Choreographed Battles for Marketing?

Snowfake · 2011-12-14, 09:51 PM

I have always found most of the videos for Planetside pretty lame as they never really capture the grandness of what exactly is happening in one of our battles. To me they have only ever managed to portray very small pieces of a much larger picture.

Though I quite like the trailer for the new planetside especially how it shows the map first and then zooms in. We then go on to see the guys firing and planes flying in but for me it just said hey you get guns!!, oh and there is some planes and tanks too by the way.

Of course that was the first teaser and im sure there is going to be loads more to see, but it got me thinking it must be really hard and take a lot of time and thought to put a really good video together on a game thats totally PvP. Not to mention this PvP games major selling point is its HUGE battles.

So I was wondering unless SOE were already planning to enlist a ton of people just to organise some really awesome battles in order to get some footage, that we as the community come beta could arrange some massive choreographed battles to really capture the "Planetside Experience" something I belive has not been done before.

If anything it would still be a really cool chance to make some awesome videos so in many years to come we can watcvh and say I was there!

Xyntech · 2011-12-14, 09:59 PM

This would be awesome.

I also think it would be a good idea for SOE to make some entirely scripted battles to show off the game as well.

All you have to do is make sure of a few things:
-The entire thing is rendered in forgelight, with all real in game character models/props/textures/effects
-No engine limits are exceeded (if the engine can't handle something happening in the real game, it doesn't happen in the scripted trailer)
-Nobody moves in ways or does things that are impossible for real players to do in game

So as long as the entire thing is made to be an accurate representation of what you could actually see and do in game, why not have a carefully scripted sequence? Just study some actual battles and player behavior, cherry pick some scenarios that would be cool to show, script out the movements to duplicate that scenario, then script the camera to show the events from interesting and grandiose points of view.

Player choreographed videos would be much cooler for the fans, but a scripted (yet true to gameplay) video would be a much easier, more polished way to market the best parts of the game.

I'd like to see both.

ShockNC · 2011-12-14, 10:49 PM

simply use a unkillable dev character to record everything via Fraps and having going while in the beta stress test.

xSlideShow · 2011-12-14, 10:52 PM

I'm already doing this. Get at me bro.

**Higby** · 2011-12-14, 11:46 PM

Thanks Duke! Never change my friend!

Xyntech · 2011-12-14, 11:49 PM

Originally Posted by Higby

Thanks Duke! Never change my friend!

Compass rose?

Tasorin · 2011-12-15, 12:26 AM

The expectation is that this game will be the watershed release that helps redefine what it means to be a Sandbox game in the next decade.

No pressure.

A lot of our core die hard PvP mongers have been waiting for a quality FPSMMO. All our chips are on PS2, and we are encouraged with your progress.

Squeegeez · 2011-12-15, 01:27 AM

I've always loved this idea, make it happen, for the glory of Planetside!

Bittermen · 2011-12-15, 01:30 AM

Sounds good wouldn't mind a CGI trailer either.

Kinda like section 8s.

Miir · 2011-12-15, 10:03 AM

Filming large scale controlled battle sequences is what we did at Malvision. It's pretty much the reason Malvision got so much love from SOE back in the day. Well that and the other dozen or so beta movies we made.

They were nice enough to eventually give me developers powers on the test server which helped us a lot. Those powers allowed us to spawn vehicles, manage damage on assets (people, vehicles) move people around maps quickly for setting up shots. It was great. Even with those powers the camera tool set in Planetside had it's limitations for filming. Hopefully they've added some more features for filming.

I believe the reason they contacted us in the first place was they had challenges doing these sorts of things in house for Planetside. This may no longer be the case as Higby mentioned they have the ability to spawn bots now. So if they can control those bots in any way they will have more flexibly to film rather than coordinating a large group of players.

But if they can't control the bots I can see this as the reason they aren't pumping out marketing type videos showing massive combat yet.

I'm sure there is a loyal fan base to support their needs if they request it.

Malvision is ready to assist.

Shogun · 2011-12-15, 10:43 AM

every single ps1 veteran who is still active in this forum would kill to help with such a project!

when beta starts, this should be no real problem to do.
tell the betatesters that this will happen at a certain date, and the server will be full.
give every faction a dev as commander and let them give out orders.
like we need 5 gal pilots, 20 fighters 20 tanks and the rest fill up those vehicles.

then tell everybody a rough battleplan, like gals try to fly in formation to base x and bail over ast tower to take it, fighters escort the gals, tanks take out aa.

then have as many devs as possible around in flying invisible cameras (i´m sure they have something like that) and film the big battle from as many angles as possible.

this way, the battle will really look like it would in the released game.
sure, in the real game, this level of coordination and formation flight, etc. will not happen in every fight, but there had been such battles in ps1 and there will be great outfit events like this in ps2 as well.

edit: AND a lot of the players could record their view of the battle as well, sending this footage to soe so they even get more to choose from. as we read in a dev bio, there are people on the team, whose career started exactly like this! just give all footage to soe and let them compose the trailer, or compose something by yourself and send it to them for approval or changes.

but having a trailer like this is crucial for the impact of the game! the trailer has to dump a shitload in the face of people who tell everybody, that there will never be a real mmofps and that they all will be instanced shit. because we know what ps2 will be capable of!

FriendlyFire · 2011-12-15, 10:58 AM

MAKE

IT

EPIC

that is all.

Haurus · 2011-12-15, 11:05 AM

I would help in a second. Did some videos with Miir and XoO back in the day.

Coreldan · 2011-12-15, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

and fuck.. ya im drunk as hell right now.....

Hands up who is surprised?

Naturally I'd be in for stuff like this and can bring like 40 people to help with it too, but I doubt this will happen from SoEs end.

Raymac · 2011-12-15, 12:33 PM

If we call ourselves a community, we absolutely need to make this happen. We will get the footage during beta with varying degrees of organization from the highly scirpted events to just capturing chaos as it happens, and then as soon as the NDA gets lifted, the videos start getting posted.

Those of you that are filmmakers, recruit the hell out of us. We all want to make your videos as epic as possible to show people the sheer scale of this game. As for me, just let me know when and where and I will be there.