Spawns DESPERATELY need a redesign...

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Aveox

Spawns should be in a central location inside/beneath the main building and defenders should nearly always be able to reach an objective faster then attackers. Only then can you truly defend a base.

Indeed, what's the point of these big set pieces if the interiors are just empty lots or void filler?

I mean, there is an ENTIRE level to Tech Plants that serves no function what so ever, while the entirely cosmetic legs of a Bio Lab are a CRIMINAL waste of resources!
If Second Life taught me anything when it comes to map design, you make the most out of the least, least you want to waste everyone's time with a map that looks pretty but plays like shit.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Aveox

Combined with the quicker AMS respawn time means that attackers consistently "outspawn" defenders by sometimes 10 seconds. The tunnels they made for the defenders don't do anything either: They shave maybe 1-2 seconds off the time you need to reach the objective on foot.

That's a feature -- not a bug -- according to the pre-lattice pro-offense high-speed design philosophy. You realize that. Right?

This is the way the bugger was designed from the get-go. Everything else is added, subtracted, or layered on top of it. This game is growing, as all complex systems grow, from its roots. What we need is suggestions to nudge it in the right direction.

So. To tilt the lever slightly back towards even in your specific instance, what would you do...? Because I admit all my ideas are systemic, philosophical, and cultural. As bizarre as that may sound. I don't draw maps in 5000 hours in Photoshop. I'm more concerned with the strategic gameplay and the community.

[TerminatorUK]

Originally Posted by ringring

I quite agree. But one thing I do know is that if you want to stop spawn camping you will ultimately have to get rid of spawns.

So, as you say, if I understand you correctly, (bad) spawn camping is a symptom of a fault elsewhere.

Yup you've understood me correctly and greatly shortened my version - thanks ;-)

I believe the issue is actually an external one.

[Tom Peters]

Bottom line: the current PS2 devs have no idea what they're doing in terms of base design and battle flow.

Let's all just go play Planetside 1.

[Aveox]

Originally Posted by Rivenshield

That's a feature -- not a bug -- according to the pre-lattice pro-offense high-speed design philosophy. You realize that. Right?

This is the way the bugger was designed from the get-go. Everything else is added, subtracted, or layered on top of it. This game is growing, as all complex systems grow, from its roots. What we need is suggestions to nudge it in the right direction.

So. To tilt the lever slightly back towards even in your specific instance, what would you do...? Because I admit all my ideas are systemic, philosophical, and cultural. As bizarre as that may sound. I don't draw maps in 5000 hours in Photoshop. I'm more concerned with the strategic gameplay and the community.

I tend to think it’s still a remnant of the heavy focus in beta on the Galaxy AMS. G-AMSes were unable to land/deploy inside a base due to their size, and when landed on airpads they tended to be sitting ducks and didn’t live long. So most G-AMSes would be outside the actual base. In that case it does makes sense as defenders have the advantage. But ever since we have the Sunderer AMS attackers have a lot more flexibility in terms of spawn points and it almost seems as if the devs forgot (or didn’t bother) to change the base layouts to compensate for this.

What I would do:
Short term solution: Replace tunnels with teleporters that give defenders faster access to base area’s that are important. Make AMS spawn take at least as long or a few seconds longer then a facility spawn.
Long term solution: Change the base layout in such a way that the defenders always reach the things like shield gens, cap point etc first so the “spawn race” is always on the side of the defenders. That does mean moving the spawn to a central location in the base and adding secure routes/tunnels to shield gens/SCU.

[Taramafor]

It all comes down to this.

Make bases easier to defend (and make use of proper cover). By that, I mean more indoor areas to defend.

Put a spawn point indoors in bases (DEEP inside) so attackers have to actually fight for it. It SHOULD take around 10 mins to attack and capture a base with lots of people in it. That gives defenders time to hold out until backup can arrive (say, an assault team flanking to knock out Sun's).

However, it shouldn't be ten mins of trying to take the spawn point itself once defenses are eliminated. It should be 10 mins of fighting TOWARDS the spawn point and then taking it over in a much quicker time frame unless said spawn point is heavily defended (Or do you guys enjoy taking each and every base in under a minute only to move to the next one and do it again?).

Or do devs have something against, you know, defense? It's not like it would favor one side, because every side would be able to defend and it would stop lightly defended bases bases from falling too quickly.

Sidenote: Fighting in narrow corridors isn't "boring" as such (unless it lacks cover). but it would limit things like infiltrator movement. Big indoor areas however might be interesting.

It's either or that, or, you know, longer spawn times. Or perhaps having people that died at a base locked from using that spawn point for a minute or so. Pick the lesser of two evils.

[Qwan]

Guys if you look at it there is only one way to fix the spawn room camping scenerio and thats by bringing the spawn rooms in, either underground or just inside of a building. Now most would say "well then they would just camp the spawn room on the inside" well this true but at least it would be on even ground. By that I mean it would be man to man or Max to Max. But the devs feel that fights at bases last to long because of this, so they would prefer and exposed spawn room, fights over in less than 10 minutes because why, the base will flip. Its a proven fact from PS1, fights at a base with underground or enclosed spawns can go on for hours. Now you have to ask yourself, would you rather spawn camp for 10 minutes or fight over a base for hours.

[Shogun]

without a doubt:

i would prefer fighting over a base for hours!

at least the fights in ps1 that lasted for hours were extremely fun!!!!!

the spawncamping in ps2 isn´t fun at all! for neither side!

and the long fights in ps1 could be broken by ntu drain, spawntube destruction or generator destruction! battles longer than 2 hours only took place when both sides had good organised teams around that were able to use strategies. and those fights were epic fun!
in ps2 even with the lattice, i often end up steamrolling with a zerg, not getting any good battle where any tactics are used other than go in, kill everybody, rinse and repeat.

[Taramafor]

Originally Posted by Shogun

without a doubt:

i would prefer fighting over a base for hours!

at least the fights in ps1 that lasted for hours were extremely fun!!!!!

the spawncamping in ps2 isn´t fun at all! for neither side!

This. 100%. there needs to be more infantry vs infantry fights. And it needs to be indoors. Haven't played PS1, but Battfront 2 can attest to that from my experience (More urban combat wouldn't hurt either).

Get it in your head devs. Just because fighting indoors is boring for you doesn't mean it's boring for us.

I'm all for having spawns in outdoor areas, but have them indoors as well so people that like fighting outdoors get to fight outdoors and people that like fighting indoors can fight indoors. Right now, all we have is 90% outdoor fighting with 10% indoors and that's just not right.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Taramafor

Haven't played PS1, but Battfront 2 can attest to that from my experience (More urban combat wouldn't hurt either).

Oh dude believe me, you don't know what you are missing!

So in the Original Planetside they had an Inventory system that caused you respawn by default with the second weakest armor, a pistol, and an SMG all factions have.
If an Enemy had taken the Generator offline or had started a Hack on the Facility, then you couldn't use the Equipment Terminals to resupply and had to rely on whatever you'd stashed in your Locker.

So there you are, barely equipped with little more protection then a Cloaker, and you have to fight your way though all these guys from the bowels of the Base to where ever the Control Console was located JUST so you can try to hack it back.
And hacks in the original took TIME, if you don't have any points in Hacking a Control Console will take you a full MINUTE to flip in addition to requiring you to use a REK Tool that took the place of any weapons!

Originally Posted by Shogun

without a doubt:

i would prefer fighting over a base for hours!

at least the fights in ps1 that lasted for hours were extremely fun!!!!!

the spawncamping in ps2 isn´t fun at all! for neither side!

and the long fights in ps1 could be broken by ntu drain, spawntube destruction or generator destruction! battles longer than 2 hours only took place when both sides had good organised teams around that were able to use strategies. and those fights were epic fun!

So yeah, not only did this tension create great fights, but EPIC moments whose fires forged the bonds of camaraderie in those who participated!

[Qwan]

[quote=Shogun;929641]without a doubt:

i would prefer fighting over a base for hours!

at least the fights in ps1 that lasted for hours were extremely fun!!!!!

the spawncamping in ps2 isn´t fun at all! for neither side!
[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Taramafor

This. 100%. there needs to be more infantry vs infantry fights. And it needs to be indoors. Haven't played PS1, but Battfront 2 can attest to that from my experience (More urban combat wouldn't hurt either).

Get it in your head devs. Just because fighting indoors is boring for you doesn't mean it's boring for us.

Well we should let the devs know, they need to work the spawns into the buildings. And I say to add to that, maybe widen the corridors, place some crates to hind behind. But should we keep the SCU concept, or switch to a destroy spawn tubes.
As the months go by I see more and more of PS1 concepts coming out in PS2, I dont want them to make PS2 like PS1, but some of the concepts of PS1 would help PS2 not become one of those cheap forgotten, F2P FPS's that you download in the middle of the night because your bored.

I dont know much but some of the best fights that I have had have been in bio labs, and in open areas on Esimar, I mean I like big tank battles, with air and tanks mixed together. I also like a good urban infantry fight, like in the bio labs, were its just gun against gun, with a little sprinkle of max in there.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Shogun

in ps2 even with the lattice, i often end up steamrolling with a zerg, not getting any good battle where any tactics are used other than go in, kill everybody, rinse and repeat.

Yeah. There's currently only one way to take a base: seal the defenders in their spawn-outhouse with weapons fire, bring down the shield gen so the unstoppable armor zerg can come barging in, and sit on the capture points that the defenders have no chance -- NONE -- of resecuring. Then comes the ritual, demeaning exchange of fire between the defenders and the attackers, both of whom pull stupid pointless antics to expose themselves to each others' fire because there's nothing else to do and they're BORED.

Last night I calmly took a knee at an outpost and killed about twenty Vanu with my underbarrel grenade launcher from the perfect safety of the spawn shield. There were half a dozen Scythes circling overhead and anyone that made a break for it got incinerated. We were fubar. We knew it and so did they. But there was nothing else to do while the timer ticked down. So they kept appearing in one of two doorways and bounced plasma off the shield in front of my face, making me a dare I never accepted. The whole thing was pointless. And it wasn't any fun.

Now is there an exception to what I'm describing? Yes there is, and it's the biolab. Biolabs prove beyond an empirical shadow of a doubt that if you put one or more cap points (a) under a covered way so that vehicles cannot interfere with the defenders, and (b) much much closer to the spawn so the defenders can rally and get there more swiftly, you can have one hell of a raging back-and-forth exciting battle where the defenders can make a break for it and win the day -- at least for a few minutes.

And yet even in a biolab, once every entrance to the spawn-outhouse is covered with interlocking fields of fire by squads that sit just outside of the defenders' POV, you still have that pointless boring five-minute denouement.

Specific suggestions for anyone who's read this far:

1) Bring back the whole panoply of CE toys. Motion sensors and Spitfires (up to four each should be plenty), weak-but-plentiful mines (call it the General Purpose Mine, and let us cert the ability to plant a dozen of the buggers) that work against anything, non-collidable-to-friendly-armor barricades (four again) -- all of this would make our gigantic sprawling bases much more defensible, even if you could only plant them outside. It would enable a dozen POed engies to turn an outpost into a fortress, and a chokepoint between bases into an outpost. It would let us create our own terrain, and use it as an area-denial weapon to slow and attrit -- not stop -- the enemy armored hordes. This in itself, like the lattice, would remedy a good many ills and provide us with a lot of fun.

2) Make the existing spawns destructible. Give each one their own small, easy-to-defend shield generator nearby, perhaps in an alcove at the end of a short hallway accessible to both attacker and defender. Towers can have theirs on the upper level in a small covered alcove, immune to aerial fire but still a tempting target for light assault and Gal droppers. Give the attackers the berserk joy of gunning the defenders in their tubes once more, and give the defenders the adrenaline-laden urgency of rushing to defend that critical point, stepping over piles of bodies to do it. That will turn the last few minutes of a base or tower cap into an entertaining exercise in heroism, rather than the pointless two-way game of chicken we're currently stuck with. It may not give the defenders a better chance of resecuring, but it'll give them something to DO.

(And what happens if the attackers bumrush the spawn gen and kill it at the *beginning* of the cap...? Why, they're free to move on to the next objective... and a wily defender might sneak in and fix everything up and resecure the joint, so you better be careful... )

3) Larger bases ought to get two or more spawn rooms, rather than just the one. One might have the spawn gen in a small building nearby, rather than protected by the arrangement I described above, and thus be harder to defend. (Variety is the spice of battle. Natasha Kerensky said that.)

4) Put at least one of the spawns close to a cap point, and make sure the defenders can reach it without ever going outdoors. No, I don't mean a tunnel or a teleporter or some other fanciful compromise -- I mean putting them in the same building.

5) Many smaller outposts still have their one cap point out in the open. This is absurd. If you're going to make the defenders run a death-gauntlet of vehicular weapons fire to reach it, at least make sure they don't automatically die to tank/ESF/Lib spam when they get there. Put it in a small building. Better yet, put it underground -- if you can.

6) Please make Planetside 2 cross-platform compatible so we don't split up a community that has lasted for a decade, not to mention our dev team. Sell the thing with a caveat that it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you go keyboard and mouse (SOE won't be unhappy with an opportunity to sell more peripherals, will they?), offer 2000 Station cash with each sale of a keyboard/mouse combo as incentive, and dump those raging eager thousands of reinforcements on our existing servers. That will be fun. That will be *so* much fun. And this is relevant to base defense because uh, the bases were designed for mass battles and Size Always Matters and stuff. Yeah.

7) Give us a goddam cooldown timer on same-server empire swaps, goddammit. Because the 4th Empire is a game-deforming monstrosity and there's no reason to roll out the red carpet for the buggers.

8) Design and market a fully-functioning lightsaber. I've wanted one since I was eight.

That's honestly about all I can think of.

[Qwan]

Well guys we have solutions, lets see what the future brings. But with the current system I have to admit somthing............. I have been cert horing again, when we push the enemy into there spawn room, I go to a corner, and leave my computer, I go cook, play with my kids, work on my new computer, and hell ive even had a quicky a couple of times while that damn timer counts down. By the time I get back (if I havent timed out), I just get a scythe and go to the next base. Its sad, but being a cert hore has destroyed my motivation to play the game, but I keep logging in daily, following the zerg, and just collecting my certs

[Taramafor]

Originally Posted by Qwan

Well guys we have solutions, lets see what the future brings. But with the current system I have to admit somthing............. I have been cert horing again, when we push the enemy into there spawn room, I go to a corner, and leave my computer, I go cook, play with my kids, work on my new computer, and hell ive even had a quicky a couple of times while that damn timer counts down. By the time I get back (if I havent timed out), I just get a scythe and go to the next base. Its sad, but being a cert hore has destroyed my motivation to play the game, but I keep logging in daily, following the zerg, and just collecting my certs

DEVS, READ THIS AND LEARN!

Along with reading every other post and learning from that.

At the very lest, fix spawns so they can't be XP farmed for doing NOTHING AT ALL! Sheese. Even a heavy XP bonus per kill would fix it, even if it tempts more zergs. But at least the zerg kill mindlessly compared to not at all.

[TheAadvark]

I don't understand. If the attackers have mad it thus far and are right in front of your spawn pull out regroup at the next hex/lattice point and counter attack. Simple , our outfit does the same to great effect. Especially on Indar where even the less gifted understand where they need to go.