Base design on Amerish in live play

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Astriania, Feb 21, 2014.

  1. Astriania

    First I just want to say, cracking job on new Amerish. I visited some of the headline spots on PTS (like the Ascent cave) but now we're actually playing on it for real I'm seeing more of it, and it's really amazing. Each base feels different, something that's missing from most of the bases on Indar and Esamir.

    Playing the bases in an actual combat situation shows that there is a wide variety of defensibility and combat style here.

    Ascent is very defendable, with the high ground and lots of campable spots at the top of jump pads; the tower spawn can't easily be tank-spammed and has overwatch over the entire B/C compound. Crux Headquarters and Rockslide are indefensible, because the points have to be attacked from the spawn room at a disadvantage (and in the case of Rockslide, you've got attackers dropping on your head from Ascent). Subterranean Nanite Analysis is epic but I can't see how you can ever take the A point attacking that without massive overpop. Some variety in difficulty to capture is good but I wonder if some of these bases will need tweaking to be a bit less extreme.

    On the varied style, I really like that we have close quarters infantry only (SNA again), we have open infantry only (Ascent cave), we have the traditional CQC point buildings with vehicle cover (several bases) and we have the new large hangar building (Auraxis Firearms, Silver Valley) for a more open point building. And then there's lots of points in open or near-open locations, requiring a more spread out hold.

    A lot of the bases are clearly inspired by Quake/UT/CoD style FPSs; some of them feel like a team deathmatch with an incidental capture point included (SNA is the worst for this) which I think is a step too far, although there's nothing wrong with taking a bit of inspiration for facility buildings from map based FPSs. But there are places in Amerish where it seems to be almost irrelevant that you are only at one base within a larger map, and that's what makes Planetside different so I think that's a mistake.

    Also, the new road layout is better than before, but it's certainly still an air continent, far more than the other two. Again this is no bad thing in itself but I forsee a lot of complaining about that.
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