
Originally Posted by
Meph
Hey, don't get me wrong-- I'm not suggesting that anything about our basing system be changed.
We've come too far in development, and people nowadays have been adapted to the new style of basing.
So regardless of how tactless it is, this is what we're stuck with until there is widespread approval of a better alternative.
To be honest, the extent of "basing" that I do nowadays consists of walking into Gz and PKing people. I have zero interest in the chest, or taking over the base. My prerogative is to go in and kill people. Realistically, I'm more of an inconvenience than a threat to a defending gang, because even if I killed them all, I wouldn't go for their chest. I'm merely raiding the base as if it's 2004.
You guys are actually out there doing the deal, and exercising this new-school basing system, so you're more experienced with it than I am.
That being said, your opinions are more heavily weighted on this matter than my own. I'm just here to toss ideas out there.
Frankly, I'm very turned off by the basing system, because it goes against my philosophy of how this game is supposed to be played. The fact that people have stereotyped guns into the categories "basing" and "sparring" is evidence that it's an entirely different game than what I'm accustomed to. This new-school notion of stereotyping suggests that different play-styles are involved in "basing" than in "sparring", and I'm over here like, "does not compute".
Understand though, I come from a time where raiding/defending bases exercised the same techniques as sparring. In the first eight years of Era PC's development, nobody ever once made a distinction between "Spar guns" and "Basing guns", because, since both atmospheres beckoned the same techniques, we just saw them as guns. It's clear that that is no longer the case, for which I am deeply saddened, because I feel that this generation is missing out on a great experience.
It would also be foolish of me to share my philosophy without mentioning several parameters that are present in today's society that were different back then:
Healing - People couldn't merely heal at the drop of a hat. The few healing items we did have were expensive and limited in supply; if people wanted to heal, they used healing beds, which was offered by each base on the server.
Respawning - People didn't just respawn at the front door. Upon dying, they couldn't just be back in the action in 15 seconds. They respawned at the hospital, had to wait 40 seconds to heal, then walk back to the base. Nowadays, you have a constant flood of people streaming into the base, with no letting up. So I fully understand why you would be turned off by two raider entrances.
Guns - Our guns back then didn't have anywhere near as low a freeze as they do now. When people fired a bullet, they were met with a freeze of about 0.24. So people were more selective of firing their shots. Nowadays, we average at around 0.17; people are more wreckless, and more likely to spam. Especially when they know that they have nothing to lose by dying.
Gas Shells / Grenades - All gas shells, grenades, explosives, etc. had a timer on them. These items were added to stimulate the game, not replace guns. 15 to 30 seconds had to lapse between each grenade thrown by a player, they couldn't get by by merely spamming them.
Hit Timer -Back then, we had a completed hit timer system. Right now, it's only halfway completed. The hit timer was created to benefit both the person shooting the gun, and the person taking the bullet; so it had two parts. The first part was to benefit the person taking the bullet-- Upon getting hit, they'd be invincible for 0.50 seconds. This gave them time to recover from getting hit.
The other part benefited the person firing the shot. Upon getting hit, players also experienced a freeze of about 0.25 seconds. This added more emphasis to not taking a bullet, since it disrupted the player's movement scheme, and downright stopped their spamming in their tracks. While it was only a quarter of a second, this gave the player firing the gun a quarter of a second to reassess the situation, or go for other opponents.
So, say I take a shot; I'd be frozen for 0.25 seconds, but invincible for 0.50 seconds. So while I have 0.25 seconds to recover and reassess the situation, my opponent's also got 0.25 seconds to reassess the situation.
That 0.25 seconds makes a huge difference in 1v4+ situations, and gives the guy being outnumbered a chance to strut his stuff. While it was only a quarter of a second, people were much more careful when in a fight, and it paid to be good. Again-- it required us to use our "sparring" abilities in a base setting.
Right now we're just benefiting the person taking the bullet.
This is where my old-school mentality on basing comes from.
I feel that these systems created a better gaming experience than the one we have here, and that this generation is missing out on it.
After reading that, I went and checked out E-Mines; and I gotta tell ya, that base layout blows.
I don't feel that the issue is the fact that there's several entrances to the "heart of the base", though. The issue is that the base consists of one narrow hallway after another, eliminating any possibility for somebody to apply any dodging ability. The win goes to the gang that can flood the most bullets into these hallways.
Again- My opinions aren't in the interest of the "basing aspect" of the base, because as I told you earlier, the whole system turns me off.
But from the perspective of a PKer that endorses skill-based play, this base layout sucks.
Really, that's the status-quo with most gang base layouts right now. We didn't used to have base layouts that consisted of narrow hallways; they usually utilized the entire level and had stray NPCs in the middle of the room to fill up "negative space" instead of just putting up a wall that divides the room.
It's for this reason that I choose Gz base when I raid.
It's got several open areas for me to strut my stuff(dodge bullets), and the whole base doesn't explode upon capture.
It allows me to do my classic Era-style raiding without restriction.