Fun Mass Infantry Fights RIP

Still forcing people into roles they don't want to.

You're overlooking the massive impact the all-too-easy availability of vehicles have on this game.
Make SG good, you'll see tons and tons of them, empty air, and tanks reigning supreme. We've got to this stage already during beta

If its not in the air, then as infantry you have some hope of fighting back. if it is, just redeploy back to the warpgate.

How exactly are more continents going to fix this? If anything all it will do is give factions alternatives to the continents they can freely take...

You have to oversimplify answers sometimes just because of issues of attention span a segment of forum readers have

Faced with a wall of text = skip over

Most reasonable players would agree that base design, layout and defendability has been a semi shambles so far. My own thoughts are that SOE wanted to have a FLUID battlefield instead of strongpionts on maps held by each faction and the areas between fought over like scraps at the table. Not a Siegfred Line or a WWI stagnant trench warfare mentality if you like.

It's not an exploit... and I hesitate to use the word at all. It's just that human nature and the ability to think means that we, as players, have spotted the weakness in the design. Bravo for being smart!

Much rather these problems are solved FIRST than the lunatic idea of a 4th continent. Yes by all means.... but shelve it for now and fix the broken stuff first. One guy on here.... can't find the thread now.... came up with a well thought out re-design of bases, Complete with drawings and plans.... Can't be that hard... surely?

Shame really that no forum sub-section or support route is available for communtiy contribution of well concieved and planned improvements is available.... as far as a quick search, by myself, shows.

Thats the nature of a team game. If the enemy has pulled 20 tanks, you need to spawn HA, I dont care what your prefernce is.
You can say 'I am playing Medic and thats it!' but dont complain when you get killed repeatedly because you didnt bring the tools for the job. Nothing is forcing you to change roles - but you will often need to.

Ever played TF2 where half the team is a sniper? Its the same thing. You CAN play whatever you want, but dont expect to always be effective.

Vehicles should be easily accessible. They are easily destroyed. I fail to see the issue with vehicles. What I do see are people whining about things that are actually fine, in many cases.

Redesigning the bases seems inevitable.

1) Include a healthy amount of underground/elevated areas that are strategically important (gens, etc) that only infantry can get to an ranged vehicle fire can't bear upon.
2) DOUBLE the number of AA turrets in bases. Don't just put them on the perimeter walls. Put them on their own dias inside. Put them on the large structure in the middle. Put two or three around each air pad.
3) Double or triple AA turret effective HP.
4) Include a radar facility of some sort as a strategic target. When it's operable a) AA turrets CoF is 50% smaller b) any friendly air within 500 meters gains +10% damage and +10% EHP...call it simulating a robust air boss controlling a defensive battle.

Anyone who joined this game without realizing vehicles would be readily available has only themselves to blame. It is very very obvious it's not all about infantry with the odd tank or plane scattered about, and if that weren't enough, you can play it for free and find out. People who don't like games with a lot of vehicle combat shouldn't play games with a lot of vehicle combat and then complain that there's too much vehicle combat.

It doesn't happen because the enemy has AA on the ground that air-to-air ESF are not good at dealing with, and nobody else cares to deal with it. In spite of what you might see people doing on youtube, the huge majority of ground attack ESFs and variously full liberators I encounter are awful and would quickly fall prey to a smaller number of air-to-air pilots if we could get near the place without exploding. The main things I always try to know before I attack is whether I'm outnumbered, how many are paying attention and to what, and what sort of AA there is. Picture yourself running into a field to knife fight a guy while an enemy sniper or two try to pick you off, and you'll have some idea why.

I'm sorry, I come from Planetside 1, amongst other titles.

You know, the predecessor....

derp

So did I, and vehicles were just as dominant there.

The ONLY place you would see lots of infantry is...wait for it...BASES.

Sort of like, you know, Planetside 2?

The Gulf War kinda flies in the face of what you're saying. The Iraqis, by world standards (not necessarily just those of the developed world) had a fairly robust amount of AA, both positioned and man-portable. It didn't do them any good and by the end of the war, they had come to fear and hate one of our most technologically unadvanced aircraft, the A-10, knicknaming it the Devil's Cross. Allied air destroyed the positioned AA and managed to shrug off the man-portable AA with extremely minimal loss.

Other than Crossroads or the Crown, the only large infantry battles I really see are when a large outfit decides to zerg an area which happens extremely often in this game. They seem to do it on nearly empty areas rather than actually fight the enemy, so if another large outfit isn't there to counter-zerg you have plenty of enemies to fight, not that it will be very even for you.

To be fair in PS1 at least when I played, you had to spend your limited certs on vehicles so if you were playing a pilot you could also not play a tanker, a lib pilot and galaxy pilot, a suderer driver etc all equally effectively.

My pilot in PS was just that + eng.
My infil had a mosquito and thats it.

This limited vehicle spam a lot.

Wrong.

The biggest issues with vehicles is the terrain, if you can limit the areas vehicles can get to via terrain/buildings, you can have more infantry fights without the explosive spam.

Never as much, and there you are right (and I never said otherwise), often because the layout was making them impossible to be so dominant, so the layout is a major factor in PS2 as well.

But another major factor compared to PS1 is the availability. We couldn't all come in vehicle all the time in PS1. Far from it. Out of a platoon of 30, you didn't have 20 vehicles. apart when your outfit were doing events. Because vehicles required certifications. Because they required 2 people to be operated. Because they were less "streamlined".
Also because they had more infantry counter than just rocket launchers. Mines. EMP.

There are much little differences that make me doubt that only redesigning bases will make things fine. I see this only pushing infantry inside facilities, and nothing else. Kind of defeating the Combat Arms goal.

I think there is a bit too much whining on this. I've been in battles that beat tank zergs with infantry. Just need enough heavies and a few good medics and engs.

Most of the terrain is the current continents is pretty horrible for vehicles. What do you want for a new one?

Maybe a bit. Timers (instead of resources) would also do it.

Just get enough infantry that are organised and you'll chew up vehicles. This game can be infantry centric if it wants to be, in any situation, but you need people to organise and rally around. When you're zerging, you're gonna get that ******** of ESFs farming everything.
Watch BuzzCut's stream and see what infantry power does when you have someone competent in the lead.

So you're essentially the game version of those people who see the re-imagined version of a film and hate it unconditionally for not being the first one with better special effects?