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2012-01-30, 08:50 AM
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[Ignore Me] #1 | ||
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Lieutenant General
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Wall of text crits you for over 9000.
 We saw:  http://www.gameinformer.com/games/pl...ime-lapse.aspx And one sample spawnroom from a single angle.  http://yfrog.com/z/nwf1enzj What we know sofar with relation to spawnpoints:
Other things of importance gameplay information:
We do not know yet:
Would be very nice if we could get some info on these, as we could start removing some scenarios and refine and focus a bit more. __________________________________________________ ______ Scenarios then. I'm going to paint a couple scenarios filling in some blanks and combining information we have. I'll first derive some basic assumptions I think we can make. I'm going to focus on the bases, since the bunkers/towers/outposts are basically sounding exactly like PS1 towers. Al be it they may have some extras like vehicle acquisition or whatever depending on local facilities. Either way, I expect the usual footzerg fanning over the surrounding area and ribbons aimed at nearest action/objective/biggest threat. Though fixed spawnpoints are necessary, my biggest concern is too large reliance on them. Any fixed spawnpoint is a predictable location and leads to predictable routes and defenses and less sandbox options to setup the fight the way you want to, basically it can lead to more predictable fights. This is even more true if there are few locations. My other concern is with too many locations, because of duration of sieges as well as smaller groups having to hold down too much. Number of fixed spawnpoints in an area As we both know fixed spawn points exist and the Galaxy must be pulled at either a Tech Plant or warpgate, other local spawnpoints MUST be already available for use in abundance as you cannot expect every situation to have Galaxies at the ready for all empires involved (provided they can survive if present and deployed). This assumption is strenghtened further by AMSes not being available at all. Further strengthening the case for a multitude of local, fixed spawnpoints is that the devs want to have little downtime between fights as possible. This meant sofar they want to cut as much time wasted in non-fight situations as possible, including walking to terminal and one can assume other travel time cuts as that is one of the main reasons why you would not be fighting. In addition it is clear that devs want clear objectives for players to take. Also, if you have few spawnpoints, fights become more predictable. Since you cannot have a lot of "surprise" locations now that the stealth spawn provided by the AMS is out, you must at least vary the optional approaches in another way. Similarly, since bases are larger, defending the far side of a base would require a local spawnpoint as well. You can not expect there to be a Galaxy present if it is unattainable locally or if the enemy has air superiority. As there are more buildings inside the CY of a base, it is quite likely that there are some that at least have the room for an additional spawnpoint for different sections of the base. The last argument that screams a multitude of spawnpoints is shear volume required to host and provide room for hundreds and hundreds of players. Three tubes was often already cramped for PlanetSide 1, it would make sense to provide more spawning space for them and not having to rely on a couple of (CY) Galaxies or further off buildings that are positioned around a base. Note that in case one would be taken out, the troop density in the others would increase, so spawnrooms would have to be pretty big to accomodate those players. As such, at least my logic dictates that the amount of spawnpoints in a base is primarily dependent on the size of the base and the amount of players expected to fight in/from it. Note that players can keep spawning, unlike in some other deathmatch games where you eventually run out of tickets. Besides, you can't really imagine defending a CY of a base properly without a spawnpoint near a defensive position, can you? Consequences of multiple spawnrooms in a base Multiple spawnrooms means multiple ways for an enemy to retain a hold on a base and gain recontrol of lost sections by spawning in other locations. This will make it extra important for an attacker to take out spawns as simultaneous as possible to prevent enemy pressure on another section spikes as spawning location for large groups shifts. This means that a huge base siege could take very, very long to achieve clear dominance. 'Epic sieges' would thus be a given. To break these epic sieges, I would imagine there is a manner to disable spawning. It will also make it harder for smaller groups to control spawnpoints, as one point is easier to defend/hold down and keep an eye on than multiple at once. Big spawnrooms make it harder to camp with heavy weapons as range increases. It also makes it harder to control multiple tubes at the same time, depending on their spacing and layout. My prediction of layout would be one or two main spawnpoints inside the base interior (to make sieging more effective by not having to take out too many) and several smaller ones in the CY buildings which are easier to take by a sieging force. If we have very clear sectioning of a base, I'd expect one big spawnpoint per section. In case there are no CY spawnpoints or even just one, then the logistics of getting to the wall will be the determining factor in how long a CY can be held once any Galaxy inside of it goes down (which is close to PS1 where AMSes cut down travel time to keep the walls filled with troops). With so many troops possible in a base, it might be better to limit the amount of spawns to keep such logistics important. However, that would make logistics much harder for the sieger to establish footholds inside the base without a Galaxy. Where the Galaxy is a bit clumsy in the move from CY siege to base siege due to its size and acquisition rules. Disabling scenarios Destruction is pretty straightforward means of taking them out. Disabling can mean a couple more things outside of wrecking it though. Though I must stress that compared to PS1, the context has changed: destructing spawns when only PJs are coming out, or when MAXes spawn are two different things. Similarly, as terms are becoming more irrelevant as you can simply kill yourself or get yourself killed to change class, if you leave one tube up, an engi will spawn soon. But of course most likely is that a large numbers of MAXes and heavies will spawn. If the mission spawning is true, you may be looking at an empty base one second and as soon as an alarm is tripped a mission may be created and people might start spawning en mass there. Disabling enemies from spawning is therefore pretty important. As said before, it could well be you need to take out a specific generator for that reason. Perhaps there is one generator per spawn, perhaps it provides power to ALL spawns within a base (see one consequence of that in next section). As stated before, keeping multiple tubes down could be a pain if you need to hold for a long period of time so there shouldn't be too many locations either. Capturing spawnpoints Capturing spawnpoints makes sense in several ways. It fits the devs view of objectives and getting nearer to the action. It however doesn't require mobile spawnpoints to be pullable nearby and you can't get OSed after capping it. So that does have some advantages. In addition, Higby mentioned that you will have objectives to reduce base capture time in the immediate area of the base. I took from this, it may not be just the time reduction influence of nearby hexes, but actualy of directly controlling parts of bases. The next question then is, how do you capture? And then, what are the effects on gameplay as a whole? If you ever played Welkin you may be familiar with this, I'm not sure how it is now as I haven't cared for the game at all. But in its Beta you could capture a spawnpoint within a base without actually capturing the base itself. To do this, you had to hack a term for a full minute (like you needed about 30 seconds to a minute to hack open doors alone @_@), while people would spawn right behind you in full gear, without noticable downtime. Bases would be taken over by literally taking over each and every turret, door and terminal one by one in the same manner: put a sort of REK on it and hope you are not interrupted once. If you managed, the spawns would flip instantly like a PS1 tower. This meant your teammates would have to constantly spawncamp in order to even give you a chance at capturing it. You can imagine that was pretty frustrating for both sides. Not to mention boring. I would presume that the speed of capturing these would be more fast paced. A lot of games use a king of the hill capture system, where you need to be in the immediate vicinity of a point without being interrupted and if you are with more people the capture speed increases organically (particularly true for World of Tanks and Battlefield games). So it could be that temporary spawncamping is all that is needed to switch a spawn. It could also be that you need to hold a different, nearby control term. It may be that capture (or actualy, even disabling) has a direct effect on the base cap timer. Just remember that if you can capture a spawnpoint and you conquer the base, the enemy that is still spawning in a different section of the base may reconquer that. A basefight would in that case not be over as easily as in PS1. But if you need a gen to power all spawnpoints, including those you already captured, that might give you an extra dilemma. So... it could be that instead of destroying a generator... you have to capture a generator, so it provides power just to your spawns, not the enemy. Spawncamping prevention measures I presume you are all familiar with the concept of destroying a tube and not being able to destroy a tube from PS1: either you removed the spawns or you were forced to spawncamp. Since spawncamping is probably unwanted as a main feature of the game, I'm already assuming it IS possible to disable enemy use of these one way or another. Whether this grants own use is another thing entirely. We have seen pictures of shields on doors leading outside before. It would not be really strange to see shields on spawndoors as well. Although that would block routes through a base so I would presume that's actually not the case. In fact, a sanctuary like that within a base would be pretty powerful and exploitable for fleeing, getting out of danger and recuperating (player recharges shield), then pwning the guy who has no spawns nearby as you can respawn close by in case you lost anyway. As people don't spawn in their pyjamas, I would reckon they don't need additional defenses as they do not have a vulnerability period. In fact, it is possible that people even get an invulnerability period upon spawncamping, like in CoD MW (deathstreak compensation). In case some sort of shield does exist, it may be possible to take these out by taking out specific other portions of the base: hacking terms or destroying generators. I'm not sure if the REK will return though, but considering Gen Blowing was one of the major annoyances of players who wanted a stretched fight for whatever reason, it would be a pretty safe bet that multiple generators per base and with different functionality have been considered (base shield generators/spawnroom generators/vehicle repair/acquisition gens, etc). I do wonder what this means for the painfields we had in PS1 to encourage tube destruction over camping. Given however the likeliness of larger rooms and the free class spawning, players are able to defend themselves more easily after spawning. Though players who want to camp, would kill all but one tube and just camp that (as they did in PS1). Unless so many people could come through in a MAX that doesn't work anymore. Painfields did help to make enemies want to sit in enemy spawnrooms as short as possible. I could see the feature return, but if there are multiple spawns, why encourage people to spawn in the same room by giving the defenders more advantages over the attackers? It would mostly lengthen sieges more. Hex ownership influence The same goes for hex ownership really. We don't know how many spawnpoints are in a hex. We do know that some bases control multiple hexes. In PS1 we saw that conquering a continent flipped all towers. It could thus well be that if you control a base, you get to control the immediate area as well (think capturing Nexus). This is directly related to hex ownership. Hex ownership may after all not do any such thing, in fact it could be the other way around, where hex ownership would be determined by who has the most facilities (including spawnpoints) within that hex. However, that would clash with the idea of bases controlling multiple hexes. I would therefore say at this point it is more likely that surrounding area switches sides with the main control points assigned to hexes, but can be recaptured individually, like towers in PS1. Thoughts? Scenarios? Info that's overlooked? Last edited by Figment; 2012-01-30 at 09:19 AM. |
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2012-01-30, 09:08 AM
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[Ignore Me] #2 | ||
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Lieutenant Colonel
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Great write up. My eyes and head are hurting after reading all this. I kind of skimmed the last section of it.
I agree with what you put. I think if anything a lot of what you wrote reinforces the need to have a dedicated mobile spawn back in the game like the AMS. I also hope to god they don't give the opposing faction the ability to capture and convert the spawn points. But I have been thinking for awhile that is route they are going to go. Again very well written.
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2012-01-30, 09:39 AM
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[Ignore Me] #3 | ||
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Lieutenant General
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One thing about spawning in any position, in PS we could spawn at five positions at max, three based on the 'nearest spawnpoint by type' principle and two more for binding, either at an AMS or at a base. not counting Instant Action's random-hotspot-you-didn't-want-to-spawn-at selection.
In Welkin you could spawn anywhere you wanted and this is also true for a lot of deathmatch games. That sort of spawning could be too unrestrictive: action = reaction, but actions often require some time without a reaction to be effective. Either way, such spawning rules greatly impact the potential flows of battle and travel time needed to get elsewhere. (I often relocated out of a siege trap by means of far off tower or AMS - Hell, I often stuck an AMS in an enemy, non-frontline base so others could come and grab vehicles - which most people didn't respond to because they were closer to direct infantry action). As stated in the original post, it could be that in PS2 missions provide the ability to spawn at different, far off parts of the map where you could not spawn under a nearest spawnpoint or bind principle. It would compete directly with the spawn on squadleader principle for effective respawning. As such, I personally would prefer it that at least a squadmember would have to be present for spawning missions so there is still SOME travel time involved before you can expect a response. It could be that binding is removed or replaced by the above, but I would imagine this feature is one of the things that simply remains. Btw, the mission system could well be seen as an evolution of "Instant Action": when you'd IA, rather than spawning where you are not needed, but a miniature towerwhoring fight is going on, you spawn where you are needed and a random mission is going on. EDIT: Oh yeah. Insert random mission abuse called "Farm". 
Last edited by Figment; 2012-01-30 at 09:43 AM. |
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2012-01-30, 09:52 AM
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[Ignore Me] #4 | ||
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Lieutenant Colonel
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See, I hope the missions are not used that way. I believe missions need to be used in a way to help coordinate the zerg and or squad not in a way to warp you into battle. I firmly believe they need to keep the spawn options limited to the AO that you are in. You should not have the ability to run back to your spawn tubes or upon death and be able to warp half way across the continent to counter a offensive happening way to the north.
I do agree there needs to be some delay. But I believe that delay needs to be limited to the time it would take for you to actually travel the said distance to get to the point. The only way I should be able to warp half way across the map instantaneously is is because of either of 1 of 3 reasons. 1. I bound my matrix to a friendly vehicle that has already traveled the distance to get there. 2. I bound my matrix to the tubes while I was up there earlier already. 3. I have a squad member who has the spawn on me unlocked up in the area. Outside of that you should have to travel to reach that location be it by foot, ground vehicle or air. Edit: Last thing / reason. It would be almost impossible to take advantage of the enemy's weakness if all they had to due was Decon and warp across the map at will. Anytime you hit a base in would come the flood of players. They should have to pay for that lack of tactical prowess with a loss of a facility or tower or w/e.
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Last edited by Hmr85; 2012-01-30 at 11:23 AM. |
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2012-01-30, 03:08 PM
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[Ignore Me] #5 | ||
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Lieutenant General
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With respect to insta-spawning cross continent, I think devs should not underestimate the social and planning aspects of travelling either.
I loved moving across multiple continents in PS1 pre-broadcast warpgates. It created time for random banter, but also planning on what to do upon arrival,you got to enjoy the scenery without distractions and it was rewarding in that it created long response times which you could use to gain a foothold. Of course it created a lot of semi-downtime which the BWGs removed. Unfortunately my pc of the time started having white texture bugs due to a memory leak issue after loading multiple continents in a row. 
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2012-01-30, 08:27 PM
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[Ignore Me] #6 | |||
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Lieutenant Colonel
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Anyways a little off topic there. But yes keep the Traveling in cut back on the instant travel crap as mention above.
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