Friday with Means - May 20th, 2011: No to Spawn Camping

[Autohead]

Hazzar....one other person that thinks the same as me!

QFT! lol

"You play to win the game!....Hello?!" - Herman Edwards (Former NFL Player & Coach)

[Traderjill]

QFT! lol

"You play to win the game!....Hello?!" - Herman Edwards (Former NFL Player & Coach)

Thank you for posting that.. great youtube link I never understood why people go into Battlestations which is a team versus team encounter whose goal is to Beat the other side (as your points are effected by how much you beat them by) only for the purpose of farming solo kills.

Play to Win or go PvP in Bor.

I wish Funcom would force everyone into a RI personally.

[Arlanon]

Thank you for posting that.. great youtube link I never understood why people go into Battlestations which is a team versus team encounter whose goal is to Beat the other side (as your points are effected by how much you beat them by) only for the purpose of farming solo kills.

Play to Win or go PvP in Bor.

I wish Funcom would force everyone into a RI personally.

Jumping on the "Play to Win" bandwagon here myself. It's outright silly for players of your own faction to cry about you capping a 4th point. The whole idea is that the Battlestation has taking control of it as an objective, with PvP a means TOWARDS that objective.

Just like Notum Wars.

This makes about as much sense as saying towers should not be destructable.

My brother got petitioned for "abusing line of sight" because he ran around a corner where the Shade couldn't hit him. He is an MP with 2k Concealment. So I guess he is also "abusing Sneak". Why not just have the Battlestation be a big empty box. Corners, ramps, standing on stuff, is not cheap, it is STRATEGY.

Can that NT stand toe-to-toe with that Keeper? Of course not. Why shouldn't he stand 6 floors up casting Triple.

If your objective is farming kills, or a "fair fight", go solo Borealis.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/

[Edta]

While I agree that in fact the goal of battle station is to cap and, if you can, 4-cap. I however also enjoy fighting in pvp and when there is a 4cap it is over so fast there is barely any fighting. Theoreticaly, there might be other forms of pvp where the fighting (and getting solo scores) plays a bigger role (I'm thinking of Notum miner area and Bor-pvp). However there are a few problems with those . The problem with the notum miner area is that there is nobody there. The biggest problem with Borealis pvp is that, when you die you need to wait 5 min before you can pvp again and buff up again. If you're a doctor or an advy or a good keeper or something, this is not so much of an issue: some profs are hard to kill (as in near-immortal), others die easily. When you belong to the latter, bor-pvp isn't really fun (though I did some; it mostly worked when I had a doc on my side ).

Also, I agree with Giit: having an environment to use in pvp makes things more interesting. While some areas should be a big flat surface (as it is around core now), some other places with lot's of obstacles to hide after etc. would be nice.

[Autohead]

The problem with the notum miner area is that there is nobody there.

Yes, what a valuable use of dev time that was!

[Frubaliscious]

in the end, the ultimate problem is lack of population. we're at a point where we are molding the game to fit a low population requirement of over all fairness. with enough people available to feed thru the mill, few of these problems would ever be an issue imo.

[Demoder]

Just the opposite. Most spawn camping occurs when a few twinked out 12 year olds and/or sociopaths realize they can overwhelm their opponents ...

Maybe so. I never said anything about what makes spawn camping happen. I did however point out how spawn camping seem to often lead to 4capping.

[Xyphos]

o boohoohoo, an engy ofc, probably 1 of 3 top predators that can kill just about anything in pvp...if you can catch it. crank up your snare aura and stop trying to ruin my game...maybe go play a second prof, and see how the rest of us feel

Also have and/or had: Crat, MP, Trader, MA, Enfo, NT.
(not just engy, tho it is my main.)

nothing annoys me more then when badly-designed terrain can be "used in a manner that gives a player an advantage over another"

1) used to prevent [engi/mp/crat] pets from hitting someone
2) used to park an APT upon, out of normal visual sight
3) used to HIDE in while AFK and getting free VP
4) used to break LoS from NT's nukes.
(notice no complaints from enfo/ma ?)

Really, those machines near the teleporters do more harm then good.
what's their real purpose anyway besides visual effect and player abuse?

and the general ability to jump on top of things just makes sense, being prohibited from that makes this game retarded beyond my ability to subscribe to it.

THAT is the stupidest /emoQuit rant I have ever seen.

[Cyberleet]

My evacs! You know BS is not a duel-area...

And what maps is it? The kind that make blinds pretty much useless?

I never understood why people go into Battlestations which is a team versus team encounter whose goal is to Beat the other side (as your points are effected by how much you beat them by) only for the purpose of farming solo kills.

Some players like to play stealth and take out single-targets.

[Weltall]

(notice no complaints from enfo/ma ?)

Why not? :X

[Cyberleet]

1) used to prevent [engi/mp/crat] pets from hitting someone
2) used to park an APT upon, out of normal visual sight
3) used to HIDE in while AFK and getting free VP
4) used to break LoS from NT's nukes.

So you're a fan of passive fighting then? /duel?

Dodging corners, getting out of los with someone blind/snared/root/pet-attacked/whatever, jumping on boxes to avoid pets and adds and do marathons or evacs is a part of what make not-duels fun and enables active fighting/playerstrategy.

[Frubaliscious]

So you're a fan of passive fighting then? /duel?

Dodging corners, getting out of los with someone blind/snared/root/pet-attacked/whatever, jumping on boxes to avoid pets and adds and do marathons or evacs is a part of what make not-duels fun and enables active fighting/playerstrategy.

thank you!

[quieter456]

the side that caps the 4th point should force core to turn neutral making it impossible for anyone to ever have 4 points capped at once, and if core is the 4th point capped the opponents spawn caps automatically in your enemies favour. adds a little tactical fun to the mix imo.

That would be a good change IMO.

o boohoohoo, an engy ofc, probably 1 of 3 top predators that can kill just about anything in pvp...if you can catch it.

Engy...predator? RK2 is an odd place. I think everyone can agree that engineer is great in certain situations, but with pets and low runspeed and engineer perks...seriously? An enforcer or NT is ten times the predator an engineer could ever be.

Thank you for posting that.. great youtube link I never understood why people go into Battlestations which is a team versus team encounter whose goal is to Beat the other side (as your points are effected by how much you beat them by) only for the purpose of farming solo kills.

Play to Win or go PvP in Bor.

Your musings are nice in theory but people who go to BS for pvp don't want it to end without a fight, and saying go pvp in bor isn't really the same thing since borealis is an obstacle-laden cluster**** with backyards, pocketdocs and constant rebuffing. The addition of an arena without these faults is one of the few things FC ever did right. The truth is that pvp minded individuals are necessary for BS to fulfill it's intended purpose because when they aren't there it is most often turned into a VP farming snoozefest/exploit. BS has several objectives, and yes one of them is to win. Some other ones are to earn VP and to have fun.

in the end, the ultimate problem is lack of population. we're at a point where we are molding the game to fit a low population requirement of over all fairness. with enough people available to feed thru the mill, few of these problems would ever be an issue imo.

Giit is correct in this statement which is why I actually disagree with this change. Removal of the passageways is only needed because BS is always running with a minimum amount of players and too much space to fill. Does anyone remember at LE launch? The passageways were just as busy as core. And if you wanted to invade a point and not walk into a waiting zerg, you ran down the passageways to the teleporter where zerg met zerg in a glorious epic battle. Also the passageways were the site of many small scale battles, 1v1, 1v2 2v2. It was a place you could try to widdle someone down. In busy places like core people come out of nowhere which is not always desirable. And of course as Molotoff mentioned, sometimes you need a place to rest and heal up especially if you are playing something dependent on biococoon etc.

When BS first came out, the hallways weren't and couldn't be used for hiding from battle for long periods. You know why? Cause there were other people to run down them. Get more people, get more action, get more money, get less trolling. Merge pl0x. Finish engine pl0x. Finish rebalance pl0x.

You should definitely remove much of the spiral in core though. It should have been removed years ago, a useless area used for AFKing, holding Q on things and forcing people to chase you up before jumping down again. Isn't 2 or 3 levels enough?

the general ability to jump on top of things just makes sense, being prohibited from that makes this game retarded beyond my ability to subscribe to it.

jumping on boxes to avoid pets...is a part of what make not-duels fun and enables active fighting/playerstrategy.

In general these things are true. However you would think, this being the future, pets would have some counter to this. Like a ranged weapon, the ability to jump over a small step, or the skills to navigate around a railing instead of walking straight into the railing. Until they do, you are only taking advantage of FC's inability to program a pet capable of navigating basic terrain, not a brilliant strategy. If you jump on a box to avoid an enforcer, it delays him a few seconds. If you jump on a box to avoid a pet, it delays him forever, unless its owner stops the pet from attacking, jumps on the box with you, casts pet warp, and starts attack again (pet probably falls off box at this point).

[Metafizis]

2. Large empty areas of the Battlestations are going to be made inaccessible.

This is bad, please reconsider.

While you are at it - make BS cross-dimensional.

[sultryvoltron]

While you are at it - make BS cross-dimensional.

This is better than every suggestion/proposal in the OP.

[Ayria]

In general these things are true. However you would think, this being the future, pets would have some counter to this. Like a ranged weapon, the ability to jump over a small step, or the skills to navigate around a railing instead of walking straight into the railing. Until they do, you are only taking advantage of FC's inability to program a pet capable of navigating basic terrain, not a brilliant strategy. If you jump on a box to avoid an enforcer, it delays him a few seconds. If you jump on a box to avoid a pet, it delays him forever, unless its owner stops the pet from attacking, jumps on the box with you, casts pet warp, and starts attack again (pet probably falls off box at this point).

I think people know why Funcom is choosing the band-aid fixes of just removing the opportunity for pets to spaze out. But that doesn't excuse the fact that they are band-aid fixes and they suck.

The whole point of combat is strategy. I know this generation of thinking wrestling is real has deluded some of you into thinking that combat is actually done between two people in a confined area just trading blows but in reality combat is a cheap ass charade of who can get the high ground/hiding spot/advantage over the other guy first and take the kill shot. If it was me or the other guy I wouldn't care about if he could see me or reach me, I'd kill him. It's not cheap or unfair, it's the way war works. Don't like it, stay out of combat areas.

I know that pet pathing is hard, I've dealt very little with code that does similar things and it's already something I can't get to work as desired. But if they're forced to throw a band-aid over it then why not do something like give pets a ranged weapon that they can switch too (or use all the time) rather then removing the opportunity for people to employ strategy in a combat situation.

[Lusos101]

1-This game allows for AFEWPEOPLE to make optimized PvP twinks against which other toons have no chance of winning, often even in a group/team. "L2P" and "gomakeadecenttoon" are trollish nonarguments. A noob has no chance in hell to farm some of the gear needed to twink. He will always be at a huge disadvantage. Similarly a leveling toon of a more knowledgeable player will have still a great disadvantage compared to a PvP specific toon. Not only can the toon not be optimized for PvP but it also doesnt make sense to waste countless hours farming gear that becomes obsolete a few levels later. The result is that most AO players ARE NOT INTERESTED IN PVP most of the time.

2-The BS is the only viable source of VPs, specially after the introduction of AI dailies, it is near impossible to find teams for mothership missions. If we include the huge daily reward for Bor missions it becomes OBVIOUSLY OBVIOUS why people NOT INTERESTED IN PVP with TOONS IMPOSSIBLE TO BE COMPETITIVE in PvP go to the battlestations. THEY DONT WANT TO PVP, THEY WANT TO FARM VP, DO THE DAILY AND GO AWAY FROM THERE.

3-There are many different steps that can be taken to solve the problem of PvPTWINKS versus NonPvP toons in the battlestations. One easy solution would be to allow the non PvP crowd to go farm their VPs and daily mission elsewhere. This would kill the BSs do to lack of cannonfooder, not a problem for most people, but a gigantic whine fest for the few people who spent countless hours sitting !afk in kite hill paying 2 mill per level. The same amount of time spamming trade channels with WTB Igocs, RBPs, full sets of Combined armor and LR for a few nodrops. And even more time camping a few grey dynas with their mains in SL. It is for these people and for them alone that this game is adjusted to. Existing content is adjusted for their camping pleasure and new content is added for their camping pleasure. Other possible, but harder and more difficult to implement solutions would be to reduce the disparity between toons, making PvP optimized toons impossible and/or reducing the huge disparity between toons. Making the gameplay mechanics less dependent on gear/profession and more on skill/luck. Changing gameplay mechanics to bring PvP gameplay and PvM gameplay nearer togheter. Changing the gameplay so that people need to play their toons to have a good toon instead of forcing noobs to grind countless hours for very subpar gear while veterans can almost intapop a hardcore PvP twink. To make a game where many, including new, players are interested in PvP will require a complete remaking of most of the game. Never gonna happen. Therefore the BS will be adjusted and readjusted while the real issues why it sucks will never be adressed.

4-I like to play my toons, none of them is or will ever be a PvP twink, I simply dont have the patience to leave a toon sitting on kite hill for days or logging my main every 20 minutes to instakill a grey mob for months. I am simply an average player, who likes to play his toons. Therefore I will go into the battlestations and I will 4cap everytime I can and APT in decon everytime I cannot. And all the whinning tears of the spawncampers who go into a rage because they loose the easy kills are as sweet to me as the whinnings of spawncamped noobs are for them. FU

[quieter456]

BTW since the QQ contest results were not announced this Friday, open the thread back up and close when you guys actually start reading?

[kindabored]

ah but then if we cannot enforce our presence to people who havent spent their years brainstrorming where next to equip the 275 scope,whats the point of PVP. i pity the people who need VPs in ao nowadays,if it was frustrating 3 years ago, today i can imagine the experience being reason to sue the game company .people desperately trying to snatch even 1 kill in the 4-5 minutes per day the average BS runs, all camping the same poor sod who wants his special edition helmet. ha ha ha ha

[Pomidor]

Dear players: 4cap is not a problem in BS. Its the lack of players to continue battle after lose. Due lack of dedicated PVPers, we have to deal with Daily PVMers which enters BS, 4cap (or go AFK in corridors) and another BS is unlikely to run. Thats a fact. If, like it was almost year ago, there would be plenty of PVPers on both side (I am speaking of 101-150 BS at this monent - it used to be crowded) we had BSs running one by one and only few VP farmers were cursing 4cap. Yet, we still have it running. Now, on current playerbase, most of those who attend are ones with Daily PVP, so after score hits 425 they often /afk and leave BS. You can clearly see it at 100 (which, at this point I am tring to make running frequently, since its bst balanced PVP range for every profession). If we have 2-4 players at max, twinks for PVP, we can manage to run it once, but if there is no players with PVP daily mission, we can just wait forever. So, I will repeat, 4 cap is a goal in BS, and its not a problem in mechanics, but it has larger scale in playerbase.

I have read here and there, seen in game people speaking abour RED vs BLUE solution. And I must say that It would be another nail to coffin - I often se neutrals (which can pick somewhat Red or Blue) sign up for side which hase adventage (i.e. twinks). This way we had 7 omnis in Q (3 neutrals) and 3 clans. But they refused to join clans...

Only one problem with 4 cap, especially at LOWER levels, even at <150, is that 4 cap is counting points TOO FAST. I mean, I had plenty of situations where 4 of our side was in decon (is that 15-20 seconds?) and oposite side took all 4 points, and we just could see how we lose, w/o opportunity to change it. Situation gets messy when you have 400 RS (low/mid lvl non-enfs or fixers) and you just cant run fast enough to re-cap.

My suggestion was a bit different for Spawns: I always felt like spawn camp could be repaired by pressing 2 Concoles in Decon room: If player use it, he will spawn at "normal" position, and thus this, 4-5 or more players can reenter battle at same time, which could always give fighting chances, instead of being poped alone vs 3 or more players.