"It's just a game" .... "we play for fun" ... "just play for fun" ...

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by NotziMad, Sep 6, 2020.

  1. NotziMad



    you quote my post and then ignore what I wrote.. or maybe you did not understand?

    What is that was hard to understand?

    First : in football there are professionals yes, but people, like me, play it FOR FUN



    Second :

    What part of : this is how the game was played from 2013-2018 and a large part of 2019 too are you not getting ?

    You say, for example, that you'd not get a kill, how do you explain how everyone got a kill in the 5 or 6 year leading to 2019?

    I mean, what is not clear in the argument?

    You say "if people played as intended by the devs, they would not get kills" and I ALREADY told you that this is EXACTLY how most people played for 5 years and YES ! PEOPLE DID GET KILLS!!!

    Think of an advertisement for PS2. What would it say? How would the game be advertised?

    "come fight for one of 3 factions in a war for continent control".

    or

    "come grind your stats for no other reason than to grind them".

    What do you think?


    ____


    Oh, and while I'm at it, if you don't like football, if you don't want to score goals or prevent the opposing team from scoring goals.


    THEN WHY ARE YOU PLAYING FOOTBALL?
  2. LordKrelas

    In Football, do you play Meta-only?
    Do your Friends only play the Roles they are best at, and only use the Tactics that win regardless if a drag to do?
    Do your Friends discourage the Other side from playing?

    If you say no; Then you aren't playing Football like you want everyone to play Planetside.
    The Meta, is not Enjoyable; We don't play games, to play Meta Solidly.

    The Grind for Certs, is more enjoyable than Camping a Spawn Room for 10 minutes, to do this for 3 hours to win an alert.
    The grind, involves non-optimal combat, engaging long-fights are better than short-bursts - and has the benefit of being dynamic.
    And the reward for this grind that you can customize? New Tools, Improvements, and you didn't just burn your will to live out.

    To win the alert, you don't gain Certs fast, don't gain new toys often, and you do the same exact thing every time.
    You have to discourage any interesting fights - as Interesting fights mean you aren't doing the Meta.

    Do you play this game as a Spawn-Camper for 10 minutes? If no, You have failed the most effective base capture.

    Do you play in a Zerg? No? You have Failed then.
    If your enemy can fight back, you aren't doing the best - So you shouldn't be complaining others are not Doing better than you.

    People come here to play the Game, to enjoy it.
    Not to AFK a Spawn-Camp.
    The Grind, is part of interesting combat that reward with fun on top- Alerts, involve actual chores, reward less, and are reliant on people wanting to "Win" instead of Have things or Fun.

    Do you login every day, to Spawn-Camp? I certainly don't.
    • Up x 1
  3. LordKrelas

    Hell, I'll put it a bit more simply:

    From Day 1, This game wasn't strictly played by Tryhards, that was "Victory Screen or Uninstall"
    When you fight people who actually understand Meta, you find the Meta is "Force your Enemy to Log-off, if you can't discourage them from entering your hex"

    As that is what ensures a Win.
    We play this game, to play the game - Not play the Meta.
    If everyone who played this, was forced into Meta with an Obsession, likely more than half the Playerbase would Uninstall.
    As the Meta is as Discouraging as possible.

    When you Play football, the other team, is not dedicated to Forcing you to quit the Sport.
    They aren't tackling you to break ankles, so they can ensure a Victory.
    When you play for Fun, you don't try to make your Buddies wish they never played.

    To win, as you demand, the Meta you crave, is Anti-Player as possible.
    As that wins, as no opponent, means a Victory.

    You want evidence? Do Zergs seek each other, or seek paths that have less resistance.
    They seek the easier fight.

    And you know what wins Alerts? Zergs doing that.
    Spawn-Camps Win alerts.
    AOE Spam Wins Alerts.

    What doesn't win alerts, is entertaining game-play.
    A game that if played "as required", has no entertainment, past "I won, by working a 9-5 Job", Dies.
    As the people who only play that way, will burn-out, as the only thing they can do, per the rule, is the Meta, which is deliberately unenjoyable.
    • Up x 1
  4. NotziMad

    forget it

    delete the ******* thread,

    it was (not that anything I said wasn't true) a late night end of the weekend rant *cough* don't do drugs or alcohol* !

    I can't even remember the last time I had a constructive conversation on these forums anway.
  5. Liewec123

    You've got it wrong, I'm playing football the same way its alway been played,
    Before the american coach came along and tried telling us how to play it.
    "You carry the ball like in rugby! And the ball shouldn't be a ball!"

    Back before alerts, hell even before continent locks, people have always gravitated to the big epic fights,
    Battles for "old crown" would last entire days, it was a truly epic experience when you'd finally take it!
    And then alerts came along...
    and alerts tried telling us that we were all enjoying the game wrong
    That we shouldn't be enjoying the big fun fights, but should instead focus on capturing the most bases.
    So for 8 years now we've continued to play how we've always played, the most fun way!

    So what game do I play? I play Planetside 2!

    You can go to a hundred other games to get the "capture the most points to win" experience.
    But only in planetside can you enjoy a chaotic epic 400 player hours-long battle over a base,
    And the devs keep trying to force people away from the big fights that we enjoy,
    So i ask you, without the big fights do you think ps2 has anything to offer?
    The competition don't have the silly latency and clientside issues, nor the performance issues,
    If I get shot after getting behind cover in another FPS someone is hacking, here it is just the norm...
    Without the big fights ps2 is just a clunky, buggy 8 year old fps that would die off super fast.

    You need to get super lucky to find those fights.

    The way that the new outfit resources award successful base caps but not unsuccessful defence
    has led to the three factions zerging over underpopped bases.

    Its not profitable to attempt to defend against a zerg, but it is very profitable to join the zerg
    So you either join your zerg, sitting on capture points with nothing to do (or spawn camp)
    Or you are the one getting zerged, unable to leave the spawn. (And you won't be awarded anything for your effort)

    The decent fights are so few and far between now, it's all zergs.
    • Up x 1
  6. Demigan

    Have you ever heard of the father who proudly watched a procession of soldiers go by and say "my son is the only one Marching right"?


    What you said was wrong, because PS2 isn't like football. In football the ordinary players aren't allowed to become the keeper, and in football the players are there because they arranged it, not because they wanted to play a few rounds.

    Rather than professional football, why don't we look at an impromptu game of football by adults and kids right there on a field. The players who aren't enjoying themselves will leave, and to keep the game fun you have to get creative to make sure the children are still having fun so some spoken and unspoken rules will apply. Not only that, if the players start enjoying a different form of ball-game altogether there is nothing in the way of the players actually doing so.
    In other words: No scoring goals does not matter during a game where the players are only loosely together and a large variety of skill, ages and desires are participating.

    As I keep telling you over and over again in every single thread you bring up about this subject: The main goal of capturing continents isn't fun. It does not support the main purpose of the game which is to give players a platform to fight each other using infantry, vehicles and aircraft. Because the goal of capturing continents is done by avoiding fights, overpopping so there is no fight or making the game so unfun for your opponent that they'll look to another place where it is fun for them.

    If the game was properly set up, the primary goal of the game would ensure the most important gameplay loop is enforced, rather than discouraged.
  7. icufos

    Agreed.
    Exceptions..
    1. Flying aces who hover above bases and wiat for me to spawn and pepper my beautifully crafted mossy with neat little holes.
    That's when I get angry!
  8. RabidIBM

    The problem is that many of the changes this game has seen over the years have been about "broadening the player base". Trouble is, any of these players they have been appealing to are used to dedicated FPS with a small play area, constant action, fast respawns, and no lasting implications for a match being won or lost. These players are playing this way because that's just how they play, and they're here because that's who the board meeting decided it would be profitable to appeal their game to. The sad reality is that the masses of CoD kids collectively spend far more money than the relative handful who want the niche blend of FPS and RTS that true Planetsiders want. Remember, DBG are not gamers, they have no passion for games, they are a business, and they are here for profits.

    This conversation has parallels to one I had with some friends about Star Trek last night. There's a reason why no Star Trek made in the last decade or so has been made for Star Trek fans, numbers. The number of people who are aware of Star Trek, kinda like it, but aren't super into it, who have had a rough day at work, just got the kid to sleep, and now want to be entertained for an hour without thinking too much vastly exceed the number of true fans.

    So, to address the weird rant this started with, we "true Planetsiders" are ignored because there aren't enough of us for a corporate board to give a flying ****.

    Best solution I can think of is to stay calm, stay positive, show others the ropes, show people can you can have fun in places other than bio labs.
  9. Demigan

    Very interesting. Could you tell us what sources you used to come to that conclusion? Because what I see is completely different from your perspective.

    Players arent used to small area's, constant action and fast respawns. In fact when given the chance players will go to the biggest bases with the largest playfields, as these offer the thing they came to play PS2 for: large scale battles. They have a lot more freedom in how to fight those battles compared to most games and whenever the base and terrain allows it they will use the full arsenal and possibilities this game has to offer.

    Key words: whenever the base and terrain allows it. Indar Excavation versus Quartz Ridge allows large scale vehicle battles, and you'll almost always find one there. The Crown also offers a mixture of vehicular and infantry combat, with the verticality giving aircraft a larger playfield compared to empty air as there are now more approaches both high and low to pick from.

    The most sad reality isnt CoD kids, it's people who just proclaim entire portions of the population have to belong to some kind of subculture and that they are the problem. This helps the devs ignore actual problems with their game, because as you say its not their game its just this rather large portion of CoD kids that ruin it for everyone else...

    Funny, considering the times these things were created and their impact, its the parents who just got their kids to sleep who would be the true fans, I should know. Also there is such a thing as a target audience, and you dont try to compete with target audiences already saturated by other media with a sci-fi setting that is less appealing to those target audiences.

    The problem isnt with Star Trek btw, its with the wrong way politics are thrown in. There is no problem with adding LGBT awareness and equality on your agenda, however "awareness" is usually added in ways that detract from the overall story and the way they present it encourages more division. Strong female characters for example will simply be able to do half a dozen tasks perfectly without effort and will almost ineviteably deal with evil men who only seek to belittle, objectify and abuse them. The messages are that women need to be given their win and men are evil, rather than the message of equality and cooperation that they should be making while supporting the story with their actions.

    Even stories that dont have agenda's are affected nowadays, as the writing style that goes with these type of stories has somehow taken root and we have been getting this low-quality bizzar writing in more and more area's. Its one of the reasons why GOT bombed the moment they got farther than the books and had to get writers to finish the stories. Nonsensical troop placement, low stakes battles for the main characters as plot armor rises to an obvious degree, a "kill bad guy and all minions die" trope and more.

    Considering the things you say I would argue that the devs listened too much to "true planetsiders". They already almost nuked the game with HIVE's, which they fortunately removed, but now they did an entire update focused on the "true planetsiders" in the Escalation update and once more the true colours of these whiny schits is revealed: they'll abuse the general populace to earn resources, fighting in ways designed to make sure no fights or fun takes place. Then once they have those resources they'll grab a Bastion and go on mega killstreaks on the biggest fight they can right-click. The worst update in PS2 history have been there to support the "true planetsiders". Apparently we should ignore them.

    No we shouldnt. We should always be critical, always look for ways to improve the game. With your attitude we would still be dealing with the old ZOE, PPA, the Hallways of Death, requiring 4 AA MAX's at point-blank range to stand a chance against 1 ESF, Rocketpods and Banshee's eliminating entire squads worth of people in a single pass, cheatvision and a million other things.
    We should be telling the devs where the problems lie. We should be asking for the mechanics of continent capture to be as fun and engaging as any biolab scrum so that those "CoD kids" that you despise will happily join you on your quest and you will join them because your goals are no longer mutually exclusive. The Escalation update saw some of the most dramatic increases and declines in PS2 history. The promise of improving player cooperation and teamwork alongside large-scale objectives like Bastion hit a nerve everyone wanted to be hit including your "CoD kids". The problem was they had listened to wet schits like you that everything on the teamwork front was fine as it is and they focused on all the stuff that breaks it instead. So then people left again.

    If we ever want the devs to hit that same nerve again and do things right then being critical and suggesting improvements is exactly what we need to do, not sit back and say "game is perfect its the players we need to shepherd into the 'real' game".
  10. Johannes Kaiser

    Sometimes I ask myself how many players are left that can appreciate the fact we have huge landscapes to traverse, be it on foot, wheels or in the air. That we have a cycle of day and night with the restrictions, advantages and disadvantages that brings. That sometimes it can be worth to fly up on a cliff far away from a fight and watch the digital sunrise.
    Appreciate that neither the fictional world nor our fictional behinds are at stake every second, unless we choose to. That we can take the time to explore a bit, and that this knowlede might help out in the future, even though it took some off-time to acquire.
    Appreciate that battles can be won by multiple means. That sometimes the destruction or survival of a single Sunderer can be the tipping point. That individual accomplishments matter nothing at all if there is noone else around that can help you capitalize on them: allies. Sure, they might shoot you in the back of leave you alone when you try that last depserate push and you lose the base because of their cowardice. But had they not been there to begin with, all would have been lost right from the outset.
    And players who just play for their own stats are ignoring those things have lost the appreciation for this game and what it offers by exclusively embracing the part about it they could get in any other lobby-shooter (aside from the playercount).

    So, okay, let there be players who place their KDR and grindfests above everything else. But also give me a bloody way to send them into a meatgrinder of MY choosing!
    In my opinion there are two kinds of players: allies and fodder. Allies are the ones who actively help out their own faction and try to take advantages that are being offered by others (such as distractions, or flying in to blow up the Sundy, even if it means spawning a Valkyrie from the warpgate). Fodder are not the bad players, but those who only ever care about themselves, who you can - if at all - point in the general direction of enemy forces and hope for the best: that they either whittle them down with pure single-mindedness or that they at least serve as a huge distraction population blob.
    And the distinction can be marginal: Player A goes with the flow and likes big battles, but picks the ones he thinks are meaningful for his faction's success and changes location if he thinks it's required? Congratulations, he is an ally. Player B goes wherever he thinks he can pad his stats best and yells at people when they try to tip the battle he is in? Well, fodder, get in line.
    As you see, the two hypothetical players generally do the same thing - sitting in big battles - but their motivation and mindset are different, and so usually also their location.
    Example? TI Alloys is a middle-map base that does not offer multiple points for a slow battle of attrition, and fights there go nowhere in 9.5/10 cases. The only thing it does is create total meatgrinders that never go anywhere. This makes the base UTTERLY POINTLESS, so it reliable catches the fodder-players who give the least f*cks about their own side in this fictional war. It is quite rare that you will find allies there, unless there is an actual chance for a breakthrough, and they will leave sooner or later if that assessment turns out to be wrong.
    Long story short: I want a way to direct fodder somewhere useful. Let them die there or succeed, if they do not care about their side, their side has no reason to care for them. But the least they can do is not die in a battle that actually matters. (And no, the irony concerning this game's lore here isn't lost on me.)

    Now, we have to admit that for some of this the developers themselves are to blame with the decisions they made. But in the end, it is every player's decision to do what they want. The sad part is that the fodder negatively impacts the allies by their decision-making (if it can be called that past the initial one), whereas the fodder could not care less about the goals and enjoyment of those playing for territory.
    • Up x 1
  11. TombsClawtooth

    Where ever there is individual progression in a game, that will be the primary goal. Hands down, flat out.

    If you want a game where group progression takes precedence, you need to remove individual progression.


    Players are playing to score goals, they're playing for the goals that help them progress.
    If you take a base, it can be flipped back in a matter of seconds, and absolutely will be taken back in a matter of hours.
    If you make a lot of certs by shooting people, you get to keep and spend those certs any way you want and you never lose the items.

    Taking issue with players for this is absolutely wrong, you can't criticize them for playing the game in the most rewarded possible fashion. You need to take issue with the devs for making farming pay out better than taking territory.

    If I offered you $40k a year or $400k a year, which would you prefer, all things being equal? Players are simply making that same choice.

    They need to make the rewards for taking a base bigger than the rewards for sitting and farming that base.
  12. DarkStarAnubis

    True, but it is a consequence of allies choices, you can hardly blame the fodder for that :)

    Allies thinking: "I am happy if I win the alert. To achieve that all the others have to contribute otherwise I'll loose the alert."

    Fodder thinking: "I am happy if I can shell infantry from far away sitting in my tank over an hill. To achieve that I need to spawn my tank, find an hill and a contested base."

    Neither the fodder nor the allies consider the enjoyment of the other party.

    I was playing some night ago and the base was basically lost: there are 30 seconds left and you need a minute to reach the control point and secure it .But here comes the classic die hard/Zealot/know-it-all/hard core/ salty PS2 veteran saying "Get out of the spawn or I will C4 everybody, we need this base to win the alert."

    Guess what? My immediate thinking was "mate, stick the C4, this base and the alert up to your ***." but I simply avoided to answer and merely clicked the redeploy button a millisecond after his message. If I had some idea of trying something heroic just for the fun of it, this moron pretending to force his playstyle upon others made me immediately reconsider.
  13. Johannes Kaiser

    To a certain degree. Because fodder can get their farm in a lot of locations, including ones that are not the most asinine ones (the ones they usually pick, otherwise I would be a bit more lenient with them), so helping the alert by following instructions doesn't impact them too much. Allies can't just pull helpful people out of their behinds.
  14. RabidIBM

    Wow Demigan, you really stabbed the hell out of that straw man. Personal attacks too? Awesome!

    Small areas are exactly what a bulk of the player base want, as is evident by the 96+ who stay in the biolab while I'm fighting in the last satellite to cut the population cluster off so we can move on to more important things, such as the tank warfare between Indar Ex. and Quartz that you mentioned. They will sit in the bio lab, deliberately not helping so the farm will come back, even though both Quartz and Regent Rock are burning down. They don't move on "when the game allows it", they deliberately avoid anything but the one play area they want.

    I don't want to go too much deeper into the Star Trek tangent but...those aren't even the things I was complaining about, although you're not wrong, I'm more upset that JarJar Abrams turned it into a popcorn action flick in 2009 with no intellectual material at all. Not to say the series hadn't had missteps in the past...Star Trek V can only be explain by "Kirk had a weird dream while camping". Anyways, that's enough of that tangent.

    If you perceive many of the mistakes as having been to appease strategic players, then either you, the devs or both have no idea what strategic players want. HIVEs were a bad idea from the get go. The trouble is they either never figured out how to integrate construction into the game properly, or were too afraid of the required shake ups to make it happen. The problem was that construction existed in it's own compartment, separate from the rest of the game. There was no reason to attack or defend the built bases. HIVEs were a lazy way to make them "relevant".

    As for the escalation update, that had nothing to do with strategy. They noticed that Outfits were good for player retention, and therefore the bottom line. So they added new toys to the game that were dedicated to outfits. In doing so they removed nearly all strategic relevance from major facilities, and gave some of the players who were best for their bottom line some extra tricks to farm zero effort kills. The number of orbitals that get fired at control points after a fight is lost, or the sheer quantity blasted at TI Alloys tells you how strategic they are. The 90% of the time that bastions sit over the biggest farm are further examples of how little so many players care for strategic play. I have personally used a bastion once, and the thing can be a fantastic asset, if boring to use. I didn't much enjoy the full hour of nothing but right clicking the map, so I don't know how the people who sit in one place for an hour with it don't go completely mad. I moved around from fight to fight, prioritizing defense before offense, and targeting spawn points so we could move on, changing fronts occasionally as required by strategic interest. My point is that the instances of a bastion farming TI Alloys, or yeeting completely across the map to farm two factions at once are not examples of strategic players "showing their true colours", but an example of what happens when you give the farmers a bigger gun.

    So, what would an update that actually gives me, a strategic player, what I want look like? It would create conditions where players have to think about what fights to be in, consider the longer term implications of holding and losing different bases, juggle competing priorities, and put time and effort into what composition they build in their platoons prior to fighting.
    How would I achieve this?
    -Bump respawn timers to 12 seconds instead of the current 5. As it is, zerging seems to out muscle tactics a lot of the time.
    -Add some more forms of splash damage to the game so that the participants in the 96+ vs 96+ battles might start to consider the merits of different fight. Perhaps revamp under barrel grenade launchers? Almost nobody uses them, but they could be good for blasting clusters apart. Mortars as a deployable engi weapon could be good. I would also like to see a man portable flame thrower. I would consider incendiary munitions, which would create burn patches on the ground for a period of time as area denial. These things, and others as people think of them, would make spacing your troops in your squad matter, would make it worth while to put different squads in different locations, and serve as a counter play to zerging. If balanced correctly, these things would be garbage in anything smaller than a platoon fight. Yes, I saw the bit about electrical storms, I would rather the cluster clearing be achieved by players than the environment.
    -Add a devastation mechanic, where bases that have been fought at for too long become "devastated" slowing respawns for defenders using the base spawns. This way defenders would be pressured to do more than sit in place waiting for kills for 2 hours. They would have to get out and get rid of the attackers, or else eventually be effectively starved out. Either way, the fight would eventually move on. Devastation could passively recover over time, at an increased speed if all lattices are secured.
    -Add mechanics to make player made bases interact with the static bases, giving some sort of benefit. This way there is a decision between stopping to kill the PMB first, or just living with the fact that the defenders have some advantage in this region, and pushing through anyways. They could be things like a back up SCU, longer burn time for generators, or nanite discounts on specific assets in the applicable static base, just for a couple examples.
    -Make more of the weapons more specialized in their function, and in doing so make counter play more important. For example, the Skyguard is honestly a bit lack luster, but damages the front armour of an MBT. If I get a good blast off on an ESF, it should be dead, not flying away smoking. Conversely, shooting an MBT with my Skyguard should do nothing more than create an example of tracers working both ways. This way, bringing the right kit to the situation and using it correctly are as important as how you actually fight. Skill in the fight would still matter, if two AP Lightnings encounter each other, the superior tanker will still win. However, if you brought 6 Skyguards and nothing else, you're screwed if you encounter 1 MBT, you can't kill it with the death of a thousand cuts. If, however, you have teammates with hornet missiles and clear skies, that MBT should die a lot faster than it currently does.

    All up, those changes would not kill fights, yes I hear people shrieking that as I'm typing. They would move the fights around, creating more new fights of different sizes and compositions. These changes would create a more fluid game, without adding any new over powered and under tested show piece.
  15. DarkStarAnubis

    Sadly It is more than that. A Biolab is a relatively small area, 100% infantry, fights in 3D (height), 4 spawn points ensuring an extremely short downtime and a very high probability of being rezzed if killed. Medics can float in certs after a few hours of fight.

    It is accessible, cheap and easy for everybody, just like a fast-food. It is obviously not the pinnacle of Combined Arms, quite the opposite.

    Don't blame the Biolabs. Blame the rest of the continent that doesn't offer so much.

    Blame bases which are carbon-copies of each other, blame defense walls with more holes than Swiss cheese, blame enemy armor that can park in front of a Spawn, blame garages for enemy sunderers everywhere, blame a useless construction system that takes 2 hours to build something and 2 minutes to destroy it.

    And that should make a serious, experienced, skilled Game Designer think about it. Why so many players gravitate around Biolabs when they have an entire continent where to fight?

    "Hmm.... Let me think... I got it! Obviously the solution is to remove Biolabs!!!!"
  16. NotziMad



    Personally, that's not what I would recommend.

    I mean those bases are really cool, and one of the things I love about PS2 is the diversity of bases, there's all kinds of bases, and I'll always remember the first time I entered a biolab, I literally was like a kid in a huge toy shop and was WOW, this is COOL ! With the jump pads and everything.


    The issue with the biolab fights is actually 2 issues :

    1. population sink
    2. static fights

    1. wouldn't be so much of a problem, if it weren't for 2. Huge fight representing pop sinks happen all the time, but they don't last for ever and ever and ever, THATS the issue.

    And that issue was introduced with the spawns. Before, the only spawn was the SCU spawn. Basically, attackers wanting to capture the biolab, triggered the shield generator, defended it until it was destroyed, then did the same with the scu (all the time disregarding the points).

    So you don't need to remove biolabs to solve this issue. Just remove the spawns (like it was before)...
    • Up x 1
  17. DarkStarAnubis

    I am not so old in PS2 - but I remember that Biolabs have 4 spawns: the main one for the defenders and 3 associated to the owners of adjacent bases and before they had 1 spawn and 3 teleports (teleports connected to adjacent bases and the associated owners). The difference in downtime was rather low (an handful of seconds) between spawning directly versus spawning in the adjacent base and run to the teleport.

    Are you referring to that when you say "like it was before" ?
  18. NotziMad



    lol

    well yeah, now there are spawns, before, there were no spawns, and I'm referring to when there was no spawns, so yeah, "like it was before" :)

    They were still a problem, they were still a big pop sink, but the problem wasn't as important as today simply because they would end.

    Today, (except for some exceptions) if you want to capture a biolab, you cut it off, you don't go in the biolab. Before, people regularly captured biolabs by fighting for them "inside the biolab".

    Now, a biolab fight is only finished when ALL the bases surrounding are captured.
  19. Demigan

    So you are allowed to insult everyone else, but I'm not allowed to insult you? At least my insults are a show of emotion, rather thana blanket "these people are bad". But allright, let's try to be civilized about this and find common ground.

    As for strawmen, I'm adding perspective. If someone says " all NC shotguns are OP!" then me adding that the shotguns of other factions are just as powerful is not a strawman.

    I assume this comes from the same source as that the bulk of the player base is a CoD kiddie?

    The evidence is there that the playerbase does come to PS2 for the large-scale fights if they are good. That is why when a good fight like Mao Tech opens up often a contested biolab from either the attacker or defender is taken shortly afterwards as people leave for it. At the same time the Esamir Techplant sees most of it's action in the opening of the continent, and mostly small-scale fights afterwards because the setup surrounding the base isn't as fun.

    We could put it another way: Why do people actually choose Biolabs in the first place?

    • It's a safe zone from OHK vehicles and aircraft that infantry overall has little chance against --> make infantry versus everything else fun (and vice-versa) and people will be willing to leave the Biolab.
    • Vehicle combat is usually one-sided after the initial combat is over. The battle flow and general base setup prevents defenders from building up a suitable vehicle force to counter the attackers ---> change how bases are build so defenders can amass vehicles at the base that is being attacked, being functional from the first vehicle pulled rather than being forced to wait for a large enough vehicle force. That way players can spend more time as non-infantry and have fun, giving them an alternative to Biolabs.
    • Spawnrooms in most bases are death traps that you can't really fight out off and retake the points unless you heavily outnumber the enemy, this is much less true for Biolabs, Techplants and AMP stations which see much more infantry traffic --> Make Spawnrooms the perfect staging-ground to retake parts of the base so players don't have to feel punished getting stuck there (and being insulted for Spawnwarriors by the Spawncampers while they do).
    • Every time a base is captured the fight stalls, often from the moment that the spawncamping begins. This is several magnitutes worse than a "stale" fight --> Make sure that near the end of a capture both attackers and defenders have something to do. Giving the defenders access to defensive positions that function to build up vehicle forces and hold off the enemy vehicle forces so that a solid vehicle battle can take place before the next attack is an option for example.
    • Fighting in smaller bases is a roll of the dice. You might have a solid fight there or you could get some zergfit suddenly appear and steamroll you (or streamroll for you), resulting in an unearned victory/loss that you could never have seen coming or prevented --> Make sure that smaller bases remain defensible like a Biolab, protecting against sudden overpops erasing everything you did. For example by adding in mechanics that change the more you are being outpopped, giving you access to guerilla tactics so you can stall or stop an enemy without actually having to engage them at the points where you'll be outnumbered anyway.
    As I keep saying: Make the rest of the game as fun as the Biolabs and the other large facilities! Large facilities attract people! Even the biggest Zerg will often be checked the moment they reach an AMP station or a Techplant! People want these big fights!

    You are allowed to be upset by it, but the popcorn flick problem does not stem from the mom's and dad's who put their kids to bed and want to watch a movie without engaging their brain. It's the horrific new writing styles they developed for minorities and women where much of the good story structure is sacrificed for "Is woman/minority/LGBTQ so they has to have no opposition as opposition against them is bad". This lack of proper buildup and the idea that continuity does not matter is the problem. Even worse if you disagree then you are either hating the minorities in question or "watching movies wrong".

    I've talked to dozens of "stragetic" players so far, and the problem with this is that for every player that says they are stragetic there is basically their own brand of strategy that should be enforced according to them. Some proclaimed HIVE's were the pinnacle of PS2's stragetic play. Others proclaim that the current "everybody go there with redeployside" outfit gameplay is the most advanced and perfect strategy ever in PS2, even though the stragety you can find on the mapscreen capturing the continent is maybe 2 steps more complicated than TicTacToe. I can find more strategy in someone spawning in a BIolab and rushing to the frontline, as that person can require more pathing skills and more knowledge of where, when and why enemies can attack than players and leaders do using redeployside.
    The common denominator is that most of these stragetic players assume that their own idea of stragety is the highest form of strategy. That isn't the actual problem though, the problem is that they want to force everyone else to be using that as well. This is basically what the devs are doing by removing Biolabs: They attempt to force players into the capture-the-continent strategy by removing the places that currently attract them, because surely if the playerbase got a taste of that they would enjoy it right...?

    A better idea would be to open up multiple strategies players can take, catering to multiple types of players. Also create a buildup of strategy that players are faced with. Currently the first time players are really faced with strategies involving other players is when they join a Squad and someone basically screams in their ear they should spawn somewhere and swarm the point. There's no smaller steps of strategy and teamwork to do, no small introduction with more advanced strategies on the horizon for players to discover and eventually roll into squad and platoon gameplay where they'll understand what is going on and simultaneously use what they've learned earlier and incorporate that into the larger scale so that a Squad is an organicly changing unit and if players of a squad are lost, then a random or a player for another squad or platoon can fill in no problem as that player will also have some background in what he/she can do at that point in time.
    Current "strategy" and "teamwork" is basically segregating players who could be working together into groups and not giving any incentive for these players to work together with anyone else, where "work together" basically boils down to "everybody pile up on there" for most of the time.

    Ah but some strategy players disagree with you there! After all there is strategy in picking the right bases to attack and earn some resources! And they like it so it has to be the best form of strategy out there! The fact that you can find as much strategy in picking the right weapon for the fight that you are at, which requires more knowledge of the actual status-quo of a base and it's layout and how to use that weapon, is ignored.

    Yes it was a lot of wrongly implented systems that are best achieved by avoiding fighting in the game and making yourself as annoying to fight as possible so people either leave or are so outnumbered they can't do anything. Imagine professional team sports only the best of the best team is allowed to pick amateur teams to play against and win the world-cup. You'll quickly run out of amateur teams that want to play you, and audiences that want to see it. Ofcourse unlike the analogy we aren't talking about an actual professional team. We agree that this is in no way, shape or form positive for the game and just goes to show once more that just because a player calls himself stragetic and that they avoid farms that they actually are doing that. Everyone farms in one way or another, some kills, some certs through any way they can, some continent captures and the rewards that brings, and some just want to play with a bigger gun than others and feel unbeatable.

    Also the fact that they noticed Outfits were good for player retention and their reaction to that is a perfect example of how the current Biolab removals are just as bad. They see something: Outfits retain more players. They think "we need more retention, so we try to get people into Outfits". How do they do this? They basically create some giant carrots that will effectively be only accessible for only a select few of any Outfit, ignore the effect the mechanics to gaining these carrots will have (capturing bases with as little resistance as possible) and then make sure these carrots function as sticks against anyone not in an Outfit.
    Biolabs are now seen as a problem that is in the way of capturing the continent. So they try to remove these Biolabs so players are forced to look for their fun elsewhere, getting pushed into the capture-the-continent gameplay as a result. This is basically a continuation of the Outfit update that already promoted continent-capture.

    1: Increasing timers to 12 seconds just increases the punishment for death. It decreases the value of trying to innovate as it's just a risk to your own fun and it encourages players to farm and avoid death. It would require an entire redesign of every single base just so that players aren't forced into chokepoints that they'll not want to attack. We already see right now that getting people to attack a chokepoint is a chore even if you have twice the numbers, who's going to attack after this change? If you want to hurt Zergs you have to give bonusses to the defenders. Punishing players for something they aren't necessarily responsible for (like having more players show up at a fight after the population was balanced) is just bad and rarely ends well.

    2: Forcing players apart isn't a good encouragement, it's basically punishing them again. Especially since such weapons are basically deterrents like flak: Imagine what a squad of these weapons would do if they fired it at a chokepoint. You wouldn't disperse players, you would prevent them from achieving objectives through cheese tactics.
    If you want to disperse players give them reasons to so that they want it, not are forced into it. I've always advocated secondary objectives that the players place themselves. If you can place the Forwards Station as a Medic (now changed into the Router) you can create new frontlines for players to attack from. This allows them to avoid chokepoints, create flanks and spread enemy forces as they can't just push a singular area. Similarly you now have a wider area where players try to reach and destroy these Forwards Stations, or try to get a good defensible position to place one as a Medic. And that's just one type of Deployable you could create for players, there's many more you can think off. Imagine deploying a generator visible on the map that prevents AMS and Forwards Station spawns in it's AOE from being deployed? Now players have to hunt it down to get more access to spawns, and proper defense and attack will be an organic, ever-changing battlefield even if you get stuck at a single base.

    3: Again punishing players for something they might not be responsible for. Also you are basically doing the exact same as the devs are doing with Biolabs and that storm thing only with a timer instead. Why would you purposefully destroy a fight simply because it's taking a long time to fight there? I for example absolutely love fights that last hours on end. You get to really probe, move, flank, change tactics, watch as actions and inactions you've taken push the frontline forwards or backwards. When capturing a single room can feel like a hard-fought victory the fight is good. When capturing an entire base or continent feels like a breeze the fight was bad.
    You should try and turn that around. For example both attackers and defenders will not be devastated, instead they will build up their attack/defense. The fight will go faster, become larger and more intricate as time goes on, but at the same time efforts to slow down your opponent will break down some of that build up. This is one of the reasons why I suggest Deployables by the players: It scales with the population size of both sides. If you have a 12v12 fight you'll see less of it but also need less of it than in a 96+vs96+ fight. Don't punish players for sticking to a fight, reward them with building up their attack/defense structure until they can move forwards and eventually attain their goals.

    4: Something I can agree with. I would make PMB's faster to build, and as integral a part of any attack phase as the Sunderer (especially if bases by default have some protection against Galdrops forcing the people inside to drop nearer the edge of the base). Bases should get some basic defenses that are always "on" and make it easy for a smaller group to defend the base. The attackers are encouraged to build the PMB to bring in special equipment and support fire to neutralize these advantages and capture the base, the defenders are encouraged to neutralize the PMB as part of the defense.
    Having FOB's, basically micro-bases consisting out of a spawn, a vehicle pad, a neutral silo and perhaps a small defensive structure like a wall or some turrets that can be enhanced with construction elements would help both attackers and defenders to use PMB's for footholds near bases to launch attacks from and build up vehicle forces.

    5: Making things work against one thing and one thing alone is a bad way of balancing things. You should be going the other way: Each weapon has multiple uses, but some uses are just stronger than others.
    Example: The MBT AP gun is great against heavily armored vehicles, but hard to use against lightly armored vehicles as it overpenetrates and they are harder to hit (Harasser mostly). If you pick an auto-canon you can be great against lightly-armored targets like infantry, Harassers and ESF, but have much more difficulty when facing off against heavily armored vehicles. However: You should ever so rarely be useless even if they fight something they aren't exactly designed against. You should never have the feeling "I could not have prevented that just because of the loadout that I chose, possibly even though the loadout was the perfect choice for the situation". When you examine what is complained about in the game (or any game), the most common complaint is from weapons that the player feels they could not protect themselves against. Creating a larger divide and giving everything things they can get that feeling from is just bad sport.
  20. Johannes Kaiser

    I would also opt for improving the minor bases to be easier to defend and a bit more fun to fight at with some quirks. But I find the idea of removing the BLs good, at least to see how that works out. Biolabs, aside from everything else, have the tendency to make the people inside completely braindead. When the thing is cut off completely and it would be best just to move on, you still see at least 24-48 allies there, often more. So in addition to neverending stalemates that do little good they also do not end when they should definitely end.