Hossin has no contour lines

I'll uninstall if u guys become lazy xD

Become lazy?

I must concur with Synapse on this one. To "become" lazy implies they aren't already. If the devs were in a position to "become" lazy then the single biggest feature to hit PS2 post launch wouldn't have been a continent that was released a year and a half late.

Because 3 entire overhauls including a grand total of something near 240 bases is absolutely no work whatsoever

Didn't say they didn't do ANYTHING, I just said that the single biggest thing to hit the game was a continent that was promised to be out a year and a half ago. And that doesn't exactly put the dev team in a good light.

Would you distinguish between the ground and the tree canopy on such a topographical map?

>Implying that it wasn't delayed with reason.

It would have come out a year and a half ago if not for Lattice and OMFG, both of which were absolutely essential to the game and MUCH better updates than Hossin. Though Hossin is certainly my favorite update, I don't think I'd be half as excited were it with Hex and/or with pre-OMFG performance.

Topography should be a toggle option on the map screen like territory control and hot zones.

I can't see how lattice would delay the map. It's literally just "connect this base to this one, done" Obviously a bit more technical than that but it's hardly something that'd delay the continent a year and a half. Neither should OMFG as that's the coder's job, the artists should have still been working on the map.

A delay I can understand, not a nearly two year delay though. So the fact that **** like the lattice and the performance patches managed to delay a continent by that long just further proves my point of the dev team not exactly being the best.

Hossin was delayed as SOE realized how many problems the maps already had so they had to fix that. Adding cover to all bases, changing towers several times, changing terrain.Then doing the Esamir revamp which was a flop so they had to scrap the prison style idea (which they might have had on Hossin) and come up with something new. They came up with the concrete slab idea and put it on Amerish. Since it was liked they decided to use it on Hossin. Remake all bases again.

Again, that's just further proving my point. The entire community back in beta shouted at SOE to make more defendable bases, that the current base design was garbage. They churned out another two continents using that same garbage base design style. The fact that the continents needed those revamps to begin with is, again, just proving my point. None of that should have ever even happened, esamir should have been fixed before release, as should have amerish and hossin. Indar was the only one that needed to suffer from these problems, problems everyone pointed out to them all through beta and all through launch.

when they did lattice, they overhauled the entire continents...

or do you not remember waiting 3-4 months for each remake? With each new continent showing new base design principles.

Which is why Indar is the most vehicle farmed map. They still hadn't quite gotten the segregation methods quite right. Esamir they just made giant walls, which actually work pretty well TBH.

As I already said, the very fact that any of that even happened is proving my point. This conversation is basically going as follows.

"The devs are incompetent"

"No they're not, they had reasons for why it was delayed"

"What reasons?"

"Mistakes caused by dev incompetence that they had to fix"

See what I mean? Your own arguments are defeating you. Those revamps never should have been needed on any continent other than indar if they had just listened to us back in beta. But they ignored us, steamrolled ahead, and down the road finally realized "oh hey, they were right" and pissed away a year fixing a mistake that never should have happened in the first place.

Yeah, they should have gotten everything absolutely perfect from the start, factoring in all the various ways that people would exploit the game in the future, and having the three branches of combat perfectly balanced from the get go, including features that weren't even in game yet.

I don't know if you were here back in beta, but I was. Not only myself but countless others flat out told soe their bases were too exposed, they got camped by vehicles too easily, they didn't lend themselves well to gameplay. Not everything could have been avoided, and I don't fault them for that. But things like the continent revamps never should have happened. They were told before Esamir even came out that the base design on Indar was garbage and didn't work. We BEGGED for proper, defendable bases. Since you sound like you weren't in the beta you don't understand just how bad the bases were back then. Literally 4 shacks in the middle of a desert with a cap point was the majority of bases on indar. Instead of listening to us and redesigning the bases, they shipped esamir and amerish with the same type of bases.

There's unexpected problems and then there's just straight up incompetence, I don't fault them for the former but I sure as hell do on the latter.

You are incorrect; I was there in beta. I do remember there being bad bases. But nowhere near the majority were bad. I was on both sides of base capturing during beta, and I saw plenty of instances where the defenses held out, where a properly organized team could wreck any vehicles that came towards them. However, a lot of later balancing made weaknesses in bases apparent, something that couldn't be tested because of how the balance was. For example, no one knew how weak bases were to air, just because of how OP the Skyguard was back then, to where pulling air was suicide.

And making defendable bases is an easy thing to do, but that wouldn't make a good fight. They have to make bases that are defendable and attackable at the same time, which is a weird thing to design, especially for a game where attacks can come from any direction, with several very different ways to attack. Other games have less of a problem since they can funnel the players where they want, but not here. I don't expect them to be able to find experts in designing levels on a scale like this. And PS1 doesn't count, due to the large differences between the two games(lack of artillery, much faster TTK, removal of several logistical considerations, etc).

Well if you were here in beta I can't possibly see how you can say the majority of bases weren't god awful. The only defendable bases in the entire game was the crown and biolabs, oddly enough those were also the only locations anyone ever wanted to fight at, funny how that works. Also, balance changes happened before release. We knew how vulnerable bases were to air because before things like skyguards were godly, they were **** and air reigned supreme. Let's not forget when rocketpods first came out and you couldn't even see the sky through the foliage that was ESFs.

We knew the bases were garbage long before Esamir even came out, let alone Amerish. Now yeah, sure, esamir was already in development but that's when you go "wait a minute, the bases on indar are ****, let's change the bases on esamir and amerish before shipping them so we don't have to waste a year down the road doing that very same thing". Also let's not forget that EVERYONE told SOE they were releasing the game months early and that it was far too **** to leave beta.

The delay was caused by the devs going back and fixing past mistakes that never should have happened, that's really all there is to it. You can try to explain it away but the bottom line is the problem was caused by them rushing the game out the door, ignoring their testers, and generally having no bloody clue what the hell they were even doing. I mean it doesn't take hundreds of professional developers to realize that having a base consist of a cap point in the middle of an open field with two wooden outhouses being the only cover is a bad idea in a game with hundreds of players and hundreds of vehicles. And yet despite that being so painfully obvious they did it anyways.

There were a number of defendable bases in the south of Indar. Of note are The Stronghold, where the walls provided the perfect vantage point for HAs to combat vehicles, and Skydock which needed air exclusively to get to. There was also Red Ridge nearby as well, but that was made more vulnerable along with others later on. You also forgot to mention Tech Plants, when they had only a handful of easily spammable entrances. Along with biolabs, those places were typically the last to fall when warpgating factions, if they even fell at all.

I never saw Lolpodders dominating that much during beta. Maybe because they were piloted mostly by noobs back then that they were so easily countered. I'll take your word for it though.

I'll talk about the base thing in my next paragraph, and focus on the "months early" thing. I honestly cannot take it as a valid point that people were telling them they were releasing too early. We have people right now telling SOE they released the game a year too early. Also, 'everyone' is just hyperbole. I saw people arguing from all sides back then. Some said it was too early, some said it was a good time to go, and some were wondering why they hadn't released yet since there weren't any more major changes planned before release.

You argue against having a small base like that, yet I have seen people argue for bases to be downsized to a cap point in a two-house area. The idea being, that as it is now, we have a lot of very large bases right now that are too close together, which doesn't leave a lot of room for large, open field play, especially between vehicles. Some people want some of those bases turned into what are essentially waystations between bases. With this system, they hope that large bases could be made more important, as well as having a better area for vehicles to fight in, with obvious signs that you were either making progress or being pushed back.

They did not ignore testers, they made several changes due to tester feedback. The ones that come to mind quickest are making vehicles unable to cap point, making MAXs unable to cap points, and adding defenses to warpgates.

Rushing the game out the door I already talked about.

Who had a clue what they were doing? Who could have? A persistent world with the potential to have very uneven teams and an infinite number of vehicles, with different groups of people looking for different playstyles all in one base? How could any one have possibly had a clue what to do in a game such as this? Coming from Battlefield, CoD, or Quake wouldn't help, or any other shooter. The closest we had was PS1, but so much was different that it wasn't a simple copy and paste from there. It was obvious from the start that it was going to have to be a learn-along-the way thing. I think they've done a good job of showing how much they have learned from delaying and redoing the maps. The Amerish bases are a good example of that(I haven't played much on Hossin at the moment, so I won't comment there). But don't take this to mean I think they haven't made mistakes. I really wish they had kept the Interlink facility, as it showed they were trying to mesh infantry and land vehicle combat a bit more. It was a shame to see it go.

You keep calling them incompetent. Fine, they didn't know what they were doing from the very start. But for a game with this much scale and freedom, who could have? And would we have been happy with them just leaving the continents as they were instead of trying to fix them? I know I wouldn't have come back if they had kept the same old same old.

The stronghold couldn't really stand up to any strong assault since every single major attack always had a galaxy parked on the mesa behind it and just rained down an endless stream of LAs into the base until it was over-run. Pretty much same deal with the skydock as people would just park a galaxy up there and mass repair it, although that one could see some decent battles if you had enough burster maxes to keep galaxies away. Red ridge wasn't a defendable base at all, dunno where you got that one from, it got over-ran so easily. Also not sure where you got the idea that tech plants were defendable, you'd get a galaxy parked on the roof of EVERY battle and people would stream in like a never ending flood.

You talk as if galaxies didn't render any mildly defendable base pointless, walls and limited entrances don't mean jack if a galaxy just bypasses them. As I said, the only truly defendable bases were the crown and biolabs and they were also the only places anyone wanted to fight, further proving to SOE that the community wanted defendable bases.

Within the first day of release people had HUNDREDS of kills with them. I'm not sure when you joined the beta, or really if you were even ever there as your posts really make me doubt that. But for anyone who was there when rocket pods were introduced they can tell you just how horrible it was. People farmed up enough certs to buy almost every weapon in the first couple of days because rocket pods were so op. They had huge splash radius', massive damage, a single volley could take out an entire squad of infantry or an MBT or anything really.

I frequented the forums pretty hard back then and I can safely say I never saw even one single post say the game was good to go. Literally every single post on the matter was either "it's too early" or some flippant "I don't really care". I remember clearly the day they announced the release date and the forum was absolutely flooded with a mass cry "it's too early", so to say everyone is pretty accurate.

Where have people argued for bases to be nothing but a couple shacks in the desert? Only arguments I've ever seen was to make bases protected against vehicles or remove bases as there were too many. I have never once seen anyone advocate for tiny little outposts as we saw in beta, not even once, so if you could link such posts I'd appreciate it.

They either outright ignored testers or took months to address any issue. It took them, what, like three or four months to address Galaxy AMS. I mean look at more recent history with ZOE maxes taking so long to be fixed. When the devs do listen they take so long to actually act on it that it's just sad. Another example from beta would be rocket pods, people *****ed ENDLESSLY about them and rightfully so and they weren't even close to fixed until right before release. It takes them MONTHS just to adjust some numbers to make things like rocket pods not insanely powerful. That's not a good thing.

Also, stop acting like PS2 is the first of it's kind, there have been several MMOFPS games before, I mean it's planetside TWO after all, there was one that existed before. So maybe they should have learned from past experiences instead of trying to re-invent the wheel. I mean there's a reason why PS1 did things the way it did. There's a reason vehicles required crews and didn't allow hot-swapping and had a lot of restrictions on them. There's a reason logistics were part of the game. There's a reason why repairs took a while. There's a reason why bases were inside, away from vehicles. There's a reason bases were defendable. Yet the devs just threw all of that out the window because they wanted to make their own game, they tried reinventing the wheel and have spent the past two years slowly bringing us closer to PS1 because they realized there's a reason why the wheel is round and not square.

It just really grinds my gears to watch you act like PS2 is the first of it's kind. "How could they have known, they're pioneers!" is basically what you're saying and that's just wrong. They're following in someone elses footsteps but they didn't like following in their footsteps so they went off to make their own without ever stopping to think that maybe there's a reason why the person before them chose this path. That -IS- incompetence, when you willfully ignore things and screw up because of it. Had they just learned from PS1 and other MMOFPS games they would have spent the past two years giving us new content, not fixing mistakes that never should have been made to begin with.

I'll guess we'll just never be in agreement then. We both have conflicting opinions(and that's all this discussion is, opinion) about this, and neither wants to give ground.