The Reality of Leading an Empire Into War

[p0intman]

The problem in PS1's leadership structure is that even though you could grind up to being a CR5, being a CR5 didn't mean someone was an actual leader and was worth listening to. The number of CR5s worth actually paying mind to, was actually quite small compared to the number of CR5s that spoke on command chat or on comall/comcont.

A common misconception was that all CR5s were bad and were worth ignoring. This is not the case, as many of us actually tried to do what we could for the better of our chosen empire. The problem arises that there exists a group think mentality in any large group of people who are asked to do something that they don't appreciate or care to do, such as re-securing or assaulting a base.

There exists a problem with the notion that players should not have a leadership position over other players in an FPS game as large as planetside, that is really that lemmings will follow lemmings unless given direction.

The development team of PS2 seems intent on eradicating any formal leadership structure for each empire. In spite of this, or even despite of it, I have decided to take initiative to fill this problem with a player made solution. I would like to the developers who read this to keep in mind, that if the player base wants something... it will exist, even if you don't formally support it.

Some, or even a few of you have already seen what I have been working on. A number of you have copies, or access to copies of the idea. For the rest, here is what I envision.

An alliance of outfits is already forming, and I am going to be approaching a few more in the near future. The goal of this alliance is to share information and chat channels ingame to coordinate movements on a massive scale that hasn't been witnessed in years. No one outfit is to lead this alliance, but the tactical decisions of the combined opinion of each outfit's squad leaders and tactical thinkers promises to fill in any gaps in empire leadership that the developers may leave vacant regardless of if it was intentionally or not.

The end goal of establishing this solution is to nullify the effect of the so-called "problem leaders" that do things contrary to the goal of having fun for the rest of the empire. There is no reason that a formal leadership structure cannot work and cannot be done correctly.

The coordination and command level discussions will take place on a secure channel either in-game or out of game. That decision resides with how dynamic and reliable the in-game chat system is. If it turns out to be that we need to use something out of game, it is not beyond the realm of possibility of using shared TS/mumble/vent information to coordinate base assaults, just like is sometimes done in PS1.

It is my hope that the developers will embrace this idea and eventually implement a method for players to functionally lead their empire as was tried in PS1. Comall/Comcont is not something to be feared or even loathed. Instead, how it is used by those who lack a desire to do anything constructive is the only real problem with it. In the end, with a lack of a solid in-game foundation, players will always pick up the slack.

And no, your "mission system" is not adequate.