1) Create a new area, put some silly quest items there, no biggie 2) Make it impossible for land vehicles to get there, almost completely surrounded by a moat that kills you, encourage A2G with infinite nanites (FUN!) 3) You have to fight over 50 carrots. FIFTY, then you get to do...ANOTHER FIFTY. How/why are people supporting this?
I think its a kind of relief reaction. Many of the players who cheer this update on have had complaints about 24/7 stalemate fights and asked for the devs to get players from those 24/7 fights into what they think off as the main game. This update heavily trashed on Esamir's 24/7 fights and a botched attempt at The Crown, throwing in incentives not to be busy with a 24/7 stalemate. I think they are cheering the update on because they got what they thought was right, without really seeing the consequences of what it brings. The 24/7 stalemate over bases on Esamir has moved to the shattered warpgate you cant even capture. It has become the epitome of what these players have professed to hate, with farmers everywhere murdering people who try to enjoy that mission system using the very vehicles and methods that the 24/7 stalemate players have avoided for all this time. Base turnover is faster on Esamir, which they experience as good because its the opposite of a stalemate. It also means that defending is becoming less and less valuable and you will see less actual fights. Even a small group of attackers can now be seen as a Zerg as they'll find fewer and fewer defenders. The Storm actively destroys the very premise of PS2 by killing big fights. There is equipment that can protect you but its gated behind the campaign system, and as far as I know does not protect the deployed Sunderers from being destroyed quickly once the storm arrives. Esamir's base culling also means the continent locks down much more quickly, preventing players from finishing their campaigns. And today an update comes out to make it even easier to start locking a continent. I dont think the devs thought that through. All in all, once the actual realization kicks in how hard the game has been hit by this update I think their cheers will stop.
That really depends. I can only speak for me here - Biolab hater - and I like the new area. You are absolutely correct that there are some big parallels, but let me explain my position. 1) Biolabs are eternal stalemates, SWG is eternal stalemate. True so far. 2) Biolabs are in the middle of the contested continent, but don't contribute and can be circumvented. SWG is on the sidelines. Consequence. Biolabs coudl suck in people who didn't care, SWG will not. Only people who want to be there will be there. 3) Biolabs were always the same 3D spawncamping, neverchanging clusterf*ck. SWG is constantly shifting with spawncamping being almost a non-issue due toe the inexistance of hardspawns, thus relying on mobile Sunderers that can be repositioned if needed. 4) Biolabs were friggin' claustophoibic dakka-hells. SWG is quite spacious. This creates ample opportunity for smart movement without inevitably running into the next enemy in a split-second. 5) Partially a consequence of point 3+4, Biolabs were often focused on a limited set of positions, most notably spawns (which were generously covered in C4 from above) or a few doors (especially the bridges to and from the half-circular banana buildings). SWG has no narrow spaces, no chokepoints, no fixed positions. If a position is fought over repeatedly, then either because it is advantageous (high ground or good place to builld a PMB) or because the bloody plants grow there. But those are their own issue. Follows: While SWG on the face has a lot of similarities with a Biolab fight, the big difference for me is that fighting around the SWG is actually FUN, whereas Biolabs were for me about as fun as diving face first into a pool filled with nails. Continent capture is importnat for me because A) it feels good to take or hold a base (the closer the fight, the better) and B) because it offers veriety of locations. And point B is now also given around the SWG, so I can have fun there, and point A is achieved by taking or holding a position, and with limited infrastructure to boot, relying more on the actual fighting force than base layout (which, as you'll agree, isn't neccessarily a forte of PS2).
While I hate the bio lab, I think the plant gathering quest is poor fit for PS2. You have to gather way to many of them. Lots of them are unreachable. I tried farming them at night during off hours and they where spawning back every 10-15 minutes. The reward for the effort it takes to get them seems low. Basically it is way to grindy for a FPS. (If they want to keep it reduce to number you need and fix the ground/tree spawns.) Then you have to go to a certain biolab held by certain faction. --Wait so it requires going into a bio lab and possible biolab fight to do Shattered warp gate .
You're quite focused on Esamir here. They removed the empire strengths for specific bases and I think that required holding more of the map to trigger an alert than it used to (not sure though). I think that kind of balances out on Esamir, were it not for the northern factions fighting over Mani Bio SWG rather than capping/defending. On Indar, though, which used to be a massive stalemate already, it got worse than it used to be (I think, I usually avoided Indar if I could for that exact reason). The first night on Cobalt, after almost immediately locking Esamir, Indar ended up being the only open continent and the last one before Esamir would open up again. I looked at the map several times grinding my teeth because all three factions managed to get about 96-98 empire strength at some point but never to 100. It took about 8 hours to even trigger an alert if my memory serves me right. Esamir got easier to lock because of the removal of bases and that's a problem they can't fix easily. Maybe they could keep the current strength threshold for Esamir only to keep it from alerting as easily, but for Indar it certainly needs adjustments.
It's not Planetside 2 anymore. That's for sure. I'm sorry, I refuse to give DBG $$$ for some campaign missions that came out of a late 1990's video game. Bwahahahah!
Yes I am quite focused on Esamir, because that's where the brunt of the F-everyone updates were focused on. Currently stalemates are the best fights to have in the game, because the devs haven't figured out yet how to do proper flow of combat for fights. Every time players scream for the map to be more fluid or a "better battleflow" they are basically asking for bases to fall at the drop of a hat, any hat. However this means that the job of defenders, who are vital to providing the other 50% of the fight, becomes harder and less rewarding at the same time. Why attempt to defend a base that is already doomed to fall just because it's design makes it easy to capture? A stalemate on the other hand means business. Any gains made against a stalemate means you actually achieved something difficult. Stalemates also means the players are more or less on equal footing to each other. A good battleflow will need to find a middle road between these. For example right now "progress" = "capture the base". This means that failing to capture a base is actually punishing for the player. But what if progress was just getting farther inside a base? What if bases were layered defenses that need to be taken down by attackers and kept alive and running by the defenders? Getting one of these defenses down or back up depending on who you are could be key to feeling progress without actually allowing bases to fall constantly. These defenses can also be used to target behaviours we don't want. Constant Galaxy drops being so effective for example. You still want to see more of the map, and the game should encourage that. However just letting people see it for 5 minutes while they waltz through capturing territory one by one is not a good way to do that. One way to do it for example is to make several iterations of each continent, where the warpgates and standard battlelines are at different places while the rest of the map remains the same. That way where stalemates happen will change with the version you play, giving players more experiences on each base. Furthermore capturing a base could be made different as well. PS2 could employ unique versions of CTF and VIP game modes. For example players could have to pick up a point and bring it to a deployed Sunderer in order to start the capture timer. Or points can only be captured when a player is quite literally holding them and outside of a painfield. That way you get a VIP gameplay mode where players try to defend whoever is carrying the point(s). These gameplay modes are then randomly assigned to each base every time the continent unlocks, making each playthrough through a base more unique. A Biolab could suddenly turn out a lot different if the defenders can pick up the points and relocate them somewhere else in the base (and ofcourse they would remain visible on the map), and the attackers making off with the points could tip the scales a lot as well. It adds variety and unique strategies the game sorely needs.
I think that it's not many people who dislike any and all stalemates and want everything to move at a rapid pace. Most people just dislike pointless stalemates that lead nowhere. Like defending cut-off Biolabs for half an hour with almost 100 players, which is utterly pointless. Seriously, when the defenders lose - and they most likely will, after a while - they can't even say "well, we'll get them at the next base", because the front is already way behind, so what they did had 0 meaning except for being a popsink. And in the meantime they could have fought it out elsewhere, actually defending something that has - whatever little - meaning. With the introduction of the interior spawns they became spawncampfests that - for defenders - are virtually unwinnable (if we count a victory as - even for a short period - little to no enemy presence accounted for because they were pushed back). Best you can hope for is confinement and spawncamping. Yay?
This assumes the one scenario where a Biolab is bypassed, which often doesn't happen. The Devs in fact have already tried to devalue Biolabs before by adding lattice lines to circumvent the Biolab, meaning that it's the Developer's fault that Biolabs can be bypassed and the fight lose meaning. Fortunately many Biolab fights aren't even bypassed, players have such a high preference for the Biolab fight that they'll ignore the options to attack the other bases. We saw this at Mani Fortress for example, which could be attacked directly without needing to go through the Biolab, yet most players would simply get into a slugmatch in the Biolab instead. And again, if players like Biolabs so much that they are willing to stay there even though it's "meaningless", isn't that a giant red flag that the gameplay they are avoiding just isn't their thing? Why else would players prefer to create their own popsinks and avoid the "meaningful" battles? I'll repeat it again and again and again: Make. It. Fun. There is no excuse, none whatsoever, to remove gameplay and force players into the gameplay they are actively avoiding just for the chance that they'll magically say "oh now I suddenly like it". Fix the issues, find out what motivations there are to avoiding the capture-the-continent gameplay and adress those so players will leave Biolabs. We've seen during Escalation that there is an absolutely massive desire to get out of Biolabs and join the capture-the-continent gameplay, but not as it is right now.
I agree that the "normal" gameplay could use a bit more spice, but no way I want to see it become a hellspawn as Biolabs were. More spacious bases with more room for movement, like taking sectors of a base, would be nice. Makes them easier to defend and allows for change of scenery while in the same facility. THis would require larger bases, though; maybe divided into actual sectors with their own 2-min counters, and you can only take it when all sectors have been captured. Hell, could even add functionality to the sectors in case of a division: One has the primary vehicle spawns, means who controls it can bring them in easier, another is the hospital and give what used to be the Biolab regen-buff (but only for that base), a storage room that gives every member of the faction in the base +5 nanites per tick, a generatorium that adds a little boost to shield regeneration.
There is enough evidence that people don't want more Biolabs, it's just that the 24/7 fights at Biolabs (and other facilities) is preferable to the supposed main gameplay. You are essentially describing something I already proposed as well: Push small facilities against larger facilities. This makes one mega-facility that has several sectors that can be individually captured. This setup also means that you can create protective area's around vehicle spawns and allow defenders to continue the vehicle fight even when the attackers have arrived. Some kind of inter-connectiveness would definitely be appreciated. I would look more into protective connections, such as one base providing power to most (!) shield generators throughout the facility, one powering teleporters to get around, one powering gravlifts, one providing fire supports etc.
Years ago, I said taking away player choice by adding lattice would lead to ridiculous attempts to make the game interesting by contrived , outdated and (as it turns out) unoriginal feature additions. Commitment to Core Competency > Chasing The Herd
