This is somthing i have seen brought up many times across the board. I think if a base once caped had a *15 min* cooldown before the points (not gens) reactivate it would improve gamplay. This is my logic. 1, It would mean if pushing a cap through with your squad fighting off a heavy counterattack atleast if you make it to the flip it was worth somthing, currently all it does it provide exp for the incoming zerg. 2, I somtimes feel as im sure many others do that the game loses meaning when you find yourself fighting over the same 2-3 bases over and over as they are recaped as soon as you leave. 3, If bases became locked for a period after a cap it would reduce the number of avenues of attack and thus encourage bigger fights and more stratiegic play, eg: that base gets off cooldown in 5 mins lets send a squad in to prep it ready as there is no defence. I am pretty sure im not alone on this but this is far from a water tight play so any and all feedback is welcomed. ps: 15 mins was a random figure
This would reward Zergs, who cap and then leave without reinforcing or sweeping the area for stragglers. There is something to securing your base before you leave, having everything repaired, so people like me that creep around knowing the base is about to fall, will just wait 3-5 mins until everyone leaves and start blowing up stuff again and capping. Locking would also block any backcapping or flanking from the opposite team, and limit their options. A continent lock for 15 mins or so I wouldnt be against.. Give out some stats on screen as to top player/defender, medals, congrats that sort of thing, then unlock it.
Evansra, i get what you are saying. Losing the base you just capped to 1 inf can be REALLY annoying, BUT i agree with Ent|ty. If you dont want someone to ghost cap, then check the map every 1-2 min or so and respawn to that location as soon as your bar starts to move. Personally thats what i do when im solo. jumping from small base defense to small base defense. Normally its just me and if im lucky only 2-3 of them and i can then blow up their sundy and kill them before they know what happened. great fun.
This is how it was during beta. They removed it by "accident" during one of their patches. However the improvement to battle flow and general player happiness rose like a 90 degree cliff face. As such they never put it back. Basically, the rule here is that players are the locking mechanism. A base is only "locked" when it's entirely under your control and there's no more enemies. If there are still enough enemies to retake the base, you haven't yet earned it, so keep fighting. Same should apply for continent locking when it's introduced.
Fair enough guys, I'm happy to see others view points on this, for one I am all for cont locking, I just find capping to be a bit too fluid at the mo, it might just be the ps1 talking but if the same base changes hands 5+ times in an hour, to me it loses any value to the cap. When it comes to the zerg it will Alwase be there and there will Alwase be people to fix up the bases because there is easy exp in itfor them Entjty- but it is impossible to sweep for people who want to sneak around and back hack because they could be anywhere and only come out after you leave, weather this is an issue related to my idea or a fundamental flaw in the defence gameplay I don't know but with so many buildings and ways in and out of a base it makes clearing it 100% very hard, especially when nobody wants to stay behind due to missing out on the next hack exp.
As Colt said, it was in beta. It was (and felt) artificial as ****. If you really want to lock a base, push through and destroy enemy opposition to remove their link.
instead of a lock on capping, why not put a lock on it being 'instant actionable' for 15 minutes would still allow the flow of battle but with an increase to the reward of capping
I like your objective.. but can't say the cool down is the way to go. Rahther, SOE should 1. modify the map designs to have more road choke points (modified sandbox, if you will) and 2. raise the difficulty of ghost capping so that it becomes less of an issue. If you want to take a base behind enemy lines, better bring at least 6 commandoes. This will create more larger battles, but still allow for/require the strategic manoeuvring of forces. It would also encourage players to play and even prepare for defence. Would also increase the duration of battles.
I do not think a lock is needed...the following is all they would need to do.. I still say to stop the single person caps they need to change the capping mechanic. If you want to cap a base fine,however if the base has a single point that says for example..0/6 then you NEED the full 6 people to actually cap it. Solo you could take it to neutral but you cannot cap unless you have the full number needed. Same with larger bases that have multiple points to cap say A B C and they all have 0/6 needed then you would need 18 players to be able to actually capture the base. This also adds to the idea of teamplay in the game. Plus it will stop the solo person remaining behind to ghost cap the point after a takeover.
I like the idea in principle. However I think you'd have to find a way of stopping the enemy from just taking it back instantly and waiting for the points to open. I dunno whether it's making the shields impassible or something like that. How about making it worth less XP if it's only just flipped? Or maybe increase the gen and point timers so it takes longer to cap to stop folk just ghosting in behind the zerg and giving more time for a resecure? I think the ideal solution is to make a newly flipped base immediately more defensible. Quite how we achieve this I don't know. But I like the idea of a small defensive bonus for capping a base.
They could just say you have to capture every point before a base will flip, so you can't just stack B and C while the defense hold A. Otherwise as soon as you cap, as they still have A it just starts being uncapped immediately. If you hold B and C the progress bar will go up to maximum, but the base won't actually change sides until you capture A as well. This would at least give defenders some sort of choke point to make a last stand. This would mean that attackers would be forced to clear out the majority of defenders to actually cap a base. There will always be the one or two people that hide away and start the re-cap as soon as the attackers leave, but I like that. My favorite tactic is to camp near a destroyed gen/scu just before we lose a base and wait for the inevitable rush of oblivious engineers trying to fix it. Often you'll find that their AMS sundys have packed up and gone, so if you stop them repairing the SCU then they have nowhere to spawn and its very easy to get a counter attack going
There really has to be more of an incentive to defend a base. Many outfits cap and move on to get more certs. I think 4 times the certs with a successful defend and more xp for defending. As I think about it...It could be exploited by a group cooperating on teamspeak and do an uncap and let the other s recap at a quiet base. Tell me if I'm being parnoid.
Lots of great ideas here guys, thanks for the feedback. I can see how a lock could become frustrating, i was also there through beta with all the changes. Im open to any and all ideas on how to make the battle flow better. A big part of the problem is that defending is not rewarding enough, this coupled with the fact your front line of combat can cross 20 bases leaves a situation where it would be very hard to distribute any meaningfull defence. sierrahotel01- i think more buffs to defence exp would help a bit and overall could be exploited just as easily now by similar means, also i agree the fact that once a base is caped everyone moving on to the next without a pause is part of the problem. Patriot- i think choke points for vehicles are a good thing and add a level of strategy to the game overall, would also help give more purpose to the gal and gal drops Stevil- i imagine that would be a move in the right direction, it would also incentivise people making daring pushes into hostile land as it will yield more exp than picking at the front line taking the easy bases. Phyr- This could help move the flow in the right direction. would be a nice way to slow the cap cycle without introducing a hard "lock" Incinerage- Interesting idea, i think it would atleast move things away from lone backhackers droping on the base as you all leave. xxjackalxx- The idea if more people needed to cap a base could improve things and help with ghost hacking but may cause problems during the graveyard shift as it where when server pop is lower. Frostical- its hard to tell how this would play out as we have not had anything similar but im intrigued by this idea, it think it would help with the small to medium fights but could cause problems in huge ones as the defenders could camp a point and turn it into a meat grinder especialy with scatt maxes also im all for your slyle of covert opps/spanner in the works after a cap, i think a line should be made from that to rehacking the base singlehandedly. This is a tricky issue im glad to see so much feedback, my original idea for a lock was just what sprang to mind for me first. some food for thought for all- - How could we make people want to deffend when due to the number of bases in contention at any one time you could end up standing around for half hour or more before anyone turns up. -This is where i thought the locking idea could have helped narrow the number of options, an alternative could be to improve the enemy activity overlay for the map or make it easyer for people to predict the movment of the enemy zerg. -It is possible this is an issue with people not yet becoming accustomed to the game well enough to predict enemy movments accuratly. as people start using *orders chat* attack/deffend missions more and that whole system is fleshed out the problem could resolve itself. -I find it very uncomon for 2 zerg's to actualy meet, offen it ends up with each one rampaging across the map with little to no rsisteance while the oposing zerg does the same to a different portion of the map.
The first time I saw the 'blast' from an amp station after getting flipped, I thought it would kill me if I was close to it in a mosquito. Too bad it actually doesn't do that, take out all the enemy infiltrators and crap hanging around waiting for people to leave so that they can recap.
Yeah I can imagine it might be a bit of a meat grinder at the last control point, but it might give a smaller defending force a chance to actually hold out for an extended period against a larger attacking force just due to the fact that they can focus on fewer approaches and can actually set up turrets etc. Though to be honest, against overwhelming numbers they still wouldn't last long, i can just imagine all the grenade spam!
