[Suggestion] Releasing New Continents Early + Base Building = Good for All

Now, hear me out: this base building system could really do wonders for the game when released and/or complete. That being said, the devs are probably, in their spare time, working on Oshur or Searhus or Iridar or "insert name" continent. Such work as putting in the terrain, bases, lattice, environmental additions and everything takes an undoubtedly massive amount of resources, one of them being time.

As such, devs, how about this: just get the terrain and environments done, make a few essential bases (Biolabs, Amp stations and Tech plants), set up the lattice, and just leave the rest open for us to play with? We can make our own bases while you guys design new, permanent ones for future patches.

That way, we get new continents early, you guys can spread out your workload without having to make delays and go back on promises, and we can fully utilize the base building system to its fullest possibilities.

Thoughts?

We got Hossin early. That worked out fine, right?

i like what youre saying but i think they should just stop at the "a few essential bases" and leave the rest open terrain, so we can have more of a sandbox style continent for the construction system

Hossin had many half finishef bases. OP's means a few finished bases.

Anyway i dont think thrrr will br moew maps. That sacturay thing npt going to be s real msp. Just some strange little place whrrr you log in ot domething likr that.

Forgive me for never having player Planetside 1, and only being a vet of Planetside 2 for about 3 years now. I don't know all the continents, but my point still stands. Give us a continent with, manybe a dozen permanent bases outside of the warp gate (3 biolabs, 3 amp stations, 3 tech plants, and 3 more randoms) and just let us build what we desire in-between those.

agreed. Too much top down design, too much micromanagement, too much inertia, not enough emergent order.

The approach to map sculpting is one of major reasons why the game feels so ******* stale. 1 new cont since the release... lolwut?

Too many bases. Too many bases micromanaged by hand down to the level of individual rocks. Did I mention too many bases with too many meaningless details? No **** it takes ages to reform the map/create new map if you put so much attention to detail, all the while 3/4 of the continent see barely any action either way because lattice/roadblocks.

The devs should churn maps by the dozen (not really but you get the point). Create a reasonably looking terrain template, flatten the **** out of 20 building sites, plop down some walls and 20 prefab buildings (current smurf villages encouraging HE cheese are a nonstarter) with a bit of sense to accomodate the blob sizes, neeeeext!
Churning content on the cheap is doubly important especially when the manpower is really limited.

but for the love of god - don't put these bases in literal holes in the ground like you tend to do. As a sidenote, I'd like to see more stronghold type bases, walled, reasonably elevated yet open and not trapping people inside in a rat maze.

Well, one thing that would certainly help with the base building system is that we could be given sundy garages here or there, and maybe an abandoned building or two, but the fact that we don't need 100 or even 50 bases on one map if can build our own would really help with things.

Exactly. Give us the freedom to shape the game, and give us the tools to do so. That way, not only is the fight between bases almost never the same, we can attract more players (new and old) to the game with fresh content on a more monthly timetable than a yearly one.

I love this idea. Was actually thinking about it earlier. It seems like a win-win all around. The devs have less bases to worry about maintaining/redesigning, it'll be quicker to push out new continents and the players can use the land to create and adapt FOBS as the situation requires (which is what we want).

I really feel the number of outposts should be reduced and the land should open up more between major bases. Give the empires room to breathe.

Honestly i think we have plenty of space already even most of the closer bases can stick an entire biolab between them and those arnt exactly small i dont think more space would be needed unless we had an absurd amount of players.

Well, the distance between some bases is extremely small, and not everyone wants cramped CQC fights in biolabs. Besides, creativity could be rewarded, with certain base designs, while more tricky or requiring more time and patience to make right, could make every base fight feel fresh, challenging and unique, every single time.

Imagine fighting, say, between Howling Pass Checkpoint and Abandoned NS offices, only now, it's between Mao Southern and Howling Pass instead, with Abandoned being, well, abandoned. Anything you can build, anything your allies can build, could be used to push forward or keep the enemy from doing so in such a wide open space.

Now people have a feeling of accomplishment with base-building, and thus fights overall. It's no longer "we pushed and got this base by trapping them in spawn, move onto the next one" or something. Now, it's "yeah, that big wall I made that let our heavies rain death on that enemy tank line and helped our advance? I built that ****." Getting the players more involved in any way, especially this way, could (should) really have people invest more in the game itself, thus creating more content overall.

After all, no game compares to this: a massive MMOFPS the likes of which makes all other FPS seem just so... small. Now, adding in that we could make the game the way we want it, shape it to suit our needs, with these future tools from the devs...

That opens up a whole new way to play, and a whole new way to win.

This sounds awesome. A few of these style continents with bare essentials of tech/amp/bio/warpgate + continent lattice +base construction = dynamic fights with enough variety and players determining the direction to take the fight = win

Plus, with the base construction likely bringing people back, it'd only be a matter of time before numbers (hopefully) rise once again across all servers, especially if such an incentive (and new content on a more regular basis) could really change the way you can play this game.

Agreed. There are far too many small outposts that either descend into tank-shelled explosions or are simply too hard to defend if the enemy has any air. We need more bases that feel like actual bases (minus those tower-based ones), and the devs would improve this game a lot by getting rid of a bunch of smaller ones that are basically copy-pasted versions of the same ones across the map.

Three different people actually called me Indar51 on different occasions :O

Well, I think the problem with that was they insisted in giving us as many bases as possible, as they had with the other continents. That, and Hossin is a much more resource-heavy and object-filled map than any before it. I mean, we're in a swamp, that's a lot of rocks and trees and stuff alongside the actual bases.

Also, we didn't have an upcoming base-building system, something that could change the game very much. If we had gotten the base building system first, and the devs didn't put in so many bases, then Hossin could have come out sooner. Maybe.

This was my exact thoughts as well. Why not try it out and see how it goes you know? Would be something different and it hails back to Planetside 1 days where there was more open terrain between the bases connected via the lattice.

itd be easier to put out for the devs aswell, you know, since less bases and all

I think a really big part of what's behind these problems is that the devs don't view the continents as maps.

They view the bases as maps, little self-contained FPS arenas, and they view the continents as collections of these maps with links between them. That's why there's so many of them, they think that by spamming bases they are making "more maps". That's why so many are stuck in canyons, at the bottom of craters, surrounded by mountains, or just have random junk plopped down in a ring around them: to isolate that base from all the other bases. To make it self-contained. To make it a "map".

The bases are not designed to interact with each other, and they're not designed to interact with the surrounding continent: they are designed to have the fight take place entirely within their defined perimeter, with the attackers spawning in the sundy garage and the defenders in the spawn room. There's a few exceptions where a handful of bases form a logical chain, like Mao->Offices->Howling Pass or Quartz->Indar Ex->CoraMed/Helios, but those are the exception rather than the rule. That's why so many times, overlooked interaction with terrain has been what broke bases. It's also why so many times, their solution has just been to wall off the terrain in question: they saw it as a containment breach, other maps leaking into this one, and their solution was to seal it off.

Honestly this mentality probably is, in a way, a holdover from PS1: from what I've heard PS1's bases were mostly underground with their above-ground structures heavily walled off, which effectively made each base a self-contained map that didn't interact with the outside world. The thing is, that design philosophy doesn't work unless you're willing and able to go to the same lengths to achieve isolation. It works for bases like biolabs and Subterranean Nanite Analysis: heavily isolated bases, only accessible by teleporters and lifts. But unless that's the only kind of base you want to build, you can't take the same approach outside of the tunnels and domes. You have to look at the continent as a whole.

Hopefully with the base-building system and upcoming continent overhauls, they'll back up and look at the big picture. The continent is one map. The whole continent. All of its parts need to mesh and flow together as a unified whole. The empty spaces need to be just as much part of the map as the bases they hold, not just scenery that you pass like a loading screen.

Plus, they could instead focus on more terrain features, like (I think Oshur, could be wrong) with the big volcano in the middle of the continent. I'm guessing making an overall featureless landscape takes up a lot less time than putting in terrain features and bases.

Better release one late GOOD PATCH as one game destroying buggy but fast one.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY