Map design woes.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Vaphell, Sep 13, 2013.

  1. Vaphell

    SOE, seriously, after you get your **** straight with performance and multithreading, go back to the drawing board with the map design. Revamp of the resource system alone won't help.

    Current map design is fundamentally flawed. You advertise epic massive scale combat, but what we got is a series of tiny deathmatch maps with way too many people on them. I clicked [redeploy] and see Broken Arch Road 48+v48+... Is there anybody who thinks that having 100 people in a bunch of shacks in a 50m wide canyon for 4 minutes minimum is cool?
    The consequence of that is the strategic layer is pretty much nonexistent as there is no space for meaningful maneuvers on macro scale. Recon doesn't matter, there is no enemy movement to track, i can tell you right now with 100% certainty that everybody will be in that 100m x 100m square. Even if you see 20 tanks they just stand there clumped blasting the base 95% of the time. Infantry pushes max 50m, from sunderer that once parked doesn't have to move an inch. Defenders only have 1 or 2 spawnpoints that matter so attackers can easily contain them.
    Every battle plays itself according to the same scenario as the battle 1 hour ago, yesterday and 1 week ago. This kind of gameplay is painfully static, gets old fast and bores to tears. That spells trouble when it comes to the game longevity.


    Despite opting for hex when lattice came out, I came to think that, no matter the resource system, both hex and lattice are broken and the cause is numerous tiny territories. Each territory = separate battle in full force but the size simply doesn't match the manpower and you get a caricature of combat. Small territories impose a hard cap on the degree to which the combined arms can be utilized, eg how do you employ the strategy of blitzkrieg, when tanks have to stop every 300m for 5minutes to camp spawns and there is almost no reason to push further?

    Scrap the lattice nonsense, what the game needs is a handful of huge provinces with a major facility in its center and a handful of resource/bonus yielding outposts. Continents divided to provinces is the only interesting way to offload overcompressed 200 man meatgrinders, improving the strategic depth, not to mention the game performance. Coincidentally the system would be very much like PS1 (it's not like i am a PS1 fanboy, never played it)
    My general idea is that there would be few control points outside the major facility and there would be 2 modes of conquer: brute forcing the base directly, or owning all outer control points simulating siege cutting the base off. An alternative using the current system: N facility points are matched by N+1 outer points, so you need at least one outer point to control the base - just like with 3-point tower bases where one point is inside and 2 outside.
    Such a design would force people to manage much more territory than a 100m x 100m square. Suddenly logistics and superior utilization of available resources play a huge role. Defenders would not be as easy to contain. Less downtime, more movement and action, frequent change of scenery. Plenty of secondary goals that can be taken by small squads. Recon would be crucial as knowing where in the 2km x 2km province the enemy armored column is going to attack and in what numbers means a lot.
    My ideas probably have quite a few flaws, it was only a rough concept showcasing the base of the solution to the core problem. No matter what you need to figure out a way to blend skirmishes/sieges in individual facilities into the greater, fluid whole, where 30 tanks don't waste their time unproductively camping spawns for 5 minutes but actively move all over the place to break defenses or to neutralize enemy armor letting the foot grunts do their job. Without that qualitative improvement the game will always feel off with its 10% action, 90% looking at spanwshields from both sides.



    Micro scale problems i have with the map design:
    - improve visibility from the spawnroom - I'd argue that's one of major causes of people staying inside. All spawnrooms have huge deadzones and people are not too confident when dealing with the unknown. If you are in a coordinated team with high levels of trust, running out together is no problem. Pubbies don't have that trust to their peers, so they don't feel like running out to meet death. Craptastic visibility only reinforces the feeling of hopelessness. Examples: pretty much all spawns suck hardcore against lolpodders. You need to step out to even see them hovering above, with noses down just waiting for delicious lolcerts. Airtower exits on the middle floor - all you see is a wall but you have no idea what is on the sides and on the stairs.
    - get rid of all elevated positions that allow to shoot down the base with tanks and other cheese. Fortifications usually oversee the surrounding area, not the other way around. It's stupid that in most bases you can have MBTs 10m above the top floors of even 3-story barracks and both air and wall towers. I get that hills are pretty and what not but seriously, this **** is aggravating. Where are going the defenders to run out to if every inch in the 50m radius including roofs can be blasted with AoE, and that's on top of tons of infantry camping in spawn deadzones?
    - if you put a turret somewhere, make it actually usable and accessible. Improve angles (there are places where tanks can shoot down at AV turret, but it can't retaliate that high. Stop with the huge tree/rock right in front of the turret nonsense. And unmanned turrets should switch to a mode that grants them a solid resist against dmg, so they can't be destroyed in 3 seconds.
    • Up x 2
  2. Sossen

    TL:DR
    • Up x 1
  3. Mr_Giggles

    Insults SOE right off the bat. Recreates definition of large scale warfare to suit his purpose later on. Hates Lattice. Wants to change it all to a few big territories. Finishes with saying that spawnroom don't have enough of a killzone and wants it bigger. Will come and tell me that I didn't read the post.

    TLDR of TLDR OP wants map to be more open overall.
  4. TheBloodEagle

    [IMG]
    • Up x 11
  5. Mr_Giggles

    I have to admit, that is very true. Esamir bases are so easy to get lost in now.
  6. Flashtirade

    What's that one base with the single capture point in a small space in between buildings, I can't remember the name.
  7. Mr_Giggles

    Grey Heron Shipping, right up by the NC warpgate? Got the 2 buildings with a bridge that goes right over the cap point. Front door is actually right there.
  8. PutteFnask

    Most bases are designed in a way that its easier to attack than defend them. More spawnlocations and possibly a combination of lifts inside the bases to make it harder to camp the exit of spawns.

    Also, the continents should be way larger than what they are today, double or even triple teh current size. Take some pointers from Battleground Europe where they call out for tank drivers and then rally them for a big push at some town.
    More cap points/generators at the smaller bases would aid in making the battles more interesting.

    Make resource income for all factions equal or simply remove it and put a timer for when you can respawn this or that vehicle/MAX next time. Spawn it and the timer starts counting down once its destroyed.
  9. Vaphell

    Since when telling how it is is an insult? Aren't they getting their **** straight with performance atm?

    For all i care there can be windows made of these airtower shields you can't shoot through. The point is it's idiotic that you don't know what waits for you 1m after leaving the spawn and you have no way to estimate your (poor) chances.
    no, because clearly you did :)
  10. TheMercator

    I like the idea of having huge provinces. I had it before, too. How about not having about 9 big bases and many outposts per continent, that are nearly completly indipendent from each other, but still no more than 300m away. So first triple the map size, to actually give us room to fight. Then we i.e. in the south of Indar were we currently have a Techplant and an Amp Station, surrounded by bases in canyons and on top of mesas, we have the Great Mesa Mining Complex or so(its only a name). The center of this thing is a mine like those South African diamond mines with some buildings to rafine the Auraxium-ore. In the surrounding canyons and Mesas are small mining outposts, airfields, checkpoints and watchtowers. Arround the hole province are some meaningless buildings likle farms and meaningless outposts. when the province is under attack there are several steps. First the attackers have to get the surrounding province-less bases to get a nerby spawnroom(I think AMS are a bad thing). Then they will attack the first line of defense, in this example the bases that control the canyons and the ways ontop of the mesa. They cant conquer them, only disable Spawnrooms, shields and vehiclepads, or hack infantrie terminals and Turret-controlrooms. After they are in the province they may attack the small bases to get additional power or regroup and start the attack on the main facility, to conquer the hole province. After that they finally need to search and destroy the last nests of resistance.
  11. Vaphell

    it occured to me that if we went by the BF3 standards when it comes to the player density, where there are 64 guys on 1km^2+, 200 man battles in PS2 should take place in areas 3km^2+ (~1.7km x1.7km square, circle ~2km in diameter). Let's be generous and go with 2km x 2km - given that the map is 8km x 8km big, you can divide the map to 16 such pieces full of stuff to do.
  12. Madcat9

    :eek: Who makes those comics and where can I find them?
  13. lothbrook

    I wish Esamir was more popular, theres a lot more wide open spaces, and i feel the starting locations are all a lot better balanced than Indar, Indar is just pure **** from a balance standpoint.
  14. TheMercator

    People would complain, that there are no epic battles, they play this game for, without recognizing, that left and right of them, there is a many miles long frontline. I ecperienced, that the best fights are 2 to 3 people per building of a base.

    A design flaw I recognized outside of map design, but touching this is the weakness of infantry weapons over range. We are in the state of the mid 19th century. When massivly used, guns are devastating over range, but there is still the possibility to overrun your enemy with pure numbers aka zerging. Would the weapons have the firepower of the first World War an open attack would be deadly for the attackers no matter how many they are.
  15. Vaphell

    i am not so sure. First, currently the battles we have are not epic if you are not a 12yo who actually wanted to play deathmatch but clicked the wrong icon on the desktop. They are monotonous but flashy cluster.*****. Actual epicness requires memorable moments and by definition they require less memorable ones as a background. When you shove ill conceived 'epicness' in people's faces constantly, their brains desensitivize to stimulus and actual epicness ceases to exist.
    Do people actually like to spawncamp with overwhelming force/be spawncamped with overwhelming force? Do tankistas like to drive 20seconds and then shell the base for 5 minutes in a circle? Is that a fulfilling gameplay?

    indeed that is an issue too, but since all battles are waged in cramped buildings... no problem? :)
  16. HonkSam

    The biggest problem with the current maps is that the design is so flawed balance wise, that the Warpgate-rotation might as well be called Winner-rotation.
  17. Phazaar