It’s a ”tough design challenge,” says creative director Matt Higby. They can’t ”gear out” newcomers and so have to look at other customisation options besides just adding more ‘gear to the treadmill’.
The second part to their OMFG optimisation efforts for the MMO should arrive mid-December, which primarily focuses on getting the game to run smoother.
”This is a tough design challenge,” Higby posted on Reddit. ”We want to provide meaningful character customization, long term goals and maintain a fair environment for new players who aren’t ‘geared out’, as well as not having too severe of a ‘grind’. Right now the cert system is basically THE thing we have to provide for that, which is problematic.”
”At a certain point people will run out of things to unlock, we’re not trying to run a non-stop gear treadmill game.”
The team believe they have a solution in the works: ”One thing we’re working on is adding additional personal progression systems that aren’t tied to gear or player power - this will allow us to provide those long term ‘reach’ goals without having to either price new players out of important gear, make a punishingly steep grind for advanced upgrades or continuously inflate the number of upgrades at the end of the treadmill like most MMO games do.”
Check out the full Planetside 2 Ask us Anything Reddit for more.
