Dev team.

Oh, and I'm glad to see you're continuing the honoured tradition of SOE Devs posting anywhere except the official forums

My question is this (seeing as everyone seems to have a free question):

What are your thoughts on the need for dynamic population balancing?
Assuming you see the need for it, would you consider dynamic server balancing to be an option?
(i.e. as pops fall into the night, close servers as they depopulate and migrate players to consolidate numbers, then open them up again as pops rise)
Obviously toons need to be portable, but I don't think we've ever been told they won't be?

Anyway, congratulations and good luck!

[Ryanishere]

Whats the best thing you feel you can add to the team?

[Shawpelganger]

And boom goes the dynamite.

[Tatwi]

Hey, so how long until you're on the Command Center broadcast, Malorne? Maybe they could have you and Hamma on to talk about what the word "Planetside" means to the fans and players of the original game? I'm thinking something like a video where you and Hamma talk about the key "meta game" concepts in PS1 and their parallels or implementation in PS2. Something to help bridge the gap and show that the Planetside spirit is alive in Planetside 2. Oh, and maybe you can poke TRay for some teasers on the PS2 versions of the PS1 armor that he said they're working on?

That would make for a new Command Center episode.

[FortySe7en]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Wow haha, I'll try my best to live up to the expectations!

Don't you love going from being able to say whatever you want to having the options of PR yelling at you.

Better you than me :P

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Mechzz

Well done Malorn, you're joining the team at an important time. Hopefully your sensible voice will be heard in the big pool that is the PS2 Dev team.

Oh, and I'm glad to see you're continuing the honoured tradition of SOE Devs posting anywhere except the official forums

My question is this (seeing as everyone seems to have a free question):

What are your thoughts on the need for dynamic population balancing?
Assuming you see the need for it, would you consider dynamic server balancing to be an option?
(i.e. as pops fall into the night, close servers as they depopulate and migrate players to consolidate numbers, then open them up again as pops rise)
Obviously toons need to be portable, but I don't think we've ever been told they won't be?

Anyway, congratulations and good luck!

Thanks! Population scaling is a challenging problem. As population increase you want to increase the area of battle to match, and as it falls you want to consolidate back down so you have a raging battle the entire time without it being either too zergy or too sparse. That's not easy, especially when people can go wherever they please and you have a wide open world.

Looking at other games, Battlefield series does population scaling by reducing the combat area and number of objectives on the same map. So 32 person conquest is the same map as 64 person conquest, only with more objectives and more playable area. That's the natural way to ensure that your population density stays as expected.

PlanetSide is much harder because our unit of scaling really is the Continent. We go from one continent to two, or two to three.

It's also harder because the scaling needs to happen while people are fighting on those continents.

In spite of this, PlanetSide managed to scale fairly well due to the cross-continent conquest model. Typically an empire would pour into one continent and another empire would pour into the same and that would happen across several different continents simultaneously. As population increased more continents would fill up and get used. As population decreased they tended to go down to fewer contested continents at a time.

The ability to "lock" a continent was actually an important part of PS1 population scaling. If the population died down, you'd typically encounter little resistance on a continent and lock it quickly. Then you'd go looking for another fight and most players would choose an existing fight over creating a new one. So that's how it down-sized itself. If the population increased then it would pour over into a new continent and the battle expanded. That's how it scaled up.

So I am a firm believer that cross-continent conquest is the key to solving the population scaling problem. The unit of scaling is the continent. The level of scaling depends on number of continents and how they link together.

Unfortunately PS2 is resource bound so it might be rough for a bit with only 3 continents. However if they all inter-connect with each one having a home continent what I think you will see happen is that the population will tend to converge on one continent when population is low and then spread out to others as it increases. That might require footholds on each continent to work correctly, or neutral/conquerable gates. The fear I have with that is that it will encourage double-teaming, while a static 3-foothold model will still allow the scaling to some extent as people simply ignore two of the continents, but still allow any empire to take up the fight elsewhere as population increase. We'll have to see about how that plays out. Long-term I see inter-continent conquest as the solution for population scaling, just like it was in PS1. The key change I would make there is reducing the downtime at the end of a conquest and at the beginning, so encourage people to stick around through the end and encourage people to defend freshly invaded continents.

[Jaybonaut]

Originally Posted by Baneblade

Bring the PlanetSide back to PlanetSide 2.

Oh god no. Roles need tweaking, for sure, but stay away from that ancient slow mess if at all possible. Yes, I played it for a year straight after launch and played it a little here and there since but ewwwww.

[TE ArmaGetItOn]

Great work getting on the team, Malorn. I've noticed Higby has frequently been stopping in on our stream and watching, presumably for research on how to improve the game for organized play. With you on the team, you can give even better input as someone who has a vast amount of experience leading and playing with organized outfits.

Also as a veteran player, you can point out bad ideas before they try them

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Jaybonaut

Oh god no. Roles need tweaking, for sure, but stay away from that ancient slow mess if at all possible. Yes, I played it for a year straight after launch and played it a little here and there since but ewwwww.

Right after Malorn's "PS1 population scaling" speech. Ironic

[JHendy]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I'll do my best, but honestly there are some smart folks on the dev team. It's a big reason I wanted to join. If you look back at the way the game has developed over the last few months it has come a long way and I think it's been in the right direction at every turn. That isn't to say there is no work to be done...there's lots to be done, but its going in the right direction.

Yeah. I absolutely agree with that. My post did seem a little bit pessimistic. They've been making all the right decisions since beta came out, which I believe is thanks to close community interaction, and by that token, it's a lovely thing to have someone who is very much member of the community actually working in the same office as the devs!

[Grognard]

Outstanding.

IMO, this is a very good move by SOE. I have watched your posts for a long time, and have agreed with about 95% of them. So, on a purely selfish note... I am glad you are in there where your input will have impact.

[Jaybonaut]

Originally Posted by Crator

Right after Malorn's "PS1 population scaling" speech. Ironic

That's why I described what I meant, which had nothing to do with that post.

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Jaybonaut

Oh god no. Roles need tweaking, for sure, but stay away from that ancient slow mess if at all possible. Yes, I played it for a year straight after launch and played it a little here and there since but ewwwww.

Well I meant fix what PlanetSide did wrong, not destroy or ignore what it did right.

[Tomcat]

yeah sir,may I have a special 'key'?

[Morsong]

Congrats!! I remember Higby joking about SOE should have hired you already, and am glad to see that they actually have!! Great news for them, better news for us!