I thought lock continent would be a good thing!

There is no winning since it is a persistent world setting. The closest you'll ever be to winning is warp-gating the other factions.

The persistent-world-state of this game seems to be what aggravates most of the CL-opponents since they are unable to be online 24/7 to prevent their little comfort-zone on Indar to always be available to them when they have their prime-time gaming sessions.

Right, so what's your ojective then? Just plain ol' killin' enemies then?

Bases are always an objective. It's what we fight over. The same principle every FPS with a capture-the-flag kind of setting follows. If there were no bases at all, I'd agree with you, at that point, it would be entirely up to the players to set whatever objective they want but alas, that's not the case here.

Also, if there were no objectives to fight over, this game would turn into a stale trench-warfare kind of game with everyone trying to sit at max range to get kills. I mean, why get up close and personal if there's noting to gain from being there?

Sure, capping bases is a temporary victory albeit a more fleeting one. Killing an opponent is even less significant. In fact, just logging in could be considered winning since there's so many things that could go wrong in the process. You could spill out beer in your keyboard and break it or you could bang your toes on the radiator and be unable to play due to either of those circumstances.

Well then there's nothing left for you to do then, is there?

Some players, me included, happen to like the fact that there is an objective to work towards. Tough luck you don't.

That's just my opinion by the way, I am in no way or form trying to insult you. There's simply nothing left to say in this discussion anymore. All has already been said.

Why couldnt they have added an objective to work for that didnt subtract from the game? There are other ways to add things than to change game mechanics.

This game isnt in BETA. Its past the point where you can make changes to core mechanics.

I have already posted suggestions on how they could have made the game much more fun to play than this current supposed and so called meta. And my suggestion wouldnt have divided the players base.

Unless you are a complete troll you cannot deny that losing players is a bad thing. That making divisive changes is bad.

Is it so hard to figure out how to do things that most people will like?

How about we ask SOE to have a login poll asking whether or not CL should stay? Can we get a login poll please?

I'm coming back to this thread after making some earlier complaints here immediately after the CL patch, because I think my position is softening a bit.

First of all (to save you rechecking my posts) my opposition wasn't to CL, it was to the way it has been implemented and specifically perma-locking 2 continents. My problem was that it reduced the type of fight available to a choice between fighting a massive zerg (and by zerg I mean 75%, 25-48 and 48+ pop, resulting in a game of trying to get past a ridiculous spawn camp and then deathmatch a while - if trying to defend), joining your own faction zerg somewhere (same definition, but less action), or just sitting in 48+ v 48+ 50/50 fight which goes on and on with barely any movement of the frontline. That was boring.

I appreciate that the game is marketed with a focus on big fights, but for me I get most enjoyment out of the squad level game and the ability to scale the difficulty of your squads challenge by choosing various degrees of enemy overpop. There was always a large battle somewhere for your platoon if you wanted that, but if you had a small squad you could also always find a fight on Amerish or Easimir pre-patch where there'd always be a 12-24 ghostcapping team (for example) somewhere to take on. I also only really found big fights bearable on Amerish prior to the patch, as Indar and Easimir were often too "choke-pointy" or involved too much vehicle spam, so from maybe the end of beta I started thinking of big fights as clusterf***s and would avoid them if I could (certainly on Indar anyway). My fear that the CL patch would just increase the clusterf***s was realised on first glance post patch, however that's no longer my complaint.

Hossin is a brilliant map for managing fights against zergs, with plenty of room to move, and bases large enough to disperse the zerglings, so it is actually somewhere I can enjoy one of these fights, much like Amerish, and I can't wait to see the final pass of the bases there. Hossin is basically what Indar should have been and if it had, we'd probably not have ended up with so many farmers in the game, and have had so many overwhelmed noobs leave the game. We currently have Hossinside on all servers I play on regularly though, where the 2nd continent is barely contested until there's an alert. It is still contested eventually, and very rarely by my faction, so I can still find those small or medium sized squads to try and take on, but a problem occurs as a result of alerts.

To use Ceres as an example, when an alert hits the NC and TR zerg the alert continent while VS fail badly at trying to lock the semi-deserted Hossin with a big pop advantage (although tonight I think they managed to hit 80% territory by the time the alert ended - a record I think for them). There are some VS who move over to the alert continent though (normally around around 20% of the continent pop), and we get some good fights, kills, and XP while underpopped, but for the NC and TR they are just rolling bases with 75% pop, and that must suck for the individuals in those platoons. With VS doing exactly the same on Hossin, for the first time you can honestly look at the map and say that EVERYONE zergs, and for me it beggars belief that players allow this to happen. I can avoid the boredom because I know better, but how on earth are we to ever boost numbers in this game if that's the mentality amongst the playerbase! Woodman is the same (just with a different faction split), and I suspect the other servers are as well. If capping a base with 75-100% pop was fun, we'd be talking about server splits and not merges this past couple of weeks. Now that's not a problem with CL per se, it's a problem with player behavior and as such it's fixable by us, the playerbase, however I'm drifting off topic....

The problem with CL is right after an alert, when the new continent unlocks and everyone is dumped onto Hossin. The ESF ghostcappers flock to the new continent, and it takes about an hour before the small and medium squad types show up in any kind of numbers which would present the opportunity of a decent fight somewhere there (maybe not quite an hour at prime time - but normally at prime time there's an alert anyway). Hossin becomes a total zerg fest with everyone there fighting in a 25-48 or 48+, and while it's a good map for it (in many places), the choice of fight is just not there. It's large scale game or nothing for about an hour or so. You then get a good small and medium scale game develop for a short while until the next alert which restarts the cycle.

So anyway, in short the problem is not actually locking 2 continents, it's the frequency of locks caused by alerts. The "meta" is not really a meta because you cannot realistically defend against a lock when you're faction is badly outnumbered and the only condition for the lock is an alert victory. You could defend against a lock and create "alamo" type scenarios if alerts did not lock continents (which would put a lot of the meta loving "we don't care if we zerg" types into one big fight where there was an actual purpose), and so if there was one thing I wish they'd revert, it's this alert locking nonsense. You can't have this without three continents to work with though, because otherwise you'd very rarely unlock one of the 2 locked continents. I don't want to see a return to Indarside, so I suppose they could add something which would detect when a continent is being overly contested, and when this occurs, give us the continent locking alert (but only then). This would allow those who like their big fights to constantly find them, and still keep the small and medium game alive to a certain extent.

I love the persistent world aspect of this game. What bothers me about CL is that it creates an artificial lack of persistence. As far as the comfort zone thingy is concerned, personally I play all over, although I will admit I'm not too fond of Hossin, yet. I just like to choose where I play.

Well, while killing enemies is fun, what really draws me to this game is the choice to engage it whichever way I see fit. Sometimes it's fun to run with the outfit as part of a zerg. Other times it's fun just to hook up with a squad or even play solo. The sense of advancement gained from acquiring new equipment or rank is also a big draw. What isn't a big draw is logging on and finding out that through no choice of my own I've been locked out of an entire continent.

As far as objectives go. After the first week of hitting the live servers, once the novelty wears off, playing Planetside with the continental lattice isn't going to feel any different that it did before. It's still going to be all about temporarily trading places with the other guy. Personally I don't have a problem with that. Planetside is all about process, not end result. I do have a problem with a game mechanic that tries to facilitate the illusion of purpose by taking away individual options and amplifying the effects of pop imbalance and the fourth faction.

I was kind of trying to keep the conversation about things within game that the game developers had control over. Also, how did you know I spilled beer on my keyboard? Did you hack my webcam

Actually, here, I think we both want the same thing, the illusion of purpose. We just disagree about how to get there.

This Thread has really gone off the deep end.

shame that we are finally having discussions after 35+ pages of silks ranting.


Also this thread has summoned the Chaos Warp into forumside which is getting worse everyday.

Hey, it's you guys who caused the mystical disappearance of entire continents. I think the Inquisition should be informed.

The Inquisition is the one on control of the continents in the first place.

Never ending exterminatus. Now that is a scary thought.

But thanks to nanites your statement is probably correct.


Also the Vanu aren't dead, they are just watching.

In this case, CL will act as both the stick and the carrot to motivate people. I agree with most of the others that the current way, with alerts locking continents to the left and right, isn't a good solution. But at least I accept it for what it is, a temporary solution until they roll out their full plan. A temporary solution which, by the way, has created more interesting fights in more interesting places.

You've posted suggestions? Where? All I've read from you is childish and snyde comments about how anybody who tries to explain the situation with "Indarside" must be joking or that you simply disagree with what they are saying. I actually went back and read all your posts from the first page to somewhere around page thirty before posting any of this, just to see if there was something I missed.

In reality, all you've done is put your own personal preferences above anybody elses, claiming that our views and preferences really can't be true or something to that extent. People have tried to explain to you, on several occasions, how and why there were no big fights on the other continents. Each and every one of those explanations has been met with a shrug and a "I disagree" basically. What's there to disagree about? Plenty of people, myself included, has told you, for a fact, why they've played on Indar despite their strong dislikes for that particular map.

Link to your suggestion please?

But you see, that's the thing, I have no proof that more players are actually leaving than there are players coming back because of this update and neither do you.

In fact, there has been more large battles across most continents during prime-time on the servers I've checked since the update than there were before. But you wouldn't know that..

You also go on calling those of us who like CL a "very vocal minority" while there's clearly at least as many (or few since we're talking minority here) who are as vocal as yourself in opposing CL.

How do you mean?

Sure, I will (and have) agree that the current system isn't perfect but continental locking the way it is supposed to work down the line looks bloody great to be honest.

No more random three-ways around a base which doesn't even matter to the faction that is currently holding it (because every area around it has already been capped by either of the other factions).

The overpopped faction will be the only faction really involved in a two-front war if they are really as overpopped as people suspect. The other two factions will have to fight them to push them out of their continent.

Sounds bloody awesome.

That's how it will end up when they implement CL the way they plan it anyway.

How will your choice of location change at all when they roll out the final implementation of CL? If your faction performs poorly while you're not online, you're even less likely to have any choices as to where exactly to fight.

Yep, I hacked your webcam-terminal.

I'll agree to that.

He isn't saying your preference for small fights is wrong. You are perfectly entitled to that opinion, many other people agree with you. However, like he said this game is designed to give the player FPS fights on a massive scale. Their slogan is "Size always matters". That should clue you in to how the developers are designing the game and what direction they are moving in.

A lot of the really small fights and ghostcapping factions were doing early on in the game was a result of the developers not being finished putting in mechanics into the game like lattice.

So if you haven't realized by now and won't see what SOE plans to do add to this game let me inform you: it is not moving towards catering to smaller fights.

Again, you are NOT wrong for liking this. He does make a completely logical point though. There are hundreds of FPS games that are specifically designed for small/medium even fights. Yet the people who enjoy this type of FPS for some reason come to play PS2 and then complain about the lack of small fights, when this game offers massive fights and directly advertises that fact. Does it not then seem logical then not to complain about this fact?

We must not forget the main advantage of PS2 over all those other small fight FPS. PS2 is F2P.

So it is completely logical that people that plays COD or BF want PS2 to be the type of game they like, for free.

What I dont understand is how SOE expects to make money of this.

"Massive Scale Warfare" should mean more than just a few 48v48 battles on a continent, it should be big fights, medium fights, small fights where big numbers are overkill and a waste. Big battles are great at major facilities but unrewarding and frustrating at most smaller bases. You say that small fights were a result of the game being unfinished? I say it was designed that way specifically when you looked at the maps and locations of bases with 3 or 4 cap points with large buildings and points spread about over larger areas, or 1 cap point with a building or two plus a little spawn room. Guess which were designed from the start for large fights or small fights.

Finished mechanics like adjacency influence and # of people on a cap were in the game to help balance against smaller numbers of people being able to push too hard into enemy territory or ghostcap, but instead of being strengthened they were removed because of complaints and replaced with flat cap times that made capping faster and the ghostcapping problems worse.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/july-continent-locking-alerts.192298/

might want to read that.

Cont locking is so damn pointless. All it serves to do is essentially remove a portion of the game from even being playable until......whenever the hell the cont unlocks again.

And ****, its not likt there is any point to it. Its easy to cont lock the entire game, and hell, make the whole game unplayable. Simply get 4 large clans together of each faction and simply go around and ghostcap late at night.....players wake up early morning to see all 4 conts locked....game....totally and completely unplayable....


TLDR: REMOVE CONT LOCK!!!!

You can't lock 4 at once, the max is 2.

But you are right about the late-night ghostcapping. That's currently quite the issue. It's too easy to lock a continent right now. I have seen Indar lock and unlock 4 times in single day so far. (Not today, but earlier in the week).

Gonna go ahead and lock this one up as it's run its course.
Please make sure all posts made are constructive, polite and courteous, as per our Forum Guidelines.
-04