PlanetSide 2 Panel Overview and Interview

After sitting in on the PlanetSide 2 panel at the SOE Fan Faire, Massively has slapped up an article-style interview that they participated in with president John Smedley, creative director Matt Higby, senior art director Trammell Isaac, and executive producer Josh Hackney. First, I’ll quote a bit of what was covered during the panel about skills 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.

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.

And then we dive into the interview:

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.