Huge Outfits and PlanetSide 2

[Fortress]

Give me a building with less than nine access points and seven HE catching windows, to start.

Actually, just put two entrances (on the ground) and no windows. Make the entrances HE proof. Use a shield that doesn't allow vehicle fire or something. That'd be swell.

Then put the capture point in it. Then connect that building to a spawn room.

Then maybe I'll consider sticking around to defend it.

[ringring]

I'd also just like to point out something that probably contributes.

Nobody uses the 'leader' or 'command' channel. It's similar to PS1 where nobody used the sl channel, which was equivalent.

However, cr5 channel was very important and coordination did happen thru that.

The other thing is that there has as yet been no formation of empire communities. I think no coordination and lack of community can be traced straight back to the lack of cr5 channel.

Devs to do:
Stop the chat channel from fading out after something is said in there - most often you don't have time to read it when it appears then when you do it has faded away and you have to press 'return' or something to see it rather than just leaving it there to be read at leisure.
Bring back CR5 channel .... perhaps a different means to qualify for becoming a member but something with essentially the same job.

**edit: suggestion for a qualification to be part of the new cr5 channel; must be br30 or above, must be in an outfit and be within the top 2 ranks. (in my outfit this would include outfit leadesrs and officers) - this could expand is more granularity in ranks are provided at some stage.

[Crator]

**edit: suggestion for a qualification to be part of the new cr5 channel; must be br30 or above, must be in an outfit and be within the top 2 ranks. (in my outfit this would include outfit leadesrs and officers) - this could expand is more granularity in ranks are provided at some stage.

Interesting suggestion. Might promote some players to break off of large outfits so they can have the opportunity to be involved in the CR5 chat more frequently. I'd also like to suggest that the outfit leaders are allowed to give permission to different outfit ranks to talk in CR5 chat. A hard limit, per outfit, on the amount of players who can actively speak in the CR5 chat would need to be implemented to control spam as well. So in case those in the outfit that are ranked higher are not online the ability would fall to the next lower ranked person in the outfit. Could also allow the higher ranked outfit member to temporarily pass the CR5 chat ability to someone else in the outfit if they are online but don't wish to lead at the time.

[Blynd]

Interesting suggestion. Might promote some players to break off of large outfits so they can have the opportunity to be involved in the CR5 chat more frequently. I'd also like to suggest that the outfit leaders are allowed to give permission to different outfit ranks to talk in CR5 chat. A hard limit, per outfit, on the amount of players who can actively speak in the CR5 chat would need to be implemented to control spam as well. So in case those in the outfit that are ranked higher are not online the ability would fall to the next lower ranked person in the outfit. Could also allow the higher ranked outfit member to temporarily pass the CR5 chat ability to someone else in the outfit if they are online but don't wish to lead at the time.

I agree with allowing outfit leaders and 2-3 officers to have cr5 chat before they actualy get to cr5 but I don't agree with letting it go to lower ranked memberw cause someone isn't online. As it would lead to suuestions from people who may not be that experianced with leading and they go and give an outfit a bad rep by speaking in command chat nd suggesting stupid things. So each outfit dependant on size can have the ol and 2-3 officers but only 2 have access at a time to avoid spam as most outfits will discuss objectives internally before saying stuff on command chat (cr5 chat) so there is no need for all outfit officers to be in that chat cause you will end up with the clutter that was gemini's cr5 chat after the mergers of all servers

[Crator]

^ Oh yes, I don't disagree that the outfit member must be CR5 (which shouldn't be an outfit exclusive ranking). I do agree, to control the amount of global chat, that only CR5 outfit members can use global command channels. And also have a timer to use it again after using it.

I guess what I was getting at was a way to give outfits a command rank system of thier own to internally tier the CR5s in the outfit. A way to control which two in the outfit can use global at any time.

[zib]

Not to hijack your thread or anything, but I have seen a lot of this on Waterson. My outfit which I won't say to keep to the OPs intention, has been thinking about trying to join some of the smaller outfits on our server to group up and do their outfit ops at the same times we do ours. My outfit is fielding about a platoon and a half on ops nights, but we have been trying to recruit more outfits to join us in an allied sort of way. We don't want to absorb all the TR players on waterson, but we would like to have a couple of outfits helping us.

If we got a few outfits to work together we could pretty easily stop an uncoordinated zerg. I agree with your post that it is hard to mess with a fully steamed up zerg rolling up the map, but a couple platoons of coordinated players( skill aside, just coordination) should be able to stop them. I don't think we should cap something like outfit size in a game that has a slogan of Bigger is better.

So I am going to suggest that we might want to start getting the smaller outfits to work together and try and build a planetside 2 community to counter issues like this.



Shameless self promotion, if you are TR on waterson feel free to send me a PM on joining with my outfit or coordination you would like to try.

[MCYRook]

Malorn, I'll go through the points you wanted feedback on, but I'll stress that IMO they are all overshadowed by the one deficiency that I feel needs to be improved on first and foremost, that being the defendability of all bases, towers, and outposts.

* Do resources need a bigger role? (in theory, a small outfit can better do resource denial with small territories)
I'll give this a blanket "yes" answer, if only because right now, resources usually don't matter at all.

I do remember you yourself, back in Beta and before you joined the dev team, posted a very long and thought-out thread about the PS2 resource system and its implications. Especially the expected possibilities of active resource-denial - or rather, lack of possibilities. Turned out that the system does indeed work just as badly as expected with regards to the role of resources as a strategic asset and target. However, that thread went on pretty long and spawned a good few ideas, might not be a bad idea to go back to that.

* Does territory capture need to be slowed down to allow for response, regrouping, and to wear down a zerg?
Maybe, but I don't think that's a huge issue. IMO the issue isn't too fast cap times, but the defenders being overwhelmed and pushed out too fast, i.e. the fight being over too quickly.

As for rapid response, better tools to read the map and assess territory statuses would help a lot tho. Proper hotspots and SCU status readings would be a nice start.

* Does defense need to be more rewarding XP-wise?
No. Well I mean, it would be nice, but the main reason people aren't defending is because defending sucks donkey balls! Not because there's too little XP to be had.

(As an aside tho, I wouldn't mind seeing the "facility defended" XP return, in a different form such as: Don't award it just because one enemy held one cap point for 5 seconds and then the base was resecured. Reward it only when the base was actually in danger of being taken, like when the defenders' cap bar was half or fully taken off, and then the defenders managed to fully secure it again, that would count as a resecure and yield XP. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, because once you've lost control of a base to that extent, you rarely get it back.)

* Do vehicles need to cost more resources to help reduce spam?
I don't think that would help a whole lot. Besides, that would hit the already weakened side even harder than the big bad zerg that's rolling over them.

* Do deployment options need to be reduced to encourage more natural concentration of force?
Possibly not a bad idea. If anything, it will make the fight in the big picture something it currently also lacks: predictability. Predictability of the zerg is a good thing in that sense.

Thinking back to PS1, you could show me the world map and I could accurately predict the flow of all major fights and frontlines for the next 1-3 hours, provided that all sides where just following the natural pattern of the zerg. The fact that this could be done was one of the foundations on which "tactical, off-zerg play" by smaller outfits were possible - you knew where your zerg was, where the enemy zerg was, who would progress in which direction, and thus when and where was a good opportunity for a small team to strike.

A big factor in this was the clear restrictions of where people could spawn. If you pushed them out of Aja, you KNEW their zerg would now all be spawning south, at Bomazi base and tower, NOT all the way east at Chuku. (God help me if I still got these base names right lol.)

PS2 battle flow, by nature of hexes rather than singular lattice connections, is not going to be able to be predicted in the same manner (even when we've gotten more experienced at PS2 map reading). But I think it wouldn't be bad to bring a little bit of that predictability back - because right now, the battle flow seems rather random, and that's not a good premise for small outfits to stage any operations on.

----------------------------------------------------------

HOWEVER, on to the main point. :D

So when I see "undefendable" I believe it is because:
1) There are objectives in the exterior of the facility which can be influenced by the presence of vehicles.
2) The defender spawn is far from the capture point, meaning the defenders need to cross no man's land to get there while the attackers can park an AMS right on top of the point.
Well, yeah. That and even inside of buildings, you're rarely safe from being spammed by vehicles/aircraft.

It's kind of obvious, isn't it? (Obvious enough that people have flailed their arms since early beta saying "Whyyy are all the bases and towers sooo open??")

Regarding PS1 interiors, I think we forget how vehicle zerged the courtyards of bases were. I remember many a time I was camped into the base or tower, unable to get out without tanks and hovering reavers shooting into doorways the moment they were opened.
Except that in PS1, you then could still fight for the interior of the building. In fact, losing the courtyard was often only the beginning of the actual fight in PS1. In PS2, you get cleared out of the important building(s) once, and then you can't reinforce.

Bio labs are actually very close to PS1-style facilities and have the same rocket-spam on the landing pads as you saw in PS1 facility doors after the courtyard got overrun.
You say that as if it's a bad thing. ;)

It's not too worrisome that the airpad area gets spammed - they can't cap the base from there, and can only help their infantry so much by spamming a little way inside the dome.

Now, I don't think the Biolab as it is now is all that great an example for a defensible base. It is defensible - much more so than any other base, outpost, or tower - but mainly because the entry points can be camped relatively easily by the defenders. Which again isn't great fun for either side. As soon as the attackers breach through at one point in significant numbers, the defense quickly falters because the rest of the dome is pretty open and suddenly you have attackers shooting you in the back at every turn.

What makes a base defensible?

- choke points (ideally several to be breached separately)
- defenders' ability to switch their attention from one choke point's defense to another as needed (this is basically what makes "small, organized" outfits so good at fighting at such bases)
- defenders' ability to reinforce quickly (i.e. spawn not half a courtyard away)

This goes for both infantry and vehicle combat.

I don't want to go into too much detail here how the base designs would have to change for them to become more defensible, as that isn't the topic of this thread. I do, however, believe that this is THE most important aspect for much of what doesn't quite feel right in the game as of yet.

Lack of base defensibility from the smallest to the largest bases is

- the prime reason for run-around-the-mill territory capturing as people can't be bothered to defend
- a big reason why small, organized outfits feel like they have no place as their being organized doesn't give them the edge they'd hope when trying to hold off similar or larger numbers
- a big reason why people often say that they have trouble finding "good fights"
- part of the reason why PS2 currently simply does not have a metagame on the "grand strategy" level

It's so important that I feel this is what should be addressed first and foremost. Pretty much everything else, from the resource model to spawn logistics, won't ultimately help if we keep those same "impossible to defend!" bases.

Figgy has been doing insane work on that end, like the case study of an outpost makeover (which I'd link to if I could find it here, duh). What that illustrates is that you don't quite need to rebuild the bases from the ground up, but you do need a serious overhaul of almost any and all bases in the game. That is a serious assload of work, and hence my hopes for some real improvement with the base designs are very slim.
(Besides, looking at what we have today, it really seems like they WANT bases to not be defendible and change hands quickly all the time.)

As an aside tho: Looking purely at the fight for the courtyard, I'd say that Amp Stations right now aren't in too bad shape. You've got vehicle choke points (gates); you've got shields blocking the gates whose generators must be taken out by infantry; you've got high ground for the defenders (which however can be circumvented by Light Assaults - the whole class makes defense harder in PS2); you've got defenders reinforcing the cy with vehicles easily (tho ofc the spawn room is in a stupid position, but defenders mitigate that by putting a Sundy in the central building).
Not all is terribad. :)

[nailgun]

Agree completely that there is no viable role for small outfits. It will definitely cause me to leave the game if not addressed somehow, I really hope Higby etc are reading this thread.

They should also realize that with their BF3 model, a huge percentage of the players of that game roll in a small clan or no clan just running with a couple mates.

While the idea of joining a large or even medium outfit is a shooter experience unique to PS2, I think there are a A LOT of players out there who just don't want to have to roll in a group that large to feel like they are contributing (and the same holds true for having to follow around the zerg).

I know I don't. I have been really frustrated the gameplay since the 2x XP bonus brought in more players. Steamrolling is good for certs but boring beyond all comprehension.

[Furber]

Agree completely that there is no viable role for small outfits. It will definitely cause me to leave the game if not addressed somehow, I really hope Higby etc are reading this thread.

They should also realize that with their BF3 model, a huge percentage of the players of that game roll in a small clan or no clan just running with a couple mates.

While the idea of joining a large or even medium outfit is a shooter experience unique to PS2, I think there are a A LOT of players out there who just don't want to have to roll in a group that large to feel like they are contributing (and the same holds true for having to follow around the zerg).

I know I don't. I have been really frustrated the gameplay since the 2x XP bonus brought in more players. Steamrolling is good for certs but boring beyond all comprehension.

I'm right on board with this. The game is starting to feel stale just steam rolling or being steam rolled. My non-Vet friends are still pretty wow'd with the game, but I know they'd have even more fun if we had options as a small outfit to really make an impact on the whole game.

Also, I think this thread has moved a little away from "Are big outfits bad for the game?" more towards "Small outfits have no purpose or role in the game. Fix this, SOE". Just my opinion, but perhaps the OP should be edited? There seem to be a few misinterpretations that are resulting in frustrated responses that don't contribute at all.

[MuNrOe]

The reason the topics changed was because this topic brought up an integral part of whats missing from game play. Big outfits are not the problem. They are the consequence of what the problem is. That is the Defense and Base Design along with flow of the fight.

You can have the biggest or smallest outfit in the game if bases were made defend able and the flow of battle was predictable then the symptom of large outfits steamrolling a base would not be such a problem. It would allow small groups and even un organized groups to defend objectives.

At least then the defenders could have fun defending the objective and the attackers would finally take the objective but not at the expense of one or the other getting farmed. Or steamrolling the base.

This would also add more infantry combat to the game which it is missing.

Tweaking a few numbers to add remove XP or Limiting spawn points isnt going to solve this problem.

[Xaephod]

Miss the days when one cloaker could force a large amount of people to move in to resecure.

[Jackyl]

I agree on the points that base design leaves a lot to be desired in terms of defensibility. Doors need to be added and spawn locations need to be in much more defensible positions in the bases. The SCU for every base actually helped a lot with the spawn camping problem in the early beta as it gave a base capture a clear point at which falling back was required. I still do not understand why it was removed.

The smaller outfits I feel are selling themselves short on effectiveness though. I am a member of the 666th but regularly play as a member of the Rapid Response Team. A group that runs at MAX 24 members deep and those 2 squads very rarely see each other. I have been apart of plenty of base holdouts with just 12 guys that finally ended when there were multiple Platoons of enemy forces hitting us with full on combined arms (Armor, Air, and Infantry). Those 12 guys were tying up 96 or more of the enemies troops plus vehicles. Any small outfit that can field 12 guys can do the same they just need to be well coordinated and (Like someone said earlier) Use their force multipliers to their highest advantage. 12 guys worth of first level anti tank mines well spread out can lock down a roadway, swapping a few of those guys to heavy assault and setting up an ambush to push the armor through the mines can shut down a darn decent size armor zerg. Things like that make a much bigger difference in the capture of a continent than one might think.

On a side note I hate to hear about whatever unfortunate business happened between the 666th and the PG. I have an old RL friend that plays with the PG and from seeing you guys around I know you hold your own. I can't speak for the DD leadership as I am not one but I'll be glad to share a trench with you guys any time.

[Stanis]

^ Oh yes, I don't disagree that the outfit member must be CR5 (which shouldn't be an outfit exclusive ranking). I do agree, to control the amount of global chat, that only CR5 outfit members can use global command channels. And also have a timer to use it again after using it.

I guess what I was getting at was a way to give outfits a command rank system of thier own to internally tier the CR5s in the outfit. A way to control which two in the outfit can use global at any time.

Regarding CR5 chat.
I'd suggested somewhere already (might be this thread) that /leader should be continental and /command should be global chat.

The cert price should be much higher (500)
(I would also like Outfits to be able to nominate 1 person per 100 members (up to 3 max) to represent them. But that doesn't fit the certs model until they give us outfit certs/experiences/resources)

Importantly I would like to see chat 'moderated' in the same way an IRC chat channel would be.

Outfit members and those that have bought either the /leader or /command cert ALWAYS join the channel. But can't speak.

Only current those actively Squad Leader or Platoon Leader get a +v (voice) in the channel, and the ability to use /orders or /comall on cooldown.



With an outfit leadership role I want to know what is being discussed in the channel. Usually I am a SL - but if other players lead I still need to read CR5 chat.

[Hamma]

Put the finishing touches on a video last night which talks about quite a bit of what we talked about in this thread. Should have it posted in a couple hours or so.

[Hamma]

AGN PlanetSide 2 Instant Action: Meta Game Concerns - YouTube

[maradine]

Thanks for putting that together. I hope more than just the thread participants are watching. :)

[nailgun]

Put the finishing touches on a video last night which talks about quite a bit of what we talked about in this thread. Should have it posted in a couple hours or so.

Look forward to watching that. :)



Malorn, obviously base defenses are horrid and the resource system doesn't really effect meta-g at all, but that's not really what makes me feel like an armed cow in a massive herd of faction cows. It all comes down to this:

My biggest beef as a medium-sized outfit guy is that there is pretty much no way to pick a fight.

No ballsy opening of continents, no gen holds behind the lines, no towers of doom. There's no way to give that middle finger to the enemy on your terms, and hope you and your guys have what it takes to hold them off when they come.

Right now it's just trading hexes. It's boring and predictable... as a platton/outfit leader there are rarely, if ever, any interesting options of how your guys can contribute. I will probably get flamed, but I really miss the option of starting up a TOD when all the main-front action was stale.

[TwinkySN]

I haven't read it all but has anyone mentioned how crappy the game is in zergs? Infiltrators are forced into medium - close quarters combat due to draw distance limitations. People are rage quiting from the rediculous power given by HE weapons. Bases are proving to have horrible designs in terms of mass combat situations... And finally; Zergs high light how pointless it is to be a spec ops style player/outfit because the player/outfit become obsolete knowing any back hacking is not only boring, but easily undone.

I might be mistaken but Zergs destroy everything the game was supposed to have.

(I'm venting for the most part and when I feel like the devs are open to contructive input again, I'll add in my .02) :)

[ringring]

Good video Hamma.

I agreed with a lot of what you had to say apart from that you seemed to put a lot of emphasis on resources and tbh, I don't have any faith that they are a solution.

But, the identification of the problems was correct, there are no niches for smaller outfits and bases are not defendable.

(I thing the only base that consistently provides a satisfying fight is the Bio and sadly I don't agree with Rook that the Amp is fine).

One final thing to bring up. Imagine we have several more continents with current populations; several would be empty, surely, apart from a few people ghosting them to get capture xp. I'd say once we get more conts. the fixed XP gain from captures must be proportional to the difficulty of the capture, ghosts should get no xp at all for a cap.

[Hyncharas]

I don't think studios really care if there is majority vs. minority battles on any MMO. Such games are designed to supplement huge populations, so it's par for the course if you're outnumbered as that's what they want; small outfits don't matter. I won't touch on game-wide EvE influence contests as I think it requires a Roundtable discussion between the fans and the devs, though I do have some suggestions about territory capture to make it much less of a Turkey Shoot...

First, one functionality that should be removed is allowing people in vehicles to capture points. I've seen plenty of instances where enemy players, or even members of my own outfit in a heavy tank, Lightning or even a Galaxy can be in proximity of a node, fully protected by its armor, as it safely changes ownership! Now I understand the studio's concern about MAXes being allowed to but, essentially, enabling someone in a vehicle to do it when a MAX cannot is utter nonsense. Second, I don't think any outpost should allow a single player to take it; instead, at least two soldiers per node should be required.

Next we have defenses. In PlanetSide, typically an outpost's or base's defenses were such that, if they detected a nearby enemy, they would engage them without player intervention at all. It would be good if every outpost had self-repairing, hack-proof "auto turrets" that need to be destroyed in their perimeter, possibly separate from their manned counterparts, adding moderate protection from another empire taking it over with impunity. These could also be structured so that the larger or more elaborate the facility, the more deadly these unmanned turrets would be to an invading force. Once the area was captured, commanders could then change the nature of these turrets to AI/AV/AA. This would thus provide more of a challenge to players than them simply walking into an outpost and ghost-hacking without resistance.

Another useful mechanic would be that, depending on an empire's population-influence on the continent in relation to their rivals, a hitpoint bonus on armor and shields was provided to defenders' territory, so it is harder and requires longer for the enemy to capture them. Then if allied players successfully defended a facility, all turrets and shields were automatically repaired to full strength, to prevent overwhelming enemy forces from just invading after losing that particular capture phase.

On a more personal note, I would like mid-air Light Assault players to be flagged as aircraft when confronting AA MAXes. The fact that they are able to fly over the class should mean that their defensive type adjusts while they are airborne (perhaps negating shields against flak), giving AA MAXes a fair opportunity to kill them rather than a continued reliance on AI weaponry to prevail. Last but not least, whilst most energy weapons for the VS are "apparently" allowed to fire at infinite range, I reiterate my misgivings about damage levels being retained no matter how far the ammunition has to travel, and there should also be a tradeoff where infantry-based weapons should overheat for a few seconds after extended firing.

[Captain1nsaneo]

One man shouldn't be able to deny vehicles to a whole cont

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! DO YOU EVEN PLAY CLOAKER?

Sorry, that was my knee jerk reaction to hearing that line. The one man not being able to make a strategic difference on the field goes against my experience playing as a cloaker and as a leader. I'm going to give two stories that are examples where one person changed the global situation.


For those of you who haven't played the original, each empire had 2 "home" continents. These conts were linked to your sanctuary and if an enemy captured both they would be able to spawn your vehicles. One of the TR's home conts is Ceryshen. No one really likes playing there because it's so high up that aircraft can't really move and there's lots of twisty nasty roads (I actually like it but then again my favorite cave is Annwn). I was bored of whatever I was doing at the time and set myself to the task of capturing Ceryshen. All of it. On foot. A couple hours later after running into no resistance the whole cont had turned a nice purple shade. So time to move onto the other TR home cont Forseral. About half way through that cont I ran into about half a squad worth of resistance so I made a call for backup and my outfitmates showed up and we finished off the rest of the cont giving the VS TR tech for the night.


Cyssor is the cont that everyone loves to fight on. That is a fact of life, so much so that the game earned the nickname Cyssorside. So here's the global outlook. VS are underpopped and TR/NC have a poplocked zerg fight raging on Cyssor. The VS want in on the fight but don't have any good warpgate links into the cont. So the VS really is just milling about fighting smaller battles on other conts with the TR and NC's leftovers but it's not really fun.
So I'm looking at this and decide that I really don't want to roam around with the other VS because that's dull. I'm looking over my map of Cyssor when I notice a base in the Southwest, Nzame, was very close to running out of power and losing it's TR ownership (the main fight was up NE). Grabbing a drop pod out to the south so I could hack out a spawn point for myself I went over to the close to neutral base. I find maybe one or two under prepared NC milling about the TR base so I setup some defense expecting some good TR to try to refill the base. While I'm sorting out my own refueling I make a call to an old friend to come and back me up as the base was in the 10% power left range. So the time comes and a few TR as well but by that time the tubes had been destroyed and the tower taken. At this point I make a global call for VS to show up and we start our 15min hack to retake the base.
For those of you who've never had to deal with the hacking/filling/capture of a neutral base allow me to give some detail. It takes 15 minutes for a base to be captured, however, if the base has no power at the end of the 15 minutes the base reverts to no owner and you don't get any experience. However, if you fill the base and the enemy hacks the base their hack will use the fuel you put in to make the base theirs. So the goal is to refill the base only after you've gotten close to holding for the full 15.
Remember earlier how I mentioned that the VS wanted to be on Cyssor but didn't have an opening? Well part of that lack of opening was the TR and NC killing any force we sent to take a base. That force was now coming to our little piece of heaven. Luckily VS drop pods started raining down and we started holding the base against the significant forces sent our way. About a half hour later the whole VS zerg was now infesting the Southwest of Cyssor.


One person can and should be able to make a difference. It is always a matter of finding where it can be done. To mandate that teamwork is needed to do anything clips the wings of players who make sabotage their line of work. I have more stories ranging from cat and mouse games to assassinations to intel gathering but those two exemplify how an individual can change the global scene. Game should be a sandbox, not a carnival ride that necessitates that you must have this many people to ride.

[ckatech]

maybe for say tech plants and amp stations, put in underground tunnels to generators that can't be vehicle accessed. I would say from the spawn room at tech plants, and from the main building of amp stations. Either that or make the staircase to jump pads at amp stations covered with direct access to the side generators--and a clear path.

It would also be really really nice to be able to keep up with say other aircraft if you are running an air to air only squad such as TE's off hours Talon squad. Teamspeak helps, but sometimes it would be nice to have on UI indicators of your squadmates--you can't find them on the global map easily due to vehicles only showing up in green. Maybe a distress option could be added that would put a moving indicator of squadmates under attack while in a vehicle.

The major problem with PS2 other than the no-meta game is that this game NEEDs to be infantry focused, but it's not--it is vehicle focus v. infantry focused. I really missed certing into vehicles. It made you feel unique moreso than just having to put certs in does. I was a PS1 Vet up until about 2-3 months of core combat & BFRs.

I really do miss continent locks, but their really really needs to be about 5 more continents for that to occur, 3 is not enough. Continent locks + Lattice + somehow being able to sneak in a hack on an unsuspecting continent. I miss driving around blue & yellow magriders too--I was NC mainly in PS1.

My final point/rant: MAKE HA EMPIRE SPECIFIC WEAPONS VIABLE AGAIN.

[ckatech]

I was TemperdSteel in PS1 for you old timers-Emerald I think, may have been Konried at first I forget .
sig added. I haven't really posted here.

Can't we just get cyssor back with a limited supply of magriders.

[Rothnang]

My giant problem with Hamma's assessment of the situation is that he seems to think vehicles need to be restricted, which I think isn't the right approach.

A lot of people enjoy playing with vehicles, and want to use them as much as possible, so any change that deprives them of the ability to use vehicles isn't an improvement, but just pushes the pendulum in the other direction towards people who like infantry combat.

I also don't believe in making the resource system more important, because I really dislike the idea of giving the faction that's already winning all the advantages. The more land you control the more difficult it should become to hold on to it, it shouldn't become easier and easier because your opponents can't mobilize powerful units anymore.


What really needs to be addressed is population imbalance, spawncamping, defense, XP distribution and combined arms

There needs to be a really substantial XP bonus for going to a continent where you're outnumbered, so people WANT to fight there, and the population balances back out. The 2-3% you get for server wide imbalances is laughable, and meaningless since population per continent is what really matters.

Spawncamping is IMO the biggest problem with vehicles vs. infantry. When a vehicle gets destroyed it isn't back in 10 seconds, it takes much longer than that. Even just damaging a vehicle sends it packing for longer than infantry takes to recover from death. This whole advantage that infantry should have is unfortunately much too easily shut down by spawncamping and knocking down Sunderers. Infantries ability to spawn back into a fight is unfortunately easily shut down by vehicles, so they can rarely capitalize on their strength.

Defending bases isn't rewarded enough, and they flip much too quickly. The whole domination system doesn't work, because there isn't ever time to mobilize a meaningful defense. The defensive structures in the base are always constructed like swiss cheese, contain none of the vital parts, and aren't adequately protected. Like in an amp station, nobody wants to stand on the wall, you're just an easy target for enemies moving around the very same walls, and you're not even helping to defend, since what you really need to protect are generators housed in small buildings, the walls are just for show.

XP distribution is just off in this game. Infantry dies in one hit from a vehicle, respawns and is back maybe 20 seconds later. A vehicle gets hit and goes to repair, that often takes longer than 20 seconds. However, killing the infantry gets you 100+ XP, shooting the vehicle gets you absolutely nothing, the driver of the vehicle gets XP for repairing though! I think that every time you damage a vehicle for 20% of its HP you should get 50 XP or so, and if you kill an infantryman in a vehicle you should only get 50 XP instead of the full amount. That little change alone would already make a huge difference in how people perceive the competition between vehicles and infantry - because right now it's all about kills, and vehicles kill more and die less.
If you look at the survival scheme for the two different units Infantry is meant to die and respawn until their respawn point is destroyed or captured, vehicles are meant to run and repair until an enemy manages to destroy them before they can do so. There is a reward for killing, there is a reward for taking out spawn capabilities, but there is no reward for making the vehicle run and repair, which is why vehicles rack up such absurdly huge XP themselves, and give very little back to all the people who fight them.

The Combined arms concept currently is a mess, because the only vehicle that effectively bridges the gap between vehicles and infantry is the Sunderer, and it's mostly just used as a spawn point. The Galaxy is too big to be worthwhile as just a taxi and requires too many gunners to be usable once the passengers disembark. The Sunderer isn't really much of an infantry fighting vehicle, but more of a support unit that happens to have a lot of seats too. It's too big and unwieldy to really be good in a fight, despite massive armor and solid firepower, and it simply isn't fun to drive. Also only MAX units really rely on transport vehicles to get around, regular infantry can redeploy/suicide to move from one viable spawn to the next.
I want to see vehicles that really emphasize the combined arms concept, where a tank driver or gunship pilot can have a vehicle he can have fun with when its empty while at the same time providing support and transportation to an infantry squad when they need it. We're just lacking units that really bring the two together.

[p0intman]

I'm agreeing with Hamma. What?

Let me see if the earth has actually been destroyed by an apocalypse..

http://qntm.org/files/afd_board/0.png

I think its broken.

[Hamma]

:lol:

I don't think vehicles need to be restricted but they need to be a bit harder to get. It's a big picture issue with lots of moving gears and it's going to be complicated to fix.

[Tatwi]

Great video Hamma. Summed up my experience and feelings as well. The game can be so much more than it is and than how people are playing it. I still really want to love this game, it has a lot of potential, but SOE does not have time for a "five year plan" to start focusing on the "right things" that have been discussed here. The game will be empty, soon, if these issues aren't addressed.

The sky isn't falling; the game simply missed the mark.

[Ironside]

Good video, raises lots of points that concern me and have always concerned me since beta.
We all know there's no substance to this game, yes it looks good and the gunplay is far superior to ps1 but ps1 had depth.

I think there's a couple of watersheds approaching that could lose a lot of players if not done right.

First is the optimized client they are promising, if they don't get this right they will lose players, hopefully the devs will release a new client that improves the game on all machines, infact lets hope this new client is the real ps2 release, optimized and bug free, the client that should of been released in the first place if they hadn't rushed to get the game out far to early.

Second is the bones of the game, the game that holds us for years to come, it needs far more depth many of you have highlighted these problems already so i won't bother. Will the devs rip out large chunks of the game and start again? because i doubt it.

Base and tower design is awful, apart from the crown and biolabs all other fights are boring and forgettable, bases and towers need redesigning, they favor attackers, they are to open and sprawling. Also there's far to many pointless installations dotted over the maps.
Taking continents seems like an after thought, there's no fanfare or sense of achievement.
Devs need to drop their battlefield mentality and look at the original game more closely.
PS1 dev team were ahead of their time in so many ways, ps2 team have basically stole large chunks of bf and made it bigger, vets get critisised on alot of forums but we will still be here playing after the fps crowd move on to their next game, maybe they should listen to us more

[Rothnang]

I don't think vehicles need to be restricted but they need to be a bit harder to get. It's a big picture issue with lots of moving gears and it's going to be complicated to fix.

Yea, but what does harder to get mean? If it means people who like playing with vehicles are forced to spend more time playing as infantry it's still just annoying to people.

Restricting the number of places where a vehicle can be spawned is a possibility, but for aircraft that makes little difference, and even MBTs are frequently pulled at the warp gate after the Techplant requirement was added. It would increase the amount of time it takes to get a vehicle back into action.

Making resources harder to come by just leads to people running out and getting frustrated, particularly since vehicles can still very easily die in the current game if they run into a unit that's pretty much a hard counter.

Increasing the respawn time or tacking the respawn time on after you die, rather than starting it when you spawn the vehicle will once again lead to people who want to pull a vehicle and can't.

Restricting the number of players who can spawn a vehicle leaves people without their favorite unit again.



Ultimately in order for everyone to have their fun the game just needs to let you play what you want and have everyone be useful in some regard while doing so. There was a time when the devs could have put really harsh restrictions on vehicles and just completely said "Vehicles are just a tool in your toolbox, you should never expect to be a specialist in them", but they didn't do that early on, and changing it to that now would just anger thousands of people who are playing with a different expectation.

Instead of more segregation of infantry and vehicles, and more systems that take from the fun of players that enjoy one over the other there needs to be a more elegant coexistence between the two.

I honestly think if they fix the spawncamping a lot of the issues will start to look more friendly, because the biggest thing that makes infantry gimpy is the fact that they are built around die/respawn instead of take damage/repair, and the respawning should be far safer and more reliable than the repairing, but its the other way around currently. Spawning is the infantry's Achilles heel because when they are all herded together somewhere its easy to keep them down.

[Roy Awesome]

One thing I would like to see is more bases that aren't directly tied to territory capture. Large facilities have 2-4 of these (Outpost bases, or as TEST calls them, adjuncts), but why are they only limited to facilities?

Planetside 1 had these in the form of Towers, but I think the concept of a capture able mini-facility with a spawn point and some equipment terminals could drastically benefit the 'small outfit' play.

It can be something as large as a PS2 Tower, or something as small as a WallTower with some turrets on it (these would be -really- cool along roads between bases, or at the end of a long bridge road). These objectives benefit your empire's attack and defense, and something that the zerg would probably avoid as a large objective (unless the other zerg is there, then you have a stupidly large fight over a very small object... much like the bridge battles in PS1).

Capturing these doesn't influence the territory capture in any way, but helps the fight move around the map, and give small strong points that aren't shitty little bases.

The biggest problem is that objects like these are too similar to the T3 Facilities (the single cap bases with only a sundy spawn). Perhaps any facility that governs the territory it sits on should be either a T1 (amp/bio/tech) or a T2 (Tower, Quartz Ridge, 3 cap bases with tanks). Then we can have more T3 outposts spread around the map diffusing the conquest and providing more things to fight over.

[Rago]

Newest Video is great, i hope this to be heard.

Sometimes you get this Planetside Moments after fighting 2-3 Hours over Allatum and it is much more rewarding , then Zerging 20 Bases and empty Amp Stions,...

[JesNC]

Vehicles, both ground and air, need to be restricted in the sense that their ability to influence a base capture should be reduced.

(the next 2 points apply mostly to small bases)
- spawn camping

Roll an MBT in front of/park a Liberator above a spawn shed and you instantly contained any respawning defenders. This needs to change - either by placing the spawn underground like PS1 or by adding a lot more cover to existing spawn buildings.
Or allow an alternative exit for the defenders - Why were the spawn teleporters in tech plants removed again?

- capping/burning points

Countless times I have sat/hovered next to a cap point in one of my favourite vehicles, capping the base while farming any infantry defenders who actually managed to brake through my buddy's spawn camp.
Vehicle occupants (even aircraft) can burn points while MAXes can't. This should change.

- accessibility to/mobility of vehicles inside bases
This applies to all bases, but moreso to the big facilities. Even with the decreased traction, it is far too easy for vehicles to navigate inside an enemy base.
Especially at AMP stations and Tech Plants (now :( ), it's very hard to try to retake the control point when the enemy has heavy armour in the courtyard.
I've seen people secure the AMP station cc/garage with 6+ Magriders, and once you lost the courtyard area you also lost any access to high-ground cover for infantry, stationary AA - well, once you lost the CY you basically lost the base. You just can't get to the CC to try to resecure when there's any amount of enemy armour/air support.


I remember Higby stating that they want you to have 'boots on the ground' in order to capture terrain, but this is just not the case atm. It is too easy for vehicles to dominate the infantry tug-o-war inside a base.
Vehicle vs infantry balance is fine otherwise IMO, but vehicle vs facility design needs to see some big improvements.

To get back OT, I feel once facility design has improved to the point where it's viable for a squad of infantry to try and defend an outpost against a larger force we'll see a lot more meta centering around the 'non-zerg'.

[Crator]

I'm agreeing with Hamma. What?

Let me see if the earth has actually been destroyed by an apocalypse..

http://qntm.org/files/afd_board/0.png

I think its broken.

No, just a shift in the matrix.

[robocpf1]

I was on Esamir yesterday trying to find a small fight, in the area around Old Shore Checkpoint and Everett Supply.

I saw a hotspot so I spawned in, noticed 2/6 enemies on the point. Great, I thought, a small skirmish.

Stepped out the spawn door and got my face melted by a Dalton I couldn't see far above my head.

Spawn buildings being separate from the rest of the facility or buildings is a pain. Attach them to a larger building, closer to the capture point.

Vehicles should have meaningful effect on capturing bases, not the ability to completely shut down defenders from mounting a defense.

Enemy vehicles excel at keeping your own vehicles away, killing those AMSes, stopping Galaxy drops or Sunderer insertions, and keeping friendly tanks away from the point. They don't need to be able to access the spawn area at all.

I think someone mentioned that earlier in the thread - put the spawn area inside one of the bigger buildings to prevent vehicle spawn camping.

A pretty good example of this is Chimney Rock on Amerish (which is one of my favorite outposts in the game). The large spawn building and several exits allows defenders to find an open spot and fire some flak or a lock-on missile to scare away enemy vehicles or damage them, then retreat back into the building. The walls and elevation of the building itself prevents vehicles from camping every exit, and the roof access helps for AA. Still not perfect, but definitely an improvement over the spawn sheds in many of the other outposts.

[ThePackage]

The major meat and potatoes of each base needs to be almost completely inaccessible to vehicles, air and ground alike.

I don't know what they're vision was when creating the maps, but it isn't working, plain and simple.

[Rothnang]

The thing is, when enemy vehicles have such a massive stranglehold on an area that your own vehicles can't come in and help you the problem isn't overpowered vehicles, the problem is population imbalance.

Also I generally agree that all the important stuff in bases should be in interior spaces that you can't access or easily shoot into with vehicles, but it needs to take longer to flip a base, because otherwise that just makes ninjacapping way more annoying than it already is if you need to dismount and head inside of a bunker to stop someone from capping.

Personally I would love it if they changed the tug of war system to not be the last thing you need to do to capture a base, but the first thing. For example when you have a Biolab, just make all the entrances heavily shielded and impossible to get through, and the way you take those shields down isn't by generators, but by capturing the satellite bases and getting on point there. If you win the tug of war over the shields the shields go down and stay down until the defenders have taken back all the satellite bases.

That would just make a lot more sense, because in facilities like the Biolab or Amp stations, by the time the tug of war is invoked that already means that the enemies have busted through all your other lines of defense, and you're probably locked in a spawnroom somewhere. Then you can't do anything about it anymore (Not to mention, that's when defense XP kicks in, not before) and the enemies need to sit there and wait for the base to flip which is boring.

The tug of war needs to happen early in the fight, not at the very end when it's pretty much already decided.

[Hamma]

I encourage everyone to share out the video I made and this thread to make sure we get ton's of awareness on the issue. Does anyone know if there is an official forum thread on this thread?

[Shogun]

i just had an idea how to put more incentives into defending:

get rid of the base capture xp!

instead owning a base gets you xp over time. if your empire owns more bases, you get more xp every tick. and make it intercontinental to avoid that every empire stays on one continent on its own.

AND put every available dev into the new continent team to give us a fourth cont as fast as possible.

then watch, if people understand and try to defend their bases to get more xp. there is still enough incentive to attack, because a successful attack will rise your xp income. there is no need for a big in your face xp reward at the end of an attack because this will always draw the most attention and mislead new players as it does now.

but most important: close some windows and doors to make bases defendable with a tactical teamworking platoon against a mindless zerg!

EDIT: another even better idea: the number of owned bases acts as an xp modifier! the more bases your empire owns, the more xp you get for every kill you make! instead of my previous idea with a tick/timebased xp fountain.

another EDIT: it could even be more dynamic, that there is a small basic xp modifier for every base the empire owns, and a much higher modifier for every base you have been involved with taking during your actual playsession. this would encourage to defend especially the bases after you attacked and took them!
yes, noobs may have a hard time understanding this system, but when they finally do, they will adept to it and have fun defending.

[duomaxwl]

I pretty much agree with all the points you drove in this video.
Hopefully something will come of it. I really REALLY miss being able to deny enemies tech by doing gen drops, because a relatively small outfit could do so much for the continental offensive/defensive. But it's a different game now..

[ringring]

i just had an idea how to put more incentives into defending:

get rid of the base capture xp!

instead owning a base gets you xp over time. if your empire owns more bases, you get more xp every tick. and make it intercontinental to avoid that every empire stays on one continent on its own.

AND put every available dev into the new continent team to give us a fourth cont as fast as possible.

then watch, if people understand and try to defend their bases to get more xp. there is still enough incentive to attack, because a successful attack will rise your xp income. there is no need for a big in your face xp reward at the end of an attack because this will always draw the most attention and mislead new players as it does now.

but most important: close some windows and doors to make bases defendable with a tactical teamworking platoon against a mindless zerg!

EDIT: another even better idea: the number of owned bases acts as an xp modifier! the more bases your empire owns, the more xp you get for every kill you make! instead of my previous idea with a tick/timebased xp fountain.

another EDIT: it could even be more dynamic, that there is a small basic xp modifier for every base the empire owns, and a much higher modifier for every base you have been involved with taking during your actual playsession. this would encourage to defend especially the bases after you attacked and took them!
yes, noobs may have a hard time understanding this system, but when they finally do, they will adept to it and have fun defending.

Nah, but you should get no xp for capturing an empty base, ie award xp proportionally to the amount of fighting a la PS1

[Shogun]

Nah, but you should get no xp for capturing an empty base, ie award xp proportionally to the amount of fighting a la PS1

i didn´t read the whole thread and expected that the "ps1 system was great, revive it!" argument would already have been mentioned on the first page ;-) that´s why i wanted to come up with another totally different alternative to think about. i agree, that a lot of really good ps1 systems should be given a try in ps2, but for some reason the devs are afraid to put too much of ps1 into ps2. since the actual systems really needs to change, we have to think outside the box and give new ideas to the devs to play around with.

[thegreekboy]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=51357

^ read it

It works imo, at least for amp stations, but the principles mentioned apply to all bases. That, and closing off some open spaces in order to preserve indoor infantry combat.

[Rolfski]

I'm on the fence on this one. On one side I do think small teams need more dev love to make them more meaningful and I can agree with a lot of the suggestions here.

On the other side: The differentiator and promise of this game is that size matters, it's the closest thing you can get to war. Besides Eve Online, their are not many games that can provide these large battles. Any change that discourages zergs is therefore a bad one imo. They just need to make it so that zergs clash into each other and that small teams can make a significant contribution to the war.

[Rolfski]

I encourage everyone to share out the video I made and this thread to make sure we get ton's of awareness on the issue. Does anyone know if there is an official forum thread on this thread?
Ho, ho, ho. Xmas is also coming to you, my friend. (http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/i-think-that-the-devs-need-to-see-this-video.71695/)
Don't be shy to step out of your own forum, ask for help to take your hand if it feels daunting :D

[p0intman]

I encourage everyone to share out the video I made and this thread to make sure we get ton's of awareness on the issue. Does anyone know if there is an official forum thread on this thread?

I know it has been tweeted to higby and smed via at least one PG member, if not yourself as well.

ghst also has a reddit thread here if anyone wants to go whine about it there. the louder we collectively are on this issue, the better.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/14utzm/base_defense_spawns_and_what_fixes_can_be_made/

Infact, if everyone who posted in this thread sent one tweet or email to smed or higby, they'd be forced to acknowledge it as a problem. I took the somewhat extreme step of actually bothering to log into twitter and doing just that. If we're loud enough, they'll be forced to either actively ignore it or answer with something solid.

[firestrike]

i with a small NC gal outfit on mattherson we use to do deep gal drop just to force some of that zerg to us (mostly for a big outfit on the TR side) but that was in beta now we are force to do on the line cap. my outfit wish is that smaller outfit can do a cap behind the vs or tr line

[outsider]

BASE DEFENSE:

Yes I believe the key unbalancing factor in the game is the lack of defense. Interestingly enough during the tech test we saw some of the biggest and most intense base defense fights ever in the whole game. My first few days I spent in Zhurvan on defense, all turrets were manned and they were heavily contested fights.

Of course capture mechanics were different and also base defense XP was really good but prone to AFK farmers.


* Does defense need to be more rewarding XP-wise?


In a way Malorn bumping the XP for base defense, and changing the way base defense is calculated ( so people get defense xp as soon as the enemy is in the base SOI ) would work. But you'd be stuck trying to balance the same carrot ( xp gain ) for both offensive and defensive play. I think its a tough balancing act which will cause outifts to flip back and forth depending on the content of the day and how much XP gain/hour each option gives them, it would need to be constantly tweeked and revisited. So alot of work to keep current and a cause for alot of QQ and little HOORAY.

I think you need another type of carrot, call it outfit XP. outfit XP works the same a player XP in that X amount unlocks outfit certs and Y amounts unlocks outfit levels.

Outfit benefits have been promised and there's alot of stuff coming down the pipe that outfits can unlock and spend their resources on like: outfit bases, orbital strikes, that big destroyer Smed tweeted, Heavy Battle tanks etc. I imagine as this feature gets fleshed out we will have assets, buffs, decals, uniforms and stuff for our outfit leaders to unlock.

Whatever resource is needed to unlock these outfit perks, make it so it can only be gained via base defense, fixing gens, repairing turrets under attack etc

The way i see it:
Outfit offense gives the outfit higher cert gain allowing it's member base to skill up, be more versatile and benefit the empire via conquest.
Outfit Defense gives the outfit members slower cert gain but is the only way to unlock outfit perks and benefits, while still providing great benefits to the empire in keeping their territory secure.

The only way for base defense to work, when an organised outfit is attacking is for an organised outfit to be there willing to defend it, so the incentive has to be there to keep the outfit from surging off. I also see sense in this model as outfit base placement is a defensive posture and shouldn't be achievable to outfits who only know how to attack.

SMALL OUTFIT ULTIITY:

There was a really good thread in the PS2 beta Forum about making small outpost hexes into bigger hexes that covers multiple outposts. these "mega hexes" would not only make a bigger meal of it, but also allow the creation of a more structured Lattice network.

I can't help but think if a "mega hex" had 3 Control points that had to be capped simulatously ( for it to start ticking down ), with 3 interconnected spawn points, a smaller outfit could be more effective by striking at the weaknesses of the supperior forces deployment while also being more of a challenge to the attacking outfit.

We all agree that stopping people from coming out of 2 doors may be challenging for 50 chickens but us human beings actually yearn for more.

I think simulataneous caps would not only stop the lone wolf but provide more of a challenge for the attacking force and possiblilities for the defending group to turn it around.

BASES:

Didn't we have forcedomes in PS1 ? what about having forcedomes around the tech plants and amp stations preventing vehicles from being able to enter or shoot through ? force domes are controled through the Biolab and all the forcedomes of that empire come down when that empires last Biolab Spawn Gen is brought down.

I think it has greater benefits than the slow heal and also creates a strong metagame focus point that serious outfits both large and small will want to keep control of or deny.

This also means that not much of the base layouts need to be changed. Personally I think the bases are alot of fun if there weren't so many vehicles. The only saliant concern I have about this idea is managing the defending empires vehicle spawn capability under an active forcedome, and what people will do with their vehicles inside the forcedome even if they cant shoot ( perhaps an auto despawn function after 10 seconds ). Also if the bases are too defensible without the forcedome than that really defeats the importance of protecting/specops on the Biolab.

[QUOTE=Stanis;869578]I would like to submit we have a "no grenade" weekend. In turn the lower TTK makes defence harder without defense friendly design present.
QUOTE]

Man you just don't know how excited I got when I read this, because no frag grenade zones would actually allow for the use of other grenades and the different gameplay options that would open up when more people look at what they can do with flash bangs/smoke grenades/concussion grenades. atm frag grenades are just too good not to bring into a base fight and is the default for most.

It could be tied into the amp station empire benefits, making that base type of great value to the empire ( This idea is very much unformed )

All in all a good thread Hamma

[Yetskii]

On Mattherson, there is the NCcoalition, which is several NC outfits working together as has been discussed.....my short 2 cents before I leave for work...\

It works well most nights

[firestrike]

the NCC are made out of big NC outfit on mattherson my outfit can't put a big army like what those guys can do plus my outfit is in NCA and right now it's made out of smaller outfit all we can do is hope the big NC outfit put their weight on the big TR and VS outfit while we go around and cap those area.

[Emperor Newt]

Another issue that I see more and more of a problem these days which might factor into the defense issues and the dominance of vehicles is that many weapons are too effective against everything.

HE weapons obliterate infantry, but also do decent damage against armor, so in big numbers HE tanks can kill smaller tank groups (at least keep them under control) and defense buildings. I rarely choose my AP Lightining over my HE one. Rocket pods are another example as they are effective against armor, defense buildings, infantry (less after patch) and air (especially since you still have your nosegun).
The counter example is max bursters where people argue that it should do more damage against other targets. And I think that this is exactly the wrong way.

Very often I see HE tanks sniping defense turrets and also kill any engineer that comes nearby to repair. Another weapon (playing VS) is that almost all our tanks use the Saron HRB as secondary because it's pretty scary against everything, even infantry and Maxes. There is no real downside to the weapon if you can aim it. Which is not that hard to learn.
And there are always one or two weapons per vehicle which make the "balanced" weapons redunant, especially due to huge numbers. There are "balanced" weapons and there hard "counter" weapons. Leave counter weapons excelent at what they are supposed to do but less effective against everythning else. For some weapons this is already the case, but a lot of them are simply too good of a deal.

And infantry in defense situations gets screwed the most currently, as this issue is most obvious in the HE guns as they keep your own armor at bay and also deny infantry the field. Combined with spawn camping and the like there are only rare situations where another weapon would be a better choice.

[firestrike]

i was hoping for a NPC control in base gun

defend is a hard thing as the put off sure we have door shield but that not going to stop a whole zergfit for steamrolling the place as some of you guys have said a over base shield will stop the big outfit for overrunning the base in 10 sec and let small outfit who know what to do and are great at this type of ops be a part of the whole cap instead of the whole zergfit going in and the small outfit can't do a thing but regroup and go other area to try and outrun those outfit

[Assist]

I had a great discussion on Twitter last night about this and wanted to bring it here.

First off let me start this thread by saying this is NOT an attack on specific outfits. I will not allow people to argue about specific outfits, this discussion is about the size of outfits in general and whether or not you think they hurt the game. Also, I don't want to hear bs like "ohh you're doing it wrong" etc.

This has bothered me since late beta and is becoming more and more of an issue (imo) as of late. I don't have solution for it because there really isn't one but I want to see what peoples thoughts are.

My outfit is smaller in size compared to most. We typically run about a half a platoon or so. We are finding it difficult to find a solid role for us in the game that isn't boring and doesn't involve getting steamrolled. This is becoming more and more difficult as time goes on. Huge outfits are able to put 100 or more people or more on an objective and essentially win with numbers in almost all fights. We are able to hold off, but it's simply a matter of time until we are struck down due to sheer numbers.

Smaller outfits are finding that they have to disband and join larger outfits if they want to even have fun, causing them to lose their own identity and be absorbed into massive teams because there are no recruits left to take. For me community is more important to a game than the game itself, hence why I've been doing this all these years.

Is having one massive outfit per empire what the developers intended? Is spam inviting every no outfit person in the game really a viable recruiting effort? How many of these people even know what they are joining?

What is everyones thoughts on this issue?

I think it isn't their intended design for outfits but I think it is heading that way. I play against you guys on Waterson and I can tell you that personally I notice when I'm up against CDL. In the larger TR fights(which is often lately) I know when you guys are there as my magrider usually goes boom. So while you may not be making a impact on which side wins the base, it's obvious to me at least that your coordination is making a difference in how the fight plays out. So to your point, if you were in a larger outfit would you be making a larger difference? I really don't know, I think that comes down to the commander. I would think that if your outfit knew it's role in a specific fight you would be fine, the problem is(at least for VS) that there is no commanders. No one steps forth, no one wants to give orders, no one wants to attempt to have organization. Would you gain that in an outfit? IMO not on the VS side. If there were a guild on our side that I felt went above and beyond with their outfit and whom I saw attempting to work strategically I'd be more interested. The size of the outfit doesn't really intrigue me, more the ability of a leader. I've always found in games that having a good outfit leader is far more important than the quality of the players in that outfit. Some of the best clans I've been apart of I would actually consider the guild leaders to be horrible players individually but they could manage the group well enough that their player skill was completely irrelevant.

/rantoff
So in my opinion, yes the game is catering to huge outfits. But not because they're better in any way, only because the game currently lacks strategy. I think it lacks strategy because of the community and not because of the game design. The current strategy for every single base in the game is to zerg it down. The Crown is the best example, it's one of the easiest bases in the game to conquer. It has a horrible spawn point for defenders and can be approached from three different directions(for VS). All that is required is to have a spawn sunderer on top, yet day after day VS sits on the hill/bridge by crossroads and shells The Crown. Why? I haven't a frickin clue but I'd bet my house they'll be doing it today when I get off work. When you break down the fight at The Crown, numbers don't really become a factor(except for player draw distance). It comes down to strategy that a dozen people could execute to take the base. The advantage of a large guild is you can multiply that strategy and it just becomes more effective. That's where the design of the game comes in but I'm not sure there's much that can be done without reworking base design.

But to me, outfit size isn't the end-all of fights. Will your outfit have to play tag-along with a larger outfit to get things done? probably. Organization is what it comes down to and personally I feel like that is what the /leader channel is for. VS on Waterson appear to not feel that way as mostly it's people bitching at each other. There are a few outfits on VS that have their own little alliance, and they tend to stick to that when they do operations, but to put it nicely they're not very effective.

I'll be very surprised if someone can read through the above and make sense of it. I re-read it to try and fix it, but some things are just a lost cause.
edit: Just a side note, I'm solo/duo/trio 99% of the time in PS2. I feel the outfits on VS don't have enough coordination to warrant joining one, as I can get the information I need through /leader and /orders well enough to make an impact on fights.

[Masahiko]

If the rendering wasnt a problem big wouldnt be a problem as you could bring in better support logistics. However, with rendering the way it is makes it a bigger issue when power zergs roll through.

[Sledgecrushr]

If it wasnt for the rendering issue it would be a lot easier to farm infantry with rocket pods. I recall the purple baron getting shot down after sixty kills in a row and then bitch about the rendering problem. I hope they dont fix that problem until the relationship between air and ground untis has been repaired.

[cryosin]

I' have to disagree here. If you are a smaller outfit, you really have to know what you can actually achieve with your numbers.

Can you assault a well defended base with completely inferior numbers? Even large outfits have trouble assaulting bases when they are outnumbered. Same with defense.

I am currently a member of AT, a large outfit, but i played the game with smaller outfits and IRL friends. Capturing an objective like "Th Crown" with twelve people, even if they are all amazing, is pretty difficult.

You really have to fine tune what it is you like to do and what is that achievable.

Here are a few things that two squads can accomplish really well:

Any kind of cavalry: Air/Armor etc. You have the benefit of being in direct communication, and picking out targets and clearing the outsides of bases is something you can accomplish much more easily than a larger outfit. I have personally witnessed a squad of Magriders stop the Enclave dead in its tracks.

Deploying and keeping sunderers alive. Imagine two squads who do nothing but bring sunderers to a fight? You assist the zerg, larger outfits and the empire overall while getting loads of XP.

Going for one specific objective, rather than an entire base. Maybe "taking a gen", or holding one area from the enemy. You don't have the numbers to really take the entire base(sometime AT doesn't either), but you can assist the rest of the zerg by making sure a gen stays down.

It's really hard for smaller numbers to outweigh large ones in all areas of war, real of virtual. That's just the way it is, and most games are very similar, even planetside 1.

I do agree with you on the idea of there being a "side" objective, however. We are definitely missing the old "gen holds" of planetside 1 that where so fun.

At SOE live i told Matt Higby about a "Power Plant" idea, basically a generator-themed base that, instead of being captured, can be destroyed. I'll probably make a post about now that you brought this up.

[TwinkySN]

If the rendering wasnt a problem big wouldnt be a problem as you could bring in better support logistics. However, with rendering the way it is makes it a bigger issue when power zergs roll through.


I'm starting to think of this as a multifaceted problem. Along with the rendering problem there is the base designs (one of them "fixed" recently, a la Tech Plant), where the base design practically calls for a zerg if you want to cap the base in a decent amount of time against a decent sized defense force. While the ability to defend against a mass number of on-comers is nice, there needs to be more points of entry so that fights don't become grind fests and there is a winner sooner rather than several hours later. Along those same lines, certain bases need to be more easily defensible against larger numbers of people, instead of being camp fests waiting for the base to flip. Granted that would require some hefty fundamental redesign to fix, it will need to be done eventually or give better tools to the infantry side to counter the zerglings. As well, I feel if they took away the ability of armor and air to camp infantry areas, we would see less zerging, as we currently know it, and move to where infantry skill and team work determine the winner and not who had enough numbers/armor to camp the spawn points from every angle possible.

:doh:

[Whiteagle]

(As an aside tho, I wouldn't mind seeing the "facility defended" XP return, in a different form such as: Don't award it just because one enemy held one cap point for 5 seconds and then the base was resecured. Reward it only when the base was actually in danger of being taken, like when the defenders' cap bar was half or fully taken off, and then the defenders managed to fully secure it again, that would count as a resecure and yield XP. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, because once you've lost control of a base to that extent, you rarely get it back.)
Hmmm... perhaps Experience points should be given for actively reverting capture bars?

I don't agree with you that Defense shouldn't have visible rewards, as a majority of new players (In the Mercz we called them "Grunts") only do things based on how rewarding it is.

As an aside tho: Looking purely at the fight for the courtyard, I'd say that Amp Stations right now aren't in too bad shape. You've got vehicle choke points (gates); you've got shields blocking the gates whose generators must be taken out by infantry; you've got high ground for the defenders (which however can be circumvented by Light Assaults - the whole class makes defense harder in PS2); you've got defenders reinforcing the cy with vehicles easily (tho ofc the spawn room is in a stupid position, but defenders mitigate that by putting a Sundy in the central building).
Not all is terribad. :)
Eh, I don't know...

The problem with the Amp station court-yard is how big of a clusterfuck it is right now...

Literally the same walls around a Bio Lab are an improvement over their Amp Station counterparts simply because the court-yard isn't full of clutter that benefits Attackers more then Defenders.

The SCU for every base actually helped a lot with the spawn camping problem in the early beta as it gave a base capture a clear point at which falling back was required. I still do not understand why it was removed.
Well the biggest issue with that was people just blew the SCUs first...

Of course, this was back when you just shot them with a clip or two instead of an overload interaction...

Still, a bigger problem with Outpost are their horrible spawn shacks.
The SCUs just prevented the terrible base layout from becoming apparent until far too late...

First, one functionality that should be removed is allowing people in vehicles to capture points. I've seen plenty of instances where enemy players, or even members of my own outfit in a heavy tank, Lightning or even a Galaxy can be in proximity of a node, fully protected by its armor, as it safely changes ownership! Now I understand the studio's concern about MAXes being allowed to but, essentially, enabling someone in a vehicle to do it when a MAX cannot is utter nonsense. Second, I don't think any outpost should allow a single player to take it; instead, at least two soldiers per node should be required.
I thought they took this out already?!

I remember a while back rolling up to a point on a flash and needing to get off... but did they revert that with the rollback and never restored it?

Next we have defenses. In PlanetSide, typically an outpost's or base's defenses were such that, if they detected a nearby enemy, they would engage them without player intervention at all. It would be good if every outpost had self-repairing, hack-proof "auto turrets" that need to be destroyed in their perimeter, possibly separate from their manned counterparts, adding moderate protection from another empire taking it over with impunity. These could also be structured so that the larger or more elaborate the facility, the more deadly these unmanned turrets would be to an invading force. Once the area was captured, commanders could then change the nature of these turrets to AI/AV/AA. This would thus provide more of a challenge to players than them simply walking into an outpost and ghost-hacking without resistance.
Yeah, this is one of those things that has me on the fence...

...On one hand, automated defenses would probably increase the load server-side and gunk up the system...

...On the other, bases are pretty much abandoned after a successful capture anyways...

Another useful mechanic would be that, depending on an empire's population-influence on the continent in relation to their rivals, a hitpoint bonus on armor and shields was provided to defenders' territory, so it is harder and requires longer for the enemy to capture them. Then if allied players successfully defended a facility, all turrets and shields were automatically repaired to full strength, to prevent overwhelming enemy forces from just invading after losing that particular capture phase.
I like the idea of a "Rally Bonus" that buffs Defenders when they are being pushed back to their Warpgate.

...Don't know about Instant repairs, but including a Repair Speed buff to the "Rally Bonus" would also be nice.

One person can and should be able to make a difference. It is always a matter of finding where it can be done. To mandate that teamwork is needed to do anything clips the wings of players who make sabotage their line of work. I have more stories ranging from cat and mouse games to assassinations to intel gathering but those two exemplify how an individual can change the global scene. Game should be a sandbox, not a carnival ride that necessitates that you must have this many people to ride.
Indeed, this is the tight-rope which further balance has to make it across...

Catering to solo players may have been what got us these ghost-town shacks for bases in the first place; the developers thought they would give an advantage to lone wolves trying to fight their way through organized Outfit defenses...

...Only to fail to understand that the Zerg would decimate this through the sheer volume of individuals assaulting a particular point.

My giant problem with Hamma's assessment of the situation is that he seems to think vehicles need to be restricted, which I think isn't the right approach.
Well honestly, it depends on the "restrictions"...
I'll agree with you that increases to Timers and Resource cost don't actually solve anything, they just make things more frustraiting for dedicated vehicle operators.

...Which is why it's a bit confusing that Hamma kept spouting off about Resources needing more importance, since they aren't a good carrot to reward individual players and are a much better suited to being a meta-game strategic mechanic.

Still, more lines need to be drawn where vehicles can and cannot go.
Right now there are only a few places where ground vehicle territory doesn't overlap with Infantry's, while Aircraft are only limited by firing angle.

...I was also long ago won over to the side of separate Drivers and Main Gunners on MBTs due to how vestigial they make the Secondary Weapons outside of those that could pass for Main Guns themselves, why the drivers can't be given control of a secondary is beyond me...

XP distribution is just off in this game. Infantry dies in one hit from a vehicle, respawns and is back maybe 20 seconds later. A vehicle gets hit and goes to repair, that often takes longer than 20 seconds. However, killing the infantry gets you 100+ XP, shooting the vehicle gets you absolutely nothing, the driver of the vehicle gets XP for repairing though! I think that every time you damage a vehicle for 20% of its HP you should get 50 XP or so, and if you kill an infantryman in a vehicle you should only get 50 XP instead of the full amount. That little change alone would already make a huge difference in how people perceive the competition between vehicles and infantry - because right now it's all about kills, and vehicles kill more and die less.
If you look at the survival scheme for the two different units Infantry is meant to die and respawn until their respawn point is destroyed or captured, vehicles are meant to run and repair until an enemy manages to destroy them before they can do so. There is a reward for killing, there is a reward for taking out spawn capabilities, but there is no reward for making the vehicle run and repair, which is why vehicles rack up such absurdly huge XP themselves, and give very little back to all the people who fight them.
Very good points!
You are right, there is a large amount of skew between Anti-Infantry and Anti-Vehicle combat Experience gain wise...

Really, it just isn't worth it to fire on a tank with Rockets, because even if you do and every other Heavy Assualt score a hit, only one of you will get the kill and maybe a few others the assist.
Seriously, does anyone know what the criteria is for assist?

Meanwhile, said tank could easily match and more then likely exceed the Experience gained from taking it out with a single well placed shot on a crowd!

Perhaps there SHOULD be an XP tick nerf on Infantry kills made with Vehicle weapons, just to counter the ease with which they can be used to farm.

The Combined arms concept currently is a mess, because the only vehicle that effectively bridges the gap between vehicles and infantry is the Sunderer, and it's mostly just used as a spawn point. The Galaxy is too big to be worthwhile as just a taxi and requires too many gunners to be usable once the passengers disembark. The Sunderer isn't really much of an infantry fighting vehicle, but more of a support unit that happens to have a lot of seats too. It's too big and unwieldy to really be good in a fight, despite massive armor and solid firepower, and it simply isn't fun to drive. Also only MAX units really rely on transport vehicles to get around, regular infantry can redeploy/suicide to move from one viable spawn to the next.
Well I don't think the transports are completely useless, but you are correct that they aren't being used much for actual transporting.

The Sunderer is alright, it just requires nearly a full coherent squad to be useful.
The Galaxy though could probably use some more seats, considering it requires nearly half a squad to fully man to begin with it lacks an ability to drop enough Infantry to be of much use.

...Would be nice if Vehicle Equipment could change their characteristics... like Modules or something... (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=47822)

I want to see vehicles that really emphasize the combined arms concept, where a tank driver or gunship pilot can have a vehicle he can have fun with when its empty while at the same time providing support and transportation to an infantry squad when they need it. We're just lacking units that really bring the two together.
That would be nice, like an IFV with a small autocannon and front mounted flamethrower that seats six.
Hopefully the Buggies will provide on this front.

One thing I would like to see is more bases that aren't directly tied to territory capture. Large facilities have 2-4 of these (Outpost bases, or as TEST calls them, adjuncts), but why are they only limited to facilities?

Planetside 1 had these in the form of Towers, but I think the concept of a capture able mini-facility with a spawn point and some equipment terminals could drastically benefit the 'small outfit' play.
Actually Figment came up with something kind of like this (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=869868&postcount=78), except instead of having spawn tubes or terminals it just had a fortified garage to park a Sunderer AMS.

It was pretty much just a bunker complex from which Infantry could effectively fight Vehicles on the road from.

Personally I would love it if they changed the tug of war system to not be the last thing you need to do to capture a base, but the first thing. For example when you have a Biolab, just make all the entrances heavily shielded and impossible to get through, and the way you take those shields down isn't by generators, but by capturing the satellite bases and getting on point there. If you win the tug of war over the shields the shields go down and stay down until the defenders have taken back all the satellite bases.

That would just make a lot more sense, because in facilities like the Biolab or Amp stations, by the time the tug of war is invoked that already means that the enemies have busted through all your other lines of defense, and you're probably locked in a spawnroom somewhere. Then you can't do anything about it anymore (Not to mention, that's when defense XP kicks in, not before) and the enemies need to sit there and wait for the base to flip which is boring.

The tug of war needs to happen early in the fight, not at the very end when it's pretty much already decided.
Another good point, since this would spread the fight out from the central facility instead of a clusterfuck over the central Control Console like we have now.

It would also take the edge off of the inherent bonus Attackers gain with their initiative.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

I had a great discussion on Twitter last night about this and wanted to bring it here.

First off let me start this thread by saying this is NOT an attack on specific outfits. I will not allow people to argue about specific outfits, this discussion is about the size of outfits in general and whether or not you think they hurt the game. Also, I don't want to hear bs like "ohh you're doing it wrong" etc.

This has bothered me since late beta and is becoming more and more of an issue (imo) as of late. I don't have solution for it because there really isn't one but I want to see what peoples thoughts are.

My outfit is smaller in size compared to most. We typically run about a half a platoon or so. We are finding it difficult to find a solid role for us in the game that isn't boring and doesn't involve getting steamrolled. This is becoming more and more difficult as time goes on. Huge outfits are able to put 100 or more people or more on an objective and essentially win with numbers in almost all fights. We are able to hold off, but it's simply a matter of time until we are struck down due to sheer numbers.

Smaller outfits are finding that they have to disband and join larger outfits if they want to even have fun, causing them to lose their own identity and be absorbed into massive teams because there are no recruits left to take. For me community is more important to a game than the game itself, hence why I've been doing this all these years.

Is having one massive outfit per empire what the developers intended? Is spam inviting every no outfit person in the game really a viable recruiting effort? How many of these people even know what they are joining?

What is everyones thoughts on this issue?

Totally agree 100%.

We're trying to keep our outfit together because we're an ex-military, highly trained group of PS1 vets. But we don't have the numbers.

The only outfits we can find to merge with are "Lowest common denominator" groups with tag lines like "cater to casual or pro, hardcore or social players" with 50 people in one teamspeak channel telling fart jokes and having burping competitions and the rare ones that we find who think they're hardcore military strategic/tactical always turn out to be 15 year olds who watched full metal jacket and think they have a right to be Gunnery Sergeant Hartman just because they clicked the "create outfit" button.

Depressing.

[Helwyr]

I just watched Hamma's AGN video and read a dozen pages of this thread... While I generally agree on almost all the concerns, there's one part of this I find both disquieting and ironic. Hamma and other "small outfit" players complain the game mechanics favor large "zerg" outfits and want things changed so there's things small Outfit groups can accomplish, while simultaneously complaining about solo players and wanting more game mechanics to limit what that section of players can accomplish. So to me a portion of this is not about making the game better for everyone, but for a particular subsection of the community at the expense of others.

That said the lack of meta game, poor base defense, resources being largely meaningless, Vehicles being easily spammed and OPed I completely agree with. I just see these as problems, not particularly the existence of huge outfits.

[Hmr85]

I just watched Hamma's AGN video and read a dozen pages of this thread... While I generally agree on almost all the concerns, there's one part of this I find both disquieting and ironic. Hamma and other "small outfit" players complain the game mechanics favor large "zerg" outfits and want things changed so there's things small Outfit groups can accomplish, while simultaneously complaining about solo players and wanting more game mechanics to limit what that section of players can accomplish. So to me a portion of this is not about making the game better for everyone, but for a particular subsection of the community at the expense of others.

That said the lack of meta game, poor base defense, resources being largely meaningless, Vehicles being easily spammed and OPed I completely agree with. I just see these as problems, not particularly the existence of huge outfits.

I'm not sure what part of the video you where referring to? I'm stuck at work and could barely hear the audio but I am assuming its the part where he said solo players should not be able to cap outlying outposts on their own?

[Brian TR]

Hey new to the forums. I was a very avid poster durring PS2 Beta under the same tag I actually was one of the first people to point out the problems of Big Organized outfits later to be known as BOOS I will reiterate here what i had created than.

First How did outfits work in PS1

1. Outfits were large medium and small group of gamers whoes play style complimented eachother. Whether it be Spec ops, Gen Drops, Galaxy last minute re-secures, NTU Drains or Ghost hacks,that sneaky, one might say annoying type of gameplay was able to be achieved with Outfits of all sizes and it had an impact on the overall game. Larger outfits may want to lead the battle and they could do this by organizing their large contingent of players and beginning a raid on a base. The beautiful thing about PS1 was how it was able to balance Large outfits. As soon as an attack happened it was usually immediately countered and who countered maybe a smaller outfit saw the attack diverted to defend than you would see the influx of smaller squads and random players join the fight. Pretty soon that spot became really hot a red alert and more people joined the fight to stop that large outfit, eventually stopping them in their tracks. That large outfit in a very short order ended up going against the whole or most of an enemy faction In a progressive battle that built up to that of which were never seen in a game. That faction may not of been coordinated with team speak but fought for the common goal of ousting the invaders. Giving you that feeling of being a small part of something greater. It was your EMPIRE you were fighting for it was where you sole allegiance was dedicated to. This is what created our strong loyalties to our faction and why when our faction succeeded we succeeded as well.

Now that I explained a scenario lets examine why it worked

1. The dreaded lattice system. Many might say its a hindrance for progression ie. Matt Higby but what did the lattice do

1. It Created large battles
2. gave us a meta game LLU (capture the flag)
3.created tactical involvement predicting where an enemy will attack and gave ample time to set up a defense defend
4. Created Structure and flow

While sometimes there were stale mates there were ways of breaking stalemates if you had a good group of guys that knew how to play the game

The good way outweighs the bad. Now there's no reason we had to go back to an exact LLU structure im sure they could have designed something similar that addressed the issues they had originally, but to scrap it entirely and to leave the map wide open with no structure or flow is a detriment to the game.
It also makes Large Outfits very powerful as they ave free roam and are very unpredictable as to where they will strike next making it almost impossible to counter them with empire strength alone.

How Outfits work In PS2

Its all about strength in organized numbers. Theres about 3 or 4 BOOS in PS2 with 100s of active players. Now to me it seems SOE never thought out what the role of an outfit was gunna be, just that it was in PS1 so yea we want them in PS2. They never really thought about the logistics or the consequences they may have in the current model.

The game currently has no way of organizing solo or small squads to fight for a common goal like in PS1 Instead these large outfits get all their forces together very organized air, ground, infantry, command structure teamspeak what have you the whole 9, A well oiled machine. To go against a guy and his few buddies and maybe another guy and his few buddies and me sniping by myself. We just go online to have some fun shooting some enemies for a couple hours. Next thing we know this wave comes killing us many times we spawn someplace else that place is under siege every where we turn its death. This isn't fun for us especially when no skill is involved in this massacre. Its pure numbers and coordination. Next thing we know we are sitting in our warp gate wondering what the heck happened. This is a common occurrence in PS2. How this is fun for the attacking Outfit is beyond me yea there going to get alot of kills but with minimal work or effort. How is that rewarding. Many times there's nothing to kill if your not the first wave in. It just so happens our faction is owning another continent spawn there to the raid of another opposing outfit our main outfit must of left because we are getting massacred here buy a different faction What does this breed just like some of you have said your outfit your squads are futile we have to join the BOO to have any relevance in the game what does this create individual players controlling your gaming experience following there orders this gives the leaders of these outfits Way Way to much power over the game itself. The current way will eventually be join us or your are totally irrelevant. The worst part of this whole thing is the big outfits on opposing sides avoid each other and prey on everyone else. Why should one person control an entire empire and the design of the game and how outfits are in game will ultimately lead to this, There will be No Terran Republic, New Conglomerate or Vanu Sovereignty. The game will become all about these outfits the camaraderie and loyalty felt for ones empire will now reside in an outfit and their leaders. Is this what we want for PS2. I for one dont but if changes arent made this game will become more of a niche game than PS1 ever was at least in that game you were free to game how you chose but In PS2 the Players will control you. One more thing most of these outfits dont work with randoms or smaller squads its all about them and there notoriety in the game and alot of these guys excuse my french are Assholes no names needed but you know im TR so you know who im talking bout. Also it looks to me as SOE will be catering to these Outfits more by eventually creating Outfit Bases??? SMDH at this, Before long PS2 will be a circrus for all the clowns to play in not the serious skilled FPS gamers like myself.

[Kate]

Good thread, just read the whole thing, and I also came to many of the same conclusions that have been expressed here. I don't think the huge outfits are a bad thing, but I recognize that smaller outfits are feeling somewhat irrelevant due to the current game design.

My thoughts on making small outfits more relevant, and generally improving PS2:

Offensive and defensive holding of terrain needs to be more feasible, vehicles should not have influence on almost all terrain.

Bases should be more enclosed, and should provide better cover. Walls should be more useful, and jump pads and lifts possibly eliminated. Reducing exposure to the enemy better defining attack vectors would make massed troops easier and more interesting to take on, by making enabling defenders to encounter them in smaller and more managable groups at once.

Internalized/underground obectives and spawn areas could would be good as well. This would promote longer and more interesting battles, would delay the onset of farming the spawn, and again would enable a smaller defending force to engage attackers in a managable way. Currently at the spawn you can be instagibbed from almost any angle or distance, which is hard to counter as infantry and quite frustrating.

Outposts and towers should have internals which are safer from air and armor, and structures should maybe be more linked. It'd maybe be cool if the tower was physically linked with its curtilage buildings and they had content of strategic importance in them, or if outpost buildings had underground tubes or something. IMHO, the elevators are lame and encourage wild flailing and spraying and hopping about, but I may be wrong about that.

AI automatic but gimpy turrets. Makes defending a little easier, gives air less uncontested air, makes back capping more interesting, gives small groups a target or role.

Bringing back PS1-style CE would be awesome. I also think pillboxes, bunkers, weapon emplacements, trenches, and tank traps would be great (not constructable stuff, but CE related). Why? It slows down the zerg, makes defending more viable, and could be interesting for large and small oufits.

On capture mechanics:

I agree with what others have said about the possibility of instant resecures, hack and hold, LLUs or CTF, maybe requiring >2 to start a cap, and no capping by vehicles. They'd add some variety, ease defense, and empower smaller units.

Cap/def completion score being mostly based on actions during the cap/def and for a few min after would be better I think. Also, maybe you should still gain exp from the actions part of that even if you've left SOI. This would discourage swooping in or hanging around for exp, and would reward attacking and defending even if the player had to go elsewhere prematurely for strategic reasons. (Maybe bonuses up front would be better though, and that'd reward hanging on even if being eventually overrun was inevitable?)

RE lack of resource scarcity, and vehicle abundance.

I think vehicle costs should increase, but gain from sanc and other conts should increase a little to give factions a chance to push out if gated. Possibly boost veh kill exp, or add some for causing severe damage. Effect: While vehicles still powerful, they become rarer and more valued. Large swarms still possible, but an endless vehicular onslaught becomesless feasible. Deterring vehicles becomes more tangibly rewarding, and more lucrative for smaller groups. Note: Being able to warp vehicles might make pilots and drivers more okay with this, and could make this less of a burden for smaller outfits with limited resources.

Organization:

Create a system whereby platoons may be linked with the other outfit squads and platoons, and allow for a command team to direct and see them. Create a similar system for alliance-level coordination. Helps make outfits more coordinated, promotes teamwork.

Create Outfit listings ingame with links for leadership contact, stats, a summary, and recruitment. Reduces relative influence of spam invites, gives a starting point for outfit cooperation.

FFS, make an option to let SLs change leads and kick, make their WPs visible to PLs maybe and let PLs swap squads between a/b/c/d, or even set color, or name other than alpha/whatevs. Letting PL's drop smoke or use SL cmd chat would be nice, as would being able to directly set yourself as SL when PL, or maybe being able to give SLs ordered targets.

Make outfit roster searchable and sortable, and more informative. Improves outfit management, promoting better community experience.

Outfit decals (and maybe related swag) would be nice. Fun and cool, improves identity and cohesion, advertisement too?

Bonus and/or optional somewhat shared exp/resources with squads, platoons, outfits, and alliances. Promotes teamwork and maybe proximity, gives people in thankless support roles some reward so they're happy and don't complain/want exp from every possible action.

Some sort of continent and global command chat, with an easier to access read-only level. Should be accessable to more than just OL, but also with standards (e.g. no single person outfits, no spam, slurs, or recruiting, some form of moderation). More coordination and community, less mobs/zerg.

Outfit points or challenges for outfit objects or abilities, maybe computed by per capita with some things. Promotes teamwork and reduces value of spam inviting?

Targets and roles for smaller outfits and spec ops teams:

Give all territories some sort of special/unique bonus/ability/facility/trait, which if not posessed may be hampered by breaking things, hacking, occupying a building, or stealing things. Add some objects to mess with. For example: Place a well you can blow up, harvesters you can sabotage, a cache you can destroy or steal from, or a comms station you can hack or occupy to debuff the enemy's logistics, or mildly tweak the enemy's intelligence (delay cap progress bar display slightly, change "Platoons" to Platoon"). This gives more meaning to territory, and would make for an interesting side game appropriate for small groups, with strategic value.

Rare resource metorites and downed satellites (modules). Every once in a while (30m-a few H?), one will randomly drop on the map. "Cool off time" after which it can be picked up and transported will vary. Depending on "weight" (value) it cannot be held by a Gal and a Sundy must take it. The bigger, the slower the vehicle can go. May or may not be extremely volatile. Must be taken to a base for processing, then maybe a facility for placement. Can be stolen by opfor on the way or after install, or maybe expended for a special ability, gives significant xp. May need replacement over time. Maybe meteors can only be spotted while inbound while landing if a tracking station equipped territory is owned, which will be a target for competeing enemy teams. Maybe rarely some could be used offensivelf for buffs, or to nuke areas. Effect: Sounds like a fun competative side game, which might appeal to small teams.

Gens provide base benefits, and can be blown/hacked/held. Would be nice targets for small teams.

AI automatic but semi-gimpy turrets - It's something useful to blow up and might be interesting.

Defensive NPC drones/vehicles that aren't *too* bright - See above.

NPC harvester/worker robot vehicles - Killable, hackable, with a few bits of resources to loot.

Raidable/hackable NPC supply convoys - If you have a comms tower hacked or whatever, you'll get notified of them. They meander from base to base, and are modified sundies with lame automatic turrets. Ambush and blow them up for points, then salvage the resources it carried with engies and pick them up (holding them makes you slow and defenseless or only able to use a pistol), return to friendly processor in base with them for reward (sooner deposits for all maybe, or extra resources, atd exp). Alternatively, hack them and drive them home, or just slap C4 on the back of them, which will kill the enemy processor when they arrive eventually. Losing a convoy causes delayed deposit or mild reduction in next deposit. There could be ANT convoys as well, or maybe some of them would blow up like gas tankers and could be used as IEDs. IHNFI. Effect: Another potentially fun side game, and a way for underdogs to steal resorces.

Here and there, maybe add a few cappable small emplacements with ammo stations and terminals, but no spawns or limited spawning probably, and rarely give them light vehicle terminals. Hide them away and have them be staging spots for groups behind enemy lines. Design them to be very small, and maybe built into terrain like bunkers. Could give them a modest resource benefit or ability, and make them subtle/not shown on the map. Not effected by influence, doesn't cause influence. Effect: Kinda cool spots that help fill empty but interesting areas, and allows for resupply and regrouping. Subtle and meant for small group usage.

Obviously that's a lot of ideas and the chances of change are low, but I think it's worth discussing given how SOE seems relatively responsive to input. What do you all thunk of that?

Note: I thought of some of this back in 2007 when I was a young teen interested in game design. I realize it might be hard to implement. Also, the last legit English class I had was in 6th grade and I wrote this on my phone, so there may be typos. My perspective may also be biased from playing PS1, and being in a certain large NC outfit on Connery...

[Sturmhardt]

You wrote all that on your phone? Holy....:huh:

[Crator]

The good way outweighs the bad. Now there's no reason we had to go back to an exact lattice structure im sure they could have designed something similar that addressed the issues they had originally, but to scrap it entirely and to leave the map wide open with no structure or flow is a detriment to the game.
It also makes Large Outfits very powerful as they ave free roam and are very unpredictable as to where they will strike next making it almost impossible to counter them with empire strength alone.

To be fair, the capture requirements are not wide open. They do require hex adjacency. The hex system is the similar design to the lattice that supports resources, something SOE wants in the game to support the F2P model, as well as control amount of vehicles however we all know that resources don't exactly control amount of vehicles properly for various reasons. The hex system is also a way for SOE to promote spreading out the players on a map in order to control amount of players in a single location to avoid lag issues which are caused by too many players in the same area of the map.

I haven't heard anyone else in this thread blame the lack of a lattice on this issue tbh. Most blame the missing game play you mentioned in your post to lack of base defensibility.

[Assist]

Obviously that's a lot of ideas and the chances of change are low, but I think it's worth discussing given how SOE seems relatively responsive to input. What do you all thunk of that?


That's a hell of a list. I like most of the changes you propose, but as you said I think 99% of that will not happen. For one, most of the changes you propose are content being added which takes a lot of dev time. I'm all for everything you propose though, call smedley up and get the ball rolling.

[p0intman]

I wrote this on my phone
holy shit

[thegreekboy]

and being in a certain large NC outfit on Connery...

:rolleyes:

Despite you being part of 666, I agree with every single one of your points and I really like them

[Kate]

You wrote all that on your phone? Holy....:huh:

I'm a little TL;DR and self-taught with my writing to begin with, but throw in being hopped up on chocolate and turkey with nothing to do, and being away for a week with double xp going on, and you get something like this... :D

Despite you being part of 666, I agree with every single one of your points and I really like them

Cool. It's always interesting to run into you guys, you're kinda like our rival or frenemy...

[Rodel]

Well I'm an officer an outfit that runs about 2 squads on non event nights and I don't agree that a group that size can't acomplish anything. We do it all the time and still have great fights. We brke a tech farm a couple weeks back by running 15 shield breaker sundies as bridges. We just held them their and maintained them while the zerg jumped in and over ran the place.
I hear these complaints all the time and I just don't see it and I've realized I'm the only one who disagrees. I don't know. I might have a different perception of the game then other people but I find this game to be very playable for soloing, small squads, and large platoons. However each is played differently and non are played the way you would play planetside 1.
I think a lot of people miss then gen/tower/cc holds of PS1. You just simply can't do that in PS2 right now. Sorry. But what I do is run my squad in a way that supports the zerg. Taking psuedo-points in large bases, slicing the enemy's enluence off from their WG, or simply calling for the squad to take over the airpad at a Bio lab and letting the zerg do the rest.
We are very effective doing these things and we have a hell of a time doing it. I always find something for a squad to do.

[igster]

What Rook said basically (Great post). Please please don't discount the views of the long time contributors to these boards like figment, pointman and rook. They want new players more than anyone but also want the depth to be playing this game in 10 years time.

- Map Sucks & is form over function. Doesnt support anything more than the zerg.
o Need to know where our population is as well as nme population is.. so that the tactically minded people can make informed decisions about how much force is needed to respond to the enemy on the map.
o tactical activity overlay from PS1 is all that is needed - the one that a lot of PS1 players didn't realise was there and often didnt know how to use. Malorn please give the map UI designer a demonstration of how amazing the tactical population overview was in PS1 since I have a suspicion that he has never seen it in operation. Then you can ask him to rip up the whole 'hover over a hex to get population information' concept and replace it with a population map overlay.
o The radar/detection meta game was great in PS1 where setting off CE would create a 'trace' of enemy activity on the tactical map. We crave for some of this depth in PS2. Bring back the Sensor Disruptors!

- Lack of indoor connected defences with choke points means its always a battle of pure attrition. Give me a fight where a small group of 12 people can dynamically hold a useful objective by reinforcing each other when they come under attack without being randomly picked off by snipers overlooking a base. At the moment bases sprawl so much and all chokepoints are so disconnected that you cannot reinforce each other without being picked off by a sniper/liberator/nme tank.

- Resources dont make sense. This isn't starcraft.
- Meaningful XP Bonuses for defenders
- XP Based on how long the person you had killed was alive/how many kills they'd racked up

Completely agree about the vehicles not being able to shutdown a base or outpost on their own. The spawn camping by libs/MBTs/lightnings is ridiculous.

Only 1 thing I'd like to add really.

Response Metagame/Vehicles
Bring back the response meta game to give us the option to not have to zerg or participate in the endless three way if we want.

However, do remember that the vehicle/armour specialists also have a part to play in the response meta game. It's not all about just the infantry/Gal Drops/Mosquito flying one man armies.

In PS1, we used to try to be the Vanu armour first responders to try to control the courtyard in our Magrider. Normally it was just me, chal and sometimes we'd have our flying wingman purplegarf giving us our air support.

Could never fly to save my life and inside a base I'm cannon fodder but in a magrider controlling the enemy vehicles in a courtyard we were the biggest pain in the ass you could ever come across.

We'd respond to the squads trying to open a continent and try to establish control of the enemy established spawn points by finding and killing their AMSes/Routers/Sunderers. I'd love for this role to be reprised in PS2.

This should be the vehicle role in planetside. Establishing the dominance outside of a base. If dominance was established easily then we'd go in on foot. Leaving our vehicles in the courtyard without having a stupid 5 minute timer on it so we'd have to abandon it if there was a really good fight going on inside.

Until CY dominance had been established that was our fight. If it was a hot base we'd have to fight for dominance. If heavy air was present we'd struggle until our flying response guys would come in.

Everyone has a role. But the important point is that neither us, the air cav or the other vehicles could take a base on our own. We all had to contribute to get the job done. At the moment a lib or tanks can camp the respawn while 1 lone soldier stands at a control point. This is bad bad base design.

[Mavis]

Back in the day on Werner we had an NC zergfit, anyone from Werner will know it's name. Yes it messed up, taking people away from where we needed to be and pushing the zerg where they wanted to be. But all the other outfits had a steady stream of players moving on from the zergfit once they learned the game and joining the smaller outfits.
With world wide communication being restricted to people who had grinded CEP the zergfits got talked down in comms. Because they never had the ability to push a people through as leaders. It meant that on Werner NC the zergfit would have maybe 1-2 CR5's giving commands. Most other outfits had between 5-10. This meant we could still direct the fights.
The problem isn't the big outfits it's needing a way to push control to the people who can do a good job. Most of us old CR5's from my outfit haven't bothered with the command certs, why bother? Anyone can get them. Beyond the few that are required for squad leadership no one bothers. Leadership needs to be earned, if that happens it will help sort out the lack of control we have over the Zerg.
Make a new currency, CEP, an SL earns that instead of certs and spends that on command abilities. Problem solved.
Just my thoughts.

[Whiteagle]

Offensive and defensive holding of terrain needs to be more feasible, vehicles should not have influence on almost all terrain.

Bases should be more enclosed, and should provide better cover. Walls should be more useful, and jump pads and lifts possibly eliminated. Reducing exposure to the enemy better defining attack vectors would make massed troops easier and more interesting to take on, by making enabling defenders to encounter them in smaller and more managable groups at once.

Internalized/underground obectives and spawn areas could would be good as well. This would promote longer and more interesting battles, would delay the onset of farming the spawn, and again would enable a smaller defending force to engage attackers in a managable way. Currently at the spawn you can be instagibbed from almost any angle or distance, which is hard to counter as infantry and quite frustrating.

Outposts and towers should have internals which are safer from air and armor, and structures should maybe be more linked. It'd maybe be cool if the tower was physically linked with its curtilage buildings and they had content of strategic importance in them, or if outpost buildings had underground tubes or something. IMHO, the elevators are lame and encourage wild flailing and spraying and hopping about, but I may be wrong about that.
Yeah, we've been rather vocal about defensibility, so hopefully new Building Assets will be created first so they can be implemented when designing the new Continents.

Mainly for this reason:

That's a hell of a list. I like most of the changes you propose, but as you said I think 99% of that will not happen. For one, most of the changes you propose are content being added which takes a lot of dev time. I'm all for everything you propose though, call smedley up and get the ball rolling.
It will be far easier to create better, more defensible building assets now, build new Continents with those assets, then go back and overhaul the old Continents at the developer's leisure.
While this might delay new Continents, it will save them the trouble of having to overhaul EVERYTHING.

I don't quite agree with your opinion on Elevator Pads, just because they are a very practical means of vertically transporting player characters without resource intensive staircases, but the beams themselves could definitely uses some cover in places like the Towers.

Jump pads are a bit cheap, but they were a more reliable alternative to the mechanically similar teleporter in Beta...

AI automatic but gimpy turrets. Makes defending a little easier, gives air less uncontested air, makes back capping more interesting, gives small groups a target or role.
Hmmm... I don't know...
On the one hand, I kind of assumed the reason Automatic turrets weren't included was due to the Developers not wanting any computer controlled content in the game as well as possible server-side issues...

...On the other, I would rather like a Spitfire or two for my Engineer...

Since no one really wants to sit around defending a base all day, I personally wouldn't mind auto-turrets, but to be on the safe side I'd limit them to:

1. Slow firing Anti-air Missile Batteries, like the ones featured in the Bastion concept art.
These roof-top turrets would automatically fire on any enemy aircraft that loiters around in range long enough for them to get a lock.
Their automatic target reacquisition isn't fast enough to pose a threat to even a single aircraft, but multiple emplacements should make it much riskier to fly over enemy territory.
Like the original Planetside's turrets, they can be manually operated to decrease their tracking time, but even then are still around the same speed as a Heavy Assault's Lock-on Rocket Launcher.
Since they are accessed from beneath the roof they are mounted on, these Turrets could go on the tops of Tech Plants, Spawn Buildings, and some type of bunker/pillbox building asset, allowing them to be easily repaired safely but still killing an operator when they are destroyed.
They would also be hackable, save the ones whose access points are in Spawn Rooms, which would give Infiltrators a much needed role in team play.

2. Spitfire Sentry Turrets.
Basically, a fixed robotic machine gun turret that shoots any enemy it sees in its limited field of view.
They would be placed around Secondary Objectives, like Shield Generators, so that they could kill anyone stupid enough to just walk in towards the objective but their low health would make them easily sniped by Infantry at range.
Of course, they'd also have a blind spot, so again Infiltrator's would gain a greater team role by hacking these Sentries so that they fire on the base's Defenders instead.

Bringing back PS1-style CE would be awesome. I also think pillboxes, bunkers, weapon emplacements, trenches, and tank traps would be great (not constructable stuff, but CE related). Why? It slows down the zerg, makes defending more viable, and could be interesting for large and small oufits.
Agreed, from what I've heard Combat Engineering would be right up my ally; laying minefields and auto-turrets in strategic positions so that when an enemy push showed up, they'd be sorry.

While there are trenches and tank traps in the game right now, it could use more, and it's rather baffling why they didn't already have more defense-minded building assets to begin with instead of mostly open shacks...

I've even suggested deployable Barricades for Engineers, to help set up roadblocks that would require Infantry to flank and destroy.

On capture mechanics:

I agree with what others have said about the possibility of instant resecures, hack and hold, LLUs or CTF, maybe requiring >2 to start a cap, and no capping by vehicles. They'd add some variety, ease defense, and empower smaller units.
Well I like the ideas of instant resecures if you have enough people to completely cover all control points and "hack and holds" where the hold time is based on how much adjacency influence you had when you started the hack.

I don't know about LLUs since I didn't play the Original, but needing more then two people to start a capture does seem like a bit much, at least for single Control Console Outpost...

I'm also pretty sure you can capture with a Vehicle anymore, as I've had the control tally clearly change when I got on and off my Flash, but I'm not 100 percent on that.

Cap/def completion score being mostly based on actions during the cap/def and for a few min after would be better I think. Also, maybe you should still gain exp from the actions part of that even if you've left SOI. This would discourage swooping in or hanging around for exp, and would reward attacking and defending even if the player had to go elsewhere prematurely for strategic reasons. (Maybe bonuses up front would be better though, and that'd reward hanging on even if being eventually overrun was inevitable?)
Eh, I don't know about this...

I mean, how is the system going to calculate how much Experiance you should get if it has to factor in where you've been, what's happening there, and what you are doing now.

I think Dynamic XP based on how much action actually took place within a base, as well as an announced set defense bonus, would be far easier to implement, even if they don't prevent leeching.

RE lack of resource scarcity, and vehicle abundance.

I think vehicle costs should increase, but gain from sanc and other conts should increase a little to give factions a chance to push out if gated. Possibly boost veh kill exp, or add some for causing severe damage. Effect: While vehicles still powerful, they become rarer and more valued. Large swarms still possible, but an endless vehicular onslaught becomesless feasible. Deterring vehicles becomes more tangibly rewarding, and more lucrative for smaller groups. Note: Being able to warp vehicles might make pilots and drivers more okay with this, and could make this less of a burden for smaller outfits with limited resources.
Eh, I don't know about increasing Vehicle Resource cost...

I'd rather decrease the amount of Resources available on a Continent overall, then increase the stipend given by owning a Warpgate and allow a percentage of other Resources to come in from other Continents...

...Being able to transport Vehicles from one Continent to another will certainly alleviate the "steamrolling" effect of Continental domination though, and we REALLY need more defensible bases which segregate Vehicular and Infantry Combat first

I've also seen this problem approached from another angle; making Vehicles less profitable for killing Infantry.
This really doesn't solve anything, but it does make killing Infantry with Vehicle weapons feel less cheap.

Organization:

Create a system whereby platoons may be linked with the other outfit squads and platoons, and allow for a command team to direct and see them. Create a similar system for alliance-level coordination. Helps make outfits more coordinated, promotes teamwork.
Yeah, it is rather odd that there isn't any higher level organization setups beyond "Platoon"...

...Then again, that is 48 people out of, what, 666 per Continent?
Rather hard to figure out how you'd manage more then 1/14th of the map population...

Create Outfit listings ingame with links for leadership contact, stats, a summary, and recruitment. Reduces relative influence of spam invites, gives a starting point for outfit cooperation.
Yeah, it would be EXTREAMLY helpful if we could access Outfit information in game...

...Too bad in my experience MMO's don't give that much of a crap about Guild info...

FFS, make an option to let SLs change leads and kick, make their WPs visible to PLs maybe and let PLs swap squads between a/b/c/d, or even set color, or name other than alpha/whatevs. Letting PL's drop smoke or use SL cmd chat would be nice, as would being able to directly set yourself as SL when PL, or maybe being able to give SLs ordered targets.
Oh YES, more Platoon/Squad Leader interaction is a MUST!

Make outfit roster searchable and sortable, and more informative. Improves outfit management, promoting better community experience.
This as well, it's rather annoying that I have to manually scroll through the entirety of my 40+ Outfit just to find the three people who are online.

Outfit decals (and maybe related swag) would be nice. Fun and cool, improves identity and cohesion, advertisement too?
Indeed, it is rather odd that Outfits don't have any means of identification outside of a three character tag...

Bonus and/or optional somewhat shared exp/resources with squads, platoons, outfits, and alliances. Promotes teamwork and maybe proximity, gives people in thankless support roles some reward so they're happy and don't complain/want exp from every possible action.
Well I'd certainly like being able to trade a squad-mate some of my unused Resources for a chunk of XP.
Certainly would make pulling a Sunderer a lot less risky of an investment.

Some sort of continent and global command chat, with an easier to access read-only level. Should be accessable to more than just OL, but also with standards (e.g. no single person outfits, no spam, slurs, or recruiting, some form of moderation). More coordination and community, less mobs/zerg.
Yeah, it is somewhat annoying that I can't read /Leader when I haven't lead a squad yet...
I do like to be informed of what our leaders are doing you know...

Outfit points or challenges for outfit objects or abilities, maybe computed by per capita with some things. Promotes teamwork and reduces value of spam inviting?
Well Dungeons and Dragons Online implemented something called "Guild Renown" which is sort of an XP system for Guilds.
While it and its decay are used as a means for determining which Guilds can have and maintain in-game housing (Air ships where various temporary Guild buffs are kept), I think Outfits would be better served by a static leveling system where constantly gained Commendation Points can then be spend on temporary Outfit XP and Resource buffs.

Targets and roles for smaller outfits and spec ops teams:

Give all territories some sort of special/unique bonus/ability/facility/trait, which if not posessed may be hampered by breaking things, hacking, occupying a building, or stealing things. Add some objects to mess with. For example: Place a well you can blow up, harvesters you can sabotage, a cache you can destroy or steal from, or a comms station you can hack or occupy to debuff the enemy's logistics, or mildly tweak the enemy's intelligence (delay cap progress bar display slightly, change "Platoons" to Platoon"). This gives more meaning to territory, and would make for an interesting side game appropriate for small groups, with strategic value.
Well I did have a Resource Pipeline Network idea, where bases would be connected through a series of tu- Nanite pipelines that would explain how Resources are automatically transported to the Warpgates.
There would then be "maintenance nodes" somewhere on the lines between Outpost that could be sabotaged by enemy Spec Ops to cut off the flow.

Other benefits could then be easily integrated into this hardwired infrastructure, letting enemy saboteurs choose between denying their foes Resources or preventing them from learning of an oncoming invasion force.

Plus, it would explain what those damned pipes you see everywhere are actually DO!

Rare resource metorites and downed satellites (modules). Every once in a while (30m-a few H?), one will randomly drop on the map. "Cool off time" after which it can be picked up and transported will vary. Depending on "weight" (value) it cannot be held by a Gal and a Sundy must take it. The bigger, the slower the vehicle can go. May or may not be extremely volatile. Must be taken to a base for processing, then maybe a facility for placement. Can be stolen by opfor on the way or after install, or maybe expended for a special ability, gives significant xp. May need replacement over time. Maybe meteors can only be spotted while inbound while landing if a tracking station equipped territory is owned, which will be a target for competeing enemy teams. Maybe rarely some could be used offensivelf for buffs, or to nuke areas. Effect: Sounds like a fun competative side game, which might appeal to small teams.
Hmmm... I think you might as well use an entirely new vehicle for this, some sort of slow flatbed crawler or something...

Other then that, I could see this as a sort of Capture the Flag event, where you need to take a particular meteorite or crashed Space Probe to a corresponding Major Facility.
You could then take it to a friendly Facility for a Faction Buff and a Reward... or play keep-away with it to prevent enemy Factions from gaining it.

AI automatic but semi-gimpy turrets - It's something useful to blow up and might be interesting.
As I mentioned before, I don't know if the Devs will fold on this, but I wouldn't mind automatic Sentries guarding Secondary Objectives or slow-firing, roof-mounted Anti-Air Missile Turrets.

Defensive NPC drones/vehicles that aren't *too* bright - See above.

NPC harvester/worker robot vehicles - Killable, hackable, with a few bits of resources to loot.
...This however I think is out of the question, if simply for the huge amount of technical problems such a system can cause.

I'd much rather have static interactables, like Resource Harvesters and Reservoirs, then NPCs that end up running into walls...

Raidable/hackable NPC supply convoys - If you have a comms tower hacked or whatever, you'll get notified of them. They meander from base to base, and are modified sundies with lame automatic turrets. Ambush and blow them up for points, then salvage the resources it carried with engies and pick them up (holding them makes you slow and defenseless or only able to use a pistol), return to friendly processor in base with them for reward (sooner deposits for all maybe, or extra resources, atd exp). Alternatively, hack them and drive them home, or just slap C4 on the back of them, which will kill the enemy processor when they arrive eventually. Losing a convoy causes delayed deposit or mild reduction in next deposit. There could be ANT convoys as well, or maybe some of them would blow up like gas tankers and could be used as IEDs. IHNFI. Effect: Another potentially fun side game, and a way for underdogs to steal resorces.
Yeah, automated convoys I can see going badly VERY quickly, which is why I came up with a static infrastructure system instead.
Still, that doesn't mean there can't be player operated ones!

I thinking they bring back the ANT as a means of transporting Resources from Pipeline Reservoirs, to both speed up Faction Resource gain AND help steal Resources from enemy bases.

Here and there, maybe add a few cappable small emplacements with ammo stations and terminals, but no spawns or limited spawning probably, and rarely give them light vehicle terminals. Hide them away and have them be staging spots for groups behind enemy lines. Design them to be very small, and maybe built into terrain like bunkers. Could give them a modest resource benefit or ability, and make them subtle/not shown on the map. Not effected by influence, doesn't cause influence. Effect: Kinda cool spots that help fill empty but interesting areas, and allows for resupply and regrouping. Subtle and meant for small group usage.
Actually, considering an S-AMS has Equipment Terminals on it, all you'd really need is a safe place to park a Sunderer.

Figment already came up with something like this. (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=869868&postcount=78)

Also, the last legit English class I had was in 6th grade and I wrote this on my phone, so there may be typos.
Props!

*Continued in next post...*

[Whiteagle]

*...Continued.*

- Map Sucks & is form over function. Doesnt support anything more than the zerg.
o Need to know where our population is as well as nme population is.. so that the tactically minded people can make informed decisions about how much force is needed to respond to the enemy on the map.
Well it'd certainly be helpful when deciding where to reinforce.

o tactical activity overlay from PS1 is all that is needed - the one that a lot of PS1 players didn't realise was there and often didnt know how to use. Malorn please give the map UI designer a demonstration of how amazing the tactical population overview was in PS1 since I have a suspicion that he has never seen it in operation. Then you can ask him to rip up the whole 'hover over a hex to get population information' concept and replace it with a population map overlay.
Mind posting a picture of this overlay for those of us who've missed out?

o The radar/detection meta game was great in PS1 where setting off CE would create a 'trace' of enemy activity on the tactical map. We crave for some of this depth in PS2. Bring back the Sensor Disruptors!
Yes!
My Radar Flash is nice, but it doesn't help find the ONE Infiltrator sneeking around a nine hex territory...

- Lack of indoor connected defences with choke points means its always a battle of pure attrition. Give me a fight where a small group of 12 people can dynamically hold a useful objective by reinforcing each other when they come under attack without being randomly picked off by snipers overlooking a base. At the moment bases sprawl so much and all chokepoints are so disconnected that you cannot reinforce each other without being picked off by a sniper/liberator/nme tank.
Indeed, it does make one wonder why Military forces are fighting over what are basically a bunch of tin shacks...

There is no defensive value to them, so why are these contested points of interest?

- Resources dont make sense. This isn't starcraft.
Well technically a Resource Meta-game DOES make sense, Nanties need raw materials to build your shit out of after all...

...But yeah, I'm not much of a fan of dumbing down they did in Beta, where Catalyst, Polymers, and Alloys were greatly simplified into "Mechanized", "Aircraft", and "Infantry"...

Hell, maybe they should go the other way, where each consumable and Vehicle has a price composed of a mix of Resources instead of just the Orange, Green, or Yellow ones.

- Meaningful XP Bonuses for defenders
Agreed, I'm thinking 40% of the capture bonus myself...

- XP Based on how long the person you had killed was alive/how many kills they'd racked up
Eh, unsure about this...

Completely agree about the vehicles not being able to shutdown a base or outpost on their own. The spawn camping by libs/MBTs/lightnings is ridiculous.

This should be the vehicle role in planetside. Establishing the dominance outside of a base. If dominance was established easily then we'd go in on foot. Leaving our vehicles in the courtyard without having a stupid 5 minute timer on it so we'd have to abandon it if there was a really good fight going on inside.

Until CY dominance had been established that was our fight. If it was a hot base we'd have to fight for dominance. If heavy air was present we'd struggle until our flying response guys would come in.

Everyone has a role. But the important point is that neither us, the air cav or the other vehicles could take a base on our own. We all had to contribute to get the job done. At the moment a lib or tanks can camp the respawn while 1 lone soldier stands at a control point. This is bad bad base design.
Indeed, there needs to be more segregation between Infantry and Vehicle Combat, instead of Infantry being stuck with the grunt work of capturing points while Vehicles do all the killing.

[topher]

My outfit is smaller in size compared to most. We typically run about a half a platoon or so. We are finding it difficult to find a solid role for us in the game that isn't boring and doesn't involve getting steamrolled. This is becoming more and more difficult as time goes on. Huge outfits are able to put 100 or more people or more on an objective and essentially win with numbers in almost all fights. We are able to hold off, but it's simply a matter of time until we are struck down due to sheer numbers.

Smaller outfits are finding that they have to disband and join larger outfits if they want to even have fun, causing them to lose their own identity and be absorbed into massive teams because there are no recruits left to take. For me community is more important to a game than the game itself, hence why I've been doing this all these years.

Is having one massive outfit per empire what the developers intended? Is spam inviting every no outfit person in the game really a viable recruiting effort? How many of these people even know what they are joining?

What is everyones thoughts on this issue?

First of all, getting steamrolled has nothing to do with one's outfit size. Secondly, the game is what you choose to make out of it. Personally, zerg is a zerg is a zerg which I dislike and I'll much rather join in a smaller outfit. That's me. You enjoy belonging to this massive zerg and thus making no difference? Good for you.

Regarding getting "struck down due to sheer numbers..." Well, soon or later it happens to everybody. Yet it doesn't make the game less fun. Sometimes I have fun following the zerg yet sometimes I have more fun playing together with a few friends or as a lone wolf. Mostly the latter. I may dominate the sky, go pew pew in my Prowler, play as 100% support class or even go into full dick mode with rl buds and go Infiltrator behind enemy lines and mess shit up. Bottom line is, it doesn't matter as long as one is having fun.

It may sound cocky but all I'm trying to say is that the game is what you make it to be. If everything one enjoy is flying ones Galaxy then maybe it's time to try something else. I can see how the game will become dull if one basically is a one trick pony and keep doing the same stuff over and over again (which is also a decent description for insanity lol) but when did outfit size become equal to having fun? So, you got struck down, didn't you at least have some epic fun defending the base?

Go get the zerg and bring 2000 infantry to cap a base, will it affect cap time? No. Only those 6 men on the cap point and the surrounding territory will. Bigger bases will take time to cap no matter what. Put up a spawn beacon if you don't want to get pinned down at spawn and go have that fun. If you ask me, it is moments like those that are the most fun.

[igster]

*...Continued.*
Mind posting a picture of this overlay for those of us who've missed out?


Wiki Link to the Tactical overlay (http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/index.php?title=Tactical_Overlay)

It always shows you a heat map of where your allied troops are but if any members of the opposing forces generates a radar signature within your detection area (i.e around friend troops or bases) it shows them as a blip on the map. The more troops the bigger the blip.

So if your big blob of Red troops encounters a big blob of purple, you can see it on the heat map.
If a snarky little assault sets of some Mines or CE around a smaller base, you get a bit of a blob on the map to indicate that there is an enemy force hitting the base.

It is just miles better visually. Tone down the transparency of the purple/blue/red overlay of the empire control so its in the background and overlay very solid opaque heat map of big splodges of red blue and purple to indicate where the detected populations are.


This also relies on the radar meta game which would massively improve the depth of PS2. How to take bases without setting off radar detection. Make radar detection a benefit etc.

[igster]

*...Continued.*
Mind posting a picture of this overlay for those of us who've missed out?


http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/images/thumb/a/a0/Tactical-Overlay.jpg/180px-Tactical-Overlay.jpg (http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/index.php?title=Tactical_Overlay)

Wiki Link to the Tactical overlay (http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/index.php?title=Tactical_Overlay)

It always shows you a heat map of where your allied troops are but if any members of the opposing forces generates a radar signature within your detection area (i.e around friend troops or bases) it shows them as a blip on the map. The more troops the bigger the blip.

Note the splodges on the map are players not territory control. The ownership of the bases is on the map rather than part of the overlay.

So if your big blob of Red troops encounters a big blob of purple, you can see it on the heat map.
If a snarky little assault sets of some Mines or CE around a smaller base, you get a bit of a blob on the map to indicate that there is an enemy force hitting the base.

It is just miles better visually. Tone down the transparency of the purple/blue/red overlay of the empire control so its in the background and overlay very solid opaque heat map of big splodges of red blue and purple to indicate where the detected populations are.

[Whiteagle]

http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/images/thumb/a/a0/Tactical-Overlay.jpg/180px-Tactical-Overlay.jpg (http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/index.php?title=Tactical_Overlay)

Wiki Link to the Tactical overlay (http://wiki.planetsidesyndicate.com/index.php?title=Tactical_Overlay)

It always shows you a heat map of where your allied troops are but if any members of the opposing forces generates a radar signature within your detection area (i.e around friend troops or bases) it shows them as a blip on the map. The more troops the bigger the blip.

Note the splodges on the map are players not territory control. The ownership of the bases is on the map rather than part of the overlay.

So if your big blob of Red troops encounters a big blob of purple, you can see it on the heat map.
If a snarky little assault sets of some Mines or CE around a smaller base, you get a bit of a blob on the map to indicate that there is an enemy force hitting the base.

It is just miles better visually. Tone down the transparency of the purple/blue/red overlay of the empire control so its in the background and overlay very solid opaque heat map of big splodges of red blue and purple to indicate where the detected populations are.
Yeah, something like that would be great...

Only problem I see is how to implement it with the current hex-based map and "all enemies ping RED" detection we have currently...

[thegreekboy]

Cool. It's always interesting to run into you guys, you're kinda like our rival or frenemy...

Yea, I really like the thing we have going. It's always fun to fight you guys.

[igster]

Only problem I see is how to implement it with the current hex-based map and "all enemies ping RED" detection we have currently...

Don't think it's that difficult. Tone down the hex ownership opacity so that you can overlay the heat map over the top of it.
It's not a problem with enemy's pinging red - was the same in PS1. The tactical overlay was much blockier than individual units. I think the block would only be visible if there was more than one detected unit in an area. When there were more than one type of enemy in an area it would turn yellow indicating that there was potentially an area of conflict (see screenshot above.... A small TR tower in NW of map with NC reacting to it. with VS presence up at Girru fighting at the two NC owned bases at Hanish (SW and Irkalla SE) You can see from the map there is more fighting at Irkall since there are more yellow blocks.

You'll notice that it is very analogue and gives you a feel for where the friendly and enemy population are currently playing.

[Whiteagle]

The tactical overlay was much blockier than individual units. I think the block would only be visible if there was more than one detected unit in an area.
Yeah, but what are we going to use FOR the blocks?

The map isn't divided by the grid anymore, so colored squares on a hex-map are going to be rather confusing...

[Tatwi]

Yeah, but what are we going to use FOR the blocks?

The map isn't divided by the grid anymore, so colored squares on a hex-map are going to be rather confusing...

Toggle one or the other. Problem solved. Besides, if you're going to call instructions it would be better to say the grid location rather than a hex.

[Rockit]

Hello all. What I think PS2 needs to do is shrink cont and pop size by 2 and then get in the habit of directed fights via some sort of lattice function.

[robocpf1]

Mistake post, tried to post somewhere else, was on wrong page, I'm a noob.

[Archonzero]

I had a great discussion on Twitter last night about this and wanted to bring it here.

First off let me start this thread by saying this is NOT an attack on specific outfits. I will not allow people to argue about specific outfits, this discussion is about the size of outfits in general and whether or not you think they hurt the game. Also, I don't want to hear bs like "ohh you're doing it wrong" etc.

This has bothered me since late beta and is becoming more and more of an issue (imo) as of late. I don't have solution for it because there really isn't one but I want to see what peoples thoughts are.

My outfit is smaller in size compared to most. We typically run about a half a platoon or so. We are finding it difficult to find a solid role for us in the game that isn't boring and doesn't involve getting steamrolled. This is becoming more and more difficult as time goes on. Huge outfits are able to put 100 or more people or more on an objective and essentially win with numbers in almost all fights. We are able to hold off, but it's simply a matter of time until we are struck down due to sheer numbers.

Smaller outfits are finding that they have to disband and join larger outfits if they want to even have fun, causing them to lose their own identity and be absorbed into massive teams because there are no recruits left to take. For me community is more important to a game than the game itself, hence why I've been doing this all these years.

Is having one massive outfit per empire what the developers intended? Is spam inviting every no outfit person in the game really a viable recruiting effort? How many of these people even know what they are joining?

What is everyones thoughts on this issue?

First time viewing this post as well the video discussion on the metagame, so please understand I didn't have time to review the 300+ posts before replying to the OP. An if my thoughts sound off from posts others have already made, forgive me.

Outfits, namely "large" mass recruited outfits. Simple "possible" fixes.

New outfits, limited between 48-92 players.
Logistic command.
New outfit certification system. A system that will only be available to Outfit leaders or enabled 2nd in command ranks.
This system could be leader/officer contribution only, or a tax%cert outfit contribution system.
Outfits wanting to expand beyond platoon strength (48 players) can unlock the outfit logistical tier system for additional squads/platoons.

Outfit Logistics 0/10
each tier would require a heavy amount of certification points. Depending on how it is implemented. I think the best way is, to have an outfit tax%cert system, so that every player in the outfit is contributing a small cert percent. This taxable slider setting can be set by the outfit leadership (leader/officers) an could be set from 0.1 to a 5% max. AS well players of the outfit should have an option to check/uncheck their willingness to contribute. Obviously this can determine whether they are kept or kicked from an outfit, other more democratic/casual outfits may view it as a determining factor to how they promote ranks in their outfit.
Each tier unlock could be (1000 certs x current cert level)x2 x 1.5?


example first unlock = 1000 certs (+1 platoon), second unlock(+1 platoon) is (1000x1)2x1.5 = 3000 certs, third unlock (+1 platoon) is (1000x2)x2x1.5=6000 certs, fourth unlock (+1 platoon) is (1000x3)x2x1.5 = 9000 certs, an so on


I NEVER liked large outfits in PS1, yet as proven in Starcraft an starcraft 2, the player that can bring the largest zerg to a fight the quickest usually wins, through sheer overwhelming attrition of numbers. Given the quick respawn, it's almost a guarantee.

Now that being said, I don't think large outfits are all zergs either. I do feel the spam invite an open mass recruitment needs to have some sort of limit, or a tiered limit. That way the players that WANT a large outfit of 100+ members can setup their outfit or a contribution setting for the players in the outfit to add a %dump of certification points into a reward system that will open up the roster to more recruiting. Call it an optional cert tax system.

As for the metagame, there needs to be more clearly defined reasons to defend/hold territory, as well a better reward system. There should be a lattice unlock system to open up lines of attack to major facilities + requiring some form of adjacency to hexes for +/- speed to cap.

Capture systems are currently too quick, I agree on that, they need to be slowed down. Bring back the proximity recap system, if you cap the point an run out of proximity of it.. the facility will recap itself. This is especially important for facilities with multiple capture points. Facilities could be tiered with importance of player presence. Make these capture points require a minimum number of players present in order to maintain the capture of a point.

For example, in order to secure Indar Excavation Tower, points A,B and C require 2 players present on each point to maintain control of that point. Half a squad spread out over 3 points to secure that hex.

Get rid of the player stack to speed up capture process, or keep the stack speed timer%. Make it a set timer similar to a set timer based on facility types. Small (15 min), med (20), large (25), major facility (30 min) with the player presence on the cap points decreasing the timer%. I can't say this is the best solution, just ideas an thoughts to this brain dump. But there needs to be some major overhauls on the capture control an conquest system.

I'm really getting tired of groups bouncing to whichever continent has the largest friendly faction %, cause the one they're on is significantly outnumbered. The entire population of each faction playing musical continents is getting old FAST! Continental locking system (4 hour lockdown) with rival factions having a system to unlock that continent to an attack by., This is the one thing that PS1 did exceptionally well an I'm terribly disappointed that SOE didn't have this in play before launch.

Again, I really thought they were going to keep PS2 in beta until the end of 1st quarter of 2013. IMO they practically pulled the same stunt that happened with PS1 beta, so many PS1 beta testers were up in arms that they released an unfinished game early an the 1st year player base of retail launch suffered for it, as well took many years to actually come to shape, but it was already bleeding out slowly.. with each new expansion practically a stab into the healing wounds.

PS2 is a game I could easily an foresee ably see myself playing for years to come, if they can.

A) expand more continents
B) proper continental lock/unlock an control system
C) mitigate outfit zerg recruitment, at least manage some form of roster limitation an organization.
D) More infantry friendly defensive works to larger facility layouts. Don't just add more tank barriers, but actual structures, within structures.
E) Better spawnroom layouts, currently they are far too easily segregated by lockdown via mass vehicle camping. The only facility that has shown some measure of success for infantry counters are biolab spawn rooms. Every other spawn room facility is easily cut off by either vehicle bombardment, or massed combined arms focused on funneled exit points.

[Archonzero]

Vehicles. Current state, I think the vehicles resource cost is a poor reflection of their effectives, namely in chief the air vehicles are absurdly low in cost versus how highly effective they can really be. Using modern military costs to building/fielding airpower vs the cost to building/fielding AFVs shows us clearly that PS2's model on resources is an exact opposite.

Modern airborne weapons platforms are easily 3-5x the cost of any modern MBT.
In planetside 2, airborne weapons platforms are 0.80 the cost of any ES MBT.

^obviously they need to change this significantly. ESF's should be higher cost than a MBT an a bomber should be more than an ESF.

If SOE plans on keeping a resource based system in the game for vehicles/consumables an other future plans, the resource costs should be much higher. With smart pilots, this will force them to be less likely to be used as a disposable resource by driving them in to a situation without proper support. (obviously it isn't going to stop that from happening entirely)

Proposed idea.
Increase players personal resource pool from 750 to 1200(or 1500). DROP the 3 resource types an combine them into one resource, call it Auraxium. ALL vehicles/consumables are purchased with auraxium resources, simple period.

In order to deny a faction from fielding/spawning specific vehicle types on a continent, make these facilities linked only, but not entirely limited to the Warpgate link. Just cause it is "cut off" from the warpgate linked territories shouldn't mean you can't still spawn that vehicle type from it, it just means the warpgate linked territories can't. Make vehicle patterns linked to specific facilities not MAJOR bases, but other facilities. For example a facility like Scarred Messa could be the requirement for liberators, while tech plants or towers could be required for ESFs/MBTs. Currently it's far to easy to pull an AMS sundy for everywhere, start limiting them to specific facility types (ie mid/large outposts + major facilities)

Vehicle resources would need to be revamped
ATV - 50
Buggy -100
Lightning - 200
MBT - 300
Sunderer - 400
ESF - 400
Liberator - 600
Galaxy - 450

GAMS+SS (galaxy Advanced mobile spawn + support system) needs to be back in the game with severe limitations. SQUAD only spawn (similar to how beacons works) GAMS needs to be TETHERED to a passive Galaxy NTU system, that drains with each respawn until empty. Thereby limiting it's long term effectiveness.

NTU (passive cert 0/12) - stock power 12, each cert adds in sequence + power (2,2,3,2,2,3,2,2,3,2,2,3). NTU can only be recharged at a warpgate.
GAMS (0/3) unlock system, 1st unlock +equipment terminal, 2nd unlock SQUAD only respawn, 3rd unlock PLATOON only respawn.

[james]

First time viewing this post as well the video discussion on the metagame, so please understand I didn't have time to review the 300+ posts before replying to the OP. An if my thoughts sound off from posts others have already made, forgive me.

Outfits, namely "large" mass recruited outfits. Simple "possible" fixes.

New outfits, limited between 48-92 players.
Logistic command.
New outfit certification system. A system that will only be available to Outfit leaders or enabled 2nd in command ranks.
This system could be leader/officer contribution only, or a tax%cert outfit contribution system.
Outfits wanting to expand beyond platoon strength (48 players) can unlock the outfit logistical tier system for additional squads/platoons.

Outfit Logistics 0/10
each tier would require a heavy amount of certification points. Depending on how it is implemented. I think the best way is, to have an outfit tax%cert system, so that every player in the outfit is contributing a small cert percent. This taxable slider setting can be set by the outfit leadership (leader/officers) an could be set from 0.1 to a 5% max. AS well players of the outfit should have an option to check/uncheck their willingness to contribute. Obviously this can determine whether they are kept or kicked from an outfit, other more democratic/casual outfits may view it as a determining factor to how they promote ranks in their outfit.
Each tier unlock could be (1000 certs x current cert level)x2 x 1.5?


example first unlock = 1000 certs (+1 platoon), second unlock(+1 platoon) is (1000x1)2x1.5 = 3000 certs, third unlock (+1 platoon) is (1000x2)x2x1.5=6000 certs, fourth unlock (+1 platoon) is (1000x3)x2x1.5 = 9000 certs, an so on


I NEVER liked large outfits in PS1, yet as proven in Starcraft an starcraft 2, the player that can bring the largest zerg to a fight the quickest usually wins, through sheer overwhelming attrition of numbers. Given the quick respawn, it's almost a guarantee.

Now that being said, I don't think large outfits are all zergs either. I do feel the spam invite an open mass recruitment needs to have some sort of limit, or a tiered limit. That way the players that WANT a large outfit of 100+ members can setup their outfit or a contribution setting for the players in the outfit to add a %dump of certification points into a reward system that will open up the roster to more recruiting. Call it an optional cert tax system.

As for the metagame, there needs to be more clearly defined reasons to defend/hold territory, as well a better reward system. There should be a lattice unlock system to open up lines of attack to major facilities + requiring some form of adjacency to hexes for +/- speed to cap.

Capture systems are currently too quick, I agree on that, they need to be slowed down. Bring back the proximity recap system, if you cap the point an run out of proximity of it.. the facility will recap itself. This is especially important for facilities with multiple capture points. Facilities could be tiered with importance of player presence. Make these capture points require a minimum number of players present in order to maintain the capture of a point.

For example, in order to secure Indar Excavation Tower, points A,B and C require 2 players present on each point to maintain control of that point. Half a squad spread out over 3 points to secure that hex.

Get rid of the player stack to speed up capture process, or keep the stack speed timer%. Make it a set timer similar to a set timer based on facility types. Small (15 min), med (20), large (25), major facility (30 min) with the player presence on the cap points decreasing the timer%. I can't say this is the best solution, just ideas an thoughts to this brain dump. But there needs to be some major overhauls on the capture control an conquest system.

I'm really getting tired of groups bouncing to whichever continent has the largest friendly faction %, cause the one they're on is significantly outnumbered. The entire population of each faction playing musical continents is getting old FAST! Continental locking system (4 hour lockdown) with rival factions having a system to unlock that continent to an attack by., This is the one thing that PS1 did exceptionally well an I'm terribly disappointed that SOE didn't have this in play before launch.

Again, I really thought they were going to keep PS2 in beta until the end of 1st quarter of 2013. IMO they practically pulled the same stunt that happened with PS1 beta, so many PS1 beta testers were up in arms that they released an unfinished game early an the 1st year player base of retail launch suffered for it, as well took many years to actually come to shape, but it was already bleeding out slowly.. with each new expansion practically a stab into the healing wounds.

PS2 is a game I could easily an foresee ably see myself playing for years to come, if they can.

A) expand more continents
B) proper continental lock/unlock an control system
C) mitigate outfit zerg recruitment, at least manage some form of roster limitation an organization.
D) More infantry friendly defensive works to larger facility layouts. Don't just add more tank barriers, but actual structures, within structures.
E) Better spawnroom layouts, currently they are far too easily segregated by lockdown via mass vehicle camping. The only facility that has shown some measure of success for infantry counters are biolab spawn rooms. Every other spawn room facility is easily cut off by either vehicle bombardment, or massed combined arms focused on funneled exit points.

Putting number caps on outfits will not do anything. You just make several outfits vs one.

[Hamma]

First of all, getting steamrolled has nothing to do with one's outfit size.

What? :lol:

[Dkamanus]

I say again on the point I said before: Quality will overcome quantity. Yes, quantity will win battles, but won't win the war if the big majority of this quantity is brain dead (which tends to happen A LOT). And Yes, in the midst of that MINDFUCK which are Large zergfits (which are the HUGE majority of the game), small organized outfits shine, even with the zergfits take the credit. To illustrate my example: I'm a fucking hardass on my outfit members, and the great majority likes it, cause it helps them learn better the game (out of 184 people that got inside the outfit, only 3 went online and left). The example I give is bio labs, where zergfits stupidity glows like a beacon. EVERY single time we focus on destroy the SCU generator and SCU. THOSE are the main objectives on a biolab.

I see all those stupid players shooting and going straight to points, forgeting the enemy is respawning right inside the base, and they start to be pushed back, mostly because they don't know the phases on places. More so, people are dieing like zombies on the outside 'cause most leaders throw every fucking meatbag at the problem as possible. Why do I say quality over quantity? I think 12 organized player (and by that I mean the damn squad leader using them as if it was a RTS, knowing all abilities possible per class) can kill 24 unorganized players easily. I've seem outfits on waterson need 2~4 PLATOONS to take 1 base (biolabs for instance).

If you need to throw 192 players at one problem (1/4 of the continent), you aren't a good outfit. Period. Will you win the bioloab? Yes, you will, and most likely lose the continent. Instead, if you cut this to 1 organized platoon, you'll have three left to go hit other objectives. Hell, I've hit biolabs with similar or larger numbers against us and have taken them with 2 squads, maybe 3 tops. Leaders barely know how to properly attack places, and that reflects on the poor use of use of troops. I keep seeing outfits with 3 platoons on the field and they can't lock the continent. WTF?

If I had 144 players under my command (21,6%) of the continent, how the hell wouldn't I be able to lock the continent? Leaders don't know what to prioritize. They travel as a big, useless blob which is VERY slow to attack and is completely useless while waiting for the caps. 48 decent players can make a HUGE dent on any zerg, if they know what to prioritize and WHICH PLACE to defend, rearmament towers being the most effective place to stall huge zergs (handing out nice XP as well). Leaders are clueless on when to fall back and when to advance. I've a certain admiration towards outfits like Devil Dogs, mostly because of the organization, at least what I think might be their organization.

Another example of clueless leadership. Today I was defending Eisa Tech Plant with my squads and a lot of smaller outfits aournd as well. We were being pushed away by a huge mass of TRs, while there were a LOT of guys from two of the "largest" oufits on NC in waterson today. I asked "where are you at the moment" and silence. Asked a second time. Ask a third and ONLY then got a response that the major zerg was on Mani biolabs, capping it. Meanwhile I was making the point of the situation as grim as possible, and we started losing Eisa. Stayed a while, then saw it was pointless and went back to Esamir Munitions Corp, in order to defend and avoid the TR zerg from eisa to go towards Freyr with impunity.

We went there, started to rebuild turrets, manning them then we see the TR zerg coming towards us again. I asked AGAIN for support, three times no less again, for them to say they were STILL on Mani Biolab. The zerg hit us, we hold them quite some time, but it was just too much, since we were only one squad and the defenders weren't able to organize themselves (I was killing people coming from those stairs like a mad man with the dual scatter max, but I was alone, waiting for more NC to help me there, while the rest of my squad was with their hands full defending the other stairs and the upper floor + AA and AV turrets).

Lastly, when I saw the battle was lost, I ordered all of my platoon to go back to freyr and asked again for help, three times again, always rasing the voice in order for people to actually speak. Just to know they finished capping Mani and are now MOVING towards the warpgate to mount another zerg to go to Freyr.

I simply gave up on support and issue an order for people to protect those gate house generators, or else those 14 prowlers on the outside would butt rape us badly. Thankfully, people at freyr did listen (plus we were focusing on those two gens specifically), and, after a LOT of bases lost, including MANI BIOLAB, the NC zerg came and killed the TR Zerg, after we made a sucessful defense of the base (no, we werent ROFLStomped by tanks, because people knew what to do).

One last story. It was we (16~20) man squads going for Howling Pass Chekpoint, trying to cap it. A HUGE TR Tank zerg (cant call those columns) blasted us away and raped us. Fine. Fall back. To any decent commander, the LOGICAL choice would Crimson Bluff Tower. Mostly because its either that or NS Material Storage, but Crimson is more easily accesible and a juicier target to help get Rashnu Biolab.

We went there and started mounting a defense. All AV turrets pointed at the road that lead from the Howling Pass towards the Crimson Bluff (East Road), mined the road, pulled 1 AP/ML85 Vanguard and waited. As expected, we were hit with the full force of the zerg. 16-20 guys + a few straglers from NC. We destroy at least 80% of the zerg before being overwhelmed by it due to an oversight of mine, and some errors of ours. The forces outnumbered us 4 to 1 and we destroyed most of them. Smart play and quality WILL get you by a LOT of problems and can be able to stall, if not stop, a zerg. Only the willingness of outfit leaders/officers to make this change, otherwise, it's simply a zergfit, which will be easily destroyed by a more organized, smaller force.

[p0intman]

First of all, getting steamrolled has nothing to do with one's outfit size.
No, it doesnt directly.. its when numbers, and only numbers equal a win. it happens to small outfits that like to do their own thing more than large outfit zergs. losing all the time is not fun, for anyone.
when did outfit size become equal to having fun?
when you stand no hope of mattering in a fight and personal skill plays no role whatsoever, it makes you feel like your outfit simply doesn't matter at all. that in and of itself isn't fun.

[Stew]

thoughts on this issue?

First of all i know some of you have huge hopes from (( malorn )) wich is a Enclave member since ever i think , the enclave is one of the most Zergy outfits ever on Matherson those are like 40 to 100 all toguether most of the time doing exactly whats you think is wrong , i mean steam rolling half empty continents with 60 % pops and then lock it and jump on anothers ones ... malorn havent proove anything to me so far , hes idea if those are the already metagame implemented as create more than some issue the (( techplant metagame elements )) as create even more imbalanced and more problems about Smalls vs large outfit since large outfit steamrolls techplant and few of them can camp it with heavytanks and denied the (( weak side )) from been competitive


Most not all of those zergy outfit have, pretty damned bad players but it make no difference they are so many and they spam so much units tanks and aircraft thats you cant catch up , most of the time we kill at least 10 to 20 (TE) before we die once but still we just need to be spot and then kill by one of their 10 000 aircraft or ligthning or etc...


We do not participate in the zerg most of the time and we pay the price for it ,

The metagame as been done toward achiving the exact same thing as Planetside 1 wich was a mistake to me , (( malorn )) drive the metagame to meet planetside 1 (( total domination )) stuff wich is exactly whats create this MASSIVE ZERGS

The (( malorn )) contribution as created this issue so far , this is what i think because this mentality of wanting to conquer a continents and lock it drive the massive zerg to steamrolls continents where they can actually lock and then moove to another ones saying (( we just lock the continents )) ...


Ressources as to MOOVE and to DEPLEATE and change location , this systhem is the only way to make planetside areas of the maps figthable all across the continents , if the ressources moove the figth will force the players to moove , some will have to stay in defense the others will be forced to go in atack if they dont want to ran out of ressources ,

If the aircraft ressources stay in a particular area for a cetain amount of time and have a (( harvest limites )) i mean if the players farm a certain amount of ressources on this particular regions , the ressources will be depleated and will pop out in a certain regions wich can be already to a certain empire , the missions sythem will drive players toward those multiples worthy ressources spot and figth will take place all over the maps and their will be strategies ans situational awarness involved

The total domination idea is bad unless we have over 12 continents and a playerbase to fit it , the techplant thats provide the vehicules bonus are unfair and stupid sicne not all techplant are fairly spread across the maps NC ones get screw up most of the time and TR as the high ground in term of tech plant , anyway

i understand your concern and share some of them , but i do not want to see the tower corridor camping from planetside 1 back , the (( older version of the techplant )) was exactly thats and it was not fun , it was a farming festival really anoying

thats pretty much it Peace and happy holidays

[Archonzero]

Yea I wasn't saying my ideas would reshape the game better, they were just thoughts an ideas off the top of my head on the subject.

40 -100 players is more or less 2 platoons of an outfits organization ability. When organized + coordinated not really a zerg, my idea of a zerg is a mass of non-organized randoms fighting in the same zone. I'm guessin when a disciplined military force like say 2 companies of marines, must be a zerg on the battlefield?

Yes it would/could breakup a "larger" outfit into small outfits linked in a TS chain of command. Yet there could be incentive design/reason to suggest the idea of an unlockable roster expansion for outfits. If SOE expanded upon the Leadership certification system by adding more content trees, features like orbital strikes (strong vs vehicles), EMP blasts, Artillery barrages (HE aoe, avg vs all), Air fragmentation bombardments (weak vs armor, strong vs infantry), fortifications (temp/manable), Orbital supply drops, Orbital drop forward vehicle respawn (temporary), Drop deployable shield barriers, Drop deployable repair fields, Drop deployable defense structures, tank traps, mine fields,et cetera. Features that would require a large resource/cert cost to unlock an use, certs/resources that are linked to the outfit an not the individual.

A roster/logistics cert system for outfit feature farming. The more players contributing to the outfit pool, the more likely to be unlocked/utilized for the battle.


A finite/respawn moving harvestestable resource system is an interesting approach.
Would this be AI controlled harvesters, or player driven harvesters that would be defended by convoys of players?
Would these nodes only appear alongside adjacent territories?

[EVILPIG]

For all of my support of PSU, I have to say that Hamma's Tweet that 1600+ member outfits are "trash" is higly offensive. I am rarely frank, but, this is completely ignorant and it may suck that a large "zergfit" is ruining your fun on your server, but that does not represent others. Sure, I know they are out there. I have many alts and I get random outfit invites on them, but don't lump all large outfits together. Planetside 2 is about offering the large scale and that is fuking cool. Find your role, but dont b1tch because you cannot stop the 600 guys moving on you. Honestly, <3 Hamma, but this is so whiney it's crap to even respond. Get creative, grow some balls and farm those fuks. We do not bitcch, we equip to win and overcome.

[p0intman]

For all of my support of PSU, I have to say that Hamma's Tweet that 1600+ member outfits are "trash" is higly offensive. I am rarely frank, but, this is completely ignorant and it may suck that a large "zergfit" is ruining your fun on your server, but that does not represent others. Sure, I know they are out there. I have many alts and I get random outfit invites on them, but don't lump all large outfits together. Planetside 2 is about offering the large scale and that is fuking cool. Find your role, but dont b1tch because you cannot stop the 600 guys moving on you. Honestly, <3 Hamma, but this is so whiney it's crap to even respond. Get creative, grow some balls and farm those fuks. We do not bitcch, we equip to win and overcome.

says the dude that literally wouldn't know tactics save for random quotes from a book written 2200 years ago.

[igster]

For all of my support of PSU, I have to say that Hamma's Tweet that 1600+ member outfits are "trash" is higly offensive. I am rarely frank, but, this is completely ignorant and it may suck that a large "zergfit" is ruining your fun on your server, but that does not represent others. Sure, I know they are out there. I have many alts and I get random outfit invites on them, but don't lump all large outfits together. Planetside 2 is about offering the large scale and that is fuking cool. Find your role, but dont b1tch because you cannot stop the 600 guys moving on you. Honestly, <3 Hamma, but this is so whiney it's crap to even respond. Get creative, grow some balls and farm those fuks. We do not bitcch, we equip to win and overcome.

Of course Evilpig - its not a problem is it. 23 pages of forumposts mostly agreeing with it.

It doesnt exist. None of us have ever seen three large zergs on each continent not fighting each other ever. It just never happens.

Kudos to Hamma for speaking up. Same for Malorn.

Here's a tip to the 'celebrity' evilpig:
Don't grow any balls : go read a book and educate yourself on how to contribute to a coherent discussion.

One other tip:
Try and contribute to a discussion rather than this 'man up' shit that you just spouted. Sometimes its better to just not post rather than to show up your ignorance.

[MuNrOe]

Wow guys seriously when did this degenerate into name calling and bigotry. Chill the fuck out. Focus on suggesting elements to the game to make it more playable for smaller outfits.

Base design that sorta thing.

Leave the name calling and school yard stuff in the gutter where it belongs. That stuff belongs on the official PS2 forums with the rest of the sess pit filled junk that goes in there.

Almost everyone here is a PS1 vet and we should be working together to fix these issues not doing our best to put each other down. Its up to us to bring back the potential in PS2 that was found in PS1 that we all know can be achieved. But it wont be unless we work together.

[Brusi]

We need alliance functionality

[Hmr85]

Wow guys seriously when did this degenerate into name calling and bigotry. Chill the fuck out. Focus on suggesting elements to the game to make it more playable for smaller outfits.

Base design that sorta thing.

Leave the name calling and school yard stuff in the gutter where it belongs. That stuff belongs on the official PS2 forums with the rest of the sess pit filled junk that goes in there.

Almost everyone here is a PS1 vet and we should be working together to fix these issues not doing our best to put each other down. Its up to us to bring back the potential in PS2 that was found in PS1 that we all know can be achieved. But it wont be unless we work together.

QFT,

And well said.:cheers:

[Babyfark McGeez]

I think it's just a logical progression of the flawed game design:

- Main goal of the game is farming XP/Certs
- Attacking is more rewarding then defending (Due to guaranteed XP when attacking, base design, territory being irrelevant etc.)
- The more people you have, the easier attacking becomes

Result = Huge outfits that can farm XP/Certs more easy

Aside from the problems with defending and territory relevance the underlying problem is the basic concept of individual player progression being THE main goal of the game.

Atleast that's my opinion.

[Dkamanus]

Yes, only with higher defensability in bases that smaller outfits will shine more. The example is the Crown. Very easy to defend, hard to take, but not impossible as some people claim, needing a multiple approach of forces to get it much easier or a lack of defense in the part of the defenders.

That northern approach is a murder against infantry if you know where to stay.

[Babyfark McGeez]

Now that i have watched hammas video i would like to say "Good Job"! A must-watch for the devs imo.

You summed up the general problems of the game very good, and even though i'm not playing in an outfit right now solving the issues you mentioned would benefit me in solo play aswell. It's a very good "big picture" you painted there.

I want to comment on three points in particular:

1)
You mentioned the base designs and how they need serious redesigning. I wholeheartly agree there (heck, we have been discussing this for ages on here).
BUT now knowing that the forgelight engine is not able to create "cuts" into the terrain (seriously, WTF???) i can see how the devs will try to avoid any "underground bases". It also makes you question in what "stage" of development this engine actually is, but that's another topic.

So here is me hoping that the devs will either fix the engine quickly or say "screw this" and work on proper base design within the limits (Which means making huge canyons in the terrain to fit an underground base "mesh" inside and cleaning up everything around).

2)
"Ghostcapping" by single soldiers.

I think the solution to this problem lies within the (non-existant) "RTS" part. Currently there are barely any fortification options for the defenders. For example in PS1 a proper empty base had atleast a dozen mines, turrets and motion detectors around. That not only slowed attackers down (or even discouraged a single attacker to the point he left) but also alerted the defender(s) more visibly.
In PS2 i never even ran onto a proximity mine at a cap point in an empty base, let alone turrets, barricades or any other form of playermade "defense layer". If a base does not have an enemy player in it, it is defenseless.

Providing us with actual fortification options would make single-player-capping less easy and inviting.

3)
Unrewarding defense.

Let's take a look at a big base here for example: Successfully assaulting one means you net a guaranteed 1000 xp.
That equals to ~7 kills as a defender (7x150 = 1050).
BUT there is no guarantee at all you will kill 7 people (or doing equally rewarding things) while defending. Even if you successfully defend a facility you could end up not getting a single xp from it.
Additonally it's not easy enough to tell where and when you should defend a base, so even if you want to defend you might end up standing around for nothing.
And since the underlying problem of the whole game is imho the focus on player-progression people think about what will give them the most xp in the shortest amount of time and go with that. That then culmulates in players herding in big zergs (makes getting xp more easy) and these zergs only being on offense (gives you guaranteed xp).

The solution would be to give a static reward for defending aswell, or to remove the static reward for capturing (drastic, i know).

Overall i really hope the devs are looking into this thread, because afterall the potential of PS2 is still there.

[Sledgecrushr]

I think a huge dose of vagisil would help you guys.

[Whiteagle]

Clearly this thread needs more... TROMBE OVERRIDE!!!

1)
You mentioned the base designs and how they need serious redesigning. I wholeheartly agree there (heck, we have been discussing this for ages on here).
BUT now knowing that the forgelight engine is not able to create "cuts" into the terrain (seriously, WTF???) i can see how the devs will try to avoid any "underground bases". It also makes you question in what "stage" of development this engine actually is, but that's another topic.

So here is me hoping that the devs will either fix the engine quickly or say "screw this" and work on proper base design within the limits (Which means making huge canyons in the terrain to fit an underground base "mesh" inside and cleaning up everything around).
Well I don't think they are going to "fix" it, as I have a sneaking suspicion that an unbroken terrain mesh is required for a continuous intercontinental setup...

Second Life used something similar and, since I'd rather have true intercontinental warfare then "underground" bases that would take weeks of development time apiece, I'm hoping they will create some new building assets so the map designers can build proper military installations.

...Had it up to here with prefab shacks...

2)
"Ghostcapping" by single soldiers.

I think the solution to this problem lies within the (non-existant) "RTS" part. Currently there are barely any fortification options for the defenders. For example in PS1 a proper empty base had atleast a dozen mines, turrets and motion detectors around. That not only slowed attackers down (or even discouraged a single attacker to the point he left) but also alerted the defender(s) more visibly.
In PS2 i never even ran onto a proximity mine at a cap point in an empty base, let alone turrets, barricades or any other form of playermade "defense layer". If a base does not have an enemy player in it, it is defenseless.

Providing us with actual fortification options would make single-player-capping less easy and inviting.
Indeed, Planetside 2 relies WAY too much on "active" defense.
As a Second Life Military Vet, I know such a defensive scheme requires a constaint stream of attackers in order to be entertaining, and that STILL get old rather quickly.

I know the developers have a thing against computer controled opposition, but could we get a confermation they are dead set against auto-turrets of any kind?

At the very least better detection deployables would go a long way...

3)
Unrewarding defense.

Let's take a look at a big base here for example: Successfully assaulting one means you net a guaranteed 1000 xp.
That equals to ~7 kills as a defender (7x150 = 1050).
BUT there is no guarantee at all you will kill 7 people (or doing equally rewarding things) while defending. Even if you successfully defend a facility you could end up not getting a single xp from it.
Additonally it's not easy enough to tell where and when you should defend a base, so even if you want to defend you might end up standing around for nothing.
And since the underlying problem of the whole game is imho the focus on player-progression people think about what will give them the most xp in the shortest amount of time and go with that. That then culmulates in players herding in big zergs (makes getting xp more easy) and these zergs only being on offense (gives you guaranteed xp).

The solution would be to give a static reward for defending aswell, or to remove the static reward for capturing (drastic, i know).
Personally, I think 40% of the capture bonus would be a good starting point...

[EVILPIG]

Clearly my post is in response to Hamma's blanket statement that all "1600" member outfits are "garbage". Not suprising to see the responses to it.

[Electrofreak]

Clearly my post is in response to Hamma's blanket statement that all "1600" member outfits are "garbage". Not suprising to see the responses to it.

That's not exactly what he said. 10 days ago he said, "These 1600 player outfits are garbage and ruin the game."

https://twitter.com/CDLHamma/status/281632392572194816

Hamma has NOT made any attacks on any specific outfit and has gone to lengths to try to remove any such attacks from this thread. His issue is with zerg outfits, so stop being so defensive EP, as it implies the 666th is a zerg outfit. If it's not, you have nothing to be offended about.

The reality is that in-game right now, empires are flooding to the continent that their empire has the highest population on, and zerg outfits are largely to blame. When a single outfit can tell a significant percentage of the server's players on one faction to go to a specific continent, it tips the scales on empire balance on that continent. Of course, everyone then rushes to that continent for all the easy XP.

It's a valid complaint. So read between the lines EP; Hamma isn't insulting your outfit. He's pointing out a serious flaw in the game which I'm sure you've noticed too. There's room for large outfits and small outfits alike in PS2 (Hamma even said just that in his recent video blog) but there needs to be more incentive for small outfits in the game beside just following the large outfits around the map.

I'm sure the 666th doesn't enjoy steamrolling relatively undefended continents either, and I would expect you to have some valuable feedback on this subject.

[EVILPIG]

That's not exactly what he said. 10 days ago he said, "These 1600 player outfits are garbage and ruin the game."

https://twitter.com/CDLHamma/status/281632392572194816

Hamma has NOT made any attacks on any specific outfit and has gone to lengths to try to remove any such attacks from this thread. His issue is with zerg outfits, so stop being so defensive EP, as it implies the 666th is a zerg outfit. If it's not, you have nothing to be offended about.

The reality is that in-game right now, empires are flooding to the continent that their empire has the highest population on, and zerg outfits are largely to blame. When a single outfit can tell a significant percentage of the server's players on one faction to go to a specific continent, it tips the scales on empire balance on that continent. Of course, everyone then rushes to that continent for all the easy XP.

It's a valid complaint. So read between the lines EP; Hamma isn't insulting your outfit. He's pointing out a serious flaw in the game which I'm sure you've noticed too. There's room for large outfits and small outfits alike in PS2 (Hamma even said just that in his recent video blog) but there needs to be more incentive for small outfits in the game beside just following the large outfits around the map.

I'm sure the 666th doesn't enjoy steamrolling relatively undefended continents either, and I would expect you to have some valuable feedback on this subject.

As I said, it is a blanket statement that includes us. Being organized and coordinated, this offended me.

[Electrofreak]

As I said, it is a blanket statement that includes us. Being organized and coordinated, this offended me.

And your response completely missed the point. I'm sorry to see that you're hung up on something said 10 days ago and completely ignoring the context in which it was used.

Wake up man, that's not what this is about. I think you're more worried about being offended at the statement than actually paying attention to what Hamma was talking about when he said it.

[Blynd]

If hamma had mentioned a specific outfit then you would have grounds to be offended unless your admitting that the 666th are a zergfit and thenyes it would be aimed at you but from your previous posts and posts of other 666th members all saying your organized and coordinated and not a zergfit so you have to decide EP are you a zergfit or not

[Fear The Amish]

Wow i think Evil Pig is defensive for a reason let me point something out. I am assuming that DD works like the other big outfits, you spread out squads to take multiple territories. BUT! when you hit resistance you throw multiple squads, and if that doesn't work everyone at it? Guess what you just became a zergfit you just used OVERWHELMING numbers to cap a point. Doesn't matter how many flanks you turned or how many gal drops you used or max crashes. It boils down to one thing you used your superior numbers to take out a position. Now you have two options here 1.) Feel offended and whiney about it. or 2.) realize you are the strongest unit's in the game able to change the course of a fight on your word, and MAN UP and use that ability to stop fighting on one continent.

But back on topic i would love an alliance system like EVE currently you have to work outside the game to do it. The VA on Waterson tries to break Esamir/amerish every night but 2-3 platoons can't stand against a 50+% pop when those 2-3 platoons only shift it from 5-10%. Also would love to see more bases like Amerish and easier to defend, And to Malorn Jeagers Fist and the others you designed are perfect we need more of that.

[StumpyTheOzzie]

We need alliance functionality

so the smaller outfits can still do their niche roles within the framework of a zergfit?

Sounds good to me.

[ringring]

so the smaller outfits can still do their niche roles within the framework of a zergfit?

Sounds good to me.
Sounds like a contradiction in terms.

TBH I think evilpig is barking at nothing and it's not helpful to the discussion at hand.

e.g. I see the problems in the game, but neither DD nor enclave nor AT nor GOTR nor any other v. large outfit play on my server.

The discussion long ago passed on from 'large outfits' to what is the role of so called smaller outfits, i.e. tactical within the strategic.

[FireWater]

I just want to pose a couple of questions to the community as a whole. If anyone is offended by these questions, I apologize in advance.

1) What exactly is the operational definition of a Zergfit? It seems that some large outfits are zergfits, while others aren't. How does one define Zergfit?

2) In an MMO/FPS where it is strictly PvP, how come so many players get dysregulated over the "size always matters" concept. One of the main draws to PS2 is the fact it isn't instanced small squad combat. It appears that PS2 is trying to offer something different from the status quo which is a good thing.

3) How do we know that small changes designed to assist small outfits won't have revenge effects that large outfits may actually benefit more.

4) To piggyback on question 3, what can small outfits do that large outfits cannot do?


Reason being is that I am in a medium sized outfit, we are selective of our outfit members, and at the same time we will open our squads to the public save during ops nights. We have 3 capped Waterson a few, and have held indar for the past 2 weeks with strong coordination amongst other outfits on Waterson.

Is Waterson simply Zerg free? Because we have come across large forces before. Or do we as an outfit and as alliance, have enough skill and tact to compete against large forces, by adding both quantity and quality to our forces.

Sentinels experiences a large amount of success, yet we don't have 1600 members. there are times when we do get smacked as well, but for the most part when we want to take something, we find a way to do it.

I am just curious what separates us from those outfits who are around the same size and may not be getting as much success.

I mean I get that large outfits can sometimes be frustrating for smaller ones, however if they truly are without skill, than a semi-organized small outfit alliance should be able to conquer them quickly. The Zerg is fickle, and I find that they are easy to break if you can smack down a few waves.

[Fear The Amish]

I just want to pose a couple of questions to the community as a whole. If anyone is offended by these questions, I apologize in advance.

1) What exactly is the operational definition of a Zergfit? It seems that some large outfits are zergfits, while others aren't. How does one define Zergfit?

2) In an MMO/FPS where it is strictly PvP, how come so many players get dysregulated over the "size always matters" concept. One of the main draws to PS2 is the fact it isn't instanced small squad combat. It appears that PS2 is trying to offer something different from the status quo which is a good thing.

3) How do we know that small changes designed to assist small outfits won't have revenge effects that large outfits may actually benefit more.

4) To piggyback on question 3, what can small outfits do that large outfits cannot do?


Reason being is that I am in a medium sized outfit, we are selective of our outfit members, and at the same time we will open our squads to the public save during ops nights. We have 3 capped Waterson a few, and have held indar for the past 2 weeks with strong coordination amongst other outfits on Waterson.

Is Waterson simply Zerg free? Because we have come across large forces before. Or do we as an outfit and as alliance, have enough skill and tact to compete against large forces, by adding both quantity and quality to our forces.

Sentinels experiences a large amount of success, yet we don't have 1600 members. there are times when we do get smacked as well, but for the most part when we want to take something, we find a way to do it.

I am just curious what separates us from those outfits who are around the same size and may not be getting as much success.

I mean I get that large outfits can sometimes be frustrating for smaller ones, however if they truly are without skill, than a semi-organized small outfit alliance should be able to conquer them quickly. The Zerg is fickle, and I find that they are easy to break if you can smack down a few waves.

BRIT is a Zergfit Fire, DVS flirts the line sometimes. But we got kinda lucky Firewater with our location on Waterson we have a literal zergfit with BRIT and a kinda one with DVS, But that is really all. The rest are all small - medium sized outfits.

[Whiteagle]

BRIT is a Zergfit Fire, DVS flirts the line sometimes. But we got kinda lucky Firewater with our location on Waterson we have a literal zergfit with BRIT and a kinda one with DVS, But that is really all. The rest are all small - medium sized outfits.
What about Angry Joe's Angry Army?

Or that new one, OMAD I think is the tag...

[Fear The Amish]

What about Angry Joe's Angry Army?

Or that new one, OMAD I think is the tag...

whats Angry Army tag? don't think i have seen them.

[Whiteagle]

whats Angry Army tag? don't think i have seen them.
It's ether AA or AJA... not exactly sure which...

Unlike Biscut's Outfit, ever time I see them in force they are getting shit DONE.

[Saintlycow]

4) To piggyback on question 3, what can small outfits do that large outfits cannot do?



This is the holy grail of all questions. What advantage does a small outfit have over a large outfit? None really, other than the possibility of fitting in one sunderer :lol:

[ElementalFiend]

Your lack of tactical flexibility and unwillingness to work with others in a massive fps=fail

This has got to be a joke coming from 666. You guys literally spam heavy infantry at points until you A) overrun it or B) meet some resistance and immediately back out. The ONLY exception seems to be your massive armor columns which frankly, win out solely due to numbers. You guys represent the exact issue that is being brought to light here.

It is a shame because you can bring together some of the largest forces on the server and the TR zerg / aircavs move along unchecked.

I run in one of the largest ( if not largest ) VS outfits on Connery and we routinely butt heads with you guys. Its the same thing every time, throw a few full galaxies of guys at a point and hope it sticks.

[FireWater]

BRIT is a Zergfit Fire, DVS flirts the line sometimes. But we got kinda lucky Firewater with our location on Waterson we have a literal zergfit with BRIT and a kinda one with DVS, But that is really all. The rest are all small - medium sized outfits.


I get what you are trying to say, but my question was "what makes a zergfit a zergfit"

Quite frankly, I've never seen either of those outfits pose a significant threat to the Vanu.

[ElementalFiend]

For all of my support of PSU, I have to say that Hamma's Tweet that 1600+ member outfits are "trash" is higly offensive. I am rarely frank, but, this is completely ignorant and it may suck that a large "zergfit" is ruining your fun on your server, but that does not represent others. Sure, I know they are out there. I have many alts and I get random outfit invites on them, but don't lump all large outfits together. Planetside 2 is about offering the large scale and that is fuking cool. Find your role, but dont b1tch because you cannot stop the 600 guys moving on you. Honestly, <3 Hamma, but this is so whiney it's crap to even respond. Get creative, grow some balls and farm those fuks. We do not bitcch, we equip to win and overcome.

Your outfit is literal definition of a zergfit. I'm not surprised to see you took offense to those statements.

[FrOzenFrOg]

Malorn, I'll throw out some examples I've found, hopefully they'll get the creative juices flowing. Without delving too deeply into "what the problem is", because people have nailed that, here are just some things from PS1 that made small outfits thrive, and a couple of "new" ideas.

1) Towers. In PS1, a "Tower" was either in the middle of nowhere and nobody fought there, was in the middle of a main thoroughfare for vehicles (like the one between Aja and Bomazi, it was the focus of some intense armor fights) or were "tied" to a base. They were important. You had to have the tower to take the base 90% of the time. In PS2, there are too many different outposts (and four different spawns per facility, one of which is a "tower"). Small outfits used to excel at denying these and starving off the large outfits that were trying to take the base. Without the tower, large outfits couldn't push in, and the assault would fizzle. In PS2, this situation doesn't happen.

2) Base draining / NTU. A way to hit a base that isn't linked. Imagine on Indar if a small outfit snuck behind VS lines and either captured Hvar, killing our tech, or neutralized it, causing nobody to have it but now it has to be both recaptured and filled with fuel. It doesn't matter if you're able to hold it very long, you've just killed our ability to pull tanks, and that both gives you a great fight and helps your empire. If our empire doesn't respond promptly enough, you can go back and kill us even more. This also stops the zerg from jumping so quickly. If we have to actually stop and fix what we break, defenders have more time to prepare. Usually, when I get ousted from a base, by the time I spawn at the next base up there is already a Sunderer deploying and a large tank force rolling in because the zerg doesn't have to wait. Let's make them wait a couple of minutes.

3) Generators were linked to the benefit, not to a shield. Gen holds were a huge draw to small outfits. You go and kill the gen of the only interlink on a continent, everyone's swarming to you. You might hold it long enough for your empire's larger force to push into their base though. Without that radar, their forces are weaker. You could kill tech or their dropship repair benefit, too. Nobody really killed gens for the biolab or amp benefit, but if they were more important that could work.

4) Cave Modules were a force multiplier. I think I can reliably say that when SOE released core combat, even though the BFRs weren't great, the mods you could harvest from caves made small outfits even more of a threat. They also gave small outfits yet another target - take out the enemy's mods so they have less benefits, or even better, STEAL the enemy's mods and take them as your own.

5) Make-Your-Own-Objective! In PS1, you could manipulate the lattice and the spawning mechanism to sort of pick an objective that wasn't an objective. The best way I know how to describe this is a "Medical Room Hold". You get a squad of guys and take the medical room in a PS1 bio lab and make a nuisance of yourselves. This is a base on the front line, people are spawning, and you and your squad are killing them all as they try to run out the door. Eventually the other empire notices and rushes you, but you've just delayed their vehicle reinforcements by several minutes and caused a pretty big diversion. Loads of exp as well. Or, if the NC is about to cap a TR LLU...maybe a small VS outfit comes in and camps the capture area so they can't. That was always fun.

6) A dynamic, mobile target - this is a new idea. Imagine a cross between an LLU and the rabbit event, except now instead of it being a rare event, it's up every few minutes. Small outfits move faster and with more precision, so how about a big blinking target that gives the empire some sort of benefit and the outfit exp if they capture it take it back to a certain base? It constantly changes where it spawns and the target base. Alert, enemy radar module located at Scarred Mesa. Capture it and bring it to Hvar, and we'll be able to see the enemy's radar signatures for the next 10 minutes!

7) Non-vehicle areas. A fortress where infantry reign supreme. The best footsoldiers survive. No tank shells or Daltons, no barrages from Lightnings, no roadkills.

8) LLUs / Capture the Flag - a faster way to take a base. Currently all base captures are by "king of the hill". I think many people have voiced their support for this and the devs have even mentioned they want to have more varied capture mechanics, I'm just noting it here.

9) Resource scarcity - I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm never low on resources. Ever. Unless I pull a tank and then immediately want to pull another one, I don't even keep up with how many resources I have. My infantry resources are important to me so I can keep refilling my supply of revive grenades and C4. Do we still get resources for fighting in an area? So if we fight at Ceres Biotech, which has infantry resources, and we get a kill, do we still get resources? Maybe that should be removed and we should only get resources during the "deposit" ticks, instead of accumulating them through fighting. That would give specific territories more value.
Me like!!!!!!!!!

[Dkamanus]

I just want to pose a couple of questions to the community as a whole. If anyone is offended by these questions, I apologize in advance.

1) What exactly is the operational definition of a Zergfit? It seems that some large outfits are zergfits, while others aren't. How does one define Zergfit?

Considering the zerg of Starcraft, a zergfit would be an outfit that throws Hillarious amounts of player on one single target, and expect to win not thanks to tactical strategy, but through sheer amount of numbers, weakening the defenders/attackers while doing so thanks to the lack of numbers.

2) In an MMO/FPS where it is strictly PvP, how come so many players get dysregulated over the "size always matters" concept. One of the main draws to PS2 is the fact it isn't instanced small squad combat. It appears that PS2 is trying to offer something different from the status quo which is a good thing.

When people think of big battles, they think big outfits with organized divisions, each supporting each other. Zerg vs. zerg isn't thething MOST people qualify as Size always matters.

3) How do we know that small changes designed to assist small outfits won't have revenge effects that large outfits may actually benefit more.

We won't. But it will benefit more organized outfits (which have a tendency to be smaller outfits) then larger outfits, with too many players to rigorously control.

4) To piggyback on question 3, what can small outfits do that large outfits cannot do?

As of first, focusing on objectives. Large outfits can't control all their players in the majority of these outfits anyway, and most have no desire to be anything else then a "LARGE" outfit. Second, organized gameplay. Having a smaller outfit allows people to become more close-knit and depend more on each other, creating a better experience and more dependable member that will rely easier on organization.

Larger outfits will most of the time not fit together, having a way smaller close knit core and a lot of fat to burn, without reliable members, imo.

[Aedn]

I just want to pose a couple of questions to the community as a whole. If anyone is offended by these questions, I apologize in advance.

1) What exactly is the operational definition of a Zergfit? It seems that some large outfits are zergfits, while others aren't. How does one define Zergfit?

specifically for PS2 its all based on opinion and mine is that most outfits who group up and use numbers as a primary tactic to win are zergs. They may be organized but when the answer to all issues is resorting to human wave attacks, its pretty self explanatory. At its core its not really even the large outfits that are the problem, its the extremely poor game design. whats worse is a large outfit basically has a built in zerg effect because most lone wolfs will end up looking to go to the same area they are, again not the fault of the outfit itself, just the nature of the game and the people who play it. i would love personally to see a combined arms battle that went on for 2-3 hours, sadly again due to game design, it almost never happens.

2) In an MMO/FPS where it is strictly PvP, how come so many players get dysregulated over the "size always matters" concept. One of the main draws to PS2 is the fact it isn't instanced small squad combat. It appears that PS2 is trying to offer something different from the status quo which is a good thing.

Quantity is the path of least resistance, its always the easiest to achieve in most MMO's. I do not think anyone who posted in this thread really has an issue with giant battles, the issue is with the battles being mindless and pointless as they are now, or actually having some strategic and tactical meaning to be placed within to create an overall front line or war. Right now, all you have to do is look at the map, 90% of hexes are empty, a handful have some population, and a few are where the zergs are.

3) How do we know that small changes designed to assist small outfits won't have revenge effects that large outfits may actually benefit more.

you can never know for sure until its tried, but the fact that there is no real meta game, has turned the game stale for many in a very short period of time. However, most of the things discussed here in terms of logistics, defense, and other issues would benefit large outfits as well as small ones.


4) To piggyback on question 3, what can small outfits do that large outfits cannot do?

right now basically nothing, its either join the zerg or work around it and hope it wanders your way in time.


PS2 is going to be interesting to watch, but its a bare bones game at the moment, that really offers nothing in terms of quality game play over other combined arms games currently on the market outside of its "huge battles" which are becoming scarce due to human nature coupled with game design issues. This thread points out most of the problem areas, and has some solutions, so no reason to go over it again. It will be worth staying around to see how the game shapes up in the next 3-6 months though. Hopefully it wont flop like most of the MMO's these days.

[Noivad]

I read all posts on all 25 pages before posting. A Lot of good information presented. Thank you all for a good read.

I runs a small Outfit on Mattherson. We field no more the 24 people, are coming up on 50 members total, but we are growing through a lengthy selection process. Some of us are former Military. Every member is given training and has to meet certain requirements.

Huge Outfits do not bother us, as usually we don't try to fight them all at one time. We choose the where, when, how to attack them. We "break contact" when their mass becomes greater then our ability to fight them which happens rarely. We usually accomplish our objectives before the zerg get there, but even when they are there, we pick smaller objectives to accomplish within high contested areas. We are Rapid Deployment Infantry most of the time.

We have developed the Overcome, Adapt, Improvise Mindset to the Current Rules of the game even though we believe that some of those rules are broken. All members Are light Assault first, but have other class secondaries that they specialize in. We adapt as a group to fight the battle as it changes on the fly.

We offer other small Outfits the following ideas and answers to Malorn's post.

Originally Posted by Malorn*

* Do resources need a bigger role? (in theory, a small outfit can better do resource denial with small territories)

Resources do not hinder us as all resources of every member belongs to the Outfit. If a dedicated Vehicle Driver/Pilot needs a vehicle, and does not have the timer or resources to pull it, another member pulls it for him. This allows us to stay on Gate camped planets longer, providing a fight for the enemy holding them there till other TR reinforcements arrive. We attack enemy resources on a regular basis.

* Does territory capture need to be slowed down to allow for response, regrouping, and to wear down a zerg?

Because we are usually one of the 1st Outfits to an objective, We usually have to wait for the bigger outfits to get there, we have noticed, at least on Mattherson, that the percentage of NON Outfit players to an objective is not as great as the percentage of Outfit players. And in fairness to the larger Outfits they usually get there near the end of the cap. We usually have our meager numbers spread out on all cap points.

* Does defense need to be more rewarding XP-wise?

Our Outfit attacks bases that are being taken from TR, we don't stay after a base is capped. We play the Attack Role 95% of the time either on enemy territory or against attacking forces.

* Do vehicles need to cost more resources to help reduce spam?

To an outfit like mine it would not make a difference.

* Do deployment options need to be reduced to encourage more natural concentration of force? (I'm thinking PS1 here where you had 3-4 options on where to spawn and it kept forces together so you weren't steamrolled as much and opened up opportunity for small outfits to avoid the concentrations)

With the current game mechanics we do not have any problems re-spawning in the same area. When we do run out of spawn points we head back to the warp gate.

The Galaxy is our main transportation, but we do use other vehicles as well as the war dictates. In PS1 we could travel with 15 people in one gal, but in PS2 that number is cut down to only 12. I would like to see the seating increased to 14 people so I could drop 3 Fire Teams from one Galaxy and leave a 2 man crew in a gal to fly/defend it. The Fire Team is the smallest fighting unit the US Military.

We use TS3 as our choice of communication, as we run multiple channels for our teams, unlike some outfits that have 50 people in one channel.

We use a decentralized leadership, and allow independent teams to be in control of their assault, with Squad leaders only providing an administrative role to provide Spawn beacons for their fire teams.

To combat possible infiltration by NC or VS members to our Outfit, we do not use way points. We use an extensive whisper system that allows Team Leaders to communicate much like the Military does in Real Life. We don't micro manage our people. Every one learns their job as wells as everyone else's in the their team. You have to be a proven leader to be a leader.

We belong to an alliance that started in PS1, and continues today in PS2. We communicate with them via forums, Command Voice Chat, Leader chat, and /tells and in formal events through the TS3 ability, to allow separate Outfit TS3 Servers to cross communicate.

To Malorn, I would say to tell Higby, That this is a War Game. You said Outfits were gonna be like the 101st. There are less Outfit tools in this game then there were in PS1. You have built a game with limited structure. You need to fix that as a priority.

Outfits are a community within the community. Your BR Military Rank system is wrong from the get go. You created a military game but you take the privilege of giving Rank to its members away from the Outfit. Pretty soon you will have generals running around everywhere. And you mixed Military Services to boot. Outfits use Military Rank structure or something more then the 5 choices (slots) you have given us to work with. And while my TAG is nice, and would like to keep it, I would pick having my whole Outfit name up over every ones name over the TAG.

People belong to the Outfits, not to the game. People play the game. People want to belong to something more then just the game or a faction, and PS2 has failed in providing all the tools to make it happen. PS2 servers the solo player. There was more team work in PS1.

You can't sort Outfit information, you can't even see the date that someone joined. You can't even seen all the members in a platoon. Thats pretty sad.

But hey I digress. The game is still fun, and we will as an Outfit work around the obstacles you have given us. There is my two bones. DOGs don,t use cents.:rofl:

[StumpyTheOzzie]

Personally, I love zerg outfits. [Definition - Zerg outfits are groups that have lots of members but don't have strong leadership. The battle commander might order platoons 2 and 3 to "Take Tawrich" but the platoon/squad commanders are ineffective at actually carrying out those orders, they have little or no strategic or tactical knowledge of what they're up against - whatever.]

The point is that zerg outfits (in my definition) bring lots of bodies to spawn rooms below my liberator. That - in turn - means that at my peak, I'm getting 1.8 kills per shot. Not 1.8 KDR, My KDR is like 100+. I'm talking about Kills per Dalton round.

Just a smudge of organisation would mean my libfarming would simply stop! And it's not like what I'm doing is novel or rare. Personally when I'm footing it, I expect to be libfarmed for a few spawns before I go somewhere else.

So, huge outfits right now are awesome. If they start doing training days and instituting SOPs, then the game will change.

I'll give it a few months and then all the temporary zerglings who are "trying out the game" will fade away and all the serious players (who on my server seem to always be away from Indar) will be able to play it in the spirit of PS1.

[FireWater]

Considering the zerg of Starcraft, a zergfit would be an outfit that throws Hillarious amounts of player on one single target, and expect to win not thanks to tactical strategy, but through sheer amount of numbers, weakening the defenders/attackers while doing so thanks to the lack of numbers.

Fair enough, but I think even in SC II Zerg doesn't necessarily dominate the other 2 races, as the game is fairly balanced.



When people think of big battles, they think big outfits with organized divisions, each supporting each other. Zerg vs. zerg isn't thething MOST people qualify as Size always matters.

If you took away clan tags while playing, would the average PS2 player be able to tell the difference between zerg vs zerg as opposed to big outfits with organized divisions? Hell I have a problem telling the difference because we mow through so many different players/outfits.



We won't. But it will benefit more organized outfits (which have a tendency to be smaller outfits) then larger outfits, with too many players to rigorously control.



As of first, focusing on objectives. Large outfits can't control all their players in the majority of these outfits anyway, and most have no desire to be anything else then a "LARGE" outfit. Second, organized gameplay. Having a smaller outfit allows people to become more close-knit and depend more on each other, creating a better experience and more dependable member that will rely easier on organization.

I would challenge the "can't" in your second sentence. If Large outfits can't control their players to a certain degree, why are they such a problem? Also a socially close knit team would yield better results on the battlefield? Maybe yes maybe no, but large outfits can form tight groups of people as well within their own outfit. In fact I think 666 Devil Dogs encourages that. Just because players are friends with each other doesn't mean they will ultimately play better, it may mean that they have a better social experience overall.

The reason I am bringing this up and kind of being a pain in the ass is that when developers ask for feedback, I want to be more than just "large outfits ruin my fun".

This game is an MMO FPS, which in my opinion stresses the FPS more than the MMO. What I am curious to see if all of the smaller TR and Vanu outfits that are on the same server can ban together to break the zerg (if they are true zerg) we will find out a couple of things.

1) It truly would be the numbers, if you have comparable numbers on the side of smaller outfits that are bound together by alliance, vs one very large outfit and the alliance wins, then we can determine that the large outfit is only useful because of their numbers, and not the quality of their firepower.

2) If the alliance loses (i.e. status quo remains), and numbers weren't an issue, than I think each outfit/player might have to do some "soul searching" to figure why they are not getting the success that they feel they deserve.

3) We would find out if it is better to have one hive mind, or several different outfits that share a common goals, but how they reach that goal is up to them. So in other words the "what" is the same and the "how" is different. Or if there will be no difference at all and there is just preference.

For example, we are having an Ops night vs. Brit this Friday. It will be our alliance vs Brit (as best we can do it, as there are no instances in PS2). I am eager to find out a few things. First, the first time I even saw BRIT was the other night when Sentinels were having a skirmish with them. (I killed TotalBiscuit 4 times w00t w00t :) ) Also if they are as large as they say they are, I am wondering myself how the alliance will do in an Ops vs Ops scenario if you will. Which will be difficult to ultimately determine as we can't control who gets involved in the fight, and for all we know NC can try to smash what we will be fighting over.

However I think it will be a great time, and I am curious if our united but independent outfits can compete against 1 large outfit. And if thats the case, perhaps that for now, smaller outfits can solve the "zerg" problem socially, rather than depend on the developers to make changes that may not even work anyway.

[Fear The Amish]

Fair enough, but I think even in SC II Zerg doesn't necessarily dominate the other 2 races, as the game is fairly balanced.





If you took away clan tags while playing, would the average PS2 player be able to tell the difference between zerg vs zerg as opposed to big outfits with organized divisions? Hell I have a problem telling the difference because we mow through so many different players/outfits.



We won't. But it will benefit more organized outfits (which have a tendency to be smaller outfits) then larger outfits, with too many players to rigorously control.





I would challenge the "can't" in your second sentence. If Large outfits can't control their players to a certain degree, why are they such a problem? Also a socially close knit team would yield better results on the battlefield? Maybe yes maybe no, but large outfits can form tight groups of people as well within their own outfit. In fact I think 666 Devil Dogs encourages that. Just because players are friends with each other doesn't mean they will ultimately play better, it may mean that they have a better social experience overall.

The reason I am bringing this up and kind of being a pain in the ass is that when developers ask for feedback, I want to be more than just "large outfits ruin my fun".

This game is an MMO FPS, which in my opinion stresses the FPS more than the MMO. What I am curious to see if all of the smaller TR and Vanu outfits that are on the same server can ban together to break the zerg (if they are true zerg) we will find out a couple of things.

1) It truly would be the numbers, if you have comparable numbers on the side of smaller outfits that are bound together by alliance, vs one very large outfit and the alliance wins, then we can determine that the large outfit is only useful because of their numbers, and not the quality of their firepower.

2) If the alliance loses (i.e. status quo remains), and numbers weren't an issue, than I think each outfit/player might have to do some "soul searching" to figure why they are not getting the success that they feel they deserve.

3) We would find out if it is better to have one hive mind, or several different outfits that share a common goals, but how they reach that goal is up to them. So in other words the "what" is the same and the "how" is different. Or if there will be no difference at all and there is just preference.

For example, we are having an Ops night vs. Brit this Friday. It will be our alliance vs Brit (as best we can do it, as there are no instances in PS2). I am eager to find out a few things. First, the first time I even saw BRIT was the other night when Sentinels were having a skirmish with them. (I killed TotalBiscuit 4 times w00t w00t :) ) Also if they are as large as they say they are, I am wondering myself how the alliance will do in an Ops vs Ops scenario if you will. Which will be difficult to ultimately determine as we can't control who gets involved in the fight, and for all we know NC can try to smash what we will be fighting over.

However I think it will be a great time, and I am curious if our united but independent outfits can compete against 1 large outfit. And if thats the case, perhaps that for now, smaller outfits can solve the "zerg" problem socially, rather than depend on the developers to make changes that may not even work anyway.

Total Biscuit and Brit can raise over 500+ members our alliance is hoping for a few hundred at best so its still going to be a massive zergfit against a coalition with less numbers. Xen officers and other alliance leaders have a few idea's to stem the numbers problem but we shall see.

[FireWater]

Well if the zerg is about power/certs, we just need to take that away from them.

It sounds like zergs are generally fickle, and if they don't get their needs fed quickly, they will disperse.

Either way I am going to stream it, and I am looking forward to it.

[Srixun]

The answer to this, imo... Bring back battle islands. :) I loved those.

[Rockit]

The answer to this, imo... Bring back battle islands. :) I loved those.

Probably not a bad idea actually. No Libs, no MBTs and smaller fight areas would be interesting. Maybe limit other things as well like rocket pods and HE Lightning configurations.

[Stew]

For all of my support of PSU, I have to say that Hamma's Tweet that 1600+ member outfits are "trash" is higly offensive. I am rarely frank, but, this is completely ignorant and it may suck that a large "zergfit" is ruining your fun on your server, but that does not represent others. Sure, I know they are out there. I have many alts and I get random outfit invites on them, but don't lump all large outfits together. Planetside 2 is about offering the large scale and that is fuking cool. Find your role, but dont b1tch because you cannot stop the 600 guys moving on you. Honestly, <3 Hamma, but this is so whiney it's crap to even respond. Get creative, grow some balls and farm those fuks. We do not bitcch, we equip to win and overcome.

He was 100 % rigth to state thats , i was already putting this problem on the spotligth even way before the game gone live , Most players in all those Zergsfits are trash its true its factual

the thing is no matter how good you are and how good and well organised your team mates are , the Zerginess will win because you have to reload , you have to figth agains laggy foreign peoples while their (( non laggy zergs )) shoot at you etc...etc...

Steam rolling is simple its taking massive numbers of peoples and then roll them out over a inferior numbers of mostly unprepare peoples

And most if not all those zergsfits stemrolls and lock half empty continents and RUINS the experience for most players who enjoy big battles yes but NOT STEAM ROLLING of Zergs

I think Hamma gain a lots of respect for most peoples , if some Zergfits get offended , its mostly because this truth hurt ;)


Stay true Hamma and say whats you really think

[Hamma]

For all of my support of PSU, I have to say that Hamma's Tweet that 1600+ member outfits are "trash" is higly offensive. I am rarely frank, but, this is completely ignorant and it may suck that a large "zergfit" is ruining your fun on your server, but that does not represent others. Sure, I know they are out there. I have many alts and I get random outfit invites on them, but don't lump all large outfits together. Planetside 2 is about offering the large scale and that is fuking cool. Find your role, but dont b1tch because you cannot stop the 600 guys moving on you. Honestly, <3 Hamma, but this is so whiney it's crap to even respond. Get creative, grow some balls and farm those fuks. We do not bitcch, we equip to win and overcome.

.....

As I said, it is a blanket statement that includes us. Being organized and coordinated, this offended me.

:confused:

Remember in my video when I said not all large outfits suck? Some actually aren't zergs? I could have been referring to your outfit you know but apparently you fail at seeing the big picture.

Usually if you are over 1600 players you are spam /inviting. You aren't an outfit, you are a zerg.

Instead of derailing my thread that focuses on a hugely important issue for your own personal reasons why don't you try just not posting. For some reason you have always thought I am out to target you which couldn't be further from the truth. You cant deny there are problems with this game and there are literally no tactics involved. Not everyone wants to "Farm" the enemy 16 hours a day.

Now let's get this thread back on track shall we? Thanks!

[ringring]

TBH, I think this thread has had it's day. Everything relevant has been said, often multiple times and it's starting to drift of topic with some writing justifications of their outfits when it's really not necessary.

Game mechanics was ultimately the topic.

[robocpf1]

TBH, I think this thread has had it's day. Everything relevant has been said, often multiple times and it's starting to drift of topic with some writing justifications of their outfits when it's really not necessary.

Game mechanics was ultimately the topic.


First off let me start this thread by saying this is NOT an attack on specific outfits. I will not allow people to argue about specific outfits, this discussion is about the size of outfits in general and whether or not you think they hurt the game. Also, I don't want to hear bs like "ohh you're doing it wrong" etc.


If people stopped attacking each others' outfits and then other people ignored those people, we could actually get more great discussion out of this. Ignore outfit names completely, like Hamma asked us to in the original post.

Maybe don't even use your own outfit as an example, that just draws in the flames. Guys, I know you want to jump to defend your outfit, I do it, too. You don't like seeing some nobody or even a somebody trashing your friends and comrades, I get it. But their opinion about YOU and YOUR outfit isn't relevant unless you leap at their throats. The only winning move is not to play. Learn this.

Here are the facts: Large outfits will not become less successful or change because any of you think they (we) are "zergs". It doesn't matter. It's a non-issue. We're here for the long haul and we're not going to change. We have the support of our members and honestly, if we have that, we don't care about the rest.

Small outfits had a great place in PS1, because many times they were (and are, in PS2) organized and tactical - and even when a large outfit is organized and tries to play by these outfits' "rules" - which are all BS anyway and don't actually exist by the way - people can't see the forest through the trees and only see the numbers.

But in PS1, both outfits had a place. Both outfits had achievements and could flame each other and develop rivalries that mattered. And that's good for the game!

So we're at an impasse. And we've been at this impasse for TEN F***ING YEARS, GIVE IT A BREAK. The problem is, PS2 doesn't have this, small outfits can't do as much, so there's frustration.

Help this game grow or GTFO of this thread, in my honest opinion. Leave your outfits at the door. I will too.

[Rockit]

Well clearly what is missing for smaller groups to be effective is smaller objectives which are impactful to the larger groups operations. Denial of important resources, base benefits, that kind of thing, but these areas need to be very defensible for the smaller groups to hold off the impending throng they will attract. Could probably use more CE elements and such as well. Let me go back over the previous 25 pages (sigh) and see what others have said.

EDIT: Yeah screw that :lol:, you guys hit on that pretty early on. Hey it's one thing to roll 20 people when the pop limit was 400 per cont and call yourselves small but 20 of 2000 you are microscopic. Just a victim of scale. I like that guy's idea of battle islands where maybe a cont could be divided in 1/4 but still behave as one in the scheme of things. So then you would get back to 20 or 500 which is similar to the days of old. Maybe have weapon type limitations as well as was on Oshur. Would be a refreshing change I think.

[robocpf1]

Well clearly what is missing for smaller groups to be effective is smaller objectives which are impactful to the larger groups operations. Denial of important resources, base benefits, that kind of thing, but these areas need to be very defensible for the smaller groups to hold off the impending throng they will attract. Could probably use more CE elements and such as well. Let me go back over the previous 25 pages (sigh) and see what others have said.

EDIT: Yeah screw that :lol:, you guys hit on that pretty early on. Hey it's one thing to roll 20 people when the pop limit was 400 per cont and call yourselves small but 20 of 2000 you are microscopic. Just a victim of scale. I like that guy's idea of battle islands where maybe a cont could be divided in 1/4 but still behave as one in the scheme of things. So then you would get back to 20 or 500 which is similar to the days of old. Maybe have weapon type limitations as well as was on old Oshur. Would be a refreshing change I think.

Being successful in a small outfit doesn't necessarily entail winning against a large zerg. Even the best small outfits of PS1 couldn't always win every engagement. They helped defeat us, on an empire scale, through delaying, stalling, getting that last minute resecure and screwing the rest of us up for another 15 minutes while we twiddled our thumbs. They screwed us by keeping our tech generator down for twenty minutes. They screwed us up by placing bombs on frequent drop zones and wiping out our gal drops. They screwed us up by finding our AMSes and then chipping away at us, killing two or three of us with superior individual skill.

They picked their fights instead of fighting everything.

The successful large outfits had ways to combat that, protocols and backup plans, fallbacks and counters. The unsuccessful large outfits didn't have answers to small outfit tactics and were routed.

A successful small outfit controlled the battlefield and fought on their own terms. They forced our hand. They didn't have to actually kill us all to "win" and winning wasn't always about the base being taken.

This isn't about 20 men being able to actually kill 200. It's about winning the battle, and then the war - not always the physical engagement.

And that is what PS2 is missing.

[Rockit]

Being successful in a small outfit doesn't necessarily entail winning against a large zerg. Even the best small outfits of PS1 couldn't always win every engagement. They helped defeat us, on an empire scale, through delaying, stalling, getting that last minute resecure and screwing the rest of us up for another 15 minutes while we twiddled our thumbs. They screwed us by keeping our tech generator down for twenty minutes. They screwed us up by placing bombs on frequent drop zones and wiping out our gal drops. They screwed us up by finding our AMSes and then chipping away at us, killing two or three of us with superior individual skill.

The successful large outfits had ways to combat that, protocols and backup plans, fallbacks and counters. The unsuccessful large outfits didn't have answers to small outfit tactics and were routed.

A successful small outfit controlled the battlefield and fought on their own terms. They forced our hand. They didn't have to actually kill us all to "win" and winning wasn't always about the base being taken.

This isn't about 20 men being able to actually kill 200. It's about winning the battle, and then the war - not always the physical engagement.

And that is what PS2 is missing.

Yes I know. I was spec ops most times myself. But I would hate to face the numbers the zerg has now with 2 squads and the open buildings as in PS2 and expect to last very long as to have an actual impact on large scale ops. You can either create an area where numbers are more equal or make the areas of denial a fortress and we all know how receptive SOE has been to that. Also, yeah here we go, if you really want to have pinpoint areas of denial you need linearity in battle flow. No I won't use the L-word but something like that would be needed.

[robocpf1]

Yes I know. I was spec ops most times myself. But I would hate to face the numbers the zerg has now with 2 squads and the open buildings as in PS2 and expect to last very long as to have an actual impact on large scale ops. You can either create an area where numbers are more equal or make the areas of denial a fortress and we all know how receptive SOE has been to that. Also, yeah here we go, if you really want to have pinpoint areas of denial you need linearity in battle flow. No I won't use the L-word but something like that would be needed.

Oh I wasn't saying your idea was wrong, I was just trying to dispel the larger notion that population and size is the biggest problem.

[Emperor Newt]

I really like TBs stuff but if these shots were the most action packed ones to choose for this video then it gets the idea behind this thread and the discussions that came out of it across pretty damn well.
It surely wasn't intended but it somehow fits so incredibly well in here, although people not knowing about this thread most likely wouldn't notice. For people who have no idea about PS this might actually look pretty awesome, granted.

Planetside 2 - The Purging of Indar - YouTube

[Rockit]

Oh I wasn't saying your idea was wrong, I was just trying to dispel the larger notion that population and size is the biggest problem.

It is a matter of population differential between spec ops and overall enemy pop, not necessarily outfits. If I took 20 to drop the gen and hold it down between the enemy tech and the frontlines I wouldn't expect some large organized outfit to respond but rather a conglomeration of the entire empire. They would clear us out quickly and move on. Problem is with pops and overall game design really as you all know well. Less pop per cont or sub cont., defensible bases and directed fights via a base interlink structure and you have something for all to enjoy. SOE marketing could still claim 2K per cont but reality is 500 in smaller sub cont with overall impact to the meta-game as a single cont. I don't know, just kicking around ideas.

[outsider]

Well the solutions can still be found in PS1.

The benefits of small outfits is that they could do things around the fringes of the big fights that would benefit their empires, without taking too many numbers away from the main conflict.

The incentive for waging the big fights was the dual xp system, CR xp was the carrot that rewarded the organisers of the fight and kept the fight going. The larger the fight, the bigger the CR xp. With only cert gain as the driver for conflict, large outfits see no reason to leave the steamrolling mindset, as there are no unique benefit in defending ( and if you can get greater cert gain in defending, like during the tech test, than they will stop attacking )

Once the larger outfits on every server have rewards that they can only get from defending bases, than they will want to manipulate the front lines to funnel the fights into big base defense scenarios to maximise those rewards ( instead of rolling out of the bases while the enemy is rolling in from the other side after the cap )

As per my previous post, once large outfits have unique unlockable benefits gained by staying and defending territory, than there is space for the small outfits to harrase on the fringes of the commited fight. Small outfits can't do anything meaningfull when the fight is: large outfit rolls in, caps, leaves.

The main element that is missing is the dual xp approach that offer distinct separate benefits. One for the player and the other one for the outfit.

To give small outfits purpose we have to fix large outfits first by giving the game a reason to defend. You can't use the same carrot, you have to use different carrots.

Say the upcoming Heavy battle tank is an outfit only unlock, the large outfit focuses on creating defense objectives to gain "outfit certs". Once the outfit buys HBT than the outfit members use their certs to upgrade it and personalise it. This gives the outfit reason to attack and reason to defend.

note: I know I am repeating myself in this post with elements from the last post. But I got no response from my previous post. Which means I must not have explained myself well enough. But I really think the dual xp system is a winner.

[Rago]

Im Happy Hamma does something and raise his Voice for us.

Im following this discussion a little longer and i don´t have to tell you that the Game has some problems, overall it is a good game but it seems to miss a lot of elemental things.

I just , yeah understand Soe position, they have to work on their stuff and that a Lot, right right, but is it the customers Fault, that they released it that early, they may have financial Problems would be a Explanation but that just guessing into the Blue,...

Well i just want to show at least my appreciation, to Hamma doing the Vid.
We all know the issues we all see them, we have to Live with them until they are worked out.

Why not making a "Beta-Patch" Team, im sure People would be happy to help Soe Out, so many suggetions and Discussion going on here,...

[Gortha]

I absolutely support Hamma in all these concerns.

I stopped playing semi-awesome PS2 a few days ago, i didn´t even played more than once during double-XP-Vocation.
Just because i see no in-game depth, not enough metagame, faction-imbalance/zergs on the single continents, too open Bases.

Hamma, keep up the good work! pimp::cheers:

[EVILPIG]

.....



:confused:

Remember in my video when I said not all large outfits suck? Some actually aren't zergs? I could have been referring to your outfit you know but apparently you fail at seeing the big picture.

Usually if you are over 1600 players you are spam /inviting. You aren't an outfit, you are a zerg.

Instead of derailing my thread that focuses on a hugely important issue for your own personal reasons why don't you try just not posting. For some reason you have always thought I am out to target you which couldn't be further from the truth. You cant deny there are problems with this game and there are literally no tactics involved. Not everyone wants to "Farm" the enemy 16 hours a day.

Now let's get this thread back on track shall we? Thanks!

I posted late one night after holding it in for many days. When you tweeted, you it was a blanket statement. We appreciated the distiction in your new video, which is good.

[Deflagrate]

When windows were mentioned I thought of this as a solution:

Window Blast Shields -> Each window should have a door that can be opened/closed from within the building, a simple "Hold E for one second" to open / close would be good, with a 10 or so second time period where it can not be flipped.

As it is now the windows have a benefit for the defenders vs infantry, but as soon as any decent number of vehicles surround the base they are just kill zones, as mentioned in the video. Not to mention light assault being able to enter through windows.

PlanetSide was a bit too overboard on base enclosure, but giving bases the ability to be converted into a defense mode is one thing that PlanetSide 2 desperately needs.

Deploying CE and preparing a base for a defense, then finally that long battle to defend was one of the most enjoyable kind of experience in PlanetSide, in contrast to that in my opinion PlanetSide 2 really shines with open field battles, but they are rare, simply because there isn't that incentive.

Defenders need an advantage, before the tech plant change, you actually saw some nice drawn out defense battles, and they were fun; attackers had to think creatively to defeat a well entrenched garrison, and the usage of abilities like the Shield Disrupted actually ended up being more than just gimmicks

[FireWater]

Honestly, I think limiting sundy spawn opportunities as well as making some vehicle tweaks (i.e. no one shot AoE tanks, but one shot direct hit tanks etc......) would certainly make things a lot better for the players, as well as the developers in terms of their development time.

When I have some time I want to post a Sundy spawn idea that should have minimal effect on small squads, but can have an significant impact on large squads if they continually die.

[typhaon]

Another comment...

SOE needs to decide what kind of game PS2 is going to be and how they want it to be played.

The beta system where certs were awarded by controlling and holding the main bases was not perfect and certainly wasn't great for someone looking to log in, get some kills, and get rewarded... BUT - had they simply made resources/certs earned stretch across the continents... it would've forced (and even in its imperfect forum, more or less did) people to play PS2 like a tactical war game.

[ringring]

Honestly, I think limiting sundy spawn opportunities as well as making some vehicle tweaks (i.e. no one shot AoE tanks, but one shot direct hit tanks etc......) would certainly make things a lot better for the players, as well as the developers in terms of their development time.

When I have some time I want to post a Sundy spawn idea that should have minimal effect on small squads, but can have an significant impact on large squads if they continually die.
Limiting Sundy spawns in itself won't promote good infantry on infantry gameplay (imho).

Planetside is all about controlling spawns. Which is why spawn camping is so bad (obviously) and why, destroying an AMS (or perhaps) the only AMS at a base is great for the defenders.

And that's the good part, destroying AMSES is good for the defenders, and we're saying buff the defenders (or at least defences).

However, if the attackers AMS goes, the fight is over. Similarly if the spawns are camped the fight is over. It's the same thing from a different direction.

If 1 AMS is destroyed is doesn't matter much as long as there is another, but if the other one is too far away it might as well not be there at all.

What we need is something that will sustain a prolonged fight such that neither side loses too easily and that winning requires effort and hopefully some squad coordination.

Personally I dont see a way of doing this that doesn't involve 'fortress' type bases and outposts.

[Maidere]

Good meta and mission system will nerf zergfits significantly.

But I have a story for people who lead 1000+ member outfits.
There is a game called Global Agenda, and when it never was realy popular, EU scene completely died only few months ago. Guess why? People where trying to keep some kind of competition so they were reforming agencies. Ofcaurse, it's not that easy in PS2 since you cant transfer your char but still...
Making the best outfit and blaming other people for not doing the same thing wont save the game.

ps: sorry for my bad engrish

[Ellipson]

As the leader of a small outfit (usually 8-10 guys on TS running 2-3 squads filled out with public members), we've done several things to mitigate the fact that we don't have the numbers of larger outfits.

Talk to your fellow outfits! We regularly communicate with all the other VS outfits on Mattherson like GOTR, TEST, AT, VR, NNG, among others and figure out where they are and what they're doing at a specific time.

There's no mission system, but there's plenty of ways to create your own small missions, especially when you're working in concert with a larger outfit.

For example; Mattherson just had quite the epic battle for VS to keep their continent lock on Indar. All of the available outfits pulled back to Indar from other continents to save our lock and fought a huge pitched battle centered around a back and forth from Peris Amp to Ceres Farms. We assisted pushes by having everyone do the same thing (pull AA at the same time and clear the skies, or pull AT and volleys of lockon rockets to kill tanks).

We also created our own objectives similar to dropping behind lines from PS1. At one point on the final Peris push that kept the base for us, we had a pair of squads drop on the Vertical/Horizontal shield generators by having a squad leader ditch a Scythe above them in a LA kit and drop a beacon on top while the rest of the squad sat on the Deployment screen. We overloaded the gens and then held that position for as long as we could.

As it turned out we got pushed off one of them right as GOTR/TEST rolled up, but the fact that the NC had sent a huge amount of guys at our generator meant that our buddies were able to get in the courtyard a lot faster because the enemy was focused on us.

We did this again at Hvar; we had all 3 squads use instant action to get there, dropped the shield gens, and held them for as long as we could. We were about to lose our hold on everything when GOTR rolled up and finished the job for us. We were all set to do it again at Tawrich before the hex-crashing stuff ruined our night.

Did we single handedly win these fights? No. But we were certainly contributors in that we ruined potential defensive positions by focusing our efforts and working in concert with other outfits.

I would love to see more sub objectives, more defensible positions, and everything else discussed in this thread; I think all of these things would benefit everyone playing PS2. We have our nights where things aren't working as smoothly as they were tonight and we grumble about our lack of numbers too. But we see light at the end of the tunnel, and things will only get better if we continue to raise our voices constructively in support of more depth in PS2.

Additionally, if you're thinking about opening up your squads to public members in order to bolster your numbers (we have a max of 6 guys to a squad with the rest as publics, with 80% of our tactical talk ingame and TS more for bullshitting and overall strategy), I highly encourage it. We've been running purely open squads for the last two weeks, and two things have happened:

1. It's helped us take objectives we wouldn't otherwise be able to take thanks to herding the publics toward waypoints (not to mention recruiting opportunities and generally helping to organize your empire)
2. As we've done it more, we see the same faces over and over again and have generally seen the quality of our public members rise as people realize we're talking and coordinating.

Yeah, the ingame comms can be a pain to use, but that's been the big difference maker for us.

[Archonzero]

I've come to the conclusion, that for every player who, is willing to lead, there is about 30-40 that would rather follow. For every 30-40 that want to follow.. there is about 50% of that figure that would rather do their own thing. This game lacks a real incentive, or even a real need for structure of groups.

The current certification system, while fun to unlock stuff, is terribly flawed and very focused on individual gains rather than faction or even outfit gains, for the most part it's just a pat on the back system. As it is all options are a common pool options, with no real benefit or sense of achievement based on your particular role. I really feel PS2 needs to divide the current system up into a mixed categories rather than a common pool system.

Infantry (common pool)
utilizes the current class system, for weapons/skills/gear unlocks

Vehicle Specialist (Pilot's pool) utilizes the current system for vehicles only, as well requires a player to unlock empire specific vehicles/weaponry an equipment unlocks with vehicle certification points.

Squad Leadership (leadership pool)
Removes the leadership cert from common pool an places it into a separate field. Adds a % based certification reward system for squad leaders achieving objectives. (either success of defense or attack)

Platoon Leadership (command pool)
Adds a % based certification system for Platoon leaders who's Squad leaders achieve objectives. As well various new tools an markers for designating objective markers that only squad leaders can see. Dedicated Platoon/squad leader comm systems. (attack/or defense)

Outfit Logistics (Outfit pool)
Utilizes a % tax system for certifications an resources, of all members or volunteered members. Depending on how the outfit leader wants. These outfit logistic certs are useful for unlocking/expanding the outfits strength/size by expanding the roster with additional players. New outfit starts off with 100 members, with the logistic cert system paying to expand with either additional +platoon strength, or simply +50/100 members for each unlock.

This may not prevent zergfits from mass recruiting entirely. Nor will it prevent larger groups from splintering into smaller outfits under a TS command structure under the same leadership as the previous large outfit. The logistics pool/outfit options rewards large organized groups being successful, as well rewards outfits with a highly active playerbase. Outfits looking to stockpile/unlock features will be more dedicated to large rosters of active players an less likely to zergcruit inactive roster lists. As well those outfit features will have a considerable cost, but a cost that isn't ridiculous to achieve, a balance in cost will prevent the desire to massrecruit (but not eliminate).

Reasoning...

Contribution of members to the outfit cert pool via tax%, is to unlock outfits ability to purchase deployable features. Call down support items, from air strikes, bombardments, supplies, fortifications, mine fields (anti-personnel, vehicle or even air) or any other fancy outfit only ideas.

All these options can be stockpiled, just like consumables an require resources to purchase once unlocked. These options will then be available to Platoon an Squad leaders that purchase the unlocks in their own certification trees.


Base Layouts Need a serious overhaul, the addition of "tank traps" to impede vehicle movement inside facility compounds is not enough. They can still cleverly get past them, I've done it as have many others. Main base spawn facilities are broken, easily camped an locked down to choke off base defense. Additional below ground rooms/halls an access to outer walls, inner base facility is an ABSOLUTE must.

This will increase defense ability of the major facilities, allowing defenders during a siege, who at this point are all infantry, an cannot push out with any vehicle strength to throw off the overwhelming tanks/air saturating the above ground access/exit points. This will give them a last man standing fighting chance and with the right numbers/organization an skill the ability to PUSH out the assault groups holding the cap points. Currently the only facility that really offers this is the biolab an it still could use some overhaul to it's design.

[Archonzero]

PS1 strategically speaking, had everything.. well maybe not everything. It did have a lot of things done right, generally speaking, they had 3-4 years of development to get a proper metagame in place and a game that ran 10 years.

There is a desperate need to establish a lattice system to the current adjacency system. As it is.. one side attacks, the other reacts. Other than eyes on the ground, a faction that is communicating effectively amidst it's playerbase/ outfits (to which there really isn't that much, outside of a few outfits) there is no real concept for the faction as a whole as to where the next attack is going or coming from until it happens. Not saying there are no players that can strategically speaking figure out, but as a game design overlay there is none. Most organized defense is purely a reactionary action inside the current PS2 framework.

The addition of a lattice system linking the large + major facilities in an unlock/lock web while leaving the midsized/smaller outposts as resource only options, SOE can add a strategic depth to the game. That will allow faction members to draw their own tactical/strategic initiatives based on what is happening when an where. Coupled with active eyes reconnoitering the active areas, squad leaders, platoon commanders an leaders can get a decent strategic concept as to the flow of the battle an establish proper counters or defensive measures to stem or defeat a steamrolling assault before it's even hit their main lines. Smaller outfits and groups can maintain control of and flow of resources, while larger groups can maintain the attack/defense over the strategic inroads of held territories.

[Crator]

They had 10 years of development to get a proper metagame in place.

I wish people would stop saying that. Yes, PS1 existed for 10 years. Doesn't mean they spent working on the game all those years. And in fact they didn't.

[p0intman]

they had 10 years of development to get a proper metagame in place.


No it didn't. Lattice and most other aspects were in place in beta or shortly after.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=46776

[ringring]

I think that when I started (May 2004) all the continents and caves were present.

After that point all I recall is warpgate transforming into broadcast warpgates when the appropriate conditions were met, BFR's, Scout rifle, Dragon and Scorpion, Capital Shields with a couple of iterations and merits.

Of course, br20 was increased to BR25 after a couple of years and then to BR40 after a few more.

But that was it (I think). All the important stuff was in within 1 year of launch.

On the downside, the game was very very unstable for many years. In fact more unstable than I think PS2 is now.

[ringring]

Holy Double-post Batman!

[Hamma]

No it didn't. Lattice and most other aspects were in place in beta or shortly after.

http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=46776

Aye almost everything in the current PlanetSide game was done within the first what, 3-4 years or so? After that it was just random stuff and christmas presents on the ground.

[Malacovics]

My whole outfit has 32 members, about 15-20 actively.
We focus on Esamir, on Cobalt (EU)...
I know the pain you feel man..

We can only pretty much solo regions again and again, and then accidentaly hop into another Air zerg, existing of 20 fighters that rapes us, or we randomly bump into 15 prowlers...

Being part of a small outfit isnt fun and neither worth it both time and XP wise in the current state of the game.

[Archonzero]

I wish people would stop saying that. Yes, PS1 existed for 10 years. Doesn't mean they spent working on the game all those years. And in fact they didn't.


Yea poorly quoted quote on my part, it was 6am in the morning an I had been up for almost 24 hours, brain wasn't fully oxygenated. I meant 8-10 years of running, with the 3-4 years of actual game dev content. The lattice system was not up during beta it took a while before implementation, somewhere during the first year after launch, even then still had plenty of tweaking an fixes after.

Still PS1 had a metagame, with clear idea of reward/structure ability for commanders, not simply just the mantle to whomever decided to bark the orders an spent 100 certs to use /order. They had additional tools to mark + draw on the map for all the faction to read, communicate in a separate channel, as well had skills an functions with the CT to affect the actual battlefield.

Reading the map could give anyone an idea of how the battlers were going, hotspot battle markers turned up relatively quick an updated themselves fairly soon if things rapidly changed. You could tell how much of a base was compromised by looking at the map, you could see the outlying facilities (ie towers) that were under enemy control, all the way from the sanctuaries.

This game is completely new-player unfriendly. Pick your faction, get a brief debriefing then pretty much instant action right into a meatgrinder battle. You don't drop down on friendly lines, just right into the meatgrinder, no idea of what does what, no class selection, no loadout review, no keybind setups. Simply thrown to the wolves. I have had many fellow gamers, first time planetside/fps players that have downloaded the game at my word of it being a great game, only to never bothered with the title again after that first experience. It strikes me the only ones who manage to stick with it, are players who have a friend waiting in game for them to act as a mentor/guide, experienced FPS twitch players that can adapt quickly to the environment. Even then, I've still had 4 fps experienced friends never look back to this title, due to a clear lack of game direction, information, customization, or variety.

[The Degenatron]

Hey Hamma, after watching your video and then later reading BuzzCut's big post, I decided to put together a list of fixes that I'd like to see implemented. Many of which directly address the concerns you both raised.

I'd appreciate it if you'd read it over and let me know what you think. Here's the link. (http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/how-i-would-fix-planetside-2.75465/)

That also goes for everybody who sees this. When I first posted it sank like a stone so I'm trying to get some feedback going on it.

[FireWater]

Well we were getting attacked by Let the Brit Drop and DVS last night, we managed to hold a lot of the continent, and was able to counter cap after they lost a lot of assests.

[Blynd]

Hey Hamma, after watching your video and then later reading BuzzCut's big post, I decided to put together a list of fixes that I'd like to see implemented. Many of which directly address the concerns you both raised.

I'd appreciate it if you'd read it over and let me know what you think. Here's the link. (http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/how-i-would-fix-planetside-2.75465/)

That also goes for everybody who sees this. When I first posted it sank like a stone so I'm trying to get some feedback going on it.

read it and liked it infact tbh i think the base changes would be perfect to give people the incentive and the ability to put up a decent defense.

/+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0 :D

[p0intman]

The Guard is in a bad place atm. Not my place to say how bad or anything, but this situation with the game cannot persist and something must budge, or small tactical outfits that pride ourselves on personal skills and group tactics over large numbers will slowly, but most certainly cease to exist.

This is as close to an ultimatum as I ever want to make, but it needs to be said:

Higby, Clegger and those that ran with us, do something... anything that shows us you're not putting a knife in our back. We showed you our tactics, we had you on comms with us, in squad with us and in our outfit in beta. You know how important personal skill is to us, and this situation just smacks of using all of that against small outfits like ours. Now, more than ever, prove to me that I'm wrong.

Dont give me a reason to say I told you so. I voiced displeasure when it was mentioned any of you joined our outfit. Was I right? Did we make a mistake with that?

[Crator]

This game is completely new-player unfriendly. Pick your faction, get a brief debriefing then pretty much instant action right into a meatgrinder battle. You don't drop down on friendly lines, just right into the meatgrinder, no idea of what does what, no class selection, no loadout review, no keybind setups. Simply thrown to the wolves. I have had many fellow gamers, first time planetside/fps players that have downloaded the game at my word of it being a great game, only to never bothered with the title again after that first experience. It strikes me the only ones who manage to stick with it, are players who have a friend waiting in game for them to act as a mentor/guide, experienced FPS twitch players that can adapt quickly to the environment. Even then, I've still had 4 fps experienced friends never look back to this title, due to a clear lack of game direction, information, customization, or variety.

Let's be fair though. PS1 didn't have a great tutorial system when it first came out either. I'm hoping that is something devs are actively working on with PS2. At least the delivery system for it. They put together the new player experience pretty quick in PS2 (we didn't see it throughout beta). But I do agree, it's not good to have these bad new-player experience as they don't help hook players into the game. PS1 had the same issues.

[Wandering Mania]

One major problem with the game in a whole not just outfit size. Is that in PS1 most of all the bigger bases where in enclosed arieas that forced people out of there tanks/aircraft. The it was hallway defence/potrolls. I miss those most of all because some of those hallway fights where some of the best fights ever in the entire history of planetside. The PS2 bases all of them are way to open and every spawn room is spamable by aircraft/tanks. At least in PS1 people would either kill the Spawn Tubes or kill the base genarator to stop the spawning there. Shure some on the new bases have the SCU but on the smaller outposts there is a masive spawn camp every time.

[Archonzero]

Stumbled across this Alpha footage of base layout/design?
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/6348/picspc8509621334328179.jpg

[Kerrec]

Posted this in my own thread, but it sank like a stone. In hindsight, my post probably came off as a little bit hostile...

In any case, the issue I see regarding large outfits and/or Zergs is the resources they can bring to the table.

Resources are tied to individuals and not to territory. Sure, you get resource bonuses for having more territory, but think about it...

It IS possible for a faction to have NO territory on a continent, but produce more resources than a faction that controls all the territory, simply by having more population. That and the Warpgate gives you access to everything. So a zerg can form at the warp gate, load up on force multipliers (vehicles, etc...) and begin the crawl across the map.

As far as I can see from playing, the devs could make a new map that has 3 warpgates and just provide interesting terrain for the 3 factions to battle in. To me the current territory has that much significance...

The only real advantage that I can see for the current facilities, is having a spawn point for vehicles that is closer to the front lines, so one doesn't have to drive all the way from the Warpgate.