There Is No Problem With Base Design

Why?

They're too small
They're too open
They have very few sensibly organized features: Turrets are in places that are vulnerable and limit the areas they can fire in, spawn doors face out into easily camped areas and are too small so if your team fires out it's hard to even leave without being TKed before the campers get to you. Console placement also has issues with being hard for defenders to get to safely.

They're just obviously not designed for effective defense.

I have no idea what server or game you are playing. I am always camping and i am always getting camped just like everyone else on Woodman. Nothing else makes even sense since the spawn doors are the simplest to guard choke points in oder to prevent enemy reinforcements.

Are you perhaps playing on EU server while you are a US player? Cause then at least it would make sense. There is nobody around on the EU servers when the US players peak.
Otherwise i cant relate to what you wrote at all. Spawn camping is the alpha and the omega of PlanetSide2 due to its **** designed bases and 20x20 spawn boxes.

Wow, I am very sorry for you.

Anyway, there are people like you who can probably be educated by more sophisticated players if we had faction chat.

But, this is supposed to be a sandbox game, not tower defense game.

I think people think that the root cause of being camped is a poor spawnfortress. I think the root cause of being camped is trying to fight from your spawn door.

With faction chat, leaders could get people out of their spawns, and into the action.

The only reason that I can see to defend spawnfortresses is a reverse-camp agenda.

Are we talking about full facilities or also outposts? For the most part I think the facilities are pretty ok, there's a few issues I'd still change:

• Amp stations need more geometry to prevent Sunderers from getting inside in that back area full of buildings. This is a huge problem at Zurvan in particular. The alternative is to get rid of most of those buildings and open that area up to vehicles.
• Tech plants need their spawn points looked at. Without a Sunderer in the base itself the thing is impossible to hold because the spawn room is so far away. Even after the changes I still think this is the worst designed facility.
• Jump pads in amp stations could stand to be moved off the walls and into the courtyard instead. One set of pads near the spawn room, another set on the other side of the base. Both would give you a one way trip to the 4 corners of the walls. Attackers shouldn't be able to use them either. The current layout of the pads means once attackers have an AMS set up near a wall they instantly have access to the entire courtyard. It turns the whole base into a giant free for all killwhoring arena without any real direction.

Outposts are a whole other subject. The ones on Amerish are decent for the most part, a lot of the ones on Indar and Esamir could use some serious work to make them defensible. Most of them are way too open to enemy vehicles, nobody bothers to defend them because they just end up getting spawn camped.

But part of that problem is the way people move around the continent. If an outpost gets attacked it's usually either one or two people ghost capping or a huge armor zerg, there's not much in between. Consequently outposts are never worth defending for small to medium sized groups of players, you're either wasting your time standing in an empty base or getting steamrolled and spawn camped by a zerg.

OP, blaming players for everything will definitely help saving the game.

And one more thing. Destroying the SCU should drop the shields around the spawn room too. There's no reason for every base attack to end with a handful of people taking potshots out of the spawn room for 5 minutes while the attackers stand around with their dicks in their hands waiting for the thing to flip.

It's also the main reason why people don't leave the spawn room anymore when it looks like the base is going to fall. Just when they're needed the most in a last ditch effort to save the SCU they're sitting in the spawn room waiting to start the inevitable 5 minutes of camping.

But that is because any standing fortification can easily be destroyed without LoS to the target in modern times. PS2 is not like a modern war as everything is done pretty close (distance wise) and the vast majority of buildings/defences cannot be brought down. In fact since a base cannot be destroyed it resembles a medieval battle in the sense that one could use a base as a rock to break the enemies attack on like they used castles in medieval times which it more closely resembles in that sense.
Also this game is nothing like real life, if it was ESFs would not be engaging with in sight range etc. Using real life theories and trying to apply it to PS2 is mostly void.
FF

You bring up good points.

Disagree about not using real-world principles, especially when it comes to being static or mobile. Advantages of the latter are so great that one should strive to remain mobile.

To me, that means that instead of finding ways to make spawning into a camp acceptable, we should find ways to organize ourselves in a more suitable position. Without broad communication tools, that is all but impossible.

The battlefield is huge. Sometimes, I wonder if we focus too much on where we are, instead of where we should be. I've been part of enough counterattacks, arriving just as the base turns to the enemy's, to see that the battle is bigger than one just one base. I've always wondered how the campees perceive such an event.

Actually, I think the players get it.

I think the problem is that they're too busy playing to come into the forums and describe the player's experience.

And yes, in a sandbox game, your experience will not be created by a scripted win. You must create your own. Who is to blame if one does not create their own experience? Is it worse yet to blame others for creating an experience for those that won't create there own as a result of realizing their plans?

The urge to camp is strong. So strong, that a very vocal reverse-camp lobby is formed.

I know what you mean. However, I have created medium size battles, and participate in them a lot. The key is to have an intelligent sundy placed, and enough players that get it.

Instead of standing or getting steamrolled, how about crashing into them with your own force?

With better communication, we could do it more regularly.

This thread seems to combine two unrelated topics.

1. Base design is not fine, the majority are just a collection of shacks and few are properly defensible.

2. A faction-wide channel would be useful (although likely full of spam too).

So, the guy who did the base designs is starting to feel desperate and made an alt to defend his crappy designs?

Sorry, the game has absolutely atrocious level design.

Toss some C4 in the teleport room/spawn room and wait for the enemies to blow it up. Clears rooms pretty fast, which is almost as good as them going to defend. Atleast the results are the same.

Additionally chat channels won't help, in my opinion, because people barely listen to channels outside of their platoon or their squad.

A while back, we were held up defending Dahaka for about an hour. One person says he found the enemy sunderer that had been elluding detection for hours ("south") and seemed to think proximity voice chat in the main vehicle bay was the best way to tell people about it. My personal opinion is that he was talking about it in the most condescending way possible; regardless, either no one was listening to him for that or for another reasons, or no one could get to it (getting out of the base had become a no-man's land of snipers, which is why people had decided to start fortifying things inside the walls). Players don't have enough reasonable expectation to have to listen to the communication channels in the game, or assume anything on them is meaningful, as it usually isn't very helpful at all.

SOE really really dropped the ball on their in-game VoIP options, ruining the coherence with the game's communication system by motivating many coordinated users to rely on third-party clients, and letting users do things without even mandating use them. It could have been a tremendous system of coordination and instead it's this silent cold elephant in the room. At this point, the best thing they could probably do is offer an interface for the said third-party clients to insert their audio buffers into PS2's chat channels. There's also a punishing option: removing voiced emotes; players would have to voice themselves asking for a heal, repair, ammo, transport, etc.. The option is punishing because I then remember what is was like when my microphone hadn't been working correctly and it was hard to communicate with my squad.

There is a problem because people are stupid. SOE need to design the game with that in mind.

The Stronghold- Great design. All other bases in areas that players actually fight at are recycled carbon copies of ****. It's not about being camped in a spawn room, it's why is it so easy to do? First thing we do when we know we are going to take a tech plant is... Get to the spawn building and make sure no one gets out. Second thing is cover all entrances so no one else can get in. It's a ****** design. Defenders are forced to play offense while the offense plays defense with the advantage of camping spawns.

There are very few key locations that allow for a truly mobile defense. Quartz Ridge, The Ascent, The Crown, and any other place that has natural coverage on its flanks. I don't know if we play the same game op, but you are blaming the players for the fundamental flaws of bases they didn't design. You can't just Rambo into an enemy force because (on Mattherson at least) the enemy aren't stupid enough to attack from only one direction, above, below, or side wise. Maybe it is your players though, your enemies play like scripted ai doing the same things over and over, but most adapt. Sounds like your server is a bit behind the times.

Once a defending force commits a push out the enemy have won unless you outnumber your enemy.

On my server, players fight battles that are decided between cap points, between bases, and in a combined arms situation with plenty of maneuver.

On my server, we fight for every inch of land, regardless of where it is.

On my server, the sheep sit in their tower defense and wait for the battle to be decided.

I blame the single player scripted win games.

People are so used to having their game handed to them. When they have to create something, they're clueless.