Hives: Ruining Planetside 2

So ya. Broken record. But for the past few nights I've been watching game play more closely-to see if other people's points about Hives make sense. Some do.

But guys, Hives are ruining PS2.

Every night on Connery it's the same thing. VS build hive after hive. LOCK. LOCK. LOCK.

Just tonight we had at least THREE huge fights to choose from on Indar, and a few other middle numbers fights....something for everyone. The fights were intense. They were what I log in for. And then LOCK. HIVES HIVES HIVES.

Sure some NC and TR kill a hive, but right after..TADA, new VS Hive.

Hives are:

1. Always built far awy from an existing map base
2. Always built where it's annoying as hell to play attacker
3. BORING as hell to attack (yea hurray we can shoot at a wall and shield with our tanks over and over)
4. Did I mention boring? It's all vehicles on the outside, infantry and turrets on the inside

Within 10 minutes of Esamir opening, 3 VS hives popped up. Just before that VS locked Indar with their Hives contributed 8 of the 20 needed VPs.

Go kill the hives you say? Refer back to 1,2,3 and 4. And once you killa hive...again, per above, TADA new one built elsewhere.

I know, some of you like Hives, I respect your opinion.

But wtf, this is a repeat of years ago when PS2's lead dev focused on the WRONG features (aka Major League Gaming). meanwhile, drip drip drip player base. MLG TWITTER REDDIT!

Continent locks happen so fast nowadays I dont even bother to play as much. I jump into a fight, alt-tab out to ***** on this forum or watch Netflix/Youtube.

Welcome to Mineside, Planetcraft.

Hives do feel awkward at first because of how much they contrast with lattice but they also capitalize on the "open world" part Planetside 2 seems to pride itself in. (I also enjoy them from time to time when I'm bat**** sick of fighting in places like The Crown, Eisa, any biolab, etc)

Oh and btw. Stop making multiple threads

Actually my other thread was how to use ANTS and Cortium to compliment the core gameplay, not to detract from it.

And I get your points. I do. But it's the round and round lock lock lock that is getting old. Locks are too fast. Locking due to building behind he lines Hives is lame. It's minecraft.

But hey, for over a year the mainstream media refused to see a trend...why not here?

In the time it took me to post this, 3 continents locked. Too bad so sad for all the great fights that were going on....you know...the MMOFPS aspect of the game?

Personally I just hate player-made bases in general. I've never once said to myself, "I'm really glad they made X base-related addition," but I often find myself saying much the opposite: "Man, those auto-firing things for the turrets are stupid OP" or "What? I wasn't even anywhere near the damn thing, why am I on fire?" or "Great, another indestructible wall in my way again" or "**** you game, I don't want to spawn there. I've half a mind to blow up that dick's friggin' s useless spawn tube. ******." Et cetera.

So needless to say, I would agree that hives are generally a detriment to the game.

I've actually had great fun attacking and defending hives and player made bases. And i've seen great structures especially around vehicle chokepoints like bridges that really help to build up an immense fight. However, these great experiences are few and far between. Most of the time a squad is too little to take out a hive, and sending out a whole platoon to do it works but there are a few things that bother me:

1. Rewards for taking out a hive are dog****. You mostly get a couple construction assists if you're in a MBT or lightning, maybe a few turret and infantry kills. If you're infantry, you will die a bunch at first then once you get inside the base, suddenly, you get to farm the elysian spawn tube location until some dolt destroys it.

2. Sending out a whole platoon to take out a hive will generally take about anywhere from 15 minutes to 35 minutes, and this can give the edge to the enemy faction who are pushing a side lane or pushing an important base. In any of these cases, attacking the hive is not worth it.

3. Most construction builders would rather build a hard to attack hive on top of some god damned giant hill than try to put fortifications around a base or cool fighting location. This is because they have no incentive to use construction without going for the hive base thing.

I really think hives are nowhere near why continents are being locked 'quickly' and I don't think they contribute that much to locking a continent beyond 5 VPs. Continents get locked quickly because usually when a continent opens up, two factions will fight against one (this depends on which warpgate you have/start with) and whoever can warpgate first in sidelanes and take an amp station / tech plant / bio lab will win. I often see zergs fighting a dumb biolab fight where they are outnumbered and getting farmed, while the same enemy faction will rush down their sidelane with barely a fight, leaving it up to an outfit or platoon to do anything about it. These kind of situations are what make you lose a continent quickly. Hives.... not really...

I see what your saying here. I do like the player made stuff and it has found a place in this game. There is some issues with the hives latley...but I just can't put my finger on it.

When it comes to my enjoyment of the game, the 2 worst features are 1 construction, 2 hossin. I HATE them both as much as someone can possibly hate something.

While I don't condone teamkilling hives or poorly placed sunderers, IF the spawn system or instant action takes me to a player made base or friendly sunderer at an enemy player made base, I discard any mines or c4 I may have, for someone else's future use...

For the record, I do enjoy PMBs as safe zones where ESFs can land to evade enemy ESF Gank Squads Farmers or ESF Ace Farmers.

Other than that, I think they are (1) largely a hugely missed opportunity in terms of being more fun and engaging for the average player, and (2) often a huge detriment to prematurely ending healthy non-PMB battles.

First: This you wont get more attention by creating multiple treads.
Second: Do you know how long it takes for even multiple hives to build VPs? Very long! Earlier a continent was locked after an alert, that was way faster.
Third: I see that people want to have specific continents open all the time, and i am with them. Still, blaming VP Gens is not fair. To lock a continent it usally takes up to 3-5 h on Miller, if one says the cont has fights that are worth beeing mentioned. There are people that enjoy playing on other continents, too, and VP Gens are ensuring that a cont can be locked without having overpop/alert only at the price of time. Fastest way of closing a cont is connecting the warpgates, on some to gather facilities and then cap the hell out of the land...

I do agree with you, before this, planetside 2 was based on territory control, but not the number of players with millions of certs that only can build hives. But now all you need to win is have fastest cortonium refining.

I would be happy if DBG removed lattice and hives. Makes games much more fun with all those restrictions and needless boundaries that ruins the game!
DBG could easily make this happen with Indar-2 or something

I agree with OP in that continent locking due to hives can be pretty awkward and abrupt, but I do like the idea of them. Here's an idea that might help that a little bit.

Instead of immediately locking the continent when a faction reaches 20 victory points, it should trigger an alert on that continent, or queue an alert if one is already going on. Instead of 90 minutes, this would be a two hour alert, and would determine who locks the continent.

Let's say the VS reach 20 victory points on Indar, while the TR have 18 and the NC have 10. If the VS win, the continent locks for them. If the TR are able to generate another two victory points during the alert, and are also able to win, then the TR lock the continent. If the NC win the alert, and were not able to reach 20 victory points during the alert, they are awarded 6 victory points, and fighting on Indar continues.

The aim of this suggestion is to make continent locking more climactic without completely undermining the value of hives.


Regarding bases from a less global perspective though, I feel cert costs should be significantly reduced, and certain modules and structures should become available for free. I'm trying to get a friend into building bases and it's extremely difficult since all he really has access to is a few walls and an anti infantry turret. It's difficult even for me, after sinking over 5k certs into this (repair module, structure shield, ai module, skyshield, and elysium spawn tube) I still feel like I'm missing a large number of structures required to make a decent base.

Please stop spamming these forums with your obvious bias.

I wonder if the same people that yell for deeper game play also yell against it.

You do know that the reason the VS focus on Hives is they found a way to deal with the Near constant TR Over populations..

It's called adapting.. deal with it.

THIS is exactly it. The Bases are fine imo, it's the 2 hour tops a continent is open till it gets locked.

Ever time a continent locks it's a pause in the game play.
And when there is a pause in the game play people log off to go do something else.

The constant locking of continents hurts the playerbase overall. Takes a good 30 min for the fights on a new continent to get rolling again, and by then there as the OP said, multiple hives already up and running and your at 7 or 8 VP already. So again 1-1.5 hours till this continent locks.

For the LOVE OF CORTIUM raise the VP required to lock a continent to at least 30 if not 40VP

3 to 5 hours! your lucky. It's routinely 2 hours to lock a continent on Connery.

I'd be weary of removing the lattice, back in the olden days when there was no lattice fights were usually spread out all over the place. a dozen or more 12-24 fights all over the map vs just a few of the 12-24 and a big 96+ vs 96+ brawl in one or two places.

IMO the lattice is good, just up the required VP to lock a continent to at least 30 but preferably 40.

By TR overpop do you mean 34% Vanu to 35% TR. It's a cold day in hell I ever see 10%+ imbalances in pop anymore.

yeah, the continent locking needs to go, imho the best period in PS2 was when locking a continent required warpgating both factions.
you'd know that when you logged in there would be no 5-10 minute combat downtimes interrupting your play.
there is nothing worse than indar locking and hossin unlocking during primetime.