Some MLG Details from Higby

Here's a video where Higby sheds some light on MLG plans

Here are some highlights I lifted off this reddit post.

• First battle island called The Nexus
• The Nexus is a ice continent, 2 warpgates 7 bases
• Very symmetrical map, 48 v 48 designed in mind
• Sony wants Battle Islands to be interstitial step between two continents
• In competition players will have their own characters however they are leaning towards having a MOBA style store where you can progress your character in different ways throughout the 45 minute match.
• Also discussing limited competitive subset of weapons tuned for competition rules
• For physical competition the ideal setup would be 4 Squad Leaders and 1 platoon leader at the physical tournament, extremely close monitoring of the other players who are playing over the internet
• Refining tools for anti cheat is ongoing
• Sony wanted esports for planetside 2 from the start
• Plan for competitive structure outside of MLG, weekly matches and whatnot
• Building outfit ranking system based on their different sizes, best on the leaderboard will be invited to MLG, the outfit selected can then select their best 48 players.
• ESF update next month, then infil update followed by Sundy update
• GU10 Next week, pretty small update, has a lot of stuff for partners and structuring for Sony
• New items for GU10
• Quality of Life Update is GU11, polish and cleanup of issues
• "Hossin is going to be our best continent" For the record this is the 2nd continent Higby has said this about
• Lot of trees,lush large canopy trees, swampy, rainforest, challenging for air to fly under trees, specific locations for vehicles to have open field battles however closer to basses more infantry fights are the focus
• Hope to show off Hossin in very near feature Higby indicated that this is extremely soon with facial expressions
• Interlink Facility, massive radar installation, purpose is for communication so the benefits will revolve around that
• Lot more interior space, centralized infantry combat core as opposed to other basses
• Lattice for Indar took so long because they had to redo every base, Sony is happy with lattice and plans on moving forward with it for Esamir and Amerish and presumably Hossin
• Higby made a joke about the TR not being very powerful on Matherson but instead how the VS are dominant
• Higby sneaks into outfits sometimes, playing anonymously, sadly Higby can't join an outfit permanently because it would skew his view of everything
• Higby uses Head and Shoulders shampoo, no comb or conditioner

 

So GU11 might mean that I won't get fps drops as much? Any word on a due date?

 

The best and most important 4 bullets IMO

 

A lot of juicy details here. Looks like I'm going to need at least 4 dedicated SL's

Lol he prolly just spent a week with NNG.

 

When will platoon leaders have more options? I want 4 SLs and 1 PL that can also place markers and a beacon! When will 1 person be able to lead more than 1 platoon? When can someone place a faction wide way point or two? When will a Platoon leader able to palce way points for each squad?

 

Soon(Tm)-oh wait, that's Blizzard's... ummm
It's Coming

 

SOE's solution for e-sports = make a different game...lol

 

I wanna know more about this!

 

With the teasing about seeing Hossin soon, I bet they will most likely be revealing it at E3 next week.

That is the only way to do it. :/ You don't want to completely rebalance an open world game to make it work for esports and you don't want to rebalance a competitive esports game to make it work in an open world. It sucks for the continuity of the player experience and can cause fragmentation in the playbase, but if you don't separate them, both sides will suffer from compromises to accommodate the other.

So with that said, if we accept the idea that this is the path they are going and we evaluate it based on what we now know about it, I think it sounds like they have a solid concept. Having match based character progression rather than using your persistent open world unlocks removes any pay to win concerns and adds an economy management skill set that doesn't currently exist in the game. I imagine them doing something like starting you with a blank character at the beginning of each match and giving you 2000 certs at the start to spend as you wish and then boosting the XP gain so you get like 10-20 certs every time you kill someone. At the end, perhaps everyone would get a cert reward for their open world character based on their performance, and the winning team gets a cert reward comparable to winning an alert.