Dev Letter: Directives 2024

Welcome back, Auraxians 

Some of the unique experiences in PlanetSide 2 reside with the events you play in the game. Whether they are Seasonal Events such as the Tides of Summer, Nanite of the Living Dead, Auraximas or others, there’s always something for everyone. For this month’s letter we’ll cover the topic of player retention along with some of our plans for upcoming events. But first let’s cover some of the urgent topics at hand: our Anti-Cheat update, past directive rewards and sunderer cert refunds.

Anti-Cheating Update

We are aware of the rampant cheating that has been going on in the game. Your voices are heard. Over the past couple weeks we have been making some progress in preventing cheaters from ruining your fun. Unfortunately we cannot reveal additional information on how we are addressing the issue as we do not wish to give these bad actors the satisfaction of knowing how to circumvent our anti-cheat measures; however, starting with our next update an additional change to the game will be made with the hope of deterring future disruptions.

Beginning with our next update, after character creation, all new characters will be required to play through the tutorial. We understand that this may frustrate current and returning players looking to start fresh but the goal here is to deter future troubled cheaters from ruining your fun.

As these and future measures are implemented we will continue to monitor your feedback and experiences in the game.

As always we encourage you to report cheaters with a screenshot, or video recording and send it to our Customer Support team. This data is helpful as our team continues to work around the clock in minimizing cheaters in the game. Submit your screenshots / videos to us here: cheater@planetside2.com

Previous Directive Rewards

We have been addressing this issue and a resolution is almost ready to remedy the problem. Thank you so much for your patience. 

Sunderer Cert Refunds 

We removed previous Sunderer modules in a way that interfered with the way cert refunds were handled in the past. 

We now know how to perform cert refunds correctly for the future and we truly apologize for the stress and inconvenience this has caused. 

There is no need to contact Customer Support on the matter as we are well aware, and we are working on a way to get players some form of compensation for this mistake. Please bear with us a little longer.  

Onboarding vs Retention 

One of our goals is to not only introduce new players to the game with the new player experience but also guide them through the game loop. Once you get past the tutorial stage as a new player and into the game, you are presented with a variety of events known as “directives.” These directives occupy your time and reward you with sweet items like cosmetics. 

This is where new players get their first taste of PlanetSide 2’s amazing player and vehicle customization options. Let’s talk about the directive system.

Directives

Directives are goals that are measurable for the player.

Players love progress, so with our Directives you can see the progress of each directive and view what rewards they are going to receive upon completion. 

They also provide players with what are called “Open Loops.” 

What are Open Loops? 

Open loops are achievements, goals, or commitments you make but which have not been fulfilled yet.
You know that long term directive you want to achieve? Or that weapon you want to Auraxium? Those are open loops.

A lot of casual free to play games will use open loops to frustrate players into monetization. Here in PlanetSide 2, we keep it mostly as an achievement system.

Players will usually try to complete open loops (and we want you to, just not too fast but not too slowly either). 

This is also a proven psychological phenomenon. Humans tend to remember incomplete or interrupted tasks more than those they have finished.

So, if you want players to think of your game outside of the game in some way, then try out some open loops (and when they close it, open another!).   

Planning Directives

PlanetSide 2 is coming up on its 12th year anniversary. PlanetSide 2’s directives have not been updated for some time and we want to address this.

We are going to add some more long-term directives for all factions to strive towards, however we need to plan these out and coordinate with the art and production teams for next year's roadmap.

Long-Term Directives 

When it comes to planning Long Term Directives, we tend to assess what features we are updating or adding. 

Planning Around Features 

With brand new features we will add a Long-Term Directive to accompany it. Once all the hype dies down, players will use the new feature less after having a solid binge. To prevent players from forgetting about the feature, we give them some goals they can achieve with the new content. Directives are a good starting point for making a new feature “sticky,” creating some new open loops. 

Friction 

Each directive Tier is an indicator of how much “friction” a player will encounter when attempting to complete directives.   

This friction is important because we need to make sure players are achieving at a decent pace. If we have too little friction, the challenge of completing a directive becomes too easy and players may just get bored and leave the game entirely.

On the other hand, too much friction can cause players to leave the game due to frustration of achieving Directives too slowly. Or the rewards are not worth the time and effort to obtain. In short, if something has too much friction, it becomes annoying and feels futile. We want to challenge and reward you, not punish you! 

There is only one exception when we lower the friction of Directives, and that is with our Seasonal Event Directives, as they are designed to be completed over a month. 

Below is how much friction to expect from each Directive Tier:

Rewards 

If you flick through the Long-Term Directives of PlanetSide 2, you will see we reward our players for achieving Directives. 

These have been around for years and while the game rewards you for your efforts, sometimes the rewards can be a little underwhelming.  

Directive rewards cannot be retroactively obtained (so updating rewards for existing ones is out of the question as you will not be able to obtain them if you have already completed them). Anything that has gone live will stay the way it is.

Although we cannot add rewards to the already released Directive Trees, we do want to create a solid reward structure for future Long-Term Directives. 

The reward structure for long-term directives is not solidified yet, however the structure we implemented in the new Conquest directives is a step in the right direction.

Tier 1 – Beginning here, is our starter reward for Tier 1.

Tier 2 - Expanding to Tier 2 we attach another reward for encouragement. 

Tier 3 - This is quite an important Tier. It is a challenge, so giving the players a decent reward to celebrate and encourage them to keep going to Tier 4 is crucial.   

Tier 4 – And here we place the biggest reward for the whole event.

Seasonal Event Directives 

These Directives are designed to be achieved in the short term, usually over a month.   

We release Seasonal Event Directives throughout the year for our players to enjoy. Here is a list of them in monthly order: 

• February - Valentines Day 

• July - Tides of Summer (Alpha) 

• August - Tides of Summer (Bravo) 

• October - Nanite of the Living Dead 

• December - Auraximas 

Since these are limited, we can change the rewards how we see fit. In fact, we have made a solid reward structure for seasonal events that you might have noticed! 

Season Directive Event Reward Structure

Seasonal Directives yield a lot more rewards than Long-Term Directives. Especially when it comes to offering currency such as ISO-4 and A7. 

One of the main reasons we formulated and switched up the reward structure for Seasonal Event Directives was due to player feedback. On Reddit, we noticed players talking about how Seasonal Directive rewards were not worth the grind. We really hope this reward structure has addressed that concern.

We would like to be able to offer a similar reward structure to Long-Term Directives, but it takes time to make these rewards, especially if we decide to make rewards for each faction (including NSO).

In Conclusion 

We hope this has been an informative Dev Letter and that it gives some insight into the design process. Design is always tricky to demonstrate and give examples of. 

We want to hear from you! Fill out our survey and let us know what would you like to see Directive-wise in PlanetSide 2! 

Directive Survey Link

Thank you so much for reading, 

See you in Auraxis! 

- PlanetSide 2 Team