Is it time for Daybreak to give up on the ghost on Planetside Arena? It was time when someone at Daybreak said “let’s make our next game a Planetside battle royale title.”
At any given moment, there are more people browsing MMO Fallout than there are playing Planetside Arena, which really isn’t saying much since the 24 hour peak for the title was 12 people. Under normal circumstances I might use this space to say “I feel bad for Daybreak,” but it’s hard to considering that the idea of a Planetside-themed battle royale game is something that was pretty much universally mocked and rejected by the community long before Planetside Arena was even announced. Hell, you can probably go back to well before the concept was even in the pre-production stages by Daybreak and find people mockingly predicting that Daybreak would hastily shove out another battle royale game while their existing title in H1Z1 was already floundering.
But Planetside: Arena isn’t just a big disappointment, it is the launching pad through which Daybreak plans to fire off its next disaster: Planetside 3.
Granted, this theory assumes that Daybreak will survive long enough or have the capacity to develop a whole new game. Planetside 3 as Daybreak stands now will be a disaster, and I will eat a Little Caesar’s pizza if Planetside 3 launches and is somehow a big hit. For charity. Planetside 2 isn’t totally dead, but it isn’t doing great. The Steam version seems to hold around a thousand players during the good hours and while there are battles to be had on the game world, as pared down as it is a lot of the world is just dead. Quiet, nobody there, outposts clean for the picking.
So what does Daybreak want to do with Planetside 3? Outside of fracturing the community, they envision a future where there is a full-fledged galactic war in an expansive galaxy. That’s right, taking the stragglers from Planetside 2 as well as some stragglers and throwing them into an even larger room where they can run around and not really collide with one another. From a technical standpoint the idea of players having battles on a giant galaxy-sized world is impressive. Unfortunately as I said with 2019’s battle royale games boasting 1,000 players per server, your technology is completely worthless if there is nobody actually filling those servers.
Thankfully I moonlight as an unpaid consultant (assuming appreciation is a currency), and I’m willing to offer my two dollars. Foremost, if Daybreak is going to create this massive world, they need to fill it with living things. Am I saying that Daybreak should go the Fortnite route and populate the maps with somewhat intelligent bots? Not really. I’m suggesting to look back at titles like Titanfall or Tabula Rasa, games that threw in grunts for players to shoot at and feel like they were still contributing to the group even if they weren’t that great at the PvP side of the game.
Let’s take the same scenario twice: I’m rolling around taking bases off in the middle of bumfudge nowhere in Planetside 3. I come up on a small base, there are no players there. I stroll around the empty base for about ten minutes and take over the control nodes, take over the base, I’m friggin bored. Now take the same scenario; I roll up on a base and there are guards present. They’re not really difficult to kill because they’re not as smart as real players, but it does prolong the encounter and I actually have to do something other than notice how empty the game world is. I might even get careless and die once or twice. As I take over the base I’m gaining experience, maybe unlocking something for my gun, and the boring busy work feels a little less boring and the world feels more alive.
Just a thought, I could be completely wrong.
MMO Fallout 