Spawns DESPERATELY need a redesign...

[Tom Peters]

Originally Posted by Obstruction

i am not sure why figment's posts are personally directed but i think it detracts from the conversation and make him look like a fucking prick.



farming tubes or whatever version of it you want, spawn building, whatever, sucks. the best and most creative spawns for any maneuver are player positioned. the reliance on the sunderer and the resource/timer cost involved is the bottleneck. my evidence is the ingenious use of beacons and squad deploy rotation employed by some groups.

attack by ESF is only a concern if people don't put flak around the AMS, or can't keep their own fighters in the air.

so maybe that's a concern for really bad noobs, i guess.

Well you do make yourself sound pretty dumb, what with the lack of sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, etc. Just reading your posts is a challenge.

And why anyone would oppose going back to the old spawn style of Planetside 1 just baffles me.

[Obstruction]

lack of sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, etc.

what?

why anyone would oppose going back to the old spawn style of Planetside 1 just baffles me.

i don't really care about Planetside (1) one way or another. the thread is about spawn room camping and redesigning bases to keep it from being:

1. an all forces battle for a single location
2. 5-10 minutes of babysitting a spawn shield

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Obstruction

i am not sure why figment's posts are personally directed but i think it detracts from the conversation and makes him look like a fucking prick.

You're the one making a design suggestion which I'm responding to, so I'm simply pointing out where you make a huge number of oversights.

What's that got to do with being a prick, would seem you're simply not willing to cope with critique on your ideas and argumentation?

farming tubes or whatever version of it you want, spawn building, whatever, sucks.

Sure. So either:

- prevent farming
- discourage farming
- make farming unrewarding
- or make it very hard to do.

the best and most creative spawns for any maneuver are player positioned.

Questionable claim. The worst and least creative spawns are as well and with interference radius frequently prevent proper placement by other players to the point people TK AMSes on some servers...

the reliance on the sunderer, and the resource/timer cost involved, is the bottleneck. my evidence is the ingenious use of beacons and squad deploy rotation employed by some groups.

Great. Yet again you overlook the obvious:

To place that beacon, you have to be there first. To place that AMS, you have to start somewhere first.

No solid spawns : spawn at only places where there are solid spawns. Warpgate.

Warpgate spawn? Drive back with AMS to other side of the continent...

By then, you'd have lost four bases.


And uhm... have you ever considered that ESFs and Harassers and what not can go ahead to the next base to tactically kill any backup AMSes and spawn beacons that were placed before anyone had a chance to use it?

Or do you want to suggest you will need to have people just sit and wait in backup bases twiddling their thumbs just to see if a single ESF or Lib or guy with C4 might come around before the other fight is over?

You honestly think people would do that?

Have you ever even sat and observed, just observed for a long time, how people play in game?

attack by ESF is only a concern if people don't put flak around the AMS, or can't keep their own fighters in the air.

Or if you're understaffed and can't afford to have sufficient people in AA, because you also need AV and AI at the same time - which means you should be able to prioritise to sustain a fight, because otherwise, it's simply over. There's no magical teleporting to terms and capacity to switch between AA and AV that's fast enough to keep up with the TTK in this game.

If you don't comprehend that, you're simply either not open to seeing it, or you're just not seeing it.

A solid spawnbuilding doesn't require a zerg to maintain its spawnfunctionality against a zerg, a field AMS does.

so maybe that's a concern for really bad noobs, i guess.

So maybe you're resorting to insults now, which is reserved for bad debaters, I guess.

This is a concern for small teams and solo players more so than it is for the derpiest of zergs. You want to insult them, fine, but don't ever design anything for a varied group of people ever again.




Now, if you would suggest that there'd be only droppods instead of spawns at a base, that's been suggested before, but it will just be more farming the people landing disoriented all over the place with no coherency to it.

[Obstruction]

it's not a contest, nor is it a debate.

a suggestion related to the original post's topic was posted.

This is a concern for small teams and solo players more so than it is for the derpiest of zergs. You want to insult them, fine, but don't ever design anything for a varied group of people ever again.

what?

Or if you're understaffed and can't afford to have sufficient people in AA, because you also need AV and AI at the same time - which means you should be able to prioritize to sustain a fight, because otherwise, it's simply over.

i'm pretty sure being unable to respond to a threat is a lose condition.

i'm trying my best to understand what is being said. it's true that i didn't list out changes to the spawn mechanics that would help facilitate player coordinated spawning, but that doesn't mean i support whatever it is then claimed that i support.

the truth is i just didn't want to be that boring.

there are problems with the spawn mechanic beyond the farming huts/tubes/whatever. but it goes beyond the scope of my suggestion. i also think most of what was said against that suggestion goes beyond that scope as well.

it was well said here:

they take and use AMSes where they are going to get exp from them, not where they will get them some time in the future, maybe.

which means that players can consistently rely on people attempting to move a cheap, accessible, mobile spawn to the front lines.

Warpgate spawn? Drive back with AMS to other side of the continent...

or from the nearest linked based that has an AMS installed. i guess people could go ahead and try to kill it ahead of the next fight, but people love that kind of covert action. being that group and/or hunting those groups sounds like it would be perfect for small teams that either don't like large battles or want to contribute by reinforcing and supporting supply lines.

honestly it sounds like a good job for a liberator or esf team, to kill those kinds of shitheads and then drop a fresh set of spawns in secure places. if it's really that big of a deal you can make something flash or beep so that people see when those kind of advance teams start to strike.

even if they did get ALL the spawns back to the warpgate i don't think that's really that bad. plenty of games have much harsher penalties for death with no nearby rez. and there's lots of ways to respawn and rez without going to a spawn room. anything missing, for example access to infantry terminals, could be folded into new class abilities, attachments to vehicles, whatever. again, it's really outside the scope of the suggestion. i just left that in with "give designers freedom from designing around the problems presented by the spawn building."

finally, if there is incentive to get AMS units into bases then people will do that. people do much more than that to get a good 500 or 1000 experience, i promise you that.

and besides, if people need to respawn all the way back at warpgate to regroup i don't think it's that bad, and in fact creates opportunity to expand the role of sunderer and galaxy as valued troop transport assets. the fact is that nobody likes to sit in a galaxy waiting for minutes to fill up and leave because 1. the pilot usually sucks 2. they can just spawn hop or grab any vehicle and get there faster.

all of that said, i should reiterate that i think spawning would benefit greatly by having the AMS divorced from the sunderer unit. it's slow, expensive, painfully obvious from the air, and worth a lucrative experience value. it's also easily TK'd, which is just a really bad design decision all by itself. i understand friendly fire to some extent and it's something we either hate or don't (again, beyond the scope of the discussion) but the fact is that it's simple to disallow damage to a unit based on who is doing the damage. so simple it doesn't really need mentioning.

would seem you're simply not willing to cope with critique on your ideas and argumentation?

i think this is really out of place. there's nothing to suggest this at all.

but i guess go ahead and win the internet or whatever.

[bpostal]

Nobody gets to win the internet until these spawns are unfucked.
With that said, please continue.
Sincerely,
The self-proclaimed El Presidente O' the Internet.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by ringring

I think that's a new definition of 'very easily fixed'.

It needs a complete overhaul of bases, especially the major bases. And I'd agree I've been wanting that to happen almost from the moment I could walk and became embarrassed using the potty among guests.

Don't kid yourself, it's a major change. I means hiding the spawns in a hard to reach area that forces you to fight your way there.

Indeed, it was why I was pushing so hard for what we have NOW, I knew we needed something in the interm to keep the game afloat while they go back and overhaul.

Originally Posted by ringring

What is wrong with camping spawns? Serious question. I don't see any particular problem with that.

Where there is a problem is in the phase leading up to that.

The camping of spawns is simply an indication that the fight is over and it's the 'fight is over' part that is the problem.

If you look back to PS1 bases the spawns were deep within the bases which meant that there would be a (or often would be) a severe fight to the spawns. It doesn't happen in PS2.

Yeah, this is what has me convinced Planetside 2 was laid out by an RPG Art Design Team and not an FPS Map Building team; Random scattered buildings do not a shooter map make!

Hopefully we'll get to see those purpose built Bases on Esamir soon, so we can have less "quaint micro-towns" and more "Fortresses of Military importance."

Originally Posted by TartarosCZ

It's actually funny when you think of how they made bases that look gigantic from the outside, yet are actually smaller inside - maybe not in square meters but definitely in their infantry combat utilization.

In Ps1 there were corridors and stairs where you had to bitterly fight over each meter of progress, while in PS2 one LA can fly over the whole thing in five seconds.
Boredom ensues.

I know right, these Major Base builds are all just GIANT SHEDS!!!

You can't have that shit in shooter, it's just turns the game into whose spots the other guy first...

Originally Posted by AThreatToYou

If they put spawns underground, ideally, the hallways would be much larger.
Multiple small entrances on the same face of an exit would block enemies from bringing vehicles inside.
The doors would have a back-face and horizontal exits to block vehicles from shooting into the spawns. This way the underground tunnel does not need to be curved or turned in the case of outposts and smaller bases.
[Back-face: The doors have a wall immediately behind them that blocks fire. This would be inside the tunnel.]
The tunnel would be rather large. Large enough for a LA's jetpack to be of some use; perhaps some air ventilation ducts that only LA's can escape from or flank enemies inside the tunnel with.

But that would require building things underground, which they're not doing...

...For no god damn reason apparently, seeing as they WERE able to get tunnels put in.

Wonder if Smed was the one behind this decision as well...

[camycamera]

i made a thread like this on the official forums a while back and people simply said "quit whining, there is nothing you can do about it."

guess they never played PS1 then :P

[Qwan]

Trollers will call this whining but its not whining, if you pay for a product you expect to get a good quality item correct. Whining is complaining that you dont get enough kills because you dont know how to play a FPS. Complaining is when a product that you ordered isnt working properly. I feel that this thread and many like it, or just actual players that have a problem with the product that they purchased. I mean currently I dont like the way the spawn is set up, and there are many others who share the same Idea as me. So we express our dislikes or concerns and hope that the Dev's are reading and work with us to make our experience of there product more enjoyable. Now for me yes I hate the spawn set up, but I have found ways around this, spawn at another locations, or get a group together and push out that damn spawn room using percussion, and smoke grenades. But as a sub, and a big time PS fan I hope they do decide to bring the spawn rooms in, and if not that try it on one base and see what happens. But I will admit this I have noticed that alot of players are having large battles at the BIO labs of late. This could be because the spawns are inside and that while fighting for a bio lab it has a more urban combat feel. I really hope they take our suggetions into consideration.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Obstruction

what?

You insult people for being morons and noobs and whatever simply because they're outnumbered.

The problem is you don't even see that because you're too focused on big zerg combat to realise that small teams cannot protect their AMSes in the same way you a platoon or more people would.

In other words, you would completely remove the ability of small teams to even try to fight at bases by making them 100% reliant on spawn beacons and AMSes, because any opposition would remove those toute suite.

It's pretty simple. Why can't you see that?

i'm pretty sure being unable to respond to a threat is a lose condition.

I'm pretty sure being unable to respond means there's no fight, no game, nothing worth playing.

I hope you also know when a situation appears lost but isn't, that what seems hopeless might be salvageable, what the strategic value of stalling is (in relation to the fight ahead) and what challenges can be overcome. I'm quite sure a lot of people would never try to tackle 7 to 1 odds because they already decreed to themselves it's a loss, even though win conditions can exist that allow someone to pull it off.

Like having an instant resecure on a CC instead of having to hold it: if the odds are 7 to 1 numerically and the 7 are holding, all it takes is a temporary loss of control or a temporary window of distracton, a hole in the defenses of the seven, to resecure by the smaller group.

If there's at any time a default "lost" or "win" situation, there's no actual game to play (anymore), so why would one play? Is that what you want? That people forego playing?

Because that's the same solution offered by people excusing spawncamping since alpha: "you noob, it's fine: you've clearly lost, so move on". That's not the purpose of the spawnroom and something that can only be said by people that don't really understand the purpose of a spawnroom in relation to a fight being ensured so there's a game to play till the very end of the base switching sides.

i'm trying my best to understand what is being said. it's true that i didn't list out changes to the spawn mechanics that would help facilitate player coordinated spawning, but that doesn't mean i support whatever it is then claimed that i support.

the truth is i just didn't want to be that boring.

there are problems with the spawn mechanic beyond the farming huts/tubes/whatever. but it goes beyond the scope of my suggestion. i also think most of what was said against that suggestion goes beyond that scope as well.

it was well said here:



which means that players can consistently rely on people attempting to move a cheap, accessible, mobile spawn to the front lines.

THEY TAKE IT TO THE FRONT LINE, not to a FALL BACK LOCATION. :/ It doesn't mean at all there's a consistent presence of AMSes, it only means people will try to get AMSes to positions where AT THAT TIME they may earn the most experience points. Most people cannot and do not prepare for an uncertain future, especially if it relies on the outcome of the frontline.

Meaning that if a fight is lost and people are pushed back, they won't gradually fall back because there's a guaranteed point behind them to fall back to. Instead the defensive effort would just collapse.


The other thing that was said was that you need a starting point. You don't seem to acknowledge that you have to have a base of operations to work from. You don't seem to quite understand that if the frontline is breached you need to fall back and must be guaranteed to be able to do. In THAT strategic sense, AMSes are not a guarantee. Complete reliance on them would even make them a liability.

or from the nearest linked based that has an AMS installed. i guess people could go ahead and try to kill it ahead of the next fight, but people love that kind of covert action. being that group and/or hunting those groups sounds like it would be perfect for small teams that either don't like large battles or want to contribute by reinforcing and supporting supply lines.

Yet nobody will sit around for hours in empty bases doing a "job" when they could have "fun", not knowing if or when a fight might come to them so their support is effective.

Which means... there won't be a nearest base with an AMS installed, aside from somewhere else on the front line. Thus you wouldn't fall back along the lattice as you suggested, you'd just create big openings in a defense.

honestly it sounds like a good job for a liberator or esf team, to kill those kinds of shitheads and then drop a fresh set of spawns in secure places. if it's really that big of a deal you can make something flash or beep so that people see when those kind of advance teams start to strike.

Dumb down the scouting more? It's bad enough they tell you how many players are in what regions of the map.

even if they did get ALL the spawns back to the warpgate i don't think that's really that bad. plenty of games have much harsher penalties for death with no nearby rez. and there's lots of ways to respawn and rez without going to a spawn room. anything missing, for example access to infantry terminals, could be folded into new class abilities, attachments to vehicles, whatever. again, it's really outside the scope of the suggestion. i just left that in with "give designers freedom from designing around the problems presented by the spawn building."

So you remove the spawn buildings instead of dealing with them and create entire new far more damaging problems by removing basic logistical support? >___>

finally, if there is incentive to get AMS units into bases then people will do that. people do much more than that to get a good 500 or 1000 experience, i promise you that.

Carrot and sticks should be used with care. The majority of decisions should be of tactical and strategic nature, not experience farming. Your example for instance would encourage this behaviour "bring AMS, deploy, get exp, quickly undeploy: move on to the next base, repeat process for quick exp gain without much effort".

and besides, if people need to respawn all the way back at warpgate to regroup i don't think it's that bad, and in fact creates opportunity to expand the role of sunderer and galaxy as valued troop transport assets. the fact is that nobody likes to sit in a galaxy waiting for minutes to fill up and leave because 1. the pilot usually sucks 2. they can just spawn hop or grab any vehicle and get there faster.

That's a severe problem with the cert system (and resource system) creating no restrictions on players that they have to overcome with teamwork (akin to PS1), not the spawn system.

all of that said, i should reiterate that i think spawning would benefit greatly by having the AMS divorced from the sunderer unit. it's slow, expensive, painfully obvious from the air, and worth a lucrative experience value. it's also easily TK'd, which is just a really bad design decision all by itself. i understand friendly fire to some extent and it's something we either hate or don't (again, beyond the scope of the discussion) but the fact is that it's simple to disallow damage to a unit based on who is doing the damage. so simple it doesn't really need mentioning.

That we can agree on.

i think this is really out of place. there's nothing to suggest this at all.

but i guess go ahead and win the internet or whatever.

Neither was there any reason to call me a prick for being critical.

[TerminatorUK]

I'd have to agree with all the comments in this thread - spawn camping as either the attacker or defender is one of the worst aspects of Planetside 2 for me and definitely needs some attention.

I do think, however, that the problem might be more skin deep than the spawn design itself, rather that there is little combat / front line outside of the base itself.

I'm not an expert on this but this could be down to a lack of cloaked AMS's and highly durable ground vehicles (for better or worse, BFRs did help create a front line).

Balancing ground vehicles like MBTs to make them more durable is unfortunately difficult due to the main gunner being the driver; in the long term this was a poor design choice.

Lack of an stalemate frontline also feeds into a lack of interesting Galaxy hotdrops to try and break the deadlock etc...

[ringring]

Originally Posted by TerminatorUK

I'd have to agree with all the comments in this thread - spawn camping as either the attacker or defender is one of the worst aspects of Planetside 2 for me and definitely needs some attention.

I do think, however, that the problem might be more skin deep than the spawn design itself, rather that there is little combat / front line outside of the base itself.

I'm not an expert on this but this could be down to a lack of cloaked AMS's and highly durable ground vehicles (for better or worse, BFRs did help create a front line).

Balancing ground vehicles like MBTs to make them more durable is unfortunately difficult due to the main gunner being the driver; in the long term this was a poor design choice.

Lack of an stalemate frontline also feeds into a lack of interesting Galaxy hotdrops to try and break the deadlock etc...

I quite agree. But one thing I do know is that if you want to stop spawn camping you will ultimately have to get rid of spawns.

So, as you say, if I understand you correctly, (bad) spawn camping is a symptom of a fault elsewhere.

[Sarloh]

I say that the AMS should have a longer respawn time than base spawns, as how can a small mobile vehicle beat a fully powered base spawn room?
Also it could be done that the AMS wouldn't just be like deployment and people come out from nowhere so it might look something lile; when deployed a small respawn pod, like at the bases could come up, like a circle on the top that emits beams down from which troops come out (hard to explain in text). The sistem could take some seats away as it requires space to be put in.

[Carbon Copied]

Originally Posted by camycamera

i made a thread like this on the official forums a while back and people simply said "quit whining, there is nothing you can do about it."

guess they never played PS1 then :P

Yeah but those are the same forums where members judge and denounce lattice changes based on a handful of screenshots and a few minutes gameplay video coupled with the weird ideology that bases you can defend are a bad and unnecessary thing

[Aveox]

Originally Posted by Sarloh

I say that the AMS should have a longer respawn time than base spawns, as how can a small mobile vehicle beat a fully powered base spawn room?

I wondered about that as well. The difference is 4 seconds I believe?

It gets even better though: Some tests I did with the AMP station and Tech plant showed that you can reach most of the critical things like capture point, SCU and shield gens a lot faster from the popular attacker AMS spots then you can from the spawn room. Combined with the quicker AMS respawn time means that attackers consistently "outspawn" defenders by sometimes 10 seconds. The tunnels they made for the defenders don't do anything either: They shave maybe 1-2 seconds off the time you need to reach the objective on foot.

Spawns should be in a central location inside/beneath the main building and defenders should nearly always be able to reach an objective faster then attackers. Only then can you truly defend a base.

[OctavianAXFive]

Well I've been on an epic Bioware/Obsidian RPG binge for the last month and this is the first thing I see when coming back to PSU.

*deep inhale* *long slow exhale*

It's good to be back.