Cont Lock finally?

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Muldoon

You put a lot of content in your posts, and again, I disagree with a lot of it from a game design point of view.

You say No deploy zones is fighting the devs, and I disagree. Why, in soccer or hockey, am I not allowed to just stand next to the goalie and goalhang the whole game? The reason I can't is the offsides rule. Am I fighting the rule makers of FIFA or the NHL? No, I am playing a balanced game that gives people a sporting chance to win. If we let any strategy go, we start getting cheap no-skill tactics like that.

I would point out again that an "arbitrary off-side area" wouldn't have been necessary if the bases were designed around defense rather than "attacker wins once it can camp the box, which is as soon as it gets in range of the base".

Some of your bases have been improved, but not by far all. Had you listened to us during Alpha and beta, you'd not have to use such random band-aids now: you'd have ensured that defenders would have the distance to capture points advantage and would have non-vehicle campable approaches to those areas, while attackers would have to find ways to disable the defenders from spawning, rather than camping the box.

Your map design and win conditions usualy include "camp as much as possible", that's very off-putting to players who play defense: they'll quit the local fight. Which is off-putting to players who play offense: they either camp without skill, they lack a real challenge and worse, eventually they have nobody to shoot at all because the other party moved on (!).

This was a HUGE reason for players, veteran and I bet new players alike, to quit. The camping certainly was a huge reason to stop playing for my outfit and sister-outfits.

I actually don't like Anti-Personnel mines either, and think they're pretty cheap too. I'd love to remove them from the game, or make them give more feedback so people have a better chance of not dying to them. But the difference is vehicles have a large cooldown and resource cost. If you mine a pad, they essentially waste resources, where you can just respawn as a player. And people can't learn to play vehicles in combat if they never get a chance to spawn.

A couple comments here:

With thousands of players in an area (and especially with such low ttks), being able to deny areas to the enemy with mines or at least weakening them is important for a defender.

"Skill" is in concealed placement, denial placement, etc. No, it's not twitch aim skill, it's a tactical skill. The problem with PS2 is that it's a strategic/tactical game while it mostly provides derpy solutions: one hit kill this, one hit kill that. If you want players to die less, maybe just make everything less lethal. Allow players to respond.

The ability to detect or expect boobytraps is a skill too. Of course, with the way you designed it, detection is often too late: even if you spotted it, it often already went off and killed you. Again. This is your choice as devs to opt for really fast TTKs.

PlanetSide 1 had WAY more mines per player, but they were FAR less lethal. You are annoyed with mines in ways that I can't recall anyone being annoyed with mines in PS1. Also... We could pack as many EMP grenades as we deemed necessary in PS1. In PS2? You have to pay resources for it.

Speaking of which, your resource argument goes for the mines as well. In fact, it's likelier to be a waste since you got so few of them, they're bound not to trigger anything.


Anyway. The biggest issue to a new player in a mmo pvp environment like this is the sheer amount of threats. And you as a design team made EACH OF THEM instant death. You don't allow players to gain situational awareness. It is something I warned about during alpha/beta and maintain is a huge problem. And a huge source of frustration. Cause if you always die instantly to anything that attempts to camp, when are you going to be able to make a counter-move?

If for a moment I agreed we should take stealth away from the infiltrator, the community would go berserk. People are invested in the game, and we can't just take a primary feature away from a class. Not to mention at the range they do most of their killing, the stealth wouldn't have a huge effect anyway.

In my opinion it was a mistake to give infiltrators anything more than a side arm. I've played infiltrator since 2004. Don't tell me it's not OP to ambush people like that with low ttk weapons.

The sunderer jammer is a neat idea, but it's not something we need right now. There are more pressing issues.

IMO it's a bad idea. Why not just start with making attrition matter?

Repairs, revives and ammunition are too readily and infinitely accessible. Defenders are numerically disadvantaged, give them a meaningful logistical advantage: nerf medics and engineers and increase the reliability on equipment terminals.


And yeah, it would have helped if the dev team hadn't given every class to every player. For one, it would have made players unique. Gameplay uniqueness and pride in what they can do makes a character mean something to a person beyond cosmetics. It also makes alternate characters with alternative challenges, (dis)advantages and therefore alternative gameplay interesting. Your setup doesn't do that and I think it bores players sooner.