With the direction the game is now going, I believe it is necessary some more graphical updates get made to the game moving forward and one of the top priorities in that should be to restore the iconic transparent shield domes to the Bio Labs to bring back some of the games old graphical beauty and make the Bio Labs look nicer as they look nowhere near as cool without them. A poll i once had won in a landslide they should return Images of the old shield domes interior look As can see they looked a lot more epic with the shield domes and are still in images for the game today In addition to coming back they should receive some slight upgrades like the shield domes now change color based on which faction controls them NC: Has the old blue shield TR: Would have a red shield VS: Have earlier a dark purple or cyan colored shield Other ideas I have in mind is a way for the dome shields to be deactivated to give them gameplay purposes like a new shield generator or possibly a terminal to hack and switch off the shield like the terminal in the Containment Site that is somewhere in the Bio Lab, this would make it so the shield is off and allow for aircraft outside to shoot in between the frame of the shield into the Bio Lab or for infantry to be airdropped through the dome like from a Galaxy or from spawn beacons making it crucial for defenders to keep the shield up and create new strategy for attackers.
The whole point of the Biolab being enclosed (and off the ground) is specifically so that vehicles cannot influence the fight. Opening it up is a terrible idea. As for the see-through domes, yes, they look cool, but the reason for their removal was sound; FPS issues and spotting issues. Nothing was more obnoxious than people sitting outside the dome Q spotting everything, or just basically ghosting and telling people where other's are on voice chat while not being able to be shot.
Believe it or not, there are still people playing PS2 on decades old rigs... And they are a very vocal and loud group whining about 'mah FPS!' If you want to know, this is how PS2 used to look like before Pentium 3 users (just a hunch) started complaining:
I am well aware of how the game use to look graphic wise, some of that graphical beauty did make a return but I still miss some of the old lighting and shield textures, I really think the dark nights need to make a return so that "night fighting" actually feels like night again.
Lanterns and night vision would actually have more uses. Not to mention the top gun on vehicles could actually be replaced with a pure utility lamp instead to brighten an area for allies and blind enemies (not sure about cloak revealing tho, way too abusable). I hope for a PS3 with less janky code that can run smoother and allow higher graphics.
i noticed when being near construction gate shields my CPU temps spike up 7 degrees. doing this to a biolab would probably cause performance issues and im sure thats one of the reasons why it was removed
It was among the reasons though it was another change that nobody asked for done during Wrel's time that has left another "scar" in the game as I like to call it. Sure there was the matter of performance both around and inside the Bio Lab, it was also a performance concern cause the Bio Lab interior would render from a distance. The thing about it though is the performance at Bio Labs hasn't been that different, performance at them is still a pain in heavy fights cause of the amount of props inside them and player counts in large fights which causes performance issues anyway so removing the shields did little to actually help and more just ruined the look of an iconic part of the game. Also important to note that gaming hardware has progressed quite a bit since this change so rigs can tolerate a lot of this better, the people playing on cheap rigs that were having very noticeable performance issues still have them even now and the devs should not cater to them by ruining the game's graphics, lighting and particles so they can maybe get an extra 10 FPS.
Had a discussion recently about the Bio Labs and recalled I posted this on restoring the shield domes.
yeah, they should bring them back. unless 'that certain Dev' deleted the files containing the code for the dome shields.
To my knowledge I recall someone making a post somewhere I think on Twitter(X) or Reddit about 3 years ago saying they found the old dome model in the game files with the framework and so on with images on Imgur to show. If I understand correctly the way the domes were changed is the enclosed model was made and then that model's coding was copy/pasted over all the Bio Labs though we may not know for sure how they done it but that is one of the most logical possibilities. Which unfortunately that change I believe screwed up Hayd Skydock with its Bio Lab dome framework which I hope that gets patched eventually.
Please also bring back the “top row of death” to Tech Plants. It is ridiculous, that these important weapon labs now have such a weak defence. I remember, when I started with PlanetSide2 the Tech Plants and Biolabs were among the most impressive elements of the game. It’s good, that a fully equipped “top row of death” is very dangerous and can stop a major enemy Zerg. And Zerg stopping is what the game actually needs these days. All the dead Vanu Zerglings - because they are gone, to their alien hell, where they belong to - will improve the performance of my old PC and give room to also bring back the Biolab shield domes. Problems solved!
