The Black Watch Interview with Matt Higby

[TechTBW]

We recently had the chance to sit down with Matt Higby at SOE's community day for a short interview. The interview was originally posted on our outfit's site here

It took 10 hours on the road, 36 hours of no sleep, 192 oz of energy drinks, and 1 car battery but The Black Watch was able to make it to Sony Online Entertainment's PlanetSide 2 community day in San Diego. And boy was it worth it. Besides being some of the first in the world to get a crack at PlanetSide 2 , we snagged an exclusive interview with Creative Director, and fellow NC, Matt Higby. Higby was generous enough to sit down and answer some questions from our community.


Tech with Higby. Wearing a suit and chewing on dog tags = WIN

The Black Watch: How important will resources be in the grand scheme of things? Will there be enough for a player to spawn vehicles indefinitely or will there be a point where you will have to conserve and spend wisely?

Higby: You gain resources by two different means: Actively by completing missions and passively by controlling territory. There will be a Cap on the amount of resources a player can have. It will work like a faucet and drain. If a player can figure out a way to make his faucet bigger than his drain, in theory he would be able to spawn as many vehicles as he wants.

The Black Watch: Will resources be locked to each character or will they be able to be traded to other players?

Higby: Resources will be locked to each character but there has been discussion about allowing players to trade them in the future.

The Black Watch: Will there be significant balancing after launch or do you feel the certification system will take care of most balance issues?

Higby: There will be regular balancing but it will occur only if needed. Balancing will be based on a number of factors including community feedback, but,we won't change things just because some players are saying something is too good or too bad. Take Starcraft 2 for example. If people are saying Mutas are OP, we don't want to go and change them right away. We want to give people a chance to find a counter for them and that is where the side-grades in the certification system will come into play.



The Black Watch: How will the grief system work to deter players from creating alt accounts and sabotaging the opposing faction?

Higby: The grief system will work similar to the system in PlanetSide 1- a player performing negative actions on a regular basis will be penalized for team killing.


The Black Watch: How important will the role of logistics be in getting troops to the battle?

Higby: Logistics will be Very important. One of the big defining features of this FPS is logistics. They will play a very important roll.

The Black Watch: Are there plans for future expansions?

Higby: No, but new content will be released regularly. PlanetSide 2 will be a combination of big content releases as well as smaller releases of new features throughout the game's life.


The Black Watch: What do you see as your main competitor?

Higby: Possibly the next game from Dice. The only thing that compares in scale is Eve but PlanetSide 2 is a 100% different type of game. Nothing else truly does what PlanetSide 2 does.

The Black Watch: How long will beta last?

Higby: If it were up to me it would last as long as possible but the reality is we have to release it some time. The game will launch when it is ready.

The Black Watch: Will PS2 be released this year?

Higby: PlanetSide 2 is slated for release this year but ultimately we will release it when it is ready.


NC from head to toe

We would like to thank Matt for taking the time to talk with us and SOE for throwing such a fun and successful event. Stay tuned to tbwgaming.com for more Planetside 2 updates as well as some exciting contests in the near future.

-Tech

[DirtyBird]

Thx for sharing.

[cellinaire]

Thanks for the interview and transcript =)

[Rago]

Thank you

[Darthkorr]

"The Black Watch: How will the grief system work to deter players from creating alt accounts and sabotaging the opposing faction?

Higby: The grief system will work similar to the system in PlanetSide 1- a player performing negative actions on a regular basis will be penalized for team killing."

Sorry Higby but you did not answer this question properly.

Edit for more explanation:
What if the greifer does not care at ALL about his alt account and only hops on to greif? YOu ban him. He makes ANOTHER account and repats the process. whats to stop this guy?

PS. Awesome pix. Love your shoes Higby!

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by Darthkorr

whats to stop this guy?

The grief system. (and the time it takes to recreate a new account)

We haven't had a lot of details about the PS2 grief system vs. PS1 but they can:
- make it super sensitive for newly created accounts to prevent abuse
- make it sensitive to battle rank so you are allowed more grief points with higher level accounts rather than newly created ones
- make it so that newly created accounts have a harder time accessing powerful weapons

There is no ultimate solution but they can do a lot of things to limit negative behavior.

[DrShadowSML]

I think a good part of a grief system would be to report a player. Once a player has reports from many people, that character would be deleted and if it happens again, the player/account would be banned.

[JoeDragon]

I'm sure that the possibility of IP bans for repeat offenders who are quite obviously causing a lot of damage will exist as well. But ultimately there will be that one person who just has a bad experience and doesn't care anymore.

[Darthkorr]

I'm talkin about someone making a second account (this is free to play) and joining the opposing faction and griefing for the fun of it. NOT their MAIN account where they play by the rules for their faction and help out.

[Shadowrath]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

The grief system. (and the time it takes to recreate a new account)

We haven't had a lot of details about the PS2 grief system vs. PS1 but they can:
- make it super sensitive for newly created accounts to prevent abuse
- make it sensitive to battle rank so you are allowed more grief points with higher level accounts rather than newly created ones
- make it so that newly created accounts have a harder time accessing powerful weapons

There is no ultimate solution but they can do a lot of things to limit negative behavior.

Sounds about right.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by DrShadowSML

I think a good part of a grief system would be to report a player. Once a player has reports from many people, that character would be deleted and if it happens again, the player/account would be banned.

hmmm, except ./reports can be abused too.

[Winfernal]

Thank you for doing this, Tech! Great interview.

[Artimus]

This gave me more insight, thanks for sharing.

[EnderGraff]

Nice interview

I liked Higby's shoes, he sure does dress for the winning team

[Rat]

I still think having friendly fire turned off until BR 5 would stop a lot of the griefing, that way a griefer wouldnt just be able whip up a new account to grief with any time he wanted...some effort would be requilred to get to BR 5 before he could grief.