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PlanetSide Arena’s loadout system speeds up battle royale

Daybreak spoke to us about the some of the game modes' battle royale "roots"

It looks like Daybreak Game Company’s upcoming massively multiplayer sci-fi shooter PlanetSide Arena, the follow-up title to 2012’s PlanetSide 2, will be bringing something a little different to the battle royale scene. Alongside Massive Clash, Battle Royale is one of Season One’s first modes, and the studio has revealed that it’s shaking up the genre’s ruleset for its own version.

In an interview with PCGamesN, Andy Sites, executive producer, and Tony Morton, Lead Game Designer on the PlanetSide series, spoke to us about how the studio is approaching the battle royale format, PlanetSide style. Sites told us that “the first two modes have BR [battle royale] roots, but we’ve made some significant changes because there’s a lot of BR games out there where, frankly, they’ve taken an existing game and layered in the standard BR ruleset, and shipped it, and it just really doesn’t do anything.”

One of these changes is the game’s loadout system: “so, in a typical BR game everyone starts with nothing. They drop into a map, you spend that first minute, or couple of minutes, either running for your life or trying to pick up something to defend yourself. With our loadout system, players basically choose the class they want to play and then select the primary and secondary weapons they want to bring into the match.”

Sites adds that this is something that, from the devs’ experience as players, and from watching streamers play, is “one of the biggest complaints that they have at this point – ‘just gimme a damn weapon, let me hit the ground and be competitive immediately.’”

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According to Sites, players will have the option of upgrading these weapons throughout their matches, plus you can pick up extra power weapons from special drops and defeated foes.

Another change is that the game will give you your own personal vehicle to use. You’ll be able to spawn it on the spot to help you get around the map more quickly and easily, which Sites says will be especially helpful if you end up far away from the action or a safe zone and want to head back without having to run there.

“We’re really trying to keep players focussed on the action and the combat, and not the monotony of having to find basic weapons and ways to get around the map” Sites says.

PlanetSide Arena launches into Early Access on Steam September 19.