[Suggestion] It's time to have that chat again. Make people give a damn.

Permanent VPs were pretty cancerous. So many fights were unstoppable zergs b-lining one objective then the next. I really like territory control because a single squad can do a lot of good if the enemy zerg doesn't split up to deal with them.

At least those Zergs HAD an objective.

I think you're misattributing the source of the problem though, the VPs didn't create the zergs, they just focused them on playing objectives. I'd concede the point if zergs had gone away after VP was removed but they didn't.

Territory control still counts towards VP, and alerts granting 5VP to the victor would still work on territory control.

Essentially, adding back VP wouldn't remove anything from the game it would only add back in features that were stripped in an effort to make Hives fit.

DBG needs to keep as less as possible continents available to concentrate a limited and unfortunately shrinking player-base.

Otherwise, I would simply get rid of the meaningless continent locking and instead have a perpetual state of alerts (or events) one after the other, focused on creating high intensity but time and geographically limited conflicts.

For example:

- "You have 30 minutes to conquer T1 Alloys and keep it without flipping for 5 minutes". The winning faction get a chance of a very good reward (camo, weapon, lots of ISO4, Certs, you-name-it) while other factions get a lesser participation bonus (only ISO4, Certs)

- then a cool-down of say, 10 minutes

- Then an air anomaly alert

- then a cool-down, ...

and so on.

Not so many players can spend hours and hours online waiting for a continent to stabilize, get fully open, get a few "warm-up" alerts and finally the big prize continent locking.

It all depends on how VPs were added back in. And I honestly don't trust DB to do a good job with that.

I'm just a huge fan of territory control. That 96+ vs 1-12 can stomp a lane, but for every base they take, smarter and possibly fewer enemies will take 2-3 bases. I just disagree that we've lost tactical options, as now we can zerg if we want when needed, or divide and concur. And with redeployside the way it is, zerging is very frequently the most efficient option.

And I'm in no way opposed to zergs, I just want zergs to fight zergs, which is much more often the case now than in the past.

My logic was based on the number of Nanites saved, 50% off of 4 C4 is 100 Nanites. Versus 20% off of an MBT is 90 Nanites.

That said I am open to some reduction of the percentage perhaps down to 30% or 40% off?

While it's true that some factions might prefer some bonuses over others I think it's also important to take into account the actual savings, a Flash is only worth 50 Nanites even at full price, that's almost nothing. With ASP and the Flash discount, they save a whopping 40 Nanites per pull.
Vlaks are what, 200 Nanites so 20% off those is also 40 Nanites, with ASP it'd be 60 Nanites off. A boost sure but as with Harassers, the numbers required mean there's a very good chance that a Striker Valk is splitting it's cost between 3+ people anyway.

That was the reasoning behind putting them in Tier Two

They could, frankly the exact value of a given base would rarely be known by players and could be tweaked easily as balance required. But yeah now that Hives are gone VP is viable again.

They're already a thing, even a non-member gets a Flash's worth of Nanites every minute. that means unless you're somehow able to lose Flashes at a rate faster than 1 per minute you'll never not be able to afford one. If you're using C4 at the same time it's different but at least then you can't cloak.

Stacking wouldn't be that big an issue. Consider that while yes the faction with the bonus has it's ASP players, the other fations Also have ASP players.
The discounts granted to non-ASP players broadly are matched by the ASPs of their opponents, so while it's a boost it's not that drastic a boost.

I try

I'd argue the value of Zergs not fighting Zergs, as you say it is possible for a smart team to sacrifice a lane in order to secure other objectives, but with territory control alone there are no other objectives besides seizing territory.

And seizing territory outside of an Alerts end has no intrinsic value.

When a Zerg faces a Zerg, it becomes a player sink, it draws vast numbers into an ultimately pointless stalemate. Where populations are even this can lead to one faction being ignored to its benefit.

That's why I love the mini-alerts so much. You get a lot of those last ditch fights for territory a few times per continent. Plus the air alerts are crazy fun if you like to fly. Plus, capping key bases ahead of alerts sets you up to win mini-alerts as well as the big one. I get what you mean, and I'd still like something deeper, but things really aren't bad.

Games in general are pointless. We're here for fun, and plenty of people find big fights fun. They can be stalemates for sure, but that's often because zergy platoons aren't often tactically minded. They approach every fight like a hammer. For example, mid afternoon US time yesterday on Connery VS was crushing a 48-96 TR pop with only 42% themselves. And that's without the Koreans. They pulled the right amount of vehicles and flanked all the right places with infantry. I really wish they didn't have such stupid outfits and laser weapons, and that they weren't such easy mode when I started playing this game. Long story short, zerg vs zerg fights are mostly stalemates due to the players who are drawn to those fights. And of course bad base design doesn't help.

Some of us maintain a balance. We play other games. We do other things during the day instead of playing games until the wee hours. We don't have the time to reach that level. There is a reason why the best players are Korean, but for the rest of us it's simply unfair. I doubt you have the time or the drive to reach their level, either.

I was in Western Tactical.... you have INSULTED the HONOR of the Exalted DIPNOI (praise be to his name that it may never be taken in vein) and made an enemy of me good Sir! I will not easily forget this day

This couldn't be more true. Nuke and Dust still stand no matter how many times the Terrorists win, and Blood Gulch is still a box canyon in the middle of nowhere.

For me some of the most fun fights in PS2 are the ones that seesaw back and forth between two bases until one side finally cracks. Doesn't have to be super tactical, just needs to be dynamic and even (within maybe +/- 10% pop). Call me easily entertained but that's all it takes to keep me engaged for a bit

Once again imploring teammates to fight the objectives has failed.

I understand, as I'm not a great player by any measure, but it really is one of those things you have to get over. This game is particularly brutal because of no match maker, but it also lets you find a way to play to your strengths and hide your weaknesses.

People play PS2 for the big fights,
Most of us will check our map, see 2-3 big fights going on and head to one of those.
DBG don't seem to know what people want however,
one of their "lovely" changes coming with the spawn revamp is to not even allow people to respawn at big fights...
(If there are more than 100 people in a region, all respawns in the region are disabled.)
When that happens you'll have your wish of forcing people to fight where it would be more tactically useful,
But it might be bitter-sweet, because as I opened with, people play ps2 for the big fights,
When big fights are intentionally removed and we're forced to go to small skirmishes people (including me) might leave.

Tl;Dr
It does suck that the most fun fights are sometimes the least useful for winning the continent,
But unfortunately those fun big fights are what most of us play ps2 for!

The problem stems from the core of the game. We basically have two objectives: Capture bases and get a higher KD. Nothing else is really promoted much, besides maybe getting a lot of score per minute or something but that is often achieved alongside a high KD with farming tools.

No one is encouraged to do much thinking or pursue other goals. When you have the option to fight a MAX or another infantry guy, you are basically encouraged to kill the infantry guy as you have a higher chance of padding your KD with it. Players are also waiting until a fight is a certain way before attacking just to save their KD, rather than assaulting an enemy position head-on and gaining a victory.

What the game needs is less importance to KD by promoting other statistics. Vehicle destruction, average damage dealt per life, destruction of MAX's, support offered to allies, objectives completed etc.
It also needs more depth to each assault. Currently it's just "go to the points and you win the base". This has bred a population where the highest form of tactics and teamwork is "throw as many players at it as possible to win", and the mark of a good "leader" is basically the capability of organizing everyone to spawn at the Sunderer and move in. Fireteams? Hardly necessary as there's no division of labor. The giant neon warning sign that teamwork and combined arms are almost null in this game is that a leader will rarely ever ask for a combined arms group, with aircraft, tanks and infantry supporting eachother. It'll always be a "everyone pick X" situation.

So what the game needs besides a shift of KD importance is mini-objectives, preferably placed by the players themselves. Players placing destructible/hackable doors and deployable shields as cover. Placing deployables that offer new ways around a base, or power nearby equipment in the base like lightbridges, jumppads, teleporters, gravlifts, environmental hazards (say venting a dangerous gas into a room), give buffs/debuffs, provide local fire support etc. This promotes scouts who track down and potentially destroy these mini-objectives which breaks the hold the HA has over the game, it promotes more class-variety as classes get specific deployable access, it promotes more division of labor as randoms, squads and platoons need to fulfill more than one task based on an ever changing battlefield etc.

I've noticed that with catering to the newer players it has attracted the laziest, unskilled, unmotivated, and all around scummy players.

There is no motivating them. You can be ask kind, or as wicked (like yours truly), or the most charismatic individual and you still will have an insane difficulty in trying to promote tactical play. E.G. using the brain you were born with to think and get creative instead of just blindly charging into the meat grinder.

This is on all factions mind you, since we stopped rewarding tactical play the game's playerbase has been meteor slammed right down the toilet. Every time you try to convince them of any other plan then simply "Go that way and get wrecked" you're met with hostility and/or stupidity.

At this point i've responded with equal hostility. For a game thats about the total conquering of a continent there seems to be a huge and unnecessary focus on the KD ratio. You're personal KD is utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, players need to be motivated to work objectively and tactically, by heavy handed means if necessary.

Not to mention its because of this mindset people get tunnel visioned in a fight for that ever so precious "Cert farm" or "directive quest" that players just often outright forget how to effectively use their current class. It also often causes them to absolutely refuse to change and adapt to the evolving combat scenario so whenever the combat paradigm shifts those who actually give a **** end up getting swept away.

Adding the events was a nice addition, however the horrendous lattice system still remains a glaring issue of creating and promoting MOBA like Zerg lanes. There also needs to be a better incentive for winning alerts and events, and participation points should not be awarded. Awarding the losing factions only encourages more laziness and scummy player behavior.

I love this game and its concept to death, but its current casual playerbase needs to be whipped into shape, and the game's core META needs an overhaul.

There are so many tools, weapons, and vehicles at the player's disposal. It literally takes only a little bit of imagination, some practice, and coordination and you can successfully route the tunnel visioned players. If they want to win, then they need to adapt and play the objective.


TLDR: Stop being lazy, play the freakin objective, stop worrying about KD, use you're brain.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who keeps seeing the elephant in the room.

I just believe things were not better with VP system, it was just the same. The core problem is there is no real long term benefit to convince people to care about the faction victory. There is no tangible reward for making people focus on the faction's success. So people tend to focus on personal achievements: which is KDR, personal stats, auraxium, directives rewards.

In the end you have people sticking to fights where they have decent XP / score / KDR, while they ignore the map and the alerts.

This the problem plain and simple: players put personal goals before their faction's victory. From this point of view the design of the game is completely wrong: stas system, directive system, xp system point in the direction of individualistic gameplay.

Just look at Reddit (which is a way more active and partecipated channel than this forum): it's common to see people asking about the best gun, the most effective loadout, how to get a high KDR, or posting killstreaks. But you never see people asking about leadership tips, or talking about strategy.

Believe me I love teamplay, and I do not give a damn about stats, but after years (I play since beta) I just gave up, I do not play in any outfit and I do not join any squad because there is simple no point in doing it. At the same time why wasting time trying to lead a squad? If the others do not care about victory, why should I?

Reality is devs want to make the game appealing to casual players, but they ended up making it more like a huge team deathmatch without any depth.

This.

That's just not going to happen as long as there's only tiny little Carrots, and NO STICK whatsoever.

... the only "stick" in this game is watching the incredibly short respawn timer, and the occasional times we unlock a high Cert cost item (without super thorough testing in VR) that ends up Sucking (or getting nerfed b/c it was a newly added item that followed the Power-Creep model but now it has to be nerfed so that the next Power-creeping item that gets added won't have to compete with it)

We're probably gonna agree on what that stick has to be... not on these forums anyway b/c almost no one here really represents the new players who've quit or don't know any better and end up in these perpetual blood-baths as the primary cannon fodder.

Worse yet there are actually carrots that encourage ignoring the objective. You get Certs and ISO-4 even if you stand around the WG for 90 minutes and your faction ends with 0% territory.

This is hardly fair, the game's tactical value has even increased, however little, compared to the beginning of the game as more things are useful rather then do things like, oh I don't know... Use an HE tank to hold back entire squads that have virtually nothing to really counter that? Also newer players are still expecting tactics, it's the veterans that are the problem. The "best" outfits out there are the one's that can simply organize enough players into one ball and have them simultaneously attack. Whoop dee doo such skill and tactics!

While KD might be irrelevant, so is capturing a continent. Tomorrow the continent you captured is open and perhaps captured by someone else. Your KD however remains visible and a boost to your ego long after that continent has come and gone. Combine that with human's preference to do short-term planning, meaning they'll prefer something that gives them an ego-boost now than later, and KD is far more easily accessible than a multi-hour continent assault you have relatively little personal control over. This is why other statistics need to be put in the forefront, so that people can feel good about other things. Should someone say "ha, my KD is higher than yours!" the other player could respond with "but I've actually played objectives, I've killed twice as much vehicles per life as you and my KD suffers for my support roles but look at how much support I've given!".
Also do you know who made the game KD focused? It wasn't the newbies I'll tell you that...

The lattice system, do you have a better solution? And if you say Hex system I'll remind you that the Hex system was zergland incarnate, with ghost capping that was neither tactically nor practically possible to stop and that was before we had Stalker cloaking.

It's not so much a problem with the players, it's a problem with the design promoting bad behaviour. "let's make the most important stat about killing the weakest enemy type any way you like and add some weapons and vehicles that can do this with ease! That won't be a problem!".

I don't think we'll ever change that.

Just think about how the army works. You already have 24 ranks in the army, 25 ranks in the navy, 19 ranks in the airforce, 24 in the Marine cops and 24 again in the Coast Guard. Even a single platoon has about 8 different ranks associated with it and specialization within each squad. I'm using "rank" here as a position in the organization, not as a Battle Rank that goes up arbitrarily.
PS2 tries to do it with basically 3 ranks: Platoon lead, Squad Lead, Fire team lead. If you were to build that out to the depth of a real army you would get situations like those in ARMA, where just organizing everyone can take up to 15 minutes if not longer. That just doesn't fit PS2.

Personal stats is what people will be going for, you can't expect people to log in for half an hour only to be forced to plan half of a campaign and try to keep yourself informed and updated constantly while also fighting. So what needs to be done is to make the personal stats you earn in-line with the goals of the game.

For example, imagine enemies holding a position for some time, or getting a mass of kills in a short time. The area is now kept track off (if necessary the hex). Should you manage to get kills, damage or even just die before doing anything within a short time after all those enemies leave the area one way or another, you'll be awarded a point in something. Siegebreaking or however you want to call it. This would encourage players to assault enemy positions with the intend of breaking through, rather than hang back to save your KD. Since siegebreaking is a harder point to gain and won't be ghost-cappable (like a point objective), it would be far more valuable. Should someone comment on your KD, "look at how much times I've broken through the enemy, I play the objective not a farmtool!".