First of all, Wrel, thank you for getting rid of the storm and your team smashed it with containment sites. The update wasn't as exciting as I would like with massive quantities of new things to tweak with my character. In spite of that, I'll take the audio fix, god rays, new base and better adjustments on battle flow on Esamir any day of the week. Even the crouch exploit was fixed, bravo! In closing, I have to agree with you, the NSO Faction is your goldmine and if you do them right with weapons and vehicles, they can be a contender rather than a skin. You folks really don't have to look far, the original Planetside has rich ideas and as you gravitate more concepts from the first and get it to blend with this, who knows, we can only hope Planetside 3 will emerge. I never thought there would even be a #2 since the original and it did happen. Thank you for your efforts.
I kinda wish they reverted the other bad bases, but I must admit the update overall went better than expected, and the wrel letter looks promising if they actually carry it out. well done devs
The Containment Site Bases are a game ruiner in my humble opinion. After the removing of Biolabs the battleflow was much more agile. Now, this new base type creates a even more farmlike basestyle that ppl get caught in and never come out before the alert ends. As we have seen yesterday on Esamir..NC and VS get caught inside there F O R E V E R. Even as we had an organised Platoon we werent able to hold our Frontline because TR was able to throw everthing to both factions and with over the half of NC and VS caught in that Trap there was no chance to stop them. Just like it is with the biolabs. But! I surely like the style, the idea behind it. But there must be put in an option to either: - make another link so the containment can be cut off easier just as the biolabs - move two points in the Containmentsite to the upper floor so its easier to capture the base with long capture time (like 10 mins with 2 points, 6 mins with 3 points) - or even make it only a 1 point base If u dont want to loose the doors downstair that need to be destroyed before moving in: - put them somewhere upstrair in front of upper level points i.e. Any other changes i like really alot. The teleporters on Echo Valley i.e. was hardly missed for a long time now. And the new bases near the shattered Warpgate as well....even tho i think making them all Blue Ressources is a mistake. One would be enough. So..overall..plsplspls change that mantraps again..it just ruins the gameflow..with al those directive farmers stay in there.. ...F O R E V E R... thx P.S: What the Hell have u done to Phylacterium Implant..it wasnt OP..it was just useful...and now its useless.. -.-
Your gameplay "flow" boils down to "bases need to be easily capturable". Why bother defending at all then? Why design an MMOFPS if you want bases to discourage fights? I get that you want that strategy element where you have to see where to attack and what bases to take over to cut off enemies etc, but doing so in a way that discourages the actual FPS elements is not good. That is why you should actually be applauding the Containment center: it creates multiple different objectives to strive for within the base while not discouraging defenders from showing up. Adding time-limits to the defenders by relocating the points is a bad idea. A better idea is to equalize it: both attackers and defenders have a soft time limit to either attack or defend, but you can extent that time limit indefinitely... assuming your opponents do not manage to stop that. You still get your movement, but it's not a guaranteed "F you defenders the time limit expired because we captured easy points". To apply this to the containment facility: the attackers have a limited time-frame between breaching the shields and capturing a subsequent point before the shields go up again and defenders can easily sweep through the facility. Defenders need to unload the reactors of the containment facilities every now and then or they overload and cause painfields to appear at inconvenient places for the defender. Just as an example.
Nope..my piont is not that bases need to be easy capturable. U can design a base that is not easy to capture, but still isnt a trap like biolabs and containmentbases. And PS2 is much more then just a FPS game..its warfare-gameplay. And creating trap-bases that captures infantrie for hours isnt a good way to keep the flow. I mean, look at the esamit fights without the biolabs. It works rly well. And with those bases now added in the north so there are more then 2 links to fight northeast of the techplant makes it even better. But to put in trap-bases is imo a bad idea. Thats all
Yes you can design bases so they aren't a "trap", I just gave you an example for one. However you keep focussing on making sure bases are captured by limiting the defenders and no one else. The bases you call a trap are basically the only bases that consistently provide the MMOFPS that PS2 is supposed to be. Everywhere else the fights can be too easily ruined by zergs, spam and Gal drops that the defenders simply cannot anticipate for or reasonably defend against. If you want players to leave these "traps" and play inside your so-called "flow" then you have to provide the gameplay people want. That means that fights need to be continuous even if you win or lose a base and fights should not be endable by spawncamping or by having players wait around for the attackers to get their stuff together enough to start attacking the next base. If you look for fights that are quickly over then yes, Esamir works really well. If you want actual fights and not a game of "who can steamroll the most bases at a time" then Esamir is a bad continent to be. If you want flow, try and create flow. Not forced defeats just to make sure bases are changed hands. Players in "trap" bases are there because it provides the experience they want and your flow does not. Add that experience without degrading defenders and you will get people out of those superior-than-the-supposed-meta bases (which you call trap bases).
I'll see in the coming weeks how the flow goes. So far I've seen the fights in them drag out when equal forces are committed and end quickly when it's asymmetrical. That's generally what we want. To say it's messed up the flow of Esamir I think is incorrect though. Esamir's flow was atrocious since the shattered warpgate. Lattice broken. Good flowing bases stripped out. Defensive favored quagmires added in.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but if I recall the reasons for the removal of biolabs and other "fun" bases was that they were too hard to cap and would result in prolonged stalemates. There are a few issues with the base that others and I noticed today when fighting there. I fought there on Connery and Emerald, on all the containment sites, and the same issues were pointed out by me and others in these fights. Allow me to share a few. There's still an issue with spawns. The shield tower is a bit weird, and is positioned too far from the entrance to the base, with no cover for infantry to advance. This results in people having to jog and get mowed down by snipers, vehicles, a2g, etc that is defending the base. Not the most fun experience. Yes you can get buses closer to the base, in which case they are vulnerable to fire as there is little to no cover for attackers, and it kinda kills the whole point of having that fortified tower anyways. The layout of the base is quite confusing. While at first it may seem huge, the base is actually a cluster of extremely tight corridors, staircases and air vent death traps jumbled in. I'm guessing we will eventually get used to the base, so I'll spare the fact that everyone was basically running around in circles unable to understand where they are. Perhaps a 3D minimap would help, if that's even possible. Didn't find that the arrows on the ground really helped, in half the bases they weren't even appearing. What I would like to address however is that the base has very few entrances, and they are all very tight corridor staircases. Great if you want to aurax your UGL, but for people complaining about biolabs or nasons being sweaty...lol this is 10000% worse. As expected the vents are a joke as well. The great thing about the vents is they actually lead somewhere "important"; they actually lead you to a fight, which is great considering how lost and confused everyone is. The downside is that you only need one guy on the other side to singlehandedly fend off an entire platoon trying to use the vents to navigate. A few nade, an incendiary thumper, a mana turret, etc....As expected there's not much people with a movement penalty in a vent that basically frames their heads to be shot can do, even with catlike equipped. The vent massacres were something I expected but it's still shocking to see the extent on live. The A reset terminal is pretty stupid, but that was a given. The fact that the points are scattered everywhere means securing/attacking the base amounts to basically running around in circles through tight choke points and cramped hangers with tons of weird cover until an infil bolts you and resets your marathon. It's a nightmare for both attackers and defenders, it's just that when the defenders eventually resecure the points (which they don't even have to put effort in for A), the attackers are left with no spawns as they have likely de-spawned or simply been destroyed. Even if they have a spawn up there they need to cover quite a distance to even reach the entrance, which by then the defenders have already plugged. Overall the base wasn't very fun. Quite frustrating to fight in, tbh. It's a base that I feel merged the worst aspects of the game into one, and even in look and feel it's clear it's an outlier that doesn't fit into the game. I'm sure they'll fix the textures, lightning and audio bugs, but it's still going to take a lot of work to make these bases fun to fight at. I still don't get why they had to re-invent the wheel when biolabs were way better and most of the playerbase clearly enjoyed them in the first place. Also these containment facilities suck at 3 way fights since there is only one entry into them. It's intended to be a 1v1 facility, and the few times I encountered a 3 way there once faction was killed off really early in the fight, or both would park on opposite sides of the base and then get farmed attempting to march to the hangar and never progressed in the base. Also funny to note that most bios on a continent have slight variations in décor or even capture points. Didn't see this in the new containment facilities, they all seem to be carbon copies of each other. I mean they could've changed the artifacts, maybe added a vehicle capture point in the hanger for one, etc. Idk it's the little things that I notice but I feel make a difference. Glad to see they used more of esamir though, I wanted to fight in the ruins and will comment about them when I join a fight there. As for the containment sites, I'll give them a few more tries but I'll likely ignore them, as I expect most the playerbase to do so in the long run. There's nothing wrong in giving attackers a challenge, but it doesn't have to be cancerous. The base looks cool. It could be a in a movie if they polished the bugs, and I'm sure it looks very photogenic and cool for twitter. Doesn't feel very fun to fight in though. Not gonna complain too much because overall it was a better update than the last ones, and there were less impactful bugs I noticed. Also I guess a bad base is better than no base anyways lol
How many times does it have to be said that the fact that it is a stalemate is what makes it fun? The fact that you actually have a continuous battle, rather than the intermittend crapshow that capturing bases is? With such bases you can alleviate the problems of attacks that you cannot predict and prepare for, like Gal drops and Zergs. This is and remains the flaw and why the current capture-the-continent mechanics will be far worse than any stalemate battle. That is until they finally fix the battle flow and move away from "defenders need to be screwed just to get some movement going" techniques. For once the defenders get the option to use vehicles in their defense and attackers are required to have vehicles in support, but somehow this is a problem? I would say that the developers are finally testing out new methods to ensure that vehicle battles take place. Why are you even making a problem out of this? People have complained about Biolabs and other persistent battles because they are infantry grinders (ignoring that for example The Crown and TI Alloys were pretty vehicle heavy). So having some more vehicle combat in a persistent battle should be celebrated right? They should have a mixture of more open combat and tight combat. Although that open combat is provided when you move from the Sunderer right? They should change that, but I'm glad they are trying stuff out. Compare it to the same base setups or the "come on in we can't defend anyways" bases we've seen before this it's a breath of fresh air, although perhaps a cold breath of fresh air. The idea behind the reset terminal is awesome and something I've proposed many times before: Objectives that can be completed without having to capture the point. Could they modify it? Sure! but to just go "nah it's stupid" isn't a good way to handle this feature. Also why do you think it's a problem that defenders can actually defend themselves? I understand some players prefer cookie-cutter bases that hand you a victory for showing up and then call that battle flow or something similar. Those kind of fights are there to kill the game, I prefer a hard-fought battle where the MMOFPS part of the game actually shines through. Does that mean the containment center is perfect? Ofcourse not! But it's a step in the right direction. Multiple objectives, different methods to secure or destroy it, objectives for both attackers and defenders, a higher importance of vehicles etc. They should do something to let vehicles remain important while infantry work their way inside. For example let vehicles drive into parts of the facility to destroy more stuff and reduce defender capabilities, but they would require infantry cover to really do anything. Building these things probably took a lot of effort. I suspect they might put more effort into adding variations to containment facilities later on, assuming they have tweaked them enough that enough people play at them. It wouldn't be worth it if 90% of the playerbase dislikes containment facilities and they spend their time making them different from one another. First get the basics to be enjoyable and playable, then look for variation. Since you and others keep complaining about the large amount of players attracted to persistent fights on a continent, why exactly do you think most players will avoid them? Give suggestions! What would you want to change in the base to improve it? What does the reset button need to do instead of what it does now? How would you make the inside easier to navigate? What do you want for your Sunderer Towers to make them useful in your eyes? Would it just be scattered cover towards the facility so you can approach it more easily? You won't get anywhere with just saying "It's stupid" and explaining what you think it stupid if you don't give any suggestions to improve it otherwise.
Here we are on the same page. Stalemates indicate the base is fair and fun to fight at, and shouldn't be considered a problem. In fact, the elements of that base that make it so successful with the majority of the playerbase should be integrated into the rest of the bases that aren't fought at as much. That's why I was dumbfounded when they removed bios and TI under that pretext. I guess you misunderstood me, but I was just pointing out they removed bios saying they were too stale, then added these bases which are even more stale. It's nice that devs are testing new ways to integrate combined arms. The problem is they're starting be making bases that favor combined arms in a utopic scenario, but the interactions between infantry and vehicles aren't fun in the first place!!! To be clear, I do not make problems. I can simply point them out. And lol who do you think is complaining the biolab infantry grinders? Vehicle mains perhaps? A2G users that can't BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT a stream of infantry that's trapped in a bio? Yeah lol, my guy if people really wanted combine arms fights, they'd create some themselves (that was kinda the point of these empty construction bases anyways right)? I'm pretty sure if the infantry players are fighting in a bio for hours that's because it's the gameplay they want. If they wanted vehicle fights they'd use vehicles. And this base doesn't offer anything new. If anything amps are better for the combined arms for defenders and attackers. They should have normal combat. A room with some tall pillars or boxes scattered every so often, similar to a regular point room/building. There's no need to carry out such extremes. I guess large open tunnels would be better than the tight ones, so sure, try that if you want. But I'm sure there's more reasonable alternatives. Yeah open "combat". Running a marathon out in the open with 0 cover to charge multilayer fortified enemy positions that house turrets, snipers, kobalts, a2g, etc is perhaps what you consider open combat. I prefer when both sides are able to shoot, but whatever. Anyways it's clearly not fun for attackers, so again, maybe another reasonable alternative could be looked into. yes, glad they are trying stuff out....on pts. And not acting on feedback. In any case, whatever, we're on the same page here again regarding the vents. That said, considering nearly all bases favor defenders in PS2, I'm not quite sure what you're tryna get at with the latter sentence. Overloading generators, killing dudes, breaking doors, hacking shield terminals, etc. That's cool. A button that locks a point room killing anything inside and resets it to defender's favor isn't. It's stupid. There's no other way to put it. I have no issue with defenders being able to defend themselves, although I feel if most bases didn't favor defenders so heavily there would be as much need for zergs and such to move down a lattice. The issue I have is with defenders not having to do anything to defend themselves, as the base does the work for them. It's a significant advantage, especially considering it strips a spawn from attackers instantly. ??????? not sure what bases you're fighting at and why you've got such a rage boner for attackers. I usually defend against zergs, and I can admit a solid portion of bases heavily favor defenders and force attackers to zerg. That said it's still possible to have fun, even fair fights against overpopped attackers. But this base wasn't fun. For neither attackers nor defenders. In none of the fights I had there. On none of the servers. General consensus in /yell agreed. Doubt they'll ever differentiate them. I'm positive they won't touch containment sites even if all the playerbase don't want them. It's been clarified many times our opinion is not valued. If they get the general consensus that agrees with them, good. If they don't, good, as they have the final say anyways. I'm more annoyed they wasted a lot of time ruining a good map, when it had clearly worked much better before. It didn't need a change in any case. Minor tweaks would've been nice. But nothing validated this revamp. They broke something that worked and now it's going to remain broken for a long time. As I said, just because it's a stalemate doesn't mean you can't be having fun. Except in these bases it seems. I expect the playerbase will have stalemates at rime or saerro instead of the containment sites, because containment sites aren't fun to fight in. I've given multiple suggestions in other threads. Best one would be to just revert to old esamir. First thing would be to add more entrances, perhaps some near the towers. Jump pads to the base from the tower could be tested as well. Remove the clutter from inside, uniform the lightning and widen the corridors, add only standard cover. For the button I suggested it could be removed entirely or simply turn off the lights in A. Ofc there's more to think of, but, at the end of the day, whether I say it's stupid or give intricate suggestions, nothing will improve. They don't listen to the community, remember?
What’s funny is they did away with the Esamir storm and I want more fights at the containment sites but don’t get them enough. From what runs I had in the last few days, I had a blast. Often confused, lost, trying to figure out what seemed like a maze. It just gave a new dimension to fights without so much vehicle interruption. I love it.
Containment sites are terrible. Wrel needs to have his desire to centrally plan everything balanced by an experienced game designer. Containment sites are just traps for the use of VS lashers. Go figure. They are the new choke point. *hint* if your map layout requires red arrow trail on the floor to guide players... IT'S A BAD DESIGN... And the storm was a terrible idea from inception--another "central planner" design idea that removed agency from players in favor of a single developer. So implementing bad central planner designs only to "fix" them a year later...is a slow path of failure. Honestly, RPG needs an outside decision maker on game design that focus on the player not on a single developer's need to control everything.
The first campaign chapter was really promising. Fights in the open landscape around the shattered warpgate were the most fun fights I've had in a long time. Further amplified by bastions and outfit orbitals not being able to fire into the area. The absence of controlpoints and chokepoints lead to much more enjoyable and natural combat flow. Containment sites are the opposite of that. I've been memeing the last months why they removed biolabs just to add them in again. It's actually worse. When in a biolab it's not difficult to leave a satellite spawn, but there is a good chance you will just get shredded when trying to move around the next corner, these bases consist of only those corners. Having to face endless lasher spam on one side of the lattice and recently buffed instagib maxes on the other, these bases were the least fun I had since the escalation update where every 3 minute fight had more orbitals than TI Alloys at primetime and probably a bastion farming people inside the spawnroom over it.
I always felt that "bases" in PS2 were designed on purpose to be easy to attack. Any defender with a grain of salt would build a base on an elevated hill/plateau/mountain to be protected from above and with a single entry point easy to man and protect and a perimeter fence/wall/whatever around. Nobody would build a base with control points closer to attackers than defenders, without a perimeter, exposed from all sides (and above) and with convenient and protected Sunderer parking places for the attackers. If you think to Biolabs those were the only structures really resembling a base: closed perimeter, two entry points easy to protect and "secret passages" /spawns easy to identify. So Biolabs created stalemates and the YouTube game designer first introduce side-lattices to bypass Biolabs and when he realized that people still had fun in Biolabs removed them completely (on Esamir).
Why couldn't Wrel have made Hossin his little playground for all his terrible ideas. It isn't even finished yet, while Esamir was the second best continent behind Indar... now its even worse than Hossin because of 1 base type.
agreed! Hossin should have been his torture victom, most people don't like hossin anyway. Esamir was my favourite map but then he nuked my favourite part (the glorious Mani Triangle), then he removed a third of the bases, and then as the corpse was writhing on the floor he redesigned most of the other bases to be utterly terrible. making many bases impossible to defend and others almost impossible to cap, removing walls so tanks can roll in, moving spawnrooms to ridiculously easily camped places etc etc. and then came Containment sites... they look pretty so i'll say bravo to the art guys, but from a gameplay perspective they are overly complicated roadblocks with extremely long corpse runs. unless you have a huge zerg it is end of the line when you come to a containment site, time to switch lattice lane... biolabs were so much better. and now i actually prefer Hossin to 'Less-amir'.
