Continent Lock - The Holy Grail?

So, not blindly agreeing with something while it is the development stage and then complaining about how it sucks after hundreds of hours of developer time is "not doing the discussion any favors" and is "getting upset"? OK man, have it your way.

EVERYTHING THAT A FEW LOUD PLANETSIDE VETS WANT IS PERFECT FOR PLANETSIDE 2! WOOOHEEE!

That better?

I'm not saying it's a bad thing that you disagree, but you're not really providing any constructive feedback by simply disagreeing. You say the system is bad because it will do this and that, but you don't put forward any points that imply that this and that will happen. If there are any serious faults in the system, the devs probably want to know before they implement it.

You're choosing not to acknowledge the feedback, which is insulting, but ultimately your decision. My feedback is very simple:

1. Locking people out of locations means they literally have less of a game to play.

2. Having less variety more quickly leads to boredom, especially with video games.

3. 100% of the content in Planetside 2 is OTHER PEOPLE, so if people get bored and stop playing, there won't be a Planetside 2.

But, I am sure you will ignore this feedback again and honestly, I don't give a ****.

1. You're only locked out of a location if you weren't in that location to begin with. If you're so horribly bored that you absolutely HAVE to fight on a certain continent and you can't be asked to push them back to that continent, you can simply switch to one of the factions that has a warpgate on that map. And the devs have hinted at redesigning the current continents to make them more interesting, which would make this even less of an issue.

2. Less variety? This system is coming packaged with four new maps. That's more than double the variety! On top of that, you'll be able to own more than one warpgate on a map, which means a single warpgate won't limit the fights you'll be able to participate in. That's even more variety.

3. You're implying that people are going to pack their bags and start leaving in droves. That's simply not going to happen. Most of the player base (at least, the vocal part of it) has been begging for this to happen since before launch. Even on the off chance that things don't go as expected and people get bored, they can just merge a few servers again and the problem is solved (maybe not for briggs, but connery is set for a long time).

Something being missed in these discussions is the problem of "Empire Compression". I had also missed this problem until it was pointed out to me by a dev in this post:

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...lattice-warpgate-capture.169521/#post-2435518

This is, by far, the biggest problem with locking continents. In a nutshell, it comes down to this: If your empire has no foothold on any continent but its own "Home Continent", then there will likely not be enough player slots to accommodate everyone from your empire who might want to log in. They will get denied access to the game because no player slots will be available to them. That's a real problem that has to be addressed before any form of Continent Locking system can be put in place.

To me, that means we'll need far more continents than just four. We'll need, at a minimum seven continents before continent locking can become a reality. And Battle Islands won't count for that because of their limited connectivity and play-space. This is a hard nose reality of game development, not some "game theory what would be better" matter of opinion.

Possible solutions to this:

1) More Continents - that I've already mentioned. Simply by having more places to defend and fight makes it harder for one Empire to be cornered. The idea here is that each empire would have two home continents giving them two guaranteed warpgate spawn locations. That's where the number seven comes from: two full sized continents for each empire, plus Hossin. Battle Islands don't count as stated before.

2) Radical Population skewing for Home Continents - I'm not fond of this idea, but the possibility exists. Basically, on the Empires Home Continent they are given far more player slots than the other two empires. So that when the population of the server is at max, they still have a huge advantage. For example, if every slot were full, the continental population would read: 50% 25% 25%. This gives the home team a huge population advantage against getting double-teamed.

3) Sanctuaries - It's been asked for by many, but the devs have said they want to avoid it. For those that don't know, these are very basic continents where only one empire can spawn. This essentially gives each empire the ability to spawn three times the population any other continent can hold (of their own empire). The problem is that you can still be trapped inside the sanctuary, and there is no ability to fight the enemy from there. Also, it represents an additional server hosting cost which adds nothing to game play (no conflict occurs there - don't rattle your cane at me and yell about staging areas providing game play).

More ideas are needed on this subject before the larger concept of Continental Locking can be tackled.

They need something like this:


Notice how IndarSide is the central / hub continent.
(This will keep the COD babies happy, while the rest of us fight around Indar on the other continents.)

And they need to stop ghost-capping (so no more 2am continent captures...) for continent locking to work properly.
- 6 players required to flip a point
- a player must stay on a point to keep it capping
- etc...

I agree. One player has to stay on the point to flip it, or it reverts back to defender's control if they leave. That mechanic is sorely lacking in this game.

I'd just make it one player per capture point for starters. That way single players could capture single point bases, but when they came to an A-B-C+ base, they'd be screwed unless they get help. That should be a requirement.

I wouldn't make it as extreme as 6 players on a point, although I do miss the old 0/6-6/6 mechanics that siphoned off at least 6 attackers to stay at the capture points rather then camping the defenders. It gave defenders some relief in this lopsided, pro-attacker game, and it a great defensive mechanic they should consider using again, among the many they could be using, but don't except for choke points and walls.

Most players don't care about forums and I don't think they even read patch notes. I think it's only a tiny minority who has been asking or even been aware of the idea of continent locking.

Anyway complaints like in post you quoted are from Indar addicts.

^^^ This ^^^ Yup ^^^

I'm for continent locking later on, but it makes no sense right now.

• Continent locking makes absolutely no sense with 3 continents.
• Continent locking makes little sense with 4 continents plus battle islands.
• Continent locking makes a slight bit of sense, but is still silly with 5 continents plus battles islands.

Continent locking should be the LAST thing they implement before these changes:

1. Hossin
2. Battle Islands
3. Intercontinental Lattice
4. Searhus
5. Vehicle Zoning
6. Vehicle Despawning/partial resource refund
7. Resource Revamp
8. And FINALLY - Put in continent locking as the last resort thing unless we could first get more continents please.

And this is why:

PS1 started with 10 continents, and later added 5 caverns. Each empire for the most part locked 2 continents - their "home continent" connected to their sanctuary plus one more. And there was no reason for most of the time to fight on your own home continent plus the one you secured all the time. So we basically kept fighting on only THREE continents constantly. It took a MASSIVE coordinated attack from alliance(s)-of-outfits to "SANC" an empire, and it was a rare event.

So if on a 10 continent game, it was highly common to keep fighting on the same THREE continents all the time, then what do you all think Planetside 2 will look like if they introduce continent locking with only FOUR or FIVE continents in total??????

Continent locking is also NOT the solution for low server populations. Funneling the same amount of players into a smaller area is not a solution. (*cough* much like the lattice *cough*) The following are the acceptable solutions for low server populations:

1. Marketing
2. Server mergers
3. Server transfer tokens from high populated empires to servers with low populated empires only
4. Optimization and bug squashing
5. Continuous new content - namely continents.

GET OFF OF CYSSOR! ™ - Aleksey

This made me chuckle. May I ask how exactly does that differ from the PS2 gameplay? Each time I played PS2 I found myself going to one continent and then playing on it ALL THE TIME and I was never in a situation where I had to leave the continent because all capturable bases were already taken by my empire. I left the continent due to the silly alerts or utter boredom. Yes, it's been close to 9 months since I gave up with PS2.