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John Smedley, President of Sony Online Entertainment, recently blogged about the concepts behind what he called Planetside Next (his moniker for the project, not the official title. Sorry for any confusion). Here’s a quick blurb:
To me, Planetside Next means we get a chance to take the essence of everything that was fun in Planetside and make it a lot better. Massive battles on a scale no other FPS will touch. None of this 64 player stuff. REALLY MASSIVE. With much better organization, and a tight focus on making sure the action is always going on, with awesome graphics.
Really massive to me means something like EVE Online. But if that’s true and there will be hundreds or thousands on a single battlefield (which makes sense if you’re fighting for control of a planet), then there’s going to need to be some serious organization to keep it from degrading into a constant stream of re-spawned players getting mowed down by high-tech land mines, grenades and machine guns...sort of like what Planetside devolved into at times. It was like World War I only with high-tech items.
Hey John, we might suggest some organization like this chart (found at VetFriends.com):
Speaking of Vets (of which I’m one) be sure to support your local vets as they fought so that we could have games like Planetside and open discussions like the one you’re reading now. Even if you disagree with the government and its reasons for getting involved in most wars, the men & women of your local armed forces are there to do a job and are generally not the ones making the decisions on what is being done. (steps down off soapbox)
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163 days ago
Well... he really only gave us very broad, vague info. Still, I loved PlanetSide and I’m looking forward to this. As for the "World War 1" scenarios you described, those were squarely the fault of the players. Even an independent player should have the presence of mind to get a MAX/power-armor suit, light vehicle, or some other way of getting around. Granted, that only solves the ’mowed down by grenades and guns’ part, not the mines.
My solution for those was decidedly misanthropic. I’d just cruise around in a Lightning light tank, and let others go first to trigger the mines for me. If there was nobody handy, I’d just lob a few cannon shells down range and watch for hits; eventually I’d clear a path. Man, I miss my Lightning...