Join the Discussion on Reddit! A Dome Shield Crusade

That is for another thread.

Why do you shove these ideas into every conversation, whether or not they address the problems being talked about (they don't)?

Even when it's vaguely on-topic, most of those changes don't address real problems PS2 has.

As long as SOE learns its lesson and never designs another Bio Lab, this would be a very good improvement.

• Hard spawns are any spawn that's "invincible". A base spawn cannot be destroyed like a Sunderer (soft spawn) can; the only way to shut it down is to cap the base or take out the SCU.
• Bio Labs' problem is that the hard spawn is too close to the capture points.
• Normally when this happens (at many other base types) you can suppress the hard spawn with vehicles (air/tanks) and successfully attack the base.
  • This solves the problem, but isn't the ideal solution since it means infantry are almost never valuable in PS2 (you don't need more infantry to take that base, you need more people suppressing the enemy's spawn.)
• Bio Labs can't be suppressed in that way. That's the core reason they're so defender-biased and result in bad fights.

That's the problem. What's the solution?

• If a base cannot be suppressed with vehicles, the hard spawn must be distant from the capture points. It must fundamentally be a bad spawn for defending the point(s).
• To make this work best, the defenders should probably have access to more soft spawns like captureable spawns or sunderers. (Because bases should provide both defenders and attackers with a balanced fight, and when both sides are vulnerable to their soft spawn being lost this makes things balanced.)

How players spawn has everything to do with getting spawn camped, Mr. Bandaid Fix.

Whatever gain you'd think you'd make would be lost on no ESF/LIBS taking out the slower bigger easier to see maxes. The complaint against maxes would rise in proportion to the drop in complaints about air.

In isolation that's a true statement.

But the specifics that you suggested wouldn't fundamentally change how players spawn in a way that would solve the problem.

In isolation nothing, all a MMOFPS is about is how players spawn

The specifics that I suggested would radically alter the fundamentals. If you had played PS1 or WWIIONLINE with the (easily hideable) UMS you would understand.

Well good, maybe then SOE will finally realize that MAXes need a good spanking with a nerf bat.

I giggled when Higby said it wasn't implemented due to render issues.

To be constructive, I'll leave this here. And don't be stupid. There's no mystery. The surge of Liberators comes from buffing the Liberator. And lolpods earned their name from months and months of facerolling the ground and making people ragequit the game in the first few months of launch.

Domeshields, like walls were and still are a bandaid.

No not good when a bandaid fix drops one thing in proportion to a rise in another.

1. The goal of dome shields is to create clearer distinction between infantry and vehicle parts of gameplay. The simple fact is that variations on AMSes/Sunderers don't change that in a meaningful way.
2. In PS1 which I played for 3.5 years, I found, camped, and destroyed AMSes just as easily as I kill Sunderers. More easily, actually, because they had weaker armor and no weapons.
3. But that had almost no relevance to the division of infantry and vehicle parts of gameplay, which is why your suggestion is so off-topic.
4. The division was almost entirely created by the fact that nearly all bases (except Amp Stations) were underground/indoors, which meant vehicles fundamentally couldn't interact with infantry and you had to fight on the ground to win the battle.
   • Dome shields take existing PS2 bases and basically achieve the exact same thing in the exact same way by shutting out vehicles and forcing an infantry fight. (But like I said in the other post, the major concern here is that without balancing hard spawn proximity to capture-points we'll just be creating more Bio Labs where the bases become too defender-biased and create boring lopsided fights.)

This was a horrible Idea when they first came up with it and it is still a horrible idea now.

you mean the no skill losers who sit in spawns shooting out from their immortal skill bunkers instead of redeploying cause they lost and counter attacking yeah it sure does.

The original idea was to allow infantry through the shield if I remember correctly. All though that looks to have changed from the picture.

I don't think it will hinder them much if at all though. Gal dropping anything but the New amp stations wasn't much of an option anyway and the new point on the amp stations are close to the walls anyway.

Care to explain why?

Because every base would be a biolab? Now I don't mind the occasional biolab fight but I don't want every base to be an infantry only chokepoint spamfest. We have biolabs for that.

Not true at all. Not every base would become a biolab. One reason that biolabs are a camp fest is because of how small they are. Also the shields can be taken down since every things I've read about them has said that they will have a gen connected to them.

Honestly I can't think of any base that would have one of these that would make the fight less fun.

Also long drawn out fights are not a bad thing as long as their dynamic. Biolabs are not dynamic because their is hardly any room to to flank with. Amp stations and other bases like the Octagon be a different fight since it would allow for better flow of the battle.

Beyond my earlier post, I do think Biolab shields should have a gen associated with them.

There should be the SCU right by the spawn, the dome control where the SCU is, and the regular generator where the regular generator is.

The Regular Generator controls the shields protecting the Dome Control.

The Dome Control controls the shields protecting the SCU, and of course, the Dome.

Or even better yet, hollow out that biolab center spire some more and put the SCU above the Dome Control, put some stairs up that back wall, put some shields at the top of those stairs, and give defenders a teleporter to a chamber above the SCU that drops in through those one-way nobody-can-shoot through shields.

Or even better BETTER yet, do the same thing but DOWN through and into the bottom bowl part of the biolab and make a whole 'nother fight down there.

Combine this with how I suggested to change the teleporter exits earlier in this thread, and biolabs just became alot more interesting.

January 21 2013... almost a year and a half ago....

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...l-against-infantry.81765/page-10#post-1065294

How things changed, SOE over nerfed vehicles, in special tanks, made it harder to obtain, again tanks.
Increased the ammount of ways to deal with them.
And i lost my faith in SOE in the mean time.

Why i'm not surprised they are trying to bring Biolabs' meatgrinder to everywhere?

And i still think this game will close next year. Let's see if i hit this foresight too.
Not next year, they will keep their server UP because the PS4 version. Then the other year.

I like where this is going!