In response to this I've decided to once again analyze why the shattered warpgate update sucks. Feel free to attack, add or whatever to these points. As a salty vet, I originally was against this update, which didn't stop me from finishing the campaign 2 days after the release. I must say I was once again surprised by the monstrosity of the update, and here's what's bad: Spawning in the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary has always been this useless place where people are forced to go to do outfit chores that could've easily been implemented in the menu or warpgate area. It's an annoyance most people tried to avoid. So spawning everyone in the sanctuary is a great way to piss everyone off, and add an extra layer of trolling before people can get into a fight (which is you know, what the game's all about). Also good luck if the only continent(s) have a queue, you may as well log off at this point. I also find it irritating that the game disconnects people, then places them into the sanctuary queue instead of the continent they were on. The BUGS! DBG's signature addition during all their player validated, wrel-tested, thoroughly meticulously planned updates. Although vets are used to this and it didn't stop me from spawn-camping the 3-4 plants that didn't spawn undergrounds, it's a sour first-impression for players who came to check out the game. Especially in regards to the campaign system which was supposed to be the main part of the update and tested on PTS, having such bugs for a week is pretty impactful and leaves a negative image of the game for the newcomers it was trying to attract. For the vets, it's just further confirmation that nothing's changed. THE STORM! An amazing idea. After all, it was unfair to let Hossin have the highest KDR with it's trees and insta-death zones. Esamir needed it's death trap! All jokes aside, it's a poorly implemented addition, that attempts to band-aid a problem without resolving the root cause. It doesn't even manage to provide that band-aid fix. The thing targets the largest fights, not zergs. I've seen 96+ vs 96+ fights with 50/50 pop on each side get squashed to 1-12 vs 96+ thanks to the storm. The storm in fact has created more zergs from what I've seen on live servers. The terrain! Adding giant insta-death rivers and bizarre terrain is cool!...for like 3 seconds. The massive uncrossable death rivers and the weird terrain when vehicles flip at the slightest pebble is a massive middle finger to non-air mains. These things really kill batteflow, and are super annoying considering all the bridges and roads are broken. The Biolabs! I'm a salty vet. I admit I was concerned with the removal of biolabs on Esamir. That said, I would've been cool with it had they been replaced with decent bases, instead of...NOTHING?!??!?!?! Seriously, has anyone ever had or heard of a good fight at cobalt geo? Or solus nature annex? That's what I thought. So why add more construction bases????? That's just lazy and silly on the devs behalf. Those bases have never generated decent fights and never will. I can think of 100 cool ideas they could've used to implement the abandoned biolabs into bases instead of just leaving a blank slate on the map. There's a reason people flocked to biolabs, removing them without adding a decent replacement was obviously gonna turn a few heads and cause controversy. The Base revamps! The new bases look sexy, and different from what we usually fight at. However I have yet to find a good fight at a single one of these bases. Infantry cover is null, the layouts are bizarre at best, and there's 0 thought to battleflow in the hexes. Some bases force attackers to be belt-fed in front of the defender's spawn, or have awkward entry points and layouts. Also a majority of the hexes have gotten bigger, and new additions have been made, yet the points are crammed in a linear fashion in a tiny portion of the base. Take Eisa for example, which is a huge hex but the 3 points are in the same boring hangar we always fight at. It would've been easy to spread the points across the hex and create pathways for enhanced battleflow in the hex. Another concern is that the bases that needed to be revamped the most haven't been touched, or instead have been made worse/haven't addressed the issues with the previous version of the base. Jaegers or the traverse are good examples. Again, a poor map revamp, creating more issues than it solves, and overall never addressing any of the primary reasons for a revamp. THE CROWN/T.I..Switching back to the 3 point base is good. But keeping B, was bad, it didn't solve the issue of tunnel stalemates. The new entrance to the crown is awkward and doesn't really solve anything for Ceres attackers, who are still forced to park their spawn under the nose of C4 fairies and AV from the Crown. Reverting to the OG Crown would've helped Ceres attackers better. The removal of the landbridge is borderline moronic, and doesn't enhance battleflow, it destroys it. Apart from the few happy HESH farmers from the Crown, no one likes this terrible idea, and it doesn't solve the issue of attacking T.I from Ceres, instead it makes it harder to attack from the Crown. More paths to T.I. were needed, not less. The new wall inside the point room is fine I guess, but the building could've been revamped to be a bit more battle-friendly. In the end, it was another revamp that at best didn't solve any of the issues it attempted to address. THE CAMPAIGN! A formidable addition...that kinda sucks. It doesn't really integrate with the game, instead forces people to waste their time in an out-of-bounds area and warping back and forth accomplishing nothing for their empire/outfit. The only teamplay aspect is basically building a base or farming space carrots together. I don't feel this was needed, and I don't feel it's a valuable addition both for new and old players. No one really knows why it's there, people just kinda do it for no reason. Again, a mixture of bugs, fetch-quests and overall a boring paying experience that further confuses new players. Also, the reward seems a little light for such a large cert and time investment, and also doesn't help new players at all. MISSIONS! In theory, this could've been cool I guess. It could've been a nice way to earn ISO, implants, A7, weapons or whatever. The problem is once again, they're bizarre fetch-quests that don't really have a reason to exist, nor fit into the game correctly. Also most are just ridiculous for new players, which realistically will only be able to complete a tiny portion of these rng based missions. Daily ribbons were honestly much clearer objectives, more accommodatable for noobs and actually would be awarded from playing the game correctly on any playstyle. They could've built on that, or just left them as they were. Again, another issue that has been addressed...by amplifying the issue! Finally, from what I heard these missions were meant to help players earn ISO and resources based on their needs. I have a sub br 30 character that gets missions for symbiote, 25 iso, 300 A7 and xp. Very few cert/weapons rewards. My ASP 100 characters get only missions for weapons, certs and xp which....does a ASP 100 really need xp??? Not one single ISO or A7 mission. Again, needs some tuning. Crafting. We can finally craft exceptionals! For 45k ISO. Needless to say, it's not what the majority of the community was asking for, and despite wrel's promises to adjust the price (before this even hit live) nothing has been touched. A7! Introduced...and put on hold. Another waste of time and resources to give players access to a few odd gadgets, and completely useless. BEC ammo/condensate grenades. You ever felt like concs/flashes, the tranquility or the storm wasn't enough? With the introduction of these cancerous items despite the clear community backlash is just pure disregard for the game's needs. And again, wrel's promises to tune based on community feedback before this even hit live still haven't occurred. And if you think this ammo isn't cancerous I'll let you interview players I've nailed in 1v1s thanks to it, and also introduce you to BEC thumper heavy camping the biolab satellite spawn from the roof. Regardless of their cancer, it's also worthy of noting that the devs plan on removing these items after the campaign. So props to everyone who grinded campaign currency and bought those items for nothing. Nanite costs. The new nanite cost of the lightning is fair. The new cost of harassers is a lazy and boring way to address an issue in vain. Instead of increasing the cost of harassers, these vehicles should have been reworked to behave like harassers! It does nothing to address the fact harassers are way too powerful for what they should be, and instead just trolls those who wanted a safer transport than a flash. Increasing the nanite cost was just a lazy workaround to avoid rebalancing. I think I've covered a few of the main issues, also I'd like to conclude by pointing out players who completed the campaign early on like me had to spend 600 campaign standing to unlock the insulation suit needed to complete the campaign. This was changed, the suit is now free. However those that completed the campaign before those changes never got their 600 campaign standing refund. Those that complained to CS were told to make a post for the devs in the forums or reddit. We all know what that amounted to. Even as a player who cares very little for the currency or the items that can be bought with it, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. So yeah, all that, plus the constant disregard for players are a few reason why the general community dislikes the game's current direction, and the shattered warpgate update.
The patch was a fantastic way... To make more people want to play on hossin. At this point in the life cycle of the game I don't think a new map is coming, So i was fairly confident that hossin would remain the worst map, the place where noone plays unless forced too. Little did I know what was fated to happen to our beloved esamir. So yeah, totally agreed without even going into the annoying, buggy, impossible campaign junk, which we could simply decide not to play, the patch was a colossal fail, for the desecration of esamir, RIP esamir. (And central indar, with TI Alloys becoming borderline impossible to cap now without a massive zerg.)
You are so right about them trying to avoid any serious rebalance. The fact that there are still a lot of harassers out there despite the doubled price proves that I and others weren't complaining about nothing, yet once that price is paid, they still have all the same problems. Deleting the bio labs entirely doesn't address the issues with biolabs. I don't have much experience with Andvari yet, but building on Ymir has been a big flop. I, as a builder, am glad they thought to give me new places to build, but these places are junk. They haven't addressed the functional flaws of the building system, and all the decorative debris makes placing buildings a nightmare. "Collides with existing object" "Collides with existing object" "Collides with existing object" "Collides with existing object" "FUUUUUUUUUUUUU!". Then, on top of that, they are push lanes. Building is great...if there is ever a contest for your base. Excavion is a critical base for either of the southern or eastern warpgates, Ymir is a throw away push lane in front of the critical base. I built on it somewhere in the 5-10 times range, and in a vacuum, I'm quite happy with the base I had come up with. But it wasn't in a vacuum, it was on a continent. Out of all those times I built it, it got fought over twice. Once because my platoon wasn't playing strategically, they were just farming that lane, and got pushed back to Ymir, so they fought over it, and the other was at the point when the alert was in the bag anyways, so my PL was nice and sent the platoon my way. At no point did any PL defend my base because it was the right play, therefore the build was useless. Add on that the thing is only a +3 on outfit resource, and it's not that important for that reason either. Add on a little thing, why did they close off the interiors of the abandoned buildings? They would have looked so much cooler if they'd been done up like some of the buildings at Terran BL-4 Crash Site. Not fully abandoned, but not properly maintained either. Full agree on sanctuary, bugs, storm, A7, campaign, missions, and crafting. I had advocated for severe weather patters to blow through, but as a way to shake up the game dynamic, not this zappy mess. Imagine if Esamir had short lived white out blizzards blowing across the continent, that made a lot of wind noise and screwed up visibility, but did no direct damage. Say they had a duration of about 1 minute in any one area as they blew by. Leaders could use this as cover to move, and break up stalemates. It would in this case be up to the players to actually do something, and not some neutral-hostile environmental zappy thing. Dust bowls and tropical storms would also work. At the end of the day however, I think this and other updates were not produced for their gameplay value, but for their marketing value.
Yeah the abandoned building are exactly what I was trying to address. They added new stuff to the hexes, and they look like pretty fun places to fight I guess. But these areas are made useless, pushed away from the points or any strategical aspect of the base, and are sealed. WHY??? What a waste of resources. I guess I agree 50/50 with your whiteout idea. I guess it would give a reason for thermals/night vision to exist, while letting infantry fight in peace inside buildings. Also I guess 1 minute without seeing anything isn't that bad. Totally agree that people shouldn't have to worry about a storm damaging them in a game like this. Even if the storm gives like a nanite boost to the underpopped faction or something it would've been better. Killing the fight isn't a cool way to solve zerging/stalemates. Yeah it's clear that almost all the updates this year have been focused on generating hype. And it's worked a bit. People have checked out the game, honestly far more than what I would've expected. But they didn't last long. Obviously a game is meant to be played, and if the new updates aren't going to add anything of value, and the past issues haven't been addressed, the hype is going to leave as fast as it came. And it'll be harder to convince these people to give the game more chances to prove itself after each disappointment.
