Huge Outfits and PlanetSide 2

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by LexDecon

I lead a small outfit, we have literally as it sits roughly 40 members, at any given time we are likely to only have half a squad on.

First I agree with Robo's post. Second we've hit a wall playing PS2 as a small outfit.

We don't want to be a big outfit, we hate dealing with zergfits.

We've taken 8 guys and dropped into a territory and sat on it held it for as long as we can. Sometimes its a little under 15 min. other times its over three hours, most the time its a mass of zerg tanks and liberators that push us out. We are infantry. We fight like infantry, work like infantry and often times are zerged to death.

Its frustrating as it sits right now in PS2, small outfits do not get any benefits, objectives are seriously set to benefit zergfits or the larger 100+ plus outfits. Tech plants are good in some regards because we can go in. Hit a generator, sit on that generator and defend it from being repaired while the base is captured. Small objective oriented situations are needed. The over all "cap the base" let the zergs work it, give Small outfits the ability to move on a single objective and benefit from it as a group.

Another thing we are irritated with. We are foot, ground pounders, infantry. Lately we've had to start running tanks. because of the zerg of vehicles, and air. We want to play infantry, and have set up some awesome ambushes, that slow down the zerg but seriously with how fast people can just go and respawn another tank, or ESF, its kind of pointless. We'll keep doing it because its what we do. but tactical faill backs are getting old under over whelming zerg of vehicles just because they can.

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

[WreckedM]

The singular killer app for PS2 is its massive scale combat. It is the feature that SOE correctly promotes as something no other game can do. Massive battles require massive armies. Massive armies produce massive outfits. Nobody should imagine SOE will walk away from their best 'feature' and that means the big outfits are here to stay.

Getting back to the OP's original question, with a twist -- How can a small outfit have fun in a game that is essentially designed for the massive?

Small outfits by nature are more highly coordinated, can be highly specialized, and have the ability to react much more rapidly compared to a large outfit. SOE can tweak game systems that allow small units to leverage these attributes.

- Faster, but lower seat capacity air/land transports.
- Difficult to access small bases and/or undesirable to visit from a large outfit perspective (ie. away from the front lines)
- Sub-meta-game. Give the small units something to fight for (& over).

Here's an off-the-cuff scenario: Remote single hex bases periodically randomly flip control to neutral and spawn a special resource. This resource is granted to only one squad from the faction that wins control based on total squad contribution. Slow control ticks. No spawn rooms. Get in fast, fight like it matters (bring a medic or 2!), dominate other fast small teams, win a resource that lets you do something cool.

That's only one scenario. The key is finding ways to cater to a small team's natural strengths.

A few other unrelated things that SOE could do to help small outfits
- Create an alliance system
- Enable custom voice channels (to support cross-alliance comms)

[Hosp]

Sledge, that's uncalled for.

[Saintlycow]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

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

I think what he's saying is that the game relies to much on numbers, and not enough on squad skill and tactics.

Winning in this game is throwing more men at the objective than the other team.


I'm not saying 12 people should normally be able to beat a platoon, but with skill and organization, they should atleast pose a challenge to 1/2 a platoon.

Add in actually defensible bases, which should require at the minimum insanely good tactics, or a 2 to 1 advantage to capture.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by evild

Biolabs are all backwards. You have exterior spawn points that once taken are difficult to recapture, that have telepads that lead right into the base, as close as the central spawn. A sunderer beside the exterior telepad is just as effective as the main spawn room. its the equivalent of a PS1 AMS router, but the router is unkillable and the far end is shield protected.

There's no 'progression' on the interior of the biolab like PS1. For PS1 think of an interlink, first you fight for the lobby, maybe takes a push, then stairs , or back tunnel to secure rooms on the level down, break the bd, then you have the choice of subbasement/gen or spawns.

Ps2 biolab is very open, walk in the air pad, and you've got ~180 deg of people shooting at you, not to mention all the rooftops. So there's no way to organize and cover angles, its just run as fast as you can and shoot people in the back and spam grenades. There's no BD holds, no lobby holds, no gen rush and hold the gen area, no hack to delay spawn timers and cut off benefits. AMS+Telepad is just as fast as the main spawn. Its just 'hey lets run around really fast and shoot each other and spawn back in real fast because there's no real depth to the game so we have to make it 'fast paced' to distract people from the lack of anything actually interesting to do.'

No, you've got the tactics of attacking a BIO Lab wrong. I've just come from a 40 minute fight for a Bio Lab and it wasn't a farm for the defenders (I think it was pretty even), we used tactics, we had our objectives and there was progression.

Bio Labs demonstrate the type of thing that every major base should. It's hard to take and once overrun hard to resecure but with persistance and tactics both can be done.

[Sledgecrushr]

I watch Sujieun and the outfit he is with on twitch tv every night. They usually run 2 squads and they are extremely effective. What they have working for them is great leadership, a willingness to do anything to help the fight, and a great relationship with other people in their empire. This tactical and social flexibility allows this Band of Bros to have a much larger footprint on the battlefield than what their numbers and "conventional wisdom" would seem to dictate.

[MrBloodworth]

Outposts should have been the game area for smaller outfits. But because they are near imposable to defend, due to design. Small outfits have little to do. This also includes lack of any real sort of support game play. Entire small outfits in PS1 could be dedicated support roles on a infantry and vehicle game play level, that's mostly non-existent in PS2.

The extremely fast pace of base captures ( And I mean this on a global, meta game flow, level ), and lack of an instant re-secure system, and the requirement of mass on point also removes small strike teams for having viable play avenues, you can no longer insert a small team to recap a base. Every re-secure attempt needs to hold a point as long as, or even longer than the attacking force, they will never have the numbers to do so.


The very best a small outfit and squad can hope to accomplish is dropping in and taking down a generator. Its about the only objective a small group can pull off that has any meaning. That is, if you can get there before XXX outfit/zerg steamrolls the thing. We can't back hack, or disrupt logistics any more.


Also, im just going to leave this here. This is what we all thought the next EVOLUTION of Planetside would be. Instead, we got Battlefield "Playing alone, together".



http://www.planetside-idealab.com/id...bilities.shtml



All of this was foretold many times over by vets.

[Hamma]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

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

Please contribute to the thread in a constructive manner. Thanks!

[Mavvvy]

Originally Posted by Saintlycow

I think what he's saying is that the game relies to much on numbers, and not enough on squad skill and tactics.

Winning in this game is throwing more men at the objective than the other team.


I'm not saying 12 people should normally be able to beat a platoon, but with skill and organization, they should atleast pose a challenge to 1/2 a platoon.

Add in actually defensible bases, which should require at the minimum insanely good tactics, or a 2 to 1 advantage to capture.

Exactly, the respawn rate for both infantry and vehicles favours the zerg outfit. The problems we are talking about are outside of how to use a small squad in combat. Ie a large battle is a collection of small ones anyway.

The problem is when a small outfit does everything right, for example kills the enemy attacking their position at a 5:1 ratio but because of game mechanics still lose a skirmish on paper they should have won. Now I know this ain't gonna change much but its good to discuss.

[Sledgecrushr]

Should I double space my comments so they are easier to read? Did you even read my quote or do you not understand what I mean by tactical flexibility? Really Hamma...

[MrBloodworth]

Originally Posted by Sledgecrushr

Should I double space my comments so they are easier to read? Did you even read my quote or do you not understand what I mean by tactical flexibility? Really Hamma...

It was one dam sentence, and it said "Blame the players". Ignoring reality. I'm not entirely sure a member of the Devil dogs can understand the issues surrounding the small outfits. If you can, you sure are not even trying.

[Punker]

I seem to remember a rather large NC zergfit that started on Markov, spamming all day every day recruiting messages to sanc. And proudly boasting the largest number of members than any other outfit in PS.

This outfit was HUGE, but the big drawback for them was mass inviting a lot of players who were just plain bad. The main tactic employed was to pick a target and swarm it, throw numbers at it and hope for the best.

Because of this, the outfit, while large, was still only as effective as the zerg. Their one and only tactic of throwing numbers at a base just didn't work against more organised, proficient and effective outfits. Better players were just outsmarting and outgunning them at every turn. They just couldn't compete with the speed other outfits were moving.

Once the servers merged to become one, I witnessed less and less of these members on. It was a rare sight to see this tag during the final years of PS. I guess they all moved on? had enough of being farmed by better players (and fewer of them) and decided enough was enough.

Fast forward to now, PS2 released and the most effective tactic in the game right now? Numbers. Numbers = winning. This outfit emerges from the shadows, boasting huge numbers once more and basking in the glory of winning fights because focusing their zerg-like numbers to one target works.

Knowing this I can understand why members of this outfit will want the game to stay as it is currently. Their tactics are surprisingly working for them, and they are no longer the laughing stock of the empire.

It still makes the game stale and boring for anyone willing to employ clever tactics, but that's okay - as long as this outfit can have their fun in the sun throwing baddies into the meat grinder then everything is fine.

[Sledgecrushr]

Originally Posted by Mavvvy

Exactly, the respawn rate for both infantry and vehicles favours the zerg outfit.

if I recall correctly the respawn rate is exactly the same for everyone, barring certification of course.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by p0intman

and every farm we find, SOE nerfs the ever loving shit out of, making the problem worse. its almost akin to saying they don't want us, sometimes. i kind of feel like its almost like they dont want competent, fast moving, and highly tactical outfits. they want zergfits.

i hate to make the analogy, but thanks to Thannis...



I'm not sorry, that is how it is.

Looks like the MI has some bugs to bust.

Originally Posted by ringring

No, you've got the tactics of attacking a BIO Lab wrong. I've just come from a 40 minute fight for a Bio Lab and it wasn't a farm for the defenders (I think it was pretty even), we used tactics, we had our objectives and there was progression.

Bio Labs demonstrate the type of thing that every major base should. It's hard to take and once overrun hard to resecure but with persistance and tactics both can be done.

Indeed, the only problem I have with Bio Labs are that the satellite teleporters are the only alternate entry point besides the pads, and that's only because they need a shielded staging area inside the Dome as well as the difficulty in re-securing those satellite points.

What I would do is put a "basement" on the Dome accessible from the current Teleporter shacks (Possibly have this a purposefully dark area where flashlights and night-vision scopes would be useful?), then hollow out the legs so they can be used as covered staircases up to the basement.

Originally Posted by Mavvvy

Exactly, the respawn rate for both infantry and vehicles favours the zerg outfit. The problems we are talking about are outside of how to use a small squad in combat. Ie a large battle is a collection of small ones anyway.

The problem is when a small outfit does everything right, for example kills the enemy attacking their position at a 5:1 ratio but because of game mechanics still lose a skirmish on paper they should have won. Now I know this ain't gonna change much but its good to discuss.

I don't know if its the Respawn rate or just poor base defensibility...

A large number of Outposts on Indar allow attackers to drive right up to the point in a Lightning, while defenders spawn in a shack on the other side of the base...

I'd like to see base (More importantly, SPAWN POINT) defensibility improved before they start touching timers again.

[Hosp]

Originally Posted by Punker

I seem to remember a rather large NC zergfit that started on Markov, spamming all day every day recruiting messages to sanc. And proudly boasting the largest number of members than any other outfit in PS.

This outfit was HUGE, but the big drawback for them was mass inviting a lot of players who were just plain bad. The main tactic employed was to pick a target and swarm it, throw numbers at it and hope for the best.

Because of this, the outfit, while large, was still only as effective as the zerg. Their one and only tactic of throwing numbers at a base just didn't work against more organised, proficient and effective outfits. Better players were just outsmarting and outgunning them at every turn. They just couldn't compete with the speed other outfits were moving.

Once the servers merged to become one, I witnessed less and less of these members on. It was a rare sight to see this tag during the final years of PS. I guess they all moved on? had enough of being farmed by better players (and fewer of them) and decided enough was enough.

Fast forward to now, PS2 released and the most effective tactic in the game right now? Numbers. Numbers = winning. This outfit emerges from the shadows, boasting huge numbers once more and basking in the glory of winning fights because focusing their zerg-like numbers to one target works.

Knowing this I can understand why members of this outfit will want the game to stay as it is currently. Their tactics are surprisingly working for them, and they are no longer the laughing stock of the empire.

It still makes the game stale and boring for anyone willing to employ clever tactics, but that's okay - as long as this outfit can have their fun in the sun throwing baddies into the meat grinder then everything is fine.

+1 Cus it shows.