Why is it so difficult to add doors?

Since in this lore and universe we use energy fields to isolate areas(Read Physics of the Impossible, interesting stuff on this) Stalkish's idea would definitely fit and work fine.

Shields isolate areas, if your Faction doesn't own them you have to waste 5" to neutralize it for X", or until one of the owning Faction comes and restores it. It could even be a panel you can fire at to disable it until an Engineer comes in to fix it. Or a panel only Infiltrators can Hack. In fact Infiltrators should be able to pass through, make it either a Passive line or a Slot mod, or a new Cloak even. Because... Infiltrators.

I'd also make it so you can't see what's on the other side. What's the word? Opaque?

Doors themselves are indeed a bit more tricky to implement, create slightly more traffic (which is negligible though) and can lead to occasional desync issues if done sloppily (see sometimes in PS1 - though it's not as bad as some comments here make it out to be).
So if we are talking traditional doors that use a trigger and a moving prop associated with it, then yes, on the scale we are talking about in PS2, an implementation would be tricky.
But even classic doors are totally possible without turning the game upside down and/or into a desynched lagfest. Alternatively, if the issue is the moving prop (which i suspect would be the actual problematic part), it could be bypassed by using transparent, flagged textures (basically the same thing as the shields now) for the same effect (like what stalkish mentioned above).

Bottomline: With some creative thinking and determination it's absolutely possible to create a map this large with fully functional doors or door-substitutes. It's just that the devs don't seem to think it's worth the effort, or that doors are of any value to the game.

Those shields are tied to a Timer that everyone gets at the same time, they are not something that every person can interact with at Will, whenever they want.

The only difference between shield doors and normal doors is animations...
Oh wait, no, shield doors are also animated.

Shield doors and normal doors would have the same performance drop, so it's impossible

What we've got here is called a straw man argument. I didn't say that, you did.

I gave a layman's explanations of the technological limitations faced. Take it or leave it, but fact is you aren't going to see doors in PS2 so save your breath.

Why do we need doors so badly?

Or ever in the future-history of humanity, it seems.

It's just depressing that games seem to be going backwards in scope and ambition from the late 90's/early 2000's to now, EQ1, PS1, SWG & WoW all wouldn't even be made these days.

I think games are moving forward by getting rid of arbitrary crap, like doors.

And inventories, lootable bodies, grenade launchers that fire more than 1 grenade, A2A and A2G fighters as seperate things, airbourne vehicle transport (Lodestar), lock-able continents, a decent proper functional resource system, a meta-game, water that you can drown in and take some vehicles across, etc. etc.

The graphics are still getting better though, just seemingly little else (I certainly CTD much more in PS2 than I ever did in PS1). The only game (baring kickstarter ones) I've seen with genuine ambition lately is ESO.

It's likely monetary constraints driving it (I would bet all the PS2 Devs would like to have much of the above in PS2), but it is still depressing.

Sry to quote myself but i already addressed this in my post that you quoted.
People interact with the shield gens to initiate this timer, ive suggested the same thing.

wish i could upvote to infinity and beyond.

TIL, Doors are ****ing complicated...

Arbitrary. How long did it take to add all that stuff? Years and years.

This was the official reason given months back on FNO however I think it's more a case of they can't be bothered.

I can't logically understand the performance reasoning and I admit I am not savy to game development however mt brain says a few moving doors in a fight with a hundred people won't make much of a difference compared to the hundred people already there, plus air and ground vehicles etc and surely players being there are more performance intensive than a simple door that opens.... and closes. Players are doing many other things that effect performance.

My brain can't understand the logic of how that reason makes sense

How is this any different to the client having to do the same thing with shields etc Both clients have to know when a shield is down or up?

It's due to a number of things. It's one more thing that can 'break', adding in the code due to the way any program is built could cause something else to break, the script that handles the doors need to run for every door on the server and that adds more processing overhead to the server.

Then you get into actually implementing them as a tool. First you gotta go back to every base that you have doors on and think "Hmmm, how does adding a door change the flow of the fight and what new considerations do we need to think of?" Then they have to go back and rework every base where they and doors.

This then leads on to poor design choices due to the Devs knowing nothing about how they work in game under live fire because we, the players, do **** the devs would never think of or are able to test for, this leads to a negative feed back that means the devs need to devote more time and energy to fixing the new addition to the game thus leading to other content being delayed.

Then something breaks, something important and the doors stop. It's not a matter of if but rather when. Is it some optimization of code that housed one line that was used to kludge the doors in? Is it some new conflict with a feature you just implemented?

Now factor this all in and then put yourselves in the devs position and ask "Is this worth us spending all the time we need to make these work ir can we better use our assets somewhere else that we feel could enhance the core gameplay or improve some feature." Then there's another question to ask. "Do the doors add to the experience, do they minimally effect the experience, or are they a detriment to the experience."

There's a reason why doors aren't being used and I suspect it's because from a cost/benefit analysis they were deemed either Neutral or Negative.

"Years and years"? Huh?

Most of that (in fact all of that, except Lodestars, I think) PS1 had on its day of release!

I think these “technological limitations” are nothing more than spoon fed fables that are eagerly gobbled up, repeated and elaborated up so often they become the truth. The “truth” is unless I have a room full of developers with my golden lasso tied around them I will believe less than half of what they say....and consequently nothing that I read in these forums.

Put doors in one outpost that’s mostly underground and watch chaos sort itself out in-game and in these forums. I simply cannot remember a single time in 10 years of insane gameplay that doors should be removed from PS1. Some of my fondest memories from that game involved doors that worked...and worked well. They were EVERYWHERE.

Because this game engine is stupid.

I can't find the PS1 patch notes so I'll just assume you're wrong, as is traditional.

He's not wrong, actually. He is correct that the only thing on his list that wasn't in PS1 from day one was the Lodestar. However, I do believe Planetside 1 had a much longer dev time before going out the door than PS2 did. Higby said that PS2 only had something like 18 months of dev time. I'm pretty sure PS1 had longer than that.