RoadMap and 6 Month Plan
Hello all -
Since the very earliest days of Planetside 2's development we've considered community involvement and feedback about the game's direction to be one of our most powerful and important assets. Having "Unparalleled community / developer communication" has been an important goal for us, one that is considered to be a core feature of the game, a top "bullet point" on the list of game features on the back of our imaginary box. On Planetside 2 we've been extremely fortunate to have a passionate and vocal player community from very early on in development; our community has shared feedback, complaints, ideas and kudos with us from long before they even had their hands on the game. Today we are thrilled to be taking that community enthusiasm for the ongoing development of Planetside 2 to a whole new level with the launch of Roadmap.
Roadmap is the embodiment of a new philosophy for the development of online games and the interaction of developers and players. At it's most basic level, Roadmap is a tool which allows the development team to expose our priorities and future plans and release schedules to our player community. This in itself is already remarkable, but the true power of roadmap comes from you, the player community. The purpose of Roadmap isn't just to give the community INSIGHT about what we're doing, it's also to give the community INPUT into what we're doing. Our goal is to develop Roadmap into a central clearing house for ideas and suggestions about the game. These ideas and suggestions will come from you, the players; you will be able to author, discuss, vote on, and ultimately see your own ideas come to fruition in the game.
As both passionate players as well as developers of games we too have felt the frustration that the development priorities and future plans for our favorite games are often obfuscated and can seem deaf to the desires of the players. We've determined that our role as developers is not to be the sole source of all ideas which go into the game, but rather to be curators who ensure that the ideas that do go into the game are taking it in the right direction. You, as players, should have just as much ability to define the future of the games you love and support as the developers making them have. This is the driving force behind the creation of Roadmap.
Put simply our vision is to change the rules of game development and find a new balance where the player community and development team form a true partnership to define the path which the game will follow. Today with the initial launch of Roadmap populated with our first 6-months of feature additions, we're taking the first step on a long journey to make this vision a reality. The 6 month plan we’re releasing today is largely based on top requests that have come from the player community since launch (and in some cases even before that!). This isn't absolutely everything that will go into the game in the next 6 months, optimizations, bug fixes, new weapons will come too, this is a listing of major additions and top level features. Some of my personal highlights in these first few months are the additions of a better player intro sequence and tutorial in February and March, the Mission System in March, a resource redesign in May & outfit enhancements in June. Beyond game systems we also have new content including a new continent, Hossin scheduled for release in April and new empire specific buggies in June. We also have some exciting class and vehicle updates spread throughout the schedule which will feature new class-specific mechanics, abilities and weapons.
It's important to understand that like all plans, things may not always go precisely according to schedule and it is by no means a guarantee of what or when. Releases will change and be adjusted constantly, as you would expect since an important facet of Roadmap is remaining flexible enough to prioritize the things that you tell us should be getting addressed immediately. We know that there will be some growing pains here. We know this will initially be bumpy and may require some trial and error as we bring all of the features and functionality of Roadmap online and work through some issues that arise from embarking on this radical new approach to development. Despite that, we hope you're as excited at the possibilities as we are, and look forward to working with you, as partners, on the continuing work of forging the future of online games.
Please check out Roadmap and the first 6 months of major updates at www.planetside2.com/roadmap
Thanks.
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Matthew Higby
Creative Director - Planetside 2
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