I did wish you guys redesigned the bases, but I didn’t want you to to make Esamir 1/3 it’s size and yeah I guess the storms help the zergs keep moving but they ruin good firefights as well. Geez maybe if anti vehicle weapons in specified classes did there job and worked for anti vehicle or anti air, there would be less of a issue. Maybe if you didn’t promote big zergy worthless Outfits and embraced the solo player and dug deeper into Directives, there would be a more solid cohesion. All this work and you could have created a new map by now, maybe even be on a second one. A community forms a Outfit because people enjoy playing together. Now everyone only talks about there Kill/Death stats or winning a base for the resources or cry at losing the event. I play for immersion not stats. You spent all this time to unify outfit members into these Bastions, then trashed it through nerfs. I really wish you would make up your mind and move forward. Nerf this, buff that, than nerf this again. How did I endure this game for so many years because frankly there isn’t anything else. So as horrible as developers have been since Rogue Planet took over, I can just go back to keeping the wallet closed.
One big reason the storm doesn't clear the zergs is because of how long it takes it to change bases. However, I would prefer to see players given anti zerg options rather than a storm moving around. I know I'm not the only one advocating for more splash damage weapons to be added as a counter play to zergs.
AOE isnt specific, and would hurt the outnumbered group more. The Zerg is guaranteed to bring more vehicles and destroy the underpop's vehicles, then be able to farm the underpop with little opposition. You've just handed a buff to all Zergs. This still counts if you were to give it to infantry. You need solutions that scale better, solutions that support the underdog but dont give as much advantage to massive zergs who could use the same options against the underpop. I would go for adding things to capture mechanics, making it easier for the underpop to get around and have easier access to equipment. For example, make sure they dont have to pass through chokepoints as an underpop to stop the Zerg from capture the base. You could add an attrition mechanic that adds time to the capture timer for every kill and vehicle kill the defenders make, more time added the more outpopped you are. Or defenders get access to a virusbomb that if detonated within LOS of a point adds time to it. The underpop would also get access to more ways out of the spawn, such as being able to drop-pod in within an increasingly large area around the spawn. This to make spawncamping useless. Add the ANVIL system to underpops, allowing them to call in increasingly powerful vehicles the more outnumbered they are, giving them access when their vehicle pad is ineviteably overrun and camped. Its the entire reason I had been advocating an ANVIL system for years before the devs decided to make it a mostly frivolous addition exclusive to Outfits.
The thing about AoE weapons is that, if balanced correctly, their damage to any one target shouldn't be high, therefore they should scale well in that they will be useless when taking on too few opponents. Right now my only tool that works at all like this is to organize my platoon to all have grenade bandoliers and coordinate a mass fragging of a room. AoE weapons on tanks just lose to AP rounds, so they're not very useful.
Esamir is borderline logoff bad now. The new base designs are simply terrible. Some of the best bases were removed. It's a travesty. The first clue is no teleporters. This eliminates a natural second path and flank for defenders trying to recapture a point. New bases have none of them. The second is the bottlenecks. The battle flow is almost linear at times. Either the offense is fully spawn suppressing, or getting chewed alive coming through a single predictable path. Offense has no way to flank other than fully bringing up a second spawn location. There are large open spaces around spawns encouraging spawn suppression as defenders have no cover to leave. For attackers there are few "fallback" locations - Once pushed off the point they are typically pushed off the whole base and the fight ends. Vehicles absolutely massacre the infantry fight. Don't even get me started on the storm. A few of us took notes on it for about an hour and a half. It has a programming flaw and goes to the *opposite* fight type it should go to. It hits large fights where the defender already has an advantage. Attacking spawns wiped, the fun ends. /bug with details submitted to no avail. Oh well, at least there's a good fight happening in the biolab...
Really the only way to beat zergs would probably be using the glass cannon route. Shortening ttk massively across the board. Make every individual unit and piece of equipment more dangerous . Does it solve the zerg issue? Well as far as i can guess it would highly increase the likelyhood of death in general. Being outnumbered is still likely to occur. But defending against overwhelming numbers would become easier with less. The problem would then likely become something else.
Let's assume for a moment the AOE is balanced correctly. Now a Zerg would be less useful against low pop and the low pop would be less useful to a Zerg (ignoring that the Zerg would have an easier time throwing more AOE around). But what about normal large-scale fights? A 96 vs 96 battle would suddenly be dominated by this AOE, because guess what it's designed against larger groups of players! Now in order to defeat the Zerg versus underpop problem you've ruined the rest of the game. Although it's hard to see how AOE can be balanced correctly. Unless you specifically limit it the Zerg will always be able to bring more AOE. If a small group can already bring enough AOE to combat a Zerg, then large group versus large group fights is dominated by this. If a small group can bring enough AOE to combat a Zerg, the Zerg will have more to throw back. If you use limitations like resources, the Zerg can still throw more back with less repercussions. We see this with how frag-grenades are easier to bring by a Zerg. Also we see that small groups can't bring enough grenades to really deal with a Zerg. Small AOE weapons like Lashers are much more effective in groups. Large AOE weapons like grenades and vehicle HE spam is easier to bring by the Zerg. The Zerg will by default start with more AOE capabilities in the form of vehicles. Zergs might still fight an underpop consisting out of 46 to 96 players, which would allow Zergs to use these AOE weapons against the underpop just as effectively. There's a question where the AOE can be used. The underpop will usually be holed up in Spawnrooms without a real way out other than through chokepoints. The point of these chokepoints is that the Zerglings will be spread out and hard to kill with AOE while the underpop will have to bunch up and throw themselves through a chokepoint, making them easy targets for said AOE and completely reversing the effect of said AOE balance. AOE is the single worst way to balance this. There is no scenario where it can balance Overpop versus Underpop and an equal large fight at the same time. Hell I would argue there's not even an Overpop versus Underpop scenario where it can balance things unless you exclusively give the Underpop massive advantages in the use of AOE. Like giving them access to 20 grenades simultaneously at little extra cost or giving them quite literally micro-nukes to launch at the enemy.
You mentioned the possibility of "ruining" the 96+ fights. I view this from a different angle. If the built in mechanics stop measuring at 96 players, that implies some sort of an intended limit on how many players are supposed to be in one are. Currently, the only thing that beats a zerg is another zerg. I would actually prefer mechanics that deliberately create a limit on how many players can be useful in one base, not to kill the fight, but to create a reason to open a second front. All too often a faction will have 96+ shoved into one base, while 3+ other bases are going down unchallenged, but nobody will defend them because "it's not where the fight is". I would like to see changes so that players aren't choosing between "the fight" and "not the fight", but instead choosing "this fight or that fight". Back tot he AoE point I made, a suggestion I made in a different thread was to make incendiary munitions, which add short lived "burn patches" to ground that will slowly burn down the HP of players entering them. In this case, there would be a natural limit on the usefulness of this, as once a room is on fire, it's on fire. The idea in this case would be that the burn might last 10-15 seconds, to counter the "stack 40 players into 1 room" play style. If this idea is not well received, then there are other ways to do it. Of course, people who are determined to be negative will be able to find ways to hate them all. The reason I'm on this AoE topic is that in RTS games, that is how you counter numbers, with AoE. Since we keep talking about "zergs", an example from that game being referenced by the term is that a common counter to hydra swarm is psi storm. Since PS2 is an FPS/RTS hybrid, and the problem in question has more to do with the RTS element (A pure FPS would simply have 16 vs 16 or 32 vs 32 or whatever, so zerging isn't an issue), use proven solutions from RTS games to beat the RTS problem.
That is a whole other problem. That is about how enjoyable the "intended" gameplay is compared to finding a big bad fight that the game is supposed to offer and staying there for an entire playsession. Going to the uncontested fights is always a gamble. You might stay underpopped, you might find air and ground vehicles pounding away at the spawnroom, you might find a balanced fight, you might get suddenly Zerged to death by a sudden Outfit or similar that you just couldn't predict. There's too many risks to take on any random fight and too few rewards for doing so. and what stops the more numerous and more spread out Zerglings from using this on the approaches to their chokepoints? Or using it to instantly burn anyone leaving the spawnroom or trying to pass through a chokepoint? How to you deal with a balanced fight where the pointroom and surrounding area is continuously on fire because one side tries to take it and flush anyone inside out and the other side is trying to prevent enemies from sticking around long enough to hold it? How do you deal with allies who use fire at the wrong time and end up burning a whole bunch of allies, lock their weapons almost immediately for an honest mistake? Worse, do you let griefers deliberately jump into the fire to lock someone's weapons? But if you remove the weapon lock for excessive damage nothing stops players from firebombing the inside of the Spawnroom for example, which is already a popular way for people saying "don't camp the spawnroom you are ruining the game for me so I'll kill you all!". Just try and take that Biolab if the front doors and every teleporter room is quickly firebombed the moment players start exiting. The thing is that PS2 isn't a classic RTS game. You aren't just destroying a bunch of units, you are killing a bunch of players with a low-skill blanket killing tool. That is not fun for those players. There are also a bunch of counters to AOE spam because it's an RTS. Additionally in an RTS those destroyed units remain destroyed and you have to pay resources to rebuild your army and such. In PS2 those units are right back at their position. If you kill a room full of people they'll respawn and return, with the big option of getting killed again without any real protection against this AOE spam. On the other hand if you kill the AOE spammers they'll repsawn and be right back throwing AOE spam at you so you can't even counter them or stop them effectively. There are also inherent imbalances in how the game operates. Attackers have by default the vehicles to support themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have made it to the base and be able to deploy their Sunderers. The defenders are almost always unable to use vehicles as those are outnumbered and destroyed, not to mention that by (dumb) design the vehicle pads are usually the first thing on a base that can't be used anymore preventing easy access to vehicles.
You make a good point about pinning spawn rooms, and that is more of a flaw with the base layouts than the concept of AoE. I have brought it up before in other threads that more bases need more teleporter spawn rooms. I have even suggested adding a concept to the game of a teleporter generator, which would burn down and repair like any other generator, but power a teleporter spawn room to create progressive micro objectives to achieve when attacking a base, and have multiple of these per base. This way, if defenders end up pinned in one spawn room, it's their own fault for losing the early fight, and if attackers don't take these out, they have to watch for a MAX crash which may come of any one of 3 or 4 possible attack angles. Additional to my teleporter point, many of the bases could be better designed so that defenders can control a reasonable enough area from the spawn room to at least get out of the spawn room. There are some where as a PL I'm saying things like "guys, stop going close to the spawn room, they have shields, they can shoot you, you can't shoot them. You're just feeding up there, stop it, get back to your positions and let the kills come to you" and if I'm saying that, this indicates that the spawn room is functioning as intended. The defenders can shoot my attackers from it well enough that we have to let them out of their spawn room, but it has little enough coverage of the base that we can still get a good set up to hold the control point(s). In the bases where defenders can be completely pinned, the spawn room and structures around it need to be corrected. Regarding vehicle pads falling, honestly drawing a vehicle from the base which is already under siege is a dumb thing to do. If I even draw a vehicle, or lead a vehicle counter play, I have people spawn one base back to get set up, then send the tanks in. Drawing from the existing battle is just throwing your nanite away. I'll sometimes attempt it as a desperation play, but I know the risk I'm taking. As for the risk of spamming, that would be reason to make it not free. The idea has bounced around the forum before of having better than basic, but less than MAX equipment infantry can draw, things like "shock troops" which have straight up better gear than basic troops, but cost 100-200 nanite to draw. The splash damage could be addressed in this manor. If for example, a flame thrower were added for the engineer class, maybe that thing costs 100 nanite to draw. Then if someone is stupid with it, and gets himself sniped, say from a properly balanced spawn room, they are throwing nanite away, not achieving anything, and feeding bonus certs to the defenders. All this aside, whatever is ultimately done about zergs, I would much rather see it be in the hands of the players than some neutral-hostile...thing...that just sorta bounces around the map. I had advocated for extreme weather events, but only in ways that would change up the game play, create new hazards and ways to kill one another, not to have Zeus show up and start randomly shocking people.
While the storm has been pretty brutal on a few fights, I think OS and Bastions kill more fights than storms do. I definitely think the storm was meant to be brutal, but the devs didn't know how much damage it could do until it actually was live. The current storm-survival methodology is not intuitive. It takes away combat effectiveness without really giving anything in return. Insulation suit takes away from your potent combat suit slot Insulation on sunderers makes using them for base capture very hard. You gotta be able to stealth or shield or its an easy sundy to pop. Using the new tool to remove overcharge does not grant experience. It definitely should, but I can see how that could be abused right now. Unfortunately it provides no incentive right now to camp your sundy to de-overcharge it. Lightning isn't even that punishing to people without insulation. That's the big kicker. If being insulated provided a tangible advantage, then it might be worth it. The chances of getting struck by lightning, and the fact you can run indoors to negate it just doesn't make it that threatening if you're legitimately trying to defend a base. I'm okay if the storm isn't designed to kill zergs. Zerging is an inherent part of an MMOFPS. What kills zergs is when smaller pockets of players make tactical choices like, spreading out to ghost cap, or even making a coordinated back-cap point hold. The zerg always moves forward so if you can thread a back-cap in, you often can slow a zerg or even bleed of a large number of them. I definitely prefer the storm has a strange hazard that helps shake things up. Considering the next chapter in the campaign is literally called "Adapt and Overcome", I have a feeling that we'll be getting more tools that will help us deal with/survive storm situations. We'll just have to see how stubborn those salty vets are.
Base design is a problem, but AoE isn't going to solve it even if we do have proper base design. Otherwise I would like to hear how you plan to add an AoE weapon system that does the following: Helps an underpop combat an overpop. Does not help the overpop defeat the underpop using the same indescriminate AoE fire. Does not become a dominant weapon type in balanced large-scale fights. Function regardless of how large the actual overpop is (in a 12 vs 30 fight it should be just as effective as a 42 vs 96+ fight). Because as I already mentioned, there doesn't seem to be a way to accomplish this at this moment even if you ignore the third point. Preventing enemies from getting close to the spawnroom is not the problem and never was. The problem is the defenders getting out of the spawnroom and into the base proper without getting minced to bits. Few spawnrooms allow the defenders enough exits and access to their own base to really prevent getting spawncamped. AMP station spawnrooms are an excellent example of a spawnroom that is almost impossible to spawncamp unless you have an overwhelming overpop. This also shows that the "if you are holed up you have lost" rethoric doesn't work. If the spawnroom were properly designed you would never be holed up in the Spawnroom in the first place, and always have an angle of attack with a reasonable chance of success to retake the base before the countdown timer ends. For reference, AMP station spawnrooms (that are outside rather than inside the main building) work so well because there's so many exits to various parts of the base: three "normal" exits at ground level, one exiting right into a wall-tower with access to the wall walkways and the 2 jump-pads on top. several exits on the intermediate floor which lead to semi-protected walkways which allow more freedom in where to get off the spawnroom before you are being engaged. Also sports two jump-pads to the main structure and often 2 turrets for local defense. a roof exit with a defense against air-attacks giving similar freedom as the walkways below, along with access to the top of that defense against air-attacks. a tunnel system exiting into the main building and onto the walls near the shield generators (although I would argue too close to them). This makes it nigh impossible to really bottle up the defenders indefinitely. While similar spawnbunkers often don't offer so many exits and force the defenders to choose: Either pass through open terrain where you'll be at a disadvantage and gunned down or move through the nearest doorway to the cover within, where you'll meet several enemies waiting for you using that same doorway as a chokepoint against you. The reason it's a dumb thing to do is because the base isn't designed to let you pull vehicles, which creates an imbalance in power in favor of the attackers right away. Your "solution" is one often given by players, but it just doesn't work. You draw away players needed to defend the base. You need more organization to get everyone back to the previous base and pull enough vehicles to defeat the attacker vehicle presence. If you are detected beforehand you are easily outnumbered and destroyed. You already lost the vehicle battle once, that is why you are the defender now. What makes you think you have the resources or skill to defeat them the second time around when you are at a disadvantage? Even if it does succeed, it only succeeds when you have the players, resources and higher organization required to pull it off. It's like saying "well ofcourse you can defeat 10 others with inferior numbers and a worse position you just need to be more skilled than them". This is basically rewarding the Zerg. Zergs have a lower death toll and more total nanites to spend and regenerate. So if there's three flamethrower Engineers on the Zergside for every one on the underpop side then the underpop will still be screwed. We already see this with how frag grenades work: They cost resources, they are limited in supply per run and still they can easily be used against the underpop. Worse, even a grenade bandolier and several players don't mean you can clear out a room, making it a costly endeavor. On top of that if these flamethrowers/whatever you think off is strong enough to deal with overpops, then they would also dominate the balanced battlefield of larger scale fights. Why wouldn't you bring one of these to a fight? I don't disagree that having more gear like the shock-troop would be good. They would definitely help the game as a whole. But they wouldn't hurt Zergs, quite the opposite. Like almost everything, being able to pull more of these will always benefit the Zerg. That is why you need to tailor things to combat the overpop specifically when you are being overpopped. The Storm is stupid from the inception. It's not designed against Zergs, it's designed against "stalemates", AKA balanced battles. You can also see it in the base design just like OneShadow mentioned: They aren't designed to be interesting or defended, they are designed to be taken. They want to push a gameplay where bases are changing hands constantly and where the "greater picture" of the mapscreen matters more. However in doing so they've neutered the actual combat. Why defend a base that is designed to fall? It is perfectly in line with the Outfit update that was supposedly about teamplay, but ended up quite predictably about zerging the hell out of players, only taking easy bases with little contest and griefing the hell out of players who contest you so they'll leave rather than trying to create an enjoyable fight. And the Storm is the ultimate expression of this. It will move to the largest fight, which isn't going to be a Zerg stampeding across the map but a large more-or-less balanced battle. In fact people have already remarked that Zergs tend to capture a base fast enough that they don't really experience too many problems from the Storm to begin with. There it will annoy and murder players for little more reason other than "you are at the current biggest fight and you are marked because you are in the area and haven't finished an arbitrary murder-hole mission set you had to pay certs for".
Esamir if anything encourages zerging, since it heads for the biggest and most fun fights. It then makes the attackers rage quit and zerg empty bases, while the defenders are left to zerg an empty lattice in a counterattack.
Im not sure what the point of the storm is because all it does is ruin even fights, which is something i thought they would rather encourage since its when the game is at its best. If they absolutely have to have and ingame mechanic that punishes anyone at least make it punish double teaming because that is seriously not fun. Being zerged into the spawnroom on all fronts is when i start logging off. Like every 2 minutes or so the game could check to see if your faction is outnumbered on all fronts (and if it "should" be compared to the % population). If it detects that you are getting double teamed then it gives that faction some sort of buff or enemies some kind of debuff or whatever. Call it Vanu nanitemagic or something i dont know.
Only allow pulling these in bases where friendly population is 12+ and, say, <40% would solve a lot of the issues already. Zergs can't pull them and you can only pull them when you're sufficiently underpopped in a sufficiently large fight.
Ok, Demigan, dude, seriously, you are demonstrating why so many devs of so many games ignore their forum. There are far too many persistently negative people. About the only thing we can agree is that what already exists is junk. Other than that, you are trying to demand that I think of everything, trying to demand that everything I think of be perfect, and if the first pass on an idea is less than perfect, you dismiss it. This is why devs ignore their forums. You asserted that spawn camping... isn't and has never been the problem? Then spent a whole paragraph on spawn room layouts. So that's just inconsistent. As for whether or not vehicle counter attacks will work, there are many variables. The defenders need to be stable enough to lose some players for a bit and not lose the base. Then, it depends on if the attacking tankers actually got out of their tanks. If they don't, then they aren't helping with the infantry fight, but count as population, enabling defensive reinforcement spawns. If they do get out of their tanks, then the tanks are free certs for the armoured counter attack. Also, if defenders have been watching the population ratio, it has been increasing, and just hit 50%, that is a good time to fall back a base and draw armour, as you will be replaced by more eager reinforcements anyways. Now, on to your challenges for my AoE concept, if implemented right, it will favor a mobile force more than a static force. This will become useful to out popped defenders, because once attackers are on the control point(s), their rolls effectively reverse. The attackers are now defending their control of the point, and the defenders are trying to attack them off the point before the timer runs out. Area of effect is not that dangerous if players can move out of the area that is affected, hence my point about mobility, and those in the roll of attacking should be more mobile, and more able to chose the location and timing of the engagement. Now, if the base is badly designed then this all goes to ****, but that will be true of any solution anyone can think of, so it's not an issue with my solution. If you disagree with me on that last point, then I challenge to think of a solution that would function in a badly designed base. As for your challenge for it to function regardless of the scale of the overpop, that would require play testing and adjustment, which I obviously don't have the resources to do. As for it not becoming dominant in the large fights, well obviously it would. If the weapon's effectiveness is multiplied by the number of targets in the impact area, then it will be more powerful in high density fights. What player count will be that tipping point will depend on the base, it will take more to reach it at Eisa tech plant than Jaeger's Fist. However, that makes sense, their comes a point where the battle is a skilless blender anyways, and not really what this game is meant to be anymore. Yes Planetside is meant to be large scale, but not to the point of having 12 people watching 1 doorway. I can say with certainty that player skill falls off in the larger fights, and for the opposite reason as the braggarts who populate most forums. I know I'm a low skill player, it you want a chuckle, look up my KDR. My value as a player is in familiarity with the game, which fight is the right fight to be in, and how to approach it. My actual head clicking ability...not so great. This is important because I also know who the high skill outfits on my server are, and where I can and can't kill them. In low pop fights against them, I'm just food. In high pop fights, some times the kills I get are from those outfits. So, I don't see the "balanced" big fights as an asset to the game. They definitely kill the strategy of the game by soaking the whole server into one base, but they also kill the skill level of the shooty part of this game. So I'm ok with breaking them up in favor of multiple smaller fights. To wrap up this paragraph, if my idea for zerg busting happens to also kill the blenders, I'm ok with that. Yes, I agree that the campaign stinks worse than dog****, the storm is a badly implmented and lazy solution, and that while the new Esamir doesn't have the warpgate balance issues nearly as bad as the old Esamir, is a weak continent...I still like it better than Hossin. However, if your reply to this is to negatively shoot down everything I said, please at least offer up an idea of your own.
If you had suggested cheap and easy tactical nukes then you would have understood that there was no way for me to agree and be positive about that suggestion right? Well the same here, I've given you the reasons why it is a bad idea and you repeating yourself hasn't made it better. This isn't me being persistantly negative, this is you being persistantly too positive about a bad idea. I am always critical, but I'll provide alternatives where I can to make an idea work. I went down several idea's to try and make AoE work and none did, I relayed this to you. I am not demanding you think of everything, quite the opposite even. I've already given you scenario's of how AoE could work, and none give you the solution that you want. Yet you keep saying there is some nebulous balance that can be achieved with AoE that would solve the issue. So since I can't think of one and you obviously can, all I ask you to do is explain this one scenario. As for the devs, they seem to be closer to your persistant positive than my more critical view. For example they see how their current forced gameplay flow failed during the Outfit update, then decided to double down on that rather than admit their mistake. I asserted that your scenario of "the spawnroom is working as intended when the attackers don't want to get near it" doesn't work. It doesn't matter that you can keep the surroundings of the Spawnroom clear, what matters is if you can actually get out of the spawnroom and mount a solid attack without having an unfair advantage like being forced through chokepoints just to enter the neighbouring building. I'm not surprised though that you didn't pick up on such a distinction, just disappointed. And again, pulling vehicles from nearby isn't as easy or clear-cut as you make it out to be. Even if your perfect scenario works then you still require more effort and coordination to pull it off. You also ignore the power that vehicles have over bases they are at and how they can keep the defenders from retaking the points. In other words, still no explanation on your "implented right". How can it be implemented right? What statistics does it need? How cheap? How many can you carry? Does it cost nanites? Can it be replenished at ammo packs? What is done to make sure the Zerg doesn't just use it against you? How does it have enough force to make you defeat a Zerg long enough for you to hold on to an objective? Especially since holding said objective makes you the static party while the Zerglings don't even need to reach for their AoE to beat you but now have that option? You again make a whole lot of weird assumptions. The attackers usually don't just sit around waiting for the defenders to show up unless they have a far superior position to do it from. They'll move out, they'll hunt down stragglers, they'll lock down the paths from the spawnroom to the points until there are none left and they start spawncamping. The defenders don't have some mobile advantage to exploit and even if they had that they would still not be able to suddenly fight a Zerg. Imagine it: you reach a room and want to throw AoE inside to clear it out. Where will the enemy be? They won't be loitering in perfect AoE distance, instead they'll be spread out. Some at the doors peeking out and putting fire downrange as you approach. Others farther back in the room with more players arriving there when those at the doors are pushed back. By that time the attackers can just lob their own AoE at the doorways, and if you decide to get your AoE into play they'll likely just hang around the next doorway and exit the room until the AoE has dissipated, then return and murder you. Assuming they don't again use that same AoE to kill you as you try to pass through the room they just vacated. This is quite literally what happens right now when you do a MAX crash or lob half a dozen grenades into a room. What makes your "implemented right" AoE different? And you admitting that it would become dominant is a perfect reason not to do it. As for the solutions I can think off, click the little arrow and be taken to my first post in this thread detailing exactly that: If you want more detail I could give it to you, or you could read one of my more detailed responses in earlier topics about this. I don't care about KD in that way. I've always pointed out that KD is heavily dependend on playstyle, rather than skill. Even a low-skill players can get high KD by using only HE tanks in certain situations and go MAX in other specific situations. However a high-skill player that sacrifices himself to take on chokepoints, MAX's, vehicles and strong enemy positions is going to have a much lower KD than a low-skill farmer. Playstyle matters more. I also have been a harsh advocate of removing or diminishing KD and presenting other statistics like being able to break chokepoints and destroying high-value targets like MAX's, vehicles and aircraft. KD does not make players skill-less farmers somewhere, rather it encourages lazy and repetitive farming strategies. Just like the current intended gameplay meta of capturing bases encourages lazy and repetitive farming strategies of capturing those bases. That said your "balanced fights attract low-skill players" is just offensive and a massive bias. It's actually the reason why we are currently stuck with the latest Outfit update and the Esamir revamp, because the actual balanced fights were seen as problematic so they decided to encourage toxic behaviour and discourage defending bases. People get stuck in the 24/7 big fights not because they are skill-less or boring players, they get stuck there because it's just more fun than the supposedly "intended" gameplay. Why waste time joining a fight where you are likely not going to get enough pop to make a difference, or where you might get pulverized by vehicles and aircraft without you being able to stop it, or where you might suddenly get out-zerged because an Outfit decided they wanted it and saw a base they could out-pop in an instant, or all of the above? Why take all those risks to your enjoyment of the gameplay if you could just stick to the large-scale fight that PS2 is supposedly for and have almost guaranteed good fights? I've already suggested that if they want people out of the 24/7 fights that they should do one thing and one thing alone: MAKE. IT. FUN. Stop trying to remove the 24/7 fights and hope that somehow all those players will join the very gameplay they've been avoiding. Start making the gameplay you want to promote fun. It's not even a lazy solution, it's a solution designed to break the game. They just think that it will make people enjoy the "intended" gameplay which has been shifting more and more to capturing bases by making bases as easy to capture as possible.
Left the game for 6 months--got tired of Bastions making playing anywhere near them difficult to enjoy. Came back to find the guys behind Planetside: Arena put in storms on Esamir. Is there no end to bad ideas and failure to understand what differentiates their product in the marketplace?
in theory the idea of a storm that dissipates zergs doesn't sound all that bad. However, once we switch on our grey matter and start examining the idea...well it's just another attempted Band-Aid fix, that doesn't address the root of the problem. Even if the storm was properly implemented, it would not solve the issue of why zergs form in the first place!
