SCU Shield Change on PTS - Page 4

Rbstr · 2013-04-28, 10:52 PM

No one will ever be able to take a bio lab.

Fenrys · 2013-04-29, 01:00 AM

Originally Posted by ThatGoatGuy

don't you get more XP from an SCU compromise/destruction than a normal gen?

No, all objectives that you compromise give equal rewards.

250 for the compromise
500 more if/when it explodes

Qwan · 2013-04-29, 11:38 PM

I like the new system, all we need now is a orbital strike to clear out the court yards of large bases, and PS2 will be coming along just fine.

ringring · 2013-04-30, 05:45 AM

Originally Posted by Rbstr

No one will ever be able to take a bio lab.

I'd forgotten about the Boi Lab. This is the base with the best fights .... and it centres around the fight over the shield gen.

Shogun · 2013-04-30, 06:43 AM

is it too late to completely scrap and redesign the bases?

the fights in ps1 were great! and i would prefer ps1 style bases and mechanics all the way!

the main features that made ps1 base-fights work and that are totally missing in ps2:

Bases had a ringwall with only 3 entrances (2 gates to courtyard, 1 backdoor to interior) -> easy to coordinate a defence until hotdrops or maxcrushes break the lines.

Bases had one(!) mainbuilding with all the tactical stuff inside. so no vehicle spawncamping but several methods to turn the tide other than just sending in wave after wave of brave men. (hacking terminals/radar/doors, blowing and holding down the generator, blowing the spawntubes, drain energy,etc.)

the fights had only one little flaw: often after spawns were down, the defenders left and the attackers had to wait at this base for 15 minutes until it would flip and give the xp.

so how can we make planetside 2 as fun as ps1 was, and polish it a little more to get rid of the unnecessary congoline time?

scrap the open base design, reintroduce doors, put spawnrooms where they belong - at the most secure place in the base and make the tubes themself destroyable instead of putting a scu somewhere else, where freshly spawned soldiers cannot defend it.

the locations of the spawnrooms are the biggest mistake in ps2´s design. the camping starts too early and the victims are restricted to a very small room with no chance to escape. camping happened in ps1 as well, but you needed a zerg to completely camp a spawnroom and the victims had the chance to fight back for some time until the spawnroom was flooded with enemies because the camping started at a big area and the attackers had to close the circle slowly and step by step . in ps2 you only need 2 tanks or one lib to completely lockdown a spawnroom.

the hack and hold mechanic was also a lot better than the bf capture mechanic! just standing near a capture point is stupid. having to hack a console while your team has to keep your 6 was far more thrilling!
like i said, the only flaw was the boring 15 min timer that forced you to stay at the base even when all enemies went away.
so please reintroduce the hack and hold routine, just change the timer thing. or keep the timers as they were, just change how xp is given, to allow the victorious attackers to move along while the timer is still ticking.

Fenrys · 2013-04-30, 11:23 AM

Get out of my head Shogun! I've been saying since the Tech Test that bases need to be demolished and re-built from scratch.

It really is poor design when the best way to capture any outpost or facility is to camp the spawnroom 1st, then go after any objectives once there are no more enemies outside the spawn room.

All the objectives within a base are 'cute' busywork diversions. You can take any point and blow any gen at your leisure after getting the spawn-camp lock-down in place.

Shogun · 2013-04-30, 11:39 AM

i like sucking on your mind!
so juicy!

but what you say is totally right. it is one of the main reasons i am not playing ps2 too often. the other reasons are the missing support playstyles (no real engineer, no real cloaker).
when i started a ps1 session, i could literally play it for up to 24 hours without losing interest or fun. ps2 can´t hold me for more than 2 hours.
that´s very sad, because i bought a high end rig only for this game and now i don´t even use it very much. if ps1 was still populated, i would prefer this game over ps2 a lot.

wasdie · 2013-04-30, 11:43 AM

That's a good idea, but bases need more than just one area to focus on. If they are removing the SCU shield gen they need to add something to replace it.

I like the fact you cannot easily just end a defense, but I would like something for small, coordinated groups to focus on that isn't just a shield gen.

How about a hackable server for turret control?

The problem with pure Planetside 1 base design is that those bases were designed for a maximum of 400 players per cont. Now you can have 650 per side. It's a completely different animal now. PS1 bases would be impossible to capture in PS2.

I would love more areas for dedicated infantry fighting like basements and whatnot, but they cannot go back to the chokepoint laden PS1 base design. It wouldn't work. They know that. This is why they are redoing a lot of the bases on Indar to make them more defendable without making them complete nightmares to attack.

The bases on Esamir and Amerish are much better, though even those could use improvements.

Shogun · 2013-04-30, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by wasdie

The problem with pure Planetside 1 base design is that those bases were designed for a maximum of 400 players per cont. Now you can have 650 per side. It's a completely different animal now. PS1 bases would be impossible to capture in PS2.

that´s a point i would like to see proven on testserver.

if the slightly higher number of players really proves as a problem, add another gate or backdoor, or widen up the chokepoints a little.

but the actual designs have proven to deliver far less fun than the old designs did.

we know that there were ps1 style bases at some point during developement of ps2 (when it was still called ps next). so i wonder if it is possible to drop one of those old style bases on one of the conts on testserver. then call out a playtest and trigger an alert that demands to take this particular base and collect feedback.

if feedback is positive, replace some or most of the ps2 bases and test again, maybe in conjunction with some alternative capturemechanics. if feedback is still positive, go to liveserver.

ItZMuRdA · 2013-04-30, 12:13 PM

Really love this change personally. I've been preaching to remove the SCU altogether for awhile -- I hate seeing fights end so quickly, especially when the offense still has to sit around for 8 minutes to cap the base.

Some may say it should just be over with sooner, but I don't think that's the best model either. I think this is one of the first steps in a better design, and it may require more changes to really work at its fullest potential, but I like it a lot better than the way things work currently on live. I'm a firm believer in battles being able to rage on until the moment the base turns -- not in favor of spawn camping, but not in favor of spawn destroying instantly and not fighting whatsoever either.

wasdie · 2013-04-30, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Shogun

that´s a point i would like to see proven on testserver.

if the slightly higher number of players really proves as a problem, add another gate or backdoor, or widen up the chokepoints a little.

but the actual designs have proven to deliver far less fun than the old designs did.

we know that there were ps1 style bases at some point during developement of ps2 (when it was still called ps next). so i wonder if it is possible to drop one of those old style bases on one of the conts on testserver. then call out a playtest and trigger an alert that demands to take this particular base and collect feedback.

if feedback is positive, replace some or most of the ps2 bases and test again, maybe in conjunction with some alternative capturemechanics. if feedback is still positive, go to liveserver.

They won't just plop those old base designing in the game (for a lot of tech reasons). They also cannot just whip up new bases and throw them on the server for testing.

What they are doing is fine. They are adding a lot of logical additions to the bases without ruining them. They are taking baby steps instead of potentially wasting several months of precious dev time for something that could just blow up in their faces.

I would rather they just keep adding stuff to the current bases and building better continents than scrapping old stuff and starting from scratch.

I personally don't mind the bases in PS2 overall. There are some, mostly on Indar, which need work but they've been improving since the game has launched. The only issue I have right now is how they are actually removing small-scale objectives and focusing more on pure zerging. That's why I would love to see other objectives in taking a base. Right now zerging a few gens isn't enough.

Shogun · 2013-04-30, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by wasdie

I personally don't mind the bases in PS2 overall. There are some, mostly on Indar, which need work but they've been improving since the game has launched. The only issue I have right now is how they are actually removing small-scale objectives and focusing more on pure zerging. That's why I would love to see other objectives in taking a base. Right now zerging a few gens isn't enough.

the bases are improving since launch, that´s right. but they are still far from being as good fights as the old bases were.
i would really like to see one old style base on testserver to check if it doesn´t instantly increase battlefun way over the new bases.

i am not saying i want every base to be scrapped. but if old bases work and generate better gameplay, there should really be some on every cont.
why scrap even more dev time while trying to make the new designs better, when the old design was almost flawless?

the only base i consider fun to fight at is the biolab. and that´s because it has some traditional chokepoints that can be defended. those are more chokepoints than ps1 bases had, but the concept is the same! vehicles are kept outside, spawnpoints are safe in the middle of the building, several gates need to be defended.

wasdie · 2013-04-30, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by Shogun

the bases are improving since launch, that´s right. but they are still far from being as good fights as the old bases were.
i would really like to see one old style base on testserver to check if it doesn´t instantly increase battlefun way over the new bases.

i am not saying i want every base to be scrapped. but if old bases work and generate better gameplay, there should really be some on every cont.
why scrap even more dev time while trying to make the new designs better, when the old design was almost flawless?

the only base i consider fun to fight at is the biolab. and that´s because it has some traditional chokepoints that can be defended. those are more chokepoints than ps1 bases had, but the concept is the same! vehicles are kept outside, spawnpoints are safe in the middle of the building, several gates need to be defended.

The old design wasn't flawless though. In your opinion it may have been but they really weren't. Not everybody enjoyed those prolonged base fights and the incredible amount of spam down every hallway.

They were better in a few ways and worse in a few others.

Biolabs are my least favorite to fight because it doesn't feel like a real fight, just a zerg grind. It's just a way to pad stats. Too many players, too many chokepoints, too much spam. I much prefer more active defenses of well made amp stations and tech plants. These have gotten better in time and with the lattice system I feel the bases become even more logical to defend as the enemy comes from more predictable routes.

The battle flow changes really improved every aspect of the game in my opinion. I feel like I'm actually contributing to a larger fight, rather than just zerging along and killing everything that gets in my way until we overrun a control point.

Adding more objectives in a base would be even better. Reasons to hold sections of a base that have a positive effect on your faction's ability to fight in the region would make every player's impact on the battlefield way more profound than it is now.

Really the only thing the biolab gets right is it is the only base with consistent flow. Each biolab is roughly the same thus easy to defend. Tech plants have improved greatly with the addition of shield generators, but the layouts are still not the greatest. Amp stations are just poor because there are too many ways to get into the shield rooms. They aren't really dependable against a zerg given their position.

Of course with amp stations and tech plants the layouts change a bit more. Each is a bit more or less defendable depending on a number of factors. I like Tawrich Tech plant because the geometry funnels vehicles well and there are logical areas you want to control to push in. I hate Zurvan amp station because it's the exact opposite of Tawrich in that you can attack from any angle.

Rahabib · 2013-04-30, 01:00 PM

Originally Posted by Falcon_br

My idea was to never allow to overload generators before the base had influence form nearby bases.
There is nothing worst to lose a base and when you are going to defende the bio lab behind it, there is no spawn point on that base, the SCU is gone long before the previous fight happened!
I also think my idea is better them the new one, because it is not uncommon now, since they increase the generator exp granted, to see people flying from base to base blowing down all generator they can find and getting a great amount of xp for that.

I think this could work. If stations "linked" they could just have doors that don't go down until the previous linking station(s) is/are captured first. I didnt play PS1 but this is kinda how it worked in Unreal Tournament.

wasdie · 2013-04-30, 01:02 PM

Originally Posted by Rahabib

I think this could work. If stations "linked" they could just have doors that don't go down until the previous linking station(s) is/are captured first. I didnt play PS1 but this is kinda how it worked in Unreal Tournament.

Actually they've said that they are working on the tech to prevent a faction from overloading the generators on a disconnected hex. You have to have a hex connected to be able to attack the enemy. I also believe you need to have full control of your control point before you can attack an enemy from that hex.

So if you're on the defense, you cannot just counter attack mid-fight and start flipping their adjacent hex. You have to drive them off of your hex fully first.

Better flow overall.