Bring back Galaxy AMS, as it was in beta, because it was fun.

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by robocpf1

spawn beacons are amazing when you upgrade them. You can spawn at a fully upgraded beacon once every 60 seconds. It doesn't allow you to resupply, obviously, but that's still a very powerful and incredibly versatile spawn alternative to the AMS.

It's not half as fun or cool though and it doesn't make Hamma giggle. :P

Originally Posted by Reaver

The only thing removing g-ams accomplished was making infiltrators useful outside of sniping. Instead of landing and deploying a gal you just hack a vehicle terminal and pull a sunderer, nothing really changed at all.

So true.

Also would like to add that "influence" is a pretty silly system. Losing a location even when you're holding a capture point is pretty dumb game design. The attackers aren't winning, so why should they win? Makes no sense.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

You know what, that was really the most fun time I had in PS2. Lots of fights in different locations, from tiny to huge, all over the map. Something for everyone and it gave a fun vehicle a big, fun role to play.

Removing the Galaxy AMS and creating the adjacency system really sucked the life out of the game and I feel it did so for the wrong reason. What was the reason? They made adjacency to solve the annoyance of people taking hexes almost instantly and then leaving them. They called this whack-a-mole and they solved it completely the wrong way.

What they did was add adjacency and remove the Galaxy AMS, some strategy, nifty human randomness, options, and most of the small battles (despite the fact that many people prefer small battles). What they should have done instead is actually really simple:

1. Require 3 to 6 people for an Outpost capture point to be captured, thus solving the truly annoying "one dude keeps capping this when we leave" issue. It also makes capturing a point a strategic event involving positioning, situational awareness, and communication - exactly what small outfits keep saying they wish they needed to do in PS2!

2. Put a 5 to 10 minute lockout timer on all Outpost captures, such that once you cap it, it's yours and can't be taken for that amount of time. Now Higby called lockout timers "hamfisted" when I suggested this in beta (despite the fact that they actually DID THIS in beta), but if the ham fits... Truth be told, this would work fine and it suits the way game is supposed to be played.

Bringing back the Galaxy AMS and removing adjacency will give people the ability and the reason to spread out and use the whole map for fighting. That's a good thing in massively multiplayer online FPS game, especially one that tends to play very poorly when too many people are fighting in one area.


Ps. Also posted on the SOE foruns here.

1. Oh yea because no one is able to actual check that there are no one there and clear the base out?

2. We had lockout timers on bases in beta but those lockout timers where not long enough for them to do anything. If I remember right it was 5 min. But the consensuses was that they had to be 15-20 min long for them to have any effect. Probably need 60 min for it to have the desired effect yuo're after, so SOE decided to remove them instead. And trust me 5-10 min is way too short time for them to have any real effect at all you wont even have the time to regroup in 5 min. The fight will just continue on as nothing happened.

And your belief that Galaxy AMS is going to make players to spread out more was also proven wrong in the beta. All the Galaxy AMS does is rendering all ground vehicles close to totally useless.

Trust me the AMS from the galaxy was removed for a very good reason.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Also would like to add that "influence" is a pretty silly system. Losing a location even when you're holding a capture point is pretty dumb game design. The attackers aren't winning, so why should they win? Makes no sense.

What are you talking about? You think it's silly that you can loose lets say The Crown when you're fighting at Zurvan Amp station? Do you even know how the influence game mech even work or what it does?

Or do you mean if the attackers hold B and C but defenders hold A they still loose? IE influencing two capture points will win over some one that only influence one? Yea that's really silly

[psijaka]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Also would like to add that "influence" is a pretty silly system. Losing a location even when you're holding a capture point is pretty dumb game design. The attackers aren't winning, so why should they win? Makes no sense.

"Influence" is a great system, adds a degree of strategy to the game. For example, NC were attacking the Biolab near the TR Indar warpgate last night; I didn't join the push but took a Sunderer to the nearby minor base and ghost hacked it - result - increased our influence over the Biolab.

Your example does make sense; seems right to me that you cannot capture a base to utilise it's resources if you have no link to your warpgate enabling your empire to actually use those resources.

Edit - Or as Sunrock says, do you mean losing when the attackers hold more points than the defenders? Either way, makes sense and works very well.

Edit 2 - in fact it is possible to lose a base even if you hold 2 points and the enemy only holds one. Happened about a week ago at Regent's Rock; I was involved in a minor push into VS territory, but we were out in a salient, surrounded on 3 sides; our influence was so weak that this is exactly what happened and our attack failed. I've no problem with this; a push deep into enemy territory should be a risky move. Time to regroup at Tawrich!

Edit 3 - I would like to see the Galaxy made a bit more useful; something like a short duration squad only AMS could fit nicely into the game. It needs to be a bit more than a one use flying bus.

[Mox]

No. Spawning in the gal is bad for the game flow. But it would be nice to transport vecs (e.g. Sundies).

[robocpf1]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

It's not half as fun or cool though and it doesn't make Hamma giggle. :P

You and I may disagree on this point. Being shot out of an orbital shuttle in a small pod that you can maneuver seems a WAY COOLER alternative to jumping out of an airplane.

And, I can fit the beacon in my pocket!

[basti]

Gal AMS was indeed fun to fly, i loved it.

But the effect it had on the metagame was cruel. It pretty much destroyed all attempts to have a frontline, as you could just pass whatever defence was set up and deploy a gal wherever you wanted.


It shall not return.

[Tatwi]

Originally Posted by basti

Gal AMS was indeed fun to fly, i loved it.

But the effect it had on the metagame was cruel. It pretty much destroyed all attempts to have a frontline, as you could just pass whatever defence was set up and deploy a gal wherever you wanted.


It shall not return.

[psijaka]

Originally Posted by Tatwi

Yeah but Gandalf is defending a narrow stone bridge, not a several km wide, 1km high airspace.

[Boomzor]

Clearly, that galaxy does what galaxies do best... ignore the terrain choke points and circumvent any ground defense.

[Sifer2]

Originally Posted by basti

Gal AMS was indeed fun to fly, i loved it.

But the effect it had on the metagame was cruel. It pretty much destroyed all attempts to have a frontline, as you could just pass whatever defence was set up and deploy a gal wherever you wanted.


It shall not return.

People say this but it simply wasn't true. Galaxies are huge, and easy to spot. Every aircraft in the sky, and every AA on the ground guns for them. It was actually often harder to get an AMS into position when it was the Gal than it is for the Sundy. All removing Gal AMS really did was make Towers/Biolabs much harder to assault. It used to be awesome to land on a Biolab landing pad, deploy an have people taking cover under it's shield wings, and a huge fight for the pad ensues. Now it's some awkward game of float up the lift, throw grenade, die an repeat.

You could argue it led to more ninja capping of outposts. But those are still ninja capped all the time now. Since anyone can pull an ESF, and just fly right to them anyway.

[Figment]

Sifer, you talk about this fight for the airpad, but you ignore that it meant there was no fight over the courtyard nor the outposts.

That the Bio Labs have silly elevators and teleporters is a separate problem. But towers wern't hard to take and certainly didn't need to be made easier. Harder in fact. The Crown being the exception due to the threeway occuring there that makes it impossible to approach because two sides prevent any advance of another side.

The Crown is one of those bases that should have a single capture point and instant flipping, if not a very short timer.