[Suggestion] Hives(Possible other uses for them)

I see people saying Hives contributing to locking the continents, which in turn might ruin good fights. Perhaps, make the hive, that is built in a territory give everyone of the owning faction(while they are in the region of the hive) a bonus of some kind i.e. The owner of the hive, person who builds it, will interact with the hive(control panel), to set the type of bonus it gives like a bit more EXP Gain, resource gain, bit faster vehicle bonus(in the territory), fire power bonus(for all allied vehicles in the area), something like that.

It, the bonus, in case of EXP gain+Resource gain, will be cumulative, IF someone has exp and or Resource gain booster, on their character.

Maybe you guys have some ideas of what Hives could be changed to do, please tell in this thread.

Interesting idea, although I don't think there really is any problem with Hives generating VPs.

The most vocal of critics are just upset their Crown farm only lasted an hour and a half, and now they have to play somewhere other than Indar for a bit - the same kind of people that play exclusive 2Fort servers in TF2. They're playing an arena shooter without a lobby.

It's the same mentality that spawn camps sunderers instead of taking them out and moving the fight on down the map. Why some people get off on 5xp spawn kills over and over is beyond me, but whatever pads that epeen stat, I guess.

If they REALLY wanted a "good fight" on a continent to last, they'd grab a couple squads and pop hives as they show up, instead of ignoring them until they're too built up to take down quickly. We've dropped hives in as little as 30 seconds, when we're in that play mode.

Of course, someone's likely going to pop in here slinging salt because of my server/faction/outfit affiliation, but what're ya gonna do?

I love base building. However, the HIVES contributing VP's needs to go. Instead HIVES should act like "mini" Tech Plants, Bio Labs or Amp Stations for the Territory and adjacent territories in which they're built. I think this is also what the OP is suggesting. Also and most importantly, building a HIVE should allow spawning of MBT's at the vehicle terminal. Once a functioning HIVE is built, different upgrade modules could be placed that allowed HIVE 'powers' to be activated. Such as:

• Tech Module: Vehicle Allow MBT's to spawn at vehicle terminal
• Amp Module: Turret bonus
• Biolab Module: Infantry Bonus
• Lattice Module: Allows a temporary lattice connection to be established to one non-connected but adjacent base

If the above makes the HIVEs to powerful then perhaps a HIVE could only power one or two of the above options.

You think Hives generating more VPs than any Lattice base, ones that unlike the Lattice can't be lost is fine?
Even if the enemy nukes hives, builds hives, defends hives, does nothing but Hives, they aren't paying for it;
They have a stream of VPs, that they can't even lose progress towards, VPs that can't be lost.
How about having half the bloody map? Fixed number of VPs, with every single VP able to be lost.
Hives? As many VPs as you please, with no risk.

Hive out in the middle of no where, generates VPs same as a Hive on the front line.
Lattice bases? Must be captured \ defended always to retain the singular VP if even that.
A single hive, can be destroyed countless times and still generate more than 20 bloody VPs.

If the enemy doesn't focus down on the bloody Hives, and then go off to build them (which they have to ensure last longer than combined Hive time of the last opponent across the entire bloody time the map has been open)
Then said enemy locks the map, even while Warpgated with no landmass but the warpgate.
Add in that bases easily require more to attack than defend (Or become impossible to defend), and while they literally gain VPs faster, easier, and safer than the Lattice, their side that isn't building Hives can attack the Lattice.

While the other two, now must attack Hives, and work the lattice.
The warp-gated one? Oh they just need enough land mass to top off the 18 VPs from hives.
The Hives that had to be constantly destroyed, which resulted in nothing.

A good fight isn't building effective Hives.
As a good hive spot is one designed to be hellish to attack - And that is going to be one-sided in all cases.

If a single Building created by someone AFK can achieve more than an entire faction capturing & holding dozens of bases..
There is something bloody broken.
For anyone wondering, Wildcard is Connery's Hive-builders for all extensive purposes.
Hives up in 30 seconds, so TR and NC have to grind against a never ending stream of Hives.

Nearly anything is better, than Hives generating the Victory Points, and better VPs than 99% of the Lattice system.
EXP boosting, increased Nanite regeneration rate in proximity, Limited Auto-Repairs on vehicles,
Anything that helps the actual fights, rather than eclipses the value of the Lattice bases.
At present, a single hive is worth more than any Lattice base, any group of them even, and only grows in Value.
A loss of a hive achieves nothing, due to how any Hive VP can not be lost, can not be stopped, only Delayed.
A Lattice base VP is singular (if even that), and requires constant defense.

So instead of actually creating an argument, your first act is to try and create a stigma about anyone who's going to criticise what you have to say. Good job! You are officially a butthat!

But you hit the nail on the head: "you don't think there's a problem" (avoided the cheap shot there). And that's the thing: The critics know there's a problem, and they've articulated what that is. These guys don't necessarily want to be playing exclusive 2Forts in TF2. That's just a nice generalization you come up with so you don't have to bother coming up with an argument.

The problem with HIVE's is that it's an entirely passive type of gameplay that generates much more VP's through less skill and by far fewer people than the rest of the game. The entire faction often gains similar or a bit better results as the few people actually building HIVE's. Additionally, the work of your entire faction is mostly temporary VP's that can be wiped away, not to mention that if you got halway to a permanent VP by going for the warpgate for instance your progress can be wiped while VP generation can't be wiped or progress erased, only stalled. And the way PMB's are set up right now, there's not much fun in fighting them. The entire fight is in favor of the defenders, and the attackers have nothing to even the scales. There's no siege equipment you can build, no way to deactivate the advantages of auto-turrets or invulnerable walls or one-way shields.

Not even close to the same mentality.

No they wouldn't, because the act of heavy organisation and "popping" HIVE's is less enjoyable than the rest of the gameplay. Your reasoning is basically "to prevent this hurting your enjoyment, you have to reduce your enjoyment". Additionally you can't stop your own faction! So if you hunt down all those HIVE's, it's your faction that's going to be building them even if you don't want them to!

And even if you did pop Hive's that quickly, the effort and time they were active is much more efficient than a massive slugmatch over territory that could go either way.

Yeah! Because discrediting people before they even react to you is a wonderful argument! /s

anything other than locking continents is a good change imho!

i've also suggested simply getting rid of hives and removing no deploy zones
(for the most part, obviously vehicle terminals and spawn rooms would need no deploy zones)
that way we no longer have stupid continent locks during primetime,
and construction becomes a way of fortifying bases before an enemy reaches it.

i've long said that the reason all we see these days are zergs is because bases have been made completely undefendable,
so this simple change would fix the continent locking and also make defending a viable option, turn your base into Helms Deep!

I'm totally for this idea! It would actually integrate the construction system with the rest of the game

Yup good ideas.

On one hand, anything seems better atm. But if destroying the HIVE becomes even less important than it already is, no one will ever attack a HIVE base again! And that would make most of the construction system pretty useless without tapping it's immense potential.

I see a bunch of options:

1. Change the way continents are captured.
   • Currently capturing a continent is relatively sudden. "ping, enough points, everything is yours now!". Previously there was a way of knowing how long it would be taking before the continent was captured because you needed a certain amount of terrain. But HIVEs screw that over, and the last-ditch attempt to prevent a faction getting enough points doesn't happen anymore.
     To remedy this, players need a good closure act. A last battle that satisfies everyone and signals to everyone the endgame has arrived. My idea was always to allow VP's to be used to capture warpgates once you have enough points. It rewards having territory and it makes HIVE's less sudden-capture tools.
2. Remove HIVE's, allow construction much closer to bases.
   • The reason for no-deploy zone's as far as I understand it is performance issues. Especially at large bases the extra buildings reduce performace for a lot of players if you can build 30 extra building pieces nearby. Additionally it's there to prevent easy trolling. A wall blocking off the spawn with a Rampart wall, or placing the Silo inside the point with a repair module and blocking off the entrances with now-invulnerable walls (with the new Cortium refineries or whatever they are called you can get cortium in the Silo without being near the Silo) etc.
     So if you allow the construction system to be build +/-30m away from small bases, you could reinforce small bases with the construction system.
3. Change PMB role, remove HIVE's.
   • PMB's could fulfill several different roles. Such as a logistical base that has teleporters to other PMB's within a certain distance, meaning you can reduce redeploy's effectiveness and let vehicle/infantry players travel around using the network players build. Additionally the opponents can actively try to take out important logistical bases.
   • PMB's could also function as an upgrade to the lattice-link system. A current big request is a way to fight at bases people don't fight often at. Allow PMB's to create lattice-links. This prevents ghost-cap side from taking over and creates a more interesting dynamic between attackers and defenders, where both sides need to defend their base and attack simultaneously.
4. Change how HIVE's gain VP's.
   • Currently HIVE's are incredibly passive. The most active thing players will be doing is placing buildings and mining, and hoping to avoid combat altogether (or hoping a small amount of players is willing to be farmed by the PMB). This can be changed to a faction-wide alternative to earning VP's. For example the HIVE will create a VP token/vehicle, which needs to be brought to an enemy warpgate to score. You can introduce ways for the opposing factions to see the general whereabouts of the VP token/vehicle so they can track it down and destroy it in time. Since this is a much more risky attack method, VP token/vehicle production would be a lot faster than current VP generation.
5. Change how PMB's work.
   • PMB's currently work mostly on "defend the inside, it doesn't matter what's outside". As long as you can defend the inside everything is A-OK. This could be changed to make PMB's need to control the surrounding area. Additional construction equipment can be introduced to allow this control, such as adding minefield generators that create weak mines.
     To contrast this, attackers will get a range of siege equipment that forces the PMB to actively control the surrounding area. If you don't control the surrounding area, the siege equipment will be put to use and give the attackers ways to even the scales and make attacking your base much easier.

I said I thought he had some interesting ideas, but didn't think hives hives as-implemented were as problematic as some make them to be. I wasn't trying to shoot down ANYTHING the OP posted.

Clearly some of the additional dressing in my post touched some sensitive spot you have. I'll leave it at you and I disagree, and chalk it up to difference in play style.

I play VS, on Connery. The server where many might argue that this "problem" is at its most apparent. Frankly, what I see from behind my keyboard is a pair of factions whose only concern is finding a "good fight". For most of those, that involves a seldom-changing back and forth near-even- population push between one or two lattice connections, with nothing to really come break the stalemate. VS, in my experience, is usually pushing to turn the world purple.

I can't speak for the whole faction, but my outfit is almost always playing to take the continent, rather than merely zone out shooting planetmans in a "good fight". So we destroy enemy hives. We take bases and push lattice lanes. Occasionally we build hives, although it's hardly a primary focus for us (24x7 rocks that play style though). And we find (or make) "good fights" while doing all that.

Again, destroying hives is made to be some onerous, really difficult thing, but it's usually nowhere near that bad. We take a few minutes, load the platoon in galaxies, and "pop the pimple". Most of the time the thing's dead in under a minute. It often takes longer to get everyone in the birds than it does to take down the hive. Every once in a while we come across a crazy overbuilt Hive base, actively defended by half a platoon or more, but it is by far the minority of the time. Those usually take empire coordination to take down. The NC/TR experience may differ, as VS on Connery does have a fairly dedicated base building outfit (that I assume also defends their work), I'll grant you.

MOST of the Connery VS continent caps come from a combination of territory, alert, miscellaneous capture, and Hive VPs, however. It's pretty rare for us to capture one on Hives alone. TR and NC do have a long history on Connery of ignoring Hives far longer than they should, though.

Frankly what usually happens is NC finds a biofarm (or other really defensible territory) somewhere and turtles up with their scatmaxes to the detriment of their territory/VPs (often against TR) and VS is left to run amok on the map.

in that case the whole vpsystem needs to go ... which would make no real sense ... yes i get it most peeps want their epic fights and farms but others also want a general winstate that goes beyond capturing bases ... imo hives by concept add a nice dynamic kinda similar before lattice was reimplemented .. personaly i just like the idea of being able to set up/attack bases that are not on the laticeleash ... hives however also add a bit more to pmb's other than "destroy spawns, turrets, terminals and special weapons" ... i am still for keeping hives as vp providers in some form but the vp system in general needs to be adjusted

You had one sentence of "well that's interesting", and then a sentence of "but I don't see a problem" followed with the rest of the post which was basically "and here's all the reasons anyone who disagree's with me is dumb".

You had virtually no arguments but "well the other dudes think differently/enjoy other things", and all you did was insult anyone who was going to say anything against you. I just pointed that out.

"Hey, all I said was that all people who commit a crime have to be brutally murdered on the spot. It must have been your sensitive spot!"

Really you are a true butthole aren't you? Your immediate response is, once again, attacking the people who disagree with you. All I did in my previous post was point out what kind of "arguments" you were using, IE insulting anyone who disagree's with you beforehand and having nothing to truly back up your claim, and here you are continueing that trend!

Ok let me ask you a question:
Why do people play games?
People play games for their enjoyment, for the experience. So the whole "only concern is a good fight" is the entire purpose of the game. And any feature that does not support a good fight is not supporting the game.
So the fact that 2 entire factions do not want to join in shows that the entire feature is bad. It has too few people actively enjoying the feature, and because of that the game becomes lobsided. And in the end 2/3rd of the entire game on Connery are now enjoying their game less because a portion of the VS community on Connery, yes not even the entirety because it's immensely likely that a ton of the VS Connery players hate the system as well, because a portion of the VS community on Connery is doing HIVE's.

So yes, there's all the reason to change it. This isn't a "soft spot", this is the pure logic of good game-design. If less than 2/3rd of your playerbase likes a feature, even worse if more than 2/3rd feel the feature reduces the game's enjoyment, it needs to go. There will always be some elitist person or group that did enjoy it, often because of the exact fact that it ruins other people's enjoyment, but to cater to a tiny portion of the playerbase at the expense of the rest is bad. If the feature wasn't at the expense of the rest of the playerbase it was A-OK, but it is at the expense.

Yes, you can't speak for the whole faction. But look on these forums: cross-server and cross-faction you see the same sentiment, "HIVE's destroy good fights". HIVE's are only fun for the defenders, which is also what you see here often with the PMB builders saying it's heaven because it gives them a huge advantage against overwhelming odds with anyone attacking it saying it's crap because it's an uphill farmfest in favor of the defenders all the way with no way to even the odds until you've basically leveled the PMB already.

You aren't making a good case here.
First of all, you are talking about massive teamwork. You load up an entire platoon into Galaxies and dump them on top of the HIVE base to instantly out-Zerg them. That's already an indication of how difficult it actually is to attack it. In fact you strengthen that by saying that even half a platoon can take on almost an entire faction. Just to remind you: That's 300 players, vs 24. 12,5 to 1 odds. But oh noes, it's so easy...

And really, what does the VS do? Oh yeah it builds HIVE's. And what do the other two factions do? Ignore them, because they don't have the want to organise a complete Galaxy Rush against a HIVE base, and prefer to have their good fights shortened than to waste time on destroying the HIVE's.
Also what if they did destroy the HIVE's? All that would happen is one of three things:
1: Their own faction starts building HIVE's, VS destroys them again and all they've done is buy a little time, time they've also already wasted destroying the HIVE in the first place, so netto no win.
2: The HIVE core expires, and VS takes it up again. This is probably the best case scenario, because it takes the longest before a HIVE is up and running again.
3: Their own faction starts building HIVE's, and wins the continent. This is again a bad thing for that team because they don't want HIVE's to lock the continent in the first place, even if it's their own faction doing the locking. Most of the fun in the game isn't in locking the continent, but how you got there. And HIVE's are only enjoyable for a teeny tiny portion of the players in the game and even reduce the enjoyment for everyone else.

"It's pretty rare to win on HIVE's alone". Really? You think that's an argument? You have to be warpgated before territory doesn't count anymore and the rest is something every faction accumulates over the course of a continent lock. It's practically unavoidable. The point isn't that HIVE's "lock continents alone", the point is that HIVE's speed up the capture of a continent through gameplay that's not enjoyable and prevents things like last-stands because it doesn't help. In the past you could actively try to crush an opposing faction that was about to win and remove their VP's, then keep the fight going for hours. That's only a temporary measure with HIVE's in play, which is why no one does those fun last-stand battles anymore.

And let's throw in one last stereotype before we leave eh? Couldn't resist it? Seriously you should dig a pit and be deeply ashamed in it because you are spouting stereotypes and trying to discredit everyone constantly without any thought of an actual argument to defend your case.

The only case I'm making is I don't think it's the problem many make it out to be.

You're taking far too much of this personal, random stranger on the internet. Also, you might want to see a doctor about the toxic levels of hyperbole oozing out of your post.

No that's not the only case you are making. You have just about two or three sentences across several posts that state "It's interesting" or "It's not a problem", and the rest is how terribly inferior anyone with a different opinion than you might be. For gods sake look at your first post! It's one sentence "it's interesting" and then the rest is completely dedicated to "anyone who disagree's is <numerous bad things>".

And way to go Morpholine! You once again try to discredit someone, rather than make an actual case for yourself! I am not taking this too personal, I'm pointing out where you are a butthat and where your version of what's fun clashes with the rest of the game.
Also the fact that you think it's hyperbole shows how completely disconnected you are from the actual subject. You play it from one point of view, without any regard for that of someone else's. Well you have some regard, and it all comes down to "you disagree with me you must be dumb!".

Please see a doctor yourself you hypocrite.

Off- topic, but relevant:

Versus

At no point was anything I said in my first post directed at anyone in particular, yet you appear to have taken it as if I was insulting you personally. I apologize if I was so inadvertently accurate in describing your preferred play style in derogatory terms that you felt it was aimed at you. I had no malice toward anyone in particular when writing that post. I, at least, have refrained from targeted direct insults.

ON-Topic:

Prior to construction, "good fights" were prematurely ended when a random alert ended and flipped the continent to the winners. Before that, continents flipped when one faction captured a mere 65% of the territory. Prior to THAT, we all played on Indar 24/7 because it took somewhere near 95% territory to capture it, and unless one faction had huge global population to just steamroll the other two, it was largely impossible. And that's ignoring the "it's Indar" disincentive to lock it in the first place.

My point is, since very shortly after release the devs realized without some form of artificial timing agent to cause maps to rotate, Planetside would become 24/7 Indar T. So they created that agent, and the further tweaked iterations of it. Frankly, the game NEEDS this in order to stay healthy and not become some weird iteration of a TF2 2Fort server.

It is my opinion that we're at a good place with how frequently maps rotate under the current system, as a motivated and marginally coordinated faction can take actions to either shorten or lengthen that timer, as desired. It is ENTIRELY the collective fault of the two other factions if they ignore one or more of the means to flip the continent for long enough to hasten that timer.

Were the devs to follow your apparent desire to remove Hive VP generation altogether (with no other changes), several things would happen as a result. First, the construction system would become effectively pointless, barring small niche and novelty things like the OS. Second, it would take longer to flip the map, as it would likely take between 3 and 4 alerts (assuming equal-ish empire populations and performance) to award the necessary VP to one empire to take the continent.

So, in essence, all we're disagreeing about is how long that continent flip timer should be. It is my opinion that the average time is fine. Yours clearly differs.

Again, the onus of combating the efforts of an empire to "win" a continent (using a captured continent as a definition for that condition), whatever route they pursue to achieve it, is ENTIRELY on the other two factions' population. If they choose to ignore hives, it's really no different than choosing to ignore a double warpgate touch.

And if we've come to the point where a single platoon is really "massive coordination" then this really is a dead game.

Indar's bases (like the Crown) lost a lot of their defensive capabilities.
Hell, every base on each map has.
So the cap time on bases, isn't even close to the older times - Indar ain't the longest thing to cap all that often.

However, Hives a few issues as I said, and as Demigan has said.

You put a Hive, it stands for any time at all , it builds progress.
You lose a Hive, that progress is still there. You can't be overtaken unless someone Hives for longer.
You can not lose that progress, which is to a VP that can't be lost - Lattice needs you to warpgate the enemy for 2 VPs like that.
A Hive can do it infinite times, without having more land mass to defended.

So it goes from Land control to a waiting game.
In order to delay this waiting game, you must abandon the lattice to attack a PMB as you need to have 2x or 3x their numbers to begin a siege, you then must destroy the Hive - followed by either building a PMB yourself to then Hive, or it expires and they rebuild their Hive.
While you siege, the Side that Hived, can put their entire force into the Lattice while waiting for Hive VPs, allowing them to easily overpop fights.
That's Wildcard in a nutshell - Hive, overpop, Hive, Overpop. Resistance found - retreat to warpgate.

So any time spent besieging one of multiple hives, is time gained towards permanent VPs.
That's more than anyone on the Lattice can achieve - They have to defend each base, which expands, only warpgating grants perm VPs , Their time isn't making irremove-able progress.
That's only for Hives.

That you see is the grand issue here; Hives are more time efficient, more defensive, and more rewarding than the actual main game.
Build a Hive, and you only go further to wining - Lose the Hive or not, you keep your VPs, and progress.
Attack \ Defend a Lattice base, and you might have a VP, but only if you hold those bases.

An hour for a Hive, is progress & VPs regardless of what happens, or how long after.
An hour for Lattice, and even if you capture half the map, only if you keep it will you retain it for any period of time.

A Hive requires platoons to engage, and if a Platoon defends it - What exactly can attack it?
All the while, the platoon that built it, can attack the lattice with full force, gaining VPs regardless if the lattice base holds.
Stalled on the Lattice, means no further progress.
Stalled on Hives, is only for the opponent, where the Hive gains progress.

Only an idiot builds a Hive before defenses.
However, whomever builds one first, gets a head-start on the entire map.
If they keep their Hives up for any period longer than the others, nothing but them being Hive-less for just as long can prevent them from having More VPs.
So if they place 3-5 hives at once, this is not only faster, but also means unless all die at once, they make progress rapidly to a VP.
Then the cycle begins again, by the Hivers taking inactive cores, or assaulting hives since ignoring lattice anyway..
Until Victory by Hives, with land grabs only to finish it off.

Only Hives allow a faction to be warp-gated, and retain 15 VPs, which they can only gain more VPs at that point.
Which is insanity.
Land Control, yet a Faction can hive hours prior, gaining perm VPs that the Lattice only grants for warpgating.
Only with Hives can the lead faction have no territory, but have the most VPs.

Like what is this system?
Hives are easier to defend than Lattice.
Grant infinitely more VPs than any amount of Lattice bases.
Can only gain more Progress & VPs.
Defenders of Hives, have access to self-repair modules, Artificial Intelligence modules to automate turrets, 'shields' against aircraft, spawn points that can be used map-wide, alarm systems that prevent any stealth, Vehicle pads, Aircraft pads, ammunition depots.
A PMB let alone Hive base, has more tools, access, and support systems for the defense than any Lattice base.
The thing even explodes destroying most likely the killers of the Hive.

A Lattice base, might have a vehicle terminal.
Some have air-pads & air terminals.
Most have scattered Infantry terminals outside of a spawn room.
None have Skyshields, None have Alarms, and none have automated Turrets.
Hell, Lattice bases are stuck with a limited number of Turrets - And often lack AA, AV, or AI turrets, holding one or two types.
Lattice bases have choke points for the Defenders, and limited reinforcement range.
They don't have sunderer garages for allies.

The difference between you and me: I insult people based on their disrespect. While you act all "oh my I'm sophisticated" or whatever you are trying to do, you are constantly insulting and discrediting everyone who disagree's with you.

Because two can play that game:

Damn, from the first post all I had to do was remove the first sentence and one in the middle, the rest is nothing more than "well they don't want good fights" (that's the mildest one) and going all the way to simply saying that anyone who disagree's is a farmer/likes specific repetition battles (which you are doing just as much with your focus on HIVE's and singular tactics to defeat them and build your own bases)/they will personally attack you.
And incidentally, I didn't personally attack you. I called you names, but only after I pointed out what you were doing and giving that a name.

Let's look at your next post:

Well that's better! For a given amount of "better". You've only insulted and denigrated anyone who disagree's with you with half of this post!

See what I mean? You probably don't, but while you don't use actual insults you are still insulting. And ofcourse it's easy to do that. I can do that kind of stuff as well. I can say you don't want the game to have good fights for everyone, just good fights for yourself and you are willing to troll and kill the fun for everyone else while you are at it. I could call you worthless, that's not a swearword either eh? So according to your reasoning I'm not insulting! Or I can just call you an ****** based on the things I point out you are doing. Just because one contains a swearword doesn't mean the one without a swearword wasn't insulting, denigrating or aimed to discredit someone.

"Well I didn't say anything in particular. I just said that anyone who disagree's with me wants specific things that I've just painted in a very bad light".
And then you continue with your charade of insults. "Oh you apologize..." and immediately continue to say that you described my preferred playstyle, which you know nothing about and isn't even close to anything you've described so far. You have malice, you haev all the malice in the world, and you are the type of fornicationtwad that will hide behind semantics to say it wasn't him.

No, good fights happened because of the alerts. People pushed, people organized, they would strategise what place to attack and prevent another faction from winning, they would do last-ditch attacks to wrestle a win away in the last moment, the entire server joined in and actively fought as hard as they could to capture it. People even alerted their friends so they would come online and join the fight.

Does that happen anymore? Not really. Why bother if less than 1/12th of the population can earn almost as many VP's as the entirety of the rest of the faction, through a passive playstyle, and these VP's are far more permanent and can't be reset like most VP's you'll earn normally. Even if players did organise those last-ditch attempts to reduce another faction's VP's by taking territory there's just going to be a HIVE somewhere ticking away. HIVE's have destroyed good fights, destroyed the want or need to do such attacks.

"A mere 65% of territory". First of all, that means you've doubled your territory on the continent. Second of all it was a clear goal that people could work toward/prevent from happening. And thirdly prior to that continents didn't even lock and people could pick the continent they wanted to play on. And apparently that was mostly Indar.

Even if it was 24/7 Indar it wouldn't even be close to a TF2 2Fort server. But apparently someone hit a soft spot with you there because you can't let it go can you? You must be terrible at those maps, incapable of fighting a fair and equal fight and having to fight on uneven maps in favor of you to get anything done.

(see how easy it is to insult someone without using swearwords? This is the exact same you've been doing all the time now).

And while your opinion does count, when it comes to gameplay and game design people have pointed out that regardless of some people's opinion, the current system is not supporting the rest of the game and causing bad effects for more than 2/3rd of the playerbase.

...
Here I'll quote my reaction to the OP:

My very first sentence there already begins with what would happen if we simply removed HIVE VP generation. So I created 5 idea's that would either improve HIVE's and the way they stand in the game or remove VP's and give viable alternatives so that PMB's are still useful in the metagame and more enjoyable for the playerbase.

Ofcourse, rather than actually read that stuff which is practically the opposite of what you blame me of doing, you have to get personal again! Because why would I even expect you to do anything else than try and discredit and denigrate anyone who disagrees with you?

No that's not it. If you had bothered to read anything, you would have noticed that the length of time does not matter in this case. What matters is how continents lock. Everything that I've posted was about that, but ofcourse why would you even bother to read that stuff eh? Is your reading comprehension broken or did you purposefully ignore everything?

Again: The problem with HIVE's isn't that they put a timer on how long a continent will remain open. If that was a problem I might just as well have asked for higher VP requirements to lock or Alerts and/or HIVE's to have reduced VP payout rather than removing HIVE VP generation altogether, problem solved! But that wasn't what I asked for. What I asked for was a different way of handling how a continent locks, because the current way is anticlimactic and the way HIVE's generate VP's means people don't think it's worth the bother anymore to fight their butts off and reduce some enemy VP's with territory capture, because the HIVE's will just generate steadily more and you can at best halt them for a while.

No it isn't. Game design is what it's about, and if more than 2/3rd of the population experience negative effects from a game feature, especially because it makes another faction win because they have the largest niche population to use it, then it needs to go. Hell even a large portion of the players on your own faction hate winning that way. That's saying something.

And thanks to people like you, we'll be getting to a dead game!

Hives contribute to victory points.

If you don't like it, destroy them. If your team cannot destroy them, then your team will lose that part of the contest.

In a butt-kicking contest sometimes one gets their butt kicked. One can deal with it, or publicly humiliate themselves by rationalization.

personaly i can understand were people come from with how hives are currently implemented .. so changes to hives and the VP system are definetively needed imo ...
because other than losing bonusvp for controling most or all hives what setback is there other than a temporal inaccesibility to a lost core ? none realy ... and to be absolutely honest closing out a continentlock with a last ditch hive that merely boosts the unified vp generation feels cheap ...
when i think of hives then i imagine forcing the enemy to come to you bringing the fight to a desired place ... i like pmb's because they involve blowing much more stuff up than with capturing latice bases imo ... someone has a signature of "we need more explosions" imho pmb's fullfill just that .. i love the chaos that happens when there is a big fight involving pmb's and that to me is were the game is at its most enjoyable ... laticebases most of the time end up in pure inhouse infantryfights and yes i understand that probably most people favor that but this is not what i enjoy the most just going from base to base with a back and forth loop then rince and repeat (yea at sometime everything might get repetitive in some way) ... there is definetively a advantage in having a pmb as a stagingground or fort for a laticebase but imo those fights don't happen often from my experience and such pmb's once the fight is over just get abandoned without further involvement .. it's easier to pump out sundies to initiate a fight on any base and go to the next than to set up a stagingbase after you captured a laticebase .. and eventualy it may take longer to set up a pmb than to capture a laticebase ... at worst pmb's end up like a maginotline being entirely ignored .. so this is were hives come into play which on paper allow for imo intresting attackstrategies as a fullfrontal assault is not always nesseccary, it IS possible to bust a hive with a small force you just need to know how to engage a hivepmb ... but the current system also allows for too significant exploits such as building close to a out-of-bounce area or places that are way too difficult to reach and only allow for limited ways of engagement this needs to be changed as well as the afformentioned way of how vp's are gained through hives with the possibilty of actual loss than just a impeedment of definitive progression ...

I still think that the best way to balance HIVEs is to cap each one at a maximum of 2 VPs each, and have those VPs be destroyed if the HIVE is destroyed. That way, you cannot cap continents solely with HIVEs, and you'll need to destroy other empire HIVEs to make more VPs available. In addition, you'll need to defend your HIVEs to keep what you've earned, rather than ignoring them and making permanent progress unless the enemy instakills every HIVE you put up.