The Reddit Q&A Makes Me Nervous

[Atheosim]

Originally Posted by Marsgrim

Posted this yesterday and didn't expect such a big response, however I'd like to address some points made on people deriding the opinion of Vets and posting that continent locks were a bad thing.

Firstly, for those of you who think the veteran players are being over-reactive and negative on everything, if you haven't played Planetside for a significant period then you are missing the viewpoint we have which has been formed from months of real time playing in massive battles.

My points and feedback come not from the FPS angle, but from the MMOFPS angle. Veterans like myself (and I was in the PS closed beta) can remember fights over the southern Gunuku bridge on Cyssor that went on for a week (typically between TR and NC as the VS vehicles could move over water). Literally a week of 200+ players fighting over a bridge to a base. That means you fought at that bridge for 4-6 hours, logged on the next day and found the same fight ongoing. This happened every day for 5 odd days.

What this highlights, that is different from a regular FPS, is the ability for choke points on a map to become impassable when there are enough defenders to hold the attackers. Facilities and bases by their nature are choke points, this leads to a huge impasse when equal numbers fight over the base.

If the forces are split 50/50 between attacker and defender then a base becomes untakable. This is why the original PS bases needed NTU and could eventually run out of power, go neutral and allow an attacking force to capture it. The NTU feature essentially made a siege possible and winable, where you starved the defenders out through draining their NTU.

Even with the third empire dynamic, it often led to a continent split where 50% of one empire fought 50% of the other two - i.e. 50% TR fighting 50% VS and 50% TR fighting 50% NC, with a third fight ongoing with 50% VS against 50% NC.

What moved the map around and stopped stalemates over a base, was the ability for small outfits/squads to go behind enemy lines and cut a base link. This feature proved unsustainable though when any base could be hacked, and the lattice was introduced to focus fights. The lattice then introduced a strategic element whereby Generator holds could cut off the plant benefits to the front line base, or another lattice point was hackable which allowed a small outfit to try and take the base, draw defenders from the main fight and allow their empire to advance.

Now with the current PS2 plans, resources seem to be taking the role of NTU, however they do not appear to be adding the facility to siege a base e.g. lack of resources may mean you cannot spawn vehicles, however it does not appear at this stage that a lack will prevent people spawning at a base. Even if resources impact an empire ability to spawn their specific weaponry, I cannot see from the plans at the moment how it will allow an attacking empire to capture a base. In fact, if there are uncapturable bases it implies that resources are not required to spawn weapons/armour (where as NTU was). The reason this is important is the simple advantage a defender has in defending the choke points of a base (and with a reduced spawn timer) this makes it very hard for attackers to win.

Further to this, the other way in which afight could be advanced was by an outfit/squad heading to another continent more valued by the empire they were attacking, and begining an offensive there (i.e. TR defending Oshur). Thus a legitimate way to move your empire forward on Cyssor was to send a small force to an enemy home continent that you had a link to and begin a hack there. One of the best things core combat added was the ability for the caves to link to a continent, allowing an empire to hack and open a base with cave benefits on an otherwise secure continent. This threat would then lead the defending empire on Cyssor to respond to that base hack, ideally allowing the Cyssor fight to advance.

This tactic worked because bases are natural chokepoints, meaning an empire had to send more responders to resecure a hacked base than the other empire had committed to taking it - opening a numbers disparity on the Cyssor fight and allowing that empire on the offensive who hacked the base to advance on Cyssor.

There were a number of occassions as well where our empire managed to break the broadcast warp link from an enemy sanctuary to the main fight because we were ignored on hacking that Empires home continent that linked to the main fight.

The point I am trying to make is that I believe the developers have dumbed down the tactical and strategic play that linked continents and sanctuaries gave. By allocating un-capturable bases on each continent and removing the links, it makes it much more liekly that a fight is going to be stuck over the same base or chokepoint without changing for days on end.

Even with the prospect of behind lines hacks to territory, at this stage I do not see how it can have the same affect as hacking a different continent, because the reduced time the defenders need to respond on the same continent means the tactical impact on the frontline base is minimal, particularly if the base/facility/hex capture time is much shorter if that empire controls the surrounding areas.

In short, it means a tactical shifting of the defender forcdes has much less impact on the fight because they can get to the threatened location quicker (same continent) and even if they fail to prevent the flip, they can recapture it much quicker due to owning surrounding territories.

Although I spoke of purpose via continent lock (and sanc locks) I have not advocated a map reset as a result or a permanent win condition, I have advocated having a purpose to playing and a way to play in such a manner that players are not just banging their head against the same base wall for 3 weeks. Having a massive scale and map means very little if the fights are always around the same bases, and the game becomes stale if a base can hold out for days. who on the attacking side wants to be "farmed" for days as they try to take a base?

Having sanctuaries, linked continents, NTU, lattice networks and base/continent benefits added a strategic level to Planetside. What does PS2 have on this scale that will meaningfully move and direct fights?

Excellent post, I suggest anybody with any investment in PS2 read this entire thing thoroughly.