Tramell Ray Isaac and Matt Higby talk to ZAM about everything from player tutorials to player owned motherships for PS2.

Beyond the excellent voice chat as a means to help the new player, I asked Tramell Ray Isaac what was planned for making the learning curve less steep, particularly in regard to the New Player Experience:

“One of the things we’re going to do is introduce a breadcrumb system, something step by step, such as drop podding you into an active area -- not necessarily a Warp Gate. Then, in addition, the mission system will give you the ability to choose missions and get rewards for them.

Being able to get that 15 minutes down to a really smooth introduction to the game, like some people asking for some sort of tutorial, these are the kind of things we’re going to explore to make sure the first 15 minutes are easier for them.

Also we’re thinking about offering a shooting gallery to give people weapons that are not available to them so we can give them things to strive for. So if a weapon isn’t available until level eight, they can try it out and think “I really like that, now I want to get to battle rank eight,” those are the things we want to add to the game.”

Isaac said that improvements to the New Player Experience were being aimed at for launch, and the team was trying to give multiple options to help players into the game, either straight into the action or with systems to ease people in.

After mentioning weapons to strive for, I asked if people realized just how much of a metagame already exists in the game, with so many options available, depending on the focus of your certification build.

Isaac responded that not everyone realizes the huge scope of PlanetSide 2 just yet, but it has been the players in beta who continue to help bolster newcomers’ understanding:

“PlanetSide 2 is a lot bigger than any other first person shooter, not just in size but in depth.  I’m a firm believer that the group of people we have in beta are great evangelists; if you have five friends in PS2, they are going to be able to show you the ropes in ways that make our tutorials look rudimentary. Having those people in the game, helping others, is going to help the overall goal of getting more and more players into PlanetSide 2.”

We talked briefly about my experience in the game and how much depth can be brought from the different approaches that groups take when capturing facilities. I asked how the team planned to ensure a continued variety in that type of experience, beginning with the types of capture points. Isaac explained:

“Instead of just Bio Lab, Amp Station and Tech Plant, we will be adding two more types of buildings on some of the newer maps. And we’ll also be adding new maps such as our volcanic map Searus, which will come after Amerish. On these certain maps there will be kinds of terrain that you cannot traverse; you have to use bridges, creating natural chokepoints based on the environmental topography. So Indar, Esamir, Amerish and Searus will have completely different gameplay modes, it’s going to require that certain types of individuals command in certain ways. As you see different people giving orders that are meaningful, you’ll be able to quickly tell some commanders aren’t as good as others.”

Higby also talked about the design choices made in relation to the different continents, ensuring there are different experiences without forcing paths upon the players:

“We try to vary things as much as possible; we look at an area and if there are a lot of choke points, what kind of gameplay is going to go on here? It’s definitely planned out, but we don’t have an approach where we look at experiences and make sure there’s progression from here to here to here. We just try to make sure it’s varied.”

Page 3: Power in the players' hands and could there be motherships?>>>