Continent locking obviously isn't totally refined yet, and I have some ideas about how to clean it up a bit. However, one thing I've noticed is that the complaints and desired changes from players have varied from server to server. So for the purposes of this post, most the changes I'm suggesting should only be applied to Connery. 1. Only one lock at a time. Since the Hossin Update, I've had terrible performance on all the continents. I checked my computer first and found no issue. Then I considered that it was just the usual increase of player population after a nice, big patch. But with continent locking, all of those players are now stuffed onto two crowded continents. Connery is by no means a dying server; even at the very early hours 48+ battles rage across one or two continents. There are simply too many people on too few continents, especially since most of them have flocked to Connery anyway. TL;DR: too many players on too few continents = bad performance 2. No insta-lock on Alert victory. It is possible to win a continental alert by a very small margin; i.e., winning with 34% while the other two factions have 33% and 33%. In my opinion, this does not even remotely warrant completely locking the continent, especially when you consider that to lock a continent otherwise, you would need 97% territory control. However, for less populated factions (such as my TR on Connery), the alerts are the only practical ways to gain a continent lock, since completely taking over a continent simply isn't possible. Therefore, I think alert victory should not insta-lock the continent, but instead put all uncontested territories under the winning faction's control. That way a fight between NC-TR on VS victory would not immediately be interrupted, but instead still have purpose. The winning would still need to oust the other factions like normal, but with an alert victory they gain a clear advantage. TL;DR: alert wins should be a step toward continent locking, not a cause of it 3. Allow the winning faction to access their locked continent, and reduce the resource cost reduction bonus. one of my favorite aspects of dominating a continent before the Hossin Update was the resources. If your faction dominated a continent, the resources from all of those territories were accessible to you at any given time (provided you visited the continent) and you were allowed to revel in your hard-won victory. With the current system, you get a flat cost reduction, and you are booted out of the continent on your death, often to a different continent where you have little to no territory, since you've been fighting to lock the continent you were just kicked out of. Even with continent locking in place, I still feel no sense of ownership for my faction's locked continent, and I feel cheated of all the potential resources I could get, and used to get, for dominating a continent. To fix this, allow players of the faction owning a locked continent to visit it and receive its resources at any time; and in conjunction with this, reduce the bonus from locking a continent to 20 or 30% as opposed to 50%. As a bonus perhaps, you could completely eliminate the resource cost of vehicles and death records on the locked continent (like the VR), so outfits and groups of players who worked hard to achieve the lock could mess around and revel in victory without cost or consequence. TL;DR: give sense of ownership and resources to factions as opposed to static resource cost reduction 4. Open up possibilities for future changes regarding "Home Continents" and "Neutral Continents", a la PS1. Back in the days of the original Planetside (which I encourage all of you to play, as it is now F2P), the three factions each controlled two "Home Continents", and fought over four other "Neutral Continents". When a faction locked a Neutral continent, their faction gained a continent-specific continent benefit, similar to now (except the PS1 benefits were more complex). When a Home continent was locked, however, it was a tremendous occasion. Say, for instance, the NC had locked the TR's Home continents. In addition to their faction-specific vehicles (of which there are far fewer now unfortunately), the NC could now pull the TR's faction-specific vehicles as well, such as the Prowler. Applying the Home continent idea to PS2 could make continent locking far more significant and purposeful than it's current form, where locks casually switch between continents and factions every few hours. TL;DR: look to Planetside 1 for inspiration, cuz that game is pretty gud So that's all I have for now; please tell me if my ideas are good, and why or why not. Hopefully a dev picks up on this and we can provide some good feedback. See you on Hossinside.
I've noticed a bit of a performance lag but it is nothing substantial. I generally run lower setting than I need to just to be safe. As for insta-lock I actually like it. Nowhere else in the game are you able to play a 1 life massed deathmatch with a huge amount of people. It is kind of like having a cage match with hundreds of people and it is actually pretty fun if the people stay for a few minutes for it. The big thing I think that really needs changing though is the continent bonuses. Being able to visit a conquered continent and farm resources doesn't really sound fun to me. Each continent has infantry, aerospace, and mechanized resources so why not just have continent ownership count as a small (and I mean small) boost to each resource's replenishment rate? Continent bonuses made sense when it was more of a strategic choice to be made. Now it is made for you by seemingly random alerts. A constant feed of +10 to each resource would be what I am thinking more along the lines of. As for PS1 I never got around to playing though I wanted to when it first came out. I think me and a friend got a poster for it in a Game Informer back in the day and hung it up but I couldn't get him to agree to paying a subscription fee and upgrading his PC to play it so I lost interest until PS2 became F2P. Maybe I will check it out sometime but I feel like I'd be at a major disadvantage for starting so late.
1. For a long time the allowed population per faction have been reduced due to preformance issues. This sounds like they are returning it to the state they intended it to be? I do notice when I am on Hossin my FPS drops randomly here and there, but that's probably optimising issues. 2. Give them so time, they are probably still testing this out. 3. I do agree, currently it seems that the continent your faction locked is very remote from the battlefield. 4. No opinion. I will wait and see.
