Cont Lock finally?

[Obstruction]

i still don't get why we want less places to fight.

[bpostal]

Originally Posted by Obstruction

i still don't get why we want less places to fight.

It's going to be needed when (don't laugh) we get more continents. It also adds a sense of ownership and a goal for players to strive for.

[Mordelicius]

They can't rush this by any means. Look at how much destruction WDS preseason 2 has caused in such a small time period. This is system mechanics is even more ingrained.

It's not just an event but will be built-into the map itself. I hope they send out previews (in great detail) of what they are planning so it can be critiqued for any flaws, large or superficial.

Lastly, it can't be half-measures like what they've done with the No-Deploy Zone, Amp Station/Tech Tunnels, WDS Preseasons, Amerish Lattice etc. A lot of these ideas are underdeveloped, unstructured, incomplete or just plain misguided.

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by bpostal

The playerbase should NEVER be divided.

It will be as soon as they go live on the PS4. Bifurcate user base, bifurcate dev programs with bifurcate budgets, et cetera.

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]it can't be half-measureslike what they've done with the No-Deploy Zone, Amp Station/Tech Tunnels, WDS Preseasons, Amerish Lattice etc. A lot of these ideas are underdeveloped, unstructured, incomplete or just plain misguided.

Every one of those (except WDS) is a kludge deriving from shitty base design. Every. Single. ONE.

I am looking forward to actually being able to capture and hold something -- to have that old sensation of YAY! WE WON!!!1!!11, if only for a day -- and perhaps engage in some one-on-one empire versus empire slugfests rather than the tired three-way shoving contest. I find myself utterly cynical as to how it will be implemented.

I am also going to point out once again that PS2 still has no user's guide. That is just pure fucking insanity. You want to know why new users drop out at appalling rates? That's why.

[Obstruction]

Originally Posted by bpostal

It's going to be needed when (don't laugh) we get more continents. It also adds a sense of ownership and a goal for players to strive for.

definitely lol'd. and i still don't get it.

is it possible that people just want this mechanic shoehorned into Planetside 2 to satisfy nostalgia for Planetside?

if they put this in as it is being described they will have to redesign or remove many other systems, including large systems such as resources and alerts. i just don't see that happening. they can't even fix half the bugs in the game 18 months after release, or half of the ones introduced in the last 18 months along with their half assed attempts to address core gameplay issues.

in fact, i suspect that Continent Locking was nothing more than a half assed attempt to address a core gameplay issue that existed in Planetside, analogous to the Alert system in Planetside 2. and if so, it would be quite ironic that veteran players pine for it while decrying Alerts and No Deploy Zones, etc.

[Azzzz]

Whats interesting about No Deploy Zones is...not one person asked for them yet they implemented it anyways.

Then again that seems to be their MO, implement shit no one wants or if they do add something that people want, it's usually half-assed or mind boggling retarded.

I haven't played PS1 but from what I get from everyone else that has, it worked, in many ways. It had everything most people wanted (BFRs excluded) or something that added a tactical aspect such as cont lock but had ew graphics.

Now why can't PS2 have the same shit as PS1 but look way better? Is this such a difficult task to execute?

[Muldoon]

Originally Posted by Azzzz

Whats interesting about No Deploy Zones is...not one person asked for them yet they implemented it anyways.

It would be severely limiting if we only implemented things that people asked for. Personally I think No Deploy Zones were a positive change.

[Azzzz]

Originally Posted by Muldoon

It would be severely limiting if we only implemented things that people asked for. Personally I think No Deploy Zones were a positive change.

Apologizes then. I was going off what I generally hear from in game. Seems there was more negative comments towards it than positive. And I was more so referring to the no squad deploy inside bases instead of sundies but then I should have more so stated it more clearly.

[Mordelicius]

Originally Posted by Muldoon

It would be severely limiting if we only implemented things that people asked for. Personally I think No Deploy Zones were a positive change.

So far there's only one official reason why it was implemented: to make Attacker and Defender spawn equidistant to the cap point. And that's something that can be easily debunked as false equivalency (a logical fallacy).

The reason being is that attacker Sundy spawn can be blown up while defensive spawn is indestructible. Hence, attackers have to apply extra players to the Sunderer so it won't simply be blown up.

If the developers were simply worried about parking Sundies right next to the cap point, they could have easily adjusted the radius to around 10-20 feet. Instead, they had to make it large, again, to satisty the equidistance argument.

The negatives far outweigh the positive. The NDZ has been voted down at least 2:1 at the official forum (2000+ against vs. 1000 yeas). This mechanic restricts gameplay while reducing the unpredictability of game (a hallmark of PS2 up to that point). I made so many posts on how toxic NDZ is to gameplay (even before they finally decided to implement it).

Also, this is more of a philosophic battle about how PS2 should run more than anything.

"For NDZ": Developers should have tighter controls of mechanics leaving less decision to players. Something that I accurately predicted as a slippery slope. Since NDZ was implemented, they also disallowed players from dropping mines on Vehicle pads and mines on infantry jump pads.

Again, rather than letting players clear the mines themselves(which shouldn't take more than 5 seconds on most bases), the developers feel it's their role to be an invisible guardian.

All this does is make pvp stale. A player blowing up in vehicle pad is that player's fault because the pad wasn't checked for mines. In a middle of a fierce, contested Tech Plant fight, mines on the vehicle pads can mean a loss or a victory.

Instead, if you ask the PS2 developers, that meta fight for the vehicle pad shouldn't be even part of gameplay . This is one of multitudes of reason why I often say that the PS2 devs don't even play PS2. Alot of gameplay, meta and balance context is foreign to them.

"Against NDZ": Hands off. Let the players decide and fight it out. This is the type of philosophy the new SOE game, H1Z1 foster. When somebody asked Smedley if there will be a safezone, he answered "what is a safezone", meaning it won't be implemented. In, short they are letting players decide the gameplay.

Is it a suprise to anyone why that type of Laissez Faire gameplay is what makes games like H1Z1 very popular?

In PS2, they operate in another direction, there's too much gameplay interferance mechanics that the Devs sprinkle inside the game.

Instead, they should just give players more tools. A Spawn Jamming Sunderer would have sufficed, rather than a No Deplay Zone. Deploy a Spawn jamming sunderer. Any enemy sunderer caught within the AOE radius cannot spawn players. That would have been a much better alternative. And that's something that have been suggested way before they implemented the NDZ.

One of my many, many posts about the NDZ (this one after it was implemented): http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=55971

Related: Suggested fixes to Spawn Camping/ Sunderer Wipes: http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=56877

[Muldoon]

Originally Posted by Mordelicius

All this does is make pvp stale. A player blowing up in vehicle pad is that player's fault because the pad wasn't checked for mines. In a middle of a fierce, contested Tech Plant fight, mines on the vehicle pads can mean a loss or a victory.

Personally I disagree with a lot of your post, but this was the biggest one I disagreed with. There are lots of new players playing Planetside each day, and are learning how to play. The game is already really hard to learn, and having a new player blow up on a vehicle pad is a quick way to getting them to uninstall. Without new players, the game dies.

Call it hand holding or what have you, being able to place mines on the vehicle pad is one of the cheapest things you could do and added very little to the game.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by Obstruction

definitely lol'd. and i still don't get it.

is it possible that people just want this mechanic shoehorned into Planetside 2 to satisfy nostalgia for Planetside?

if they put this in as it is being described they will have to redesign or remove many other systems, including large systems such as resources and alerts. i just don't see that happening. they can't even fix half the bugs in the game 18 months after release, or half of the ones introduced in the last 18 months along with their half assed attempts to address core gameplay issues.

in fact, i suspect that Continent Locking was nothing more than a half assed attempt to address a core gameplay issue that existed in Planetside, analogous to the Alert system in Planetside 2. and if so, it would be quite ironic that veteran players pine for it while decrying Alerts and No Deploy Zones, etc.

No cont locking was not 'half-assed' as you say. It was very important and it drove the entire game.

Alerts do fine for what they are and are the most interesting part of the game as it is. But they have a big flaw. That flaw is the reward to the winner. If you want the reward (and PS2 is built on xp gain as the motivation) then you have to be on the winning side to benefit most and the result of that is population swings.

This was obvious from launch on Miller. TR population jumped as events started and grew throughout. TR therefore won the alert often with dominating victories which then in turn reinforced the impression that TR will most often win alerts.

Back in ps1 we did have alerts of a kind and different to those in ps2, but when they occurred we normally decried them because they were a distraction from the main event, ie 'the war'.

[BlaxicanX]

My heart is torn on the argument regarding casualiziation of the game. On the one hand, the ambitious gamer in me says that people need to nut-up and learn how to play the fucking; I jumped into Planetside 2 in 2012, when the game was merciless toward new players, yet here I still am.

On the other hand, I am the only person out of my entire circle of friends who plays it. By their own, personal admissions, the game was too frustrating for them. Even as attackers, they felt like they couldn't go two steps without getting killed by a thousand different things.

So idk. The complexity of the game definitely needs to be toned down, I suppose. Not sure how to go about doing that without sacrificing the depth, though.