Сообщение от PSU

On the Class System
The skill tree and classes go hand in hand, you can switch between roles as often as you want depending what is needed at the time. Things like weapon attachments will be based on the skill tree. Also you will be able to queue up 24 hours of skills to train so you can train your characters offline. However there will still be battle rank involved which will prevent you from training all skills unless you advance in battle rank. Skill training will also occur quicker when you are online.

On Resource Collection
On a continent you will have multiple regions that can be captured that have specific resources tied to them. Some areas may be more rich in rare resources some in common materials. Auraxium will be one of the rare resources that can be obtained. You will be able to unlock secondary weapons such as mortar cannons and AA guns on tanks. You will do this based on resources collected by your empire or outfit. Resources will make gameplay more strategic, for example denying resources to empires to gain an advantage.

On Outfit Customization
Outfits will have skill trees also that will be customizable. Outfits can spec specifically to increase certain aspects such as focusing on being an air cavalry outfit, or infiltry and max outfits.

On long term plans.
There will be a three year plan for PlanetSide 2 for all of the players to review and and provide feedback. Based on feedback the plan could be changed or moved around.

On Game Focus
It's about giving back to the players, SOE wants to make PlanetSide 2 for the players who have stuck to the game for years, and the hardcore players who participate day in and day out.

On the scale of gameplay
There will be multiple continents in the game just as with the original PlanetSide. Down the road there will even be multiple worlds.

On gameplay systems
There will be an extensive mission system in PlanetSide 2 to assist in coordinating PlanetSide 2 combat on a much larger scale than seen in PlanetSide 1.

On the Territorial Control Systems
Due to the structure of the systems there will be a large variety of heavily contested areas such as large forests. Large and open areas could be conquered entirely with vehicles, this goes for air and ground vehicles. Much of the territorial control system will be based similarly on bases where if you capture a base or structure you own the territory. There will be bonuses to capturing territories that are connected. It will also add more vertical gameplay to the game.

On the pace of Gameplay
Moment to moment pacing for PlanetSide 2 is much faster than PlanetSIde 1.

On external access to data
Most data will be accessible from outside so webapps can b built on top of the game. Services such as signature generators and statistic pages could be built around the data feeds.

On urban combat.
There will be "Urban Like" combat in PlanetSide 2.

On the Flight Model
They want skill based vehicle driving to play a much larger role in PlanetSide 2. There will be much more advanced flight mechanics with barrel roles and flips. Real skill will be required to fly vehicles so quality pilots will be in demand.

Сообщение от PSU

When is beta?
Beta will ready when we feel the game is ready for people to play and test in. There is no solid date at this time.

What are you most excited about in Planetside 2?
I am most excited about the world system and the territorial control system, for example being able to capture a ridge or a river bend. Also the engine is capable of things volumetric clouds where vehicles could fly in and hide in the clouds.

Can you tell us if 3rd person will play a role in PlanetSide 2?
There will only be a 3rd person view for certain air vehicles, infantry will not have a third person view at all. There may be things like cameras that an infiltrator can throw on a wall to monitor who is coming up the stairs or around a corner.

Can we expect more varied base layouts?
Currently they coming up with a way on interiors are going to work, working on predictability vs randomness. Leaning towards more standard base layouts rather than random. But combat will be less centralized on bases. There will not be specific purpose built facilities such as drop ship etc (ie you won't require a dropship center to build dropships)

Are there any plans for a larger variety in towers?
Right now there are two types of towers. We hope to have more variety in towers.

Are there any plans for more in-depth character creation, like what was done from EQ to EQ2?
There will not be a large variety of character creation due to the large scale of the game.

Game Appearance - How will weapon-customization be implemented into the game?
There will be weapon customization in the game. The customization will be very sensitive to player gaining to much power. An upgrade may allow you to unlock different variants that are less accurate but do more damage. There will be a 15% to 20% maximum difference between players who are new compared to experienced.

Will base names remain similar in PlanetSide 2?
The team hopes to use similar base names as well as continents in PlanetSide 2.

Will wreckage remain on the battlefield?
Wreckage will stay around on the battlefield for a period of time, hopefully minutes but it is still up for balance.

Are you currently planning to make an expansion pack or periodically add content?
There will be large scale content releases rather than expansion packs in PlanetSide 2.

What are your plans for the storyline? Will it be expanded upon?
The PlanetSide 2 story is the re-imaging of PlanetSide, you are still in Auraxis and allot of the story from PlanetSide will be re-examined in PlanetSide 2

Сообщение от Massively

Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley and members of the Planetside 2 development team sat down with press to talk more about the highly-anticipated sequel to the original Planetside. Joining Smedley were Creative Director Matt Higby, Senior Art Director Trammell Isaac, and Executive Producer Josh Hackney.

Smedley began by talking about how Planetside 2 is both an MMO and a FPS game, and that there are very few titles in that particular genre. He added that it will be a remarkable experience, and that he feels they can deliver in a way that no one else has. Read past the cut for more details.
From there, he discussed some of Planetside 2's features in greater detail. First off is the territory control system, which allows players to control not only structures or choke points, but entire areas. In Planetside 2, they wanted to improve on making fights more unpredictable. It's created so that each piece of the map has intrinsic value through control of resources. So, rather than capturing a facility to increase influence for the empire, you can capture everything. Control of resources gives players a new motivation to fight.


"Control of resources gives players a new motivation to fight."

As a result, it changes the way they design levels and continents. There will be more vertical gameplay, with the addition of things like scaffolding along canyon walls, and the battles will be more intense. More players will be able to fit on a map and have a meaningful interaction.

Resources
Matt Higby went on to explain the importance of resources. Control of resources means a gain for the outfit, empire and self. There are rare and common resources, and players have to make a decision about what resources to pursue and how far to go in order to get them. In addition, players can capture territory in order to deny resources to the enemy. It adds a lot of variety to the game.

With this much going on, he added, you're not drilling down towards this particular area; you're looking at the bigger picture and the war across the entire continent. Everyone's on the move. Players are part of a huge army, accomplishing individual goals in the process of accomplishing team goals. And he added that the world is persistent, so once an area is captured, it's under the control of those players until someone takes it back.

Skills and Classes
Next was a discussion of the skill tree and classes. Classes are combat roles, and players can switch seamlessly between them. Players will be able to add attachments, power ups, and even improve their vehicles through the skill tree. In addition, there's a time-based unlock system, which allows players to select skills to level up, and they continue to increase whether you're online or not. You just need to log in once a day and have those selected skills in queue to improve them.

For example a player could choose to be a Vanguard driver, one of the new classes that will be available. You can choose how to customize your vehicle, such as improving the handling of the tank, unlocking secondary weapons, adding ground-to-air or anti-infantry weapons.

There is also a skill tree for outfits. Skills can be chosen to make an outfit specialize in a particular style of combat, and Smedley used the example of the 101st Airborne Division as a type of outfit that players could aim for. It gives an incentive for players to join certain outfits based on what they can do and what skills they unlock.


"The basic goal of Planetside 2's design is to take everything that players loved about the original game, take all the bells and whistles of modern day FPS games, add in the systems and features of MMOs, and integrate it all."

Activity in game does increase your velocity of points increasing. So the more active players are rewarded for playing the game. But there are a few reasons that they added the offline skill system. First, they wanted people to stay close to friends even though they can't play as much. But they also wanted to allow players to play actively. With a time-based unlock, you won't feel like you're wasting time if you're not actively fighting. If you're waiting for obstacles to clear or for one more kill, you'll still be increasing your points. This should prevent people from running off randomly instead of sticking with the team and staying in order.

The basic goal of Planetside 2's design is to take everything that players loved about the original game, take all the bells and whistles of modern day FPS games, add in the systems and features of MMOs, and integrate it all. They have sought out player feedback, and as part of a larger plan, they intend to reveal features for the next three years in advance, to let players give feedback and input.

Press Q&A
During a Q&A with the press, there was a question about what was not included from the original Planetside. Sanctuaries are one thing that will not be in Planetside 2. The team decided that they wanted people either coordinating a battle or in a battle. In addition, shuttle timers were scrapped, because it was a feature that frustrated players.

When asked about whether Planetside 2 will be launched both on the Playstation 3 and PC, Smedley dodged the question, but he did say cryptically, "We were first with DCUO, second with Free Realms, and we have other things planned, possibly beyond even the PS3."

Our Interview
After the panel, Creative Director Matt Higby talked with Massively to answer some questions about the game. A recap of the interview follows:

Higby first elaborated a bit on the question of what type of price plan Planetside 2 will have. He said that Station Cash is a company-wide agenda. It hasn't been worked out completely yet, but he assured players that they will never sell powerful items or items that give players an advantage through the cash shop. He said they don't want to limit players' enjoyment of the game by forcing them to buy items with Station Cash.

Next, he talked about servers and populations. Planetside 2 will have multiple servers, in order to support the size of the playerbase on the world map. He also said they don't want players to be able to create characters from different factions and be able to listen in on the enemy. Players will be able to play multiple factions, but they'll have to do it on separate servers.

When asked about populations and managing a balance among the tree factions, he said it was a tricky problem. They don't want to break up player communities, especially the enormous teams that are coming from Planetside. They plan to allow people to create characters, choose their faction first, and then select from recommended servers that need the empire they want to play the most.

We asked next about whether players will be able to build structures in open territory that they capture, such as river banks or cliff sides. Initially, he said, they will be able to build structures like turrets and sand bag walls, which he said hopefully will be in a launch. As part of the three year plan, they intend to add a greater variety of structures and facilities that give players more ability to build bases and defenses. But as with everything, if you build it up, it can also be torn down.


"But as with everything, if you build it up, it can also be torn down."

Next was the topic of voice chat, and as with other SOE games, Planetside 2 will use the Vivox voice chat system, complete with various channels and the ability to customize your own voice channels. When asked about whether players will see the ability to interact with mobile devices, Higby said they're not ready to announce anything yet, but the idea of having something like the mini-map on your iPad, allowing you to interact with that while playing on your big screen, is an eventuality.

Higby then spoke about the prospect of one faction dominating the others, to the point that they can't retake captured territory. When asked about whether there would be plans for a reset or a way to help players even out the battle, he said they don't intend to include that in the game. If anything, it would only be a last resort. He said they plan to manage and balance things very carefully to reduce the chances of something like that. But he also added that being able to have one empire control large portions of the map, or even take over the entire map, is next to impossible.

We asked about whether there would be any small group instanced PvP, and while he said that Planetside 2 is focused only on world map open battles, he did say they thought about adding some strict, competitive, e-sports-style competition into the game. It would be a small map set up for platoon vs platoon, or 40 vs 40, with a set duration and objectives. He said it would be a neat sub-game to Planetside 2, but he stressed that it would never be the focus of the game.

Lastly, we asked about whether they had any specific plans for the original Planetside once the sequel launches. He didn't go into specifics, but he said they're focused on rewarding Planetside fans in Planetside 2.

Сообщение от Machinima

Developer: SOE
Release: TBA
Genre: FPS
Platform: PC
Publisher: SOE
PlanetSide 2 takes all the groundbreaking features from the original game -- massive multiplayer battles, distinct empires to rally around, and enormous continents where intense ground and air combat unfolds -- and adds features that modern gamers have come to expect out of the FPS and MMO genres. With advanced technology, years of gamer feedback, and a new SOE proprietary MMO game engine called Forgelight™, PlanetSide 2 offers a truly competitive and visceral FPS experience with massive warfare, massive customization and massive community.

Сообщение от MyCurse

Sony Online Entertaiment unveiled their next-generation MMO game engine, Forge Light, at this year's Fan Faire in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The engine has a ton of amazing features that are streamlined for modern, state of the art computers and yet designed to scale back for older machines as well. The engine is set to make its debut in PlanetSide 2 but will also be featured in EverQuest III or EverQuest Next as it is known as right now.

Forge Light will feature:

No zones - a purely seamless MMO universe for players to explore and enjoy.
Real-Time Radiosity
Fully scalable for older computers and newer, more state-of-the-art machines.
Atmospheric scattering
Volumetric Fog
Complex Shaders
Advanced occlusion
Beautiful, dynamic environmental lighting
nVidia PhysX

Many of these terms will be little more than industry jargon, but what it means is that Sony Online Entertainment is committing to staying cutting-edge in their games, graphics and gameplay. PlanetSide 2 will most likely be the first title to debut with Forge Light in tow but when it does, we feel like the experience will be incomparable.

Q. What exactly is the planned Damage bonus for headshots? Will any Infantary weapon be able to One shot Kill? A. The system allows us to have different damage bonuses for each weapon. This way we can make it so that sniper rifles give a 200% bonus making them OSOK on headshots and chainguns get a 0% bonus making it make no difference. Other guns like pistols or assault rifles might be somewhere in between based on how rewarding we feel precision should be with each of those weapons/weapon types. Vehicle weapons will likely have a 0% bonus. Exact balance for this is not final, but that's the general idea that we're going with and we'll tweak as necessary.

Сообщение от NewSith

Higby once mentioned that there's likely to be a 20% power differentiation between a high level and a low level, probably including inequivalent damage.
This "possibility" has created serious commotion among PS vets, thus after flames broke out, Higby stated that there will be no damage bonus for a higher level:

"We're going to have hundreds if not thousands of certs at launch. These will vary from certs that unlock new weapons, implants, vehicles, weapon/vehicle attachments and class skills to ones that allow for faster reloading, less cone of fire, larger ammo capacity, and yes, additional damage. When we say overall 20% increase in power we're talking holistically, not necessarily "each of your bullets do 20% more damage! a winner is you!".

The spirit of the PS2 cert system is very much based around the PS1 paradigm of advancement by addition of situational flexibility and overall breadth of gameplay options. A good fps player playing light assault with minimal certs will always kick the shit out of a bad fps player playing light assault with a lot of certs."

And less transparent statement:

"The growth afforded by the PS2 cert system to an mmorpg character growth curve isn't even comparable.

Using some back of the napkin math on a hugely simplified example. A first session player would pick up a gun that did 10 damage per shot and start blasting at a guy with full health, assuming he hit every shot and didn't get any headshots (he's a noob, afterall!), it would take 10 shots to kill his enemy:

Shot # damage done health remaining
1 10 90
2 20 80
3 30 70
4 40 60
5 50 50
6 60 40
7 70 30
8 80 20
9 90 10
10 100 0

Imagine we were talking about a straight 10% damage increase, what does this look like?

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 11 89
2 22 78
3 33 67
4 44 56
5 55 45
6 66 34
7 77 23
8 88 12
9 99 1
10 110 -10

Would you look at that... still takes 10 shots to kill.

What about 20%, surely that is an insane TTK decrease...

Shot # damage done life remaining
1 12 88
2 24 76
3 36 64
4 48 52
5 60 40
6 72 28
7 84 16
8 96 4
9 108 -8

1 less shot to kill, not exactly curb-stomping and face-blasting noobs off the map. And, this is already an out of bounds scenario because we're not going to have a 20% increase on damage to begin with."

Few more things are:

There was a thread regarding kill stealing, and exp bonus for support/assists and here's what we got:

"We're doing assist XP, it'll affect for kills earned by your squad greater than outside your squad, but there will be some bonus for outside of squad assists also. There will be some graduation to it as well, if you do 90% of the damage to an enemy and someone swings in and finishes them off you'd get more than if you just randomly hit an enemy with one bullet in a massive firefight."

In response to the discussion of Night/Day on PSU forums (ignited by me), Higby has left a comment regarding day and night cycle:

"I was just looking at some kickass day/night cycle work this morning, in fact. It was pretty dark at night and the purple and yellow tracers sporadically illuminating the world was pretty slick."

It can be a pure speculation, but it is most likely that we're going to get a realistic night in PlanetSide 2.

Сообщение от SyndCon

John Smedley and Producer Matt Higby were part of the SoE team that presented Planetside 2 at SyndCon, the annual guild meeting of The Syndicate, a guild that has been in existence since 1996 and works together to provide professional alpha and beta testing services as well as the writing for print as well as website game guides.

Planetside 2 is built on SoE’s own proprietary engine, Forgelight and we were given close up shots of the graphic possibilities with Matt accelerating the day / night cycle while the audience “oohed and aahed” at the light changes in an early build of the game. We were also given close-up looks of models and the level of detail possible, down to scratches on the paint of armor.

There will be a dynamic weather system that can affect warfare. Intense firefights causing a lot of smoke can affect the weather and they also spoke of volumetric clouds that can mask vehicles. That may not be in at launch, but is definitely in the long term plan.

“The long term goal,” said Smed, “is to have environment that is destructible.” If players wreck a base totally, they will have to rebuild it before it can be useful again. He also alluded to EVE Online’s outside-in approach in that they started with space and have since created on- planet game play while their plans are inside-out, with plans for space game play in the future.

“We can build in extra detail where it is needed,” said Matt as he pulled the camera in and out of landscapes and models. We saw the heat shimmer of super-heated air under vehicles, reflections of light off armor and the sun light striking the canyon at sunrise. There will be spotlights at night, on towers and on vehicles as well.

“Imagine the old Looney Tunes prison break,” Matt laughed, “with the spotlight following you as you try to escape it.”

Bases and outposts have attained greater variety, with some buildings built into the sides of stone walls, making the approach only, say 180 degrees, not 360.

“We will start with a single planet and continent,” said Smed, “then add more continents, and eventually planets.”

That brings up the possibility of naval and air transports between the continents as well as fighting on the high seas, refueling stations and floating bases – both on water and air. Planetside 2 will retain the same three factions, the Terran Republic, the Vanu Sovereignty and the New Conglomerate, but the three factions won’t be battling over territory just to hold it for the sake of holding territory. There will be outposts that control certain resources and looking at the map, players can gain control and hold them for the purpose of denying another faction the use of the resources, or use them, themselves.

The game will be able to re-allocate resources so that one strong faction won’t be able to completely monopolize a single resource. They might deplete one type of ore and spawn another, or create an abundance in another non-controlled area.

Matt then spoke on skills or as they are called in Planetside and Planetside 2, certifications. Planetside 2 will be much more of a skill-based game than Planetside was as the Forgelight engine is capable of the physics. For example, headshots will be possible and snipers will have a harder time of it, as ballistic physics will be in game and they will have to account for wind shift and bullet drop. The game will play very much like an FPS, with a keyboard layout that will be familiar to FPS players, however, there are leadership certifications as well as other support roles like medics and engineers.

Certifications can be trained offline or on, with online training speedier than offline. Players can still be a Jack of all trades, and bring specific load outs into each battle, but specializing will get players higher level certifications faster. Throughout the presentation, we were told we could do this or that, provided we had the proper certifications. For example, Terran Republic players will be able put a powerful anti-vehicle weapon on top of the Prowler (a mid size tank) and swap them out as needed.

If a player has the command rank and the certifications, they can command the base to raise specific turrets such as anti-personnel or anti-aircraft. Missions are area based, the objectives popping up as you enter an area, but leaders can also pick missions for the squad / outfit as well.

Players respawn on death and if leaders have the certification, the respawned player may be able to drop-pod directly back to the group rather than making his way back from the respawn point in a camp or outpost. Friendly fire will be in game, which will make AE weapons more strategic and player sacrifices more meaningful. Each faction will have an uncontestable base and Outfit housing will also be a safe sanctuary.

At FanFaire 2011, Smed had alluded to a cash shop, and he did the same here at SyndCon, reassuring the audience that they would not be selling power. If a weapon can be bought in the cash store, he was quick to assure us that it would be attainable in the game as well. Definitely though, one of the things that will be sold would be customization.

SoE hopes to create a parallel feel for outfits that’s like the US military, for players to recognize outfits for what they do, like how the 101st Airborne Division is known. To help with the identity, Outfits will be able to customize the look of their armor and vehicles. Leaders (with the right certifications) will be able to unlock abilities and customize the skill tree for the Outfit. Drilling down, an Outfit can have more than one Division, so they can have for example, a light assault Division, an Engineering Division and etc. Group play will be the same with 10 to a squad, but in addition, platoons of up to four squads can be formed.

In summation, Smed had this to say of Planetside2. “Basically, we took everything that sucked out of Planetside and made all the fun things better.”

Сообщение от incgamers.com

For those that don't know, Planetside 2 is a massively-multiplayer online first-person shooter and a 're-imaginationing of the original game. As of right now the release date "it's done when it's done" and, despite some loud mouthed specualtors, it will not be coming to PS3. A fact confirmed to us today when we spoke to creative director Matt Higby.

"I think I would have been told about it by now," said Higby when asked.

Сообщение от Strategy Informer

Strategy Informer: For the sake of the uninitiated, can you give a brief overview of what Planetside 2 is all about?

Matthew Higby: We have all the modern-day bells and whistles you'd expect to - real-time reflections, real-time shadowing, HDR lighting, physics... you'd expect these in a modern FPS title, and attached to that we've also added modern day... deep character progression, outfits... all that sort of MMO progression.

Planetside 2 takes place on these massive battle-fronts that are dozens of square kilometres. It's an entirely over-world, non-instanced combat game. You can have hundreds of players fighting against hundreds of players fighting against hundreds of players in these massive cluster-fuck battles that allow you to have tanks coming in on one side, aircraft coming over the ridge... such a massive scope.

Strategy Informer: I imagine latency is going to be big thing for you guys, seeing as in you want to cram so many people in a (high quality) persistent world. What steps are you taking to account for that?

Matthew Higby: S.O.E.'s DNA is built around Massively Multiplayer, so in terms of server structure and getting players to be proxy'd to one another, that's one of our core competencies. I always say that I'm not surprised that there hasn't been another successful MMOFPS besides the original Planetside, but I'm shocked that there haven't been attempts to make one, because the gameplay is phenomenal - you have hundreds of players fighting, and latency is not a problem so you can massive battles.

Strategy Informer: It's been eight years since the original game - that's a long time in gaming terms.

Matthew Higby: Yup, it launched in 2003. Planetside was a bit of a tragic game, actually. It was way ahead of its time. It launched when people really didn't have broadband - at least in the states it wasn't that widespread. People's hardware wasn't really at the ability to be able to run it - so it wasn't really able to catch on. Also, it was a subscription base game that was launched into a market that only had really 400,000 subscribers to sustain it. Now that WoW is out, people are more familiar with that kind of model. We haven't announced anything regarding Planetside 2's business model, yet. But back then, that was definitely a hurdle.

Strategy Informer: As you mentioned, there hasn't really been a decent attempt to emulate Planetside, so really you've got nothing to look to in terms of what might work, what won't work. Are you going t be more cautious with experimenting in this game?

Matthew Higby: We're technically pushing things, but really we're looking at the more successful FPS titles. We're saying "well, what games do WE like to play?", what kind of experiences do players enjoy? We're looking at Battlefield, Modern Warfare, MAG... even Team Fortress 2. We look at them and we think about what are the cool experiences we can take from this and incorporate into Planetside 2.

In addition to that, we look at everything that's cool with modern MMO games. Guild systems, progression etc... And of course we have eight years of experience working with the original Planetside.

Strategy Informer: You mentioned barriers to success for the original Planetside - obviously things have come a long way in eight years, is there anything that you're doing now that you wanted to do in the original game, but couldn't?

Matthew Higby: Oh absolutely. Planetside 2 is much faster paced. We're moving a lot... we're basically making it more like a modern shooter. Planetside was a more slower game it took a lot of bullets to kill somebody. We have a mission system now, one of our big learning curves from the original was that new players jumping in for the first time will need guidance on what to do. Players that are experienced and have played the game a lot need a way to organise, so we created a mission system that serves both fronts.

If you are a new player and just want to join in, and just want to have that FPS experience and not mess around with all the coordination and leadership stuff, then we have missions that let you have that kick ass FPS experience. IF you are an experienced player, than you can create your own missions that depend on what rank you are, whether you're the leader of you 'outfit' or guild, and players who log in can see these missions and can really coordinate. The mission system was a key component mission from the original Planetside.

Strategy Informer: What about the factions, any changes there?

Matthew Higby: There are three factions that are pretty much unique - I mean they are all human, they all wear armour and have similar classes - but they have unique weapons and vehicles, and so have unique tactics. Within each faction there can be any number of player-run 'outfits', with squads etc... and they are all working towards the same faction goal. So you could have two of the factions fighting it out, and suddenly the third faction will appear and just cause havoc.

Strategy Informer: Can you go into the territory/control system a bit?

Matthew Higby: There's a whole regional control system where you run around and capture bases, which means you can capture pieces of territory, and this nets resources to the player. This means I don't have to go out an acquire my own territory though - if I'm a member of a faction, or outfit, and that group owns territory, I get resources passively. And those resources can be used for everything from customising your vehicles or weapons, buying things from the store, to being able to place towers or bunkers on the game world.

Also, different territories will have different resources, and different resources will have different rarities. Say one empire needs a lot of Araxium - which is a resources used in rail guns - and as an opposing empire you know that, and you decide you're going to deprive them of Araxium by taking out this and taking out that. So there's an entire resource game that makes PS2 play like a real war.

Strategy Informer: Will there be friendly fire within a faction?

Matthew Higby: Friendly-fire is still something we're working out - the original Planetside had friendly-fire, we have friendly-fire on currently, but we're not entirely sure it will be in at launch. Right now we're iterating on the mechanics for weapons and vehicles.

Strategy Informer: You mentioned a leadership ship - if you look at MAG, their approach to leadership was the "carrot", giving people incentives to do as they are told. What's your take on this? Sometimes we can't help but feel that people who don't want to do as they are told, really won't no matter how much incentive there is, so perhaps a "rod" should be in place as well?

Matthew Higby: Well, M.A.G. has a limit on the amount of people that could play right? But with Planetside, you're not going to have the problem where - say these people don't do as they are told - you can't accomplish goals or anything. You're going to have enough players to be able to get stuff done still.

We want the game to remain open-ended, if someone just wants to hop into a mosquito - one of our lighter aircraft - and just go fly around in circles in the corner, that's fine. That's not really bothering anyone. Yeah, he's not helping anyone achieve any goals, but it's not the end of the world.

Strategy Informer: Social Networking is becoming a big thing at the moment, especially with online games - are you guys incorporating that into Planetside 2 at all?

Matthew Higby: We will have our own built-in social network with friends, character profiles, Outfits... we have a very deep and rich Outfit system, Outfits are our Guilds. But we're also doing facebook integration, probably Twitter. We want it to be so that, if you get a sweet headshot, you can tell people about it.

Strategy Informer: How are you going into the MMO side of things? Are we talking about crafting, marketplaces, etc...?

Matthew Higby: Well we're a first-person shooter first. No matter what else we focus on. We talked a bit about crafting, like buildings and stuff - I mentioned earlier that you could use resources to dynamically place things on the map, but that's something we'd consider doing post-launch. Player resources, player trading and marketplaces for trading are all things we've discussed but not something we're going to focus on.

Strategy Informer: Will there be several zones like the original game?

Matthew Higby: We'll have several maps, each of them will be dozens of square kilometres of playable game space. Right now we're hand-crafting every single playable area on the map so that, not only infantry, but all the vehicles we have feel fun and interesting in the area. Yeah, we'll have several areas, different climates and environments.

Strategy Informer: Is there anything for players to do when they're not trying to shoot each other, is there a base or 'house' where they can just hang out?

Matthew Higby: Well, if there's a safe zone you could probably hang-out there. It wouldn't be much fun but if you just wanted to chat to your guild-mates, you could. We talked about offering 'Outfit Housing' so that Outfits could have or create their own bases, but we're not sure that's something we're going to do for launch. It would probably be something we'd have in our long-term plan.

Strategy Informer: I imagine the most important question on everyone minds is the when? Do you have a release window yet for release? Or even a Beta?

Matthew Higby: We don't have a release date or a beta date announced yet. Right now we're working on things like weapon mechanics, how many weapons we want to have, balancing between empires, etc... so once we have a solid feel on those bits, and the larger gameplay affecting bits, then we'll have a better idea of when our release and beta dates will be. We also haven't announced a business model, and that comes from the finalisation of what the core gameplay is going to be, how many skills are there, how many items there are etc... we don't want to just say "hey, here's our business model, let's slap a game on top of it".

Many people remember the original Planetside fondly, but as Higby stated, it may have come ahead of its time. But with eight years experience and all of the wonders of modern technology at its disposal, perhaps it's time has finally come. We'll bring you more information as we get it.