Hidden Ridge Mining Revamp: Walls on Amerish

You may not be a base designer, but I think in the 5 minutes you gave it a go you succeeded...

Give this dude a job at SOE.

Those walls seem to have a lot of gaps, so that the walls can actually function as creating an infantry-advantaged section of the battlefield (as bases should be.) That was the big problem with Esamir.

PROBLEM 1: However it does look like the spawn point is scarily locked into a corner where there might only be a few exits.

PROBLEM 2: The base looks rather small, and bases where the hard spawn is so near the potential capture point (if it's the communications tower like it is on so many bases) do not scale for larger fights where the defenders have a critical mass.

PROBLEM 3: Still a lot of surrounding mountains by the look of it. The game's continents are waaaaay too many mountains and it makes driving around a chore. (This is probably the single biggest problem with the game's vehicle gameplay right now, and should be taken very seriously.)

HOPE 1: Some bases get made where the vehicle facilities are fully protected (enough for defenders to rally a group of vehicles safely before pushing out.) However you would probably want the respawn room directly above this area, with many holes protected by spawn shields that defenders can drop C4 or shoot rockets through -- so that when a new group captures the facility they have an easy way to take out any leftover vehicles in there. Either that or vehicle pain fields, but it's possible to do the former solution without a new (and probably buggy) game feature.

HOPE 2: Most bases are tank/air capable, allowing a side losing to vehicle zerg more opportunity to spawn at the next-closest base to pull a counter-vehicle force.

HOPE 3: Iteration. No design is perfect the first time. It's always a rough draft. Iteration is absolutely critical to any form of design, level design included. One concern is that Esamir's bases' biggest balance issues haven't been improved since release, which works against the entire point of putting so much effort into redesigning the bases.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/...er_arclegger_hidden_ridge_mining_revamp_part/

Amp Station style walls are what we need, not cages. Defenders shouldn't be trapped inside their own base waiting to get crushed by all the enemies with better tactical positions outside.

Bye bye PS2, BF4 here I come.

I don't know if it's only me... but I really like the Walls in the game. But walls on amerish and dome shields at the same time as said before by SOE, I think is much for vechiles/aircraft.
SOE, if you want to put walls in the game, put walls like that GIANT WALL in hossin! LOL

Yes BF 4, the Beta is awesome, imagine the hole game! I can't wait for it.

Looks like might be raising parts of the base off the floor .. So kinda curious how the walls will play into it and if they would be really needed at all.

Also looks like they have flattened out a lot of the more interesting terrain directly around the base

agreed, maybe with less *** though!
but yeah, removing spawn points, adding walls to all the bases on esamir, planning to turn evry base into a biolab fight with dome shields, they're destroying this game...
esamir was my favourite map when it was big, flat and you could get were you wanted to be nice and quick.

"I don't need no walls around me."

This is getting pretty ridiculous. They should simply revamp the capture system to be PS1 style. Buff vehicles against infantry, nerf infantry against vehicles, greatly increase vehicle kill experience. Create bases that vehicles can lay siege to, but cannot directly influence the defenders' ability to defend capture points. Capturing bases should be infantry combat supported by vehicular siege. Modify spawns so that there are destructible generators on the interior of bases (ie, infantry combat promotion), make the capture points require infantry, and implement the power drain/refueling mechanics so that sieges don't become day long stalemates without serious coordination.

The vehicle spamming spawns so that infantry can't get out to defend is bull****. The danger single infantry can pose to vehicles is bull****. The system is currently broken to the point it needs a redesign to allow combined arms to mean something other than vehicles spam, infantry run around in uncoordinated cluster****s, and occasionally a decent fight crops up that doesn't end in an utter circle jerk of vehicular camping (because that's really all they're good for when you break it down...you're punished as a driver by going after only other vehicles) and spawn room warriors.

does that mean, that the whole base will be on a raised plattform? When yes I like it.

If this goes through, I'm done with Amerish. I was done with Esamir when you walled that up.

You have ONE more continent, SOE. That's your last chance. I probably speak for a lot of vehicle players when I say:

We are sick of this. We are tired of being locked out of fights all the time because you don't know how to design a base. Look at Eisa Tech Plant. It manages to limit the viability of vehicles in CQC without walling off the entire base. Learn from THOSE bases.

Personally I like how "The Stronghold" is designed on Indar it's one of my favorite bases to defend and attack. I wouldn't mind seeing more bases designed like this but Esamir is a bleepin disaster with how walls were implemented and we're seeing more of it on Amerish. This is just plain old lazy game design on the part of SOE and is hopefully a stop gap measure until a proper solution can be implemented. I'd like to see the vehicle spam getting cut back some and making a vehicle above a Flash a real asset to be guarded and protected but we both know this isn't going to happen. The more vehicles that can be spawned the more camo, hood ornaments, and weapons they can sell.

I was thinking today all they need to do to Lattice up Amerish is put in the links. It's a great continent; the natural terrain restricts movement without feeling artificial, and you can move vehicles between bases and have big vehicle fights, and fighting as infantry is a lot of fun because it doesn't feel like it's a bunch of tiny deathmatch maps squished together for the most part; instead you have massive bases where you can have enormous fights over a large area with a lot of cover. It's also got lots of sneaky places to hide sunderers and such; put more of those in and make bases more unique. Like someone said; it's Moss Basin Mineshaft; why aren't we fighting in a mineshaft? That'd be awesome.

If you really want to put walls around everything, at least get them right on the current continents first. Walled bases are horrible to defend. Why? Because almost all of them are low-ground, meaning enemy tanks can still just spam to their hearts content into the base; in most cases it's not actually difficult to get vehicles inside the walls either, where it's just absurdly easy to chew up infantry. They are death traps; they should have catwalks at a level where infantry can duck and hide behind the walls, and stand and fire. They should have entrances that are easy to defend and difficult to take, and they should most of all be placed around bases where it makes sense. Walled fortresses typically are built to take advantage of the high ground so they can hit the enemy, but the enemy can't hit them.
Instead, most of the bases on Esamir are like being trapped in box canyons where all of the advantages a defender should have in a walled base are nonexistent.

Natural cover >> walls in this game. Take a lesson from Hossin; that place is amazing, with some really clever base design that is going to be incredibly fun to attack and defend. Because of the cover, infantry can hide and have cool fights, but clever vehicle operators should be able to use it as well, making fights between bases very exciting. Things like tree roots, dams, and waterways naturally limit vehicle movement, and the tall trees provide cover, making Air to Ground riskier, but less prone to Ground to air interference.

Wrong, too many bases are still easily shelled from the outside if you park your tank in the right place. I've been fighting both Harassers and a freaking Magrider inside the octagon. There are many ways of keeping vehicles from getting too close to the infantry combat but erecting high walls around the base is not a good one. It ruined the continent. There are many examples of bases that does it well and they should have looked at them instead of just choosing to mess the game up.

The walls made infantry play much less fun and it really limited how you assault a base. Now you have two garages for your sunderer and you are supposed to assault from there. So it's just a massive grind between the two spawns. There's very little creativity possible for hiding a sunderer in an unexpeted place or hitting a base from the other side since they have so few actual entrances. They are also horrible to defend against vehicles since the turrets are few and far between. They also forgot to add the AV Phalanx in their little armour vs infnatry balance pass. They should have increased the health of the turrets as well. Now they are mostly used for enemy snipers.

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but I have a feeling this is less to do with ******** on tankers (which it is still) and more about performance.

Sticking those big ugly walls everywhere seems like a quick and easy way to grab some frames by essentially bringing the draw distance down to nothing. Now when you're inside that base you don't have to render the whole base and all the surrounding terrain. Just whatever is inside the little "room" that you're fighting in.

This tells me that the point will be in a basement.

Right next to the player numbers.

I thought the mountains were the walls -____-