Boundaries

[Hmr85]

We need some Higby love in this thread imo. Hopefully he could help clear up some of this.

[Shade Millith]

Originally Posted by Notser

Think battlefield error message when you leave the hex grids. You will die if you're out of bounds for 10 seconds.

Hmm, while preferable that I can fly off over the water, I'm just glad my worst case scenario wasn't right.

[Kaw]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Totalbiscuit asked Higby about spec ops teams flying galaxies over the ocean in PS1, would we still be able to do that. At first Higby was like yes but then he threw in something about how he'd prefer we flew over fights or something.

It's making us wonder if we're going to be hit with restrictive flanking/sneaking despite the fact that flanking/sneaking is supposed to be a HUGE benefit of a large scale map game.

I'm still of the opinion that sneaking behind enemy lines shouldn't be as trivial as flying a mile over the ocean and looping around. In theory, the "front" in a battle will span four kilometers or more. Surely an outfit can find a point where they can sneak past. If in beta it turns out that every inch of the front is covered in anti-air and that sneaking past is literally impossible, I think the dev team would be more receptive to easing the boundary restrictions.

I think outfits trying to fly their Gals over the front with their lights off at night has a whole lot more potential to be fun than trivial flights over nothing. Half the fun of being behind enemy lines should be the difficulty it took in getting there.

[Notser]

Originally Posted by Bags

There's no 10 second time limit. Why did you link that? That just shows there's an out of bounds.

I swear in some video he flies into it and dies, but if it isn't in a video then I hope it is shown in full at e3 from some perspective. But at 1 min in that video it literally looks exactly like battlefields soft boundary, little warning that death will follow shortly if you don't return to the battlefield.

[Bags]

At least your whole damn screen doesn't turn black and white.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by Kaw

I'm still of the opinion that sneaking behind enemy lines shouldn't be as trivial as flying a mile over the ocean and looping around. In theory, the "front" in a battle will span four kilometers or more. Surely an outfit can find a point where they can sneak past. If in beta it turns out that every inch of the front is covered in anti-air and that sneaking past is literally impossible, I think the dev team would be more receptive to easing the boundary restrictions.

I think outfits trying to fly their Gals over the front with their lights off at night has a whole lot more potential to be fun than trivial flights over nothing. Half the fun of being behind enemy lines should be the difficulty it took in getting there.

I think it defeats the very purpose of going behind the lines. Even if the front isn't covered by AA, you're forced to overfly people who will see and report you, and I just think it defeats the very thing that a large scale MMOFPS is supposed to provide.

In any event, this is such a big deal to Battlefield players due to how long we've been oppressed by BF3 and BC2 meatgrinding and castrated flanking that's partially due to restrictive out of bounds, I am willing forego any jump pad or TTK issues and crusade solely on this point alone.

[Hmr85]

Originally Posted by Bags

At least your whole damn screen doesn't turn black and white.

Yeah, but it is still annoying as hell.

[Zulthus]

Yeah, I seriously don't get this. He says it's to keep players in the fighting area, but do you really think that everyone on the continent will be playing out in the beach if you remove the barrier? We NEED this gone. It is the absolute best way to get the drop on an enemy. Flying over them doesn't work for spec-ops, someone will see you and report you all over chat.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by HtSgtMAD

we would always rally over the water, it was the best place to not get get burned while staging

Coordinate better. Stage in friendly territory, and fly with escorts. Meeting safely right outside your target is lame.

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Coordinate better. Stage in friendly territory, and fly with escorts. Meeting safely right outside your target is lame.

How is it lame? It's a valid tactic and if the enemies don't see you it's their problem. This is a sandbox MMO and we should be able to do as we please without stupid restrictions.

[Kaw]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

I think it defeats the very purpose of going behind the lines. Even if the front isn't covered by AA, you're forced to overfly people who will see and report you, and I just think it defeats the very thing that a large scale MMOFPS is supposed to provide.

My point is that the front will be miles long and almost a mile high, and it isn't like there will be "sentries" at every inch. People, like always, will gravitate to the big fights. It sounds like yall are advocating a system that lets you avoid all player contact until it is on your terms. If anything goes against what an MMOFPS is supposed to provide that is it.

Even if you do fly over an isolated player or two they will have very little ability to get their teammates to ditch their fights and organize a defense. And on the off chance that you fly over somebody who actually has the ability to shut you down, like another outfit perhaps, then your risky tactic that shouldn't always work didn't work this time.

[Zulthus]

Originally Posted by Kaw

Even if you do fly over an isolated player or two they will have very little ability to get their teammates to ditch their fights and organize a defense. And on the off chance that you fly over somebody who actually has the ability to shut you down, like another outfit perhaps, then your risky tactic that shouldn't always work didn't work this time.

Doesn't matter if they can get to their buddies, all they have to do is mash chat and type in "INCOMING GAL" and people at the base they're trying to attack will be ready for it.

[kaffis]

Originally Posted by Stardouser

Technically that's not exactly true, fighter patrols can find you out over the water.

...

How else are we going to have airfights of such importance as shooting down a 2-3 galaxy spec ops team in a dogfight if there's nothing but forced overflights of ground AA?

Fighter patrols over water are boring. Just like defending bases not immediately under assault is boring. That's not what the design goal for PS2 is about -- reducing downtime and getting into the action. Anything else just turns "special operations" into a game of who has the higher boredom threshold -- the passengers in the twenty-minute galaxy ride, or the fighters "patrolling" empty space.

Furthermore, who said anything about forced overflights of ground AA? Scout better, find holes in the defense. In an 8x8km island, there's bound to be something like 6 kilometers of front lines. 2000 people won't pack that tightly around the front.

Originally Posted by Kaw

I'm still of the opinion that sneaking behind enemy lines shouldn't be as trivial as flying a mile over the ocean and looping around. In theory, the "front" in a battle will span four kilometers or more. Surely an outfit can find a point where they can sneak past. If in beta it turns out that every inch of the front is covered in anti-air and that sneaking past is literally impossible, I think the dev team would be more receptive to easing the boundary restrictions.

I think outfits trying to fly their Gals over the front with their lights off at night has a whole lot more potential to be fun than trivial flights over nothing. Half the fun of being behind enemy lines should be the difficulty it took in getting there.

This entire post is spot on.

[IMMentat]

The worrying thing for me is that the boundary was only 2-3 seconds flight time beyond one leg of a capturable resource (BioLab).
Even a casual flier on a strafing run could have hit that no-go area and get fed a nasty message, an unplesant thing to happen while flying solo let alone when running from an enemy base after unlkeashing pain on many people with angry AA support.

Every map needs an edge, but please position it sensibly, don't threaten a player for stumbling onto an area thats not obviously somwehere they shouldn't be.
The minimap on TB's vid showed no indication that an arbitrarily decided line had been drawn in invisible ink was on the map waiting to threaten and/or kill you.

So in short, keep em fair and don't let the map edges interfere with alternate approach angles for "coastal" bases.

[Stardouser]

Originally Posted by kaffis

Fighter patrols over water are boring. Just like defending bases not immediately under assault is boring. That's not what the design goal for PS2 is about -- reducing downtime and getting into the action. Anything else just turns "special operations" into a game of who has the higher boredom threshold -- the passengers in the twenty-minute galaxy ride, or the fighters "patrolling" empty space.

Furthermore, who said anything about forced overflights of ground AA? Scout better, find holes in the defense. In an 8x8km island, there's bound to be something like 6 kilometers of front lines. 2000 people won't pack that tightly around the front.
This entire post is spot on.

Boring is subjective. What you call reducing downtime I call funneling people into meatgrinding and tunnel combat. The hex system will prevent quick backhack/backcapping and probably also give facility warnings, so running fighter patrols isn't required. Some people might actually want to do it anyway, and so long as it's not mandatory, it shouldn't be a problem.