You're a platoon lead. Why do you throw all your weight against the underdog?

It's a daily occurrence on Planetside. One poor faction is on the ropes and the others are just railing them. They have no tech plant, their biolab has been the site of a farm while they vainly try to get it back, and people are cracking open beers on their warpgates.

This experience is putrid, horrible, and drives away even the most veteran of players. Why bother when you're presented with a losing situation that you can't overcome? No tactics will overcome a two to one advantage, not in this game.

So what ends up happening is rampant ghostcapping, the whipping boy logging out to go elsewhere, or people just logging out wholesale, a night ruined. If an alert drops, god help you. It just gets WORSE. Now the zergcappers have a reason to push you even harder and you can't douse the flames.

So, in basic, you're creating a toxic environment for other players when you do this. Oftentimes you're also allowing yourself to lose, in the classic tunnelvision, where if the other faction realizes that your currently uncontested borders might be a little more contested, losing it all. So you shoot other players in the foot. Yourself in the foot, twice, because who likes ghostcapping?

Why any of it? Why would you not pursue a more balanced and dynamic fight?

Capturing the continents is the goal. You don't accomplish that by ignoring enemy factions.

I love when both factions try to warpgate the NC. Lots of good fights usually occur.

I admit warpgate breakouts are pretty fun as long as you're not on SE Indar.

Being unable to find a fight with more than 30% friendly pop sucks at times though.

Human nature, the strong usually pursue the weak as its easier, quicker, and doesn't result in much losses. You can pull many examples such as the fact that Hitler went to Poland rather than attacking the United States.

I.. don't even know where to begin.
There's no such thing as a fair fight. The objective (in general) is not to have a 50/50 stalemate of evenly matched players, it's to create a strategic advantage and exploit it to ensure a victory. Most of the complaints about the game are remedied when you view it as a war game rather than instanced deathmatch.

Not all of us like to have it easy, this game is about challenge, and here is something to motivate you

Villanuk, I like an underdog fight probably more than most, but not even being able to step out of the spawn room isn't what I'd call "fun". I'm not even quite sure how it's "fun" for those bastards with their guns aimed at the glow shields.

Its not the greatest part of the game, but i had it today on Miller against the VS, but this game is a see -saw, we managed to pull together and have a mini fight back and when when they brought more numbers in, although we knew we would lose the base eventually, it was fun every minute extra making them work for the base.

Ans when your done, you fall back and try and start again. Winning is not always about taking the base, its how you fought or lost the base. More pride can be taken in valiant defeat than a simple win.

Meh, what do you propose the winning side does? "Honorably Leave" and then get shot in the back by the opposing team?

I see this all of the time, for example a tower is getting absolutely crushed. Yet the losing side continues to spawn to get those 1 or 2 C4 suicides before the tower flips.

I can see how it's annoying but i can't see how it would need to be fixed

Quick note: This was far. FAR worse in PS1, some nights you literally couldn't play because you didn't have access to any continents and if you did you lacked the force necessary to storm it. It is really not that bad in this game honestly

I get where you're coming from, Angry Scientist. I live for those hard-fought 50-50 battles where superior tactics and skill reign supreme. It feels like it's ruining all the fun when another platoon joins in with 10 sunderers and 20 tanks and one side is out-popped 3-1 and is spawn camped. Now skill and tactics mean very little and it's primarily a numbers game. Very boring and frustrating for me.

But not everyone plays the game for the same reasons. Some people play primarily to win alerts or to farm or to dominate. The easiest way to do that is with pop advantages. Personally, I don't get it, but whatevs. I'll just keep logging when there are no "good" fights to be had. To each their own. PS2 is still a decent enough game that I'll keep trying to find the good fights.

So outpopping the enemy 50 to 1 is strategy?
"We call this tactical superiority!" - TR guy
NO! If you put all your troops in one place they can't defend your borders elsewhere... At least not in real life... In PS2 you can just jump between bases with your whole zerg for free and instantly... How is this a "war game"?

Well, how would you change this then? Isn't Planetside about capturing territory? So, you're saying, the winning faction should allow the losing faction to win a little?

That's when you assess what is needed at the battle. Be it AA, AV or an alternate spawn and you go to the next nearest base and pull something and flank the enemy. A lot of times pulling a defensive sunderer to give your troops a safe place to spawn or pulling something to sneak around and take out enemy sunderers can go a long way towards turning a tide or at least prolonging the battle.

Oh man, don't whip out Motivational Stallone like that unless you really mean it.

Do you really mean it? Huh??

What is the Platoon? Is that the rare rocket launcher you unlock from completing missions?

I personally like it when we're warpgated. It provides a serious will to fight.

This morning I was playing on Emerald on Esamir against some TR that were one territory out from their warpgate, and those fellas played their red hearts out. It was like trying to chew shoe leather. Those guys just wouldn't cave.

I like those fights, from both ends.

I mean, seriously, you should see my killboard. It was a meat grinder this morning. I went 20 some odd deaths before I got one kill. Frustrating at first, but when you realize that they literally got no place else to go, you begin to appreciate their situation, and enjoy the game.

I mean it, we need the Troops inspired

I love you man.

If it is not an alert I usually tried to get good fights instead of win fights. Better for both sides and is fun, healthy gameplay. I like to do this because I think it is better for the new player experience to not get swamped with a platoon of players, lose a base, redeploy to the next base and find that same platoon already there and spawn camping you. Not fun for anyone, not even for the spawn campers.

If it is an alert it may be of good strategic value to hit the crippled faction first to expose more points of attack on the not as crippled faction's borders. If I can attack from 5 lattice lanes instead of 2, I can be less predictable and have a greater range of movement (especially when coordinating in command chat). This also means they can attack me from more angles, but if I strike first I control the fight and they have to fight defensively.

Honestly though, throwing an entire platoon at a single base is just lazy. Usually 1-2 squads can effectively take back the point at most bases. If its ghostcap-athon-side 2: Electric Boogaloo than just split up the squads into 6 man groups in valks or gals and cover as many lattice lanes as possible instead of all focusing on one lane. This in turn either splits them up or causes them to base cap inefficiently, giving you the upper hand most of the time.