The Esamir Disaster And The End Of Combined Arms

I hate this damn lattice. Feels like I'm playing first person dota or something. I don't really play on Indar anymore because of it, and I probably won't play on esamir after it's implemented there either. After Amerish falls I'll probably begrudgingly shelve this game.

Don't the shields also protect you, not only the infantry? Think about it, you can fly just above the shields, go down and kill some guys and go back up. Your only problem should be other aircraft in that situation.

People will use less AA since they're usually more protected in those bases and you have to move under the dome to get shot (at least, they'll think that, until someone gets below the dome and surprise attacks you) So AA will only be used outside of those shields.

These domes only cover certain areas infantry are already pretty covered, aircarft and tanks are only being excluded from large groups of infantry covering inside buildings, not the open ground around where any type of ground has no defense...

And maybe now helpless infantry has more defense against aircraft, flak will be nerfed as it is n longer needed by everyone.

If a Lib or ESF gets taken down by a medic or an infiltrator, then they deserve it.

We need more infantry only areas like in ps1.

So now people outside of your render range won't be able to shoot you and this is bad for vehicle operators? It's a blessing for infantry because vehicles will have to be close to do their job and a blessing for vehicles because of said render issues.

I like the changes. Finally stop tank and lib spam on spawns.

I will NEVER understand the anti-lolpod whiners in here.
ESFs are basically the easiest unit in the game to area deny. Where is this magical place, where ESFs pilots are free to lolpod whiny noobs all day without getting constantly locked or shot at by burster maxes?

Pretty much this. Right now infantry AA is so powerful that you cant fly anywhere near bigger battles. Hopefully with anti-projectile dome shields the amount of AA MAX's and strikers should go down and libs+ESF should have an easier time flying.

Ofc the zepher and ESF lolpods are going to have a harder time farming infantry but whatever, nerfing cheese tactics isnt a bad thing.

That bubble will do one thing only - make it absolutely mandatory for defenders to have their ESFs out and dominating. Since AA will be totally ineffective in the base proper, without ESF cover, infantry will simply get farmed by enemy liberators. A lot. I can think of a nice scenario right now, a lib pilot parks their lib a bit above the shield, and ducks in for a few seconds, long enough for the gunner to blast a few ants below, then up again, rendering themselves immediately immune to any projectiles, rockets and whatnot. In fact, if an attacking zerg owns the sky, the shield will actually help them farm more than protect infantry below.

Think a giant spawn room shield blocking all projectiles, only enemy can physically pass through it and you can't. Well done SOE, well done. Jeez.

I definitely have some mixed feelings about these changes. While some of them are positive- the interior layouts look very nice with lots of cover to make infantry fights more interesting, the overall feeling is of an attempt to completely separate infantry and vehicle combat. Statements like "infantry shouldn't have to worry about vehicles" really have no place in a game like Planetside.

The added walls aren't a big problem as they do make bases more defensible and prevent vehicles from surrounding the spawn point but the dome shields are too much. I wouldn't mind it put on some of the outposts as less crammed and claustrophobic alternative to the Bio Labs but this should not be the same for most of the outposts in the game, and definitely not for facilities which have enough AA to effectively defend against most air attacks.

The domes is what really creates the forced separation between the outside environment the the inside of the base. While it would make it easier to fly over a base, having no effect whatsoever on the fight would make aircraft pilots feel pretty pointless and left out. But air isn't the only thing that would be affected- like the question that was correctly raised regarding sniping, even if infantry or vehicles manage to get to a good vantage point overlooking a base they won't be able to shoot inside either. Positioning and having the high ground should matter and turning every outpost into a mini Bio Lab is not a good idea.

Having vehicles only able to participate in open field fights just diminishes their role. While those fights do happen on occasion, these changes would make them even less frequent when a defending force knows it can fall back to a nearby base where all the vehicular firepower of the attackers will be useless.

While I don't think the current balance between infantry and vehicles is perfect, this is not the right way to go about addressing it.

If they had actual gameplay tied to it, like the ability to destroy and repair walls, overload the bubble generator, have big gate shields the attackers can hack/destroy and open and defenders have to guard and so on, then these changes would be awesome and add depth to the game.

What they're doing is lazy and poorly thought through. To such an extent that even if they add the ability for attackers to drop the base shield bubble, I think attacking zergs will just opt to keep them on, as it helps the attackers more than it protects the defenders.

Not sure who does their game design, but they're not doing a good job. If they want to have base overshield, that shield needs to be impassable for everything, and it needs to have a larger gameplay mechanism tied to the overall game, preferably multi-tiered. For example on-site generators which can be blown up and repaired and offsite means of dropping the shield too, such as cutting the "power lines" tied to the lattice and slowly starving the base of energy, so that its passive defenses drop.

Otherwise you're just setting up giant meatgrinders.

'infantry shouldn't have to worry about vehicles'

This is a very worrying statement to hear from a dev.
I agree with the poster above, this kind of game design is arbitrary and lazy. If you want to cut down on spawn camping (which is killing the gameplay) then connect buildings to the spawn room to provide immediate cover the infantry as they leave the spawn room. Or even easier, just create more spawn points to allow the defenders a choice of attack angles and spread out the campers more.

Creating a game with combined arms and then trying to separate the 'arms' just dosen't make sense.

I'm torn. Bubbles are stupid, except on big facilities where they belong, with a generator, to add some sort of tactical strategy to the caps. More infantry combat is good, there are enough vehicle fights and the lattice ensures that battles happen between bases now so it should be a really good flow.

I'm kinda concerned about that as well, I can live with dome shields but only over main bases (preferably as the interlink benefit and a way to disable the benefit like ps1 style gen holds) and not over every little outpost there is.

I do think the walls make for far too much segregation vehicles from infantry... you basically have a "death alley" for vehicles which is pretty pointless to take your tank there cause you will just get killed, and a sundy landing area, but everything inside those walls don't have to really interact with the "outside" except for the bridge areas.

Consider some of the "fortress" type bases they added to Indar, these are pretty inaccessible to vehicles, but defenders can take to towers and walkways to interact with the outside of the base, so infantry can fight vehicles while having added cover to give them a tactical element to use. Its a whole lot better than a high wall, but even then, it seems a bit much to have most of the bases turn into fortress type facilities.

The level of segregation leads to more bio-lab type fights, which means vehicles are going to end up being transport mode, and convoys, wolf packs to hunt convoys... and some cheesy dome games by air maybe which will be frustrating for both air and infantry (you can shoot me you can't shoot me, I come under shields and die almost instantly, etc). Any way you look at it, vehicle gameplay of all types are diminished in value and when you get to the next base, you ditch them and proceed on feet.

Now let's look at bio-lab fights today, while I understand some people love them, they're basically meat grinders and MAX infantry farms. Its just about cramming enough MAXes and support infantry to win the fight, nothing more, nothing less... not really a lot of strategy, just mass mayhem and plenty of kills. It caters to a subset of the PS2 audience, but many grow tired of these fights too.

Its even worse now that with lattice, we have no outer control points/sub-bases, where you had fights outside the bio-lab that could end the attack, and those sub-bases/control points can be flipped very quickly and do flip many times during a heated fight. With lattice as in Indar now, even those fights are a distant memory.

The game is just turning into an infantry grind pretty much.

What this essentially does is create the progression to a base fight that happened in PS1. The combined arms fighting will still happen because you have to advance to the point where you have all the defenders contained within the base, the only difference in PS1 is the bases were smaller and all inside. These bases are much more interesting to fight in than the bio labs, so as far as adding variation to the game with some infantry only battles I think its a very good thing.

NOTE!!! they said that they may only be on SOME of the bases, not all...depending on what we the community want. Personally I think they should only be on main bases and not all bases. They also said they MAY allow them to be DISABLED, so before everyone flies off the handle lets just see how it plays out on the test server and provide ideas / feedback in the meantime. Regarding the ability to disable, I think this should be an option. It would give an objective for smaller squads to have an impact, which they feel the lattice system has taken away.

Another thing that I think is essential if they do this, they must allow vehicles to be left unmanned for longer. This means that once the perimeter is secured, the players in the tanks / Air vehicles can take part in the infantry fight and not lose their vehicle while doing it.

Im pretty sure you can drive through them. I just watched that steam and Im SURE it just said you can drive though them so Im really not sure what your complaining about. All its guna stop is Libs at the flight ceiling out of render range killing everyone, rocketpod heroes farming kills from 500m away and pansy *** inf and drivers who are so scared their precious designer tank with its chrome wheels will get a scratch refuse to close to more then the aforementioned 500m and just sit on a cliff trying to farm kills without really helping.

All its guna do to combined arms is actually force the theatres to actually combine their arms in close support rather than sit on a cliff half a click away not really accomplishing anything, while a handful of players who actually realise you have to advance to win a combat get mercilessly butchered because they are being hung out to dry by their team-mates in a 10:1 conflict despite the fact you actually outnumber your opponents.

But that's where you are wrong....they have every place in Planetside. In planetside1 you had base fights where everyone would abandon their vehicle and secure the base with infantry only. The battle therefore had two stages, a) approach the base and secure the perimeter with combined arms b) take the base using infantry only.

The ONLY difference here is the bases are bigger and more interesting to fight in...thats it....no one ever accused PS1 of not being combinded arms, or there being a problem with infantry only fights being the only way to capture every base.

This is the thing with change....whenever something is changed some people will prefer it the way it was, which is fine, as long as the change is what the majority want then the games moves forward. As I said in my previous post. They may only make SOME bases have shields, they may make it so that it can be disabled....its not black and white where 'black is how it was' and 'white is how its going to be based on this vid'

I think its a good addition to the game to add base fights which are inf only. Whether thats 'all' bases and whether they allow them to be disabled can be worked out over time, for best and varied gameplay

I think you are confusing different groups of people.

I find it strange looking that they added trees and rock to bases. The first thing to do when building something is usually to clean the place from such things.