The absolute worst part of this game is the spawn rooms

If you ask most players from MW2, you'll also find out that a lot of them hated the spawn system. It had one of the worst systems in any FPS game. I don't know if COD has changed since then because I don't play anymore but it was really bad. Want to know why its so bad? Watch this for a good example... LOL



Trust me, you don't want that kind of spawn system on a game like PS2. That would be really bad. LOL

Also, I'm not sure I like the idea of destroying spawn tubes. Seems like that would take away even your small chance of retaking a base and just make it easier for enemies to take control.

The thing is we're now almost a year into release, players have offered enough suggestions and ideas. Many of the suggestions and ideas seen in this thread were already suggested before during the first few months of launch. Again, it's up to SOE to fix these problems. They're in the driver's seat, we're passengers in for the ride. If there's a problem, they have to fix it or they lose players like this game has been.

My suggestion is above your post, and again, it isn't the first time it was posted & suggested to SOE.

The problem with the tower spawn shields (that don't allow outward fire) is that once properly camped they are an utter death trap, it's litterally impossible to push out unless you basically have more than enough players to retake the base (in which case Spawn Shields themselves are irrelevent).


This is made worse by the bottom level exit being within mine range (Claymore's are worst/best for this) which means as soon as you come out of the transporter you are killed by the mine blast through the Spawn Shield.

It is a horrible expliot, but one you'll see in every tower fight.

Which is what makes PS2's spawn design so baffling. I understand the devs wanted to do things differently, but how in the heck did they come up with this horrid design and think, "Yep, definitely better than PS1"? How did they not see that this is some of the worst gameplay ever put into an FPS?

Imagine if you tried to propose this as a design element in a design meeting:

"Okay, so the clincher of every battle, where it's decided who REALLY wins a base, is that we have one side all crammed into a tiny room, totally invincible to enemy fire, but they can shoot out these tiny windows and doors at the attackers! We'll have tons and tons of bullets flying into these shields, but nobody will be dying! No progress will be made whatsoever! And here's the BEST PART: everyone does this for five or ten minutes until the base flips, and then the attackers all rush in and immediately slaughter the defenders!"

You have no reason to be ashamed. If the other team is spawn camped, it is purely a lack of skill, coordination, or knowledge. Are spawn rooms the only way to deploy? Nope. Spawn Beacons, AMS sunderer, and Galaxy drops exist for a reason. I don't even play in squads, but if I'm spawn camped, I pull an infiltrator, run to a nearby enemy base, hack a terminal, pull a Sundy, and drive it to an unexpected location. Squads and outfits have even more options.

So just explain to your friend that the people being spawn camped are basically choosing to be there. If they die trying to "push out" of the spawn room, they deserve it.

PS1 paired it with it being much easier to recapture than to capture.

To be honest though destroying spawn tubes wasn't much different to the current SCU bases, it's just the base design in PS2 is generally inferior to PS1.

Inferior more like so backwards we're trying to figure out what fire is all over again. The spawn system is such a bad system at the moment, what we have now is basic map design for the showcasing of PS2 allowing players to just get straight out onto the field. That stage is over now and they should seriously rethink their position on this once the optimisation patch is done.

In order to "properly camp" a tower base, it takes time, and it takes greater numbers. The point is the tower design gives defenders a chance, much more so than the ordinary spawn death rooms. It's one of the best designs in this game.

I think a lot of people underestimate the usefulness of spawn beacons. They can really shift a battle if there are multiple squads using them.

PS1 already proved that destructible spawns work great. In fact, base fights in PS2 had much more back-and-forth. The fights would push in and out of bases, back-door crashes would pierce an area and may or may not get repelled, and overall the flow was exciting and often protracted into epic standoffs (granted, sometimes these could get boring, but they weren't ALWAYS boring the way spawncamping in PS2 is).

PS1 had the best method for dealing spawning issues I've ever seen. PS2 didn't use it because...? I have no idea. (No, I don't think EVERYTHING from PS1 should be borrowed for PS2).

Well, the problem is that this isn't PS1. I don't know how similar these two games are but being able to destroy spawn tubes could have a different effect in this game. And it may not be good.

This is the direct result of having hard spawns near the points themselves.

Change 1: Create a rule where hard spawns are always distant from capture points. Now the game is more about control of soft spawns (sunderers) which means that when a spawn-camp would normally happen, instead the sundy dies and the defenders spawn elsewhere.

Change 2: Vehicle terminals should universally be close to hard spawns. This allows for a much better vehicle game, and offsets the disadvantage of soft spawns being so far from where you actually want to spawn near the frontline (should you lose all your soft spawns.)

Change 3: Increase the number and types of soft spawns. Satellite spawns exist at some bases, and these are probably the right balance of softness vs. spawn convenience (though the spawns should generally be a little closer to main base objectives than hard spawns are, since soft spawns are easier to steal away.)

Satellite spawns alone might be enough, especially if there can be satellites which are captured quicker than others which could be placed inside facilities like Bio Labs so that attackers or defenders can gradually claim territory and push in or out depending on who's actually winning the fight (instead of an eternal stalemate.)

As the number of these spawns increases, the time from respawn to combat will be kept reasonably short (the enemy will cap spawn #1, so you'll respawn at soft spawn #2 which is still pretty close to where all the action is and sometimes within striking distance of spawn #1's capture point,) which is generally what a good infantry fight will want. But the capture point for a satellite should always be reasonably far from the satellite itself (as most are currently,) otherwise a satellite will be invincible with a zerg critical mass (as Bio Labs are, due to spawns being too close to capture points.)

Change 4: Reduce base Sunderer cost and cooldown. These changes put more reliance on player-created spawns (which is great, since it puts more control in players' hands, both for the spawners and the people attempting to stop the spawning,) so Sunderers should be much more available than they are now.

...and all of this assumes drop pods are fixed (currently they're brokenly overpowered in their ability to destroy sunderers), which will eventually require more open terrain (so that zerged sunderers can be more easily killable by vehicles getting a good flanking vantage point.)

In PS1 to capture some bases you had to bring LLU from target base to your factions base within a time limit. It was fun to take LLU and jump in a skyguard where dozens of aircraft pursuing to kill you. Felt like your factions success depends on you for that moment.

spawn rooms have been an issue since at least beta. SOE doesn't like to make drastic changes that would make things better. They are extremely resistant to it and it usually takes months and months of calling them names before they wear down and fix anything.

I just wander around hoping someone will poke out so I can shoot em. But yeah, I can agree the base camp to cap gets really boring, really fast. I usually get a base cap and warp away to some where I might get some kills.

I'm not sure what could be possibly worse than what we have now, where you sit for five minutes staring at spawn shields.

I'm not saying the attackers should be able to destroy the tubes at anytime, because like you said, this is not PS1. We have to work with the bases we have to some extent.

However, how could this not be better than what we have:

1) If there are 5 minutes (or 3 minutes, or whatever) left for the attackers to capture the base, the spawn shields go down, or maybe there's a hackable terminal to disable them.

2) There's a pain field inside the spawn room, which prevents people from just farming the tubes forever.

3) It takes heavy weapons to destroy the tubes. You need AV MAX, Rocket Launcher, or C4.

4) Once tubes are down, defending engineers can repair them.

That, right there, is gameplay. Camping spawns is not. If it's just limited to the last few minutes of a capture, it can't cause these nebulous problems you're worried about. If attackers could just run into spawns and take down tubes at any time, I could see how that would be something to worry about. But restricted to the last part of a battle? It's win-win.

Right. And I'm a horrible player--even I know this.

And that raises the question: Why are better players being spawn camped?

The answer is: They want to reverse farm the zerg.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because you occasionally see an effective enough reverse farm to actually kill enough attackers and attacking vehicles to flip the battle. It's bad because it encourages some players to not actually attempt to retake the base.

The best solution does both. It keeps enough players in the spawn room to create an attrition of enemy forces and keep the enemy's attention directed at the spawn room. Meanwhile, other squads set up sunderers or beacons to flank and recap the point. Suddenly, the attackers are not in the right position and need to reconverge on the point. While they are doing this, the spawn room players are hitting them from behind.

You've now turned a camp into a pincer.

And this totally works because I've done it (pulled a sunderer from a nearby base and positioned it to flank).

That's my one criticism of most of the tutorial videos I've seen for new players. There is too much emphasis on fragging and not enough emphasis on making tactical decisions that dictate the course of battle. The assumption is that a solo player isn't able to do this--and it's a bogus assumption.

It may, however, be correct to assume that most solo players aren't interested in such things. I think not, though. I think most solo players want to win and don't only think of winning as having a good KDR.

My least favorite thing about spawn room camps is actually the idiots who encourage and yell at people to push out of spawn with no solution for the 9 tanks, 3 liberators, 6 ESFs and 28 troops sitting right outside. Even if those players think KDR is unimportant, they actively encourage teammates to commit a sort of suicide that feeds certs to the other team.

What they should say is, "Good. You guys stay here and keep hitting them. Me and Diego (cause every team has a Diego) will bring up AMS sunderers. Then, you and Diego can flank them while I get a bowl of Rice Krispies (cause everyone who flanks loves Rice Krispies)."

I'd like to see available ''safe'' spawn points moving away from bases that are contested once the updated Amerish is up and running.

Just an idea for a possible solution.

Once a point has changed hands, nobody from the defense team can spawn there anymore unless the points are retaken or there is a sunderer available nearby. It would drive some of the fighting on the roads and surrounding terrain instead of all happening around the spawn points.

It could take longer and require few people standing on the points before they flip over and there could be a short timer that gives some time for the defenders to spawn, get organized and get it back. It would add pressure on the defenders to get out of the shields and drive the fight onward to the points as quick as possible. It's currently really boring to sit in front of the spawn room for the offense for the full duration of the base cap, just in case someone slips by and ninja cap it back. On the reverse side, it's really frustrating for the defenders to just get killed as soon as they get out of the shield. Defenders could get a buff to their shields as they exit the spawn points for X seconds while also preventing them to go back inside for the duration of that buff.

As a side effect, it would make transportation oriented vehicles like the flash, the galaxy and sundies very useful and necessary tools to mount an effective defense. It would add a purpose to combat vehicles as escorts and vanguards for the transports. It would also encourage scouting for information and infiltration. You know, like combined arms should be.

Just my 2 cents.

didn't you know....spawn camping is the meta game

That would still require a base overhaul as there is no point having that ability to do such when they can just overwhelmingly sit at the spawn building we have now and camp it with any reward they may get from it be little amount of experience or not. more teleporter/tunnel exits and sure add in the disabling spawn tubes providing those get moved to a more secure area ie underground.
This is once again all about choices and so far we as players in this game have very little choices. They literally took Battlefield 2/2142 design and then threw it onto their engine and put horrible spawn places on the map obviously meant for the showcasing and demoing of the game to reviewers and so on in the early stages.