PlanetSide 2 status update covers new continents and performance improvements

Forgive me for briefly channeling Douglas Adams when I say PlanetSide 2 is big. Sony Online’s sprawling MMOFPS is currently in beta, but the legions of Vanu Sovereignty, Terran Republic, and New Conglomerate recruits know how to throw a spectacular war theater. The beta’s single playable continent, Indar, represents just the beginning of the bloodsoaked struggles for total domination of Auraxis, according to a status update post penned by Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley.

“We’re working hard on [the second continent] Esamir,” Smedley writes. “It’s getting closer to a finished state where we want you guys to play on it. It’s pretty awesome and very different gameplay wise than Indar. After that, [the third continent] Amerish will go back to being worked on.”

Smedley revealed that unexpectedly long continent development times may prevent all three battlefields from being available at launch. “They’re taking longer than we expected, and it’s possible we’ll end up launching with two and delivering the third shortly after launch,” he explained. “We’re working super hard, but we have some resource bottlenecks. We’re also going to see how the game plays with two continents before making any final decisions, so please do us a favor and don’t judge any of this before you play the game with two zones. Too many people knee-jerk react to things. There’s no point. Just wait till Esamir is live and let’s all see how it goes.”

Performance tweaks are also a critical objective. “We have a lot more work to do in that regard,” Smedley notes, but he also acknowledges that PlanetSide 2′s unusually high system requirements make it “really play well.”

Gunplay came up next, and Smedley noted “a lot of changes” incoming to recoil, engagement ranges, and animations based upon ongoing player feedback across multiple patches. As for toying with the idea of continent-locking and spawn changes, Smedley didn’t set anything to stone, writing, “I make no promises here about what our designers are going to come up with — just that the conversations are happening. You can see we’re working super hard to deliver a really fun game. We’re also playing the heck out of it ourselves, and we see and feel what you see and feel.”