[Suggestion] Operation: Time Machine!

hey gang, its no secret that a majority of players aren't too pleased with what has happened to the game in recent years, and so i was thinking, much like in the early days when SoE dropped everything and focused all effort on "Operation: Make Faster Game" we need...

OPERATION: TIME MACHINE!

Operation Time Machine would be a large project to undertake the task of undoing or reverting

changes which most would consider negatively impactful to the game.

SHORT TERM CHANGES:

these are changes that should be possible with minimal effort.

Spawn System:

The current spawn system has brought the gameplay loop to a crawl,

sometimes you will find yourself staring at the map for 10 seconds before being allowed to spawn

at the hex you're in...this does not make for good gameplay,

and so the Spawn System would revert to the previous iteration which allowed for instant rez

in the current hex and further hexes would unlock become available over time.

Oshur:

possibly the easiest change!

Oshur will either be removed from rotation or always trigger an immediate lockdown alert.

there isn't much more to write here, when Oshur unlocks the majority of players log off,

You tried making a map, you failed, its time to mitigate the damage of your mistake,

so either oshur will be removed entirely or it will only interrupt the game for 1.5 hour periods.

LONG TERM CHANGES:

these are the changes that (depending on the existence of back ups) could take longer to complete.

Esamir: Rebirth!

Esamir will return from the dead!

current Esamir is a mess, the containment sites make for dreadfully long rez runs and dull gameplay,

there are far too many 3 point bases, CTF bases, containment spaces across the center of the map

that you can sometimes feel like you have nowhere to push without a zerg...

And so Esamir would be reverted to pre-shattering state!

all removed bases would also return, along with the Biolabs.

Capture the GONEduit:

CTF bases would be reverted back to point-hold bases.

Its bad, there is no sugar coating an unfortunate truth, converting bases to CTF was a monumental mistake

and has seen some of the most popular bases become empty graveyards, avoided by all.

all CTF bases will be reverted back to point-hold bases,

the CTF mechanic could potentially be used in a future update for side objectives

(such as overloading SCUs and shield generators.)

i feel that this should be top priority for DBG, the game is a leaking bucket right now,
with "a certain persons" mistakes still bleeding players by the hundreds each month,
now that "that person" is gone fixing their mistakes cannot be delayed.
when the mistakes of the past are fixed we can then talk about server merging!

I agree. As for Esamir, a good start would be to remove the CTF bases, especially the ones surrounding the Containment site, and the Traverse and Matterson's Triumph.

I do, however, very much disagree with the spawn system. It's one of, if not the only mechanic to prevent huge zergs from forming. Surely I'm not the only one who remembers the large increase in 80/20 fights when they disabled the system for some months... Sure, we do still see 70/30 fights relatively often, but in most cases this is due to multiple squads on one side responding to a cap - not an organically forming zerg

I agree the most with the paragraph about Oshur. I don't know which server you're on, but it's exactly like that on Cobalt; half the server pop just quits as soon as Oshur unlocks.

Cobalt is my main server, and yep EVERY NIGHT primetime gets murdered by Oshur,
i've found on other servers it can be less of a problem, like emerald has the pop to have another map open,
so they can just ignore it, but as you will know we Cobalters don't have that luxury,
every night primetime will just be Less-a-mir > Hossin > Oshur log off.
sometimes it'll happen as early as 7PM and just kill the entire night.

and the most frustrating part is that of my list, Oshur is both the thing that needs to go most
and also the thing that would be easiest to remove,
a few lines of code could either remove it from rotation or have a lockdown trigger instantly.
the devs are just LETTING IT kill primetime and make people quit.

Liewec123 is also more known as HAMM3RT1ME on Cobald

and 7 others on Cobalt
and since Oshur has been murdering primetime i've also got 2 alts on Miller, and 2 alts on Emerald

Veteran perspective is good, but not what this game needs.

New players are what feed a game like this, so new player feedback should be weighed more heavily.

Good input though.

thanks!
but wouldn't all of these changes be better for new players too?
staring at a 15 second despawn screen isn't fun for anyone, the game felt fast paced and alive years ago when rez was instant in your current hex and you could spawn at any available spawns on the map if you waited (the further they were the longer you waited)

likewise new players aren't gonna stick around if their first experience is capturing a CTF base and there is noone there until the last few flags and then enemies just come along and undo the last boring 5 minutes of running around with a flag by resetting the base to 12/12 flags and then all leaving again, CTF is dreadful for everyone.

and new players wouldn't know how much better esamir was than wrel's "less-a-mir" so they'd just consider it to be a great update when it comes along and they have all of these "new" (old) bases like one of my old favourite bases East River Sky Station

and Oshur not murdering primetime by decapitating the population every night is a no-brainer, good for everyone, new and old.

my endgame would be reverting all of the mistakes of the past few years to remove the big things that make people leave,
and then i'd like to see the map limit raised up to 1500 as it was in earlier days. [it was 1950 at release, 650 player faction limit!]
and the 2 EU servers merged into one, and the two US servers merged into one.

i agree with the oshur remarks ( esp since the 2nd ladder rearange patch)
the largest factor stopping most i know from playing is the complete lack of comms (they either dont work, or your in discord)
all the CTF bases have been hated since launch
the arsenal update brought a lot of old players back, then the complete nerfing of everything after made 1/3+ of the returning leave

why do we have so many servers that hardly, if ever open up to 2+ maps? why? consolidate

and as much as the previous dev lead wanted to bottle neck everyone into a 90/90+ fight.... there is very little wiggle room for strategy now, can we get some lattuce links opened up again?

while many love the zerg v zerg fights, they are often too chaotic for new players, so having alternatives are nice for the small groups/ solo's even during primetime

Both can be good fixes (veteran and new player input), but new player input should be prioritized in a game that is losing population and subscriptions.

If CTF, Oshur and Esamir were reverted I'd by a lifetime sub and play every day.

TS, thats obvious for you, obvious for me, or for plenty of other PlanetSide 2 vets.
Such changes should not take much time... if devs have any backups of previous game builds and could use copy/paste commands in the map editor.
But, I dont know if anyone still doing anything PlanetSide-related at RPG except server maintenance.
Even community manager, Mithrill, have pretty much low activity, only on official forums.
I dont know what these guys (if there is still any except Janitor Jones) doing for whole months at their job, but I can say, some indy game studios that work on their game in their free time, roll out way more updates in a month than RPG in a whole year.

I dunno... any hope is gone for this game long time ago, and no one will listen you anyway.

while i know this to be true, its not my fault that i still care about this game, even if the devs don't.
so i'll keep dreaming that one day they will wake up and revert the mistakes of the past!
and hey, its the anniversary in 10 days, so maybe they will actually deliver some news that the players want to hear!
unlike OuTfIT WaRs...