Fears of the zerg fights.

[SKYeXile]

I dont know about you guys, but when i see this map and think 2000 players on it, i think clusterzergfest.

http://s224245511.onlinehome.us/INDAR.jpg

With the next hex design while backhacking is possible, its more difficult, we dont know if bases can be sabotaged and then the benefits(if any) to other bases can be cut by blowing generators(which i believe are still inagme?)

Anyway back to the continent design, the vibe i get from that is each empire will generally own the 3 bases closest to their warpgate, from there they will likely spread out evenly and attack the closest bases from whichever base or hex they happen to be at, its the general nature of the zerg, so what we will have is each empire pushing their frontline out and make everything just one massive cluster fuck along a big line.

with only 3 continents planned to be in at launch it means these fights will be ever going and ever lasting. since each empire will always have a link to the continent through its warpgate base.

I all can really say to this is i just hope the other continents go back to a more traditional design that allows for some tactics and more spreadout fighting. I loved the smaller fights in planetside. the problem with indar is there is no backline bases, they're all going to be in the thick of it really.

If they keep cyssors deign the same as it is now in PS1, but obviously redesign the terrain alittle, it would allow for more tactical gameplay, you could go far behind enemy lines to get those smaller more isolated fights and there would still be those big cluster fights offer in some locations. The way i see indar, you wont be getting much variation in fights and it allows for little tactical gameplay with how each base is evenly spaced apart...yes, yes im aware that bases are like bigger, thats a nonfactor in this discussion to since the population is 3x bigger.

seriously look at the indar map, say you own the 3 bases outside your warpgate, what can you see happening?

[sylphaen]

I see 3 fronts and one empire ending up double-teamed.

[Warborn]

No AMS spam means attacking will probably be harder. Conversely, bases aren't small things with only a couple important areas in them. It's hard to tell how it'll pan out exactly, whether fights will stagnate, but either way it will probably be a non-stop near-zerg I guess. There might be the bases themselves which would attract a hundred or more players per side fighting for them, but probably the smaller outposts which compose the rest of the front line would be smaller fights. So, hopefully there'll be room for smaller scale fights as well. I think there's reason to be optimistic.

[Duddy]

It's funny, I was having similar thoughts after having seen that image.

I'd think that we might see players attempting to take things that they're not directly adjacent too, and remember there are small outposts that aren't bases and perhaps we'll see more taking place outside of main bases due to that.

On reflection though, to put it in the context of PS1, I imagine it'd be similar to a pop-locked Osgur battle-island sans the lattice. Ascension in particular springs to mind.

Certainly something that needs to be seen though.

[Stardouser]

Well, look at it this way. I KNOW you can't compare distances between games, but I will do it anyway. Project Reality maps are about 6 km long, and even if I adjust it to consider it the equivalent of 4km X 4km in PS2, and consider what 2000 would be like in that, the thought of even 8 X 8 doesn't seem big enough for 2000.

So, there are 3 main possibilities I see:
1. The scale is even more off than that and a PR map is really more like 2km X 2km despite what it says in the in game marking system, making a true 8km X 8km perfectly big enough.
2. 2000 is more like a hard cap that the continent is not to exceed but average capacity will likely only hit 1500 or so,
3. We're right, and there is something to be worried about, and either the continents will need an emergency stretching to a larger size, or lowered player caps, or some other measures.

I have always thought that things like non combat support roles, behind the lines missions attacks, and multicrew vehicles(100 2 man tanks effectively reduces the chaos by 50 players even though they're technically still on the server) would alleviate the problem. But I can tell you that a significant number of Battlefield imported players WILL go with one man tanks, so that part of it is out the window, at least partially, even if there is a multi-crew option.

[ArmedZealot]

Sky aint falling. We don't know enough about how battles will be yet. We don't even know how things will handle with the new vehicles, spawn points, and towers.

And what is wrong with clusterfuckzergfest anyways? You can still play with your "tactics" even if it is. The clusterfuckzergfests of Planetside were the best part.

[Immigrant]

so what we will have is each empire pushing their frontline out and make everything just one massive cluster fuck along a big line.

That actually sounds like war...

with only 3 continents planned to be in at launch it means these fights will be ever going and ever lasting.

I believe that's their point on this first or main continent.

I all can really say to this is i just hope the other continents go back to a more traditional design that allows for some tactics and more spreadout fighting. I loved the smaller fights in planetside. the problem with indar is there is no backline bases, they're all going to be in the thick of it really.

Sure, varietas delectat. Each continet should have specific design - some for smaller fight you described, other for massive cluster f-fest etc.

If they keep cyssors deign the same as it is now in PS1, but obviously redesign the terrain alittle, it would allow for more tactical gameplay, you could go far behind enemy lines to get those smaller more isolated fights and there would still be those big cluster fights offer in some locations.

I googled it up but still I don't understand. Please explain - cyssor. Sorry for being a newb.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cyssor

Edit: Here - http://www.spectaclerock.com/spec/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/cyssor1.jpg

I think I understand now, you want more choke-points/natural barriers, right?

[SKYeXile]

No AMS spam means attacking will probably be harder. Conversely, bases aren't small things with only a couple important areas in them. It's hard to tell how it'll pan out exactly, whether fights will stagnate, but either way it will probably be a non-stop near-zerg I guess. There might be the bases themselves which would attract a hundred or more players per side fighting for them, but probably the smaller outposts which compose the rest of the front line would be smaller fights. So, hopefully there'll be room for smaller scale fights as well. I think there's reason to be optimistic.

Thats a fair call, I forgot about the weight smaller outposts and towers will play in this, yea going behind lines and taking a smaller hex could work i guess.

[SKYeXile]

This is cyssor:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/media/album/2x7d548n9q/planetside5.jpg

it is an original continent from planetside, and said to be one that will return, but perhaps by name only.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

I've been saying this for a long time. Stalemate 3 ways are boring, and that is what seems most likely to happen with only 3 conts and footholds.

[Zekeen]

Zerg fights... that's the new fear?

I got three little words for the 1000 enemies in front of me.


Bring - It - On!!!!!!!!!!!


Seriously though, I don't think it'll get too bad, it will be split up into 3 continents at launch, we got battles inside bases, spread across towers, and in the skies. I'm sure there will be a lot of divide and conquer type movements keeping it active but not so overwhelmed.

[Stardouser]

Zerg fights... that's the new fear?

I got three little words for the 1000 enemies in front of me.


Bring - It - On!!!!!!!!!!!


Seriously though, I don't think it'll get too bad, it will be split up into 3 continents at launch, we got battles inside bases, spread across towers, and in the skies. I'm sure there will be a lot of divide and conquer type movements keeping it active but not so overwhelmed.

As far as we know, it's supposed to be 2000 per continent. The OP was about the 2000 per continent, that's not going to be split up into 3, there will (again, as far as we know) be 2 more continents of 2000.

[SKYeXile]

Zerg fights... that's the new fear?

I got three little words for the 1000 enemies in front of me.


Bring - It - On!!!!!!!!!!!


Seriously though, I don't think it'll get too bad, it will be split up into 3 continents at launch, we got battles inside bases, spread across towers, and in the skies. I'm sure there will be a lot of divide and conquer type movements keeping it active but not so overwhelmed.

Have you seen the inside of a base? It looks to me like everybase is simply a BF map with multiple nodes and indoor fighting is limited. for example the spawn rooms are in the middle of the courtyard.

[Figment]

And what is wrong with clusterfuckzergfest anyways? You can still play with your "tactics" even if it is. The clusterfuckzergfests of Planetside were the best part.

Well, some people get satisfaction out of resolving a fight, a change of pace and having the feeling they achieved something. Without relying on just numbers (zerg). Like solving a puzzle, a lot of people want to see results and especially like them and their team, regardless of size, being able to take credit for it by outplaying and outsmarting. Being zerged or playing nothing but zergfest clusterfuck over the same terrain all evening is horrible to them.

It is possible ps2 will be full of zerg.

Question is, if you can make an impact and if what little impact you have is noticable. If not, big chance a lot of players would get bored, fail to see the point and eventually leave over it. And they tend to be the smart and imaginative ones too. They are the ones who are not easily content because they 'know' what will happen and stop bothering to try if the reward doesn't suffice.

[SgtMAD]

PPl really aren't wrapping their heads around the 2k pop per cont number

if this game does a 10% of the business BF~/CoD does, we will see half a million ppl playing,now I realize that it won't mean one server per 6k players but even if its 30k a server,that's a lot of servers for the sequel of a game that had 7 at its best and if anything my player numbers could be at the low end

[ArmedZealot]

Well, some people get satisfaction out of resolving a fight, a change of pace and having the delling they achieved something. Without relying on just numbers (zerg). Like solving a puzzle, a lot of people want to see results and especially like them and their team, regardless of size, being able to take credit for it by outplaying and outsmarting. Being zerged or playing nothing but zergfest clusterfuck over the same terrain all evening is horrible to them.

It is possible ps2 will be full of zerg.

Question is, if you can make an impact and if what little impact you have is noticable. If not, big chance a lot of players would get bored, fail to see the point and eventually leave over it. And they tend to be the smart and imaginative ones too. They are the ones who are not easily content because they 'know' what will happen and stop bothering to try if the reward doesn't suffice.

Right, so how does this map prevent people who seek this type of gameplay from doing what they want to?

[Figment]

Well one thing is certain, the first three continents will not inluence the nect generation much as they would already be in the works. In fact, the third generation of maps might already be in the works. So I would not expect the first ten continents to have the optimum size and design for 2000 players. There is simply too much to be learned from the first. At twelve continents you should see lessons having been learned.

You see similar map design evolution in World of Tanks. The first maps lacked viable routes and they progressively got better, although they are still experimenting, their latest maps are more sandboxy and have less predetermined routes, giving the player options to use and play around with and choices to be made.

[SKYeXile]

PPl really aren't wrapping their heads around the 2k pop per cont number

if this game does a 10% of the business BF~/CoD does, we will see half a million ppl playing,now I realize that it won't mean one server per 6k players but even if its 30k a server,that's a lot of servers for the sequel of a game that had 7 at its best and if anything my player numbers could be at the low end

Yea, 6k online is the typical number for a full population MMO server(well its more like 4-5k), a server of that size would have approximately 25k-35k active accounts on it. so if SOE numbers are correct we will see:

online server: 6000
per continent 2000
perfaction/continent: 666
(yes yes im well are of rounding issues and those figures dont addup.)

[LightningDriver]

I don't think there's anything to fear. The good old footzerg won't cut it anymore. Too many of us have played Planetside for long enough where we'll know how to handle the mob. There are a lot more objectives, and from the looks of it, mini objectives where it will be about surrounding the NC and VS, limiting their spawn points, then wiping them out.

As far has holding a generator room, or whatever the equivilant is, that is incredibly dull, and the only purpose of that is to stroke an outfit leader's ego. Have fun with that if you're into 10 people shooting at 1 guy at a time running through a doorway and calling it teamwork.

[Turdicus]

Hm, I don't know. 64 km squared is quite a bit of territory even for a couple of thousand people. You're right in assuming that the battles for the facilities will likely be enormous, zerg like, and seemingly never ending, but like it was mentioned before I'm willing to bet that the smaller battlefields in the outlying hexes will spread the fight out quite effectively. Squads will splinter from the main fight in order to gather the resources and spawn points that the outposts will yield.

Those battles for the small hexes will likely be much smaller than the battles over the facilities, and will spread people out over a large portion of the map surrounding the facilities. Hopefully the mechanic involving capture times and the neighboring hexes will do its job.

[Figment]

Right, so how does this map prevent people who seek this type of gameplay from doing what they want to?

Look at the shape and base locations.

There is very little behind the lines area. It is either very close to the frontline and middle where three factions will likely clash with their zergs, or close to the sanctuary.

Traveltime and thus response time will be short for very large groups of people. Especially those airborne since Indar is canyony.


What does that mean tactically? You should be able to figure that out based on the rationale why spec ops teams always choose hard to reach locations. With 666x2 enemies, how big is the chance that a resec group respons and how fast without having to recall and change continents twice? Is this faster and a larger group than ps1? Yes on both accounts. Can you hide your spawns to keep them safe with small pops (10 or less) if it is a Galaxy? What does that mean for spec ops?


How long would a hold last, especially of terrain near a warpgate you cannot exert dominance over.

Questions you should know the answers to, or can find.

[Purple]

im sorry but are you complaining about the massive size of PS2?

[SgtMAD]

im sorry but are you complaining about the massive size of PS2?

no, he is explaining the facts as we know them and how they will affect gameplay and response times for backhacks

[Hamma]

Honestly I think the mission system is the wild card here, combined with the territory system. We won't know how those will behave.. it's not going to be like PlanetSide 1 where it was only bases to attack there are also tons of outposts and little buildings here and there all over the map.

[Purple]

no, he is explaining the facts as we know them and how they will affect gameplay and response times for backhacks

thanks for clearing that up for me =)

[Toppopia]

Sometimes the zerg would be good though, because then a smaller group can go somewhere else and capture a smaller target alot easier. But what i am wondering, will the defenders always have people at a base/outpost or would they only spawn there when it started getting captured? Because i would hate to be put on guard duty for 2 hours and nothing happen.

Because in say BF3, you always knew where the enemy would be coming from/going to, so you could prepare accordingly, but now there are soo many possibilities, so will outfit leaders order 1-2 people to go to a remote outpost and be put on guard duty till they log out?

[Shade Millith]

I really don't get what people are worried about.

I'm more worried that there ISN'T going to be a zerg. The Zerg acted as the cannon fodder to either shoot, or use as a distraction. Running along with the Zerg also was where the BIG BATTLES happened.

Removing the zerg honestly removes a big part of the game, and that the clashing of ARMIES. All this work of spreading people out is counter intuitive to one of the biggest draws of the game.

If I wanted small skirmishes, then I'd play BF3. I came to PS and PS2 for ARMIES

[SKYeXile]

no, he is explaining the facts as we know them and how they will affect gameplay and response times for backhacks

Yes that and the general flow of combat, in planetside fights were very diverse, with populations spread over sometimes upto 5 active conts, even 10 in the early days, there were all sorts of fights happening...i dont need to explain the types, we have all played PS1 here, no fights were ever the same...except maybe on cyssor bridge battles around the south west tip, dam bridge battles.

But in the original PS you could kick an empire off fight and have just a 2 way fight. you wont have that diversity in PS2, sure you make take all an empires bases, but you can never kick them off. In PS1 sure that empire might be able to run straight to the fight through another link, but alot of the time they would have to fight through another cont or just open up a fight there.

sure this means that an empire wont have to endure those boring backhacks of continents when been kicked off, but instead they MUST breakout of their warpgate...thats probably been camped...we all remember camping warpgates, its boring, for both sides.

I'm not complaining bout the massive size of PS, im complaining that it just may offer ONLY large fights. I have played practically every PVP MMO in existence, especially the open world ones, its never the zerg fights i remember, its the good small fights. I can hardly remember a single zerg on zerg fight in PS, i remember so many of the smaller fights like they were yesterday.

[Turdicus]

I don't really think that the concern was whether or not there would be a zerg, I'm pretty sure it was about whether or not there would ONLY be a zerg. The OP was concerned about the lack of opportunities for small scale battles alongside the larger ones, since there would be so many people and not enough points of interest.

Or something

[laelgon]

I've never understood the dislike of the zerg. When people talk about the zerg on this site it makes a lot of them sound like elitist assholes. Since this "unskilled" mass of players represents the largest part of the playerbase, it's not exactly surprising that they're being catered to. If most of the people are playing for the huge battles then that's who needs to be designed for. There's nothing keeping players from running their side operations and hacking empty outposts, so just let the people who want the big fights have them without acting like your game is being ruined by the much larger population.

[SKYeXile]

I really don't get what people are worried about.

I'm more worried that there ISN'T going to be a zerg. The Zerg acted as the cannon fodder to either shoot, or use as a distraction. Running along with the Zerg also was where the BIG BATTLES happened.

Removing the zerg honestly removes a big part of the game, and that the clashing of ARMIES. All this work of spreading people out is counter intuitive to one of the biggest draws of the game.

If I wanted small skirmishes, then I'd play BF3. I came to PS and PS2 for ARMIES

I've never understood the dislike of the zerg. When people talk about the zerg on this site it makes a lot of them sound like elitist assholes. Since this "unskilled" mass of players represents the largest part of the playerbase, it's not exactly surprising that they're being catered to. If most of the people are playing for the huge battles then that's who needs to be designed for. There's nothing keeping players from running their side operations and hacking empty outposts, so just let the people who want the big fights have them without acting like your game is being ruined by the much larger population.

The thing is though, in Planetside you had zerg fights, you had smaller fights, you had 1 on 1s you had zerg on squad. there was a huge mix. on these maps i really cant see the fights breaking up from the zerg 3 way fight that much. They can design the game to have both, it doesn't not need to be all massive fighting. you people claim to want realistic fighting and wars...not all wars are army vs army in frontline fights..atleast not anymore its all small ops teams vs a small known enemy bunker or outpost.

I do like the odd zerg fight and massive fight, but you need something to break it up sometime or it just becomes repetitive.

[Baneblade]

That's a Battle Island... right?

[Stardouser]

This thread reminds me, we need to know details on squad spawning - such as the timer, and if there are any other restrictions. That's going to be key for attacking away from the main forces.

[SKYeXile]

This thread reminds me, we need to know details on squad spawning - such as the timer, and if there are any other restrictions. That's going to be key for attacking away from the main forces.

well you could always fly a gal around, then you would have a squad spawn point...i do hope they allow you to fly off the map more though, those out of bounds warnings made me cringe.

but yea the better option could be to fly a loan infil in, bail and then get 9 people inc heavies and maxes to drop on him, also you notice that those dropods landed on base objects...bail one infil on a tower or base roof...SEND IN THE DROP PODS! im patenting that that tactic BTW. (im aware in the final ironed out PS2...that would be likely unpossible, to you i say: SHUTUP!)

[Raymac]

I think even with our vast experiences in the flow of battles in the original Planetside, it is next to impossible to accurately predict how it will be in Planetside 2. There are too many new variables. The player count is larger, the maps are vastly different, the lattice is gone, player generated missions, etc. etc.

I think the OP could be right and it will just congregate into 1 massive zergfest, but since they are removing the lattice, I think it might actually be easier to have smaller skirmishes over resources. In Planetside 1, the smaller skirmishes were limited to mainly gen holds and towers of doom. Now with the custom terrain and large variety of smaller outposts, the smaller fights will be more entertaining and therefore more attractive.

[Brusi]

When people talk about the zerg on this site it makes a lot of them sound like elitist assholes.

The majority of people on the planetside forums think about the game enough to actually occasionally play with a level of strategy.'

They are not being elitest discussing the movement of the zerg. The zerg effect is the simple movement of casual fps players, moving from enemy to enemy, base to base. The path of least resistance with the greatest short-term gain.

Catering only to zerg style gameplay will be detrimental to PS2 in the long run, as one of the great things about Planetside was it's ability to transform people from casual FPS gamers into strategically thinking leaders.

Don't forget the other catch words "Persistant" and "open world" that were the other reason for Planetside's popularity! If there isn't a bit of variety, it will get boring ;p

[ArmedZealot]

Look at the shape and base locations.

There is very little behind the lines area. It is either very close to the frontline and middle where three factions will likely clash with their zergs, or close to the sanctuary.


Traveltime and thus response time will be short for very large groups of people. Especially those airborne since Indar is canyony.

You don't know how much "area" that is. While the map is scaled similarly to the old continents you don't have any idea of travel time or terrain, just a blue map from ages ago. Your basing your assumptions off a game that may or may not carry over here.

How does "canyony" mean short response time? You've only seen the videos which don't show the entire continent. From the GDC video some of it was covered in forest, from TB's videos it was indeed canyony but he was walled in to 1 base.



What does that mean tactically? You should be able to figure that out based on the rationale why spec ops teams always choose hard to reach locations. With 666x2 enemies, how big is the chance that a resec group respons and how fast without having to recall and change continents twice? Is this faster and a larger group than ps1? Yes on both accounts. Can you hide your spawns to keep them safe with small pops (10 or less) if it is a Galaxy? What does that mean for spec ops?


No I don't know the answers to these questions. I don't think anyone does unless they have actually played the game, or have a crystal ball to spawning mechanics, tower maps, and features that are on SOE computers.

To make anything more of it is just making assumptions out of nothing and theorycrafting.


How long would a hold last, especially of terrain near a warpgate you cannot exert dominance over.

Questions you should know the answers to, or can find.

I don't know, do you know how bases are captured in PS2? Because the current capture mechanic shown in the videos is not what is going to be in the game as is if I remember right. Nor do we know what destroyable base assets there are.

[2coolforu]

Nothing wrong with the zerg, on Werner TR we always organized for some epic raids. The good CR5's flowed with the zerg and organized them into a massed force and we all had a good time following their commands, the zerg only occurred because people want to have fun and they want to work together. It's just half the time /Comall was such a clusterfrak the hive-mind just decided to wander on to a mutual target and have some fun.

[SKYeXile]

You don't know how much "area" that is. While the map is scaled similarly to the old continents you don't have any idea of travel time or terrain, just a blue map from ages ago. Your basing your assumptions off a game that may or may not carry over here.

How does "canyony" mean short response time? You've only seen the videos which don't show the entire continent. From the GDC video some of it was covered in forest, from TB's videos it was indeed canyony but he was walled in to 1 base.




No I don't know the answers to these questions. I don't think anyone does unless they have actually played the game, or have a crystal ball to spawning mechanics, tower maps, and features that are on SOE computers.

To make anything more of it is just making assumptions out of nothing and theorycrafting.




I don't know, do you know how bases are captured in PS2? Because the current capture mechanic shown in the videos is not what is going to be in the game as is if I remember right. Nor do we know what destroyable base assets there are.

we saw how fast TB went from base to base, rapid response use aircraft, not ground, the terrain makes no difference.

Base in PS2 are captured in sections, so you can have a fixed spawn point in somebody else's base. presumably though to flip the hex you will need to control all points at once or the majtoirty for a select time.

Im not going to explain the hex system, i gather you're up to date with that.

[Sabot]

I don't even see it as a zerg... I see an army, where "commanders" direct it where to move, attack and defend. Outfit leaders then takes care of the players in that outfit... some might be specialized, and som might just run with what is needed or what they think is fun. And squad leaders takes care of squads. The actual zerg are solo players, which actually aren't that many.

[SKYeXile]

I don't even see it as a zerg... I see an army, where "commanders" direct it where to move, attack and defend. Outfit leaders then takes care of the players in that outfit... some might be specialized, and som might just run with what is needed or what they think is fun. And squad leaders takes care of squads. The actual zerg are solo players, which actually aren't that many.

erg...no.

Outfits dont run orginased groups at all times of the day
outfits arnt always organised, there are some that mass recruit anybody and dont lead them at all.
not everybody runs with outfit squads
not everybody is in an outfit.
not every squad willbe organised
not everybody will squad, infact most wont and will play solo.

How many squads were there in PS1 running at a time? heaps, msot of them because somebody spammed invited them, they dont care if they're in a squad or not, they do what they want, the SL know that, he just hopes they bring him CEP. what im saying is...THAR WILL BE ZERG.

Mission system may give a bonus for some people, but were yet to see how it functions if it even does. theres a great potential to exploit the system i think.

[Hyiero]

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p7/morbidgamer/PS21.jpg

This is the map, you see all the resources...I'm only assuming that is all small outposts and towers,those resources mean our supply line to vehicles,aircraft,w/e you may need to keep your army going,with the proper strategy an enemy team would want to split up and multi cap several of your resources to deny you of something before they go for a base. Or do both at the same time and as Hamma said earlier in the post,the mission system is a key factor for splitting up the population like how you have explained your worries about, yes their will be "zerg" fighting,but I can with certainty promise you that there will be several other battles of different size mixtures going on.

[Xyntech]

Here is how I understand it, although I could be way off.

Continents, bases, towers and populations are all larger this time. In the first game you needed 4 (later 5) continents to hold 2000 players, where as now you may only need one to hold the same amount.

From my perspective, this leaves the towers as the PS2 equivalent of PS1's bases. They are almost the right size for it at least.

Perhaps this will leave those different regions of the continent as separate major sections, with the different biome regions being like PS1's continents, only with several all conjoined together. It seems like Indar is broken up into four sections, which would match with the PS1 math, 2000 players divided into four groups of 500.

I'm not sure how this will play out in the new game, but I think that we are going to have to start thinking of each continent as several of the old continents all shoved into one giant play space. Towers are maybe like the new base fights, and bases are something else entirely new.

The zerg seems very important to me, but I have been having some similar concerns of the zerg potentially just running amok, as well as the problem of how players will stay decently distributed.

I personally just don't think there will be any shortage of opportunities for more tactical players and outfits to find a weak spot in the outskirts of the lines or behind enemy lines to exploit tthough.

[LostAlgorithm]

I personally just don't think there will be any shortage of opportunities for more tactical players and outfits to find a weak spot in the outskirts of the lines or behind enemy lines to exploit tthough.

This.

This thread's topic is a non-issue. There will always be opportunities like the OP wants. It's just the nature of a game like this.

[Figment]

we saw how fast TB went from base to base, rapid response use aircraft, not ground, the terrain makes no difference.

Pretty much.


ArmedZealot, do you ever take in new information and combine it with other information you've already obtained, or do you keep ignoring it and keeping things separate just so you can pretend you won't know till beta? Because we know a lot more than you assume and I'm not even making any assumptions, I just take what we've seen in footage...



We saw many vids on the speed of aircraft already, got a good impression of the size of the continent because we ALREADY KNOW THE SIZE OF THE MAP and we know how large a PORTION OF THE MAP (base) is and how long it takes to traverse from one side of a base to the other by walking, driving and flying (!).

Meaning we know a lot more if you just dare COMBINE that information. You never do! Why!? If you are unable to calculate from that how long it takes to get anywhere, you're even more unimaginative than you let out before. Have you ever done any algebra or dividing/multiplying, extrapolation maths? Any maths at all? Ever? FFS ArmedZealot, you really want to do your name justice, don't you? Zealots are ignorant, narrowminded SOBs that work within a (self-)imposed doctrine. In your case the doctrine is "we must be ignorant till beta unless it is conveniently in favour of my argument!".


Also we saw that TB - who wasn't boxed in AT ALL - flew from one side of the continent to the other in minutes. Which means if it was a third or even a sixth of the continent (which is the range I'm talking about and the range we know from the Indar map), it won't take very long in aircraft... Now will it?





But just to prove you are wrong yet again. I'll illustrate it for you, maybe you'll learn something on combining information! (Of course you will then again say I can't know, but hey, do your thing).

http://i.imgur.com/tmJOW.jpg

So we have the map. As you can see, it conveniantly has a typical subdivision with equalish, interconnected territory being held by all empires. This is the most likely scenario for this continent based on base layout and grids, save the pocket of NC up north east which probably is only viable due to there only being 50 people on the continent at the time of the alpha playtest and there not really being a very competitive fight going on.

So we see that 1.5 grids is approximately the size of a base that TotalBiscuit was flying in, since we know that he was actually in the base called Zurvan:

http://youtu.be/hjsd5uouw9I?t=4m

This mapview too gives a decent impression of the continent size and distance to the nearby outposts.

We also know from his footage how long it takes to get from one side of the base, to another side of the base:

http://youtu.be/ptGe-UplC34?t=7m32s

Around 10 seconds to fly from one side of a base to another. Afterburners of course are available and he uses it right after he passes over the Sunderer as he should. On the way back, he takes around 15 seconds without afterburners.

So, 1.5 grids can be approximated by 15 seconds of flying, give or take 5 seconds depending on afterburner and accuracy of the measurement. Thus 1 grid is 10 seconds.

So, consider now that there's about 6 grids from a Sanctuary to a frontline (60 seconds of flight). Distances between big bases are around 5-6 grids too and distances to outposts in between a lot shorter. That means that if you're furthest away from frontline and sanctuary, you're at three grids. Meaning you're only about 30-45 seconds or less away from ANY rapid response team based on the frontline or working from sanctuary when you try something behind enemy lines. In the worst case scenario where the rapid response team comes from the far north side of TR territory to the south side of the territory, it will take 13 grids, or approximately 130 seconds. That's just over two minutes.

from one side of the continent to the other it will take approximately 190 seconds, or just over three minutes. This corresponds with the Alpha Gameplay footage from Higby and the TB videos as well. Diagonally, it will be around 25 grids, which is just over four minutes.

Even if we assume a 33% error in my calculations, the increase in time is insignificant and at most up to a minute and a second or twenty, but that extreme situation is only true for diagonal cross-continent movement (!). Meaning in practice and a normal situation with decently divided territory, the 33% error would be 10-20 seconds at most! Because the basic value that might be wrong is simply very low!


Of course, anyone travelling by ground will get stuck in choke points and is hindered by terrain and enemy presence (cannot by pass-it or get away from that as easily as they can't put a cliff or structure between them and a threat/target as fast and can't afterburn away, ignoring terrain features) and therefore has a far lower travelling speed. Aircav thus will always be the prefered unit of choice of any fast response team.

Either way, even if the flight distance is increased by a few seconds per grid, you're still not exactly giving people a lot of time. Small ops will be overwhelmed very fast by aircav teams on stand-by, which is the type of flexible gameplay that a lot of 1337fits do: react on a moments notice.





So to say we don't know anything about that is just completely self-inflicted ignorance, but tbh, I've come to expect that of some people by now. The refusal to combine information tidbits on these forums out of fear of harming the perfect image of PS2 or getting a conclusion wrong is staggering. :/

[cellinaire]

And this game has 'Terran'. Where's the Protoss, anyway?

(oh wait. We actually have Protoss aka Vanu :D )

[Toppopia]

From all your brilliant calculations and arithmetic, then the continent seems really small. I was thinking something along the lines of Far Cry 2 size (North or South map, not both combined), but maybe i was being over optimistic.

[SKYeXile]

Also figment, we have seen a great deal of spawn points when respawning, its possible that you have the option to spawn anywhere, and if not im sure binding to a location is still ingame and the availability to always spawn at the outpost is probable too. greatly dreasing travel toto any distance near the warpgate.


we also need to think of base design too, how many bases have we seen the interior of? none, the spawn room is in the CY ffs. small team thrive off been able to bottleneck enemy's and use corridors and such so they have limited angles to cover, in the event that your enemy can come from any direction like where some of these node locations are, then that will lead to more zerg fighting, because there will be no other way to fight since you cant as a smaller group give yourself a tactical advantage.

[SKYeXile]

From all your brilliant calculations and arithmetic, then the continent seems really small. I was thinking something along the lines of Far Cry 2 size (North or South map, not both combined), but maybe i was being over optimistic.

my original post shows the size vs the BF3 map...caspian border. the maps pretty big, but its not like a PS1 map, especily not when aircraft move HEAPS faster in this as figment pointed out. it takes about 1.5 second to afterburn from one side of a planetside base to another. these bases are much bigger than planetside bases.

[Nabeshin]

If you have 2k people on a map that size I believe you will have your small fights Sky.

Your right, 99% chance there will be one massive clusterfuck in the middle, happened in PS1 when all 3 empires held bases in that same format with relatively equal population. However, this time we could have up to 4x+ the people fighting on a cont. Reguardless of how great PS2 runs on some PC's it will run like shit on someones comp, likely a lot of peoples, even more so when you get into those massive fights so they will need to break away from the large fight and find something else to do.

Which leads me to believe that we will have fighting all over the entire cont, not to mention you will have people that head straight for the warpgates to fight reguardless of what kind of fights are happening elsewhere. Then you have the people that like to defend, so they might just hang out in the rear bases just to try and prevent shenanigans. And the people that like to backhack stuff.

So I think the fighting will be plenty spread out but one massive fight in the middle is highly likely. Have to remember no one really follows any rules in a game like this, people will do what they want. If they don't want to be part of the massive battles, they will purposely start a smaller fight elsewhere. Hell, we did it in PS1, I see no difference here aside from the escalated pops.

[SKYeXile]

If you have 2k people on a map that size I believe you will have your small fights Sky.

Your right, 99% chance there will be one massive clusterfuck in the middle, happened in PS1 when all 3 empires held bases in that same format with relatively equal population. However, this time we could have up to 4x+ the people fighting on a cont. Reguardless of how great PS2 runs on some PC's it will run like shit on someones comp, likely a lot of peoples, even more so when you get into those massive fights so they will need to break away from the large fight and find something else to do.

Which leads me to believe that we will have fighting all over the entire cont, not to mention you will have people that head straight for the warpgates to fight reguardless of what kind of fights are happening elsewhere. Then you have the people that like to defend, so they might just hang out in the rear bases just to try and prevent shenanigans. And the people that like to backhack stuff.

So I think the fighting will be plenty spread out but one massive fight in the middle is highly likely. Have to remember no one really follows any rules in a game like this, people will do what they want. If they don't want to be part of the massive battles, they will purposely start a smaller fight elsewhere. Hell, we did it in PS1, I see no difference here aside from the escalated pops.

This is why we made you an officer, always with the smarts thinkings, needs more -J though.

[Figment]

Yeah the CY Spawn Rooms bother me as they are basically Redoubts or Mod Buildings.

We all know how Redoubt gameplay ends up if you ever played in a cave.

From the alpha footage Higby and TB showed, it also indicated that once you reach the spawn room, the location is taken in seconds. Obviously it will be the prime target of any resecure team and since there's no hidden AMSes, you instantly know all the spawnpoint locations of the invading team: Galaxies will stick out like a soor thumb, while sections of bases are spread out significantly. That also makes your movement patterns as the attacker far more predictable (you already know starting point and you know the objectives, meaning you know the optional routes too, with an AMS you don't know where the starting point exactly is aside from some likely locations or a rough direction, meaning you still needed to scout the area). Any aircav team would first barrage the Galaxy into oblivion before landing, reducing your spawnpoints to the solid structure. Then camp that, take it and finish up on the rest, provided you yourself even got to the point where you captured more than the spawns by then.

Note also that timers increase if the territory is surrounded by enemy hexes, meaning it's easier to take back than to take. This puts spec. ops. in an even worse position.

Basically, I don't see how you can capture such a base with a crew of ten or twelve and hold it since you need to guard so many sections of the base separately and the spawnpoint as well as it does not defend or hide itself. That's why I've been saying from the start the game is really designed for zerg-combat, not spec ops. Spec ops simply do not have the manpower to hold all these objectives, certainly not against a flexible team of aircavs that can improvise their priorities upon arrival based on your locations (ie. all you can't guard is lost before you can respond).

In fact, with ten people, I'd say it's even hard to guard a single control node in an entire base... If you spread out over the base to guard multiple nodes, those rapid response teams will overwhelm you individually and take it anyway. In PS1, you had far fewer control points and your spawn point was less dependent on active defense, meaning a small team had far more chance of guarding those points.

[Nabeshin]

This is why we made you an officer, always with the smarts thinkings, needs more -J though.

I will indeed miss the -J in PS2. And its rarely allowed to use the - in anything so I didn't even see if it would work here.

[Toppopia]

It seems that to be Spec-Ops, we will need at least 30 people. That sounds really Spec-Opy.:doh:

But if you are in a decent outfit that plans stuff regularly, then it shouldn't be too hard to muster up 20-30 people to go attack something.

[SKYeXile]

Yeah the CY Spawn Rooms bother me as they are basically Redoubts or Mod Buildings.

We all know how Redoubt gameplay ends up if you ever played in a cave.

From the alpha footage Higby and TB showed, it also indicated that once you reach the spawn room, the location is taken in seconds. Obviously it will be the prime target of any resecure team and since there's no hidden AMSes, you instantly know all the spawnpoint locations of the invading team: Galaxies will stick out like a soor thumb, while sections of bases are spread out significantly. That also makes your movement patterns as the attacker far more predictable (you already know starting point and you know the objectives, meaning you know the optional routes too, with an AMS you don't know where the starting point exactly is aside from some likely locations or a rough direction, meaning you still needed to scout the area). Any aircav team would first barrage the Galaxy into oblivion before landing, reducing your spawnpoints to the solid structure. Then camp that, take it and finish up on the rest.

Basically, I don't see how you can capture such a base with a crew of ten or twelve and hold it since you need to guard so many sections of the base separately and the spawnpoint as well as it does not defend or hide itself. That's why I've been saying from the start the game is really designed for zerg-combat, not spec ops. Spec ops simply do not have the manpower to hold all these objectives, certainly not against a flexible team of aircavs that can improvise their priorities upon arrival based on your locations (ie. all you can't guard is lost before you can respond).

well yea, spec ops gonna arrive in aircraft mostlikly, that or via droppods and advanced scout. your best be would be to keep people mobile in the sky so you can intercept their birds and get around quickly to defend nodes. this is what i always did, i stayed in my aircraft until i was forced to bail or they got enough men past me. in my aircraft i could kill people who would attempt to fight me, kill the odd terrible bailer not smart enough to bail on the doors, takeout a gal full of bads who think they're rapid response or kill any idiot who thought it was a good plan to rockup in a ground vehicle.

Though tbh, i think taking a base is now out of the reach of specops its gonna be very hard to defend 8 nodes against assault for xx time, you would be best to take an outpost or tower behind lines, maybe there you can get a funnel happening. then if you do manage to take it the nearby bases could be more possible.

[Nabeshin]

Note also that timers increase if the territory is surrounded by enemy hexes, meaning it's easier to take back than to take. This puts spec. ops. in an even worse position.

Technically it was the same deal in PS1, only instead of someone needing to have the higher tiers of advanced hacking, it will be determined by the surrounding territory control. Though who knows what the actual capture speeds will be. I am guessing the capture speeds that you see in some of the PS2 Alpha vids are purposely very fast for the time being.

[Figment]

Technically it was the same deal in PS1, only instead of someone needing to have the higher tiers of advanced hacking, it will be determined by the surrounding territory control. Though who knows what the actual capture speeds will be.

Hence why I didn't like BR40 and Expert Hacking (had to have it myself though and resecured a lot of bases at the last second that really should have been awarded to the enemy team for holding it for 15 minutes).

Pre-BR40, even BR23, a lot of people simply could not afford even the Hacking cert, let alone Advanced Hacking. Quite often it meant that you could spawn and return to the CC to defend it because the resec person in there had a one minute timer to go through while you spawned in 20-30 seconds and traveled back there in another 10-15 seconds. Or... they had to fight with subpar equipment and couldn't bring the spawnroom back up. (Post-BR23 more people killed base equip terms as they had to at least stall someone by having them get glue from their locker).

It became a default cert later on. With Expert Hacking especially, the chance of you stopping a resecure attempt by spawning and running back to the CC became zero, since you could not reach the CC from even a CY AMS in time due to spawn time and travel time combined being twice to three times longer than Expert Hacking takes to resecure. Meaning once a concentrated push on a CC broke through your defenses, the hold was over because they only needed to take you out once. That too was a bad move by SOE devs who did not think of the consequences for specific players and gameplay at all.

Expert Hacking even became a forced cert for resec teams due to being the only thing that could counter the rather overpowered virals (a few seconds with a console harms gameplay of everyone on the other empire for many minutes, unlimited use save for a few seconds where you can't install another, all in all Data Corruption being fastly superior to an Orbital Strike in impact) and giving an immense extra boost in resec power.


Anyway, back to PS2.

Regardless if capture speeds are faster (easy to take but even easier to retake) or longer (harder to take, slightly harder to retake), spec ops teams are doomed by the amount of spread out nodes they have to defend, having to cross outdoor terrain constantly and having no hidden back up spawnpoints or Routers to use.

[SKYeXile]

It is said though that bases are taken in sections, so how that endup playing out will be interesting to be see. hex control may go to the empire who held all hexes last, but that does not mean that the base could not be taken in sections, including the spawn points(which we know is acutely possible) so perhaps specops could take 2 vital sections of the base instead of going for all 8.

well see how that plays out though, the idea of an enemy owning half your base jsut seems little foreign to me.

[Nabeshin]

It may be hard for spec ops, it may not. How many spec ops teams had been running at the same time in PS1? Maybe 2-3 tops per side?

4x+ pop can also mean 4x+ more spec ops teams, someone will get something done eventually.

[cellinaire]

From all your brilliant calculations and arithmetic, then the continent seems really small. I was thinking something along the lines of Far Cry 2 size (North or South map, not both combined), but maybe i was being over optimistic.


(I don't know how many times I have to say this again and again, but)

The size of the continents won't be that small like some of you guys would think it'll be. ;)

[Xyntech]

Though tbh, i think taking a base is now out of the reach of specops its gonna be very hard to defend 8 nodes against assault for xx time, you would be best to take an outpost or tower behind lines, maybe there you can get a funnel happening. then if you do manage to take it the nearby bases could be more possible.

Don't those modular towers now allow you to spawn certain vehicles? I agree that bases seem outside of the scope of what a small rapid response team can now successfully hold, but I think a tower would be perfect.

As I said before, towers are like PS1's bases in a lot of ways. From what little we've seen of that smiley face tower (not the insides unfortunately), I wouldn't be surprised if a small team could take and hold one for a prolonged period.

Capturing hexes that are touching the incursion point will become easier, maybe not for the zerg, but for a larger 60 man team who is decently organized even if not extremely rapid response. Getting some spec ops teams to work directly with some supportive teams would be pretty cool to see used to the fullest potential.

That's not even mentioning that just holding the tower itself may prove a benefit on it's own if it provides your empire with x resource, or denies it to the enemy.

A lot of this will depend on the defensibility of things like towers and outposts though, as well as the defensive effectiveness of things like MANA turrets and C4.

(I don't know how many times I have to say this again and again, but)

The size of the continents won't be that small like some of you guys would think it'll be. ;)

The aircraft flight speed is pretty high in TB's videos. Far Cry 2 just seems so large because you are land locked the entire time, traveling at extremely low relative speeds.

[Figment]

It may be hard for spec ops, it may not. How many spec ops teams had been running at the same time in PS1? Maybe 2-3 tops per side?

4x+ pop can also mean 4x+ more spec ops teams, someone will get something done eventually.

And more resec teams.

@Xyntech: agreed to a large extend.

I'd really like to know internal layouts. I do hope they will bring back sub-surface combat in bases and put the most important nodes underground, somewhere where you can defend them with a smaller team by holding entry (choke) points.

So far, I don't think we've seen a lot, if any internal structures aside from some courtyard barracks/rooms. Those remind me a lot of CoD map design btw.

[cellinaire]

...The aircraft flight speed is pretty high in TB's videos. Far Cry 2 just seems so large because you are land locked the entire time, traveling at extremely low relative speeds.

Yeah I saw that, too. Felt definitely a lot faster than PS1's afterburner/normal flying speed. Coupled with totally handcrafted continents and various landscape/biosphere, they're doing awesome job here :D

[ringring]

Sometimes the zerg would be good though, because then a smaller group can go somewhere else and capture a smaller target alot easier. But what i am wondering, will the defenders always have people at a base/outpost or would they only spawn there when it started getting captured? Because i would hate to be put on guard duty for 2 hours and nothing happen.



Even in ps1, if you decided to attack a behind the line quiet base you would often find 1 or 2 people already there. 1 or 2 while not enough to stop you would be enough to tell their mates.

Even if you were doing ant runs, over quiet territory, often someone would have laid mines in quoke points and bridges.

So, yea, I think with 2000 people the continent will fgeel pretty full.

You have to factor into this of all the players how many will be online per server at any one time? It a server has a full 6000 evenly split between empires then I imagine the result will be a stalemate and at worst tactical play won't work and people will just go for kills.

However, if the max pop cap is 6000 and average population is, say 1500 then empirees can move people around the continents for best advantage. People can form raids and overwhelm defenders.

I've been asking for more continents for a while for exactly this reason and hopefully if there are only 3 continents at launch additional ones aren't far behind.

[MCYRook]

Though tbh, i think taking a base is now out of the reach of specops
This.

For one, it's a pure numbers thing - in PS1, if you had a team of 20 (already pretty big for a spec ops group), and if your guys knew their shit, the enemy would have to bring at least 30 people to root you out. Even if they had a poplock's worth on the cont already, that meant almost a quarter of all their pop would have to be diverted to you. Now if the enemy empire has 666 people, that same 20-man team will only pull 5%.

I do agree that various factors will additionally make it harder for small teams to hold a base. Multiple cap points and spawn point control being the most important ones.

That leads me to think that the large bases (of which there are only two hands full on the cont to begin with) aren't meant to be captured by any other means than a big assault. All things considered, they do seem outside the scope of spec ops teams with 5-25 people.

Here's hoping that the smaller installations scattered over the cont will both provide gameplay interesting and varied enough and some strategic impact to make them viable playgrounds for the spec ops types.

[bpostal]

Honestly I think the mission system is the wild card here, combined with the territory system. We won't know how those will behave.. it's not going to be like PlanetSide 1 where it was only bases to attack there are also tons of outposts and little buildings here and there all over the map.

I'm hoping that the mission system will allow me to create temporary objectives and then place them out in global. For example; Bonus XP (or whatever) to the platoon that takes the north tower. Perhaps even create missions to take, hold and establish spawn/supply points on a particular piece of real estate outside of a base.
Planning, executing and revising a scheme to take over a base via the mission system sounds like it could be a bit of fun and cut down on the mindlessness.

[Figment]

The mission system is all nice and dandy, but I personally don't believe in scripted missions and I'm not sure it would matter if I write a mission opposed to trying to talk to people in person. There would have to be massive rewards to lure people to where you want them to go, because if they think it's suicide or takes too much effort, they won't anyway.

[Sturmhardt]

Very interesting assumptions and calculations you guys got going on here. There is still one thing I might doubt about everything (im sorry :D): I dont really believe in the 2000 Players. I know it is a goal and I guess the more the merrier, but I dont believe it is technically feasible (although Im no expert and might be wrong). I believe it is clever marketing so that PS2 stands out even more from other games. It might be their "goal" to get 2000 into the game but come on.... have you ever seen anything that comes EVEN CLOSE to that? The closest I can think of is PS1, nothing else.

I just assume this because over the last decade we didn't really see a rise in playernumbers in onlinegames. Games like Battlefield had max. 64 players 10 years ago and they have max. 64 players today. Obviously its kinda hard to do this MMOFPS thing, still SOE did ~400 players once in PS1, but Im not sure if they can get 4x or more players into PS2. My speculation would be that we get something around 1000-1500 players, not much more. I know this is just speculation, but as cool as 2000 would be - I just cant believe it.

Sorry for being an engineer who does not believe in miracles :p

[ArmedZealot]

stuffs

I'm just going to ignore ad hominem complaining in this wall of text. It was completely uneeded.

Right, so you know how long it takes for air cav to move from base to base on indar. How does this compare with PS1 travel times? If we are going to moan the loss of PS1 spec ops because of lower travel time between bases then we need to compare it to PS1 numbers. I'm not subbed to the game or I would check myself with a mosi.

[SgtMAD]

there isn't any reason you can't run an 80 man spec ops platoon(s),its attitude,skill, planning and execution that make up spec op teams,size is not the determining factor.

if you were in an outfit during the PS years and that group stayed active for the whole time and did some recruiting while still active ingame, you will see hundreds of ppl coming back and wanting to rejoin those outfits becuase they played with you back in '03/'04,you are going to be swamped by ppl that at one time you though were good enough to become members.

with the pop caps being scaled up,you will need to scale up your outfit to give you the same pop % you had in PS1

and if the devs think that just giving us the same three base layout on every new cont they add later(hopefully)is going to work then they are sadly mistaken

[raw]

So the rule for use of the military is that if you outnumber the opponent ten to one, then surround them; five to one, attack; two to one, divide.
If you are equal, then fight if you are able. If youare fewer, then keep away if you are able. If you are not as good, then flee if you are able.

-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter III: Planning A Siege

[Marsgrim]

I've been saying this for a long time. Stalemate 3 ways are boring, and that is what seems most likely to happen with only 3 conts and footholds.

Agreed. I raised this in my post on the Q&A making me nervous - I see stalemate all over the current strategy design.

[Tamas]

Good. More targets for me to shoot? Epic battle size? Yes please.

[Hyiero]

Very interesting assumptions and calculations you guys got going on here. There is still one thing I might doubt about everything (im sorry :D): I dont really believe in the 2000 Players. I know it is a goal and I guess the more the merrier, but I dont believe it is technically feasible (although Im no expert and might be wrong). I believe it is clever marketing so that PS2 stands out even more from other games. It might be their "goal" to get 2000 into the game but come on.... have you ever seen anything that comes EVEN CLOSE to that? The closest I can think of is PS1, nothing else.

I just assume this because over the last decade we didn't really see a rise in playernumbers in onlinegames. Games like Battlefield had max. 64 players 10 years ago and they have max. 64 players today. Obviously its kinda hard to do this MMOFPS thing, still SOE did ~400 players once in PS1, but Im not sure if they can get 4x or more players into PS2. My speculation would be that we get something around 1000-1500 players, not much more. I know this is just speculation, but as cool as 2000 would be - I just cant believe it.

Sorry for being an engineer who does not believe in miracles :p

SOE is imo the most experienced company dealing with MMO's if it is possible to get 2,000 people on a continent, they will make it happen. But I am a strong believer in around 1,500 as well,it just seems more realistic. Time will tell though

[Kurzgan]

The best way to avoid the zerg, is to join a good outfit. The zerg will ALWAYS be there, it's comprised of the guildless, unorganized part timers or the lone wolf "I don't know how to play well with others". They just go where the most fighting is, they want the action and the want it now and they want to pad their K/D ratio.

A good outfit will be doing all of the coordinated assault and organized joint ops. The folks that are really making things happen out there and the ones that are having the most fun. The way PS2 is set up, you can simply go around the zerg ;)

[Kalbuth]

On 1 hand, 8x8 km isn't that big. ArmA2's Chernarus map is 15x15, and this one would hold 2000 players easily. That's nearly 4 times Indar. The issue I can see is as outlined above, anything you go isn't far, either from a fairly large group of people (there's a fight in the neighboring Hex), and even less by mobile aircav. Indar is not too small, it just isn't big enough ;)

On the other hand, there won't be 2k players per map. And I think the specops will naturally scale, depending on the easiness of tools available. If we can coordinate at 60 easily, both spec ops and rapid response will scale accordingly.
In fact, the big rapid response team you fear may well be, when not doing response job, covering a spec ops airspace....

[Kalbuth]

then 8x8km isn't enough to distribute 2K players correctly, imho

[Mechzz]

The hex design will force defenders to spread across the map, thinning things out.

[Ieyasu]

whats with all these threads with people posting their fears based on speculation? I mean ffs why not wait until at least 10% of the people here commenting on said situation have at least played the game?

I understand people have concerns, but do they think the devs are going to make a change to the game based upon someone who has yet to play its speculation on what might happen?

[Hyiero]

Well the killcam is a totally different issue all together and they knew already that it might be a bad idea,they just wanted some outside opinions but I am positive all the intelligent people working on this game have thought about things such as map size and populations gathering together.

I agree with a lot of the posts talking about size compared to aircraft travel etc. Though none of us maybe other than hamma has seen how the outposts and tower capping will be like so until this is shown to us I don't believe we have enough information to conclude or speculate how the population will begin to spread itself out.And that the land mass is too small to house the population that they are wanting.

[SgtMAD]

whats with all these threads with people posting their fears based on speculation? I mean ffs why not wait until at least 10% of the people here commenting on said situation have at least played the game?

I understand people have concerns, but do they think the devs are going to make a change to the game based upon someone who has yet to play its speculation on what might happen?

we spent almost 10 years playing PS,its not idle speculation when we look at the map and with our previous experience can see there might be a huge problem with the expected planned on population numbers given the size and layout of said map,every fight doesn't need to be a huge force on force battle royal, sometimes a nice small scale skirmish is what ppl are looking for,we called it a farm in PS,we used to pull that kind of shit in a tower far behind enemy lines.

what this thread is about is how damn close that front line is to everything else on the map,its a pretty damn simple point and the fact that we are now at page 6 and some ppl want to act like we can't read a friggin map is comical

[Baneblade]

Hopefully the lack of a lattice system will punish the zerg... although many a time the zerg was punished by the lattice system :lol:

[xIIDeAdLyIIx]

I personally would be disappointed if the big bases were taken by a special ops team unless it was a monumentally good team. The 'special strike squads' or whatever you want to call them will be used to take smaller outposts.

If there are multiple battles going on then the field will be spread out enough to make it even.

[Ieyasu]

we spent almost 10 years playing PS,its not idle speculation when we look at the map and with our previous experience can see there might be a huge problem with the expected planned on population numbers given the size and layout of said map,every fight doesn't need to be a huge force on force battle royal, sometimes a nice small scale skirmish is what ppl are looking for,we called it a farm in PS,we used to pull that kind of shit in a tower far behind enemy lines.

what this thread is about is how damn close that front line is to everything else on the map,its a pretty damn simple point and the fact that we are now at page 6 and some ppl want to act like we can't read a friggin map is comical

you could have played 20 years of planetside it doesnt mean youve played 5 minutes of planetside 2 yet. I played the original PS off and on from open beta till 2010 and I can see this game is a completely different beast. I guess I just didnt realize how much free time people had to blindly speculate on a mechanic then discuss that blind speculation over and over. just seems like a thread like this would be better suited to come out a day or two after beta opens up at best.

[Immigrant]

Here's another thing to take into account when considering the possible war outcomes on this continent and that's terrain elevation. The differences in terrain elevation could function as funnels thus weakening the zerg forces.

http://i.imgur.com/m9rYk.jpg

Also when youu take alpha territorial hold situation (http://i.imgur.com/BpXFp.jpg) and overlap it with terrain map above you'll get this:

http://www.zaslike.com/files/m73oy7nezsjptxwdn4mq.png (http://www.zaslike.com/)

which indicates that terrain structure will heavily influence territorial hold of Empires and situation on average will be 1/3 for each. VC will hold the plains, TR valley and surrounding cliffs and NC will get the plato.However I believe there will be enough of dynamic front-line shifting to keep the situation interesting.

[Ieyasu]

Like 90% of the threads on this website. Let people speculate and theorize, it's a healthy exercise for us and SOE. You might be surprised how much is said here in idle chatter gets picked up on by the devs.

Im not telling people not to do it. I just dont see the point. I agree that people should be free to speculate, but theres a bit of a difference between speculating on something and calling for it to be changed or made different like the op has done here (and in a few other threads I have seen pop up lately) when not having even played the game for 1 minutes time.

I think you would probably be surprised how little is taken from the community here in the forums. The dev team already had a idea in mind when they set out to begin this project and their influence has been taken from modern day fps games in an attempt to draw in more players than the original planetside was able to do. if the devs were so into input from the players where are the questionaires on what people want to see ingame? they could have a link to one people could fill out on the official planetside 2 site if they wanted to. Ive yet to see them officially ask us what we want in any way. Did I miss the day they asked people what they wanted to see for customizations and someone replied with "hearts on the cockpit windshields"?

can you provide any examples of devs changing things ingame based on the PSU Communities opinions or input? The killcam isnt a very good example because higby said after gdc that they almost didnt include them in the demonstration and from one of the most recent videos of gameplay footage (totalbiscuts) they appeared to still be in that build and the same as they were in gdc. not trying to be rude but its one thing to say youre drawing from the community and another thing to actually do it.

[SpcFarlen]

Not sure if anyone touched on this, i tried to read every post and some i skimmed, but you can capture a base that is not adjacent to a hex your faction controls. It will however take longer and any faction surrounding it can take it back quicker.

So yes there is a front line where armies will be clashing. But sending a few hundred men through the lines to capture an interior base can be done and should really looked at. It diverts the focus away from the front allowing for distractions. It also allows players then spawn in behind enemy lines to then capture the boarder bases.

So ya i dont really see there being this eternal war in the middle of the continents. Maybe at first before adjust their tactics. But i dont think there we be a clean "top is Vanu, bottom left TR and bottom right NC" thing going on for long.

[Ieyasu]

Why don't you just ignore threads or even better this entire website if you think all this is a waste of time. Because you are doing nothing but wasting yours posting useless melodramatic crap.

lol guess thats a no on any examples then. :groovy:

Im not here trying to be a debbie downer, but im not putting my head in the sand either. Im as free to comment on peoples wild speculation threads as they are to make them.

[Coreldan]

We have to remember that the fights arnt going to be around bases only. For that one base, there will probably be like over 20 hexes. The amount of different fights going on will be massive in comparison to Planetside.

Sure, when wanting to get a hold of a big base, it will be a big fight probably on many ends cos people are asked to come help with it, but we can't ignore the huge remaining front line that will also need to be defended. This will also provide work for the non-zerg organized outfits who can do other vital stuff elsewhere with the majority distracted or for example (just like in Planetside) resolve the zerg fight by getting something crucial done that the zerg lacks organization for.

Zergs were important in Planetside as well. While it was the outfits that got the stuff done, it would've been extremely hard without the zerg pushing.

[Turdicus]

Ieyasu is allowed to criticize, but don't dismiss thought experiments. Speculating on game mechanics and playing them out logically is a very useful thing to do. It is the best one can do aside from physically playing the game, and I would be willing to bet that there are situations where money and time can be saved for a developer if unforeseen consequences of a mechanic were discovered because some dudes (and dudettes, I assume) argued in a forum thread.

[Ieyasu]

Ieyasu is allowed to criticize, but don't dismiss thought experiments. Speculating on game mechanics and playing them out logically is a very useful thing to do. It is the best one can do aside from physically playing the game, and I would be willing to bet that there are situations where money and time can be saved for a developer if unforeseen consequences of a mechanic were discovered because some dudes (and dudettes, I assume) argued in a forum thread.

I should be clear. Im all for speculation on game mechanics and features. I guess what I was complaining about were the people like the op of this thread that are calling for changes to the game to be made based upon said speculation. we have yet to see large scale combat in any videos and yet the call for doing things this way or that have already begun. No dev is going to make a change to a game theyve been working on for hundreds if not thousands of hours because someones call for them to do so in a forum post when that person hasnt even played the game...

[Mechzz]

Zergs were important in Planetside as well. While it was the outfits that got the stuff done, it would've been extremely hard without the zerg pushing.

This. Exactly this. And this means the game needs to cater to the zerg. The ones who can't/don't want to organise. And don't criticise them for it. They are not listening to us (all of us who write on this forum). If they get bored or feel unempowered, they will simply move on. They will not whine and moan, they will simply leave.

What we need is the game to leave the organised outfits enough headroom to be able to do the stuff that (to them) is more fun than zerging, but without driving away the zerg players.

That is the balance the gameplay designers must get right.

[Xyntech]

I also tend to think of the zerg as the pool from which to farm team players. Not everyone will come around, but the longer that PS2 runs with high populations, the higher the percentage of those zerglings who will come around and start contributing more than just being bodies for the meat grinder.

The zerg sucks, the zerg has always sucked, but I think that PS1's slow decline shows how valuable they were. Players = content, and the zerg provides that content en masse.

Planetside 2 really needs to strike a good balance. Cater to the mindless shooter crowd to get them in the door and keep them hooked with simple, solid shooter mechanics on a scale that will blow their mind. Then at the same time, make sure not to sacrifice team work and depth in the process, that those who are interested will be able to dive deep into the game and stay submerged for many years to come.

I think most of us can agree that the original Planetside failed in regards to appealing to the masses of shooter fans, albeit there were technical barriers at the time as well. It was an amazing experience as a whole, but there were too many flaws that drove many players away after a short amount of time. Clearly PS2 seeks to change things up to make sure that doesn't happen again, but in the process they have tweaked a whole load of things. The big question is how will all of these changes play out when combined together.

These thought experiments are not useless, they are in fact quite interesting and valuable, but the fact does stand that we can't know for sure about some of these issues until we test everything as part of a larger picture, with all of the nuances working together. We never had anything like bases on the scale of PS2's bases. How will it play out in practice? Nobody really knows for absolute sure at this point. Not even the developers.

It will either work, or we'll have to help the devs figure out how to fix it in beta. In the meanwhile, we can continue to wrap our heads around the concepts to get as good an idea of what may or may not be problems to watch out for once we do get our hands on the game.

[DOUBLEXBAUGH]

if the devs were so into input from the players where are the questionaires on what people want to see ingame? they could have a link to one people could fill out on the official planetside 2 site if they wanted to. Ive yet to see them officially ask us what we want in any way. Did I miss the day they asked people what they wanted to see for customizations and someone replied with "hearts on the cockpit windshields"?

When PS2 was first announced they sent out an email with a survey to everyone that had a PS1 account.

http://www.questionpro.com/a/TakeSurvey?id=1368989

[The Kush]

If you own the same "general bases" at all times this game will get incredibly boring. I hope for the sake of continuity of this game that this is not the case. If it is a constant three way over the same territory this game will be awful. I really hope this is not the case.

[Immigrant]

If you own the same "general bases" at all times this game will get incredibly boring. I hope for the sake of continuity of this game that this is not the case. If it is a constant three way over the same territory this game will be awful. I really hope this is not the case.

I think this is exactly how it's going to play out... just look at the map I posted earlier - you can see clearly that there are Warp gates + 3 different base type in each of the 3 control sectors - plains (Vanu), plateau (NC) and canyon/valley (TR).

[SKYeXile]

This is a pre release forum, where no official forums, only the dedicated PS1/2 fans make their way here, all we have to talk about is the latest screenshot or video and then speculate. If you dont like speculation based off existing faqs then pre release forums are probably not for you.

i think my mind is abit more at ease after getting some opinions of some other people, on their points of:
There is still alot of outlying outposts and nodes to capture away from the bases, every piece land is valuable.
bases can be taken in sections is possible you dont need to capture all points at once.
thankfully not everybody likes the zerg fight and people willbe looking for the smaller fights.

it still is abit of a concern how fast you can get around the map, especially now that everybody has access to aircraft, but we'll see how that pans out, since they said they;re rewording the cert system.

[Red Beard]

I'm hoping that the mission system will allow me to create temporary objectives and then place them out in global. For example; Bonus XP (or whatever) to the platoon that takes the north tower. Perhaps even create missions to take, hold and establish spawn/supply points on a particular piece of real estate outside of a base.
Planning, executing and revising a scheme to take over a base via the mission system sounds like it could be a bit of fun and cut down on the mindlessness.

Since only one squad/group/whatever will likely be able to accept a mission at a time; I would like to see some sort of bidding system based on the success rate of the bidder. That way; you won't get spam accepts by noobs who don't know what they're doing/don't care about completing objectives; potentially nullifying missions as they are generated.

Something like this could factor into eligibility for global command levels I'm thinking?

[Serpent]

My real hope is that outfits will be organized enough to use flanking maneuvers and other such ways to avoid huge fights... Maybe using some people as a distraction while another force attacks a completely different location. Something like this.

[Figment]

@Serpent: on outfit organization:

Even the most bland zergfits can apply advanced tactics, but to even have them do something basic, you need a lot more management and especially a hierarchy for micromanagement. Communication is very important because of the large behemoth mass that needs to coordinate together, without being too well aware of the why.

Most outfits with above average players need less instructions and more a general outline. They may have more individual routines and depending on the group combination will be more flexible as different individual traits become dominant in different player combinations.

The elite outfits tend to have trained and planned typical assaults in detail where roles are tailormade per player and therefore have routines built in that reduce communication needs on a basic level. Some risk becoming predictable because of that if they rely too much on that and restrict personal freedom (which may mean less imaginative improvisation), mostly because they are used to dealing with things in a certain way they know works. Experimenting and improvisation become less needed skills.