Planetside 3 - The Harsh Reality Behind This "Sequel".

From a technical perspective, they need a complete engine overhaul, and they do NOT have the people for that. So unless someone with a lot of money comes into the picture, the idea is dead in the water IMO. More later on the other reasons.

I think the transition from Planetside 2 to Planetside 3 will NOT be like the transition from PS1 to PS2. If it happens at all, I expect that Planetside 2 will be long since officially shut down, and THEN discussing Planetside 3 as a new title with a new team and new funding as an entirely new project might happen. PS3 as a sequel will not be made for the same reasons that PS2 was.

Things I'd love in a theoretical planetside 3. - Smaller continents but more of them. Instead of having 4 places with 30 bases each, have 10 with 12 bases. - Less weapons while being more distinct. Have the NSO weapons be the basic weapons everyone uses. Instead of having 3 different versions of basic assault rifles, just have 1 NSO rifle everyone uses and then faction specific weapons such as the mini gun, jack hammer, and beetle juice or whatever those gross dirty vanu players have. - More ways to take over bases instead of just hold a point for X mins. Like sure have that but why not run the CTF thing on it as well, dropping the overall time for capture or increasing it. Maybe if certain players are doing amazingly make it so if they get their kill streak ended it drops a few seconds off the capture or adds a few. - The old school cert system from PS1. Instead of having classes being independent. Bring back the everyone starts as a vanilla soldier while using certs to tweak that soldier. Get certified to use heavier armor or a max. Get certified to use a tank. Get certified to use said armaments on said vehicle or soldier. - Have warp gates that link to other continents. Have each faction have a hone location like the old game. Have each of those worlds connect to 3 continents with 3 other warp gates that link to 3 other continents creating a webway of sorts. - of course a modern engine with more modern sensibilities. Something that handles the abundance of multicore processors and something that doesn't use bloom CoF like it does now but instead uses more modern FPS ways of doing things. These are all just a pipe dream though. As much as I enjoy PS2 I can't help but get annoyed with various things while playing it. I am fine getting wrecked by sweat lords but taking the same bases, the same way, over and over gets old.

I think that a game franchise like planetside has already proven its viability. The fact that PS2 has lasted as long as it has and that it STILL has a significant enough player base to keep it going is a testament to that. The fact that it is the only game of its kind is another point in its favor.

as one of those people that always comes back to planetside 2 and tries to get a lot of others into it I can say a big reason that people leave is just that it is not really accessible for new players in the "construction feels locked behind a paywall but a new player will want to check it out for a bit then get back to the normal gameplay loop" kind of things. Basically there is just so many things that can turn a new player away by just not offering an ideal experience, biggest example being ui scaling not working, that in order to give people a good new experience you really need to personally guide them through all the amazing and fun things with planetside and hope you get a map that allows you to do so. Though the reason I keep leaving personally is just the ui nonsense keeps pissing me off because like... slamming my face up against the monitor to see where a vehicle terminal is is not a great gameplay experience

A Planetside 3 will be enough.

for the game to still be going means its quality and unique. I think planetside needs a bigger marketing push

I would love a Planetside 3, with a proper, powerhouse developer studio behind it. Modern tech, gfx, marketing, hype... the huge battles were always my favorite. That's exactly the thing that is sorely lacking in the FPS space right now: a modern, large-scale, MMO-like FPS. It's brilliant because you aren't pressured as a new player to have a montage-worthy KDA, you could always be useful in some way, on the other hand the high-level players are always able to find opportunities to scale their preferred combat playstyle from the smallest skirmishes and 1v1s to the largest engagements to rack up as many kills as possible. An FPS where there is something for everyone. My go-to was playing a medic and throwing out revive grenades, running and gunning with my quick-firing SMG, and trying to be a hero by keeping my teammates in the game for as long as possible. I miss this game... but I don't think I'll ever come back to it, it just feels a bit too dated and clunky for me.

As far as i see it. A "PS2 like game" is possible to do in the sense of scale and combined arms stuff, especially because the insanely big competitor Battlefield isnt as prevalent anymore and Battle royales arent the newest thing anymore. That being said, i also believe that this theoretical game wouldnt be really like PS2 itself if it comes down to base design, classes, ttk and so on. It would need to be a completely different game, but the game type itself (MMOFPS) i feel like has insane potential. I mean, just imagine a Warhammer 40k game at this scale. Holy moly, that would stirr up some hype.

Planetside 3 needs to give the magrider a flying chassis for sustained flight

I just want the game to look like it did in 2013

I cant wait for a day full of Battlebit and Planetside 2.

A fair critique. I had hopes that the obviousness of MMOFPS not appealing to the masses was something we could overcome if we just tweaked this or that...but the window for that is shrinking to the point that it is becoming not feasible. Like you, I hope I'm wrong and PS3 materializes.

For a planet side 3 to work it would need to be a decently large improvement over 2 i can see them pulling an overwatch 2 or counter strike two and porting over alot of the stuff people have from the second game but still would need a decent amount of new stuff.

Planetside 3 needs to be closer to one then two

A sequel aside, I still think they should take a look at upgrading the engine. There are quite a few technical and map related issues like poor frame rate, assets and player's popping into view, render distance, falling through the ground, getting stuck in various places, and so on. While upgrading they could also enhance the visuals, but I don't want them to change the game. It's fun and unique with nice personal progression. It has some superb supporting roles like engineer and medic for those of us who don't aim that well which reminds me of Star Wars Galaxies. And the only area I would like to see improvements in would be the missions, side objectives, and off-hours game play. Something that would benefit the war effort and your personal progression, but doesn't necessarily involve direct combat. Fortifications are a good step in the right direction. The game does suffer from poor population numbers as I see it. If I jump into the game during they day there are only a handful of people playing and you really can't get anything done. This would be a perfect time to grind other aspects of you player progression. One of the things I really enjoy about Lord of the Rings Online is that there is always something to strive towards, or some personal goal to work for, like professions. I see some of this in PS2, but the game could offer so much more. Especially during the off-hours. Server population is an issue, so I think a good step would be to only have one continent unlocked at a time, and possibly merge servers. But low populations numbers might be an illusion? I don't have any numbers to verify this. I only know that in the middle of the day there isn't much I can do since there are no battles going. Finally I wanted to touch on the point of continent sizes. If you log into the game a peak time you will see maybe 4-5 large battle raging, but these take place in maybe 10% of the entire map which creates a lot of dead and wasted space. What I'm getting at is that I would much rather they'de cut the size of each continent in half, but double the amount of them with new biomes. This would both give tighter battles are more focus on where the fights should be, and it would also give more variety for the player to experience.

Cool that you responded to deeg's take at the end there - it was in the back of my mind throughout the video. The idea that you touched on at the end there of the series needing to change with the times from PlanetSide 1 to make it to PlanetSide 2 is an interesting one. Particularly considering this is exactly what happened with PlanetSide Arena (which was, in a sense, PlanetSide 3).

What we really need is a prequel

If they added a PVE only continent that's always open (an evil AI NSO area? space arachnids?) for people to build their skill with before hitting the PVP part, more people might play Starship Troo..er PS2. Folks don't like dying over and over to the tryhards.

Cami, I very much enjoy your content and perspective. It's always interesting to hear your thoughts, and I hope you'll keep sharing these honest ideas. I think the realist perspective on the future of Planetside that you offer, positing the changes potentially needed for sustained profitability, is valuable and has merit for the developers to consider. I may actually disagree slightly on the reason for why the game is struggling, though. Whereas the core gameplay loop could use some touch-ups, and we could come up with numerous other complaints, from the graphics to the varied bugs, I think the reason for it's current struggles are more related to its societal audience than with the game. What do I mean by this? In short, it seems that the core 'fantasy', or idea driving Planetside is a team-based, collaborative, objective-focused first-person-shooter game where squads use combined arms, tactics, and raw aiming talent to conquer opposing squads and win battles. On the contrary, the players currently available and the current trends of society in games seem to want a single player (or occasional multiplayer) skill-based, battle-focused first person shooter game where combined arms exist in their own venues and raw aiming talent and reflexes win battles and destroy squads. In other words, the driving visions between the devs and the players are conflicting. The gap between the design perspective and the player desire is potentially what is causing the lack of permanent playerbase, with players being attracted by some parts that they see, but turned off by their own desires being unfulfilled. Parts of Planetside appeal to the current playerbase, but since the whole experience isn't based around it, the parts where the player ideals fall off is often where they quit. If I were to step on a limb here, I think this may possibly be related to your own current struggles with the game, too. To avoid an over-long walltext, I'll stop here. Hopefully that makes sense, though (if any parts are unclear I'm happy to expound). I think Planetside is an amazing game that has an important niche, but due to the current trends of gaming society, would not likely see long term popularity unless it either "becomes fully mainstream", focusing solely on what the players of the time want, or until the societal trends change and squad/team/multiplayer experiences become top priority. What do you think?