BS changes

[Maxencee]

Oh, no! A BS tactic that does not require gearing up to kill other players! This cannot be!

(I kinda miss cocoon- and DoF capping, though, as those used to handily defeat this type of single-turret defense).

BS = Battle Station.... It's not Base Snugging or Bong Smoking.

Etymology
The definition of a battle cannot be arrived at solely through the names of historical battles, many of which are misnomers. The word battle is a loanword in English from the Old French bataille, first attested in 1297, and is itself a borrowing from Late Latin battualia, meaning "exercise of soldiers and gladiators in fighting and fencing," from Latin battuere "beat", from which the English word battery is also derived via Middle English batri, and comes from the staged battles in the Colosseum in Rome that may have numbered 10,000 individuals. A battle refers to an epic fight.

Rename this new fail station to "Capture the base" or some crap, and give the old "Battle Station" back.

[Cyberleet]

Ya, groundhugger-station

Now if they made it easier to get 200/30/70 and to aquire twinking items... well that'd be a complete nightmare for leveling toons and casual pvpers.

I think it'd level the playfield nicely =)

More get more competable and it's fun to play your profession to it's utmost potential, and levelering toons will actually get more to play with aswell. It's not fun gameplay in 2011 to roll nanos alone tho.

[Xirayne]

I think it'd level the playfield nicely =)

More get more competable and it's fun to play your profession to it's utmost potential, and levelering toons will actually get more to play with aswell. It's not fun gameplay in 2011 to roll nanos alone tho.

A few moderate setup toons vs many top end twinks is not a level playfield. A level playfield would be one where everyone has the ability to compete, even those who are still working on their toons. If you speed up the process to gear up a toon then you set the average higher, and with the standard very high like you have set then everyone below that standard must first reach it before becoming competitive, no matter how little time you think it should take to get the toon up to speed, any time spent reaching the destination could have been spent playing and enjoying the game. Not only does that mean more annoyance in completing the pvm content required for gear, but it also means less people for the lesser geared players to play and compete with, and overall less willingness to participate.

We needa stop making this game with such a top heavy attitude and make it so that people are able to enjoy playing prior to being endgame/finished twink. Then you'll have more people willing to compete in pvp and more people enjoying themselves in BS.

[Cyberleet]

A level playfield would be one where everyone has the ability to compete, even those who are still working on their toons.

But the whole idea is to boost up 'those who are still working'. Less gaps.

[Xirayne]

The only way for that to be successful is to have everyone start with a maxed out toon. The gap is always going to be there otherwise, no matter how easy it is to acquire said levels or gear. The way to solve the problem is to make the gaps within the population less extreme. Pushing the average bar higher by making equipment and levels easier to acquire only makes the gap worse because there will be only few people in the lower range, almost no people in the middle range, and many in the high range.

People are gunna be either working their butts off to reach only the average(instead of working to earn an edge), or sitting on kite hill till they reach the desired twink level then buying lootrights so they can compete, or they will quit because it's too much of a hassle to have to catch up with everyone who already has all their stuff.

I can tell you right now I'm SO glad I can compete in pvp on my tl5/6 leveling toon without having to have already completed inf grinds for research and bothersome quests, I can play my toon right now and enjoy it. That and I still have excitement for when I do accomplish my goal setup since it will give me an edge.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

But the whole idea is to boost up 'those who are still working'. Less gaps.

doesn't work that way letah, xirayne is right

The "easier" it is to gear up, the faster the people at the top get the gear, the research, the AXP, to max out.

The HARDER it is to finish setups, the more balanced the playfield.

Think about oldschool SL, where people worked their asses off for inf hecks, and, when you hit 215-216, you have a LEVEL advantage over those at 212-213, but, gear wise you'd probably be just on par. In this situation, even those at 212-213 would certainly be competitive with those at 215-216 and even those who had recently arrived at 220.

The problem is, once you've turned the dial THIS way, it's near impossible to turn it back.

[Xirayne]

The problem is, once you've turned the dial THIS way, it's near impossible to turn it back.

Very true.. Luckily for us we have a big rebalance on the way(hopefully), pretty much a reboot of AO.. so maybe we can make good some progress in balancing the populations gaps as well. ..Hopefully I miss the old days of battlestation with more balance and participation.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Very true.. Luckily for us we have a big rebalance on the way(hopefully), pretty much a reboot of AO.. so maybe we can make good some progress in balancing the populations gaps as well. ..Hopefully I miss the old days of battlestation with more balance and participation.

tbh, I've seen some epic fighting on the new BS.

It's a lot easier to get some good fights so if you can stay alive you can just farm kills.

And, ditto the other way around. The core fights are insane now... I love it.

[Xirayne]

Lucky you.. I've had maybe one good round and the rest were just jokes... I've accidentally spawncamped more the past week than I had in all my years of bs before that, doesn't feel so good Can't go anywhere without running over a freshly spawned player, usually they get the jump on you due to suppression but if you are better setup or in a group of 2 or 3 (or both) they just get killed super quick. And nothing is more stupid than spawning on top of an enemy player lol

my experience=
-Lotsa people teaming at core and are fairly untouchable cuz there's no good way to approach now.
-2-3 player groups run laps around the rest of bs cleaning up the lone spawners around the cap points.
-Everyone else spawn rush zerging at core or an active point for quick kills.
-Fresh spawned people hugging gas and refreshment buff for an unreasonable temp advantage all over bs, including key battle areas.

my experience.. not so good.. though the sit and spawncamp isn't so popular now I guess is an improvement

Edit: and I forgot to mention I'm getting tons of "you cant do this while falling" crap on the new laser/glass ramps :/

[McKnuckleSamwich]

ahh, I've been chainkilled on my engi by karst a few times :P

but i've also chainkilled a few others... I kinda love it, being chainkilled now is hardly an issue becuase decon seems to be shorter, and, the run to where you can fight is a lot less.

all in all, I think it kinda wtfpwns.

If you're really in a jam, just spam the non-red named dudes with invite to team, and, then go slay the slayers ! I dunno, it's a MAJOR step forward in maintaining action packed BS rounds.

[Xirayne]

lol yeah I understand what you mean, I've since removed most of my defensive perks on my toons cuz I so rarely get to use my important def perks like cocoon or lifeblood and so I can get the most death-per-minute out of them .. tons of solo kills x.x

Though I do hope that FC either re-revamps bs to cater the non chainkill loving pvp population, add a new pf, or modify WTF for a little slower version of the dumbed down pvp

I thought the PVP Mine pf was a good pf for the chainkill loving players that needed a little work to get some more participation, putting that playstyle in bs was a pretty low blow for a lot of people.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

I can appreciate your point of view. And I agree, I suppose it just depends which side of the coin you're on. Because I'm a vet, and I've BEEN on the chain killer side, it's not a huge loss to me to BE chain killed once in a while.

The thing is, though, running straight into certain death seems a lot more appealing now, NOW that I know I can just as easily go straight to ABC to cap immediately if I get tired of getting hammered at core.

Of course, this flies straight in the face of oldschool BS, where, if you are being spawncamped, theres nothing you can do except pop a speed stim, leave team and hope your RS+lag>=distance to first whompa and hope there isn't a pack of gangbangers on the otherside! :P

[Xirayne]

Woulda been nice for old bs to have been a players in zone type fight instead of physically capturing points, that way the people who were at the enemy spawn would end up capping that last point just by being there.

I'd also like to support the idea, pretty much taken directly from my favorite online shooter, plus a few other games, but have an advance and secure type game with the goal to capture bases (KotH style, not cap point) and advance to the enemy home base.

-If at all possible it would be nice to be able to spawn only at points your side controls, that would still limit spawncamping while making it fair and more interesting of a fight.

-I was thinking more along the lines of the AAS gametype from joint operations, not sure if the devs ever played that but they do play tf2 so I think they'd understand what I mean. Joint ops just did it in a much larger scale, more sandbox-ish way that really reminded me a lot of ao..

[Gatester]

Wulf speaking proper english, Mcknuckle making sense, Duke Nukem being released...oh **** 2012 is just around the corner isn't it?

[Armus]

Cba to read the entire thread but.. The "buff" you have when you get out of decon is very bad. You can kill 1-2 ppl while you are invulnerable. That has to go. The buff should break as soon as you attack someone.

Also this is bugged often so that you don't do any damage at all for literlaly minutes to some ppl. In short it needs to be fixed.

[Gridpain]

1) Remove decomp buff at the end of the grace, including when grace is ended by attacking someone

2) Add 10 or 20 secondes to the minimum time in decomp room

Rest is very good tbh

(well, smooth some places to have less "cant do that while falling, and it would be perfect)

[Anarchic1]

I like bs as it is. THe rest of u dudes are just sad cuz u can't run and hide during the entire round

[Murskaink2]

New BS is MUCH better than old one. Thank you funcom.

[Legion84]

Well as i've had a long break i came back and tried BS to find that it had changed, i liked the waiting area, it's neat and tidy and fun to hang out between bs fights, with all level ranges hanging out there waiting to do battle sweet,

I then got onto the battlestation, realised you could zone anywhere my first impression was ohhh they put something in place to stop spawn camping not so bad, then i heard that people cap core under grace... not so good. I don't mind taking a hit to cocoon capping it wasn't really over powered, was worthy when core or a point was full of enemies to take a risk and to capture the point and get out of there or try dieing. After all did they nerf limber/dof? not sure.

Then i had mixed feelings about the glass they put up between zones to core, so now it feels more compact which is ok because the numbers for BS have fallen i understand why they have done that and that it works maybe better for lower levels, but now to get to zones or some privacy if you dare to fight 1 on 1 it wont happen and you got to teleport everywhere.. i think (no offence to funcom/staff you do a great job) have been lazy with this as there could of been a better fix... making new battlestation maps smaller ones for lower level ranges, or even newer ones at all level ranges rather than restrict movement on battlestation, and the battlestation map that you will be entered to will reflect on how many people join up everyone would like a change and i see this as a win win situation.

[Cogline]

I'll be trying the new BS later today. It'll be nice to see if I can up my run total of kills across all my toons to higher than 1. Yeah, yeah, I know: PvM Froob = PvP Gimp.