I am a longtime
gamer, a longtime FPS fan, and for a short time of about two years, a game
designer on Planetside 2. PlanetSide 2 was one of a few true MMO-FPS games made
and it has a great deal of learnings. I have tremendous passion for PlanetSide
2 and its predecessor, PlanetSide. I worked on level design and systems, and
learned a lot about game design in that short time. I have an unusual
perspective of starting as a super-fan and transitioning into a dev, then back
again. It's quite a cool journey, and I want to share insights, ideas, and help
transfer some of that knowledge and experience onto whoever may be interested.
This blog is for the
fans of games in general, Planetmans, and anyone who may be considering making
a MMOFPS. I will warn you - I can be rather long winded when I have a lot to
say, so some of these postings may be quite long, but hopefully packed with meaningful
information.
I will keep this
blog strictly to game design related topics, and my publishing goal is to have
at least one new entry every week. My content goal is to give you something
interesting to read and think about, and maybe shed light on a different
perspective of a topic. You can always provide feedback on twitter - @xalorn
Here are a brief
list of some of the topics I have considered writing about. Feel free to let me
know which ones interest you the most!
- Why Planetside is Special
- The Open World
- Creating Fights
- Making a MMOFPS
- The Spawn Room
- Hand Crafted World
- Templated Facilities
- Players vs Devs
- Facility Flow
- Density
- NPCs (PvE)
- Free To Play
- It's All About The Spawn Control
- Game Dev Realities
- Innovation in Games
- New Player Engagement
- Metagame Unicorns
- Skygods
- Rewards and Continual Play
- 100% Pure PvP
- Base Design
- How I Became a Game Designer
- A Typical Day Working on PS2
- How Planetside 2 Evolved
I will start with
the first topic; it's a great topic. After that I'll go with what I'm feeling
or what readers want to see.
As a game designer on my first game on a large scale FPS, I'm interested on your take regarding:
ReplyDelete- density
- new player engagement
- metagame
- typical day on ps2
P.s. Loved PlanetSide 2, over 2k hours and two time SOE live attendee (both I met you at, last one with Angry Joe's crew).
Thanks, and sure, I can cover some of those next!
ReplyDeleteI would really like to hear your thoughts on why the base design philosophy changed so radically between planetside 1 and planetside 2.
ReplyDeleteIn planetside 1, vehicles are necessary to push into the courtyard but the inner core of the base is infantry only. In planetside 2 nearly all bases can easily be bombarded by air and ground vehicles. Personally I feed that this lack of a boundary for interaction between vehicles and infantry is the largest design flaw of the game. Perhaps hearing the developer's side of the story will change my perspective on this.
I was actually thinking of covering the PS2 level design and flow history next, which I believe would answer your questions.
DeleteI'd love to hear your thoughts on Players vs. Devs. Also, I'm doing a show topic on this blog this week. Real good stuff that I've truly enjoyed reading so far.
ReplyDelete