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Old 2012-12-22, 03:02 PM   [Ignore Me] #31
Mriswith
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Bags View Post
Well, it's not 100% comparable because no one really wants to play AV. Everyone is forced to grind honor to be competitive in arena. No one is grinding base caps in PS2 for some other aspect of the game.
I think this is kind of the same problem though.
Because honestly what is "the goal" in planetside 2 ?, I'm assuming the goal is to actually capture an entire continent (or several) but the reward for doing so is pretty much non existent (or very puny -_-) and also that it's incomparable to the amount of effort involved means that peoples goal is currently divided by the type of players they are:

1. Good non-outfit players whose goal is simply to "level up" as in getting as many certs as possible in as short a duration as possible. (I'm assuming most of those players are doing this, those are the ones that actually do defend as long as they're not going to get spawn raped/camped)
Since they move around get a good amount of certs/hour for a moderate effort.

2. 'Bad' non-outfit players whose goal is also just leveling up, but compared to the 'good' non-outfit people these aren't good enough to actually defend or win most 1:1 fights, and the result is that it's much more efficient for these people to simply cert zerg farm even though you get much more points in non-zerg farming either attacking or defending.
They get a decent/low amount of certs/hour for a very low amount of effort.

3. PS Veterans or the like that want to resume where PS1 left off who doesn't really care about certs, most of them doing squads / outfit based play and what I'm guessing is that no matter what they do they have a moderately good success in it and even do last stands even if they get semi spawn camped.
They get about the same amount of certs/h as the good non-outfit players, at the cost of having the most effort involved, in organization/communication if not in strategy.

But I think due to the game being f2p the largest amount of players are either 1 or 2 (most of them 2 I bet).
Because honestly if your a semi-good player even solo playing (not even squading) you still get way more points defending a position against a decent sized group (the zergs still crush you in the end) then what you get from zerg-farming no matter how many bases you take.
I would say that if you want to actually get the non-good zergs to attack or defend bases / attack other continents you need to lure them with cert / score gain / cert/score continent buffs instead. (maybe add a score increase dependent on territory as well as population like it is right now, it's not very tempting moving to a continent where you only got your warpgate left because the bonus for fighting a superior force is pretty pathetic, which makes the situation even worse when your facing a team with ~60%+ territory control (and all the resources / spawn points that gains them)
And also make taking a base with a vehicle force harder to do, many of the esamir bases for example can easily get spawn camped by tanks that are outside any effective counter attack (especially those 4x air platforms bases).

Last edited by Mriswith; 2012-12-22 at 03:08 PM.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:05 PM   [Ignore Me] #32
Helwyr
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
[...]
Seems to be a combination of playing the territory control game + path of least resistance....but it isn't fun...at all. Its the exact opposite of what I experience in outfit play where we intentionally go after the enemy and pick fights because that's where the entertainment is.

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
On Connery I don't notice this distinction between Outfit players and non Outfit players. If players are sweeping up lots of bases largely uncontested it's with an Outfit in the Vanguard and everyone else just going with the flow. I don't see fight avoidance in quite the same way, rather avoidance of being the underdog/losing. So, players of each faction will cluster on a single continent perhaps two, but rarely ever split evenly between all three.

The problem with PS2 is the primary motivation is just gain certs, ok there's K/D stats etc for some people on top of this. However, there's very little in the way of game mechanics for players to be motivated to see their Faction collectively do well. There's a lingering PS1 culture that breathes a little life into Faction loyalty, but outside of that the player culture seems apathetic at best.

Double EXP days just seem to bring out the worst of it, there are Medics killing Medics over who gets revive EXP, people blowing up friendly Sunderers to deploy their own (and no it's rarely about bad placement)... Really it's like those awful Blackfriday events where people are trampling each other for the 50% off Toaster. Also, this behavior can be found among Outfit and non Outfit players alike. I know there's some great big Outfits that really help this game, but don't assume they're all good.

PS2 desperately needs a meaningful Metagame, where players benefit or suffer as an entire Faction. Being F2P and FF, the game also needs a lot of active policing, with bans handed out to repeat offenders who are working against their own Faction.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:06 PM   [Ignore Me] #33
RobUK
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


I can only relate what happens (or rather, doesn't happen) in Planetside 2 to what happened in Planetside 1.

First of all, the chat window in PS1 was always open. In that window was a pretty constant flow of tactical information, plus the directions issued by Command Chat. That helped a lot in my opinion.

In Planetside 2, the chat window disappears too quickly and has so very little tactical information or Command direction in it.

I really miss those things from Planetside 1.

The other cause of this is the massive vehicle and air spam. The "blob" consists mainly of powerful offensive weapons that simply cannot be stopped. It's like a Tsunami of steel, shells, and rockets thundering ever forwards to the next nearest "something" in the hex.

In the original Planetside the developers bemoaned their mistake of making the areas between bases complete wastelands bereft of action. Planetside 2 has made exactly the same mistake.

There is nothing to slow "the blob" down and nothing to dilute and disperse it, especially the increasingly massive air zerg that doesn't even have to worry about terrain and its inherent choke points.

This game is far too vehicle centric and suffers because of it. When I first started playing PS2 I really thought that I had found my dream gane that offered massive and prolonged outdoor infantry combat. The "everybody can do everything" design of PS2 has put paid to that, which is an absolute tragedy.

Last edited by RobUK; 2012-12-22 at 03:08 PM.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:20 PM   [Ignore Me] #34
MyOdessa
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Ghoest9 View Post
-No one is defending because its a total waste of time xp wise.

-So attackers are just moving in giant zergs from undefended base to base(which are even harder to defend against).

-If you try messing around in smaller forces you are quickly dominated by air.


Thers is practically no fighting for anyone except air picking off clueless small groups. And Noob defenders who get rolled imediatly when the zerg shows up.
This is not fun.
Im hardly kiling anyone any more(and my average k/d is still about the same.)




EDIT: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - WORST 2x event ever.(if a mod could happen to fix my title that would be nice.)
Until there is major air power nerf, it will not change.

When you move with zerg, your air follows, giving you protection from enemy air. Anytime you try to have squad or two move to take bases on their own, you get decimated by air.

I had great time in ground battled for the first week after release, then all ESFs got pods and Libs got buff on their Daltons and ground battlesl are largely stopped. Tech plants were fun, but after last patch, Tech plants are rolled over in 5-10 min.

Planetside is getting exceedingly boring.

Last edited by MyOdessa; 2012-12-22 at 03:22 PM.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:21 PM   [Ignore Me] #35
Rivenshield
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
The OP isn't crazy - I've observed the same behavior lately, especially late at night.
/puts tech pubs glasses on, rubs hands

You're our man on the inside, Malorn. Preach the gospel of defensibility and put it into practice as often as you can, so that people can look at their maps and good fights have a chance to coalesce.

Here are some quick but vital fixes:

1) End XP for capping empty bases. NOW. Implementing dynamic XP for *individual* kills is prolly a coding nightmare, but I fail to understand why it can't be done in short order for bases. No gunfire, no XP. Half a dozen stalwarts, eh, a little XP. Raging-ass battle, full amount and maybe a bonus tacked on for each half an hour.

2) There is no incentive for stubborn defense among the instant-gratification mid/late teen target audience -- the ones Smed apparently hopes to harvest -- if they can instantly swap sides and happily join the attackers. We had an eight-hour cooldown timer a decade ago. We need one now, for God's sake.

3) Spawn rooms need to be protected from vehicle spam. The only way I can think of accomplishing this with existing base/outpost design is to connect the spawn room to another nearby building via covered hallway. The hallway itself should have multiple doors. That gives the defenders more avenues of egress and makes the problem more complex for the attackers.

That's for starters. I've worked on a few enterprise software development projects myself as a technical writer, so I don't want to fall into the twin traps of feature bloat and 'it's easy because I don't understand it.' But... those are three quick (?) fixes I *think* can be implemented relatively painlessly in the near future.

Nice-to-haves include:

4) In the fullness of time, if they could include a spawn shield generator that's close by and easy to defend, I think that'd also help end the lame five-minute ritual of 'overrun base, camp spawn, farm people dumb enough to jump out.' Also, make spawn tubes destructible. Give the attacker the fierce joy of gunning the bastards in their tubes, as we did of old. Decisive victory is fun.

5) Make everything SMALLER. Good God those bases are huge. Having a few megacomplexes the size of small cities is fine, but in the main a base should be defensible with sixty or seventy warm bodies.... and that, frankly is all the game will support without lag or rendering issues. Clear some of the clutter -- not all -- out of the courtyard and bring in the walls by a third. Tighten them up.

6) I hate launch pads. They're stupid. They take away from the hard-SF feel. They're a video-game device inserted into an online war. That said, if you're going to have them in the game at all, make them usable by the defenders alone so we can't be overrun by a handful of enemies bouncing around like fleas with high explosives. Defense with launch pads that can be employed by both sides is impossible-- full stop.

7) Turrets need to be buffed. They're stationary and highly visible and they can't take cover, and they are magnets for all kinds of fire. I think the answer is to provide them with shields, same as infantry have. Perhaps this could be one of the benefits tied into ownership of an amp station.

8) Nerf grenades. Having an instakill weapon when there's 32 of you per side and clusters of 2-4 people are rare is one thing. When there's 50-100+ packed into stairwells it's a bit different. I've got 3/4ths my flak armor certed on my HA tree, and it makes no perceptible difference. I cannot count the number of enjoyable small-unit actions I've been in that have been ruined by a single grenade. It currently does no good to take a knee and be patient... you can only dance around like an idiot and the instant you see the bouncy red thing, RUN. Half the time you still die. Instagib weapons indoors that involve a minimum of shooter skill have no place in the already-lethal environment of a massive online FPS.

9) One big reason people enjoy attacking and taking bases is because you get the Pavlovian popup with POINTS! and MUSIC! and the NPC commander telling you how good you did. Do the same for the defenders. Rather than offering a small but user-transparent bonus on top of normal XP, increment them and roll them together every five minutes or so. BLING! BONUS DEFENSE XP!11!!1! and a big fat number that tells them how much they got ON TOP of their normal experience. It's a cosmetic thing.

10) With antitank mines, we can merely lay booby traps for individual tanks. We can't lay minefields. And minefields were, as you recall, one of the ways we used to attrit the attackers along chokepoints and in our own courtyards. We hardly ever *killed* anybody or anything with them, unless they were dumb or careless, but they helped. Bring back the mine from PS1 -- deployable only outside and only in friendly territory, and unable to kill anything but an infiltrator with one hit -- and let us cert the ability to lay up to ten of the buggers. Call it the General Purpose Mine, the GPM. You want to slow down battles a bit? You want a remedy for the tank spam? You want to promote strategic gameplay? Bring back MINEFIELDS!

Any or all of these can remedy the phenomenon of ghost-zerging by making traditional stubborn defense fun and rewarding -- and most of all, *possible.*. Best of luck to you and yours, and thanks for staying in touch. I hope you got something useful out of the wall of text.
__________________
No XP for capping empty bases -- end the ghost-zerg! 12-hour cooldown timers on empire swaps -- death to the 4th Empire!

Last edited by Rivenshield; 2012-12-22 at 03:58 PM.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:27 PM   [Ignore Me] #36
Stanis
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
This is what I typically see in larger groups - players roll around in a blob from territory to territory getting capture XP and avoiding the enemy. When the blobs meet it is by chance, not intent. When players try to stop the blob they usually get rolled and have little choice but to find their own team's blob and roll with it. Larger outfits have the numbers to chance this behavior, which is why I don't see it on ops. Seen several reddit threads pop up about this sort of thing too.

Seems to be a combination of playing the territory control game + path of least resistance....but it isn't fun...at all. Its the exact opposite of what I experience in outfit play where we intentionally go after the enemy and pick fights because that's where the entertainment is.

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
  • Complete lack of defenders advantage. By this I mean very few tactics withstand superior numbers.
  • lack/unclear of linear objectives. we play ring around the base stamping out fires. defenders can't defend that many multiple choices.
  • Current dominance of air.
  • Lack of metagame objectives to influence strategy


I shall run through each.

Defenders should be in a better position than the attackers inside a base they control.
The enemy can put a sunderer next to one of the half a dozen objectives they might choose to target. Probably two as outside the walls is a fair distance apart. The defenders are stuck with maybe one sundie inside the base due to interference ranges. Friendly sundies inside base should have half/50m radius.

Who put walls around a base and then left two 20m gaps infantry can run through? We have light assault. We have galaxies. We have teleporters and jump pads. We have shield-diffusers.

Those walls are to complex. Plain walls with merlons on the outer edge only

The objectives are not linear. They might need to take the wall shields to get vehicles into the CY. But there is nothing stopping them taking the central shields first. In the case of satellite bases they can flip those first and get teleporters into the bases.

I'd like to say teleporters and jump pads are atrocius in that they remove the defenders ability to hold a line. And make the intervening distance pointless.
In the case of Biolabs the jump pads are ok. They get you onto the pads. There are two entrances.
The teleports - are just wrong. They should be for the defending empire only.


Make objectives linear.
  • satellite base to secure spawn point (attackers must destroy teleporter generator to prevent defenders coming through it)
  • Put a shield on the "infantry wall gap". add a 20m vertical shield to the wall.
  • add 'shield generator' to one of the satellite bases. this opens the infantry wall gap and means LA can jumpjet over the wall. without this only drops/diffuser can get in.
  • inner base shields are also protected by the vehicle shields (infantry cant get to inner base gens until CY is taken)
  • take down inner shields
  • capture base or take down spawn gen

This makes the areas or points to defend known. Right now we are playing ring around the base attacker or defending it. It's a lovely deathmatch, but a terrible war effort.

The spawn rooms. How easy it is to camp them. Whether by infantry or vehicle. Plenty of suggestions about improvements to be made there.


If this sounds like the base can't be taken. That's kind of the point. With equal numbers the defenders should win. Handily.
Even outnumbered. 3:2. The defenders should win.
This is why metagame is so important. I have replied to Malorns post about "big outfits" with suggestions for every outpost and hex to have a purpose. Such as comm arrays. Shield-generators. intel facilities.
Players defending a base have to balance defence of those outposts and facilities. This is why the base falls - the defenders can't afford to just lose all that territory.
This gives us a rich metagame full of strategy.

Air can respawn in sanctuary. Bomber and Pilot, swap roles when one dies. 2 man teams can remain in the air fairly consistently. They have the freedom of movement to trundle around - short of strong enemy A2A ESF they don't have natural predators that. At first sign of ground based AA they bug out.

There is not a "no mans land" for air. No automated turrets.
Base turrets are virtually all limited in firing arc. They are certainly static. No turret every snuck up and suprised the air craft. They turrets take forever to repair compare to their TTK.
Also, some idiot put the AA turrets on the out edges of the base in clear line of sight for AV weapons. They should have been at the centre of foxholes on each turret - enclosed and protected.
AA turrets just don't offer enough bang. Fixed AA emplacement should clear the sky. No really they should.
Teamwork and co-ordination should be necessary to prevent that AA turret defending the base successfully.
(All the same arugments apply to AI and AV turret)

This gives us the current situation of anyone with a bit of teamwork using air - it works and is apex predator.

Maxes, Skyguard. They are needed in such numbers to act as a deterrent let alone a viable kill force. You get 50 aircraft overhead it's too late to start trying to take them out of the sky.



Finally the metagame.
What 30 men do on the other side of the continent should influence the strategic decisions for the whole continent.
A rapid response outfit or platoon may choose to grind kills instead - but they must ignore that at their peril.

Hexes and outposts should have a purpose. See huge-outfit thread.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:29 PM   [Ignore Me] #37
Helwyr
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by RobUK View Post
The other cause of this is the massive vehicle and air spam. The "blob" consists mainly of powerful offensive weapons that simply cannot be stopped. It's like a Tsunami of steel, shells, and rockets thundering ever forwards to the next nearest "something" in the hex.

In the original Planetside the developers bemoaned their mistake of making the areas between bases complete wastelands bereft of action. Planetside 2 has made exactly the same mistake.

There is nothing to slow "the blob" down and nothing to dilute and disperse it, especially the increasingly massive air zerg that doesn't even have to worry about terrain and its inherent choke points.

This game is far too vehicle centric and suffers because of it. When I first started playing PS2 I really thought that I had found my dream gane that offered massive and prolonged outdoor infantry combat. The "everybody can do everything" design of PS2 has put paid to that, which is an absolute tragedy.
Yes this is a real problem as well. Air is especially bad as its speed, maneuverability, ability to ignore terrain, and firepower combined with targeting enhancements like IR/Thermal make it omnipresent and very hard to avoid. Meaning once the enemy has Air Superiority, it's usually game over and time to move elsewhere.

Infantry really need a big boost in PS2, and it isn't in being able to destroy enemy vehicles more easily, but rather avoid them altogether. Bases should be redesigned to be much more Infantry centric. There needs to be way more overhead cover in the game, like 10 times as much. And finally Vehicles need to lose their ability to easily target Infantry, that is remove radar and IR/Thermal options that show Infantry from all Vehicles.
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Old 2012-12-22, 03:37 PM   [Ignore Me] #38
boogy
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Saying just rolling out coordinated anti-air is fine, but reality is people don't and won't do that enough to solve the problems we are having with air completely dominating ground. You can't tell people to play a game a certain way that they inherently will not. As each day goes by it's becoming increasingly obvious that there is a balance issue with air domination. I'm confident that the devs will figure it out, but let's not pretend that this doesn't exist. It's not going to help them make PS2 a better game.
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Old 2012-12-22, 05:12 PM   [Ignore Me] #39
Beefnoodles
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
The OP isn't crazy - I've observed the same behavior lately, especially late at night. I like to occasionally join random squads and try to be a typical casual player and see how different types of players and outfits experience the game.

This is what I typically see in larger groups - players roll around in a blob from territory to territory getting capture XP and avoiding the enemy. When the blobs meet it is by chance, not intent. When players try to stop the blob they usually get rolled and have little choice but to find their own team's blob and roll with it. Larger outfits have the numbers to chance this behavior, which is why I don't see it on ops. Seen several reddit threads pop up about this sort of thing too.

Seems to be a combination of playing the territory control game + path of least resistance....but it isn't fun...at all. Its the exact opposite of what I experience in outfit play where we intentionally go after the enemy and pick fights because that's where the entertainment is.

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
I honestly think that this situation (which occurs a TON on Genudine due to the moderate numbers of players everywhere except the Crown), can be solved with a couple of changes:

1) Drastically increase exp gain when fighting in territories where you are very outnumbered. I would love to defend, except I have a 2-3 KDR when fighting equal numbers. It drops down to ~1 or less if I am taking on the zerg outnumbered. I hate how slow I gain exp (and less importantly the hit my KDR takes) when I try to fight the zerg.

2) Bring back squad-only galaxy AMS. Allowing squads to attack territories without having to travel on foot is a huge deal. My outfit and I normally roll in groups of 1-2 squads. We often don't even get to our objective, because we run into the zerg or get bombed by air. It is really not fun, but we have to go on foot, because we NEED a spawn point (sunderer).

If we could travel in gals with squad spawn, it would be faster, safer, and give us the vital spawn point we need. It would also let us outmaneuver the zerg without getting farmed (or at least not farmed as often).
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Old 2012-12-22, 05:14 PM   [Ignore Me] #40
Beefnoodles
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
The OP isn't crazy - I've observed the same behavior lately, especially late at night. I like to occasionally join random squads and try to be a typical casual player and see how different types of players and outfits experience the game.

This is what I typically see in larger groups - players roll around in a blob from territory to territory getting capture XP and avoiding the enemy. When the blobs meet it is by chance, not intent. When players try to stop the blob they usually get rolled and have little choice but to find their own team's blob and roll with it. Larger outfits have the numbers to chance this behavior, which is why I don't see it on ops. Seen several reddit threads pop up about this sort of thing too.

Seems to be a combination of playing the territory control game + path of least resistance....but it isn't fun...at all. Its the exact opposite of what I experience in outfit play where we intentionally go after the enemy and pick fights because that's where the entertainment is.

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
Originally Posted by Helwyr View Post
Yes this is a real problem as well. Air is especially bad as its speed, maneuverability, ability to ignore terrain, and firepower combined with targeting enhancements like IR/Thermal make it omnipresent and very hard to avoid. Meaning once the enemy has Air Superiority, it's usually game over and time to move elsewhere.

Infantry really need a big boost in PS2, and it isn't in being able to destroy enemy vehicles more easily, but rather avoid them altogether. Bases should be redesigned to be much more Infantry centric. There needs to be way more overhead cover in the game, like 10 times as much. And finally Vehicles need to lose their ability to easily target Infantry, that is remove radar and IR/Thermal options that show Infantry from all Vehicles.
+1 One of the reasons why I stay at the crown so often is that vehicles play such a small role. I really wish vehicles were more of a support role rather than the true power behind pushes...
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Old 2012-12-22, 05:43 PM   [Ignore Me] #41
Illtempered
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Simple things that would vastly improve the game:

On Optimization
-Do it, and do it with fervor. Want new players?

-Do it without sacrificing game-mechanics-type things like render-distance of enemies, or hit-distance of enemies rendered, or not rendered, etc. Do it with cosmetic things first.

On XP
-Add Dynamic defense XP, as others stated, including XP for flipping or resecuring hacks.

-Add bigger global, and some kind of continental pop XP bonus for outnumbered empires.

-Less XP for ghost-hacks, possibly zero?

-Add platoon XP, not just squad XP.

On Resources
-Increase continental ownage bonus % for all three continents.

-Return % of resources when a vehicle decons by timer or by order, but increase resource cost for vehicles.

-Make all ammo, including vehicle ammo, part of the resources, in infantry or as a new resource, but make it cheap, which should mean less spam on all sides, and make the "auto-resupply" feature actually work....

On free-2-play
-Lower price for cheap textures(camo) that would take a novice artist 5 minutes to make(I know, I'm a novice and have made textures of that quality in about 5 minutes)

-Allow refunds for weapons that have been CHANGED AND THAT WE PAYED GOOD $$$$ FOR!!!!!

Outfit-mate: "Dude what's a good weapon?"
Me: "Well this one is, but I'm not sure you should buy it because it will get nerfed."
Outfit-mate: "What? Why would it get nerfed?"
Me: "Because it works good, and we're still in Beta. Maybe you should buy this other weapon that sucks, because I think they're gonna over-correct and buff the @#%^ out of it."
Outfit-mate: ".....?....."


On UI
-Overlay voice-comm and chat on outfit/platoon/map/etc. When you're leading a platoon, and looking at the map, and the platoon/outfit/squad lists, and getting AFK-knifed by cloakers, it would be nice to see who's talking on voice-com and text-chat.

-Make UI more customizable, like it was in Planetside, and allow chat-window to stay open longer, or indefinitely.

On Base-design
-Change Tech-Plant design back. Really? I loved defending them before. They weren't untakable at all though. And, I loved having to load up three full Bangbuses with shield-diffusers, and crashing the back shield, that they never defend, to take one sometimes. Or, hot-dropping everybody in on the roof to suppress the turrets and hold the top until the zerg pushed in the bottom. Those were epic caps that I'll never forget. Now when we get to a tech plant we are forced to ghost hack it because nobody is ever there. They are now the WORST base to defend. Just ask.

-Change Scarred Mesa Skydock back. Another really? It was epic to hold, and epic to take. We've done both, and lost it too. It can be done. You just have to think out of the box. Remove that retarded bounce-pad.

Do NOT touch Bio-Labs!!!!!!!! They seem the most perfect to me. Some are fortresses...others pushovers. I personally love the variety you find in all the different bases as-is. AMP stations are fine too. We've actually found some good defense tactics, and to prove it, today we held Elli Amp on Waterson against a much larger TR zerg coming from the north. We had our outfit platoon guarding the two outer gate-shield gens, and our pub(greeny) platoon split between the other two inner gate-shield gens. Every time one started overloading, we crashed it with Sunderers or ATVs full of engineers, maxs, and medics. They thought we'd be a pushover at an amp station.



Not-so-simple things that would vastly improve the game:

-Don't nickel-and-dime us to death with new content that costs SC. Make it cost certs, and lots of them. Please, for the love of God, do not introduce cheap clones of existing weapons(meshes), with improved stats, every week or two, so you can get quick money. I know it's not-so-simple, but please....

-Give us Sanctuaries, and more continents.

-Give outfits something. Outfit HQ? I mean, it's nice that I can outfit-invite from the platoon-list, and platoon-invite from the outfit-list now, but come on. We lost outfit-points, and a list of other outfits. We lost outfit-decals. Give us something, anything. I would be willing to buy more SC if I could pass it to outfit-members, or buy some outfit-specific camo, decals, features on vehicles/weapons, whatever. I would be willing to buy my outfit a gargantuan, Star Wars Star Destroyer-like Bastion Fleet Carrier.

-Get rid of the cheaters. I put this in the not-so-simple category because I don't mean that I want to have to DL some third-party program that doesn't even work, like Punkbuster. I'm torn. Is it that hard to have a few admins pop in from time to time though? TR was zerging us with 50% server-pop today, and to make matters worse, these obvious speed-hacking/aim-botting TR kicked us out of our Biofarm. To SOE's credit, we didn't see them much after about an hour, so I do hope they were removed. What happens when they can spoof their IP's though? How will you ban them in this free game?

-Fix the in-game voice-comm. I was really surprised and impressed when I first saw/heard the in-game voice-comm. "Wow" I thought, "Finally an in-game voice-comm that might be worth a $#17" It's only gotten worse since beta. I put this in the not-so-simple category because it must not be simple. Otherwise how could it's functionality actually be declining?

-Moooooar Meta-game!
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Old 2012-12-22, 05:46 PM   [Ignore Me] #42
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


It's already been said but i'll chime in: Bases are not very defendable. Spawns are easily camped.
Turrets are impossible to keep alive.
Jump pads that can be used by the enemy.

3 continents, 3 factions also doesn't help with players avoiding each other. Leads to a lot of 15%, 15%, 70% situations. Being hopelessly steamrolled near your warpgate or finding your own team's massive zerg is not a hard choice for most people.

As for air domination eveywhere, I think aircraft should take much more damage from small arms (including Liberators, which take zero right now). Nobody seems to think Skyguards are useful. The A30 walker AA option for tanks can't kill anything, it could use a major buff and i'd like to see it available for sunderers too.
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Old 2012-12-22, 06:20 PM   [Ignore Me] #43
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
The OP isn't crazy -
Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
I appreciate the concern. Since I have a crap work schedule and have had weekend commitments my primetime play with my outfit has been on the order of about 4 hours since release. The rest of my game time has been late night and i've seen this issue basically my entire time in game.

As has been said, the dynamic XP thing is the quickest fix I can see. Removing the benefit from doing dumb. There of course, like in PS1 you had some guy that was having a bad day in RL or was fed up with getting repeatedly farmed and went off and drained a whole continent or just flipped as many bases on an empty continent as possible just to pull people away from the fight. People will still do it but to remove the GCB (Ghost Capping Blob) take away their XP.

As Bags (14 K/D) tried to point out the cert/XP gain is miserable for ghost capping. As many others (o.5 K/D) are pointing out gaining that XP/Certs is important because the cert cost of everything is so high. Personally I think the cert costs/real money cost are about nailed. I know they went up and down a bunch and I don't really have an issue. There is always something to work for (I don't feel it is a grind) and it WOULD suck to have everything too quick, would just lead to asking "why not just give it all to us from the start?"

Anyway on top of the dynamic XP. There is the XP gain for strategic stuff as I have said before. Towers in PS1. The ones that were used for taking a base were crucial. Everyone knew it, they were taken for their tactical value, XP wasn't needed and wasn't given and that was good. Same thing with killing Gens. In the wee hours i've gone to empty AMP stations to figure out, I guess exploitable ways to get vehicles around... every gen blown and every term down. I don't know who wants to do that for XP but they are obviously out there.
Simply XP changes encouraging fun... like fighting.

The other and much bigger issue from the ability to change is the base design. I don't have as much on the side of good suggestions for change, but can say a few things.
The outposts around the bases seem designed FOR the attacker. It is obvious they are needed in the progression of taking the base but their set-up and locations FEEL like they are designed to help attack a major base rather than defend them. Since that is the case it eliminates that part of the needed progression.

You had pointed out in another thread PS1 had issues with Air/Tanks camping doors after taking a CY and keeping player inside a base. The biggest difference? WE STILL CONTROLLED THE BASE. There was also the possibility of breaking the siege. Taking out the AMSs cloaker, Libs from Sanc or other base, OS, plus re-taking the tower when those things happened in conjunction a team could push back out. Now with multiple points around the base and AMS's which everyone could have pullable from all of them even if the base was made defensible breaking the siege? Not sure it is possible.
Also with the PS1 base siege, as was also pointed out in another thread, there was a progression. Open field battle - Tower fight - CY fight - Lobby fight - Basement fight - Hack - Spawn.
Here everything is not just compressed but upside down, and totally missing the lobby/basefight and has gotten worse with the base changes to eliminate the "exploited" AMS locations inside the bases where you could defend.
Also pointed out here, the jump pad things and the base walls of the AMP station just are too beneficial to the attacker and hard to use by the defense. I don't see that changing though, especially with the note a few weeks back about improving the lone wolf aspect of LA. That and drop pods into the middle of the base. I can see being able to sneak in and getting a spawn beacon down to allow it, but for the instant action? It is just really powerful and is a very big issue with being able to properly defend a CY.

TL;DR
Dynamic XP
Defensible Bases
2 biggest issues in making people fight rather than the ghost hack blob.
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Old 2012-12-22, 06:20 PM   [Ignore Me] #44
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
The OP isn't crazy - I've observed the same behavior lately, especially late at night. I like to occasionally join random squads and try to be a typical casual player and see how different types of players and outfits experience the game.

This is what I typically see in larger groups - players roll around in a blob from territory to territory getting capture XP and avoiding the enemy. When the blobs meet it is by chance, not intent. When players try to stop the blob they usually get rolled and have little choice but to find their own team's blob and roll with it. Larger outfits have the numbers to chance this behavior, which is why I don't see it on ops. Seen several reddit threads pop up about this sort of thing too.

Seems to be a combination of playing the territory control game + path of least resistance....but it isn't fun...at all. Its the exact opposite of what I experience in outfit play where we intentionally go after the enemy and pick fights because that's where the entertainment is.

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
Defense isn't viable atm. Go and change that, and see what happens. I bet if liberators and tanks had less of an immediate effect, you'd see more infantry -fighting- and less camping/blobbing.

there needs to be a definite line at all facilities - outposts, towers and main bases alike - where tank spam stops and infantry fighting begins. the base design in ps1 was well done for this exact reason. go take a look at them again with this in mind.

until then, im going to get my infantry fighting fix with dayz/arma2/wasteland. its much more fun when personal ability comes into play.
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Last edited by p0intman; 2012-12-22 at 06:28 PM.
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Old 2012-12-22, 06:50 PM   [Ignore Me] #45
bpostal
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Re: Ghost capping zergs - air domination everywhere else - wordt 2x event ever.


Originally Posted by Malorn View Post
The OP isn't crazy - I've observed the same behavior lately, especially late at night. I like to occasionally join random squads and try to be a typical casual player and see how different types of players and outfits experience the game.

This is what I typically see in larger groups - players roll around in a blob from territory to territory getting capture XP and avoiding the enemy. When the blobs meet it is by chance, not intent. When players try to stop the blob they usually get rolled and have little choice but to find their own team's blob and roll with it. Larger outfits have the numbers to chance this behavior, which is why I don't see it on ops. Seen several reddit threads pop up about this sort of thing too.

Seems to be a combination of playing the territory control game + path of least resistance....but it isn't fun...at all. Its the exact opposite of what I experience in outfit play where we intentionally go after the enemy and pick fights because that's where the entertainment is.

Any feedback from the PSU community on contributing factors to this behavior? I have my own thoughts but I'd like to learn what y'all think is going on here.
Farming is what's going on here. Farming the 'most efficient' path of cert gain. There seems to me, to be a bias towards the majority of players to work towards the certs (and the personal gain) it brings at the expense of more (but potentially more rewarding, game play wise) strategic gameplay. Those who are not in large outfits are at an extreme disadvantage when they encounter the enemy zerg and are quickly overwhelmed, leaving a bad taste in their mouth.
I'd bring up the lattice, although I know you have more experience with it than I do, and how it funneled these opposing zerg together in a chaotic, orgasmic frenzy of murder and mayhem. The same can be accomplished with the hex system but it takes much more thought on the behalf of the players (new players especially) to locate the opposing zerg and move to not only engage, but to engage in an favorable location.
I can't really propose any ironclad solutions other than to change base layout to aid in nullifying enemy vehicle spam at the final push for the control point (a la Planetside) and tip the favor towards a smaller number of defenders when they're faced with a large number of defenders.
Figment has a rather high quality thread on the official forums with suggestions that are much better than anything I could come up with.
As it currently stands defense has a very high turnover rate, facility-wise in that one person can flip a base seconds after the last defender leaves for the next base that needs attention (and that one person has either flipped the base before defense has gotten a proper chance to respond, or as good as.) It's a small piece of metagame that I've taken to referring to as "Ring around the 'go fuck yourself'"
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