Sneak peek of new hex adjacency graph for Indar and a bit more!

You're right, in a vacuum all this micro-hex system does, is to provide more condensed battles at the expense of tactics. That said, the current "tactics" in Planetside 2 are pointless, and is too often out of touch with the actual action.

The tactics in Planetside 2 has to be as geographically close to the actual battle as possible, while at the same time being out of grasp for the unorganized players.

Now, i would never say solo players are not playing properly, but they are clearly at the beginner stage of their PS2 career, since they are missing out on nearly everything planetside has to offer (there's very little in the game that works properly for a solo player - vehicles need gunners, even maxes require support, heavies require ammo etc ad nauseum). The game to a solo player is like a naked rambler in the outback of Australia - desperately hoping to bump into something that isn't trying to kill them.

Which then means should the game be tailored in favour of dumbing the game down - dissuading the solo player from joining the MMO part of the MMOFPS? i.e. Outfit / squad play?

I don't think it should, because again why would the solo player be interested in continent locking, or intercontinent tactics and, as the developers say, this change to the hexes is considered so significant they are delaying the other changes to see how this goes.

Looks great!

What I would like:
Indar 1-2 routes
Amerish ~3
Essamir 4-5

So that everyone could actually go where they want - I want to ahve huge chokepoints with large battles, but I know there are otehr who wish for numerous approach so I'd be happy if the different continents would accommodate different numbers of "routes".

But these lanes effect everyone, Right? My outfit can't just ignore them, we will get continent locked.

Do you love the epic battles between Crown and Crossroads? Or between X and Y?
Sorry but you can't have them. You have to fight between the same places every time, use the same deploy spots, use the same cover. It eventually will become very repetitious. Seriously this is almost as bad as separate Zones.

Do you want to maneuver past a Zerg rush to take the tech plant they left alone?
Sorry you have to beat the 3 to 1 numbers instead.

As far as Spec Opps, my outfit is a strategic platoon, who occasional plays Spec Opps roles. But this change may reduce or ability to play as we like to and "make us" rely on spec ops as our sole contribution. The catch is no matter how many tanks we Mana Turret from behind the much bigger army many continue to advance until it warp gates us off the map for a week or so, w/ continent lock.

Ssaying that seeing the same part of the map over and over will kill the game is false. Look at TF2. Dustbowl is one of the most played maps in the game, and it's been around since the game launched. A game of Dustbowl rarely changes. Engineers set up at the same spot, put their teleporters in the same area, and enemies run down the same paths. For seeing and doing the same thing for over 5 years, you'd think then that no one would play it anymore, especially since new maps have come out since then. But yet there are dozens 24/7 Dustbowl only servers.

Look at the design philosophies in all of TF2's maps. Depending on the state of the battle you're only looking at a fraction of the map while the rest is largely ignored before and after the battle passes through. The battle also progresses linearly down a path. 5CP maps, attack/defend maps, and payload maps all act in this way. For a game being so linear, it must suck. But it doesn't suck, does it. It's considered to be one of the best shooters out there.

PS2 desperately needs some linearity. For those who played back in beta, do you remember fighting at the large bases before they removed all but one point and added in the generators? It was a game of cat and mouse to try and stomp out the last few attackers at the far flung CPs around the base and the ones located where the satalites are at now. Once they added more linearity, through first taking out the shield gens before you could gain entrance to the main base and the sole CP, large base fights got a lot better. The defenders didn't have to spread themselves out so far to defend their base.

This is what the battle needs on the continent scale. Now there are a lot of things wrong with the game currently, and the new system won't fix them all. Bases are still laughably indefensible with only a few exceptions. This needs to change. Rarely does a defending force keep a larger attacking force at bay. It happens a few times, but rarely. And only at a couple places. All bases should need a 2:1 advantage in numbers to take an outpost, or require a great execution of tactics. Towers should have a higher ratio, and even higher for the large facilities.

Now with defensible bases, the game needs an attrition system. If attackers can't force their way in, they can starve the enemy out. This sometimes happens at towers, when the defenders firmly hold A while the attackers hold B and C. The defenders need to push out or they'll eventually lose the base. This needs to happen at all bases, since once A is taken at single point outposts, the fight is usually over. Adding the ANTs back from PS1 would be ideal. It would provide the attrition mechanic, and provide secondary objectives to that small outfits can target or protect. You wouldn't need many people doing the runs. a dozen people making runs would be enough. It would give spec-op teams something to aim for, and have a meaningful impact in a battle to starve a base out. Defending ANT convoys would also be beneficial if attacks are consistent.

The hex system is good on paper, but it just doesn't work as well as it needs to. Limiting players on where they can attack has been proven to work in the last game. It will prove to help this game as well.

If this is going to be introduced, and i think it's likely it will be from the tone of the original "sneal peak", it should not be introduced on an existing map.

If implement firsted on, say, Indar, you are going to invoke the "it's new i hate it and will therefore moan and want it nerfed" mentality so prevelent amongst those who react before spending even an hour trying to accommodate any new change. Therefore, implement it with Hossin. Since there is no PS2 "old Hossin", people can't moan about the fact that the pre-funnelling was better than the current layout. But people can still see if it works - if people play on Hossin and the population on the other continents drop off then it's a success and apply the funnelling to the other continents.

I know the idea is for test servers - but anyone who has played on games with test servers knows that as soon as the new thing hits the general population it has to live in a much more rigorous environment - it's amazing how many things have been openly tested and then still have to be adjusted when they get formally released. Anyone remember the gun on the original Planetside Phantasm? That made it from a test server - tested by the community - but was hastily removed when it hit the live servers.

I never said it will kill the game. You are correct, there are very commercially successful games that are very repetitious. FarmVille is one of the most extremely repetitive and successful games ever. TF2 is a great game, I just like this game, way more, in part for the complexity they plan to take away.

TF2 however has a big difference I should mention, balanced teams. What if your logged into TF2 and you were going to play against a force with 1/3 more players. Let's say you play anyway and they beat you, you can't play against anyone else you must face the same team with yours all night. Would you keep playing against the team who beat you with a 1/3 advantage or log off, leaving your team with a bigger disadvantage? What about your team would any of them drop out?

You mentioned the "cat and mouse" situation of the game,I feel that's a great analogy for how a unbalanced team game can work. On my server my faction is the mouse, this will end the cat and mouse game by feeding the mouse to the cat.

Clearly I am the minority here most people seem to want this. But with unbalanced teams of 20-50%, current system lets the weaker team win at something when it gets to crazy. When people feel they can't win after awhile they log off making the problem worse.

Naaah, bases are fine. Some are military fortresses, others are solar power plants, storages or farms. The military ones have some fortifications; the others don't, because they're not military objects.

Ask the VS on Cobalt how easy it was for them to take Quartz Ridge Camp yesterday from the NC.
I'll only say that they did a kamikaze 20+ Galaxy run on us at one point...

Before drastic changes like this are made to direct the fighting i think theres other smaller things that could be changed. One is automated turrets like in ps1. It stops alot of nuisance non serious back hacking being done by small rogue elements. It would also direct aircraft and armor down a more linear and anticipated path which would help keep the fighting confined to the veins of roadmap connecting facilities in conflict.

As it stands right now theres nothing preventing players from moving around the maps on foot, in an aircraft or in armor and when people get bored, or arent team players, or are just plain new to the game they wander off to do something else.

Bring back spitfire turrets and automated base turrets and maybe add a few so bases are a little more defendable and fights will become a bit more directed without choking out options

Put this crap on a new map. Make it some sort of urban environment with buildings all over the place. That way it feels like youre moving through the towns and such.

This would only work for 1 map imo, because its an annoying idea to be dealing with every map since it forces you to do the same thing every time. You cant say "oh I want to go here ive been going the other place alot" no. Now you have to go to the same places more often.

Its also annoying because youll be close enough to some points that snipers and armor cant snipe you, yet you have to ignore them slightly because even though theure right there, you cant cap the base because its not part of the trail.

true, there are things TF2 can do PS2 can't to deal with the imbalance of teams. you can join another server without losing progress, the server auto-balancing the teams, etc. The main point I was trying to make though was that linearity isn't a bad thing, which many people were saying. This is why bases need to be more defensible than they are now. the smaller team taking up the right positions should hold off a far larger force. It can be done, I did it yesterday with my outfit on Esamir. We had 2 platoons, plus what seemed like another zerg platoon, holding off the entire VS faction at Stillwater Watch. The NC made a few appearances as well trying to take the base with a few platoons of their own. We held the base for over an hour until ops were over and we left of our own accord.

however, you can't do this everywhere. Bases on Indar especially are very hard to defend. What makes it worse on Indar is that holding a position is almost never a good idea since with the hex system you can be easily avoided, especially in the North and SW. The SE you have a better time since of the canyon walls. Esamir and Amerish are better designed for the hex system. Bases that have a small connections are often far away. You can attack them, but they'll take a long time, and they're far behind the "front line".

The hex system makes more sense on those maps. But on Indar, its a mess. With so many territories so close together, attacking the next base, or the one behind it with little influence are equally vulnerable. It actively discourages large forces to cover the vast territory your faction controls. Look at the map during any time of the day, and chances are you have around 10-15 of your territories exposed with 10-15 enemies territories open to your attack. That means you have at any time of the day 20-30 choices on where to attack or defend.

It makes the game, at least on Indar, too complex. Which can be just as bad as being too simple. It can be even worse for a F2P game, which NEEDS to bring in as many people as possible. If the bar of entry to the game is set too high, players won't get a chance to experience the game or its depth.


This video shows the relationship between complexity and depth. PS2 complexity is keeping a lot of people from experiencing its depth. It just throws people into the middle of things with little to no explanation. The hex system could work if there was a tutorial, but its problems go beyond people not fully understanding it and how to use it.

most of my friends I tried to get into this game left because there was a lot of downtime. It is hard to find a fight, even harder to find a good one. And to even know where one might be it takes a long time to learn how to read the map, and then learn how players act in the game to make sense of what you see on the map. So if you log in to try out the game, chances are you aren't going to find the fight. IA helps with this, but we know how inconsistent that is.

I've told all of those friends about the new system coming and and its intended effects. They're all excited about it and ask me all the time if its been added yet. People want to like this game. It has amazing potential. But as it is right now it just drives people away. The hex system is a failure. Be glad SOE has admitted it now rather than later.

Actually, it strongly encourages it by saying "Hold it or lose it." If your entire force is fighting in one place, it's only natural that a more spread-out enemy force will seize the territory around it. Any competent commander would never stick his entire force on one point in a front line, because the enemy would simply engulf and destroy it; if not that, then cut off its supply lines. In PS2 that translates to seizing a bio lab while everything behind it is gobbled up by smaller, more mobile, more astute squads.

This whole business is about platoon commanders demanding the right to be incompetent; they insist that the game must be changed to fit their "everyone in the same place at the same time" style of command, and because zerging in-game doesn't work the way they want, they've resorted to zerging the forums.

That you can actually say this without irony is the fundamental problem. There is no "next base", or at least there shouldn't be. The next base(s) your squad takes should be dependent on where the enemy is, where you are, and what territory you want to take. The influence/hex system works nicely here, because it slows down captures depending on how far from your territory you plan to take in one swoop. A platoon that knew what it was doing and wasn't composed of cert farmers could take a strikingly disproportionate amount of territory in short order. But that would require management, disposition of forces, and maybe even a bit of intelligence (in both the military and conventional sense), and how many erstwhile commanders are capable of that?

So with lattice system you won't be able to see enemy activity beyond the hexes?

You're assuming platoon members WANT to be told to go and handle back cappers, or small squads. The fundamental flaw in your thinking is assuming most people don't want to be stuck in with the zerg/frontline forces. Last I checked, that's not just PS2's selling point, it's also a feature unique to PS2. Can't get multi-hundred man mixed-arms battles in BF3 after all.

There's a difference in doing what is right, and what is fun. Thing is, this is a game run by a business trying to make money, not an actual war run by bureaucrats trying to make money. The latter aspect of FUN is a far greater concern for the player base (including you) and is part of why retention rates are abysmal for those seeking the big fights. Finding a good fight reliably and consistently is an aggravating experience. You can call it dumbing down the game, what's really happening is that SOE is encouraging PS2's main selling point to occur much more often naturally. I'm sorry if you really think ignoring the zerg and just back hacking is the epitome of tactical genius, but this game wasn't built for the sake of simply taking land to say "I win." Consider this: this game might not be for you.

If you didn't download this game planning to be involved in the big fights, you're a tertiary concern.

Well said.

Wait, what? You can't possibly mean a "good" fight as in a large one, because not being able to find a large fight in PS2 is like not being able to find naked women on the Internet. You literally just open up your map screen, find a territory adjacent to yours, and go to where all the flashing red dots are. Done. And there's always at least one of those going on, usually more than one. If you did it right, you won't even be able to see all the combatants anyway due to render distance.

If you mean a good fight as in a fair fight, lattice really isn't going to help that, because if one side outnumbers the other, the winning side gets more hangers-on and the losing side has people fleeing because it's either that or get farmed. At least the hex system lets these overwhelming zergs break up on their own.

This is totally a point worth considering *rolls eyes.*

I think what PS2 is striving for is zergs rolling into other zergs without the concern about the whole dissipation part.

... Like, ever.

The lattice will help. Fewer places for people to spread out means overall fewer and thus bigger groupings of people. There's no guarantee the fronts will always be even, but the chances are much higher than the system we have now, where everyone just kind of gathers into a single mob and rolls along until they hit a snag.

Test server!!!!1!!!

I can improve on this lattice system by taking it a step further.

Let's just make a map that consists of a straight line of bases connecting to each warpgate, like a giant triangle. That way the zergs would always stay together, there would always be a massive fight, and everyone would always be at 5fps with 50m render range.

(Actually most CS maps were like this; from your spawn there are 3 routes to enemy - left, right, or middle. Why should PS2 be more complicated than this? Make PS2 simpler! Think of all the 12 year olds with their parents credit cards you are alientating....)

Wasn't the test server supposed to be up ages ago, just what the hell is happening with this.

SOE better not have bailed because of the naysayers.

And children who over exaggerate and won't even set foot on the test server shouldn't be given the ability to comment.