Discussion: What do smaller squads want in order to have more fun AND make an impact?

[Rahabib]

So am I the only one who thinks that XP bonuses shouldnt be the answer to everything? Cause it is, and a lot of suggestions here seem to continue with this. certs to me is way too shallow to be utilized. If things are not working out the way you want, there is no penalty, you just redeploy somewhere where you can get certs. Isnt that whats happening now?

[Snydenthur]

Originally Posted by Rahabib

2) Bases are too easily captured. The flow of battle is: take a base, watch it be retaken within a few minutes. The lattice helps but the micro-battle instances to actually retake the base remains unchanged. More force-fields, more generators, etc. will help this. gens are a good way for small units to make a difference, but there are not enough that battles can spread out to make defense viable. Most bases ,IMO, should have multiple gens to take out and more bases should have them. I also would like to see game play like hacking, scramblers (for anti-hacking), CTF (bases with items that can be captured then transplanted at your base to steal technology, etc.)

Attacking a base isn't easy by default, if people would actually defend. It's just that every time there is even a slight sign of losing, people lock themselves to the spawnroom to farm kills. If they actually left the spawnroom to try to take the cap point(s) back, then we would know for sure which is easier in this game.

Defenders have the upperhand. They have a safe place to spawn, kill the couple obvious enemies watching the spawnroom, push out and take the point back. If the enemy has a sundy nearby, they can first push to take it down and after that take the points. If sundy is far away, it's not the first concern anyways.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Snydenthur

Attacking a base isn't easy by default, if people would actually defend. It's just that every time there is even a slight sign of losing, people lock themselves to the spawnroom to farm kills. If they actually left the spawnroom to try to take the cap point(s) back, then we would know for sure which is easier in this game.

Defenders have the upperhand. They have a safe place to spawn, kill the couple obvious enemies watching the spawnroom, push out and take the point back. If the enemy has a sundy nearby, they can first push to take it down and after that take the points. If sundy is far away, it's not the first concern anyways.

This is actually one of the main issues with PS2 vs. PS1. People don't lock themselves into the spawn room, typically. They are pinned in the spawn room, away from capture points, due to enemy air/vehicles keeping them from getting there.

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Snydenthur

Attacking a base isn't easy by default, if people would actually defend. It's just that every time there is even a slight sign of losing, people lock themselves to the spawnroom to farm kills. If they actually left the spawnroom to try to take the cap point(s) back, then we would know for sure which is easier in this game.

Defenders have the upperhand. They have a safe place to spawn, kill the couple obvious enemies watching the spawnroom, push out and take the point back. If the enemy has a sundy nearby, they can first push to take it down and after that take the points. If sundy is far away, it's not the first concern anyways.

How come it was never like that in PlanetSide? You think people there were different?

I can point out at least 3 things you think wrong, but the point is not to prove you wrong, but to make you reconsider why the situations like that occur.

[Rahabib]

Originally Posted by Snydenthur

...
Defenders have the upperhand. They have a safe place to spawn, kill the couple obvious enemies watching the spawnroom, push out and take the point back. If the enemy has a sundy nearby, they can first push to take it down and after that take the points. If sundy is far away, it's not the first concern anyways.

Theres not really a good counter for vehicles camping the spawn. You cant fire missiles out, and the minute you pop out you are toast.

The problems is that the battles can be over before the defense even knows whats up, even with a lattice. Sure the base hasn't flipped but you cant do anything to stop it once the spawn is surrounded.

[GeoGnome]

What smaller groups need: A way to contribute to the battle, that separates them from the main fight, but allows them to contribute.

People say: More defensible bases, but to be honest, I don't want to see bases in PS2, where 1-2 squads can hold off MULTIPLE PLATOONS. That is ridiculous, and I am someone who almost exclusively rolls with 1-2 squad sized groups.

I think Combat Engineering is a step in the right direction. The small groups shouldn't necessarily have to be Directly involved with things if they were allowed some kind of specialization to take.

Battle Galaxies, Battle Sunderers, vehicles that require 12 people to operate and use effectively... More objectives that are point defense and Very tough to crack. Narrow cooridors that can be breached effectively by fewer people, but a large zerg would just get funneled. More defensible POINTS, not bases.

I tend to agree with Rahabib that XP rewards aren't as key here, as just Giving people something to do.

My other real hope, is that the resource revamp will give smaller groups something fun, but I feel if I beat that particular horse anymore, it'll be paste by the time July rolls around.

[Hmr85]

I highly recommend a lot of you guys use this free 6 months for PS1 that appears to be rolling out today. I believe then a lot of you newer guys will understand what needs to be done to fix this game on a squad level and beyond. Look at the base designs looks at what can be accomplished with small spec op squads. Look at everything.

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by Stanis

We need objectives that make a difference to force organised players to respond.
We can't get their attention and pull them to another continent, that aspect of gameplay isn't present.

This I can see in the future Stanis, as they push the lattice system out to the other continents, and some how connect these continents using the lattice, there really is no reason to leave a continent, UNLESS there about to loose there 10% cost bonus Yeaaaaa. From my understanding only one continent will have the lattice and thats Indar. In PS1 the lattice system went threw warp gates and connected facilitys, if the base was hacked on the other side of that warpgate then guess what you need to be ready to defend. In PS2 is more like a large map with shielded bases, for each faction, I agree with some players when you say that its just a open match free for all, and I dont want to sound greedy, or like a spoiled PS1 brat who is used to more involved game play but, when we take a continent in PS2 I sit back and wonder is the match over now, only felt that a couple of times in PS1 and thats when we turned the world purple.

[Stanis]

Originally Posted by Hmr85

I highly recommend a lot of you guys use this free 6 months for PS1 that appears to be rolling out today. I believe then a lot of you newer guys will understand what needs to be done to fix this game on a squad level and beyond. Look at the base designs looks at what can be accomplished with small spec op squads. Look at everything.

A squad in PS was 12 people and something like 6% of the population on the continent.

A platoon in PS2 is 48 people and is about 7% of the population on the continent.


Had this chat with our PS1 guys when we simply couldn't do as much - that's because with great power comes .. umm no thats not it. It's a case of scaling up the map population scaled up pretty much everything else.

When we throw platoons around the map - strategically, tactically - it feels a lot like PS1.
when you try to do something with a squad, spread out over swiss cheese bases with dynamic combat, satellites and capture points you soon realise you haven't got enough size to achieve as much without more team.

As for PS1 I might play it. I doubt. It was a great game - however it has it's flaws.
It was brilliant for the revival weekends (when PS2 got announced) - it had people in it - but the graphics, gunplay, waiting, corridor spam, lockdown maxes in a tower .. it had its fair share of amazing gameplay for it's time.
But I do mean 'for it's time' without using rose tinted glasses.

[Stanis]

Originally Posted by Qwan

This I can see in the future Stanis, as they push the lattice system out to the other continents, and some how connect these continents using the lattice, there really is no reason to leave a continent, UNLESS there about to loose there 10% cost bonus Yeaaaaa.

Most of our problems can be resolved by more continents.
I expected a continent every month or every other month for the first year or two.

Lots of development time on pushing those out - because quite frankly irrespective of gunplay - the strategic and tactical depth of PS1 came from its continental warfare.

I know developers can only do one thing and the art guys dont work on balance.
But if there is a budget for continent design I expected it to be front load over the first 18 months of the project and then we get maybe a new core continent every 6 months with a more generic 'player continents' on a global warfare schedule.

[Shundara]

I prefer the base hacking method from PS1. I enjoyed the feel of a cc capture as opposed to the way bases are taken now.

Also the layout of the objectives being open to vehicle spam makes it hard for small squads. I liked when people were forced out of their vehicles to capture something. I find myself being forced into playing infil more than I care to because of this. Perhaps one master gen that is harder to take down could help this.

I'm sure some people love SCU's but I hate them. I like to shoot people, not stand around.

[Rahabib]

The rest of the game was not good, but one thing I liked from Brink was the way hacking worked. You place a hack device and the further away from the terminal the slower it hacked. You could swap to guns but then the hack process started rolling back. You can have multiple devices to make hacking go faster as well (up to I think 3). Something like that could work for hacking without making it boring. You can still cover an objective by yourself in smaller outposts as well.

Then to add on, you can have an engy place a scrambler within an area that makes hacking slow down. Then you have to go and blow it up to speed up the hack. Maybe put points behind doors that need C4 to blow up to gain access so you can't just ghost hack. Once the door is blow up, an alarm goes off that anyone in the area sees and can react to. there is just so much more this game could do.

Small squads who effectively implement a take and hold would have a lot of fun with more to do.

[Snydenthur]

Originally Posted by NewSith

How come it was never like that in PlanetSide? You think people there were different?

I can point out at least 3 things you think wrong, but the point is not to prove you wrong, but to make you reconsider why the situations like that occur.

I don't know, I have never played planetside 1, since I haven't liked how the game plays. Probably people were different. My experience is that people played more as a team back in the early 2000 than nowadays.

Vehicles and air pinning down the spawnroom isn't the explanation. This happens in biolabs too. If you have platoon of people inside a spawnroom against attackers, who have to be all over the place, making a concentrated rush out of the spawnroom is very effective. But since you lose a lot of xp (you might even die and have to respawn somewhere else!)for doing that instead of just killing stupid people from a safe place, you don't see that often.

[camycamera]

Originally Posted by Gatekeeper

That makes no sense to me because those exact same flaws are present in the current system for capture xp.

The core problem here is that PS2 forces you to wait at the base in order for it to credit you with any xp for the base capture/defence, and gives you 100% of that xp regardless of whether you were there for the whole fight or just for the last 10 seconds.

To fix this (and thus negate any objections to awarding defence xp) just use PS1's system: award xp for base capture/defence regardless of whether you're still at the base when the fight ends - but award a proportion of the xp total based on how much of the fight you were present for.

Scaling the capture/defence xp based on the number of people present during the fight and/or the number of kills would also help to avoid exploits and cut down on ghost capping. Again, PS1 did this and it worked fine - so I've never understood why PS2 doesn't.

exactly what i was going to say. some old things from PS1 like that would work in PS2.

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by Stanis

Most of our problems can be resolved by more continents.
I expected a continent every month or every other month for the first year or two.

Lots of development time on pushing those out - because quite frankly irrespective of gunplay - the strategic and tactical depth of PS1 came from its continental warfare.

I know developers can only do one thing and the art guys dont work on balance.
But if there is a budget for continent design I expected it to be front load over the first 18 months of the project and then we get maybe a new core continent every 6 months with a more generic 'player continents' on a global warfare schedule.

I feel ya on this one I think that more continents will resolve some of the issues, but I feel that just putting out more continents wont do the job, I think they have to be somehow connected. I mean right now you have 3 factions, 3 types of resources, so the 3 continents work for now, and a lot of gamers who never played PS1 dont know what there missing, when you got ten continents to fight over, its bigger and a little more complicated, but its so much *&^% fun. In the long run they have to figure out a way of connecting these continents or else this game is gonna fell like BF3, or CoD, were your just switching maps, at the end of each session.

Originally Posted by Shundara

I prefer the base hacking method from PS1. I enjoyed the feel of a cc capture as opposed to the way bases are taken now.
Also the layout of the objectives being open to vehicle spam makes it hard for small squads. I liked when people were forced out of their vehicles to capture something. I find myself being forced into playing infil more than I care to because of this. Perhaps one master gen that is harder to take down could help this.
I'm sure some people love SCU's but I hate them. I like to shoot people, not stand around.

Good point Shundara, you hit it right on the money, by placing spawn boxes underground or within the facility's, this would kill the vehicle spam and spawn box camping. The tunnels helped alot, but I still see players going out the front door when the spawn box is surrounded, but this is because there trying to get to the SCU which there is no tunnel to. Smaller bases still suffer from vehicle spam because the boxes are out in the open.

As a suggestion I think they should make one base just like one of the old bases from PS1, I mean right down to the stair well that goes up the side of the courtyard wall. The spawn boxes on these bases were inside and the CC was inside as well. I think they should do it as just an experiment. I guarantee you there would be some epic battles there, and some good old door to door infantry fights (thumper not included ).