idk if this comes up often, but why are the bases so cramped given the scope of this game? Most people i talk to really enjoy the fights that happen between bases, on continents with an appropriate amount of cover via trees and rocks. And yet we have this *** backwards base design of really compact compounds surrounded by no man's land. Even in the bases where the points are spread out, they are often separated by a no man's land.. The devs seem really in love with the idea of lanes and easilly controlled battleflow, but most players seem to enjoy sprawling fights more, where you can choose if you want to take a flanking or frontline role, a qcq role or a long range role, and where the goddamn A2G ESFs and HE lightnings aren't served up highly concentrated clumps of infantry on a silver platter. I am so goddamn sick of level design suitable for like 6v6 fights in this game, it is absolutely baffling.
It was worse before. Before we had the lanes and the limitation to being able to conquer only bases our empires had access to, everyone could take a vehicle, sneak through enemy lines and destroy generators and SCUs, cap bases behind the enemy's back, sometimes multiple bases at once without anyone noticing until a squad was looking what the hell was going on. But once you conquered bases, allies could spawn there and spread out into further territory behind the enemy zerg and retake stuff without facing this zerg. Now zergs rush up and down the lanes in a more controlled manner. And since we don't have any trenches to provide cover for infantry, open fields are tank vs tank territory.
I've voted for trenches, rock bridges, corn fields, wheat fields, more boulders, taller grass, ect. Ye the areas that have points on open fields, usually don't have enough cover for infantry.
Oh we don't need trenches. some of the areas in amerish, hossin or even indar with sufficient vegetation/rocks/ changes in elevation are good infantry shelters that tanks should be wary of entering. It's just that this sort of terrain is seldom seen anywhere near capture points when those are outside a base. and even where the terrain IS good for infantry cover, it is often useless to have infantry there regardless, since base fights are mostly sundy/ router right next to the base you're capping or bust. Speaking of bases that were good for combined arms gameplay, the earliest addition of containment sites with a big sprawl of buildings etc were fun to fight in! with a big sprawl of buildings and other things, and a good assortment of possible sunderer locations. But they had to go and replace those with what they've become now, idk if anyone actually like the containment sites, they're terrible, I avoid esamir because of them. Atleast the biolabs were possible to navigate without a doctorate in remembering one base's layout, even though i don't like biolabs.
Are you joking? You think infantry players like these bases with large swathes of open ground with (in many cases) zero cover from any direction, only to be funneled into a medium size L or 2 stack building? Oh, but vehicle mains don't count those open spaces where they could be, because anything that isn't a hill 300m away isn't safe, and we can't have vehicle players not feeling safe.
Because you would hate big open bases with lots and lots of paths and options that would take many players to be able to successfully defend or attack. Think about it this way: Say you have a base that is very open on the inside, lots of room, some cover here and there. Well, then you create a no man's land because the attackers can't approach. You would then be forced to either airdrop players in or flank around the other side of the base with vehicles, leading to more bad gameplay. Say the base has tons of routes to take. Well, you can't defend them all without a ton of players, making it easier for players to get past you. And if the base is too big, its a hassle to traverse, meaning you need a good support of medics, constantly reviving people and camping positions that you need to hold to advance. Therefore, you have choke points as we do now, not too many, not too few. You have to rely on Light Assaults to make an opening via flanking, Infiltrators to give you recon down those choke points so the LAs can be effective, Medics to hold the line and keep them supported, Heavies to take the brunt of the attack, and Engineers to hold the rear and give defenses. Is there room for improvement? Sure, as with every aspect of the game, but we have to make do with what we have and try more unconventional paths and tactics. Very hard to redesign a whole continent's base flow and general battle flow, but this post is a good warning for Oshur.
The problem is that there are 3 arms, but they are anything but combined. True combined arms is for example a scout helicopter guiding friendly infantry or tanks to a target. An infantryman guiding in artillery or airstrikes. Vehicles relying on infantry to keep away anti-tank weapons in enclosed spaces or infantry relying on vehicles to quickly move to their destination and lending fire support. While that is present in small amounts in PS2, mostly the game is designed to prevent interaction between arms. Walls around almost every base try to reduce interaction between vehicles and infantry and aircraft are basically solo-vehicles capabke of wrecking ground without input from ground and aircraft arent even allowed to be properly countered by the ground unless they attack with several dedicated weapons. Those fights out in the open are most often one team running and defeating the other. An equal field battle with infantry is rare, with only a few spots on the map where they truly happen. Between Crossroads and Xenotech it happens for example, but only the team that holds the green hill (not the mountain) will use infantry. This for some of the reasons we dont have combined arms: vehicles are immensely powerful against infantry and only when they have the high ground do they stand a chance. If you want better base design you need better combined arms design first. Infantry, tanks and infantry need to be closer in terms of power and need more ways to coordinate and cooperate with one another. "Power" can be equalized more by offering defensive mechanics rather than buffing one unit too much. Ways to avoid detection, to reduce accuracy or deflect damage. Coordination and cooperation needs to be independent of squad/platoon/outfit status, it should not matter if the guy you coordinate with is in your squad or not. At best it should smoothen the cooperation, not be a requirement. You could easily expand the Q-spot radial menu system we have for friendlies to place more contextual messages on spotted enemies and do the same by holding the V button to place information on the ground for example.
Oh, now that you mention talk about combined arms, you remind me of my days in Battlefield 3 on PS3, where they had a SOFLAM laser designation tool for the recon class, which would be the equivalent class to our infiltrators. In short, the SOFLAM gets deployed to a suitable area, the player can control it remotely (yet if the deployed SOFLAM gets destroyed, the remote will be useless and you'll have to get another SOFLAM + remote from the terminal, what might happen since the laser can be spotted, even more so at night) and it locks on to an enemy tank or aircraft and every HA with a guided missile launcher for that type of vehicle or aircraft within range gets notified of a possible lock and can immediately fire at said lock. So one infiltrator locks on, a dozen HAs could fire at once without locking on all by themselves. The infiltrator gets some points for the lock, the HA dealing the killing blow gets the kill(s) the others get points for assistance. This tool might be a nice addition to help ground forces to fight aircrafts better. And of course, it opens further doors towards teamplay, may even be a new directive in Recon or Support. If one sees the constant threads made to counter A2G attacks, a tool to speed things up for infantry might be a possible addition. Edit: It could even mean that the SOFLAM could lock on to aircrafts or tanks FOR aircrafts or tanks to lock on at once, combining infantry, airforce and tanks (if only tanks had systems for guided missiles that is...)
ok. So to answer the original posters question, its because, like most modern fps shooters, the developers of planetside are aping the faster paced combat systems of more successful shooters like COD and Fortnight to pursue an audience that has no interest in their game. This has been an issue in most modern games of late with each developer alienating their target audience in the vain pursuit of a larger player base that doesn't exist. We see it with the reworks of TI alloys, the crown, scarred mesa skydock, and other "fortress" style bases that relied on sieges and large scale battles to take in the past. We also see it with the repeated nerfing of everything that relies on armor or survivability to be effective such as MAX suit damage resistance and buffs to everything that does high DPS or movement such as LA's or in the case of MAX suits, weapon systems or the ZOE system for VS. These things, combined with the implant system, are put in place to try and encourage faster paced combat and the "Flow of Battle" that the devs prattle on about in their livestreams while dumping on the combined arms tactics that their original fanbase prefers. Ever wonder why harassers never got a health nerf despite almost completely replacing MBTs? ever wonder why LAs got the rocklet rifle to make them even more broken instead of the C-4 removal that the players have begged for over years? You wont see good open bases anymore because they don't fit the intended gameplay design the developers want. The grand vision of the devs is a "glorious" future of LA suicide bombers, and HAs with SMGs and hip-fire equivalents of other weapons slamming into each other in a huge meatgrinder with no tactical consideration whatsoever, were every engagement that lasts longer than .7 seconds its considered unacceptable, and the only people that are allowed to change the flow of battle are suicide bombers throwing themselves at sunderers and clumps of infantry. So to the OPs point. Yes, the devs do love their CQC bases, and they shouldn't. We SHOULD have large open bases and defensible areas that encourage defensive and combined arms gameplay. We should also see buffs to tank units such as MAXs and MBTs such as the prowler and vanguard (Restore MAX dmg resistances and restore original lockdown systems for prowler and muzzle velocity to vanguard), and nerfs to units that encourage bad tactics such as ambusher jumpjet LAs and movement speed builds that exploit planetside 2s poor hit detection system. But that wont happen. All that will happen is another round of poorly thought out nerfs, another round of crappy base reworks, another round of crappy CQC focused weapons or another gimmick gadget for a class that doesnt need it (betting it will be C-4 on infiltrators or something dumb like that), and an army of naysayers that will no dought be frothing at the mouth to defend their broken playstyle to the last, it will not change.
The problem is, that at some point the devs have decided, that each base should be like a small map from COD or BF. Ok, the probably have not decided them to be like that but many of their design choices really make it seem like that. It is a year old problem. Two examples: Once tanks could shell bases from far away farming infantry with ease. The solution: Build huge walls around every base, so the tanks can't farm anymore (but infantry also cannot strike back). Once every base had a SCU that disabled the spawnpoint. People complained that they had to wait to much before capturing a base they already completly controlled. The solution: Remove the SCUs, now horribly outnumbered defenders can try to attack the enemies in their own base...
