Short Story Imagine you are at a buffet. You get yourself a clean, white, 10 inch dinner plate, and serve yourself a single scoop of mashed potatoes before going to sitting down to enjoy it. That plate is going to look pretty empty don't you think? If you really only wanted one scoop then you should have gotten yourself a smaller plate. In this short story, the plate is the continent(s) of Planetside 2, and the mashed potatoes is the total population occupying it. Main Currently, the unstable warpgate system leaves the entire continent so empty and unused during times with low player counts. We got this massive continent that is open to explore but ultimately unusable because of shutdown lattice links. If the intent behind the unstable warpgate mechanic is to reduce the amount of fronts factions have to fight on (because there is not enough players to make the continent look and feel full) then the continents need to scale their playspace up and down based on population numbers. I like the way Oshur's lattice transitions to unstable to fully active. Its partially unstable state has the outer most bases disabled while growing the center - it expands from already active bases. On other continents its one center lane straight to the center base, and two side lanes traveling along the border of the map. Because the lanes are disconnected it becomes a game of tug-of-war, not: Okay, VS came from Echo Valley Substation and took Waterson's Redemption from us. If they continued their attack, where are they going to go next? The Amp Station or to Bridge Ward? There is no uncertainty in fighting a single chain of bases. Starcraft, Age of Empires, Sins of a Solar Empire RTS games have maps designed for a specific number of players. Two players wanting to do a 1v1 match in these games do no select a huge 8 player map and crop out the outer most parts of the map or accept that the starting locations for 6 other players are vacant. Besides, the size of the map could affect how they play comparing to if they selected a map designed for two players specifically. End Planetside 2 should not use these massive continents built to hold thousands of players for only hundreds. There should be smaller variants on current continents, an improved unstable state, an alternative to unstable warpgates, or new maps designed with lower population numbers in mind. The familiar distance between outposts can be the same. But the number of territories, and size of bases should not.
The whole point is that there is a lot of map to hide things in AND push down, smaller maps would mean longer cap times which with how PS2 is currently balanced, wouldn't be very good.
I would love to have multiple continents on the same planet, and expand the scope and scale to make winning/ losing a continent mean something other than a perk. I'd probably add a command and conquer'esq building view for building stuff. but then that changes the game a little more.
