If they removed spawn rooms, instant action, and squad spawning...

Tatwi · 2013-09-06, 11:25 AM

... and

Made "sanctuaries" like PS1
The only place people can spawn is at a Suny/Gal or Sanc
Made 1 waprgate per continent neutral
The other two warpgates are contestable for ownership/usage
Made only one of each facility type per continent (so people might actually care about owning them...)
Allowed vehicles to travel through warpgates
Brought back Galaxy deploying/spawning OR allowed a galaxy to carry a Sunderer
Ensured that bases/outposts can't be flipped in less than 15 minutes.

Do you think that would make PS2 more than the CampTheSpawnRoomSide / SteamrollSide / LogisticsArePointlessSide that it currently is?

Doing this would make staying alive, protecting your machines, medic rezzing, base terminals, and engineer repairing much more important. It also concedes that the best way to defend a base is to "attack it (from the outside)", because all internal spawns are either hopelessly camped or simply shut down within a few seconds. Attackers would become defenders once the base is won. The only spawning at said base would be that which is provided by players, through a Sundy or Gal. This allows players to move the spawn around to where ever it makes sense at the time. It also means that if no one is there at a base, people will have to actually GO there, both attackers and defenders. The 15 minute capture then ensures that the base owners will have the chance to use the base, provided they are already in it or that they can get to it.

I dunno folks. Something with spawning and base capture needs to change, because this game is entirely boring and pointless when one looks beyond blowing stuff up. The whole concept of spawn rooms is fatally flawed, they just do not work to encourage FIGHTING or fun game play.

Flame away, PSU, for thou art excellent at it!

Rahabib · 2013-09-06, 11:49 AM

They could leave in Instant Action but make it so you can only IA to owned (ie defense use only) territories. Give us back the choice of territory to go to and removed spawn rooms.

Then make it so that IA you get little movement so air can play support roles.

Squad Spawn I think should stay, but I think the timers are a bit short - or make it so you cant deploy one in an area near a sunderer, so you have to use it only when a sunderer isnt available. So make it so you can only deploy one like once every 30 minutes, and they expire after only 5 minutes of use. Just enough time to pull a sunderer back into action.

But I like the idea of getting rid of spawn rooms. They are too easily camped. replacing them with IA and using IA as only defense could be a good alternative. I know this is not what you were going for, just my vision.

Tatwi · 2013-09-06, 12:07 PM

I don't really have a problem with instant action and squad spawning as concepts, but in practice instant action is suicide 100% of the time and people will just find ways to circumvent any intended limitation on squad spawning. May as well just remove them and not have to worry about it.

The function that Instant Action is conceptually supposed to achieve (Player pushes button, player is now having fun playing the game) could be accomplished by doing the following,

1. Player pushes Instant Action button.
2. Player is placed into an active squad
- "Active" is qualified by 60% or more members being within 1km of each other.
3. System automatically sends a message in squad chat for the player announcing that he has joined and requests orders from squad leader.
4. Player has the option to spawn at the closest sunder to his squad/platoon or get a vehicle from sanct and bring it to where he's needed.

By putting the player into a squad of folks that are trying to play together rather than immediately dropping them into some random clusterfuck of stupidity, even first time players will have an excellent idea of what it is going on. It's not a crazy concept... join a squad, ask where you're needed, go do that, enjoy... lol...

EVILPIG · 2013-09-06, 12:21 PM

At that, you might as well charge 100SC per life.

Tatwi · 2013-09-06, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by EVILPIG

At that, you might as well charge 100SC per life.

The point you wished to make was not as clear as you thought it would be. If you have some time, do you think you could elaborate?

kubacheski · 2013-09-06, 01:07 PM

If I read this correctly, you could probably just add 3 things to accomplish your intended goals:

Dropship
More continents with warpgate linkage
Sphere of Influence around controlled bases

Everyone's suggestions keep sounding more like PS1 than PS2.

mrmrmrj · 2013-09-06, 01:10 PM

Camping the spawn room is only a problem for those that choose to subject themselves to it. It is not a game flaw. It is a player flaw on the part of the defenders. If your spawn room is locked down and that is frustrating you, stop spawning there.

Timealude · 2013-09-06, 01:16 PM

I know new players already have enough problems trying to figure out where to go and what to do in this game, I dont feel that sanctuaries would help solve this. You also need those spawn because if you removed them all you pretty make defending a base even more impossible then it already is. If you have no spawns you pretty much make steamroll side even worse.

Sundies would be the only way to spawn and they are taken out too easy. I know people hate the spawn beacon from the spawn room crap and sundy drop pods, but until they find a way to make bases defend-able without causing a battle to be a 24 hour stale mate then we are sort of stuck with it, no matter how cheesy it is to do. We might be able to have have underground spawns again now that we the performance update coming and with one of the things T ray said..it sounds promising.

bpostal · 2013-09-06, 01:32 PM

Originally Posted by mrmrmrj

Camping the spawn room is only a problem for those that choose to subject themselves to it. It is not a game flaw. It is a player flaw on the part of the defenders. If your spawn room is locked down and that is frustrating you, stop spawning there.

Spawn room placement is the game design flaw. The way they're placed, the way they have been positioned since the inception of PS2 has been horribly flawed. Adding tunnels to the major facilities was a step forward, but it was a baby step and hasn't been expanded on yet.

Especially since the spawn rooms are:
A:As open and vulnerable as a Thai hooker during an aircraft carrier's shore leave, if the carrier hosted an open bar just prior to opening up liberty.

B: Placed in such a manner that they destroy any existing flow of battle within the facility. Ruining a majority of fights.

C: One of the major complaints about PS2's world design since it's inception.

D: Allow the defensive faction to establish some kind of limited, local, fucked up fire superiority (that again, due to their positioning doesn't allow the camped faction the ability to actually leverage their momentary upper hand).

E: Exacerbate any population imbalances (due to their placement and positioning).

This is not the official forums, You can't just say stupid shit like 'Spawn somewhere else' and expect anyone to believe you. If you want suggestions on how to make the spawn rooms better, look up a PSU member named 'FigmentOfYerImagination' My guess is that he's given up hope on this game, but he has put together dozens of posts, designs and ideas to solve this fundamental flaw in the game.

TLDR: Wrong, it is a game design flaw, not a player issue and your inability to grasp that is not helping the situation at all.

Carbon Copied · 2013-09-06, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by mrmrmrj

Camping the spawn room is only a problem for those that choose to subject themselves to it. It is not a game flaw. It is a player flaw on the part of the defenders. If your spawn room is locked down and that is frustrating you, stop spawning there.

So you spawn at the next link in anticipation, find that they're already pounding the spawn room there as well, spawn back another link and find you're there on your own waiting for the steamroller to get to you. Yeah that works.

Wahooo · 2013-09-06, 01:52 PM

@ OP

I understand where you are coming from but to implement the way you are saying would be just too confusing and chaotic. Never knowing where your spawns would be? Dependent upon people deploying Sundies in good spots? Super frustrating thing about driving a sundy even now is when you drive up all sneaky like, and can't deploy because of the NDZ created by someone's poorly placed sundy... now you are just a big target trying to find a place to park, and if these were the only source of spawns? a much bigger target.

Spawn room and base design allowing for them to be camped. As much as people rage about choke points creating stalemates, they are kinda what makes for tactical game play. You need to find a way to break that, max rush or get a squad to move around it. PS1 indoor CC with indoor spawns and several choke points, made for a fun progression... well sorta endless stairwell plasma wasnt' exactly fun game play but there were other options for an organized group.

Taramafor · 2013-09-06, 02:14 PM

The problem isn't with spawn rooms itself, it's the fact that they're stuck in small rooms because apparently, for whatever reason, the devs have decided that spawn rooms should only be taken over through conquest mode (base capture) instead of giving the players an option to disable them after fighting there way inside the spawn room. But seeing as the fight is already lost when pushed back to the spawn room, why shouldn't we be able to blow a tube to disable spawning? SCU is good and all but it doesn't solve the problem in bases without SCU. I say bring back doors, add a few hallways, some bigger indoor areas and make sure the only way inside spawn rooms is through doors along with the force fields. And all force fields should have a generator nearby that can be well guarded by the defenders easily yet if swarmed by attackers, should be able to be hacked and therefor disable the generators and therefor gain access into the spawn room and the doors (of which offer a little more defense which provides a slim chance of holding out), fight your way into the spawn room and shoot a terminal with a rocket. That would solve spawn room camping and make both attacking and defending more fun, as well as offer a bit of an indoor area to fight in (indoors and doors themselves are needed to prevent cheap bombardment on the spawn rooms).

Tatwi · 2013-09-06, 02:39 PM

Right on bpostal!

Remove the spawn rooms and all of a sudden people have to find something else to do than stand in one or hope they can form a defense from one.

Remove the spawn rooms and instantly the focal point of all bases changes from spawn room camping to capping and holding the points.

Remove the spawn rooms and all of a sudden people will understand how important it is to place a sundy and defend it (though they are far too squishy against suicide C4, given how easy they are to find).

Really, the next most important thing to do is solve Timealude's concern that people run around not knowing what do, which I covered in my suggested change to "Instant Action". If IA put was really a squad forming tool, then it encourages leaders to lead and hapless people to follow orders.

I think somewhere along way in the last couple years SOE lost track of the following reality:

How many thousands of games are there out there already for people to run around in and fight at random? I really don't PS2 should be pulling any punches when it comes to expressing to players that it is a team based game. Instant Action put players in a team. Don't want to play in a group? Cool, don't, but don't expect the game to help you any. It's just not that kind of game, sorry.

Suggestions here on PSU aren't simply to make Planetside 2 into Planetside 1. They are, in the large majority, gear toward making the game function properly as a squad/platoon, objectives based, opened ended combat game. Sadly, there are just too many game play systems in PS2 that actively work against that concept. Spawn rooms are a perfect example, because they let the masses randomly mass and flail about "doing their own thing" so unsuccessfully that eventually they just logout and never come back.

It's not a bad game, but like I said a year ago, it is very much lacking community building game play systems and at this point, it barely even encourages interacting with your fellow faction members. IF you don't care about your KDR, then who cares what happens, you can always spawn somewhere and keep shooting doods! *sigh*

"Lone wolfing" in itself isn't a bad thing. It's simply the fact that the game does not encourage nor guide users to do anything else. As a result, everyone is a "leader" and apart from those in organized outfits, people don't feel the need to work together.

Either force people to play together (and this goes for forcing the factions to fight each other rather than ghost capping!) and be proud of it or turn PS2 into yet another round based shooter game. This half assed, wishy washy in between land just isn't working (unless the viable market for this game is less than 50,000 people, give or take...).

bpostal · 2013-09-06, 05:56 PM

I do want to point out that I'm not sure removing spawn rooms completely solves the overall problem, I just want the spawn rooms in a logical area where they can foster the flow of battle. Ideally it'd be something along the lines of (really really simplified):

[Spawns]>>>>>>>>>>>>[CC]<<<<<<<<<<<<<[Attacking AMSes]

with the ability to destroy the spawns instead of forcing players to camp them (Destroying the spawns means using your existing momentum to sweep the CC clear and destroy all nearby opposition in the base). The current spawn room placement, in most every base, simply tosses the players into the CY so that the defensive faction needs to assault through the bulk of enemy forces simply to establish (or reestablish) defensive positions around the CC. Figment had a really good writeup that I now can't find for the life of me.

Carbon Copied · 2013-09-06, 06:55 PM

Originally Posted by bpostal

I do want to point out that I'm not sure removing spawn rooms completely solves the overall problem, I just want the spawn rooms in a logical area where they can foster the flow of battle. Ideally it'd be something along the lines of (really really simplified):

[Spawns]>>>>>>>>>>>>[CC]<<<<<<<<<<<<<[Attacking AMSes]

with the ability to destroy the spawns instead of forcing players to camp them (Destroying the spawns means using your existing momentum to sweep the CC clear and destroy all nearby opposition in the base). The current spawn room placement, in most every base, simply tosses the players into the CY so that the defensive faction needs to assault through the bulk of enemy forces simply to establish (or reestablish) defensive positions around the CC. Figment had a really good writeup that I now can't find for the life of me.

Not Figment's but I'm pretty sure this is the flow you're thinking of: