In this second part of three taking a look at the still emerging MMOFPS genre, we’ll take a look at what I feel is the best game released in this genre and the best example of what future MMOFPS released should be modeled after, Planetside. If you missed the first part, you can check it out here and you can view the third one here.



Planetside was released in the Summer of 2003 and developed by Sony Online, the same company that first broke the MMORPG into the mainstream with Everquest. SOE hoped they could replicate their previous successes in the new genre.

Technical Issues
Planetside’s release was well timed, before its released broadband use had begun to explode in the US and server technology had finally reached a point where some form of work around could be used to facilitate play.

To overcome bandwidth limitations, Planetside’s world was divided into continents; each continent had to be warped to via a jump gate. When a critical mass of players was reached, the server would automatically lock the gates to prevent the servers from overextending their bandwidth. Early beta and public release versions had several exploits players used to attempt to tip the balance in their empire’s favor and this would often lead to partial or total zone crashes.

Another bandwidth and processor issue involves the tracking of hits between players. In smaller games like Counter-Strike, all hit detection is handled by the server, as well as what hit box was struck and where all of the players are located. When scaling this up for extremely large battles, it becomes extremely processor intensive. Planetside solves this by using client-side hit detection and movement prediction. While an ingenious solution, it creates many frustrating moments for newbies and veterans alike who felt that while on their screen they may have been behind cover, but on another players machine that hadn’t finished its movement predictions, they were not in cover, and thus killed. It also led to various exploit like activities players could use to perform outrageous looking maneuvers by fooling the prediction algorithms.



Gameplay
While Planetside utilizes a hybrid RPG like advancement system, the game is entirely skill based. There are two sets of levels a player may have, their battle rank and command rank. Experience points are earned by killing enemies, doing support activities (healing & repairing), and capturing bases. Each battle rank gained (maximum of 25) gave the player an additional point to spend on equipment. There were no ‘levels’ to equipment, so players were free to specialize around a particular role they wished to fill.

Command rank is gained only by capturing, and on a later patch, defending bases, while leading a squad. The more XP the members of a squad gain killing and doing support activities during, and the larger the squad, the more command XP is awarded. Command rank goes from zero to five, which each rank giving the player more special abilities, lower levels allow the player to local chat with others of the same command level, and a mine clearing EMP blast. The highest rank allows player s to send continent wide or global wide orders and the ability to call down a command and conquer style Ion-Cannon blast.

Bases and towers are captured by hacking their control consoles. Towers are captured the instant a hack is completed, and bases have a fifteen minute timer. The bases on each continent are connected via a lattice network, capturing one bases opens up a path to adjacent bases that then may be captured. Each continent then has jump gates that link their lattice to other continents.

Each Empire or faction (Vanu Sovereignty (VS), New Conglomerate (NC), and Terran Republic (TR)) have their own ‘sanctuary’ continent that may not be attacked, in the original release, this linked to three home continents, and those then linked to the empires homes and one neutral continent. These continents became a heavy focal point of player pride and anguish in defending or capturing an enemy home continent.

In addition, each empire had their own ‘theme’ to their weapons, NC did high damage with a low rate of fire, TR did low damage with a high rate of fire, and the VS (underpowered and under-populated on release) had ‘versatility’ (ie built in Anti-Infantry and Anti-Armor modes in their guns instead of having two ammo types). These differences would later cause many balance debates as anything that received buffs that was not ‘common pool’, led to feelings of developer favoritism and unfair treatment.

More true to RPGs than FPS games, Planetside takes a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ approach to balance, only allowing certain weapons to do significant damage to targets they were intended to hit. This combined with generally long time-to-kills on most weapons can lead to a slow poddering feel for some players, and frustration for some traditional FPS gamers who expect an anti-tank laser to cut an infantryman in half.

Reception and Criticism
Planetside was viewed by many at the time as revolutionary, and despite several large bugs that existed within the game, at least worth looking at. And indeed, the population skyrocketed on release to roughly around 60,000 players. Not nearly as large as Everquest by any means, but for being the first well received game in its genre it did fairly well. It did however face both a steep uphill challenge; first it had to attempt to attract both a mix of traditional MMORPG players that, while used to paying monthly fees to play their games, they were not used to FPS gun-play. Conversely Planetside had to attempt to attract FPS players that were used to the exact opposites.

These two factors right off the bat cut the prospective player base down significantly. And the player base never grew significantly above the 60,000 it experienced after that first initial rush. Several future factors involving balance patches and one massive new content disaster would lead to a sharp decline in the player base over the next year and a half.



Community
The reason the game continues to exist today is the almost rabid hard core crowd that continues to follow and play the game, despite the decline and disastrous changes. The core of this community, are the CR5s that hold their respective outfits’ (Guilds/Clans) together. The game itself is very hard to “solo” getting anything accomplished either requires the support of a moderate sized group of players or if someone is soloing, someone who knows the game inside and out.

While they are able to hold the game together, the community in the past and today continues to some extent to tear itself apart over balance issues. Anyone who has been a frequenter of the WoW forums can probably attest to the level of discussion some people will go to arguing balance issues and Planetside is no exception. Despite the constant bitching about balance, which is something you can never really do away with when it comes to MMOs, several player ideas did make a large impact on future developer decisions, mainly the new engineer deployables that were released this past year seem to have come almost directly from an idea lab started by players to give the developers ideas to enhance the game.



History – What went wrong?
Despite having virtually no competition as far as similar games go (and to this day it still stands alone for the most part), the game still managed to lose a majority of its subscribers and virtually implode on itself. The problem in my opinion was not knowing how new content will affect the player base and not knowing how balance changes will affect the game.

If you put the balance issues in an FPS context, they are almost insane, and it’s not the rock-paper-scissors balance system that angered players the most, it’s the constant tweaking and changing. Imagine if playing counter-strike, and Valve one day decided that not enough people use the UMP, so they upgrade the damage it does or its rate of fire. But they go too far, and now the gun is ridiculously overpowered and to top it off, they now made it a CT only weapon. The people that played the game would probably call shenanigans and storm Valve’s corporate office. Following the storming they then over-nerf the UMP and buff some T only weapon to compensate and the cycle begins again.

This is basically what happened in Planetside on a monthly and sometimes weekly basis. This was especially a problem when the over-buffed a weapon that was specific to one empire. This would cause players to shift across servers, defecting so they would use the overpowered gun and causing further population imbalances.

Unfortunately, in addition to the ongoing balance issues, the impact of new content was not thoroughly researched. The problem started with the first and only expansion pack, Core Combat. The expansion added several new underground ‘micro-continents’, the point of these areas was to gather modules that could be used to enhance bases defensive abilities on the main continents. In addition, the pack added three new weapons and three new vehicles. Some players felt cheated at the lack of new content that was included compared with expansion packs for other MMOs and FPS games. To compound issues, there were several glaringly obvious balance issues with the Flail (mobile artillery) and two out of the three new weapons.

The second major introduction of new content, the one that crippled the game and lead to the mass exodus of players was the introduction of Battle Frame Robotics (BFRs). Since the beta of the game the tanks that each empire used were referred to as ‘medium’ battle tanks and developers promised that at some future point they would add in heavy tanks.

The vision players had of these tanks was something about 50% - 100% larger than the tanks currently on the field, but they would be slower and require a large crew to work as a team to man all of the guns and keep the thing alive, and their main role would be to kill other vehicles. What was delivered could not have farther from players visions.

What players got were two legged monstrosities that looked like Mechwarrior rejects. Each BFR came in three varients, standard, gunner, and flying. If players got 1000 kills in the standard variant they were given access to the others, the gunner added on a back turret and the flying could use jump jets to hop around the battlefield.

Each BFR held two interchangeable weapons (three if you include the Gunner Pod) and these weapons could be anti-air, anti-vehicle, or anti-armor, giving them a versatility no other vehicle on the battlefield had. These one man engines of destruction completely defeated the team-based gameplay that Planetside had been built around.

BFRs also came equipped with a rechargeable shield that blocked all but small arms fire, the justification in this was a new balance triangle the developers had envisioned where BFRs would combat vehicles, vehicles would combat infantry, and infantry would combat BFRs, keeping with the rock-paper-scissors theme, in practice however, this did not work at all. The problem with this is under the shield, BFRs had so much armor even several infantry concentrating rifle fire on one was about as effective as trying to wrench a big daddy to death, the thing would just turn around and kill you with its interchangeable anti-infantry weapons.

The shields were the biggest point of frustration, initially they recharged so fast, it was difficult even for two BFRs to fight each other with anti-vehicle weapons. Because it recharged they were not forced to retreat for repairs like other vehicles had to. This led to very prolonged stalemates (more so than there had been in the past) with neither side being able to advance. They were given very long respawn timers (45 – 60 minutes to reacquire) to balance their ‘hard to kill’ factor. However, due to their massively overpowered nature, the odds of being killed by one in the first hour of life (unless you were completely pants-on-head retarded) were miniscule.

By the time the things were finally rebalanced (almost 4 – 6 months and several series of patches later), the damage had already been done. Combined with the release of WoW offering players a new hot alternative, Planetside was dealt a blow from which it could never recover.

Current State
Despite all the past problems, a small hardcore crowd manages to keep the game at least breaking even and avoiding SOE’s axe. Programs such as the Reserves (referred to as Fodderside by vets), allow players to play the game as long as they want for free, but to unlock higher levels (above BR 6, CR 1) players must pay the monthly fee.

Free weeks and/or months are given continually to old accounts in attempts to get veterans to resubscribe. Some people that left during the BFR fiasco might be pleased that the things have been nerfed into relative obscurity, and veterans continue to discourage their use among players, but the game just doesn’t feel the same. It’s like going back to your hometown that you grew up in after having moved away and finding that urban decay hit hard. You have some nostalgic moments, walk around for a while, bring up some good memories, but in the end, you just shake your head solemnly and walk away.

Destructoidside?
Several people mentioned having played a trial at some point but never really getting into it or not liking it. The game is not newb friendly in the slightest and you almost need a guide or a good outfit to really show you around.

I have two free weeks coming up in January on my unsubbed account and Ill likely be using them for a little tank driving nostalgia. If you are interested in tagging along let me know, the server would be US East – Emerald, Vanu Soverignty, my character was ‘HeresJohnny’, maxed out in both BR and CR, I’d be glad to give you a guided tour.

If enough people are interested I’ll make another post about it. Just to be clear too, most PCs built after 2000 will likely be able to handle the game.