Containment Site Playtest Feedback thread - Apr. 10-11

Discussion in 'Test Server: Announcements' started by RPG_Wrel, Apr 10, 2021.

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  1. RPG_Wrel Lead Designer

    If you participated in the Containment Site playtest on Saturday or Sunday, Apr. 10/Apr.11, please fill out the corresponding form below, and respond in the comments with additional feedback.

    Saturday's Feedback Form: https://forms.gle/1XteKPrMpsYhMR4z6 - Locked for Responses
    Sunday's Feedback Form: https://forms.gle/Vgrp8u1VyFQPRnPt6 - Locked for Responses

    Responses for both feedback forms are now locked, but feel free to continue sharing feedback in the thread below.
    • Up x 1
  2. NonameFTW

    Just gonna keep this short.

    1. For the love of god and all that is holy. Remove the damn no construction zone at the facility. (And while you're at it remove them all together. K ? thx bye ;P )
    2. The way for attackers is to long imo. Literally. Biolabs have adjacent facilities that provided hard spawns. Currently the defenders can just go onto the surface, Destroy all spawns and repair everything and the attackers are back to beginning. Construction Bases could provide the necessary fortification for attackers but because there are no construction zones everywhere in this game its barely used.
    3. Obviously some areas still needs some makeup work. Literally empty grey rooms through a window.

    Overall I think that this definitely a very cool base. Probably best facility ever. Because taking a facility should actually be that complex like it currently is. Compared to a tech plant for example its really awesome. (Tech Plants are cool to fight at but also very simplistic)

    Suggestion: Bring back the old satellite bases in the sundi towers. A capture point of 1min provides a hard spawn AND a vehicle terminal at the tower for whoever owns it.
    • Up x 2
  3. SmittyJensen

    • The corridors remind me a lot of the ones in Planetside 1. Very similar feel.
    • The bases themselves are way too convoluted. A maze. I practiced navigating for over an hour before the playtest and then conducted the playtest and I was still confused. Maybe more directions on the walls would help.
    • The textures are very nicely done. And I like the destructible carrots. Not a big deal but it is nice to have more interaction with the world.
    • I'm afraid more of the battles will gravitate to these 3 bases and they'll become uber biolabs for the entirety of the map being open. Ground and air vehicles rendered mostly useless.
    • If you could find a way to get less pop deeper into the internals before they have a skirmish, that would be more interesting imo.
    • 3 factions with huge presences in one of these facilities is not super fun. But what ends up happening are big skirmishes at entrance points. That's it. It's just a bullethose fight. Get the gun with the most bullets and shoot them downstream constantly. Medics and Engies keep it going. Occasional mass lobbing of grenades.
    • It would be interesting to see this again with about half the people that showed up. I think there were just too many.
    • I absolutely love the ability to navigate through the air ducts!
    • The elevators at the entrances lead up to a deck that goes no where. Pointless. Do something with those that is functional please. Maybe their could be jumppads to/from the towers surrounding or from other bases. That is one positive about the Biolabs -- it connected them to the other bases surrounding them, giving more purpose to the entire region.
    • I'm not even sure I could answer most of the QA form questions properly because I didn't even realize there were subsections. It was just one giant maze to me.
    • Up x 1
  4. graamhoek

    If the devs want players to spend their time in game running, this is a success. This base will deter new players from sticking with the game - they'll spend the vast majority of their time running (and being lost) and then be picked off without any real fighting to speak of, only to spend two more minutes running so they can die again. It's not an enticing scenario for people who download the game expecting a first person shooter instead of a first person runner.

    If it were mine, I'd reduce the base to about a quarter of its size with wider corridors and fewer choke points. More vertically oriented open spaces with catwalks (like the old SNA) would go a long way to reduce camping and create more play for light assaults. As it is, the base is just too easy to camp and pick off clueless players who are just trying to find their way to the fight.

    Air ducts are an interesting addition, but it's also another grenade and C4 catcher in the narrow spaces.
    • Up x 1
  5. Judoka

    Since the feedback form had no place for actual comments, I felt the need to put them here.

    1) The new Containment Facilities are going to be MASSIVE population sinks. You thought Biolab fights sucked in pop? Just wait.
    When they hit live, they will either just be cut off or have massive prolonged (Can you say Ti Alloys?) level of pop sink.
    It would actually probably be better to make one of these the center base on Esamir instead of the Tech Plant, ala Nason's on Hossin - a place where multi-faction fights happen spontaneously.

    2) The SCU at the entrance will make it only feasible to cap once SCU is down, and it will be easy to take down. You may see a defensive router brought into the spawn room in anticipation of a siege fight where the SCU dies quickly.

    3) Without Medics and Engies, sustained pushes on the massive underground will be impossible. Lose your medics or medics can't reach you? A couple minutes of boring running to get back into the fight if it is on the point areas with no routers.

    4) Without routers, attacking will be very boring due to the long runs needed when you die.

    5) The new sunderer garages may actually be a bit TOO safe. One of three things happen:
    a) You can never get to it to kill the bus if people are spawning on it.
    b) If people are underground using routers and not the sunderer, it will go down as easily to infantry as current garages so no net gain for the new design.
    c) If the fight is pushed outside the facility, then the garage just becomes a HESH/bolter farm for as long as people keep spawning since the distance from the garage to the Containment building is across a large expanse of open ground. It either needs moved closer OR some type of underground tunnel/jumppad from the garage to prevent the tower camping.

    6) The blue floor arrows help, BUT the minimap is a real issue. You have no good way to know depth or levels on a two dimensional map. Example, I was underground trying to save the SCU since it was RIGHT BEHIND THE FRICKING WALL I WAS NEXT TO on the minimap. I was getting wildly frustrated trying to find a way to it to save it. Little did I know it was upstairs several levels right beside the entrance. As I yelled my frustration after trying to run around trying to find a way to it and verbalized my frustration, a squadmate who had noticed it earlier when attacking a different containment facility informed me it was upstairs. This points out an issue in that we need some method of distinguishing levels/altitude of important points in the base either on the map or possibly via wall signs? ("TO SCU ^")

    7) BUG: Even after the SCU was down for over 30 seconds, I was still able to respawn in the spawn room several times. Once I went outside, I was then finally not able to respawn in the spawn room.

    In general, I felt very frustrated when trying to get back in to the fight as an attacker after running to get back in then suddenly Oooops - dead from a flank / cloaker / group camping a choke. The grenade spam is real.
    • Up x 2
  6. Erosion139


    I am not sure how you can say "reduce camping" and include catwalks in that solution. If a light assault is going to find itself perfectly at home on a catwalk then you have created a new way to camp. IMO if you are camping you are playing the game correctly because unlike every other game the coordination of many people contributes more than a singular camping infiltrator. You should be able to camp yourself too in the same environment which makes the entire situation completely fair. Ill be clear though, I have not been on a playtest and as the times work out I will not be able to. But in my 2000+ hours I cant ever say that a camping infiltrator should not have had the opportunity to do what they did. If someone can camp and repeatedly kill me every single time I am afraid it is my own fault for cluelessly walking the same path like nothing ever happened. As for new players, they are not that stupid and deeming them as such is almost as insulting as saying the containment bases should be 1/4 the size, of which they should definitely not be (id like to retain the grand nature of what this game represents.) A new player is hopefully going to lock onto the immediately visible path to objective and follow it until they reach one of the main pushes from the allied faction. There they should understand where the line is and where the enemy is. With enough people it should work, and with not enough people why should I expect it to work and feel like a battle that it is not. Those "clueless" players have every clue they could possibly need.
  7. Asic

    Hey Wrel, thanks for taking on a suggestion about questionnaire.

    Couple of my observations and suggestions:
    - distance to interior, after SCU has been destroyed is a tad too long. Either remove no deploy zone inside for sunderers, move towers closer, incorporate construction, add more cover or add teleporters in towers after SCU is shown.
    - the towers themselves could have additional stairs inside
    - allow defenders to turn the Syphon off
    - this place is huge -add more mini-objectives that influence battle flow (e.g. use stored tempest to block pathways, sabotage computer to cause tempest overflow resulting in EMP, add few terminals to flip the same pairs of vents open, disable parts of facility, add capture the flag objective that grants something etc)
    - maybe increase capture point count.
    - add more shortcuts, both horizontal and vertical (vents, one way gravlift)
    - place SCU in a protected recess
    - main spawn room should have a teleporter to the top spawn room when SCU is not destroyed
    - maybe add a facility map on a wall before the first stairs
    - consider faction benefit for controlling containment site (tempest strike?)
    • Up x 1
  8. BiggLou55

    The new facility is fun and you have done a great job putting it together.

    I definitely echo others here being confused and doing a lot of spawn, shift-dub, shift-dub, fight, die, repeat. I'm not going to rehash everything that's been said, so here are few points.

    The Bad:
    • It was confusing as to which section you were in. possibly color code the walls in each section?
    • Minimap of the facility would be great, as well as some sort of online reference to the facility layout.
    • The shield controllers need more HP. They are VERY easy to take down.
    • The B and C points should have hard spawns linked to them inside the facility. This will help with keeping the fights going.
    • The catwalks at each bay entrance seem a bit out of place. they are catwalks to nowhere.
    • The aircraft spawn deck and defense turrets feel odd. They seem out of place and will most certainly be camped.
    • Unfished textures and glitched areas, but I'm sure you are on those.
    • The space outside of some of the facilities feel baron and not enough cover to approach.
    • The capture sound effect was VERY loud (too loud)
    The Good:
    • New fresh base
    • I love the new Sundy Towers
    • The destroyable door shields is a great addition, as well as the destroyable cover.
    • The vents are great (reminds me of bf2142)
    • No more storm!!! Yay!
    • Up x 1
  9. Doom721

    Blast doors and uppper SCU were too easily killable by a vehicle. I used a canister harasser and quickly destroyed them.
    Speaking of harassers, they can enter the underground part of the facility using turbo/daredevil to fly into the center spiral staircase. This allows the harasser to go all the way down to the Tempest Terminal location.
  10. JustGotSuspended

    Would like to see the top SCU protected by a shield generator. Experiment if you want to allow GSD flashes to go through the shield to overload the SCU, but having the destructible SCU out in the open leaves little motivation to even try repairing it, since it will be killed long before anyone can even spawn on the first floor anyways.

    Also I would like the kill-switch just turned into a light-switch, so it doesn't significantly impact the fight.

    Also not a fan of the self-rez implant rework.
  11. JadenDevon

    The new Containment Sites work really well as a standalone base to possibly do timed 1v1 outfit wars where one attacks and one defends, then it is switched. On servers that have lower populations, like Connery, I believe this type of base is too large and would hinder the progression of fights and creating a stalemate arena that you have been trying to remove from the game.
    • Up x 1
  12. [TMAT] Weemos

    I found the base to be too large for the population during certain times of the days. The electrical room mechanic makes the attackers have 4 points to defend, as the switch is easy to turn on and fry everyone in the A room. When I was in the playtest, I used vents, and found no enemies in a whole wing of the containment site, and was wondering where everyone is. I do like the mechanics of the botany room and the soft cover, but the botany room, has a high ceiling, and light assaults can just perch themselves up there and drop c4, on the on crashing attackers. As there is only one way in through the top SCU room then down the ramp, that is a nasty chokepoint, when its a big fight, as its the rampway then another set of stairs either way. I went to the containment site earlier in the day and kept getting lost, and I have playing for a long time. I know the arrows are supposed to help, but going underground made the game really laggy with that amount of players with the materials used for that size of the base and I was on super low settings.
  13. Larington

    A 3 way fight is not particularly the best circumstance under which to test this base, needs to be tested in 2-way situations - there were at least 96x96x96 population initially which doesn't tend to happen anymore.

    Vehicles treating the entry ring as a race course makes the first area roadkill central, there needs to be left/right/left/right alternating barriers within the initial circular space to prevent the area being used as a race track. Though I did get a few AV mine kills from this stuff, I'd rather be focused on pushing into the base and let the vehicles duke it out with each other.

    Citadel shields intersecting through the lower levels of the containment sites have severely disruptive effects on battle flow.

    The narrow vent tunnels are at risk of being abused by Decimator/rocket primary heavy assaults, but I don't know if that'll become common place at the moment, may be best to make them less long to discourage this.

    After the base was captured, one of the sets of guide lines along the floors did not update to reflect the base being captured. It was still red on a newly NC base.

    The base is too much of a maze for when you've spawned in the bowels of the base and just want to get out. This could be a problem for new players who haven't grasped the full advantages and methodology of redeploying yet.
  14. Humppaveikko

    Door locks need more hp, or high resistance to small arms
    Destructible plants could use at least a few bullets to destroy instead of one

    Hitting a door lock didn't show a hit marker
  15. Larington

    Further feedback based on today's play session:
    PLAYTEST 2
    A lot of the doors are too narrow, making area effect weapons a little too effective at those choke points.
    The notice that the siphon is being activated needs to advise people to get clear of the A point.
    The vents are easily blocked by deployables (EG AI turret).
    Might be worth having a variant version of the green spawn circle on the map spawn menu to indicate it's a deep underground spawn.

    Should put more effort into making the vents one way and the vents should exit downwards from the ceiling instead of exiting in the sides of walls to encourage people to move out of the vent lest they get a grenade thrown up there. Where the vent exits, there should not be long sight lines to reduce the ease with which they're watched by defenders. Also putting the vent exit above the defenders makes it harder to watch along its length with an AI mana turret or bolt action rifle. The vents should advantage the attacker, not the defender.

    Where there is a vent exit, there should be a vent hatch on the floor below, people will be watching the floor as they run a fair bit due to the new guide arrows and having those hatch covers very obvious in the terrain will help hint to players (Environmental story telling woo!) that there's a vent they need to watch nearby.
  16. Lausk

    NSOperative1337:

    The good:
    - Felt like I had plenty of space to move around
    - Fights seemed to take place in multiple areas so things didn't feel too bottlenecked
    - Areas of the base seemed unique enough that getting lost would be less likely.
    - Finding the fight didn't seem too hard most of the time
    - The aesthetic and sound effects were spot on and really immersed you
    - Lots of good cover and multiple elevations to play with
    - Good computer/network performance
    - Router placements in some of the rooms between vents seemed really cool

    Feedback:
    - Friendly Fire was a big problem as one would anticipate, lots of people side stepping into your line of fire
    - I got lost a couple of times where a path on the floor would lead me to a shielded doorway I couldn't go through.
    - I suspect suppression fields for explosives will be a must, but grenades were obviously strong. Lasher too as expected.
    - Had issues with floating proximity mines as NSO.
    - Seemed odd that you could place an engineer turret for people to use to climb into the vents. I don't know if that's intentional design.
    - Vents were really fun until everyone was clogged into them then things got a little crazy.
    - I feel like a map of the containment site should come up when you look at your map when inside.
    - The room with the shields and control consoles that could be blown up and repaired seemed cool but got a little crazy.

    Overall great design. Good job!
    • Up x 1
  17. Limarest

    Alright, so the Sunday playtest has just ended, my fresh thoughts:
    (During the playtest I played TR, so at first I defended on Andvari and then tried to attack Ymir.)
    I got the impression that the base is very easy to defend since attackers can't easily get into the base and stay there. Maybe on Live it will play differently because of more organized squads bringing routers and such. Even then this is one of those bases where you need 60%-70% pop to have a chance of success.
    The buildings around the base seemed useless (sundy garages were nice, I am talking about default double-triple stacks), there were no fighting in them. As an attacker I could only enter through the main enter since syphon was on all the time and I've tried to equip insulated suit to resist lighting but it didn't work.

    I also think that it's strange that there were no equipment terminals around enter zones or on a main level. Both attackers and defenders would benefit from them. As a defender I would appreciate a quick lift upwards from the spawn, so I wouldn't need to run after every death. Also, because panels in this building are darker than usual, it's harder to aim and see the enemy.
    Not to mention that anti-aliasing doesn't help, leaving a lot of ladder-like artefacts where a lot of detail is present.

    When attacking, Air is also a bit of a problem, because you place your sundy in a tower far away and then have to run all the way to the center enter, being farmed by vehicles. Maybe allowing construction there could help in some way

    Overall a nice base and it's interesting to try how the final version will play, good job guys
    • Up x 1
  18. SomeStupidSongBird

    The only specific feedback I have is that in the playtest, the storm siphon would be cycled on and off way too often. There is almost no point in making a push on A unless you have a significant overpopulation. I would like to see a way for the attackers to temporarily disable the device (maybe a generator) or for there to be something that restricts its activation and deactivation like longer timers.
  19. xXN0TXx

    Make maxes vehicles and make an instanced boarding bastion interior mini map hosted in a few minimal servers (cs like so to have huge frames in order for skilled players to be able to shine).make it so you have to use this maps to walk to combat stations, create round table rooms engines room, shields room(so combination of sabotage and outside battle can work together), etc.. Then make it possible to fly from one continent to the other using bastion.

    Also, reconing my feedback would help me professionaly.
  20. Rapicas

    I didn't really get to play it because the exterior plays way too badly. I think there is a real problem with the sundy placement (already mentioned by basically everybody). The problem is that the devs intended to get a progression with vehicles: destroy shields, enter the room, destroy SCU, then play infantry. But you won't play a vehicle every time which means that next time you die, you'll have to come back from the sunderer all the way back, if there is any. There needs to be a progression in the spawn potential as well because else your progression basically gets reset every time you die.

    Potential solutions could be add sundy placements inside the main facility, add a hackable spawn room somewhere, make spawn rooms available when controlling a point (like Sungrey Amp Station), give the top spawn room to attackers if they hack a terminal after destroying the SCU... Or even, put somewhere a terminal that gives you a free router?

    Map problems have already been mentioned. The map is awful, it was already true with a lot of bases (Ikanam being the worst), but you'll really lose the players for a long-time with this base because the layout is difficult to understand. The arrows are helpful, but can also be confusing. I'd say that you should improve the map, to only show the elements at the level you are (or add arrows, or opacity differences...) AND add somewhere a map of the whole facility for each level as a piece of decoration that could serve as reference.
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