Why did everyone hate generator holds at the end?

Jader · 2011-12-11, 05:31 PM

The Enclave came back for a little while during the dying days of PS1 (2006/7).

Whenever there was a stalemate inside of a base and all the forces on a single continent were stuck in a zerg v. zerg, my outfit would just easily drop the generator and then hold it. We would be insulted and even TKd by our own guys, and I never understood why.

In the glory days of early PS, dropping or holding a gen was an important tactic in keeping the game dynamic and crucial for a rapid offense.

Why did the community express such outrage at a tactic thought to be fundamental to the game?

plug: http://www.planetside-universe.com/f...017#post615017

Zulthus · 2011-12-11, 06:14 PM

Simple. PlanetSide doesn't have the populations anymore to be dropping the gen on every fight you come across. It's hard enough to find a fight anymore. Every time you find a decent one (maybe once a month) a group of Falcons/Pounders or Batsteg would run down to the gen and blow it. Fight=gone. No fight=people log off. Including me. I unsubbed because of the ridiculous gen blowing. The game is absolutely no fun anymore. MAKE IT F2P

Jader · 2011-12-11, 06:20 PM

Originally Posted by Zulthus

Simple. PlanetSide doesn't have the populations anymore to be dropping the gen on every fight you come across. It's hard enough to find a fight anymore. Every time you find a decent one (maybe once a month) a group of Falcons/Pounders or Batsteg would run down to the gen and blow it. Fight=gone. No fight=people log off. Including me. I unsubbed because of the ridiculous gen blowing. The game is absolutely no fun anymore. MAKE IT F2P

It's not hard to defend the generator--that defenders had to manage two objectives was just too complicated for you?

Zulthus · 2011-12-11, 06:24 PM

Again, there are maybe like 100 people on TOTAL anymore, that's when I unsubbed a month ago. And that isn't per empire. Hop in game for a while and try to figure out what I'm sayin'. The 30 people on NC are constantly Falcon crashing, TR like to router, and us VS do a mixture of both. Game is boring.

Effective · 2011-12-13, 02:45 AM

You can't always defend a generator. Insisting that it is possible is incredibly stupid.

For example, if you're outpopped 3-1 or more, how can you expect to stop a numerically superior force from dropping your gen without some sort of painmod + buff?

You can't, and it's boring as fuck when people drop gens when it isn't needed.

We can also realize it's a lot easier to drop a gen then it is to defend it. Why? Because defending a gen is fucking boring. People don't like to be bored, that's why they're playing a game.

Crator · 2011-12-13, 01:28 PM

Defend the gen? Ya, if you like sitting around doing nothing for long periods of time... Now, if there were some sort of alarm system you could have for the gen room that would alert folks in the base that are defending it, may work.

krnasaur · 2011-12-13, 01:38 PM

Pretty much why I unsubbed aswell. The game just got boring. The game is too big to support <50 people per side and still be fun.

Xyntech · 2011-12-13, 02:43 PM

Maybe if the game was designed to scale well to anywhere from 30 players to 3000, but that would take a lot of extra balancing and effort.

If I had to pick one, I'd obviously take Planetside being balanced against more players than less, but when you do that, you gotta maintain high populations.

That's why F2P is worth trying, even if it has some dangers and draw backs. It will absolutely keep populations high.

I probably wouldn't really want to play a small scale Planetside even if it were balanced for it. Too depressing when you have all those great memories of huge clusterfuck battles raging across multiple continents during even the off hours.

Coreldan · 2011-12-13, 02:45 PM

Even F2P wont guarantee high pops unless the game is actually good.

Not that I'd be worried over PS2, but APB for one was a 100 million game with some totally unmatched features, but also a plenty of problems and even in F2P it isn't that highly populated except with the Steam-launch-rush, but I dont expect that to last.

Goku · 2011-12-13, 03:23 PM

I am all for blowing the gen when the game warrants it. Like being unable to push in on a interlink facility or taking forever to get a biolab. Yet, when you guys were on NC Emerald I swear you blew every single gen at every assault. You never used this tactic as a last resort at all IMO. This was years ago, but it felt like you blew the gen within minutes of even entering the CY and there wasn't even a fight. Hence all the hate. Compared to now 2006/2007 was almost prime time for PS as opposed to being dead also.

DviddLeff · 2011-12-13, 04:49 PM

Blowing the gen ended the fight quick, making it the best choice for advancing the battle line. Unfortunately the "best" (meaning those that generated the most XP and allowed people to get into the action quickest) fights were found in stalemated base fights.

It all came down to a fight between empire success vs personal success. The commanders often supported a gen drop but the troops did not.

Hamma · 2011-12-13, 05:10 PM

DviddLeff hit the nail on the head there. Nice

Zulthus · 2011-12-13, 06:07 PM

Well fuck empire success in the current game, I don't care if NC/TR have 9 conts and we have one, I just want to kill people. Which doesn't happen much anymore.

Goku · 2011-12-13, 07:25 PM

Originally Posted by DviddLeff

Blowing the gen ended the fight quick, making it the best choice for advancing the battle line. Unfortunately the "best" (meaning those that generated the most XP and allowed people to get into the action quickest) fights were found in stalemated base fights.

It all came down to a fight between empire success vs personal success. The commanders often supported a gen drop but the troops did not.

Blowing the gen at every single opportunity easily makes for stale game play, never mind stalemates.

What is exactly your definition of a commander? On Emerald NC I saw plenty of CR5s who did not want to go for the gen right as we got to the base. Sure after a good amount of time of going nowhere there was agreement to down the gen. Which I totally agree with.

Crator · 2011-12-13, 09:40 PM

Gen should be very last resort meaning you've tried and tried to get into the damn base but can get the hack on. Of course unless you're trying to break a link to a cave, mod, or tech benefit.

For one, when you take out the gen the NTUs get drained from the base faster. This can be bad if the NTUs are too low and no one brought an ANT. Another thing about taking out the gen is your empire's adv. hackers can't hack the base terms to get out equipment and vehicles needed. Two really good reasons to only take out the gen when absolutely necessary.

Tubes might be questionable to take out if you know there's a lot more of your empire in the base then the enemy. If you want to have some fun, and get more XP for base cap, keep the tubes up. Killing tubes in towers has always been considered lame.

Further discussion on this in: Can anyone still stomach this game anymore?