Daybreak Announces Planetside Arena

AlphaAtlas

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Daybreak Games, the developer behind the EverQuest series, H1Z1, and DC Universe Online, just announced another entry into the crowded battle royale space. Unlike H1Z1 King of the Hill, which originally spawned out of a zombie themed survival game, Planetside Arena is a spinoff of their sci-fi F2P MMOFPS, Planetside 2. Assets like the 8x8km map, vehicles, and infantry and small arms models all seem to be lifted from the free game, and it will presumably use the same engine that allows Planetside 2 to host so many players at once. Daybreak says the game launches on January 29th for $20, with support for 500-player battles, but they intend to add more modes and increase the player count as time goes on.

Check out the announcement trailer here, or watch the dev's lengthier introduction on YouTube.https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/12/14/daybreak_announces_planetside_arena

"The other side of it is, it's not a BR game. It's an Arena game. PlanetSide Arena may have BR in it, but our biggest goal is to have just BR as a mode and not be a BR game. While we may have a CTF mode that is 8v8, we may also have a CTF mode that is 20v20v20v20, which completely throws everything on its head and any expectation for predictability out the window, and it's something we can do on a scale base we know no-one else can do at the moment." The announcement of PlanetSide Arena also comes at a worrying time for Daybreak itself. The company has suffered two rounds of layoffs this year, the most recent occurring just before Christmas, with a reported 70 staff let go.
 
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Well one thing is wrong, its not using the Planetside 2 engine, as Planetside 2's engine is on DirectX 9 (still), and this new Arena game is on DirectX 11. The important thing is that it better use the same netcode. Planetside 2's netcode is second to none. Best netcode in gaming, and they absolutely can do what they claim, having 500 players on the map at the same time, and that's something no other game can touch.

It sounds like its going to launch with just Battle Royale mode, and that's a problem. The veteran Planetside 2 players who know the shooting mechanics are just going to destroy newbies to this franchise. Planetside 2's shooting model is different that most other games. When new players (who've had to pay $20 at a minimum to get the game) get demolished every game, I don't think they're going to stick around or recommend it to their friends. So this may end up just splitting the existing Planetside 2 playerbase and not much more. Daybreak needs to get other modes besides Battle Royale in the game as soon as possible, preferably before the beta ends.

And as you may have guessed, I've been playing Planetside 2 as my main ride for the past 6 months or so. Played it for years before quitting for other games, then came back sorta randomly.

Also, whoever decided to fire 70 employees right before Christmas, then announce a new game one week later should themselves be fired. Completely tone deaf.
 
Well one thing is wrong, its not using the Planetside 2 engine, as Planetside 2's engine is on DirectX 9 (still), and this new Arena game is on DirectX 11. The important thing is that it better use the same netcode. Planetside 2's netcode is second to none. Best netcode in gaming, and they absolutely can do what they claim, having 500 players on the map at the same time, and that's something no other game can touch.

It sounds like its going to launch with just Battle Royale mode, and that's a problem. The veteran Planetside 2 players who know the shooting mechanics are just going to destroy newbies to this franchise. Planetside 2's shooting model is different that most other games. When new players (who've had to pay $20 at a minimum to get the game) get demolished every game, I don't think they're going to stick around or recommend it to their friends. So this may end up just splitting the existing Planetside 2 playerbase and not much more. Daybreak needs to get other modes besides Battle Royale in the game as soon as possible, preferably before the beta ends.

And as you may have guessed, I've been playing Planetside 2 as my main ride for the past 6 months or so. Played it for years before quitting for other games, then came back sorta randomly.

Also, whoever decided to fire 70 employees right before Christmas, then announce a new game one week later should themselves be fired. Completely tone deaf.

it's going to be what replaces the current PS2 dx9 engine. this is just an easy way to test it before completely implementing it into PS2. i also agree that this has the potential to damn near kill PS2. it's not like the game has a massive player base as it is.
 
Good to see someone making a CTF mode, been missing that since the quake2 and tribes days
 
I wouldn't mind trying this out. H1Z1 has Battle Royale actually. Really sucks they are still laying off people.
 
H1Z1 is essentially dead and even more so as an e-sport. The remaining employees that were working on H1Z1 after this round of firings are working on PSA.

I wish them luck but the current and past teams that managed PS2 were so out of touch to what the community wanted and needed; it was and still is a boat without a rudder. Implementing construction only to have it taken out, this development time probably took half a year. Seeing how the inner workings to the armor resistance and damage types systems worked made me understand that the original designers were very short sighted and only wanted to create Battlefieldside~

Excellent netcode, good engine, and awesome vehicle physics. I just wish they would sell all of it to a developer that could make something out of it akin to the original game which was more squad and team play oriented.
 
i also agree that this has the potential to damn near kill PS2. it's not like the game has a massive player base as it is.

It could go either way. If Arena gets enough attention, it could bring more fresh meat to Planetside 2, which has a lower barrier to entry since it's free.
 
Why not just add this to PS2 itself?

Jesus Daybreak, go under already.
 
As a huge fan of Planetside 2, this is a bit of a Diablo Immortal for me

I guess it is a matter of "we have the engine and assets, let's repurpose them and see if it makes money", which I do understand.

But it is one of those things that will probably just dilute what is already cool and different about Planetside. It's not like all the other offerings which just seem so samey-reskinny.
 
I guess it is a matter of "we have the engine and assets, let's repurpose them and see if it makes money", which I do understand.

But it is one of those things that will probably just dilute what is already cool and different about Planetside. It's not like all the other offerings which just seem so samey-reskinny.

I think overall it could be positive just by giving PS some publicity, I have just been waiting for a Planetside 3 announcement for soooo long. They did give a hint that a new PS3 was coming much later, but who knows when.
 
It could go either way. If Arena gets enough attention, it could bring more fresh meat to Planetside 2, which has a lower barrier to entry since it's free.

that was also CCP's theory with doing dust 451 a while back that it would bring more people to Eve Online, it had the exact opposite reaction and instead pissed people off and more people left Eve then joined the game..
 
This isn't a new game, its DLC for an already existing game that is still free 2 play.

Deybreak games. What a joke.
 
Delayed to March 26th: https://www.planetsidearena.com/new...ent-letter-launch-closed-beta-founders-season

January 30th (one day after previous release date) is now the Beta Test: https://www.planetsidearena.com/beta

Note that as of this moment, the beta test signup doesn't actually work.

Too funny! I just watched some footage of the game designer for PS Arena playing Planetside, the guy had absolute no clue about how to play Planetside. Amazing so many people get to design a game with zero to no clue about titles in the franchise that proceeded it. Planetside 2 was such a casualty of this sort of game design, the designer wanted to make it like Battlefield but ....*wait for it* with more people. Well that did not work out so well with vehicles destroying infantry due to the fact that they could drive right up on in to bases (at release, it took them 1 plus year to fix this) and destroy infantry.

*shakes head*
 
Too funny! I just watched some footage of the game designer for PS Arena playing Planetside, the guy had absolute no clue about how to play Planetside. Amazing so many people get to design a game with zero to no clue about titles in the franchise that proceeded it. Planetside 2 was such a casualty of this sort of game design, the designer wanted to make it like Battlefield but ....*wait for it* with more people. Well that did not work out so well with vehicles destroying infantry due to the fact that they could drive right up on in to bases (at release, it took them 1 plus year to fix this) and destroy infantry.

*shakes head*

I would laugh every time there was an obvious problem, and the obvious solution was to make it work like planetside 1. They really fought that for some reason on multiple occasions.
 
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