What If Indar Never Locked?

Everyone seems to love Indar in particular. Probably for the way it doesn't force you into lanes quite as much as Amerish or Hossin and everyone is more likely to have a tech plant, unlike Esamir.

What if Indar played on a slightly different ruleset than the other continents? It never locks.

Victory conditions simply tell you which team has the Indar bonus at this time. If one team has 20 points and nobody else does, they have the bonus. If more than one team has 20 points (if this would still be possible), the team with the higher total has the bonus. The Indar bonus can flop around to different teams but the battle never ends.

"What about HIVEs?"

HIVEs generate victory points, as usual. On Indar, these points have a life span of 2 hours each. If you generate a point at 7:50pm, you will lose it at 9:50pm. So ultimately you need to keep generating points. (Not really sure if this should be "4 hours" or "2 hours" or "30 minutes" or what. We can figure it out.)


What do you think? Would one "endless battle" continent be interesting or nah?

Why do you think we lock Indar in the first place?

If you think that, Crossroads, Quartz ridge, Regent Rock, Howling pass and the Crown is interesting to play 24/7, sure.

People probably wouldn't mind at first, until they finally had enough playing the very same bases for a month in a row and then just quit. Instead of actually rotating them, you'll end up with a scenario like that and it isn't particularly good for the game.

You see the same with other shooters, and it tends to be the beta map that the game offered. It is vastly popular, even if it isn't the most interesting or exciting map, and it just ends up sucking a lot of people up that were needed on those better maps and it hurts the game.

How about instead of locking the continent, the lattice lines just change? That would mix up the fights somewhat.

Before the locking system, it was a crown fest every day. Day after day, week after week of fighting for control of the mountain. It was GLORIOUS!

Because there are too many continents for the number of players.

We don't lock continents out of some cute idea that players need to be forced into experiencing variety. We do it because there aren't enough people to have fun fights on all 4 continents.

But rather than let them all lock and rotate, we could have one that stays put while the rest rotate. Anyone who feels particularly annoyed with map wins causing a continent lock in the middle of some great fights could play on Indar to avoid that. The other 3 are on the usual rotation.

What would you do if Hossin never locked?

My favorite are Amerish and Hossin.

Indar is my second least favorite to play on, right behind Esamir.

I'm pretty much infantry only, thats why I like the rotation, I can just grit my teeth and bear it through "Tank-World Online" until one of the ones I prefer is unlocked.

The reason why we lock continents in the first place is different from that. In conception, it was an ill-fated half-jab at reviving the principles consistent to an intercontiental lattice system. An idealist would suggest we should do it because it promotes a feeling of progression across a much larger battlefield, which follows from that. (Let's ignore that the current implementation, due to shortsightedness, could never accomplish that for the moment.) A pragmatist would point out that continent locking essentially does force us to experience the variety of the continents, since we have to revisit them all in theory to unlock one that was previously unlocked. A realist points out the developers are often shortsighted and frequently lazy.

Half cheered and the other half boo-ed when players were finally unable to spawn on Indar and had to choose between Esamir or Amerish for the first time. I think enforcing variety is very important to certain subsets of the playerbase.

I'll turn your argument around: we don't have enough people for fun fights on all four continents, so we need to make sure we divvy up the players so that we get as many fun fights as possible on all of the continents in turn, which necessitates moving large groups of players from time to time. As that will necessarily become Indar (or even just from time to time), it will occasionally become necessary to lock Indar.

Really this idea is looking to address the people who hate continent locks interrupting great fights. It's a fairly common complaint that works its way into a lot of threads.

Which one we lock isn't that important to me but my suspicion is that Indar is the most popular. Hossin and Amerish seem to be underpop more often. I can't recall a time when I saw Indar underpop. We COULD have an idea that there is always 1 "slow-lock" continent. It stays open for 1 week at a time and then rotates to some other map that will stay open for 1 week.

I just suspect that will be unpopular when Hossin is the one on the 1-week uptime.

My personal favorite is Hossin, I like the open swampy areas combined with chokepoints without forcing me into long Amerish-style lanes. But it's pretty clear from population levels that the majority don't agree with me, so I'd settle for making it Indar. Some days I would like to log in and play for 4 hours with no map changes, even if it's not a lovely swamp.

It might be enough to say "if there is enough population for 2 continents, then keep Indar open".

Basically this will keep Indar open non-stop during prime-time. It may shut down for low population periods so that people who play at 5am aren't simply playing Indar every single day.

Again, the point here is not "KEEP INDAR OPEN" but rather "find a way to let people play without having their battles constantly interrupted." Keeping one continent from locking isn't the only idea, but it's a simple one.

what if Indar was always locked?

Just Indar was boring as hell when it was open practically all day, its how I grew to hate it, some days I wouldn't even play because of it.

I hate Indar, personally, but end up spending most of my time there because that's where the fights are. I would love to be able to spend more time on Hossin, but even with Cont Locks, almost nobody ever goes there...

If Indar never locked, I would love it. I would probably play on it almost all the time. With maybe some time spend on Amerish, and a very, very rare trip to check out Esamir.

I would just never go there. And since nobody else would go there, it wouldn't really affect me.

Esamir (and probably Amerish) would have more of an impact as a perma-unlock than Hossin. Because people do actually like to play on those.

Agree 100%

Crown was amazing. It was the single most massively popular, ongoing experience that PS2 was able to make happen. Their most played and hyped "Map". And they killed it, intentionally, because... they wanted to control how players spent their time. Ultimately they wanted to make players have to trudge through their obstacle course of half-baked and badly implemented ideas.

Once upon a time...

Indar was always unlocked. It got boring, people left, the end.

Saying no one would ever go there is a bit presumptuous, don't you think?

Seeing as battles take place there everyday, even when Indar is unlocked

If more people just went instead of saying they would like to fight there but no one else does (which is false) it would have a pretty good pop... though I prefer fights 48 and below, speaking for myself.

Indar is pretty damn boring. Amerish seems to be the best continent for base design and varied environments by far. All vehicles work there, bases are varied and each base has a different set up that works best depending on the environment. Totally different from say Esamir where the chief strategy is "pull vehicles lol" or Hossin where its "vehicles don't work here lol"

leave Indar unlocked

I was speaking very casually. To be more specific, I think many players don't like to play on current Hossin, and so it would remain lightly populated even if left unlocked. That said, perhaps the appeal of playing on a Continent that never locked (and assuming Hossin was the only continent that never locked) would motivate more people to go there just for that, so it might end up with larger populations.

I in no way fault others for liking Hossin, wanting to play there, or wishing it was played by more players. I just don't enjoy playing there myself, and I recognize that some number of others don't like it as well in its current form... for a basic set of shared reasons that have been stated on these forums a number of times.

I do not like Zergdar nor Wallsamir. My first preference is Hossin and second is Amerish actually. So I am wholeheartedly opposed to this idea. Now if we would be talking about Hossin never locking then yes please.

They need to have a more dynamic lattice system. Who cares if the bases aren't symmetrically split, just changing up the lattices, randomnly, would make existing continents way more interesting, because it might increase the chance to fight at different bases.

I have no idea how those lattices are coded in the game, but having some mechanism that randomly connects them each time it unlocks would be good. Variety is the spice of life.