Why lead a squad?

[Traak]

I have found in PS that the reward for being an effective leader is being kicked out of outfits. Being tactically, strategically, and just plain IQ smarter than the boss is the fastest way to get fired from ANYTHING involving Americans, in my experience.

[xSlideShow]

Originally Posted by Traak

I have found in PS that the reward for being an effective leader is being kicked out of outfits. Being tactically, strategically, and just plain IQ smarter than the boss is the fastest way to get fired from ANYTHING involving Americans, in my experience.

I disagree.

[CuddlyChud]

I just wanted to point out that I was never talking about the boutique outfit squads. I never had any doubt that gen droppers and max crashers and whatnot would be organized. I was specifically talking about the zerg, i.e. the majority of players whom you guys are writing off. I was thinking about how to give the average Joe an incentive to lead a squad. In Battlefield pub matches, chances are half your team is un-squaded, despite the obvious advantages being in a squad brings.

In regards to my comment about not needing squadwork, Higby once said in an early interview that you could go off and fly your mossie in circles and it wouldn't affect the team too much because of the sheer number of people. And its true. For the majority of players, doing crazy gen holds or whatever isn't normal gameplay. Most people are just doing their own thing towards the goal of taking the next base. And as much as you guys might disdain the zerg, without it, the game isn't all that great. So my question was, how do you give the average joe the incentive to lead a squad. Anyway, i feel like i'm floundering against the current here, so i'm just gonna leave it at that.

[XPquant]

You should come work for me sometime Traak, I bet I could change your impression.

Leading is the single greatest addiction I have yet to come across in online gaming and I have planetside to thank for that. You might say I am a giant killer in that I look to challenge myself, doing things because they are hard, organizing combined arms controlled by real people under constant pressure is a great challenge. This is the arena that Alexander, Qin Shi Huang, Julius Ceaser, Atilla, Ghangus Khan and Nobonaga Oda played in.

Being a leader of men in any situation, even in a video game is one of those things that when done well is satisfying in way's nothing else is. So no I do not need any mechanics encouraging me. The only thing leaders need from a game is a way to receive intelligence.

[xSlideShow]

There will still be people who want to be SL even in the zerg.

Squad leaders will still pop up just because people find leading the squad fun. All they need is cool enough tools to make squad leading a fun way to level up/play. There will probably be fewer SL's or people with command rank, but you only need 1/10, if we keep the ps1 squad size.

[SteinB]

Giving players an incentive to lead squads just leads to bad squad leaders.

[SteinB]

Originally Posted by Traak

I have found in PS that the reward for being an effective leader is being kicked out of outfits. Being tactically, strategically, and just plain IQ smarter than the boss is the fastest way to get fired from ANYTHING involving Americans, in my experience.

It takes real IQ smarts to lump an entire nation into one category.

[Rivenshield]

I lead squads because it's a natural extension of healing/fixing things. I like helping people. If I can score sweet sweet XP for it, so much the better.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by CuddlyChud

I must be the only person on this forum who doesn't like to squad lead...and yet I still managed to get to CR4.5 somehow.

I don't really like leading either. I'm not horrible at it when I put my mind to it, I just generally don't like doing it. Telling people what to do doesn't give me any kind of power rush and having to worry about much more than myself, my objectives, the enemy, and watching my team mates backs just gets to be annoying for me.

There are tons of vets here on the forums who love to lead though. I'm sure the percentage will drop in the beta and even more in the full release, but there will always been a fair amount. Outfits will undoubtedly try to make sure to have a lot of leaders and motivate their members to learn and take up leadership. A decent percentage of new players who never played the first game will probably gravitate towards leadership for the same reasons that some of these diehard PS1 leaders did.

In the end, we may be shorter on volunteer squad leaders than in the first game, but is that really a bad thing? I bet you that the number of squads with ACTUAL leaders will go up significantly. What's the use of having a squad leader who doesn't lead? Just go solo, especially in PS2 where you will be able to take on missions.

I'm sure some people will still group together without a real leader if there are still experience perks to being in a squad, but how will that be much different than PS1? The only difference is that someone will have to start that squad without any reward of CEP to motivate them. If someone wants the XP perk of being in a squad badly enough, I'm sure they will start a squad. Just make it so that you can have an open squad that anyone can join freely without permission. That way a slacker squad leader doesn't have to spam to get new squad members. Less spam, better leaders, everybody wins.

[Zulthus]

^^^I'm with Xyntech. If I HAD to lead, I could manage it. I have in the past. I just don't like the pressure invovled with keeping your team safe and watching for all of the factors going against you. I feel much more at home receiving orders because I can concentrate on one objective. It's less stressful.

[FoxBait]

CuddlyChud, I might be misunderstanding your point here, but I'll go for it anyways.

It sounds like you're worried that, without an incentive, you won't see squads popping up randomly amongst the zerg (?). Now, I'm not really sure why this worries you for certain, whether its that there won't be enough squads for people that are actually looking be lead or that there won't be enough herding of the zerg forces.... but I'd like to think that the missions posted by people with a really high amount of command certs (missions that are seen by all the zerg) will manage to herd them much better than in PS1.

Really, it comes down to the question of what's the point of being in a squad in PS1? Besides the exp, which any random group of lone wolves can benefit from, squads in PS1 were the most deadly tool on the battle field when they were being led by someone who cared to doing any leading. Those are the kind of people who don't lead for the CEP, they do it because it's one of the things they enjoy about PlanetSide. No amount of incentive it going to change how many real squad leaders we see in PS2.

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Traak

I have found in PS that the reward for being an effective leader is being kicked out of outfits. Being tactically, strategically, and just plain IQ smarter than the boss is the fastest way to get fired from ANYTHING involving Americans, in my experience.

The Persian Empire would've conquered the west had Phemistocles or w.e his name is hadn't convinced the Athens senators that someone else had posed a threat and that they should totally build ships to fight them.

The moral of the story is somewhere in there.

[DviddLeff]

I lead the Vindicators, and have done since 2003.

Why did I start in the first place? I saw a lack of general all round outfits as we waited for the game to start, and we filled that role.

Why do I still do it? Now its the pride and satisfaction of seeing my guys work together as friends to achieve things that they could not on their own.

In PS in particular its the times when your squad takes a tower with no casualties, hot drops from a Gal and crushes enemy tanks with a column of Mags.

The BF series has never had a good squad lead system; I like leading and in BF3 I have no idea how the squad system works when it comes to orders, as far as I know its just point at a capture point and press Q to give an attack/defend order.

What I want to see in PS2 is a similar context sensitive orders key that goes much beyond the BF series to something like the systems found in Star Wars: Republic Commando and Brothers in Arms. That would be a damned useful system.

[Coreldan]

I'm not much of a leader in anything myself, I operate the best in a semi-high position. As in, higher than the zerg, but lower than the true leaders. Just about every clan/guild/community I've been in I've ended up as sort of the officer who is asked opinion about everything, but doesnt really lead or give that much orders. Overall speaking I much rather and I'm much better at taking and executing orders than giving them.

With WASP expanding to PS2 though, I most likely have to do some squad/platoon leading at least at the start till we find someone more suitable for the job. Who knows, maybe I'll like it and keep doing it myself, but I sort of doubt it.

On another note, I often play quite short sessions, which isn't really too good of a thing considering that I'd be leading a squad

[ringring]

Wow, I am a little bit staggered by some of the replies above.

In my experience the vast majority of people do not want to lead and even then those that can are a fraction of that.

To address the point. Yes, there should be some incentive to lead. If some mechanism can be found to boost proper leadership then all to the good.