Guys, I need you to breath. These walls aren't the end. It's the start.

Combined arms isn't being killed, or phased out. By its definition, as long as the classes exist in the game, it still exists. Combined arms is using different tools, branches, or types of the military to support and compliment each other for a successful victory. A medic, heavy, engineer, and infiltrator are all different roles and sorts of infantry, making it combined arms.

But wait, you might say, these walls make tanks obsolete and that is not combined arms! Well, not quite, Little Billy. Granted, the worry is a slightly valid one, but the really nice thing about this whole process is that Planetside is constantly changing. For good or ill. The game at release is a different beast then the one we have now.

What we have is a step. The walls aren't perfect, I'll say that flat out. Good thing is that they can be improved! We have the groundwork. Instead of attempting to create a river of tears so that you may row to the developers and make them listen isn't going to help. What we need is to be constructive.

Now to make the suggestion I really wanted the thread to be about. The Esamir lattice, and lattice in general, is pretty much here to stay. Too much work has been put into it to just yank it out because sand got into some cavernous orifices in the underpants of some players. So we'll have to accept that. Instead, put your eyes on the real prize: making this all an even better game.

Having played around on the map for a little while, I have a general idea of how I feel about the changes. Not enough to make a solid declaration, as we quite haven't yet broken in the new Esamir yet, but there are impressions all the same. Namely, well and oft repeated, the walls. They're a little too high, a little too featureless, and a little too many.

So hopefully we can get those tweaked. Shaving a few meters off a few of the walls, removing some to make openings, and adding places infantry can use to shoot down, or even just climb over, would be great. Indar has done it fairly well. There are precious few bases where tanks alone can steamroll a base, and there are precious few bases where tanks are utterly useless. Esamir should match.

Remember: variety is the spice of life. Every base does not need to hold a welcome wagon out to vehicles. On the reverse, neither does every one of them need to be a bastion of impenetrable walls.

The next step is returning deconstruction with some measure of utility, with the exploits removed. Tanks that are pulling up to one of those 'vehicles not welcome' bases either need to suck it up and abandon the tank to the five minute despawn timer, or sit and eye the chokepoints, hoping for a kill. Neither is fun. Neither is satisfying. If a tanker could instead return the vehicle when it's clearly not able to serve a useful role and pull it back out when it's needed again, we could adapt more. Yes, unfortunately, it would give a small measure of having your cake and eating it too, but isn't cake delicious? Why can we not eat it?

Tank spam is thinned out when it hits the places it simply can't be useful or a player decides that the fortifications are too dangerous to use the armor against. Tanks despawn and get put away, more infantry. Less tanks spam. Winning!

I've got some other suggestions but I'm kinda running this thread long as it is with my rambling...perhaps another time.

I havent played GU13 yet
But tanks fighting tanks isn't really useful for anyone team-wise unless tanks can do anything inside a base

Well said.

Personally, I think bases need to be WAY the hell larger (in area) than they are now. I mean sizes like the whole of a techplant's area. I want areas that are open (albeit with cover for infantry) and areas that are closed. I want tanks to have somewhere to fight until they push the defenders back to the inner areas, at which point the major infantry forces will move in and fight on foot to the point.

Basically I want what the Esamir bases are now (With better mannable walls), surrounded by ~75 meters of boxes, tank traps, and small hut-buildings.

It might have been a start... if they bothered to listen to the testers who nearly to a man pointed out almost all of these issues.

I really don't understand why they bother with the PTS; they don't give a **** what we say. They should just call it the "hype buildup preview server" and be done with it, cause that's all they use it for.

Yes, that is correct. At that pure level, tanks only existing for the sake of killing other tanks is flawed. What happens when one side pulls no tanks? Enemy tanks have no tanks to kill, rendering it easier to simply not field armor to devote the resources elsewhere. So that is why people using that argument are flawed.

The tank is meant to be a heavy hitting, hard to kill machine. Doling out impressive firepower to provide cover for infantry to advance, push an enemy out, eliminate high threats, etc. In games, where the fear of death is nonexistent, this generally means 'killing targets so they have to respawn and our guys can have less to deal with'. Unfortunately, the walls as they are now negate that. Save for killing sunderers, tanks can't do anything at the base, making pulling one largely fruitless. But, luckily, we can get it changed to be less so.

Honestly, I think we're going to end up with a lot more Planetside 1 then anticipated. Bases having stages to them, objectives, you name it.

In my ideal Planetside 2, bases have their walls. But they can be manned. As well, they have HP and can be torn down, mostly akin to how turrets work for simplification purposes. Tanks are used to demolition those walls to create a beachhead, infantry moves to secure. While buildings would make it infeasible for tanks to advance in and excel, they might sparingly if they deem it worth the risk. By and large, the securing and holding of the base would be the job of infantry. The armor is there to eliminate defenses, stop counterattacks, tear down walls, and dominate the open areas. Defenders wishing to push back would need to use indestructable cover to their advantage, or fall back and counter attack. Tools given to commanders would allow this. A mission to counter attack a base would be generated, granting more XP to actually attack the attackers from another base, creating incentive, means, and organization to attempt to resecure a base.

*breathe

They can stop transports from getting close.

I disagree, tanks can play a big role in protecting a sundy (the lifeblood of attackers) from other vehicles or vice versa, even though its usually C4 that does them in most of the time.

infantry whining about tanks when it's infantry drop podding in with impunity that ruins any kind of organized defense.

you've now got bases immune to tanks but enemies are still able to drop pod into superior positions (and past your defensive lines) whenever they want.

same for squad deploying onto enemy sundies.

Op, this has already been going on since March. They started gutting the game at that point. People left.

They dropped Indar lettuce on us, people left.

They said they learned alot from Indar, about base design and lettuce implementation. They inferred this knowledge would be used to improve Esamir. The people that tried it on the test server, raised the issues that are all over the boards today.

So it is pretty apparent they learned nothing. The actual Esamir lattice is even less open than Indars. For example, there are now only 3 possible paths of progression going in the north south direction. One west, one east and the other through the tech plant.

Even Indar has more options for advancement.

Then they added mazes with huge walls everywhere. Vehicle spawns that passengers must run literally hundreds of yards around the giant walls to get to the vehicle pads, where their ride is.

The walls were added to remove vehicles from the bases and stop the spawn camping. Now attackers control the outside with vehicles, the defenders camp the two or three narrow choke points that attacking infantry must use to get to the cap point. The defenders must use the same choke points to get at the attackers sundies.

So, now the attackers need a 3:1 , no joke watch the map on Waterson during primetime, pop advantage to be able to break through the choke points. The defenders cannot get to the attacking sundies to slow the attackers. Eventually the attacking zerg, yes it is a zerg when you have a 3:1 majority, gets the proper proportion to advance through the meatgrinder to the cap point.

Once capped the zerg camps the spawn, now with infantry instead of tanks.

In the end SOE ruined the game for months in order to fix spawn camping by tanks, only to have infantry camp the spawn. With fights where the population is so lopsided it makes a bad joke out of the entire game.

This is what I have seen and my perspective on the new improved fights.

Now you come here and attempt to tell me, it will be fine when they are finished. In gaming no MMO is ever finished, unless the servers shutdown.

Honestly, you are just the latest to be fooled by the "we have a grand design" promises SOE makes. They have no idea what they are doing and you will understand this in 6 months yourself, when your still waiting for the "better times".

Myself, I canceled my sub tonight. The dev's are totally disconnected from their game, and seem to stop analyzing how changes will play out at some point around "that sounds like fun". Which we all learned as children is a good way to **** up, get injured or die.

Well walls were added to keep vehicles outside
If they were to be manned that would provide an immense advantage to the defenders

I think this will be a nice option how to not allow too much tank-spamming spawnpoints and simultaneously let tanks be again very usefull in capturing bases (at least in the first phase when they destroying these walls). It should be introduced in test server, tested, and then testers should write their feelings how it works.

+1 for your post, I like that idea

Hence why I'd like them to be able to be demolished with enough fire. It creates a series of checks and balances, different ways for it to play out.

Attackers bring tanks to destroy the wall. The defenders lose their advantage and need to change tactics to successfully repel. Attackers decide to push infantry to the base of the wall and demo it by hand with rockets and C4. Defenders are pressed again to change tactics. It's a tug of war, back and forth, with the side adapting the fastest or bringing the best tools wins. Ideally, anyways.

The walls don't need to have turrets everywhere. Just some cover and the ability to stand up on them would suffice. Hell, I'd take just destroyable cover on the top of those things rather then a whole chunk of wall. I'd make the walls have increasing HP as chunks of them are taken out, too. The first breaches would be easy, then it gets progressively harder to make more holes. It would be a balance thing, so the entire wall complex of a base couldn't just be torn down by a zerg in a moment. Gives defenders a little more breathing room as the situation gets worse while allowing the attackers to keep trying to press more advantage.

WHERE ARE YOU GETTING YOUR NUMBERS FROM? Holy god. I know these forums are toxic but this is amazing. Pro tip=If the lattice wasn't working they would not keep implementing it. Just because you hate don't start spouting stuff without proof

The beginning...


... OF THE END

I did not put numbers in that post, I see no reason to make numbers up. I simply listened to the reasons why some people in my outfit quit. I claim no majority or minority. There simply is no way to get legitimate numbers either way.(without infering and thats just a guess)

Your experience may vary and I'm fine with that.

Good post. Sums up lattice quite nicely.

There need to be far more links (or preferably no lattice at all).

When people complain about the degradation of combined arms, they're referring to infantry/vehicles/aircraft. Simply changing YOUR definition doesn't negate what people are complaining about. People complain about X, you change your definition of X to mean something else, and then tell people that they're wrong because X doesn't mean what they think it does.

How you expect to gain anyone's respect when you treat them as inferior is a mystery, "Little Billy". We're all equals here.

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You don't refute that argument at all. You're saying "X is an invalid argument, because Planetside is changing".

What you're asking is for everyone to ignore any problems. People are being constructive by voicing their concerns; they're not censoring their complaints to make them sound nice and nor should they.

So what you're saying, once more, is to completely ignore the problems and bend over? And once again, you insult everyone who disagrees with you. You act as though anyone who disagrees with you is immature, which is ironic. "sand got into some cavernous orifices in the underpants of some players"

That's far, far more rational and respectful than the rest of your post.

They get from the same place people who claim the number of players have gone up get it. Never mind the fact that people don't delete accounts when they abandon PS2 means the number of accounts only goes up. However, the circumstantial evidence is very strong that this game is down right hemorrhaging players. At sever merge there were lines for multiple continents, now there isn't a line during an alert. Where Outfits fielded 2+ platoons, now barely fill half of one. Indar used to constantly have 5 48+ vs 48+, now it barely sports 1 during an alert. The lattice works, there is no question of that, in fact the fewer players there is the better it will work. The problem is this: the fewer players there are, the less reason to play Planetside. And make no mistake, players are hanging up their rifles due to the sloppy, hamfisted implementation of the lattice that makes the game play worse for them.

Before adding these walls, they should undo The Crown nerfs and restore it to original state.

pre-nerf Crown represents the type of gameplay that you are hoping to achieve with these walls - where attacking vehicles can't get inside the base (without being instantly killed) and have to resort to "defend the sundy" roles on the outskirts, without doing anything meaningful. The Crown was all about infantry on infantry action. It achieved all that without the need for artificial wall barriers.

The real question is: do we want to turn every base into a pre-nerf Crown fight? I thought people hated The Crown. Why was it nerfed so much, only to see SOE pushing the same gameplay on every other base?