In an industry where MMO and other live service games can come and go as quickly as the wind, for one to stand the test of time is a big deal. It’s an even bigger one when that MMO is more niche than even this niche genre: a full PvP MMOFPS that pits hundreds and thousands of players against each other in an ongoing battle for supremacy over a planet. PlanetSide 2 is such a game, having celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.
Since launching in 2012, PlanetSide 2 has seen massive change in our industry, and some even close to home. Launching back during the Sony Online Entertainment days, PlanetSide 2 has gone through its own share of growing pains, with developers, creative leads and more coming and going during its lifetime. It saw the change over from SOE to Daybreak Games, and has lived through the most recent acquisition that has seen Daybreak become part of EG7, while PS2 has been spun off into its own development company within Daybreak, Rogue Planet Games.
Throughout its lifetime, PlanetSide 2 has seen countless updates, additions, and much more, but the core of the long-standing MMOFPS has remained the same: large scale, combined arms battles that see players vying for territory across the various continents in PlanetSide 2. This tight, incredibly well-tuned gunplay, as well as just the sheer scale of some of the battles, has kept players coming back year over year.
Throughout its life, PlanetSide 2 has seen over 17 million accounts created to jump into the fray. In that time, players have fought on PlanetSide 2's many continents for 506,271,035 hours.
While every MMO goes through growing pains, population fluctuations, and more, PlanetSide 2 has stood the test of time thanks in part to a passionate, active community who are still logging in day in and day out to take part in one of the only real large-scale MMOFPS titles on the market. It feels unique in the landscape of MMOs out there, standing on its own with a vibrant sandbox that sees players fighting over continents, structures and more each day. The comparisons to EVE Online are apt thanks to it being a massive influence on PlanetSide 2’s sandbox as well. Players dictate the flow of these battles, and player dropped bases thanks to PS2’s construction system can help keep things fresh compared to the static bases that dot the map.
However, what that staying power really comes down to, according to Creative Director Michael Henderson, is PlanetSide 2’s uniqueness, and Rogue Planet Games’ ability to tap into that unique feeling to provide, what he calls, “novel experiences.”
“You know, what I think it really comes down to is being able to re-engage through interesting and maybe even novel experiences,” Henderson told MMORPG in an interview last month.
Indeed, these novel and unique experiences are what drew me and some friends to the MMOFPS years ago. The idea of being able to not just jump in and make a difference in the world in a small way, but take part in massive, intense battles for control over a world was compelling. And for many it is still compelling even today. But improvements to the formula are always going to be needed, even for the best experiences out there.
It’s not just creating these experiences themselves, but also the ambition behind them, and not being afraid to potentially change swathes of the MMOFPS for the better. However, Henderson points out that with games as a service-style games, like PlanetSide 2, it can be difficult to create meaningful updates and content while still staying true to the core of the game.
“I think games as a service, there can just be too much accretion and it can be very difficult to continue to keep the core of the game as solid a foundation as you found it after years,” Henderson says. “So the interest of being able to re-engage the community. Also, I think it’s the ambition of the types of updates that we’re creating. There have been so many times throughout the game’s history where weve not reinvented it, but gotten pretty close.”
Some of those examples Michael gave were the introduction of Bastion fleet carriers, or the Colossus Tank. A recent example could be the introduction of the Oshur continent, specifically the complete overhaul of water physics, including the ability to fight underwater now. These types of updates fundamentally change the math in a combat situation, but also enable new and exciting ways to play the MMOFPS that keeps long-time players engaged, while also drawing the attention of new players to the MMO.
Interestingly, Michael got his start in PlanetSide 2 as a player who created popular YouTube videos about the MMOFPS after launch. However, a few years later he was moving to San Diego to join the Rogue Planet Games team, helping to shape the future of the game. Since former executive producer Andy Sites stepped down in 2021, Henderson and Chris Farrar have been co-leading Rogue Planet Games, bringing the MMOFPS into the next decade.
This throughline from player to developer isn’t new in MMOs, nor is it unique to PlanetSide 2, but it’s fitting that a player who spent their time offering insights into what players wanted out of the game in its earliest days is now the one listening to players in its latest ones.
Building on the past for the future
One area where any MMO, regardless of whether it’s a traditional tab targeting RPG or an ever-evolving FPS sandbox like PlanetSide 2 needs to improve over the years is its foundation. As technology advances and player appetites for different types of content expand, a game has to be able to adapt and evolve with those trends.
Ten years on, PlanetSide 2 is continuing to do that, most recently showcased with the new Expedition Oshur release earlier this year. Technical Director Brad Heinz has been here since the beginning, building the infrastructure that PlanetSide 2 depends on, from iterating on the engine to working on the technical side to facilitate the player counts that this MMOFPS relies on to create engaging battles at any moment.
Heinz actually is a holdover from the original PlanetSide games, and he’s responsible for helping to create the many systems that power PlanetSide 2. On the whole, he’s had a hand in the MMOFPS’ evolution since 2012, including the massive undertaking of building the systems needed to power Oshur earlier this year.
“We’ve tried to keep adding things to keep having things for players to do,” Heinz told us in our interview. “Obviously, what the players like to do shapes that.”
It’s not just what the players have said they want that helped to shape PlanetSide 2’s trajectory over the last decade, but also the developer’s own experiences, both in other games and making other games. As more devs have joined the Rogue Planet team over the course of PS2’s lifetime, that experience and those ideas have helped to shape the MMOFPS for the better.
Games influence other games - this is a known quantity in the games industry. Early on before the initial launch of PlanetSide 2, then head of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley and previous creative director Matt Higby stated in interviews that PS2 was heavily influenced by EVE Online’s sandbox, as well as FPS titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield 2. The latter was a massive influence on the vehicle combat in PlanetSide 2 apparently. Over the years these influences have changed with the industry, as well as the people in it, helping to bring more ideas to PlanetSide 2.
“So you’re always taking pieces of what you’ve learned elsewhere and folding it in,” says Heinz. “And there are things that we wanted to do initially with PlanetSide 2 that maybe fell off because they were too ambitious, too big. Pieces from PlanetSide 1 that we intended to have that we were unable to get in.”
PlanetSide 2 uses its own proprietary engine to accomplish all of this, which means that when there is a large addition, like the new water in Oshur, to add in, Brad states that the team has to do some of that all by themselves.
Heinz tells us that their physics implementation didn’t really have a good concept of how to do volumetric water. Effectively it worked like a plane: if you were above the plane, you were above water, if you were below it, you were in the water. The team had to effectively build out this new system that resulted in the new water mechanics for Oshur. But as a result, it allows the PlanetSide 2 team to build on their past to inevitably help create new experiences moving into the second decade.
“That’s what we’re always trying to do, we’re trying to implement things, but still just add to the toolbox. Especially if we can add stuff for the designers where they can kind of go off and try things on their own and see if they can make things happen that are fun and interesting.”
Evolving the tone
At the outset, environment art lead Alen Lapidis, says that PlanetSide 2’s primary color scheme felt like you were playing a zoomed-in RTS. In the early days of PlanetSide 2, the look of the MMO was something that, as Lapidis puts it, was a little “toy-like.”
But as the years have gone on, the art team has been able to evolve the tone and look of PlanetSide 2, giving it its own vibrancy and life while still staying true to its roots.
“We took more influence about creating a sense of identity to our soldiers so that you would look cool without always having to display that big, bright primary color everywhere,” Alen tells MMORPG.com. “That opened us up to a lot more variety. And the game has allowed us to throw in a little bit of humor now and then; a little bit of theming that we didn’t do in the very beginning.”
Lapidis has been working on PlanetSide 2’s art team since the beginning as well, helping to shape the look and visual tone of the MMOFPS for the last ten years. Releasing with three continents - Indar, Esamir, and Amerish, the PS2 team has added to that with the swampy Hossin, the small island of Koltyr, the battle islands of Desolation and Nexus, as well as the recently release Oshur. While there are some areas that share design language (such as Amerish and Koltyr), there have been areas that the environment team has helped to create that completely change how you approach encounters throughout the lifetime of the MMO.
“If Indar was a little bit of everything,” Lapidis explains, “big open environments without a lot of line of sight blockers, tight canyons with a lot of crevices, and then highlands with deep valleys; Esamir was completely open, there was a lot of risk from air so you had to be cautious when you move from place to place. And then Hossin was the opposite. There was a lot of overhead foliage. So aircraft’s vision was really obscured and they had to fight and fly in tight channels.”
Oshur is also an example of evolving not just the tone, but also the gameplay and shaking it up after ten years. Oshur’s new look added vibrancy that drew me back into PlanetSide 2 when it first hit, but it also shakes veteran players out of their comfort zone according to Lapidis. Bringing a new area with such a different fee, as well as new combat zones helps evolve not just the look, but the actual core gameplay that is fundamental to everything a player does.
“If a game is constantly releasing the same formula on its maps over and over,” Alen explains. “At the end of the day, it’s just a green map, then the blue map with a red map. But if different maps require different tactics, different equipment, it really changes up the play style.”
Keeping PlanetSide 2 Fresh
One thing Brad mentioned in our interview that I found interesting was his desire as a technical architect was to help build systems that could allow the developers to really design and do new and interesting things in PlanetSide 2. As Brad put it, that same water mechanic that was designed for Oshur doesn’t have to stop at water.
“It’s not just a purely water system. It is a volumetric area system. So if we wanted to create lava, or mud, or some other asset or something that had different kind of properties, we would be able to use it for that.”
The look of the MMO has to evolve as well, keeping up with the latest rendering techniques out there so that the MMO doesn’t look as dated as it might otherwise. With the recent 10th anniversary update, the team has updated many of the art assets used to give the game a fresh coat of paint moving into the next decade.
When PlanetSide 2 first launched, physically based rendering in games was just starting to get its footing. So effectively the Rogue Planet team would paint the color of an item, then you’d paint the shininess, and then the normal map of the texture.
Now though, as PBR is the standard for many game engines, Lapidis states the team has gone back and polished those older assets that were “not quite dialed into what we would consider today’s industry standard.” The art team also tried to bring back some of PlanetSide 2’s personality that might have been lost throughout the last decade as well.
“We tried to bring back some of the color grading in the zones that was probably pulled back a little bit to make the game a little bit more grounded in reality, but lost some of its personality in the wake. So we’re just taking a step back towards some of that bright color.”
Henderson points to events in the MMOFPS and content drops that have shaken the foundation of some of the most important maps, such as blowing up the Warpgate on Esamir or creating the new Sanctuary zone to help create a little downtime to take a breather in a social space. Or even, as Alen described, the Desolation map’s simple beauty of it’s lighting he is particularly proud of.
“The concept was for an arena, but it had to feel like it was off planet, some asteroid. So I was able to create a single time of day, which gives more control over the lighting and look. So you have this sort of sand dune canyon on an asteroid with an asteroid belt in the sky. And I thought that was really dramatic compared to some of the more Earth-like settings that we tend to pull off on Auraxis.”
PlanetSide’s team has also branched out into other projects over the decade, with its short-lived PlanetSide Arena launching in late 2019, only to be shuttered in early 2020. However, while PlanetSide Arena may not have done well, it wasn’t a waste, as many of the improvements made to Arena were later brought to PlanetSide 2, such as DirectX 11 support.
The technical underpinnings are always being tweaked as well to support the players as well as the developer's visions. Moments of stress occur when there are a ton of players in one area together, including the times when PlanetSide 2’s players have broken world records, cramming over 1200 players into a single space.
Connery just broke the Emerald record with 1241 on Indar. Nicely done everyone. #PlanetSide2
— PlanetSide 2 (@planetside2) November 5, 2022
However, while Brad states it can be stressful, the unique challenges building a live service facing his team are just part of the gig.
“There are a lot of unique challenges when you make a game like PlanetSide 2 because there’s no map for how to do it because very few people have done it, and very few people have done it well. And when you’re dealing with the type of scale we deal with, that is very challenging. And it is an open game where people can go where they want. So we have to be able to keep the game running, even if everybody on the continent wants to go stand in the same spot and fire their guns. So unique challenges are definitely part of the gig when you’re working on this game.”
However, those challenges and puzzles can sometimes lead to great systems that power the future of PlanetSide 2. One example given was the mission system and the campaign system which were closely related. Brad mentions that on the back end where his team works, the way these systems were implemented provided a ton of flexibility to the designers on PlanetSide 2.
Being able to iterate quickly and make content that is compelling is also another trait that Alen believes the Rogue Planet team has been able to leverage to help PlanetSide 2 stand the test of time.
“One thing I’m really proud of is how agile our team is,” Alen said. “I see other games and you know, they have like an update a month, an update every two months. And PlanetSide’s always like, ‘You know, we’re just releasing this quick update or fixing the space, we moved this thing, it was blocking gameplay.’ So if something is glaringly wrong, it’s not going to be for very long, because the designers will not rest until they fix it.”
Looking back on 10 years of PlanetSide 2, and its future
10 years is an eternity in the game space, especially in the MMO world where a game could release and be canceled within the span of a year. So for PlanetSide 2 to stand the test of time here is a testament to the studio, but also the players who have helped shape the community that has rallied around PlanetSide 2 to keep it going all this time.
Everyone has their favorite moments from their time in-game, and the development team is no different. When asked for a favorite moment over the last ten years, either as a player or as a developer, Michael states that it was hard to come up with just one. And while Oshur is something the whole development team seems to be very proud of and excited for what it brings to PlanetSide 2, there was a moment where Michael said the event felt very “old-school PlanetSide.”
“We blew up the Warpgate on Esamir, totally changed the structure of the game, added a campaign system which was kind of unheard of. And in fighting in the northeastern part of the map, which is where the warpgate blew up, the campaign will take you there, that felt very PlanetSide. And those experiences that I hallmark as very PlanetSide: it’s running and shooting while vehicles are driving up next to you and aircraft are screaming overhead or like you’re chasing off enemies. It just feels like the community is kind of there.”
The team isn’t stopping either. Henderson says that, like every professional, the team needs to continue to hone their craft.
“We’ve done a lot of foundation over the past two years and a lot of systems work. And now I think we need to kind of refine what PlanetSide is and tie together some of the loose ends and keep it an experience players will have no choice but to keep coming back to.
“As long as the players are here for PlanetSide, PlanetSide 2 will continue to be here for the players.”
