Planetside 2: A Roadmap to Respect or to Rudeness.

Planetside 2 just released its Roadmap site. It’s quite a nifty idea, allowing players to vote for which game features they want to see implemented. There’s a lot of very promising game ideas there that make me quite hopeful for the future of Planetside 2. Given how much time I spend at spawnpoints, I’m particularly pleased that farming spawn-points will be becoming less optimal.

However, it is also true that SOE is notorious for launching terrible game-changes on players without warning, so anything that allows us to head the awful stuff off at the pass is a wonderful thing, and I hope to see a similar system implemented for other SOE games.

So… Speaking of terrible ideas that need to be squashed:

We’d like to add the ability to display a taunt on your target’s killscreen and play a taunt animation on demand with your avatar.

  • Ideally we might want the ability to customize a killscreen that allows you to display even more stuff, like a short message and a custom background to go along with the taunt animation

No. What on earth, SOE??

I have heard that Planetside 2 wants to be considered an e-sport, and to attract pro-gamers. Judging by how many pro-gamers League of Legends has had to ban recently for disgustingly unpleasant behaviour, pro-gamers do have pretty strict requirements for having systems in place for abusing opponents and team-mates. I am sure many pro-gamers would appreciate the ease with which they could use the proposed Planetside 2 system to rapidly abuse far more people than they could do by hand.

The pro-gamer culture appears to be a completely toxic one. But as long as companies are lining up to sponsor the pro-gamer teams, without also demanding a good standard of behaviour, pro-gaming will continue to be a foul-mouthed misogynistic, racist, homophobic example to the rest of the gaming community. A proud symbol of everything that is wrong with gaming culture.

You don’t need to go there, Planetside 2. If you want to be an e-sport, start by displaying some sportsmanship. A fallen opponent should be respected. That’s the attitude you should be encouraging. That attitude leads to a better community, happier players, and less CSR calls.