Give defenders some extra time if they manage a point reset.

[Figment]

I would say the following change to capture times would help defenders a lot:

Upon reset:

-60 seconds capture time.

Optional: consecutive reset(s) within the next minute (or two) :

-30 seconds

(To prevent recapture abuse and penalize losing the point again a bit, while still giving players some time to work from a momentary recapture)

Why? Because simply taking back the point often means nothing other than the player risking all to reset it getting shot, due to the ticker system hardly having been influenced by the time the attackers recapture it.

It also allows defenders to move on a bit sooner and allow them to try to control the zone, rather than just the point (which is something attackers need to do) as they are likely spread thinner than the attacker.

[CzuukWaterson]

Do not want. There are already too many redeploy spammers.

[Boildown]

They need to fix redeploy first. Logistics means something in real life, but is far too easy in Planetside 2.

[Figment]

Different subject, related, but don't shoot this down due to another thing that needs to be fixed.


They need SOIs to stop people harting straight into the base anyway.

[BlaxicanX]

Dunno. I understand and empathize with the idea of punishing attackers for camping the spawn room in a frenzy to the point where they leave a cap undefended, but I think that this punishes them too much. Sitting around with your thumb up your ass because the cap timer still has three minutes to go and the fight basically ended 90 seconds ago is already a huge problem in the game, imo. Extending that wait by another minute because an infiltrator got lucky ten seconds before the base flips would be more unfun than punishing, I think.

If anything, I think the current timers for caps needs to be lowered, or at least tied to pop in a base (so that if the defender pop drops to 1-12 the timer instantly drops down to 30 seconds, or something). There are too many meaningless bases in Planetside 2 to warrant making them all more of a pain in the ass to capture.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by BlaxicanX

Dunno. I understand and empathize with the idea of punishing attackers for camping the spawn room in a frenzy to the point where they leave a cap undefended, but I think that this punishes them too much. Sitting around with your thumb up your ass because the cap timer still has three minutes to go and the fight basically ended 90 seconds ago is already a huge problem in the game, imo. Extending that wait by another minute because an infiltrator got lucky ten seconds before the base flips would be more unfun than punishing, I think.

If anything, I think the current timers for caps needs to be lowered, or at least tied to pop in a base (so that if the defender pop drops to 1-12 the timer instantly drops down to 30 seconds, or something). There are too many meaningless bases in Planetside 2 to warrant making them all more of a pain in the ass to capture.

lowered! The times are too low anyway. The times are at the root of one of the current problems with this iteration of the game. Caps mean nothing now, strategy means nothing, defence and resecures is mostly useless and the only reason when it's not is in part because of the stupid redeploy which at least allows hacked bases to be reinforced. Plus when you do put a hack on there is little to no tension that a resecure team will be on it's way because, if they do arrive in time, the speed of the attack vs defence timer means it's just as hard to resecure for defenders as it is for attackers to capture.

There is no tension!

There are too many bases, timers are too low, coordination is low, ghost hacking is rewarded ..... so many things.

[Figment]

Defense takes time to organise, especially if people have to come over from somewhere else. Especially if you're up against a big group. Stalling for time is something defenders need more than anything.

If you want to make defense meaningful, they should have a manageable objective. Defenders are in the minority and they are typically pushed back into a single camped point. They simply can NOT be tasked with the SAME task the attackers have. Tasking people with the same task while only giving them disadvantages (and yes, a solid spawn you can't escape because of bad design is a disadvantage, especially if you have to cross open ground against superior unit types like tanks and aircraft).

At the very least, defenders should have a tick rate that is significantly faster if you force them to hold a point, because defenders cannot afford to sit around in the open next to a capture point. This is just lazy design where an arbitrary assumption is made that defenders and attackers are equals, while anyone knows from experience this is normally not the case.


Attackers MUST be forced to control the point, rather than control the spawnroom.



I can't but help but feel that people who say that being punished for leaving the capture point alone for a "lucky infil" to capture, have absolutely no idea what they're doing...




On the other hand, you could also have very hard to reach, but very fast flipping/ticking points for attackers to take. Like points that are three defense layers deep into an infantry base, right next to the spawn point. In the past design iterations of PS2, such fast capture points were right in the middle of open terrain, often at the gate, making it pointless for defenders to even try and reach it in time to reset it. Let alone migrate from another bases to try and stop it.

[BlaxicanX]

Originally Posted by Figment

Defense takes time to organise, especially if people have to come over from somewhere else. Especially if you're up against a big group. Stalling for time is something defenders need more than anything.

If you want to make defense meaningful, they should have a manageable objective. Defenders are in the minority and they are typically pushed back into a single camped point. They simply can NOT be tasked with the SAME task the attackers have. Tasking people with the same task while only giving them disadvantages (and yes, a solid spawn you can't escape because of bad design is a disadvantage, especially if you have to cross open ground against superior unit types like tanks and aircraft).

At the very least, defenders should have a tick rate that is significantly faster if you force them to hold a point, because defenders cannot afford to sit around in the open next to a capture point. This is just lazy design where an arbitrary assumption is made that defenders and attackers are equals, while anyone knows from experience this is normally not the case.


Attackers MUST be forced to control the point, rather than control the spawnroom.

You say "should" and "must" a lot in this passage.

But very little "why" or "because".

Explain what the problem is that you're trying to address, than explain how this offered solution alleviates it.

You didn't directly address anything I said, but you did feel compelled to take a snipe at me, so I'm assuming you want to have this discussion. Let's do it right, then.

[Figment]

It should be very obvious why I say should and must, if you don't see why, you lack experience. I presume the people I talk to have some basic grasp of logistics and experience in what they encounter outside of a spawnroom and what kind of defense one can find around a point.

I gave ample reasons. Don't pretend I didn't give any reasons, in fact, you're the one who hasn't provided much reasoning whatsoever aside from you thinking it's a pain in the arse to capture some bases in PS2, which... is rather ludicrous and you haven't substantiated at all.


Defenders on the other hand keep getting pinned down in a room with few chances to get out and even less incentive to get out because their task is unachievable. This alone is sufficient reason. That you didn't grasp this the first time I said it and completely overlooked the reasoning is... "somewhat indicative". IMO.





As long as a ticker is running, there should be a major incentive to try and get that point back. Any incentive requires a reward, a chance to win. With no chance of winning, since attackers will likely retake the point fast, nobody will even try for the points and just whore kills from the false safety of a spawnroom. False safety, because it guarantees a loss, even at a higher K/D. A major reason why I don't like that spawns can't be lost till the base turns, because it provides an incentive to just stay in the spawns and doesn't force you to "do or die".

Spawn rooms should be in relatively safe locations, so there's little incentive to hang around the spawnroom. In PS2, it's usually in a sieged location from the moment the base attack begins. This is an incentive for passive spawnroom defense, rather than active defense. There being an instant battlefield reward for capturing a point (rather than some meaningless experience points) is an actual incentive to try and take it back and provides a meaningful objective for even small resecure teams, because it allows them to gain time to restore order to a base. Without time, there's no battle.


If you think 60 seconds is a horrendous amount of time lost, then I don't know how long your attentionspan is, but we dealt with 15 minute losses, ie. 900 second resets in PlanetSide 1. That's right, that's 15x longer resets than I'm talking about now.


And it worked fine as an incentive to do the most insane strike attempts and was extremely rewarding for the defending party and quite brutal on the attacker's moral. Hence I'm suggesting a compromise.

And yes, as attackers, we held those points with 3 attackers against 15 for those 15 minutes (provided the 15 were poor players and come in one by one), due to the spawnroom being possible to disable, the sheltered Control Console locations, the SOI that prevented drop pods on the base and the combat engineering allowing to set up a delaying and alarming defense grid and thus being able to control and funnel enemy movements and logistics (including spawns and travel time).

Note also that the method of capture (zone around point) or interaction with point where you need to be covered for up to a minute without interruption also matters a lot.

It's those things PS2 IMO lacks or made some rather poor combination choices in. A different combination may work, but it's not the best combination of base design and capture systems right now either. Hence I'm proposing some adjustments.


PS: Blaxican, nothing personal, but if you can't see defenders need time to dislodge an attacker's grip and have a harder time controlling the point in PS2 than attackers do, then I'm simply not exceptionally impressed by one's observational prowess. :/

[BlaxicanX]

Originally Posted by Figment

It should be very obvious why I say should and must, if you don't see why, you lack experience. I presume the people I talk to have some basic grasp of logistics and experience in what they encounter outside of a spawnroom and what kind of defense one can find around a point.

I gave ample reasons. Don't pretend I didn't give any reasons, in fact, you're the one who hasn't provided much reasoning whatsoever aside from you thinking it's a pain in the arse to capture some bases in PS2, which... is rather ludicrous and you haven't substantiated at all.

Defenders on the other hand keep getting pinned down in a room with few chances to get out and even less incentive to get out because their task is unachievable. This alone is sufficient reason. That you didn't grasp this the first time I said it and completely overlooked the reasoning is... "somewhat indicative". IMO.

I'm sorry that being asked to provide an argument is upsetting for you. Your passive-aggressive whining about my "lack of experience" and "inability to grasp" things isn't getting you very far though.

Reading the rest of your post, I get the impression that you're a pretty smart guy, but you're shit at expressing yourself in a brief and concise manner. Let me simplify and then address your points for you:

As long as a ticker is running, there should be a major incentive to try and get that point back. Any incentive requires a reward, a chance to win. With no chance of winning, since attackers will likely retake the point fast, nobody will even try for the points and just whore kills from the false safety of a spawnroom. False safety, because it guarantees a loss, even at a higher K/D. A major reason why I don't like that spawns can't be lost till the base turns, because it provides an incentive to just stay in the spawns and doesn't force you to "do or die".

"Instead of hiding like bitches in the spawn room until the base flips, defenders should be fighting to get the point back."

Spawn rooms should be in relatively safe locations, so there's little incentive to hang around the spawnroom. In PS2, it's usually in a sieged location from the moment the base attack begins. This is an incentive for passive spawnroom defense, rather than active defense. There being an instant battlefield reward for capturing a point (rather than some meaningless experience points) is an actual incentive to try and take it back and provides a meaningful objective for even small resecure teams, because it allows them to gain time to restore order to a base. Without time, there's no battle.

"Defenders can't leave the spawn room and fight for the point like Men because spawn rooms are often in areas where it's easy for the attackers to surround it and lock it down."

If you think 60 seconds is a horrendous amount of time lost, then I don't know how long your attentionspan is,

" http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7...60mao1_500.jpg "

And it worked fine as an incentive to do the most insane strike attempts and was extremely rewarding for the defending party and quite brutal on the attacker's moral. Hence I'm suggesting a compromise.

And yes, as attackers, we held those points with 3 attackers against 15 for those 15 minutes (provided the 15 were poor players and come in one by one), due to the spawnroom being possible to disable, the sheltered Control Console locations, the SOI that prevented drop pods on the base and the combat engineering allowing to set up a delaying and alarming defense grid and thus being able to control and funnel enemy movements and logistics (including spawns and travel time).

Note also that the method of capture (zone around point) or interaction with point where you need to be covered for up to a minute without interruption also matters a lot.

It's those things PS2 IMO lacks or made some rather poor combination choices in. A different combination may work, but it's not the best combination of base design and capture systems right now either. Hence I'm proposing some adjustments.

"It worked in PS1 dammit."

PS: Blaxican, nothing personal, but if you can't see defenders need time to dislodge an attacker's grip and have a harder time controlling the point in PS2 than attackers do, then I'm simply not exceptionally impressed by one's observational prowess. :/

"I'm right, and if you don't blindly accept that I'm right without me taking the effort to defend my assertion then you're dumb!"

- - -

Okay, so, if we were to lay this out in a manner that's actually conducive to a discussion rather than a condescending lecture...

Your asserted problem: Instead of fighting to regain the point, defenders are instead locked into their spawn room and forced to hide like betas while the attackers mercilessly bombard the spawn with bullets and switch thumbs.

Your asserted solution: Configure the capture mechanics so that if a defender manages to re-cap the point, the timer is reset by a minute.

Your asserted argument for how this alleviates the problem: By having the timer reset 60 seconds every time a defender caps the point, you're forcing the attackers to allocate troops away from the spawn-raping toward guarding points, lest they (the attackers) get stuck in an infinitely looping-gif where the timer is repeatedly reset. This also incentivises defenders to push out of the spawn point, as even if they can't re-take the base, re-capping the point for even a moment is accomplishing something by putting the timer back 60 seconds.

Okay. See how easy that was? It took me ~2 minutes to write that, and is much clearer and more concise than your jumble of words.

Now, allow me to retort:

The reason why I think that this proffered solution fails to adequately alleviate the problem is that it does nothing to account for A) the game's massive population problem, B)shit base layout and C)Human nature- and these three variables are the reason for why your asserted problem exists.

Consider this scenario. I'm Commander Dees of the NC, leading a full platoon in a gloooooorious offensive on the Vile Scientologists. We've attacked their base, sundered their defenses and driven them into their spawn point. Now comes one of the most critical steps in this attack: containing the enemy and trolling their spawn room until the base flips. Now, according to you, by virtue of a defender getting onto the point and resetting it, that should take some pressure off of the spawn, and best case scenario it could even give the defenders time for reinforcements to arrive. But here's the thing, as a player I'm aware of this mechanic as well. So what's to stop me from simply putting 5 dudes on a point so that my remaining 43 guys can continue throwing bullets at your spawn room like angry chimps throwing shit at people in a zoo? Five guys defending a point will all but ensure that you're not going to be able to take that point back without throwing at least twice as many guys at it, and how do you plan on getting that many people out of your spawn room that's in the process of receiving a bullet enema? By the time most bases flip, the attackers usually have around 60% pop there. With numbers like that, there won't be any temporary recapturing of a point because that's more then enough attackers to simultaneously guard all the points and still camp your spawn.

So right then and there, this change would be absolutely meaningless without prior changes to spawn room layout and population imbalance.

Regarding human nature, I'm now Commander Ackbar of the VS, and I'm currently getting my shit pushed in by the Noob Conglomerate who's got 60% pop on me and my platoon at this base. What is my incentive to stay and try to defend this base? Yeah, I can "maybe" push out of the spawn and stall for time, at the expense of many lives, but why bother? They've got the entire fucking base locked down, and besides this is base #89 out of 100 bases, and it has zero intrinsic value. Why should I throw my platoon into the meat grinder and stall for time when I could just have us all mass redeploy to base #88 and try to defend from there? It'll certainly be easier- it's a lot less of a pain in the ass to grab all the best positions in an empty base and prepare to defend it from attackers, rather than try to push out of a spawn room. Hell, as VS Commander Haysoos who's sitting at the warp gate with a full platoon, what's my incentive to go to that #89th base with 60% NC pop in it that's got 90 seconds left on the flip timer? They're dug in to hell there, we'd have to gal drop on them and it probably won't even work. Why not instead just deploy to base #88 and dig in there? People follow the path of least resistance, and inter-platoon cooperation within a faction is spotty in Planetside 2 at the best of times. Even with the option to continuously reset a timer, I don't think most people would even care too.

So, TL;DR: there's too many things wrong with the game's meta for this mechanic tweak to be of any value. I know from reading many of your threads over the years that you have answers to most if not all of these problems, but those solutions are beyond the scope of this thread, which is specifically about tweaking the cap reset mechanic. Fix those problems first, then this mechanic may be useful. Though, I'd argue that if those problems were fixed than this change wouldn't even be necessary in the first place.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by BlaxicanX

I'm sorry that being asked to provide an argument is upsetting for you.

I already provided an argument in the opening post which you completely failed to even detect. Sorry if that gets my sarcasm running when someone goes and without any argumentation or sense of reality proposes the complete opposite.



I was concise in the OP, you couldn't understand it. That's your problem, not mine.

[Crator]

Position spawns in locations where there's enough cover from vehicles so that the defenders can reach the capture point. If a 3 capture point base make one point real easy, the second not as easy, and the third hardest for defenders to get to from the spawns. *I believe the devs have addressed this in some locations on Amerish and Hossin.

An alternative to this could be they make it easy (complete cover from vehicles) for the defenders to reach the vehicle terminal from the spawns. The v-term at this base should not be accessible to enemy vehicles and enemy troops would have a really hard time reaching it. When the vehicle spawns it would have cover from enemy aircraft and have an advantage over enemy ground vehicles allowing them to push out easier. On this type of base they could make it easier for attackers to reach the capture points to even out the advantage that the defenders get.

I don't know about the whole timer thing that is being proposed Figment. It seems in a lot of locations I've fought lately (mostly on Hossin) , in battles where both teams have equal pop, they last for a good long while. Defenders are more easily able to defend. If you added the timer reset it would just be annoying like BlaxicanX described above...

[Figment]

Okay, so, if we were to lay this out in a manner that's actually conducive to a discussion rather than a condescending lecture...

yes the above surely wasn't offensive to anyone.

And yes, I'm right on this. Whether you like it or not, I haven't been caught making a wrong suggestion for gameplay and game design regarding PS1 and 2 (aside from people saying "oh you just want PS1" or "you just refered to PS1 so I'll stop listening there and assume you wrote I want it to be like PS1 exactly cause you're nostalgic"), because I will only suggest something after an analytical process that exceeds the casual forum poster's level of thought by miles... Whether or not you think that's arrogant, I don't care cause it's been proven a fact time and time again...

This topic is one of the things I've been getting experience in for years. Analysing the chance of a resecure, analysing the impact of spawns up or down, chance of spawns staying up, use of bait, threat level assessment, how much time you have to pull it off, timing of when to make a move, what kind of move and how much force you'll need to pull it off, or what you can do with what you got available and based on all those complex things together making a final decision on how to act for the optimal chance of resecure success, typically at odds where most people send me tells "nah I won't help, no way that can be done" and then pulling it off on my own.

As long as the mechanics favour individual actions, you can have small teams do the impossible. Of course if you have a smaller group, you need more time to perform all the necessary actions, may need to perform them not in parallel, but in sequence (like taking out spawn points, getting up generators, taking control points or other objectives vs actually fighting enemies, etc.)

My goal is to make sure objectives are possible to achieve at any odds (particularly making it possible for combat to not require zergs to attack or defend), but simply require good play and keeping things fair. If you do that, you'll have a much better chance of retaining players.


It really annoys me when people who casually come up with a reply assume they have identical credit and demand I give them such credit and treat them as having an equal argument. Usualy, they don't... Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised, but usualy I'm pretty disappointed and then I get cranky. Let's face it, my topics and design solutions are of a different level than most posts in a development forum.

Your asserted problem: Instead of fighting to regain the point, defenders are instead locked into their spawn room and forced to hide like betas while the attackers mercilessly bombard the spawn with bullets and switch thumbs.

Not the asserted problem because you completely oversimplify it. The problem (which isn't an assertion, but fact):

"Defenders in PS2 very frequently have too little time, manpower and incentive to perform the necessary actions to make use of the turn-around ticker system, because it's far easier for the attacker to regain and maintain control over a point than it is for defenders. In fact there isn't even enough time to organise an intervention on behalf of the defense, or even create a defensive plan. Executing all the tasks necessary for regaining control of a base take too much time. Hence the task of defending a control point in the outskirts of a base over a prolonged, uninterupted period of time is unworkable.

With two exceptions: UNLESS the defenders have a significant manpower surplus to overwhelm the attackers OR if the capture point is within sheltered control reach of the defenders. This depends entirely on how easy you can get large groups of people from one place to another (and therefore doesn't benefit small group play and benefits zergs).

Either way, as a consequence of the design and with no reinforcements coming, defenders are demoralised to even try, while at the same time due to the attributes of the spawnroom's shield they are incentized to stay within the safety of the spawn room."

Completely different statement and quite more nuanced than what you wrote.

Your asserted solution: Configure the capture mechanics so that if a defender manages to re-cap the point, the timer is reset by a minute.

Too simplified, that's only a partial solution of the overarching solution to improve all gameplay elements.

Your asserted argument for how this alleviates the problem: By having the timer reset 60 seconds every time a defender caps the point,

See what I'm talking about regarding attentionspan? You missed the bit where I stated consecutive resets would have less of an effect, so that sustained control is important for both sides, but it doesn't become an abuseable mechanic to allow the enemy to recap the point, just nullify the effect of having lost it again (just equal to the time lost due to back and forth point capture time).

Again. Nuanciations.

you're forcing the attackers to allocate troops away from the spawn-raping toward guarding points, lest they (the attackers) get stuck in an infinitely looping-gif where the timer is repeatedly reset. This also incentivises defenders to push out of the spawn point, as even if they can't re-take the base, re-capping the point for even a moment is accomplishing something by putting the timer back 60 seconds.

Okay. See how easy that was? It took me ~2 minutes to write that, and is much clearer and more concise than your jumble of words.

Not really, because you will lose a lot of important information and nuances. I don't write for low attentionspan people. Especially the bit where you think an infinite loop is likely to occur. In the end, consistent control of the point would still be important, you just get a bit of leeway.

Actually, look at Gate Shield generators in PS2 and how you can hold and resecure these.

Now, allow me to retort:

The reason why I think that this proffered solution fails to adequately alleviate the problem is that it does nothing to account for A) the game's massive population problem, B)shit base layout and C)Human nature- and these three variables are the reason for why your asserted problem exists.

You might want to stop there and realise I adress these topics separately, but from an overarching vision (as you noted later on).

See, what I've done is taken one part of that vision and broke it down into a concise, specific topic. Yes, concise. I can't post it as part of the overarching vision, because you'd get a 100 page report. Speaking of TLDR...

Consider this scenario. I'm Commander Dees of the NC, leading a full platoon in a gloooooorious offensive on the Vile Scientologists. We've attacked their base, sundered their defenses and driven them into their spawn point.

Takes about half a minute work in PS2. Walking towards the spawnroom mostly from a perpendicular attack vector to where the defenders are located, not exactly brainy stuff, is it? :/

Now comes one of the most critical steps in this attack: containing the enemy and trolling their spawn room until the base flips.

The brainless and uninteresting spam bit, yes. Containment is simplistic, too easy and boring as is.

Now, according to you, by virtue of a defender getting onto the point and resetting it, that should take some pressure off of the spawn, and best case scenario it could even give the defenders time for reinforcements to arrive. But here's the thing, as a player I'm aware of this mechanic as well. So what's to stop me from simply putting 5 dudes on a point so that my remaining 43 guys can continue throwing bullets at your spawn room like angry chimps throwing shit at people in a zoo? Five guys defending a point will all but ensure that you're not going to be able to take that point back without throwing at least twice as many guys at it, and how do you plan on getting that many people out of your spawn room that's in the process of receiving a bullet enema? By the time most bases flip, the attackers usually have around 60% pop there. With numbers like that, there won't be any temporary recapturing of a point because that's more then enough attackers to simultaneously guard all the points and still camp your spawn.

You never played as a full-time resecure team, have you? :/ Resecure (especially alone) is, well, was, one of my specialisations. Ask Delta Triad and TRx if I ever pissed 'm off with a resecure.



For out-popped situations, you use a precision strike, a fast paced strike where you keep moving straight to your objective, where you find a weak point in the attacker's defense of the point, apply sufficient pressure on this point to punch a hole, break through their lines and face only a select few at the point itself, take it and create some breathing space. For instance, in PS1 elite outfits would do a group Mosquito Drop, medium outfits would do a Galaxy Drop or Sunderer Drop, we often did a Deliverer drop. You will evade engaging most the enemies in the base during this time and simply stall the remainder, while one of you takes the point. If you do it right, you only face a couple enemies at a time, allowing your group to actually have localised superior or equal numbers during the engagement, even if compared to the total amount of people in the area, you are outnumbered 10 to 1. Hell, I've done it on my own against a hundred + with 15-30 on the point as an infiltrator in PS1 regularly.

Exactly because attackers are to guard the points, they will be more spread out, more isolated in various locations, thus spread thinner and thus more easy to handle by a small group of defenders or resecure teams.

So right then and there, this change would be absolutely meaningless without prior changes to spawn room layout and population imbalance.

Wrong, from experience, a population of 20% good playing players would be able to stall an enemy a couple of times. 40% could easily hold out if they stall and have some on taking out the source of the attackers (AMSes).

Currently the defenders are tasked with both taking out the source of the attackers AND holding a point consistently AND breaking out of a spawnroom, all at the same time, against the clock. They currently have NO WAY of resetting the clock, other than holding the point consistently, during which they have no time to try to do the other things, all the while with LESS population than the attacker.

Regarding human nature, I'm now Commander Ackbar of the VS, and I'm currently getting my shit pushed in by the Noob Conglomerate who's got 60% pop on me and my platoon at this base. What is my incentive to stay and try to defend this base? Yeah, I can "maybe" push out of the spawn and stall for time, at the expense of many lives, but why bother? They've got the entire fucking base locked down, and besides this is base #89 out of 100 bases, and it has zero intrinsic value. Why should I throw my platoon into the meat grinder and stall for time when I could just have us all mass redeploy to base #88 and try to defend from there? It'll certainly be easier- it's a lot less of a pain in the ass to grab all the best positions in an empty base and prepare to defend it from attackers, rather than try to push out of a spawn room. Hell, as VS Commander Haysoos who's sitting at the warp gate with a full platoon, what's my incentive to go to that #89th base with 60% NC pop in it that's got 90 seconds left on the flip timer? They're dug in to hell there, we'd have to gal drop on them and it probably won't even work. Why not instead just deploy to base #88 and dig in there? People follow the path of least resistance, and inter-platoon cooperation within a faction is spotty in Planetside 2 at the best of times. Even with the option to continuously reset a timer, I don't think most people would even care too.

That isn't human nature. Human nature is "spawn as close to the action as possible, work with whatever is at your disposal and go straight from A to B without considering reroutes and flank moves."

What you describe is called organisation and hierarchy (enough authority to make a group of individuals coordinate and fall back). Something which most players simply do not have. If you think otherwise, you're actually pretty blind or biased, because 80% of the players acts on instinct in a combat situation and works with very basic decisionmaking skills.

The things you describe require leadership, foregoing the ego of admitting defeat, etc.

Anything tactical or organised would actually welcome this change. Why? Because it will pay off far more to an organised platoon to keep a section of their squad's best IN the base defending, trying to stall for time, while the remainder regroups and supports externally.

I've also tried to organise raids like you describe above and coordinate outfits to work together to do the fall back and regroup thing. However. People refuse to fall back and gear up properly, but will prefer to make a last stand until all is lost and your fall back base is too late, while getting people to try and resecure a "lost cause" is virtually impossible. Hence my group of people used to do it with less than five.

And we'd pull it off with local divide and conquer tactics, distractions and local overwhelming of enemies. It requires a brain but is far from impossible, especially if you can make use of the overconfidence and short attentionspan of an enemy that outnumbers you. People that have to sit around and wait while others are shooting will move off a control point eventually when they think it's secure for instance.

So, TL;DR: there's too many things wrong with the game's meta for this mechanic tweak to be of any value. I know from reading many of your threads over the years that you have answers to most if not all of these problems, but those solutions are beyond the scope of this thread, which is specifically about tweaking the cap reset mechanic. Fix those problems first, then this mechanic may be useful. Though, I'd argue that if those problems were fixed than this change wouldn't even be necessary in the first place.

It's a much needed change (quite possibly the reset time should compensate for respawn time to some extend as well actually and may have to be just a bit harsher at 90 seconds).