Last week, we gave the exclusive first look at the PlanetSide 2 Lightning tank; now we're picking the brain of Creative Director Matt Higby to find out some specifics on Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming free-to-play shooter. Want the details of PS2's game balance, updates, and sneaky reconnaissance between factions (as well as a handful of exclusive screens)? Read on.

Creative Director Matt Higby: Yes, many! We’ve totally revamped the way the territory capture mechanics work to make the game more fluid and the battles more dynamic, added a mission system to quickly get players into battles, added classes to streamline inventory management and give us some more set combat roles, added tons of new weapon and vehicle customization, special abilities and cosmetic personalization. PlanetSide 2 is a totally re-envisioned game that still delivers the gameplay that made PlanetSide the unbelievably amazing experience it was, like massive coordinated battles and persistent FPS action.

MH: Most of the biggest lessons are about getting players quickly into battles. Many FPS players don’t want to have to spend a chunk of time configuring their load out and traveling to the destination where the battle is, so we’ve streamlined that experience quite a bit while still keeping the world feeling massive and allowing players a huge level of customization.

MH: PlanetSide 2 delivers on massive battles and team-play in a way that no other game does. Having hundreds of allies and fighting against hundreds of enemies is an epic experience that no other game even comes close to.

MH: Each weapon, vehicle and class has its own certification tree which players can spend points in. Players unlock skills (certs in PlanetSide) using cert points which are earned through gameplay as well as passively while online or offline.

MH: It’s been challenging to design certs that feel meaningful without giving players a major gameplay advantage. Our mandate has always been to ensure that fights come down to player skill, not cert points spent or weapons unlocked. In general, this means that our unlocks offer tradeoffs, rather than straight advantages. This isn’t 100%, there are certs that just give bonuses, but we’ve tried to keep those bonuses under 20% in terms of total affect of player power so that a 5 minute player and a 5 year player can have a fair fight that really comes down to player skill.

MH: Vehicles are critical in PlanetSide 2, from combat vehicles to more logistic orientated vehicles, they’re all very important in terms of overall strategy. We definitely expect to see players specialize, and right now have hundreds of certifications to unlock for each vehicle role in the game.

Ryan Elam, Technical Director: PlanetSide 2 draws upon over a decade worth of experience in networking, with some of the first and best coders to squeeze thousands of people in on the same spot. Using the ForgeLight™ engine, which has supported massive numbers of simultaneous users, plus the experience of some original PlanetSide coders, we will not disappoint.

MH: I know that free-to-play can be a contentious issue, but I’m an unabashed fan of it. There are a lot things I like about f2p, its very player friendly, if you want to try a game out you can with no commitment, if you love it you’ll play it and hopefully pay for some stuff in it. From the perspective of building a game, we have to make a great game that people want to play and stick with, not a cool demo that sells people or a bunch of features that look great in advertisement – if the game is fun people will play and stick around.

We’ve published several very successful free-to-play titles here at SOE; outside of us, I think League of Legends is doing a great job with how they provide a fantastic game experience and monetize with things that don’t hurt the competitive nature of the game.

MH: One of the things we’re mindful of is that we’re making a competitive game. Shaking up the landscape every week with new weapons to learn and vehicles to fight against isn’t always the best way to make the game feel like it has a strong competitive feel. I’d like for things to settle and people to be able to learn the ins and outs between updates.

MH: We don’t really have the idea of levels in the traditional MMO way. An established player can be killed by a new player just as easily as anyone else. We have a variety of spawn methods as well; from squad spawning to spawning on deployed vehicles, so having some guys in your spawn point is rarely a game breaking situation.

MH: No. But, you’ll be able to create multiple characters (on different servers) to check out the other factions.

MH: It’s not something we want to promote, and while there isn’t a lot that we’ll do to prevent it we have some ideas on how we can help dissuade it. It will ultimately be up to the leaders of a given outfit who they let in.

We're excited to hear from Higby that SOE won't put a stop to faction-vs-faction espionage, even if they don't officially encourage it. To find out more about PS2, check out our PlanetSide 2 preview with, wouldn't ya know it, Matt Higby!