Energy Shields and protected areas. They are counter productive and make for poor game play. I would like to see them removed (maybe just as a test, see how the game would play if there were no safe areas) I would see it go like this, Give engineers the ability to erect destructible barricades , this along with existing mines etc would give the ability to create temp barricades at ANY location including halls doorways etc. Provide no protected spawn points, if you want your spawn point protected you have to defend it, if you lose it, you better get a sunderer etc. As it is once the spawn point is surrounded its just a shooting gallery of people trying to farm xp, its frustrating on the inside and boring on the outside, when i get pushed into a spawn I just go somewhere else. I feel the game would be a lot more fun and flow a lot better if areas were not "magically" protected. Please consider this, atleast as a test, maybe a "power outage" weekend just to see what happens, i really think it would be more fun.
Planetside 1 had a pain field inside spawn rooms that would damage enemies within, but otherwise they could enter and blow up the spawn tubes. That said, PS1 also had doors that had to be hacked* to get in to said spawn rooms. The base layout also generally meant there was a sharp turn in a hallway immediately as you exited a spawn room limiting the angles you could camp said doors from. NC (in my experience) would spend most of their time spawn camping (killing people as they spawned in the tubes instead of blowing the tubes up) compared to TR or VS. I assume the same thing would happen in PS2.
possibly yes, however base layout in this game is much different than ps1 which i played quite a bit, and i still feel was superior in many ways....but i digress, most spawn rooms in this game are quite open, but personally i dont care if they camp the tubes, only need to spawn once before you realize better go some where else. But they just need to add a spawn tube generator in every base that needs to be destroyed to complete a capture, doing this will stop them from spawn camping as they need to kill it to cap, defending it will also be very important. adding another layer to combat. You will need to defend your generator, and the area around your spawn rooms, engineers can place defenses to help push outwards etc. the more thought i give this the more i see the force fields as a negative to game play.
PS1 was an onion. Base capture had a number of layers to it that couldn't all be gotten around through one or more simple trick. PS2 is an egg. There is really only one layer before the soft bits; everything else is just window dressing designed to give the illusion of base defense.
The open nature of bases and the location of spawn rooms means if you removed the shields they could be easily camped from 200+ meters away. The game would turn into nothing more than Tanks / AV turrets / Aircraft shelling spawns room ... and we think it's bad now I don't want to be rude but with how the bases and game currently stands it's a silly suggestion ..
Spawn rooms that could be directly camped by tanks and ESFs (instead of just their exits) would kill the game in weeks (if not days). No amount of player stuff could fight off a Zerg with dozens of Tanks and Lolpodders spaming stuff straight into the spawn tubes. Sorry but in gameplay reality It is a terrible idea (although I like the idea of destructable barricades and such and have said for a while expanding engineers in a non-direct combat way would add a lot to the game). Now something like PS1 could be done, but that would require almost every base in the game to be completely redesigned (which I just don't see happening). But just allowing tanks and ESFs to directly camp spawn tubes? It would just be plain horrible.
The shields only protect VS/TR maxes and LA/Engineers of all factions with UBGL, while they farm people, who are stupid enough to step into the line of sight. Protected enemies will never come out and stop farming. And this happens especially in biolabs, where there is no danger of vehicle HE spam on the the shield exits.
