I thought lock continent would be a good thing!

This.

Now, if my outfit wants keep the gates open to Esamir, we fight to keep it neutral. If we want +50% infantry resources for our faction, we'll make an operation out of capturing Amerish. If we want Indar unlocked, we try our damnedest to win the Hossin alert to lock it and unlock Indar (when we can cap Hossin).

It's given more depth to this game. The choice is there but you have to earn it, just like weapons or perks in CoD are a choice, or special abilities and access to your favourite raids in WoW, you have to earn them first. Only difference is that in PS2 you don't get the reward forever, creating a self-sustaining loop of constant achievement and reward (or failure and punishment) - and a renewable long-term goal for leadership and outfits with a sense of tangible progress for the effort we put in as a coordinated force in a WAR beyond capping the same small central group of bases every single day providing no material effect.

Continent locking's not perfect, and there's plenty of room to improve, but it's a significant step in the right direction and that's far more than what we've had in the past.

As other have said, this is only phase 1 of a grand scheme of changes to improve the depth of the game. IF you don't like it, come back in 3 months time, but for now enjoy the little depth and grand strategy this game now has and recognise the fact that the foundations are finally in place for some really great war-like strategic and rapid FPS gameplay. For FREE. And not just another shallow grind-em-up.


Besides, Hossinside will only last a week or so, so if you hate the new continent that much, grab an IRNV scope for your guns or just log out and come back in a week.

Well, its kinda hard to defend a certain continent 24/7 since some of us have to work and sleep

This only work in prime time, game is empty from 2am to 6pm shall I capture 100+ bases alone then only so I can play the map I want to play.

Why not just time the lock so it only last for 2 hours.

This update was for Cod and console players. Now PS2 is a close combat, laggy and buggy beta game.

For the love of god stop complaining.

If you want to unlock the continent, then FIGHT to unlock it. Organise your faction and FIGHT, for gods sake. At present Vanu have taken Hossin - this is the game. If you want to take Hossin you will have to lock something else.

At last you have a real PURPOSE to fight - for control and domination. To prevent the enemy from accessing a continent.

Vanu are just playing the game properly.

Play a different game.

For the love of god stop complaining.

If you want to unlock the continent, then FIGHT to unlock it. Organise your faction and FIGHT, for gods sake. At present Vanu have taken Hossin - this is the game. If you want to take Hossin you will have to lock something else.

At last you have a real PURPOSE to fight - for control and domination. To prevent the enemy from accessing a continent.

Vanu are just playing the game properly.

No if you only want to play on one map then you should not play a game where a core feature is to push each other in and out of maps. Your freedom to always play on Indar was never meant to be there and you know it.

This version of locked continent is not inherited from PS1. Unfortunately that version requires at least 5 continents to work, which of course we don't have and possibly never will do.

Guys.... Contlocking at the current form is just temporary. If we got our BI we will get a lattice and this kind of locking might go away

I'm not even going to gratify you with a reasonable response now. GG

That is true but it will probably take another year before it changes.

it bugs me too, but you won't get a lot of sympathy from this crowd, man. these are the same plebs that whined until SOE ruined the Crown, whined until they got lattice implemented (setting back development at least a year,) and have now whined for yet another nostalgia mechanic that doesn't work for the game we're playing. it's scrubism on a vast scale, where the player expects the game and other players to meet their expectations and play by their own arbitrary rule set. sadly it is the future of gaming because the majority of gamers are scrubs, and the majority is where the most money will always be. they don't know why they want what they want, and the truth is there isn't a logical reason for them to want it. but they think they want it, so they want it, and they use majority power to dictate design. for worse more often than better.

that said, for those that prefer indar, the correct strategy lies within the fourth faction. even if you despise the other factions, or have bitter rivalries with players on other factions on your server - this is the time to set those feelings aside to create and maintain faction alternates. the strategy is this: if indar is close to being locked, even by your faction, switch to prevent it. if indar is locked, pick the faction closest to the next lock and assist there. it may not seem like much help - one individual making an effort - but i am sure enough people prefer indar to make a difference if they all follow this method. this is especially apparent with player behavior during alerts. it is very easy to notice population swings, especially late at night on connery when the japanese swarm VS and everyone who is unable to farm the low pop xp bonus changes sides.

it is my prediction that whether people intentionally faction swap to game the locking system in favor of indar specifically or not, behavior will be influenced by the alert rewards alone. this is because 1. the majority of players of games (in general) like to be on the winning side, 2. there is a cert grind incentive to winning alerts, and 3. the underlying issues of population imbalance and poor overall game design (base design, reward incentives, and battle flow in particular) are not addressed by the hodge-podge of half-baked game mechanics that are aimed at treating the symptoms of the issues rather than curing the disease of the issues themselves. i suspect that it has a lot to do with collecting paychecks and waiting for PS4 release to drop, before shifting development assets to new projects, and PS2 being primarily a free massive alpha platform for Forgelight with little regard for longevity or player enjoyment. but that is a betrayal of the old heads that are so easily placated by this nostalgia content anyway, more than it is a disservice to the minority of skilled gamers that will just move on when this game is proven to be ruined by catering to base elements.

of course the next argument to be made is that there should be some sort of mechanic against changing factions, that they should bring back 1 faction per server rules, or at the very least some sort of faction changing cooldown to promote the kind of faction identity and loyalty that was so prevalent in PS1. again this is another example of how nostalgia for the intellectual property (the name, the lore, the first game) often wins out over careful consideraton of the game environment and meta-game (F2P, cert grind, attacker vs defender imbalance) that we are actually playing on a daily basis. this nostalgic ideal creates immense pressure against good and careful design decisions. it is an example of development serving too many masters, indeed. and of course, if such a mechanic were implemented - since this is not a subscription game where the pressure is on players to "get their money's worth" since the devs are already paid - it would simply lead to players having the attitude that "i can't play where i want, and now i can't play the faction i want, so i'll just go play another game until i log in and i can join the winning side on indar." and so population will continue to drop until there is one server for NA and one for EU, mostly full of scrubs and has-beens.

I unlock Indar. Alert start, regardles what faction win I lose Indar.
How I can fight to stay on Indar?

Or they capture Indar in the morning and you need to wait till the evening or the next day before you can have fun.

It's fine, death to Indarside

It... it actually forced me on Indar.

I haven't played on Indar for 10 months, and now i have no choice. Straight to Indar for me as Amerish and Esamir are always locked en Hossin has such a booming pop that my PC can't handle it.

Yep really I think PS2 would need 5+ continents & 3 sanctuaries to really do PS1 locking justice (obviously PS1 10 continents would still be much better).

Having said that the status quo wasn't really doing much but slowly dying either, so we'll have to see how locking goes in a month or three.

It interesting that this devolves into a discussion of lattice.

Imagine...if you people had the player-guts to have never required lattice in the first place.

You're right it is a game. But sometimes the opponents in a game don't let you do what you wish. Sometimes in Football the QB gets sacked when he wants to do a pass. His teammates have to prevent that.. but its not always possible. Poker is an even better analogy. We'd all love to get a full house. But sometimes we're only lucky enough to get dealt two pairs. You just got to play the hand that is dealt to you.

I mean how it was before this was that people who didn't like Indar had to play on Indar or play a ghost capping game. Now they get to play a real match on the other continents. Yes Indar lovers get screwed. But at least they DO have an option to cap another continent or two to unlock the one they really wish to play on.

In every FPS I've played, there's always been that one map that people just want to play exclusively. You can't play any variety because of it. When another map comes up, everyone DC's and goes to a server that is running it. And of course there is always that one or two servers that run it exclusively. I'm glad that SOE found away around it that works in a persistent MMO. Other games such as MechWarrior Online also deal with it by hosting all games by their servers and picking maps at random.

This is a good thing. The game isn't stale. And it makes the game more exciting not to be in the same buildings and bases all the time. Yeah you all are going to moan and complain about it. But sorry, like I said I'm calling bluffs on players leaving. Those of us who were forced to play on Indar just to find a fight never left. So I seriously doubt you all will leave.

As we said in the Army, suck it up, drink water, and change your socks. You all had Indar for 20 months. Time to play something else for the next year and a half. Its only fair.

Cont locking is one of the most requeated features of the game.

It is a feature that has always been intended to be in the game. If you want a bog standard session shooter there are plenty of other games that provide the TDM on the map of your choice.

This is the meta that has always been planed for this game and is the first step in adding that meta. This is the game you signed up for, it has always been listed in the roadmap as an upcoming feature

This is planetside