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PlanetSide 2: First Look Preview
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Our lads at GDC 2012 this year were treated to the first ever look at a dev-driven demo of SOE's upcoming MMOFPS, Planetside 2. Does the game look like it has what it takes to make PS2 a household name? Find out!
"Massive" is the first word that popped into my mind when we were shown PlanetSide 2 at Sony Online Entertainment's special preview event at Game Developer's Conference 2012. SOE has been particularly mum about their upcoming MMOFPS, and we were unquestionably excited to be invited to their first big showing of the game. In our 45-minute preview, we were given a glimpse of the scope of what SOE is attempting with PlanetSide 2, and it is huge.
Read the rest of Som Pourfarzaneh's Planetside 2: First Look Preview.
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
It's looking quite good and suitably massive...
But what I really can't help doing is:
Looking at those screenshots and imagining what Everquest (Next) locations will look like in that engine.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/599/view/forums/post/4806418#4806418
Actual quality footage.
It's looking awesome, I'm scared from the "possible membership/subscription" option.. hopefully the benefits won't be combat altering to where you NEED a sub to compete. I do like the micro transactions about skins etc like league of legends did.
Am I the only one who thought that "hands on" would actually mean that you got to play the game yourselves?
I did, as well, Tom.
Anyways, this is sounding iike it's just going to have waaay too much bf/mw/CoD aspects going on. Loved the original(when it was good) but this seems like it's not going in the direction i'd like. Already sounds like gear/level is going to play a much bigger role than it did(or should, imo) in PS, but I guess that's how you get people to pay for faster xp/proficiency gains, which is undoubtedly coming.
Will you be able to buy an uber gun with real cash that you couldn't get through playing? No, but you will for sure be able to level up and improve your gun faster than everyone else if you can shell out the cash. Not quite pay to win, but not too far away.
My concerns as well. I'm really excited with the way it looks graphically so far. However, I hope it doesn't focus too much on level. Level really didn't matter in PS. A level 10 had an equal chance to kill a level 20. The bullets didn't do less damage, if you were lower level, or some nonsense like that. The only thing level did was give you more OPTIONS, which is fine.
The other concern is the cash shop. The more I hear about it, the more I get a sinking feeling in my gut. The line that scared me the most quite frankly was "...while anything in the store that would confer a gameplay advantage can also be earned in-game." I have in the back of my mind a sentence that they left out which is "...That is, after you play the game for 2 years and accumulate enough credits to get something that people plopping down $20 can get instantly." This is how it will probably be.
Games like League of Legends does the cash shop right. There is no real advantage while playing the game, the cash shop is mostly for skins, and making things look pretty.
As long as unlocking everything worthwhile isn't going to cost an arm and a leg (I happily paid 50 bucks + sub for PlanetSide 1 for over a year) I don't mind. This might be _the_ FPS game for me for years, so I can invest 200-300 USD into it over that period and it will still be money extremely well spent.
Sometimes I wonder if people think that free to play should mean they get everything for free. You think game developers create these amazing games as a hobby or for charity?
Given the amount of effort SOE have put into developing PS2, I've no doubt that the cash shop items will be made very "attractive". After all, they need to make money off of this puppy, given that they're a listed company which needs to keep their shareholders happy.
Hopefully they will decide on to have a sub model that circumvents the cash shop "nickel & diming". If they have a decent sub model, I'm in.
The F2P move is a good idea though, seeing as it will most probably create a "target rich environment", which is vital if the game is to succeed
But, if GW2's B2P model proves highly successful, SOE may well take note. They have the time to observe the GW2 results, because the PS2 launch is still a ways off.
Was with Som at this. PlanetSide 2 looked freaking AMAZING. You guys are really in for a visual treat. The light scattering technology combined with the day/night cycle is just a sight to behold. Gameplay looked great too, but I was really surprised by the visual quality!
Keep an eye out for April issue of PC gamer as its supposed to come with a BETA key for PS2. Subscriptions and newstand copies will come with it
No offense , but I'm tired of hearing about how great looking visually a new game is coming down the pipe is. It's pretty well said for every game lately. What's different , what's improved, what's innovative. Frankly, if this is a FPS on a massive scale, there are going to need to be innovations to keep people interested. FPS's are evolving, examples like BF:BC 2 , BF 3. While I understand the limitations of MMO's and FPS and the fusing of the 2. Building a game that, basically uses a shooter format and gameplay style of something that is becoming outdated will just not cut it , in today's market. I am looking forward to this game and seeing what it will have to offer. I'm just not going to be victimized by the hype that these big devs are pumping out . This game had a huge following in it's time, but just like all things the genre and population/technology have matured. People will be expecting more and better. Frankly, I don't believe Sony will deliver.
And I wouldn't mind paying for a subscription either, in fact I did that at one time with EQ2. However, I then found out that even with the subscription, Sony's model was such that you had to pay extra for more inventory slots, then extra to have more races and classes available, then extra to gain access to certain zones, etc etc. That is how it used to be anyway when they first went F2P, it has improved since then.
Again, as much as they say it won't be, I have a funny feeling the plan will be a "dangling carrot" model. If you want to win and omgz uber pwn, you have to cough up just a little more cash, and that's just not what Planetside should be about. It should be about those with the most organization and better skilled players, wins, not those with the most cash. That's one of the primary reasons I loved Planetside so much. It was the most even playing field around.
Planetside created MMOFPS'ing. They know how to get that part right I think. The Micro-transaction were said to have no pay-2-win models. Hope they can stick to that as close as possible.
With games like CoD or BF3 it, honestly does not take that long to get weapon unlocks. They come pretty gradually over time, even without the best K/D ratio. A smaller difference about PS2 compared to them, is that K/D ration is less important than overall tactics.
Good team work can out do some skill driven team if done right. And even with all those skills points accumalted it's not as though they can throw all those skill points at you at once. I do undersand the concerns with damage modifers being tied to leveling, but I'd like to know the progression of leveling, if the first couple levels are fairly easy there shouldn't be too much concern.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
I want to play an mmofps and it's more like it.
If by every game, you mean MMO (yes this is an MMOFPS, but whatever) then you're just dead wrong. With the recent PS2 gameplay video releases, I envision EQNext (a more traditional fantasy MMO...supposedly) and it's potential using this same engine. Fact of the matter is, SoE has been on the cutting edge of MMO graphical technology for some time now. With the release of EQ2 and Vanguard, to some extent, SoE has done an excellent job of optimizing game engines in an attempt to make large scale battles playable in settings that would look dull and very NON-immersive in other MMOs. Yes, I know SoE didn't have much influence on the development of Vanguard, but they've done a great job of optimizing the game none the less. Many computers could barely run EQ2 at release. But, the game looked amazing for it's time and still looks good even compared to recently released MMOs
Graphics in Rift, Swtor, and even GW2 (from the videos I've seen) aren't comparable to what this engine is capable of. This engine IS next gen and is something we should expect in a modern day MMMO(fps). The question is, can SoE optimize the engine in such a way that allows people with regular every day computers to play the game reliably. I'm still skeptical, but hopeful.
Sure, gameplay is king and graphics tend to be an after thought. Graphics aren't everything, but when realizing a game world, immersion is extremely important imo. Trees should sway like trees, water should flow like water, magical abilities should be colorful and dynamic. Graphics make exploration enjoyable and give us a reason to travel to obsure areas.
SoE has developed a fairly bad reputation over the years, for good reason. However, they've been around the block for quite some time now. Whether you love em or hate em, they have an experienced dev team. Lets just hope they've learned from the mistakes of the past. I, personally, haven't given up hope.
TR for LIFE!
I'm stoked for PS2, even if it has classes.. I'll suck it up and deal with it.
Long gone are the days I enjoyed certing in hack'n'hide's while switching to a max.
Played - M59, EQOA, EQ, EQ2, PS, SWG[Favorite], DAoC, UO, RS, MXO, CoH/CoV, TR, FFXI, FoM, WoW, Eve, Rift, SWTOR, TSW.
Playing - PS2, AoW, GW2
I'm not worried about optimization for the simple reason this engine was designed from the core to be able to optimize it for older systems and he said that very quote at fan faire.
My problem with this game and all games similar to this one is this. Outside of gaining a temporary advantage that will likely quickly be lost what will be the point in capturing points? IE if there is no "Win" that can be accomplished I dont see the point. I know this is just a personal opinion and personal pet peeve of mine, however, I would love to see a game in this context with a final win scenario after which the servers are reset and game play starts anew. This of course has its own problems as servers in which one side is dominating become ghost towns etc.
I have a few small solutions to these potential problems such as instead of charging a sub fee charge a small fee to join a new game(IE like $1 or something) and have a game with enough objectives points needed that will last a month or more. Give persistant rewards to players on winning sides and lesser rewards to players on losing sides. Allow an account access to only one server at a time such that you would have to abandon one game in order to join another game. Things of that nature.
In a game like PS2 that does not have an end, players end up chasing around in circles grabbing weakly defended points and avoiding heavily defended points unless they are the faction with the numbers at that given time.
In short I want a true Conquest type game in which something can truly be conquered. Heck they could probably even use the PS2 game engine and make a variant server in which a game like I am describing could be created. If they had that with a well thought out system to avoid stagnation caused by people fleeing a losing side I would play it.
I enjoyed Planetside. It was great. And this looks great too.
But I am with others in that I am extremely leery of the F2P model. The problem with F2P is that it always effs up design. It creates a conflict of interest between developing the best game possible and developing artificial imbalances or annoyances simply to then sell something in the cash shop to fix them. I played Atlantica Online, whose cash shop is hardly egregious, but still I swore to never play a F2P mmo again.
Saying, "anything in the store that would confer a gameplay advantage can also be earned in-game" doesn't mean jack. While there are very few ways to successfully implement such a balance (League of Legends is the only competitive F2P I can think of to do so), there are near infinite ways to screw it up.
We shall see.
@Maelkor: You heard of Battleground Europe (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/34) don't you?! Seems to be the right game for you
F2P concerns of mine:
- Hacking/Aimbotting
- People with horrid ping
- Foreign languages flooding chat (huehuehue)
BUT.. and its a big but...
Its PLANETSIDE 2 !!!
I cant help but be excited about this release to the point were I dont even care what the payment model is.
One of the few MMO' releases coming up which I genuinly beleive wont fail after the first month.
I don't usually like F2P models but having seen how SOE handles EQ2's cash shop I'm quite hopeful for this one.
Cant wait for this...
They should just stick with a sub model, dont like all this f2p stuff