Next Live Update news and status

Agreed.

I read it perfectly well the first time - I may not have made it clear that I'm a software developer, and what wasn't in the statement was at least implied to those of us who write software for a living: his statement said nothing about how many they can work on *concurrently*. Obviously, they can work on more than one concurrently, given the current (albeit slow) rate of content delivery.

My apologies for any perceived offense - I'm as disappointed as the next guy about how long it takes to get content out the door.

Thanks Higby for posting this on our forums! We really appreciate it dude, you rock! You the man Higby

<3

No offense.
Personally I haven't seen any evidence that SOE can walk and chew gum at the same time. I think Higby's estimates per base is with all hands on deck.
Waiting for them to prove us all wrong. So far we haven't seen it.

I'd also like to see the next continent have far less bases. It cuts down on development time and gives fights more room to develop between bases instead of just at them, which is really important for armor especially. Just give it a shot with the next continent, if it doesn't work you can always sprinkle some outposts onto it afterwards.

That said I'm really looking forward to trying Hossin and continent locking!

Isn't it sad how Higby isn't gonna discuss in this post, from what we have seen so far? 80 BASES ARE OVERKILL, THE GAME DOESN'T NEED THAT MUCH!

I think Hossin has 82 to be exact. Anyway SOE thinks many bases is a good thing. Both Esamir and Amerish update had new bases added to them.

I agree with everyone else on the less outposts/bases stance. I really wish they didn't add so many damn outposts/bases to each continent. They should have half the amount of the current bases on each continent with more terrain. As others have said, this would lead to more interesting battles between bases, cut down development time, more bases feel more unique, and vehicles feel more important for infantry transportation. That way we can have a few more continents with less development time. Sometimes, especially I feel in this case, the expression "less is more" applies.

And it will also increase performance. Too bad the devs won't listen.

I think if people had been told to wait another 3 months for Hossin, they'd stop playing altogether, so you've done right in that regard; you don't just put something off forever on a whim, because user feedback is actually important to the successful tweaking of any game long-term, especially in an MMO...

As for other continents being "finished", if SOE are willing to give me limited access to the editor, I am a freelance Level Designer and would be open to doing some work (in exchange for Station Cash, as I live overseas) to fix unplayable parts of bases, still present on Amerish and Esamir.

Bah, bring back the old towers inbetween the bases for additional fun... PS1 style! Haha!

1. More space doesn't mean anything anymore you can just insta port or insta deploy anywhere you want these days. Unless they remove both of those features, Vehicles in general (especially the galaxy) are basically useless.

2. 30 per continent is too few, you need a minimum of 50. 80 is nice provides a lot of options, but is probably too many considering the small dev team working on it.

3. I would also rather see 8-12 continents, maybe even other planets, Faction skinned Vehicles and weapons (No more common pool crap) Then 80 outposts on a continent.

According to your math 1 outpost takes basically a month. So by saving yourself from making 30 outpost per continent, your saving yourself 2 1/2 years of development time. Which could be spent on:

* Vehicles and Faction Skins
* Weapons and faction Skins
* An entire other continent
* Upgrades tot he Galaxy, or a new Version of Vehicle transport airship.
* Actual outfit bases, designed by Outfit leaders. (I am positive you can put a modular construction system in place to allow this, plenty of other games do it).

Lots of stuff, There's having enough outposts to make it work and be good, and then there is having too much and wasting time, that is better spent on other development features which make the game more enjoyable (such as the above).

To be honest, I'm not sure if you learned enough about battle flows and massive warfare if you still insist on having 80 tiny outposts on a single continent... And continent locking could be done better, with better mechanics, instead of just "cap 94%/win alert".

Apart from this little doubt, however, I am very happy that these features have finally been completed. Live servers will certainly provide better info on how people will play the new continent, so I support the decision of releasing the continent early.

And continent locking, as primitive and rushed as it may be, is still a huge step forward in creating more focused battles.

But I have one little problem with locking right now.

You know what's gonna happen, right?

Hossin and Amerish will be quickly locked by the first ****tard ghostcapping squad that lolcaps everything at 4 AM, then the game will be Indarside/Esamirside all over again.

My solution to this would simply be allowing all four continents to be locked. Then, once all 4 continents are locked, one of them (picked at random, or the oldest-locked one) experiences a "Fatal Control Matrix Crash": all its outposts become neutral, Warp Gates are reactivated and the continent is unlocked.

TL;DR: All good, but the current continent locking mechanic will not help to fix Indarside 2 much.

And yet the best large-scale battles are always the ones happening in large open areas (Indar Excavation VS Quartz Ridge anyone?).

More space does not mean more logistics required but it does mean more vehicles and air support required to push to the enemy base, and that's why we should have less outposts and more large areas where we can roll our tanks and aircraft.

A medium sized, low base density map would bring even MORE diversity to the current maps. More medieval fortifications resembling a concentric castle but with added circumference to outer walls open internal space with added walls for more chambers as to emphasize vehicular warfare would be awesome for those tank people, and in addition adding a heavy version of a harasser or even a Anti-Tank flash would bring in people that don't really have someone to pilot their vehicles turret.

I like the idea, there's not enough scenarios where a swarm of tanks face another swarm of vehicles as much as swarms of infantry do. Im not saying that that doesn't happen, but if everyone was required to be in a vehicle to be effective.. that would be allot of pewpew.. plus if the base points are left to be unconquerable by vehicles it would force infantry action and its probable that anti tank liberators will see a spike in success.

Medium Size, Low Base Density, Large Walled Fortifications, Vast Geographical Space (Crests, Ridges, Mountains, Plateaus, Tuyas, Faults etc)

Heavier Version of Flash!! (my opinion, but it might **** up the balance stuff)

oh and yes
GJ on hossing PS2 Crew!
cheers

MY BODY IS READY

I agree

Not sure this would happen. I think alerts will control which continents get locked more so than ghost cappers.

I am all for massive battles, but shoving an entire servers population onto one continent would be insane, and not a good insane.

Thank you for hossin and thank you for posting it here and not reddit. I believe the website is banned by the government.

I'm incredibly impressed by Hossin so far, and after reading fully into the details of it I rather like the idea of continent locking just because it forces regular map rotation for much more variety (even if in practice it will only really be triggered ghost-capping and alert victories). Organically rotating warpgates after a continent is unlocked is also genius solution to the everpersistent problem of fights along the same lattice feeling repetitive after a while (looking at you Howling Pass lattice).



My biggest issue so far is that the mechanics of continent locking are not made clear enough in game.

I played post-update before I read the patchnotes and I really had no clue how it worked, when locked continents would be unlocked etc, even after asking around.
Lack of information in game pertaining to these mechanics results in the widespread perception that continents will only be ghost-capped (ie Esamir & Amerish) thus continent locking ultimately takes the game back to square 1 of perpetual Indarside + Hossin.

Many people are also not aware that non-dominating alert wins (specifically on Indar) result in a continent lock.
This is evident by the many cross-factional discussions/arguments on most servers about how to intentionally lock Indar.

The last issue is that it is not immediately clear (without witnessing a continent lock as it happens) whether ownership bonuses are reset when a continent is unlocked or when it is locked by a different faction.
ie I've seen arguments over whether faction A's ownership bonus of Amerish can be removed without Faction B locking Esamir, forcing Indar to become unlocked etc.