PlanetSide Preview

Kevin McCann, lead designer and producer of the forthcoming PlanetSide, and the rest of his team at Sony Online Entertainment (Verant) face an important question every day. Why should anyone pay a subscription fee to play their game, when they can play Tribes 2, Counter-Strike, or any one of a large collection of other online first-person shooters for free? The answer is quite simple, actually. Give the players an experience that no other action game (free or not) can give them. Recently, we were invited to the company's San Diego offices to take a good look at the game, and judging from what we saw of it, PlanetSide will certainly be a welcome new experience for all first-person shooter fans.

Like Verant's other existing and upcoming games, PlanetSide will be persistent, and the character you create will gain experience every time you play the game. The game's main focus will be on a continuous war that involves three factions and rages across 13 different battle continents, each of which can accommodate between 400 and 500 simultaneous players. As one of these players, you'll initially choose one of the aforementioned three factions--the New Conglomerate, the Terran Republic, and the Vanu Sovereignty--and then select from the light, medium, or heavy classes of warriors. Much like in Tribes 2, the light infantry are best suited for speed and scouting, the heavies are designed for brute force, and the medium class features a mixture of the advantages and disadvantages of both extremes.

Like in EverQuest, your character in PlanetSide will be your physical manifestation in the game. You'll first be able to distinguish yourself from other players depending on the class of character you chose. Heavy infantrymen, obviously, are markedly taller and wear much bulkier armor than their light cousins, who wear standard sci-fi battle dress uniforms. Likewise, your faction affiliation will be quite noticeable. The New Conglomerate players, for example, will don angular blue and yellow armor, whereas Terran Republic players will wear contoured red outfits. Dress for the Vanu Sovereignty hasn't been completed yet, but McCann describes that third empire as having "a very desert-camouflage look" to them. As you gain experience points, your character will also rise in rank, and with each promotion, your player model will get an incremental change to denote his or her higher rank. You'll also be able to see individual weapons and items on your character's model when you're on the battlefield, whether that item is being carried or is slung across your back.

You'll be able to distinguish yourself even further from other players in the game with your apartment. Yes, apartment. When you create a character in PlanetSide, you're a given an apartment to live in and store any items that you bring back from the battlefield. Like your character's player model, this apartment will also change in appearance with every promotion, and you'll easily be able to tell the difference between a general's flat and a second lieutenant's studio. These apartments will be located on the respective homeworlds of the game's three different empires, and they're all considered safe zones. You'll be able to interact with fellow players and even invite them into your apartment when you're on your own homeworld, but no one will be able to break into your residence or kill your character on these three worlds.

Defending and Attacking Bases

Specific details about how wars and alliances between PlanetSide's three empires will unfold are still being hammered out by the game's designers, but McCann gave us a general overview of how a typical battle might develop. Interestingly, these battles will play out much like the US Navy's island-hopping strategy in the Pacific theater of World War II, but instead of islands, players will move from base to base. In any one of PlanetSide's 13 continents, you'll find a number of bases that vary in function--some will house radar and communication equipment, while others will be vehicle-manufacturing plants. These bases will be either under your control or under the control of the other two empires, and the majority of the battles will involve defending or assaulting these bases. Once you win control of a base, you'll gain access to all the facilities afforded by that structure--be it a radar facility or something as simple as a storage facility for supplies--and you'll then move on to assault the next base.

Taking over a base will be a difficult endeavor, however. In addition to having to deal with the enemy players themselves, you'll also have to contend with the base fortifications, which can either be manned by individual players or computer-controlled. The heavy cannons can dole out a severe dose of punishment, but thankfully, they can be destroyed with a few well-placed shots. A typical base's defenses are made up of more than just guns, though. Every door, both internal and external, on every base will come equipped with an IFF (friend or foe) sensor that will automatically open for you if it's your base and remain closed if it's not. In order to get through every door in an enemy base, you'll have to interface with a small control panel and open it manually. This process won't take more than a handful of seconds, but when you're surrounded by enemies and have a number of other similar sensors to bypass, the simple act of opening a door can quickly become deadly.

Once you do gain control of a base, you'll have access to that structure's respawn tubes, which are one of the most important aspects of PlanetSide. These tubes allow you to respawn at that structure instead of back at your original base, meaning you don't have to worry about running X number of miles back to the battle after you've been killed. Incidentally, your character will undoubtedly be killed a countless number of times throughout your online campaign, but the penalty for death is relatively low, and the only thing you'll lose is the time it takes to get back to the hot spots. McCann said the designers are considering penalizing you even further by making you drop one weapon or item, but they haven't decided anything yet.

The designers also haven't determined how much importance they'll assign to unique items. For the most part, PlanetSide will have 30 weapons that will be available to almost all player types. Some of the weapons will be specific to the empires, but each side will undoubtedly have a balanced arsenal. Some of the non-empire-specific weapons demonstrated to us included a standard side arm, a rapid-fire assault rifle, and a powerful sniper rifle. Like in Counter-Strike, each weapon's reticle, which is denoted by a circle, will show the possible scope of divergence of that weapon's rounds. As you run, the circle will expand to indicate a larger cone of fire, but if you stand still or crouch, the circle will shrink to a very small size to indicate accuracy.

Items, Implants, and Vehicles

In addition to weapons, your character will have access to special abilities in PlanetSide. As you gain experience, you'll be able to progress up an ability tree similar to Diablo II's skill tree--once you gain enough experience points, you'll be able to "unlock" a new ability, and then if you choose to follow that path, you'll be able to unlock enhanced versions of that ability as you gain more levels. There will be about 70 different abilities, including healing and hacking, and they'll aid you passively and actively on the battlefield. Take the scenario on the base assault that we outlined on the previous page. If your character has a high-level hacking ability, you'll be able to open locked doors much quicker than a player without this skill.

PlanetSide will also have numerous items and implants that will enhance your character's performance on the battlefield. Implants, while not visible on your player model, will let you perform actions like zooming in on a distant target without an external scope. You'll only be allowed to use a limited number of implants at once, since implants are "stored" on your person much the same way that items are stored in a standard inventory. McCann didn't comment on whether or not you'll be able to remove implants once you've equipped them, though. McCann also didn't demonstrate any of PlanetSide's items to us in the game, but he described how one such item, the cloak suit, will work. This item will actually hinder your combat abilities, but when equipped, it will make you nearly invisible to all players, which makes it the perfect tool for spying on enemy movements.

But the factors that will influence your combat the most are undoubtedly PlanetSide's vehicles. The emphasis is largely on ground vehicles, but PlanetSide does have a number of airborne units, including the light gunship, which resembles the Command & Conquer orca; the mosquito, a light scout ship; the mosquito repair unit, a light repair vehicle; and the massive dropship, which is easily the largest vehicle in the game. This slow-moving behemoth can transport ground vehicles like the vanguard assault tank or dune buggy plus a small contingent of players to anywhere on the map. To guard against attackers and clear out landing zones, a number of player- or computer-controlled guns are mounted on either side of the dropship. But as large and intimidating as this vehicle is, controlling it is actually a breeze. McCann stressed the importance of keeping vehicular control very simple for players, and for the most part, all the game's vehicles use the default WASD or arrow-key configuration that you'll use to control your own character. But while they may be easy to control, these vehicles behave in a realistic manner. McCann explained that each ground-based vehicle has five reaction points: one per wheel and the fifth for the vehicle's chassis. Additionally, when computing its trajectory, each vehicle takes into account its own weight and the weight of any players or modular weapons that it's carrying. Vehicles will also have their own pool of hit points--so, with careful aim, you can kill the driver of a dune buggy without hurting the actual vehicle. This will leave it open for you to jump aboard and use your enemies' own weapons against them.

Final Thoughts

McCann and his team have a number of gameplay issues that they're currently addressing, including the different ways of handling friendly fire. Unfortunately for some, PlanetSide will indeed have friendly fire. Anyone who's played on a friendly fire Counter-Strike server knows how quickly one rogue player can ruin the game for the others. McCann feels that friendly fire is necessary in order to "complete" the feel of the game, but PlanetSide will have a system in place to handle friendly fire offenders. This system will let players who've been shot by their teammates give the offender a warning. The warning level works like a health bar, and the more it fills up, the more dire the consequences for the offender. Of course, accidents happen, and a player who mistakenly shoots another can receive a warning, but then over a short period of time, his or her warning level will expire. Players who've received several warnings in rapid succession will automatically be punished by having a handicap placed on the rate at which their character can level up. Finally, offenders with a lot of friendly fire warnings will receive "special" attention from PlanetSide's GMs. No matter what you might think of friendly fire, this system certainly sounds fair enough. It'll be interesting to see how it actually functions within the game.

Gameplay aside, the most attractive aspect of PlanetSide is easily its graphics. The game features gorgeous rolling terrain with moving clouds. Trees and stalks of grass sway in the breeze, and in the first-person perspective, you can make out hills, mountains, valleys, and lakes for miles. You won't find any load times of any sort--not even a pause--when you walk into a building. The game's 3D engine transitions from outside environments to indoor structures without blinking an eye, and both indoor and outdoor areas are detailed with crisp and bright textures that don't have any visible seams.

All this comes at a price, however. McCann says that PlanetSide will be a T&L-only game. That is, it won't run on a video card that doesn't support hardware transform and lighting. Even though the build of the game we saw was running on an Nvidia GeForce2 card, PlanetSide was clearly designed for Nvidia's GeForce3 technology. According to McCann, the ideal system to run PlanetSide on would include a 64MB GeForce2 and a 1GHz Pentium III processor. While that might sound like a lot of computing power to swallow, keep in mind that, realistically, PlanetSide isn't due out for another year. By then, prices on the GeForce3 will be significantly lower than they are today, and Intel and AMD CPUs are already an amazing bargain. And for EverQuest fans who are interested in this game but are wary of paying another subscription fee on top of what they currently pay, relax. Much like EA.com, Verant will soon be launching a subscription program that lets you play all its upcoming games (Luclin, Star Wars Galaxies, Sovereign, and so on) for a flat monthly fee. While undisclosed, this fee will obviously be more than what the company currently charges for EverQuest, but it should be comparable to EA.com's current price for its platinum service.

We'll continue to follow PlanetSide's progress until it releases sometime in 2002. For being the company's first attempt at a first-person shooter, PlanetSide certainly looks sharp. The premise of a persistent FPS is intriguing, and what we saw of PlanetSide confirmed our thoughts that, if any company can pull off such a feat, it's Verant.