this game is just NOT fun anymore

Hard to put in words, but I useto spend countless hours ACTUALLY fighting the other factions in this game. Nowadays you pretty much do everything EXCEPT fight the other factions. Sure, driving around every now and then can be relaxing and fun... but unless you enjoy dancing to and fro waypoint to waypoint - the game is basically a bad-version of mario-kart with waypoints.

Game useto be very simple. If you own the crown, you are the king-of-the-hill... defend it with your life! Every other speck of territory should assist you in keeping the crown: for example:
- capturing tech-plants would allow your friendlies @ crown to spawn battle-tanks
- capturing bio-labs would assist your friendlies @ crown to spawn MAXES)
- capturing bases surrounding crown would ease pressure off crown so your friendlies could spend more time on secondary objectives as above

If you didn't own the crown, you had to try and dethrone the kings by 'bullying-up' on the king-faction: for example
- Starve them from resources by capturing their secondary bases (tech-plants/ampstations/biolabs)
- Sit outside their warp-gate to bait-the-kings away from crown (if no one's defending the-crown, the 'kings' are vulnerable)
- Fail and get frustrated... and release all your anger on the 'other-loser faction' (if no ones fighting the kings, they might bring the fight and overextend- leaving crown vulnerable')

There was always something to do, and plenty to be motivated for. Nowadays, you cap and base, you lose a base. you win the alert, you lose the alert. Whereas before, you'd cap a base and all of a sudden you'd spend the whole weekend trying to defend it. It was awesome. Every base had it's importance. The king-of-the-hill format made the faction-rivalries stronger than ever. It was good to be nice and p1ssed off.

So basically you're bemoaning the loss of Indarside?

Yeah, no...

The psychological value a player puts in owning or taking territory is directly proportional to the effort players on your team put in defending territory.

These days there is zero effort we put in defending anything, therefore it's value is zero.
There use to be the highest value on the crown because players give their all defending it when they have it.

Give us the PS1 AMS, PS1 mines, PS1 spitfires, PS1 motion detectors and we will defend. Otherwise we will continue to put zero effort in defending a single square meter.

What the hell are you doing in game at a contested base? Handing out flowers and flashing the peace sign instead of fighting the enemy?

Granted, you can't fight an enemy that isn't present, welcome to the offpeak hour of whatever server you're playing on; get in sync with whenever the server is active the most to participate in a meaningful fight.

Are you talking about the Crown on Indar, or are you referring to any given contested base?

Don't assume that the two factions with the least amount of territory control or don't have majority favor to win the alert won't go after each other instead of the faction that could win the alert if unchallenged.

although the title is misleading, i agree that the old crown was great. it isn't even "indarside" as someone uselessly parroted, it's just that Eisa and the Ascent never came close to what the crown was.

we defended it with maximum effort, and assaulted with maximum effort, because those activities were richly rewarding. they made a mistake when they decided to move away from the "all or nothing" base designs and began creating indefensible bases with artificial/arbitrary limits such as "no deploy zones" and easily camped exterior spawn rooms.

the best thing they could do would be to return to an all-or-nothing central base on each map, with several all-or-nothing style defensible major facilities, linked by lattice. the remaining bases can be of the same typical outpost and tower designs, but rely on a hex system that contributes to reduced capture time (or affects resource flow) in the main facilities. in each case the battle flow would lead zergs into the center like ocean waves breaking on a rocky shore, guaranteeing steady, large scale clashes and plenty of smaller scale guerrilla/spec-ops hex capture objectives all around the map.

the problem is, according to a recent interview with Higby, base design is known to be the primary issue, but since it takes time to get it right, they'd rather just do "fast mechanical fixes" like no-deploys and 0xp for spawn kills that do nothing at best, and at worst remove options for engaging gameplay.

You get forum cookie for being unreasonably understanding. Dont agree with what OP was saying, but what he was 'trying' to say but you nailed it.

Game still fun, but them old battles... good glob, they were fabulous.

Personally I believe that was because it gave people a sense of achievement in taking it and thus a sense of ownership .. Why for the most part other bases, even hard to take meat grinders like Biolabs have failed to replicate that feeling I don't know ..

Maybe because Indar + The Crown were the first .. I dunno

Crown was nothing but a farm for the defenders.
If your faction held the crown, your faction was pretty much useless, as half your pop was farming the crown...

Cant you just play call of duty?
If the 24/7 crown meatgrinder crap was all you really liked, then why not play a game that is specifically designed for 24/7 meatgrinder crap.

Besides the tools (Ps1 motion detector is already in the game), what's the reason to defend? No one cares about base capture, unless during alerts. Bases come and go, while K/D is what remains registered. So no one cares to lose ground.
When they will start to put the focus on territory control, resources control, soldiers and resources logistics, then maybe Planetside 2 will look a different game.
Today it's just like a CoD with bigger maps: capture one base, teleport to the other, pew pew pew, K/D and certs farm.

It's still the coolest shooter around imho, but it could be way better than this.

-You have to be in a certain class to use it, or else it disappears
-There's only one of them, not 20, so it takes very ltitle effort on the enemy side to clear ONE out
-It doesn't scream like a banshee when an enemy is nearby, you have to have your nose in your map to see the little red dot

Reason to defend or not, if we're not given the tools to defend against larger numbers of players we will not defend.

PS1 AMS confirmed, pseudo-spitfires confirmed, bad motion detectors already in the game in the form of dildars. PS1 mines are only a matter of time.

They have finally listened.

Oldschool Tech Plants back in Beta were epic battles as well, for anyone who remembers them.

The SCU, Cap Point AND the Shield Generators for the main building were all INSIDE the main building. Attackers had to break into the core of the facility to take down any of the important objectives, which lead to massive fights all over the base.

Infantry could only get in from the two doors in the rear, or by Jumpjetting over the shields on the sides. So it was quite tough to push in.

But, instead of adapting and using Galaxies to drop onto the roof and down into the base, or Gate Shield Diffuser/Mineguard Sunderers, people whined the base was too hard to zerg and SOE moved most of the stuff out where attackers could easily get them.

Old crown was the embodiment of combined arms. You had a fairly sizeable area of varying terrain to attack from and the defenders had the high ground...it also had choke points but the choke points were not so tiny that AoE spam was the only way to go. It took the work of air/ground vehicles to suppress the tower and Infantry/Ground vehicles to get a foothold at the base of the tower. It was honestly the only time in Planetside 2 where teamwork felt implied instead of forced. You could pick your poison and be an asset to the team. Don't want to hop out of your tank? You don't have to.....maybe eventually get off of sniping from the Plateau and get closer but it's good to stay there in case the team gets pushed out of the tower. Don't want to get out of your aircraft? Cool, another fallback plan and you can prevent drops on your sunderers. Only want to Infantry grind? Cool the road to the tower and the cliffside always need more blood or medics or ammo!

There has never been another base like this and I would be extremely happy to have the old all day crown grinds back.

Edit: As for the defense....You get to test yourself at defending against every possible form of attack at once. You'd rarely regret your class choice because they were all needed.

Source?

People remember the crown because it was what a battle should be. Defenders defending and attackers attacking.

Game and base design, by and large, now favours the attackers.

Personally I think being able to spawn in a galaxy has really hurt fights. they can sit high enough and in a position that's hard to shoot at while being able to take a heck of a beating/ram enemy planes and destroy them, has made it too easy to get inside a base. Why fight your way in when you can just rain in from the sky over and over and over.

The really good fights now are the ones that don't have a galaxy or two parked over them and the defenders have a chance to push out and back. One of my fav places to fight now is Indar Ex and Helios. Excellent back and forth can go on for hours there.

Not saying galaxy spawn is game breaking, just that it's been a detriment to good base fights involving defence. "in the old days" people specialized in ferrying players from warp gate to battles. That was pretty cool.

Small outposts in between larger bases should be removed, or just not possible to capture (just contain NS terminals) to promote more open fields battles. I've been at many different bases that have had a battle go on for hours, but it's the lack of any sort of meaning outside of just having some fun running and gunning that makes PS2 a good game instead of a great one. Oh, and the next captureable base is just right around the corner. It makes some piss poor stop and go zerg gameplay. This has not been fixed after 2 years, and it never will be.

You obviously play for a crappy faction then - I've never seen TR on Miller give a single inch willingly.

Personally i play planetside2 for the epic battles and the crown was a wonderful place for that type of stuff. But i don't have any problems getting into epic fights. The NC arsenal is a nice place to defend from a determined foe its an exciting fight. Had a couple of good fights on hossin today as well.


tbh, i pretty much play for the fights and holding bases is never really my concern considering how it changes so quickly. But its extremely galling to watch your faction lose vast chunks of turf without any resistance or proper defense. Having playing as TR they seem to be missing something. Presumably all the dedicated players who had organised outfits have left or turned traitor.

Was thinking about it and what crossed my mind (in that day) as the crown from TI, crossroads from NC side, defending the impact crater.... they were evil, but thinking on it, the most fun Ive had in the game.

I guess it stems from all things VG wise, play battletoads and then play well.... anything these days, hard = unfun I guess