I thought lock continent would be a good thing!

Yet there are people around saying that this is great meta and that we finally have something to fight for...

Unfortunately, if players were able to choose between al 4 continents, battles would simply be too spread out. Remeber that this game promises "Massive Combat on an Epic Scale", not "kinda like BF4 but a tad bigger".

There absolutely needs to be a way to concentrate players to create those huge fights that Planetside 2 promises, and that are also its biggest selling point, in addition to preventing ghostcapping on unoccupied continents.

Freedom of choice is a beautiful thing, but players need to be funneled and guided to play so that the game works, while still having a good degree of freedom of action. The problem is, where do you draw the line. Exaggerate in guiding the player, and you will find yourself with overlinear, overscripted, cutscene-riddled gameplay a la COD. Don't guide the player at all, and you will find yourself with a buggy game where everyone escapes the map and abuses weapons and mechanics to consistently break the game in all ways possible. A balance must be found. Continent locking is a step towards finding that balance. Hopefully new updates with better, original and better-honed mechanics will help finding that balance even more.

I'm pretty sure that's a false dichotomy.

How would I defend it? As soon as the alert pops up, that continent is destined to be locked. If I fight heroically and somehow overcome massive underpop issues and win the alert, guess what, the continent still locks and I am unable to play on it.

All this mechanic does is drive away players and all the community does is tell them to kick off if they don't like it. It's killing the game.

Some magnifcent battles on Woodman at the moment - across 2 continents with Hossin and Amerish locked.

The continent locking has given factions something to REALLY fight for. Some really hardcore and committed struggles going on.

GREAT STUFF!

It's not a dichotomy. As I said, a balance needs to be found.

I like the continent locking, it gets those losers off indar for once in their life and play on the other continents, I do think Esamir and Indar need a revisit considering Amerish and Hossin both have had reworked outpost designs that are much more fun than what is available on esamir's concentration camps or indar's nothing but basic poop outpost designs.

The thing is no one ever leaves indar though, thus making the other continents barren because otherwise its all ghost capping, no one wants to be on an empty playing field with small battles, so unless we had continent locking to force people to go elsewhere, they'd always go to indar because thats where everyone just goes.

No one is gonna sit on amerish and wait for people to show up for a fight to begin, its like getting a lobby in a multiplayer game going, if you are there alone no one joins you they'll just go to the server already with people, it isn't that indar is such an amazing continent and no one likes the others, its simply because no one ever leaves indar so everyone has to be there to play planetside 2.

Hmm - i'm not convinced to be honest, i've played since the locking was introduced and overall I have to say that i'm just NOT having as much fun.

The largest population has an significant edge on winning a continent - and that remains on whatever continent(s) are left to be locked; for me that means NC dominate (this will vary with server). At least previously, many NC would go and chase an alert leaving a more balanced battleground.

So I've been forced to play predominantly on Hossin - and, it is very pretty - but not great for vehicles and feels somewhat claustrophobic. I'm not overly keen on the haze either. I just prefer more open terrain.

So here I am on a Saturday night with an hour or two to spare and i'm in the forums instead. Not a good sign.

I see that many people are glad that they are no longer 'forced' to play on Indar - but - I LIKE Indar, yet I have no way of playing on it right now due to constant locks; instead I'M being forced to play elsewhere presumably for the gratification of players who want something different. Fair enough - I hope they are having fun.

Problem is - i'm not playing at all - and that surely isn't a desirable outcome for anyone; especially myself.

I don't think you appreciate or even understand what the point of culling Fog is...

its to force people to play hossin which in turn has forced me to stop playing almost all together enjoy your cod map kids ill come back in a year when the launch a non arena style map or fix content locking. but my bet is the game is dying hossin is pretty much all the info you need to make that statement almost a year late and not done unrefined and full of bugs. the reason being most of the team is working on H1Z1 and they will abandon that if it doesn't get 5 million players like COD welcome to soe land of the good ideas but bad execution and suits ruining everything. oh and anyone who says "oh it takes time to code and make maps." yes it does but ive seen ******* mod groups for other fps games without ******* soe funding do a way better job then this with half the team they do for free mind you and get out with almost no bugs in about 2 months. so yeah not buying that, the fact is they are leaving ps2 to die. i for one went down with ship in ps1 and they got better updates after the game was almost abandoned. have fun gents i wish ya all the best.

and off ps2

Exactly my sentiment.

Yeah, I've been in some great fights (on Cobalt as well as Connery) after the lock was implemented too, and none of them were on Indar. Yay!

I'm not talking about huge zerg-fests either but reasonably sized squad-vs-squad fights. On Esamir and on Amerish mostly since Hossin-fights are more likely to be zerg-fests anyway due to the novelty-factor of it.

Continent locking has greatly diminished the richness of this game. I don't know why you guys pushed for it ( I know why the elites pushed for it, of course). I really never thought it would happen, because I didn't think SOE would ever consider limiting access to PS2's most popular continent (Indar) a good business practice. Indar was the one place you could go to find NC Tank battles. Esimir is ok, although mags are harder to fight because they can get around you easily, and no cover for vanguards. I might like amerish more if the lighting wasn't tinted florescent green. Hossin is exactly what I expected it would be. A DM nightmare with no visibility, and few opportunities to pull a tank. Don't get me wrong, there are good things about it, like all of the cover from and for air, but it is extremely stressful to play on, especially at night. I would like to think that all of this will make NC on Connery really up their organization, but I have played long enough to know that it will most likely just frustrate the team players, and they will 4th faction to VS or TR. Of the two times that I have logged on since the locking was implemented, I have been locked out of Indar, by the VS. On Connery, VS has always been more organized than NC (on average), I really don't think locking the NC out of Indar is going to change that, and it may drive potential customers away from the game.

I'm enjoying the indarside tears, but the people really complaining hardcore, like CL ruined the game make me laugh even harder. 1/4 continents are locked, play on one of the other 3. It's not hard ladies and gentlemen.

They were unable to introduce the system due to the number of warpgates. If you tried building one of these maps yourself using currently functional maps, you would end up with one warpgate too many, or one or two too few. As such, they had to create a minimum of 7 different maps, 5 of which have reached a point in their level design progress which can be considered "functional". Those 5 being Indar, Esamir, Amerish, Hossin, and Nexus. The remaining two are Desolation and Ascension. Nexus, Desolation, and Ascension are not continents, but Battle Islands. Battle Islands in the context of planetside 2 are small maps with two warpgates instead of 3, and can only field two platoons per faction.

Well, that, and they have to figure out how warpgate captures are going to work, as well as get programmers to work on it. And they have to get UI people (which they have a shortage of according to the devs) to make a world map. When you really think about it, it's a lot to do.

I am usually not this harsh but...

you are playing a PC intensive game on a toaster. what do you expect? Upgrade your PC, seriously. Continent locking is a PART of the core gameplay and it is very much needed for this game to have any chance of retaining anyone/be successful

When it's finished ofc .. Just hope there are people left to retain when they finally do ..

At the rate kiddies are complaining on the forums cont lock will be nerfed into non-existance. When (if) that happens I will be among those who uninstall this game and never look back. Kiddies don't want

-Gameplay
-Meta
-Strategy
-Evolution

They want mediocre gameplay with DLC and funny hats. Pathetic

I do vote, I vote with my wallet. Which is also why I'm willing to give SOE 50 bucks if someone can prove to me that they are quitting.

Continent Locking didn't increase player number/concentration as hoped so far, at least not on my low pop server.