Planetside 2 - advancing in the battle

Novice bot · 2012-07-28, 06:00 AM

After seeing the videos, having the knowledge of how the game play will generally look. One thing has started to bother me, and that's how the attacking force advances in the battle field. Currently, my worry is that the front line is not clear, and that cases of trench war won't exist. Naturally, there hasn't been enough people playing Planetside 2 to set up a proper defense line, and Planetside 1 isn't comparable due to the fact how capturing bases works in planetside 2 in comparison to its forefather. But still, the concept seems to support this all out three-way team death match inside an base owned by one of the tree factions, so its double/triple domination in my eyes.
As a person who plays two types of FPS games, pure twitch arcade FPS games, and "war simulations" (however the term is vague, but you get my point).

My favorite example of why I love trench war comes from Red Orchestra, however I do not recall the maps name I will explain the map in a simple way.
The defenders are in the east on a hill, their capturable locations are all lined up vertically from south to north, and the whole hill is a trench / bunker area. The attacking force spawns at west, at the base of the hill in a forest. After the forests edge there is a road in middle of the map, and from the road towards east there are barely any rocks / other terrain to use as cover.
The whole core of the maps gameplay became simple; it was all out trench war, opposing side lined up at the forests edge, where as the defenders formed an defensive line at the trenches. It was next to impossible for attackers to get over the road, up the hill and to the trenches, but if the defensive line did not hold, and one of the three capturable locations was lost, it only became a matter of time when the rest of the three locations were captured. Naturally, RO was not an FPSMMO with static maps, it had a map timer, and the only way for defenders to win was to hold the all three for long enough. This only did not happen at public game scenarios, but on the competitive side of the game, and to some it was considered the most "interesting, difficult and strategy dynamic map in the game". I am part of that some.

Trench war on paper may sound boring, but when the actual battle is played through, its extremely fun (and sometimes frustrating concept), but it would definitely work in Planetside 2's setting. However, it requires the point that defenders clearly would have easy counters to people charging, and that the "camper" would have a clear advantage over the guy that rushes in. I am aware that a lot of former PS1 players do not want proning in the game, yet prone would actually be one of the viable solutions towards creating the battlefields more front-line / trench type, instead of the double domination death match. In addition, what worries me is that if one guy gets close enough, lets say 50 meters away from the base behind a rock, he could just sit there, and people could respawn with drop pods and suddenly, they are inside the base. Naturally the battle is more dynamic with air and ground combat, but I'd wish to see one decisive point being in base; When assaulting an enemy base, actually getting inside the enemy base would be difficult, but once breached, the defenders would have one hell of a time to keep the base theirs anymore. By this I simply mean that holding your presence as an attacker inside the enemy base would be difficult, if the opposing force still had their shit up.

TL;DR Hopefully there will be mechanics that support trench war and clear front lines, getting inside the enemy base in the first place would be difficult, but once in, clear advantage over defender is gained.