Cont Lock finally?

[Muldoon]

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

I don't recall using the term holding hands, nor it's in that spirit lol.

Think of another game, say, basketball. A referee would draw random circles on the ground where offense can't step on. After watching the offense dance around like clown just to get off a shot, the ball changes hands and now it's the other team to do it on the other side.

Hockey for the longest time had something like this. It was called the goalie's crease. An opposing player wasn't allowed to score while in the crease. It made it so the goalie had a buffer zone of not being interfered with. The No Deploy Zone is also similar to a modern offsides. It prevents you from goal hanging, which is similar to placing a sunderer directly on the capture point.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

I think it is exaggerated how these mines affect newbie experience. Most of the vehicle pads are located about 5 feet from the console. I assume most players have use of at least one eye. And it's no different that laying AI mines on stairs or doorways.

Instead newbies are leaving because of gameplay imbalances:

Exaggerated or not, it adds very little to the game vs the amount of cheap and cheese for players who like to mine the pads. A variety of cheese is still cheese.

The reason most noobs left was because of performance until OMFG. After that, it's usually one of these: not being able to find a fight, or dying a lot. Some players have no idea how they're dying and the feedback the game gave was very sparse and difficult to understand. That's one of the reasons we added the killcam. Personally, I wanted to go further with the killcam, but what we have is still pretty good.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

Finally, I reiterate that this is a philosophic battle whether the Devs should jump in or keep their hands off gameplay and leave player interactions to just the players.

There's no "we keep hands off gameplay." Everything we do has some hands on or design direction. For the best games out there, it's really hard to notice the designer's hand in the game, because it all flows so smoothly. There are some rough edges where you can see the designer's hand, but I don't agree with your solutions to fix that roughness.