With GU09 many spawn room shields were changed to be no fire shields rather than one-way shields. I can only guess at what you (SOE) hoped to achieve by doing this, but you've done is made spawn rooms extremely camp-friendly and removed the ability of players inside the spawn to clear a path through the would-be campers. It seems like a pointless change. The only change in player behavior I've seen is that players must now dodge in and out of the shields while trying to take pot shots rather than shoot directly through the shields. In both scenarios players just redeploy a 15 seconds before the base captures to avoid damaging their KDR. This behavior is most noticeable in towers where all spawn shields are now no fire rather than one-way. Defenders are basically stuck inside their spawn room once the doors get camped because they aren't able to fire through the shields and clear out any campers, so they play chicken with the shields and redeploy before they lose the base. Few people actually try to charge out and retake the base from the attackers. If this was an attempt to discourage players from sitting inside the spawn room you failed miserably. Players will not charge out into open combat because many of them value their KDR above all else. Nothing is going to change until this statistic is purged from the in-game UI and the usable API. Feel free to use it in e-sports arena fishbowl 48 vs. 48 combat, but for the love of gaming keep it out of the "normal" game. It has no place and serves no purpose other than making people sit in spawn rooms rather than charge out into the fray and attempt to take back their base. You've gotten a lot of feedback regarding spawns and what to do with them and you seem to be ignoring that feedback for the most part. Almost every time you have changed something with the spawn rooms you have made the situation worse. The solution is probably not as simple as it seems to a lot of us on the outside, but I'll lay out what seems to be the most popular idea once again. Every base, regardless of size, gets a SCU that becomes vulnerable once the attackers begin adding tickets to the capture timer rather than subtracting from the defenders. Once the SCU goes down, the spawn room shields drop, the pain field dissipates, and the spawn tubes and terminals stop working. The attackers can then clear out the defenders, forcing them to regroup and either prepare a defense or counter-attack from another base. I feel that this adds closure to the base capture process. In conjunction with this change all spawn shields need to go back to being one-way shields in order to allow defenders to carve a path through their enemies. If they're sitting in the spawn room trying to snipe they're ensuring their own defeat. Once the shields go down they're toast. This change combined with the elimination of KDR encourages players to actually run out and fight rather than try to pad their KDR by scoring some kills behind the safety of the spawn room shields. I know that this won't change player psychology overnight, but I feel that it would be a step in the right direction and I also feel that it would greatly improve the flow of capturing bases. Thanks for your time.
Replace KDR by certs. Fact: you can /suicide instead of pressing Redeploy, saving you 10 precious seconds at the cost of a death. 10 seconds = time not spent farming certs. Must farm certs. KDR later. KDR is a non-issue
Often when a spawn room is being camped, the fight is over. I think this is a good change, as it gives confused players more of a push away. If you're ever shooting out of a shield, you are playing wrong. Simple.
Spawn rooms need to be used for spawning. They shouldn't ever be accessible by enemy vehicles. We can now place structures underground(base tunnels) why not place all spawn rooms underground with multiple pathways out that lead into larger buildings. Nobody shoots out of spawn rooms, nobody shoots into spawn rooms. The worst you'll get is a tunnel infantry battle. Also SCUs
I would be happy if kills from within the spawn room did not grant a kill or certs. It prevents attackers from camping out in the open, and gives no incentive for players to remain in the spawn area.
Invincible spawn shields were bad design to begin with. They're unfortunately necessary as a result of the poor base design, because nearly every spawn room in the game is so readily accessible to attackers, as both infantry and vehicles. Allowing defenders to shoot out of them only made them even more annoying. There should never be a position where one player can kill another while being immune to all damage, and I'm glad to see this change coming. In addition... I know people get tired of hearing comparisons to PS1, but honestly PS1 overall handled base attack/defense much better. Base battles generally went through three stages in PS1. Large vehicle battles/pushes between bases, with interspersed infantry combat (which we now have in PS2 thanks to the addition of lattice). Mixed vehicle/infantry battles for control of the courtyard and outer base. Infantry only battles for the base interior. (Interior objectives included the generator powering the facility, spawn rows themselves, and the control console. Or you could simply siege the base and drain the NTU.) The primary difference is that in PS2 we mostly only ever get to step 2. In PS1 the spawn rows were buried a few floors beneath the base, and obviously had a constant stream of soldiers flowing out of them. Invaders had to push the defenders back down through indoor infantry fighting, rather than vehicle and explosive spam. As time goes on it seems like SOE is continuing to relearn PS1's lessons, and as much as I wish they had started with PS1 and built forward, at least they're slowly adding back some of the best bits. It keeps me hopeful for this game's future. I hope more PS1-like base mechanics can return soon.
I would be satisfied with going to the PlanetSide 1 method of base design. Higby did say that Hossin has more PS1-style bases, but we'll see what that means as Hossin draws closer to release. In the mean time though there is still the current base layout issue and the issue of player psychology and incentives. The spawn shields need to be one-way so that defenders can attempt to un-camp themselves. Otherwise the spawn room doors may as well shut when the base has all of its control points compromised because the defenders will be unable to exit the room without being destroyed by the entire opposing camping force. KDR needs to go bye bye so that people don't have anything to pad or hide from other players. This might get people to leave the spawn rooms without angry teammates threatening to blow up the entire spawn.
People are kidding themselves if they think the removal of KDR would suddenly make most players run head long into mass MBT's / Turrets / Max's of a camped spawn room.
