PlanetSide 2 is huge, featuring battles that consist of hundreds of players. I have been a part of joint infantry and armor pushes into a large facility. Dropped from one of five full galaxies onto a base in an attempt to fight our way down and hack out a spawn point. Defended the Crown from an almost continuous stream of armor and infantry for hours. To say the least, PlanetSide 2 is epic.
However, it seems SOE has even more planned for their game. John Smedley, President of SOE, has talked about supporting PlanetSide 2 for years to come; 13 years according to Smedley. While they have plans for the next decade, they also have more defined plans for the next few years.
“First off, we have a 3-year plan.” Says Smedley on his blog. “That's really big. We plan on putting that out to the users at some point in the near future. This isn't some "vision" we plan on imparting on our players. It's our thoughts on what we think would be cool.”
What are some of those ideas? Some of the smaller ones (relatively anyway) is a Mac version of the game, whether, oceans between continents, and more vehicles. Some of the ideas are big, very big. The biggest of which is the Bastion Fleet Carrier, a large floating ship that brings to mind the Titan ships from BF 2142.
Another big idea is player owned bases. SOE plans to release new continents down the line. While some will have bases pre-placed, like in the three currently released, Smedley states that there are also plans to release relatively bare continents where players can build their own outposts or bases. To build these structures they will need to harvest special resources. How Smedley puts it, “imagine SC II style resource harvesting with physical vehicles doing the mining or the harvesting.”
Another idea is to add NPC enemies and armies to the game. “I don’t want to call this PVE.” says Smedley. “More like a global invasion that goes after everybody. This isn’t a bunch of quest givers saying “go kill 10 rates” - this is bad ass aliens that want to gut you.”
All of these are big ideas. I have been playing PlanetSide 2 since early beta. The game has changed a lot since I started playing. It seems like the game will change a lot more over the coming years. I am particularly excited for the Bastion. I can just picture large air battles surrounding them.; fighters’ dog fighting to take control of the skies around them, liberators making bombing runs, and Galaxies making their way into a hangar to drop off infantry to fight in the corridors within.
So what are you guys excited about, if anything? What would you like to see added to the game? Leave a comment below with your thoughts and ideas.
