Any plans for scenery changes in the future to the maps? Just small cosmetic changes I feel would make a huge difference to players.
Rather than scenery changes they should focus on making use of more of the map. Fights that leave an impression of the area on the player mostly revolve around the starting frontlines of a continent. This means players will rarely see bases far beyond the frontline and when they do its with a Zerg and little actual fighting. To remedy this you could designate some bases as alternative warpgates and create various starting frontlines across currently not very active bases. Making use of existing tools would also do wonders. PMB's could be repurposed to give local and continental benefits. For example the PMB's could house a teleportation system to get players across the continent as infantry or with their vehicle, teleporting to another PMB with a teleportation system. Combined with limitations on redeploy such as limiting how often you can do it in a short time would make PMB's important hubs to find around. To cement this PMB's could get things like a Flash garage which spawns vanilla Flashes for free to travel around on. PMB's could also be used for more local advantages, such as providing fire support in the form of smaller Flail versions or creating powerful items that players can use in both defense and attack modes. Having locally triggered alerts and capture modes for bases would also help. Imagine doing a CTF style battle where attackers have to bring a data core stolen from a point towards a PMB or a randomized area in a base location in order to start the capture timer. It would change how fights play out and where fights take place. Things like turning it into local deathmatches to gain advantages for your team or having to protect a VIP could also change how you view the same base and where you fight in it. Think of having to pick up a point in order to start its capture, but having to stay within a certain area of the base to capture it? Not only could this reduce ghostcaps but make fights more hectic and give players that "so close" feeling that is often missing from PS2 combat.
There's another post on this all coming from a one word answer by the famous 'Wrel'. I say that because he seems to be mentioned alot on this forum. Did like his answer and the delivery. He should run for president. Think he'd get it. https://clips.twitch.tv/HedonisticManlyAxeHassanChop Previous post https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/terrain-changes-to-indar-esamir.254357/ Nice to know changes are on the way. Songs rather appropriate in todays climate I thought.
The problem is that we cant know what those changes will be. They might add one new tree type and replace some existing one's and call it a day. They might take the Indar tristate area and turn it into 3 mirrored bases for "fair" arena style battles to take place there. They might try and actually solve the gameplay flow issues by looking at bases where the flow seems better and looking into new ways to place bases and their paths. We dont know, and right now considering how good idea's are sacrificed for extremely childish thinking, such as "people in outfits stay longer so we'll not investigate why this is but just try to force people into outfits with carrots and sticks", my guess would be that they'll be screwing it up right now and sacrifice another good idea for some lobsided idea they had to get more revenue, player retention or force some part of the game to become relevant.
I would make another continent with just the three warpgates and nothing more. Just a control point in each territory like we have already in some baseless Territories. That would prompt an open terrain gameplay, much more movement and logistics, heavy use of PMBs and in general a different way of playing PS2. A nice variation compared to fight 6 hours nearby TI Alloys...
There's problems with combat flow. Who's going to build the base behind the current frontline? Who's going to build the base behind that one? If you capture an area, who's going to build a base there to ensure your attack can continue? And if you capture another base, who's going to build there? Its certainly not going to be the same person due to building limits. You'd have to create rules that the first X buildings are free in each base region. The point is that you need more than just opening an empty continent with some capture points ready for PMB construction to make this work.
You do not know there is problem until you try. People may either build PMB around the warpgates (easier to defend) or small hidden bases in forests/canyons (easier to hide). Or do not build bases at all and pull everything from the warpgate and rely on sundies to get infantry in place. As I said it is a different way of playing.
What a genius idea. It is an Alien planet. Also wouldn't take, I imagine, a whole lotta programing neither. Just change the numbers around.
I really doubt anyone cares much for scenery. Time ago I posted a comparison picture of how lighting, fog and sky has changed and people said they had barely noticed any change. Nobody made a noise when Indar went from having 3 distinct color profiles into the standardized one we have today. People don't care that enclosed indoor areas have a vibrant blue sky tint to them. People (and devs) didn't notice that Amerish sun and moon motion was de-synced with the sky colors even since nights were made brighter. People don't care that the sun turns into the moon when it shines through thick fog. Most people don't care about aesthetics of games. They play in low graphics mode, never appreciate the scenery or care much what their guns look and sound like.
It never even rains on Auraxis, no wonder there isn't any rivers on Indar or Amerish. Hossin should be a downpour 90% of the time.
