Can Platoons be Outdone? OR: Are Platoons "So 2003"?

kaffis · 2012-06-19, 01:42 AM

Okay, I made this post elsewhere, and I was asked to break it out for discussion on its own merits, rather than allow it to hijack the other thread. So, done, PhoenixDog.

Originally Posted by PhoenixDog

Example? I don't seem to understand how platoons would be redundant or unnecessary save for a mission to take Random Outpost #42

Design the mission system so that higher level commanders (we'll cover how we could stratify command usefully a little later) can create high level, "big picture" missions. "Capture facility X a couple hex layers behind enemy lines." This mission is created because facility X has strategic value, be it resources, continent benefits, denying the enemy one of the above, etc.

This is obviously a big mission, that will require massive amounts of forces. MORE than a platoon, even! So how does it get organized?

Well, squad leaders accept the mission, and create submissions for their own squad to support it. Again, depending on the level of the commander, said squad leaders might still be creating some high-level missions. "Capture facility Y" where Y is a facility along the front line that has influence over X, perhaps. He'd immediately support that mission with one for his squad to complete, "Destroy turret emplacement Z." He'd also survey enemy force disposition, and perhaps add, as a task to be requested to complete for his Capture Facility Y mission, "Suppress enemy tank activity on the northern approach to the facility." He orders his squad to set to work destroying turrets, or capturing control point Alpha, or whatever his mission was.

Another, low-level, squad leader, looking for some action for his squd, pulls up a window, and sees that there are missions to capture X and Y, and that the commander who's taken charge of the Capture Y mission has put in a request for tank suppression. Knowing his squad is full of crack pilots, he calls for them to load air to ground weaponry, and they go to work, earning bonus xp for tank kills in the designated region.

Etc. I'm not going to go and invent an elaborate tree of thirty such missions, but the idea is that the mission system can support a hierarchical structure by which commanders of different levels can create missions that support other commanders' missions, and can create their missions to call for certain support tasks they anticipate needing. The UI would need to be designed so that you can see what other groups around you have selected as missions, to help commanders know whether an appropriate force has been dispatched for a given task or whether additional support is needed.

In this way, you can involve an arbitrary number of squads in an operation of arbitrary size and scope, creating a chain of command on the fly (based on whose missions support whose), and allowing each commander to address manageable situations according to their command level.

You can then modify a follower-like system (such as Higby suggested at one time) so that upon conclusion or abandonment of a mission, the people involved in that mission can rate, as it were, the commander who issued the mission. If you feel ambitious, you can (and probably should) try to implement a system that weights missions by difficulty, impact, and level of success, and apply those as modifiers to the ratings the commander recieves. In this way, the theory is that good, active commanders will rise to the top, and be granted the authority to issue the missions with the larger scope. Generally, commanders would get partial credit for the actions and successes of the missions supporting them, the idea being that talented middling commanders will be motivated to seek out good higher-ups to support, too.

Now, I realize that all this is completely theoretical, and pretty ambitious.

But, hopefully, it's enough to illustrate that when you give commanders the ability to delegate responsibilities and mission tasks to other commanders, you can completely eliminate the need for platoons. Such a system enables relative strangers or multiple smaller groups of occasional allies to work together and organize as effectively as large outfits. And that builds good community, and a strong game.

Now that this is standing on its own, I'll just add a few more lines.

I really think that, while ambitious, this sort of thing can be done. And I think that it would really set Planetside 2 apart from the pack. If you put the love into it, and particularly the UI for it, it could have the makings of an intuitive, easy (and fast!) to use, and informative system for coordinating forces continent-wide. A framework like this has got the potential to allow for granular management of mission objectives at all levels of play, smoothly integrated calls for help or support, and to integrate smoothly into both Outfit play and the command certification system.

How would it integrate into Outfit play? Quite naturally! Offer UI sorting filters so that Outfits can quickly and easily find each others' missions, and prefer to support their own missions. If Outfits want to get really protective of their command structure, I suppose you could offer the mission commander privacy options, so that only Outfit members could see/support their missions, but I think that, overall, that probably ends up being a net negative to the system's integrity from an Empire standpoint, and it would be better to simply allow the Outfit's members to naturally prefer their own, and if they don't trust somebody else to support their mission when they create a supporting mission, simply duplicate the effort with their own support mission.

Really, though, the TL;DR to take away from this comes in keywords: hierarchical, granular, support, scaleable, informative, integration. If you design a mission system around those goals, you can completely obviate the need for platoons. Go ahead and keep them in, some people will still like them. But they can be made dinosaurs that artificially limit the number of squads working towards a given task (as evidenced by even the hyper-organized outfits complaining that 3 squads isn't enough!!!), while at the same time breaking down the artificial barrier of "You need X number of players directly reporting to you to get Y done." Put the tools in place, and talent will rise to the top, no matter how many people they tend to associate with permanently.

I just want to see people, especially as we approach beta, with high aspirations for the mission system, rather than going into this new game looking for an exciting new possibility to fail so they can protect their precious platoons.

Razicator · 2012-06-19, 01:47 AM

Great Wall of Planetside Universe...

I honestly see where the original plans of omitting platoons came from. With in-game highly customizable VOIP, there's really no need for platoons other than being able to see in a glance everyone on the map, which should be no problem for an organized outfit anyways. Things like platoon-locked vehicles and no grief points against platoon members can easily be fixed in other ways. But the inclusion of the platoon will help the more disorganized zergy outfits and squads for sure, so I'm all for platoons.

Plus it'll help bring the "massive" scale that PS2 wants to the newcomers. First time they get invited into a giant platoon, they can see where everyone is on the map. Assuming of course this doesn't happen on the outfit level.

PhoenixDog · 2012-06-19, 02:01 AM

I had a reply going in the other thread...But since got lost in my banter with silly TR and NC rabble =)

Anyway...I loved the idea you've come up with. I'd love to see a more hierarchical structure to the mission system. The entire idea for a single global mission to take Bio Lab X could branch off into many sub missions requested by the squad leaders involved themselves, and in turn accepted by other smaller squads would make such a grand unity of an empire.

My only concern is that you were mentioning the redundancy of platoons. That a system such as this would make platoons unnecessary. Platoons will still have a large need on Auraxis. I know within my outfit alone we have had more than enough people on ion PS/1 at any given time to fill a platoon ourselves and complete rather complicated objectives. Within a single outfit, platoons will still be a very heavy requirement to be successful; especially which platoons being rumoured to support 100 people. A single outfit can have their Infantry, Armour, Air, and Special Ops divisions all within the same platoon structure, coordinating with one another much easier than we did in PS/1. Platoons will still be necessary.

However...Back to your post at hand. I can see a structure like this incredibly useful for (lack of a better term) less organized outfits or players. Obviously with the community like it is, there are groups already established for this game, many from the first game. But for smaller outfits, random players, or just people hopping on for a bit, a mission structure like this gives them something to do. It makes them feel useful. Of course the major engagements such as Tower A or Base B are handled by the larger forces of the empire (See: Large Outfits). But when a small outfit has a few people on, and they form a squad of about 6 people...They want to help just as much. So they open up the mission objective for "Capture Bio Lab X". Once opened, all these side-objectives appear below it. One of the missions that hasn't been selected is "Capture Outpost G". They click that mission and it says "Xen of Onslaught is currently in need of assistance in holding off the NC advancement on Bio Lab X. We need a squad to engage the NC at Outpost G and secure it for the VS". The squad accepts the mission and heads out. Now this small squad of 6 people feels they are making a difference helping a large, organized outfit complete a goal.

Grognard · 2012-06-19, 02:03 AM

Originally Posted by kaffis

Okay... Now, I realize that all this is completely theoretical, and pretty ambitious.

But, hopefully, it's enough to illustrate that when you give commanders the ability to delegate responsibilities and mission tasks to other commanders, you can completely eliminate the need for platoons.

I just want to see people, especially as we approach beta, with high aspirations for the mission system, rather than going into this new game looking for an exciting new possibility to fail so they can protect their precious platoons.

I always remember your name from this common theme, you are completely against platoons, I get it... However, nothing you mentioned necessitates the castration of platoons. Why limit platoons? Why not a robust mission system and platoons? Even companies, and from what Smed said about 10 squads... well, thats a company.

There is no good reason a well constructed mission system should eliminate platoons, or companies. Good sized outfits can make good use of platoons, and I suspect that is the real issue here.

Zebasiz · 2012-06-19, 02:23 AM

Totally love the entire concept of that mission structure. But as others said, I don't think that itself eliminates the need for platoons. Because you can have the larger objectives focused on by platoons, who set missions within their squads for the smaller step objectives. Who themselves can send missions for backup etc.

Shade Millith · 2012-06-19, 02:24 AM

This is supposed to be a MASSIVE multiplayer game. Constricting a group to a single squad of 12 people would be in very poor form.

Platoons were used to organise large groups of people. Just because there's some stupid 'mission' system in doesn't mean anything.

If you are going to organise a large group of friends, the 'mission' system is completely worthless.

Toppopia · 2012-06-19, 05:40 AM

We need a way to organise massive amounts of people, thats why people will play this, for massive battles and massive teamwork, which this mission system creates, and what platoons create.

Canaris · 2012-06-19, 05:48 AM

Mission system plus platoons is win/win, why would you want to limit large outfits by forcing them into singular squads only?
My outfit in PS1 still regularly runs full platoons and I can only see benefits for keeping them in PS2.
I've read your arguement over there removal and can't agree with it soz.

Coreldan · 2012-06-19, 05:55 AM

I do not see a good reasoning to leave platoons out. Most likely we will manage all the same without them, but whats the downside of having them?

I'm planning on operating with at least a platoon worth of guys all the time if barely possible. Sure, we can just work as individual squads, but I still can't see whats the harm in allowing us to be in a platoon as well.

SKYeXile · 2012-06-19, 05:59 AM

i can only see 4 of my squad on screen in the map of GW2, you know what this makes me?!?!! ANGRY!!!!!! warbands and platoons are pretty fucking vital in every mmo iv played. I think SOE practically invented raids didn't they? not having them in a game over 10 years later is pretty fucking stupid.

kaffis · 2012-06-19, 09:39 AM

I'm not against platoons, guys. An awesome mission system can co-exist with platoons plenty peacefully.

What I don't want to see is operational advantages given to platoons that aren't available to the mission system.

My only beef with platoons is that lots of people want to castrate the MISSION system in order to make their ability to round up 30 guys, or 2 groups of 30 guys, or whatever create a barrier to entry for the "strategic game" so that smaller groups of players are at a disadvantage. And *that's* the mentality that bothers me.

Creating a hierarchical mission system allows for such commanders to be completely scaleable, and facilitates cooperation with strangers towards sensible objectives, so the brilliant strategist who's part of an outfit that fields, say, 20 guys can have his good ideas be just as valid and gain just as much support as the leader of the military-regimented 200-man outfit in command of 4 platoons from his outfit. If the smaller-outfit guy's strategy is as good or better, why not create a mission system that helps him lead without resorting to mass recruitment of strangers? Nobody loses; the empire benefits, and the big outfit carries on as before.

Finally, a mission system along the lines of what I propose is actually a tool for organizing MORE people than platoons allow, because it has no cap on the number of squads that can participate or support a given mission. My suggestion is about opening up the game to MORE massive organization that doesn't have to resort to centering around the outfit.

Trafalgar · 2012-06-19, 09:42 AM

I have low aspirations for the mission system. I forsee people spawning, making a tank or other expensive multi-person vehicle, and driving to the objective(s) by themselves without waiting for anyone else or waiting for a large force to assemble in order to attack simultaneously. Just all streaming in slowly and endlessly with no coordination to allow the enemy to pick them off.

Driving vehicles away as soon as they spawn works in something like Star Wars:Battlefront (I or II), where the number of players per side is limited, the maps are fairly small, and vehicles spawn and periodically respawn without costing resources, and are useful enough that it's better to use them immediately to gain an advantage than to sit around hoping for more to appear somewhere else that's under your control. Wouldn't work so well in PS2, I would think.

Stardouser · 2012-06-19, 09:43 AM

Originally Posted by kaffis

What I don't want to see is operational advantages given to platoons that aren't available to the mission system.

Where is it written that platoons can't be used to accomplish mission objectives? Does being in a mission mean you can't be in a platoon?

TeaReks · 2012-06-19, 09:47 AM

Instead of getting rid of platoons they should add companies into the game.

Three to four platoons can equal a company.

kaffis · 2012-06-19, 09:59 AM

Originally Posted by TeaReks

Instead of getting rid of platoons they should add companies into the game.

Three to four platoons can equal a company.

Again, this is the kind of mentality that worries me. More barriers to entry on "getting anything significant done."

I don't want signs, or even the perception of signs, that say "You must know THIS MANY people to matter."