Wrel talks about Hossin being unpopular

Actually the poor visibility has a surprisingly large negative impact on Hossin (for me anyway).

I was there once when experiencing the 'sky bug' (where you get a sky from a different continent) and it made Hossin so much more attractive, I almost enjoyed it. So it should make things better.

All they have to do then is make the egg plants soft so you can drive around a bit.

Oh and fix the horrible G2A balance thanks to the cover.

Fix the landscape so vehicles aren't quite so constrained.

Oh and maybe do something about the stupid base design (oh you fell off ? Bad news, the only way back in is the other end of the base).

...but apart from that - it's all good

I like all the continents for one reason or another but the bottom line is too many people have issues with frame rates on hossin due to all the trees and foliage

That could be true on PC, but FPS isn't really a factor on PS4, it runs Hossin pretty much the same as any other continent.

It still doesn't see more than 100 total players at a time on the continent except for very rare occasions.

I've mixed feelings about Hossin, on one hand it has some of the (IMHO) best and most interesting base designs in the game, especially some of those near the warpgates that almost never get played in; but on the other it also has some of the worst and most uninspired base designs in the game. The construction sites need to either go, or be actual construction sites - i.e. a cap point in the middle of a big flat square with no 'no-deploy' circle so we can build our own bases on them (no spawn room, no buildings, nothing, just a big flat square or rectangle).

The lattice doesn't traverse the paths well in many places, so you often find after taking a base, the next one on the chain is practically impossible to get to on the ground. While some of the choke points make for good pitched battles, others are simply impediments to movement for no real reason; with whole sections of the continent basically off-limits to anyone but air and LA's.

And as people have mentioned, those stupid egg-plant things; just so awkward for vehicles.

Like this?

Old Indar canyons



Old Amerish

Okay hold on. It's important to consider every design decision in the context of the game that has the design. For example: imagine if shooting someone initiated a turn based mechanic so all players would be able to retaliate against their shooter and the latency from clientside would practically be removed. Hey, that's a good design isn't it? Lots of games use turn based combat and it would solve problems players have with PS2! It would just be ~challenging~ for players to get used to, but that's okay right? No. Adding turn based combat to PS2 is a terrible idea and I hope I don't have to explain why.

This is the case with a lot of the things in that list. Poor navigation is poor, of course it's going to be represented as bad because it is. The rest of PS2 has a certain standard when it comes to navigation and Hossin doesn't meet that standard for most people. If navigation became easier, it would be considered a quality of life change because challenge doesn't factor into it.

Extremely linear base to base movement would be okay. Except the other continents don't often have that because the ability to attack a base multiple ways is a feature in PS2. Even the old Crown had multiple ways to attack it, and it was notorious for being difficult to attack.

PS2 is a combined arms game (though it feels less and less like one every year.) It better have good combined arms gameplay. Otherwise it'd be like playing dodgeball but you're not allowed to dodge the balls in order to increase the challenge.

Poor base design's pretty much universal for almost every game since it heavily affects how anyone can play and yeah sure air having a huge advantage over ground is challenging... but only for ground units. And that's the problem. I really don't feel like this should even need to be argued.

But see, good game design is crazy hard (if it wasn't, all 4 continents would be equally as popular as each other.) Mistakes will be made and some people will appreciate a particular design decision more than others, but Hossin is unique in that its population is always poor and the majority of the player base clearly doesn't enjoy it (and, from what I've read, some of the people who enjoy Hossin enjoy it only because it offers small battles!)

The last thing any developer would do is convince themselves Hossin is perfect and force players to go to it. You know what happens when players are forced to do something they don't enjoy doing? They stop playing the game. Talk about unintended consequences...

(Though I do agree the developers have sometimes listened to players too closely, but this is often when they use the community's suggestions on how to change something. When the developers are given complaints but must use their experience to figure out a solution on their own they generally do a better job... even if they only release part 1 of 8 then do something else.)

Yesterday I was about to play on Hossin, but after running around a friggin 50m painfield and barely reaching the enemies vehicle terminal, I decided to go back to Indar as I was reminded of all the time I have previously wasted with some ridiculously huge painfields on Hossin.

Don't want infiltrators to hack the terminals ? Then put those in the damn spawnroom. Sniping players at terminals is just bad gameplay so they shouldn't be outside if they can't be hacked.

This 100%... I could drive a thresher on PS1's Hossin, weaving in and out of the trees at full speed. PS2? Thorns, Eggplants, rocks, roots constantly causing major issues while driving, getting you hung up and forcing the gameplay to be slow, plodding and boring. In other places, there is literally only the road to drive on, as you are forced down between two mountain ranges. Even as a Mag its annoying to circumvent and that's saying something. God forbid if you want to flank a base as you have to drive like halfway across 3 hexes to find yourself stuck by a vehicle-shielded gate.

Some parts of the Cont are better than others, but its the bad parts that stick in your memory and fuel your decision later. Overall, It's not a bad continent, I don't mind a challenge, but Hossin is just F'n annoying... and thus I don't choose a map which I'll be annoyed while playing vs one I can have fun on.

to be blunt, it's a swamp.

Was never meant to easy to navigate or get around.
Yes there are some terribly designed bases, but most of them are fine imo.
Makes the infiltrator game alot more fun for me at least.

My only problem with it has already been mentioned, aircraft escaping, but then again, if they are low altitude and dealing with tree canopy and all, kudo's to the pilot who doesn't crash in a panic. Always entertaining watching that 1/3 lib blow up on a tree trunk or in the canopy while running.

Even had it to the extent on briggs, had some guy abusing me on hossin because i pulled an AV max and proceeded to push him and his friends back from warpgate, funny thing being 2hrs later we won the continent.

Hossins not bad. Its space vietnam

What makes Planetside 2 work are the large scale fights. Combined arms. Squads, Platoons, Individuals. Attackers, defenders and support. These are not dependent on MAPS, they are dependent on GAMEPLAY.

Dark Ages of Camelot, an old game still around today, had very basic maps. VERY BASIC. But the three way faction (realm) PvP combat was unparalleled because the game designers focused on the gameplay. Several years later, the designers focused on controlling gameplay by introducing two things: 1) a revamped world with detailed maps that FORCED certain play styles, and 2) introducing a pendulum swinging OP NERF OP NERF to classes.

DBG is following suit in Planetside 2 by crippling key aspects of the game (hint DBG: that key aspect is spelled S U N D E R E R S) while tinkering on things that don't matter and introducing game breaking OP/NERF cycles.

It's dangerous when game designers start to see themselves as puppets masters instead of tool/world providers.