The state of PS2 and what I feel must change.

Does he want to buff flak armor? I Don't think so, I'm sure he'd be happy if there were simply other valid suit options. As it stands, you NEED maxed flak to survive with boots on the ground, and that should not be the case. You should be able to take Nanoweave or Shield Capacitor without directly lowering your battlefield effectiveness. IMO, hand grenades should never kill unless they explode when in direct contact with you. A grenade or two should soften up a room for the kill, not empty it of everything with a pulse.

It may not be random, but it certainly isn't easily quantifiable. As buzz said it creates frustration and confusion. For new players and even veteran players it's difficult to tell what exactly the bonus is that they're fighting for. If you have 3 territories surrounding the base your trying to take, you'd expect each base to give you 33%. This is not the case. It seems to be determined by the area % of the border area with other territories, even if the only border between them is an impassible mountain. On top of this it's impossible to tell what the bonus actually is for having a certain influence % of or 0/6 number of people on a territory.

It's confusing and at the very least, needs a complete overhaul. Buzz says to do away with it all together. That's just one of many options.

I do agree with your point that bases should mean something and have some kind of effect on there neighbors beyond just territory. Something more tangible than a cap reduction.

Some good ideas but certainly not all of them. And most of these we have heard before of course. But it certainly doesn't hurt when some outfit leader takes the time to write them all down in a single topic and have his underlings and other supporters instantly vote them up, forcing SOE to take notice.

Makes me wonder if the OP actually showed some interest and took notice off the efforts of his fellow outfit leader. Because in that Azure Twilight session the devs pretty much explained why some ideas that PS1 vets keep asking for like a lattice system, are pretty much a no-go. Many systems just can't handle a PS1-like lattice system. Too much focus, battles unplayable, end of discussion.

OP basically wants to force more structure into this game. This can be a good thing but is also a double edged sword. What OP calls a mess is a heaven for other players. Indar is popular for a reason, lot's of players like this "messy" continent with many locations for smaller battles that their computer can run. With more structure comes more predictability and with more predictability there's an increased chance of more boredom. You have to keep in mind that this game was designed with Chaos/Sandbox/Anything-can-happen in mind and while one can argue that the devs went overboard with these design principles (especially towards new/casual players), there's also a thing as too much structure, where the game is taking you by the hand and forces you too much in which direction to play it.

In a way, he does. He wants to make the current maximum Flak Armor the "default" resistance that every player has against explosives. The Flak Armor certification would then further improve a player's resistance to explosives.

The same effect could probably be achieved by simply lowering the damage on explosives across the board.

Results are the same there either way, huh? I wonder what would happen if explosives just did less damage to personal shields, but full damage to health. . .

Read the op and loved almost all of it, the only thing I did not agree with was the pain field associated with downing the SCU. If there is only 1 guy in the spawn room, you can actually just leave the spawn and protect important points, like the SCU, gens, and cap points. Either he is going to sneak out and get away, stay there and get killed when the base flips, or redeploy out of there. If you are outnumbered and the SCU is down, there isn't much to do beyond leaving if they protect the scu.

Interesting take on SCU's going down creating a "pain field".
1. Why not just make it if you kill the SCU it's like you "lose power" and the shields that cover the doors just power down? Now you have the attackers not just sitting getting shot at, and the defenders camping behind their little walls. The "pain fields" push them out of the spawn anyway - why not give the attackers the ability to clear out the base if they've successfully taken it?

2. Dark Age of Camelot Capture tactics, which I think are in line with the Lattice System from PS1 might help with the flow of battle/"front line" concept you're getting at.

If you wanted to take a castle, you had to take the 1 or 2 castles prior to it, all the way up to the last castles on the particular continent, thereby "owning" the continent. Anyone wanting to take it back from your side had to start from a particular castle and work from there. Attackers/Defenders knew the flow which focused the battle all the way from the open areas between the two castles, to each castle individually. If the Defenders had been beaten back to the next one in line, they could form ambushes/a counter attack all the to the previous point. The last couple castles had the ability for the enemy factions, if owned, to allow quick transport from their home continent. If they had no ownership/castles occupied, they had to run across a neutral middle island to get there, allowing the continent defenders to stop them or block them all the way. You had a constantly moving line through the whole game, focused around major fights. This though never precluded smaller outfits from running around the map engaging in their own fights, or skirmishes against the enemy.

What I'm getting at in that TL;DR post is that, by forcing fights to specific areas, you create the option around those points to be places for fights to happen, and not just limiting it to the points themselves. By having certain points be "key objective areas" this gives focus for the attackers to establish their hold from where they will then go and fight. The defenders of that continent/homeland know have a suitable idea of where a fight will occur next, and have an option to induce strategy.

This confuses me.

On one hand, we have buzzcutpsycho the shouting raging moron.

On the other hand, we have buzzcutpsycho who posts these well thought out posts on the forums.

Are there two people behind this handle?

They are, but this game was made for large battles with luscious tracers and explosions everywhere. If they were pushing for a more CQB they would have made the bases a little tighter with a lot of large building with multiple room and choke points. Sadly, they didn't.

Same Person 2 Personalities, One which puts on a show for people and the other who is an actual real person.
you decide which!

You could either have the shields go down and allow people into the spawn room to kill them or activate a pain field. Each solution will ultimately end up in the removal of the defenders from the spawn rooms.

The reason I personally am in favor of the pain field approach is to just get them out anyway. No more hold outs for free kills, no setting up a bunch of traps or defense and no last stands. Your last stand shouldn't be taking place inside of a spawn room it should be at the base you're trying to defend.

Either way sitting in the spawn room and scumming kills is getting old. If I had my way I'd remove the ability to shoot through the one way shields entirely as a further motivator to get these people out and fighting.

I'll fully admit I myself sit inside and farm safe kills too. It's an easy way to keep that oh so important KDR stat up, right? I mean... who WOULDN'T want to be able to shoot at an enemy and kill them while they have literally no way to shoot back at you?

Indar is popular for more than just one reason, but are they good reasons? The only people I read about/talk to that like Indar is because it's a mix of the other continents, not because it's "messy" (does that mean poorly designed, filled with debris... I don't understand). That one reason, or two reasons if you'd like to add the small battles for bad computers bit, does not do enough to counterbalance the fact that Indar has many more cons than pros. Those small battles you're talking about? They'd take place at 90% of the bases. Why those 90%? Because they're meaningless and sparsely populated as a result. Why are the battles at those places so small? Let me reiterate their uselessness. It's a pretty self-fulfilling cycle.

More structure means just that: more structure. A good foundation for a game will not go stale for a long time, especially a game like PS2 which promises updates for the next decade. You claim the game will become more predictable, although the general consensus is that this is Indarside 2, and more specifically TI/Crown/Crossroads-side2. I can't really see it becoming MORE predictable.

With the proposed changes, players looking for small-scale action can still defend an adjacent location to a recently-capped one that they believe wouldn't be in the direct line of the zerg. I'll use an example that blends the current system with the proposed changes.

You play as NC. Your faction has been doing well and have pushed TR back towards their warpgate; you even control the crown! But the TR surges back and retakes the southwest up to TI Alloys. In the current system, most people will probably swing East and bash their head against the crown until they realize they've lost all the other points. Knowing this, NC will set up all of their defense at the crown. New players who might not realize where the action is going to be will go to wherever it is they go, and be none the wiser.

Now with the proposed changes, that story changes course after the TR re-take TI Alloys. Most people will flock to the crown, which the NC has as an option for redeployment. However, they could also spawn at Seabed, Ceres Hydroponics, and potentially even West Highlands/Crossroads/Snake Ravine/Allatum if NC controls any of those points, although they're less of a given in this situation.
This still gives people the options of going elsewhere without giving them the option of going nowhere.

You can achieve the desired result of the lattice system without copy/pasting the lattice system from PS1.

Buzz, I won't pretend to like you and I know you sure as hell don't like me and the people I associate with but I have no problem saying that I completely agree with what you've said here, you presented your argument in a well-reasoned and intelligent matter and I believe the ideas you presented would at least be worth trying out. Well said.

The problems are:

1. The timer on the SCU is what, 2 minutes tops? It would have to be at least 5 minutes, because once the SCU is down the fight is over. Why even have an SCU? It's effectively the exact same thing as the capture timer, only it's way shorter.

2. The SCUs are way too easy to access, if people are looking for are long, interesting fights.

Bio-labs are broken, in that they are both too difficult to enter and to difficult to defend once overrun. It's 100% a defenders game until the overwhelming number of attackers show up and then the fight is over in no time flat. Every time.

Amp Stations are just a mess. The vehicle bay shield gens are too easy to take down (for reasons Buzz mentioned) and once they are down, SCU shield gen is right there on the single capture point for the whole facility. This design doesn't make any damned sense at all to me. Despite not liking the "whack-a-mole feeling of it in beta, I actually really miss the original Zurvan design, where the satalites were needed to be captured and held to take the Amp Station. THAT had some room for strategy beyond numbers.

Tech Plants. Well, truthfully I don't know where the spawn gen is in the tech plants or if they even have one these days. I gave up caring, given how every single battle at one goes the same: 1. Attackers remove shield. 2. Attackers remove defensive sundy. 3. Attackers win.

It's ALWAYS overwhelming numbers that wins in this game. SCUs play into that even more. Again, why even have SCUs when long, static capture times will deliver the controlled battles the game needs? SCUs don't make any sense and are completely contrary to the overall objective Buzz laid out in his posts. I actually find it odd that he didn't see that.

Base capture should take X amount of time, so that everyone knows the status and possibilities. Once a base has been captured or defended, it should remain owned for at least X amount of time, otherwise what the f is the point of taking it in the first place? It's just going to be back capped the moment you roll out to find the next fun fight (as happens every day, all day, already), because no one wants to just hang out picking their butt waiting for the handful of back cappers to come along. In fact, that's why we have adjacency - people don't want to actually have to defend the land they take (which I think is completely stupid...). A lock out timer says to the players, "Good job on capturing/defending this base! As your reward, you can go fight somewhere else for at least X amount of time without having to worry about this base. You rock!".

Anyhow, I don't pretend to have any or all the answers. There are just some things about what Buzz put forward that I don't think would really help solve any issues with how the game plays (or is played). Actually, apart from the things I brought up, I agree with absolutely everything he else mentioned (especially the god damned over the top camera shake! Man I hate that part of the game.)

I look at that as being more of a teacher. Take this guy: I killed him no less than 5 times , each time he was rezzed (by his smart medic friend who was hiding behind a box). After that fifth time I let him live, but what did he do? He ran right over to the spawn room door! *facepalm* After that last time I killed him at the spawn room door, I think he finally got the idea that hey, people can shoot out of the door and he shouldn't stand in view of them. lol...

Incidentally, I was the only person "defending" that outpost against a squad or two of ghost cappers. I do that periodically to remind people that hey, PS2 is a combat game. Sadly, I have even managed to "win" and keep the base a few times.

In a nutshell, make the game more linear and more like PS1 in nearly every respect.

Whilst I agree and an on record now for weeks in saying sever populations are a serious issue.

More linearity does not lend itself to more involving game gameplay. You note at one point that the movement of the front line will be entirely predictable.

So in essence, reduce the game to the linear slugfest that was ps1. But with ps2's larger server architecture.


Some of your suggestions re small bases and flow, is If I might coin a term, just bad. Where the SCU mechanic works, is in a place like a biolab or a amp station, where by there are satalite bases to take (and spawn at) and so the loss of the SCU equates to the loss of the 'keep' not the siege itself.

This allows for far more dynamic play. The possible number of tactical and operation options is always quite large.

NEARLY EVERYTHING YOU SUGGESTS UTTERLY HOBBLES THE NUMBER OF TACTICAL OPTIONS. STRATEGY LIKEWISE BECOMES ABOUT AS INVOLVING AS MOVING FROM ONE LEVEL OF A PLATFORM GAME TO THE OTHER.

For your suggesting however, reduces the game to a series of zerg fights over a point 'flag' like point. whoever in essence takes it, takes that base and then everything snaps to the next base.

Sure, it'll increase the number of people at a given fight on low population servers. But at a significant cost.

As i've also noted before, there is nothing keeping you on indar but convention.

I can appreciate its frustrating on a low population server. But the game mechanics do not really need much more in them to get more involving.

You need

1) More people, as such I do not content mergers are needed.
2) MOre involved inter-outfit play. It happens on miller because we make it happen, could be easier.

For people like Tatwi who think that the SCU going down is the end of the battle I feel the need to remind you that the defenders can and should be setting up defensive AMS.

You're entire arguments against this Tatwi is that the fight ends when the SCU dies yet you fail to mention, notice or care that the defenders can always setup defensive AMS units.

So what will you suggest if the game is updated so SCU destruction only slows the spawn rate and does not kill it?

That's a terrible idea. It doesn't do anything to end the fight and get the defenders out of the spawn room and setup at the next base to prepare defenses.

Slowing down spawning is asinine. I don't support that change in any way shape or form.

I also feel the need to remind people that right now the sole purpose of the attacker is to spawn camp the defender. This game is actively promoting spawn camping. Spawn camping is a mechanic that in most FPS games is frowned upon and disallowed whenever possible.

You need to end the spawning thus end the fight and move on. Attackers mobilize and defenders prepare.