According to the patch notes it was Jan 26th that Oshur dropped, and it certainly had a novelty rush for a while. Regardless of any analysis of what we were playing on, just the chance to play on something new and different was nice in a nearly decade old game. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. The novelty period is over, and I'd like to talk about what is and isn't working. What's working? -It genuinely feels different. Oshur genuinely handles differently than the other continents. It does feel a little bit like playing a different game because not everything that works on other continents is entirely transferable. -It's gorgeous to look at. Really, this is the best looking continent IMO. -Just in general having a 5th continent means the other 4 are open less often so players have less chance to get sick of them. What isn't working? -Base design: This is the big one. I was going to list "we have a bunch of fresh new bases" as a positive, but frankly that didn't outlive the novelty period because these bases are awful. Why? Replayability. If every fight at a base is the same fight every time players will get sick of it quickly. Each base should have multiple ways to win for both sides. This way the players have choice as to how to play and uncertainty as to how their opponents will play. The whole point of playing a PVP game is to have opponents who can surprise me, out play me, and generally give me an experience that ISN'T being up against a scripted bot. One of the most basic requirements for a base to have multiple ways to play it is for there to at least be different physical paths available to the player. If you look at the rest of Planetside, the best bases are the ones which are more clever than they might look on the surface. There are multiple options for players, and none are necessarily wrong. If one path isn't working, try another. If the center push is going nowhere, find a flank, etc. This is not the case on Oshur. There is one murder hallway to push down in most cases. Any routes that look like flanking routes run the player past the enemy spawn room or teleporter room, meaning that enemies naturally counter flank just by spawning. It comes down to an arm wrestling match of who brought more bodies and who brought more splash damage. I could work in a dig on the lead dev for being a Vanu main and designing the bases to favor the faction with the Lasher, but frankly most Vanu players aren't happy with this either, so lets not do that. -Macro scale battle flow: This ties in with the sales pitch that Oshur was going to come with a construction overhaul and be a construction focused continent. Well, construction has more problems than just that the built in logistics of existing bases are more efficient to use. The construction system itself is not user friendly, hence it is only used by people who are in love with the idea of construction. The construction system itself isn't winning anyone over, not even the people using it. This means that when a lane has 3 blank bases in a row and sees action, the faction being attacked just goes elsewhere because organizing a defense in that region is too much of a pain in the butt. This results in the dreaded "uncountered zerg". Yes, this happens elsewhere in the game, but it is particularly prevalent here. -Underwater combat: Why? This was one of the major selling features of Oshur: A new playable area, water!...but we didn't put any objectives underwater so there is no reason to go there. No, your 30 minutes of fetch questing campaign with some things under water that need me to press E on them doesn't count. Also, having some vehicles float and others not float was a terrible design choice. It's almost like that choice was made without consulting any vehicle main players. Every vehicle should go down to the sea floor, yes even the Magrider. Vehicle groups need vehicles of multiple types to play off each other to cooperate in this thing call "A combined arms game". Forcing the group to separate between surface and sea floor units hurts both. Further to that, if the Sunderers drove on the sea floor, they would then be able to deploy on the sea floor and we could have some under water bases to actually use those new under water guns you gave us. -Tridents: There's another problem with these. If I just joined the game, and it's telling me that I can support my team by bringing a spawn point, how do I do that? I haven't played the campaign yet so no lodestars, and even if I joined an outfit right away I probably don't have perms for anvils. How does average Joe bring a spawn point to a trident? So, how does it get fixed? -Many of the bases need a complete rebuild. You had some cool ideas. The space needles had potential, the interlinks had potential, the use of an outfit wars doughnut had potential, the cave facility base had potential. This potential needs to be brought out by redesigning these so that there are different paths available to both sides so that if one tactic isn't working then a valid alternative is available. -The map needs a shake up. There are more places where blank bases could be added, but more important than that is the staggering that needs to exist. Even without construction, the field fights can be fun, but due to how this game works they can never be too far away from a hard wired base. We need an even staggering of built and blank bases. Field fights are fun, but without control points between the bases things quickly become beaconside tactics with both sides skipping the field fight. Also, don't be afraid to give multiple control points to a blank base. Even if they're just in a line, let players feel a sense of progress as they gain ground. An example of a good location for this would be the double D-day beaches between Terran genetics and Viridian East Terrace. Put one control point on top of each berm and one on the bridge. Maybe even put the point UNDER the bridge so that we have a reason to briefly pull out our Aquaman guns. -I kind of already covered the water, but I'll recap: 1. Make all vehicles sink 2. Put objectives under water 3. Let us deploy spawn points under water. -How to make a "Logistic focused continent"? You need to fix construction. This deserves it's own thread...of which there are many already...one of them by me. I'm not typing it all out again. Link: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/long-read-rabid-fixes-construction.256679/ Not covered: Triggering alerts on Oshur. This is because that's its own set of problems not distinct to Oshur. Anyways, I want to like Oshur, I wish I did. Unfortunately it has a long way to go before I'm going to like it for anything other than novelty.
I like Oshur because when it's the only map, I can just logout and go do some IRL stuff. Otherwise I might get stuck playing PS2 for 4-6 hours straight.
The mysterious and mythical Oshur, will I ever see it again ? Every day I check, watching and waiting for my chance - will I get lucky today ? No. Three weeks now without seeing Oshur once Even with the continents going in reverse, even the occasional random jump. Always perfectly timed to my sleep period.
That is another unfortunate point, that it was released so late in the game's life cycle means that most servers only have one continent open at a time. They gave it a brief "always open" period, but in reaction to criticism it was a much shorter period than SW Esamir.
Bad continent, any ops just stop as soon as its oshur, most of the outfit log off. Before you had it on hossin, so 1/4 chance for a pretty dead server. Now its 2/5 with oshur in the mix. PS. what water combat? The whole idea of water combat is dead horse they will keep beating till there is no players left. Talk of adding more weapons and more water stuff to other continents... I suggest the dev's come play on a live server, they obviously have no idea whats going on in their game.
They certainly could do a better job of connecting with their player base. Hiring Mithril was meant to address that, however I'm picking up that he's not even being paid part time. If you look at his account, there are long gaps with no posts and bursts of posts that probably took a couple hours. If he's even getting paid for 20 hours a month I'd be surprised. On top of that it seems like his hands are very tied with regard to what he can say. He gives the occasional thank you to something positive being posted, and acknowledges bug reports sometimes. There's never any asking people to clarify their suggested ideas, or explanation of why it would be unworkable, or any of the other things which are normal on any other gaming forum. An example of what I mean by that would go to Crusader Kings 3. If anybody here plays that and is glad that they added the ”raise men at arms" button, you're welcome. Yours truly suggested that in their forum, they closed my suggestion thread with an acknowledgement and stating that my suggestion would be included in the next patch. That's the sort of thing you're meant to do with a forum.
Mithril is rather quick to lock non-constructive posts of which there are quite a lot of these days. I don't really see what more you'd expect? A community clown that produces several posts per day and engages in every discussion? I'm also of the impression that the devs do actually read the forums as they say they do. Some of the suggestions we've come up with in earlier threads have made it in patches, like these which I made years ago that are now on PTS: Of course there are many suggestions that may not be deemed to be positive for the game. It is better then that they independently evaluate each suggestion, treating the forum as a source of inspiration rather than orders. Best take stuff read online with a grain of salt as the saying goes.
What do I expect? Look at some other gaming forums. If you look at Paradox's forums they're much more active. If players have questions which answers already exist they don't tend to touch it because they know one of the players will answer the question. They have that luxury because they have cultivated their forum for years to a point where many use it. They also enjoy a higher standard of manners out of their users because those users know that someone who talks to the devs might actually read their post so they'd better present it well. This, in contrast to much of what goes on here where many have felt for years that they are screaming into the void to no avail, so no point in putting in the effort to clean or filter oneself.
Swimming has to happen on Oshur for the sake of it making it worth crossing under water instead of walking super ultra slow on the floor bottom.
There is a disconnect between how the Devs think the game should be played, and how the playerbase wants to play the game. The Devs tried to force their vision of the game on the playerbase, which is impossible. The playerbase will play the way they want to play always. If pushed too far to do things they don't enjoy they will simply quit. It's how most games die. This is what we see with Oshur. The way the playerbase wants to play clashes with the way Oshur was designed. Instead of adapting their playstyle, the playerbase either stops playing Oshur, or they continue to play the way they want and the map isn't fun. Now the playerbase will begrudgingly shift their playstyle a small amount towards the maps design, but it will not be enjoyable for them. When the devs see this they think "Oh! They are playing 10% more like how we want them to play", this map was a success! So even though the map wasn't a success, and the playerbase says it isn't a success, it's extremely easy for disconnected devs to truly believe that the map was a success. It's much more difficult for a dev team to admit a failure and pivot to new design choices.
