Malorn's Planetside Manifesto. Anyone Have it?

[eveninglion]

Originally Posted by SGTalon

How is the Hex system so much different than the Lattice System? They accomplish the same thing but add the ability to spread the front line out to more than just the few main bases. It also gives the small towers and outposts more importance in the flow of the battle.

In PS1 there was no real benefit to taking towers except to deny the enemy a spawn point. Now they have real value from a resource, base capture, vehicle, and spawn standpoint.

Just because it isn't the same as PS1 doesn't mean it sucks.

In board games terms the PS1 lattice system is called a point-to-point movement system. From any given position, you only had a limited amount of valid places you could move to next. The lattice system consolidated battles because the base you just captured only opened one or two bases you could capture next. This funneled the players and increased the potential participants of a battle. However, this did lead to the point you made about small outposts being left behind, and battles only taking place at large bases.

The hex grid movement system in PS2 is markedly different from the lattice system, as with each base capture, the number of potential spots to attack next (at the very least) doubles. This is because each hex is always connected to multiple valid points of attack, limited only by terrain and enemy opposition. This also means that battles are now going towards the outposts as well as non-base terrain (large fields etc). The downside of this is that due to the nature of the hex system, the front line is much more spread out, meaning that each battle had less potential participants simply by the virtue of having increased options of where to go next. The zerg somewhat alleviates this problem as people tend to flock to these large groups for increased chances of a good fight (although the zerg has problems in itself that I won't go into here).

So while both serve as movement systems, the details and effects of one are vastly different from the other. The lattice focused the conflict to a few key points, thus ensuring a high population of participants in each fight, but failed to include outposts and other non-base areas in the equation. On the other hand, the hex system allows for more freedom of movement and attack, with battles taking place in outposts and surrounding terrain now; but also expanded the front line greatly which potentially diffused the amount of participants in the big fights. That's my understanding of the debate thus far. Please note that I did not play PS1, so if my analysis of the lattice system was incorrect I would greatly appreciated if someone with the knowledge of its details could correct me. Thanks for reading!

[SGTalon]

I think that the whole reason they went to the Hex system was to retain the idea of a limited front but allow for the order of magnitude larger populations that PS2 has.

When people are on their game the front can have fights along the entire thing.

Let's take Indar as an example, When the TR push the NC and VS down past the cliffs, there is always fighting along The Entire Front. The team that is working to push VS back always have a battle at Allatum, NC Data and HVar. That is the whole front on that side. On the NC side there is always that battle between Rashnu, The 2 outposts (forget the names) and Zurvan. The entire front has battles along the whole thing. If one team ignores the fight at just one of those outposts, that side is lost and they push all the way up to MAO or when it comes to the VS side, they never get stopped short of Suarva!

I don't think that this is any different from the Lattice in terms of focusing the fight though. It does allow for a fact reacting squad or platoon to push the fight past the bogged down stalemates that the big bases can become and force the defenders to reassess where they where they need to concentrate their defense.

This is one aspect of the game that i think they have done very well. If we are rocking a max pop continent you need that larger front to spread the battle out. When you are Low Pop, it can make things tough, but that just means the territory changes hands more often.

[Valcron]

Originally Posted by Hamma

I know they will add more to the game, I just wish they had pushed release back to 2013 to release it right. It's to late for many people.

Gamers have short attention spans, most won't stay around to find out what they added.

I am glad that you're finally seeing the light of day. This game and most of it's current systems need to be scrapped completely.

[SGTalon]

Originally Posted by Valcron

I am glad that you're finally seeing the light of day. This game and most of it's current systems need to be scrapped completely.

You sir are crazy. This game in it's current state is better than it's nearest competitor - BattleField 3, It's better than COD Black Ops and has tons of improvements over PS1.

And as you have been told for months, they are never going to stop updating the game.

Scrap the game? It is obvious that you have never truly looked at the game for what it is. You only look at it from the perspective of "It's not Planetside 1"

[Valcron]

I don't like how this community hangs onto the thought that Malorn can change Planetside 2 for the better. I have news for you, this PS2 team is driven by Higby and his vision of how he wants the game to be.

It's always going to be a meat grinder, run get killed run and kill. Strategy, and everything that was apart of PS1 is all gone. This is your new Planetside, take it or leave it. I left it in beta, and am very thankful I did.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by Valcron

It's always going to be a meat grinder, run get killed run and kill. Strategy, and everything that was apart of PS1 is all gone. This is your new Planetside, take it or leave it. I left it in beta, and am very thankful I did.

Theres really only a handful of meatgrinders currently in PS2, like the crown. Current gameplay is almost entirely run and gun. Speed and the initiative of a quickly collapsing front is the meta of the day.

[Hamma]

I don't think the "Community" thinks Malorn can single handedly fix everything. I think (hope) people realize that the creative director is in control of design..

[SGTalon]

Of course no one thinks that Malorn is in control. But it is pretty obvious that they have a team that works well together. But Malorn was hired to work on Meta-Game and World design. This means that they know that they need someone dedicated to it and they hired him because they know that he has great insight into what it takes to make the Meta-Game work. They are not going to just ignore him, otherwise why hire him?

I don't know why you are so down on Higby though. Seems to me he has a pretty good handle on what it is going to take to make this game last for a long time. Most of the things that people complain about are things that have been discussed by the Devs and they have stated that there is more coming.

[MaxDamage]

Not read it through, but his opinion that vehicles should have specific roles rings true to me.
Lightnings that can be anti-air, av, and HE anti infantry is pretty wanktastic.

[SGTalon]

Not sure if "wanktastic" is good or bad. Sounds like good though....

As to the Lightning with AA, i think that is was meant as a placeholder until the real AA buggies get released.