Devstream summary, Wrel strikes again.

I didn't say 'make base capture the primary source of rewards', I said "Make the game more about objectives".

Defending a base is just as much an objective as capturing one and the reward for defending a base should reflect the importance of that base (especially in light of any wider objectives - like contribution to the overall alert objective). I cited base capture as an example of an objective - not the sole or primary objective.

There are other possible fixes for ghost capping and Zerging (again - these are just spit-balled ideas - i'm sure people can think of others)

Scale the base capture/defence reward based on the size of the attacking or defending force. Smaller organised units would gain more reward from capturing a base than a massive zerg. Small groups of organised defenders would gain more repelling a zerg than they would taking part in a 96 on 96. This would encourage more smaller fights as the rewards for participating in a smaller fight would be greater.

They could make lattice more flexible so that more bases on the lattice can be captured, but with a time penalty. Capping a base with a direct lattice link takes the same amount of time as it does now, whereas capping a base one lattice link removed takes say twice as long. Capping a base 2 lattice links removed takes 4 times as long etc. That way, you can send advanced forces to other bases, allowing for more fights and thus breaking up zergs. Defenders would of course be able to flip these isolated bases back quicker than attackers can cap them because of their direct lattice links, so that should somewhat limit the impact of loads of isolated capped bases.

Ghost capping has a super easy fix - make it so that base capture points start to flip back to the defenders faction if there isn't at least one (or perhaps more) attackers within capture range for more than say 10 seconds. This also goes for cloaked stalkers. It would stop lone wolf stalkers flipping points, then cloaking and waiting for the timer to tick down. If they did want to try and ghostcap - they would have to stay uncloaked or constantly cloak and uncloak - which would give away their location and leave them vulnerable (risk vs reward).

I really like this, having an attack and defenders both have a passive timer which could scale on the size of the conflict (and other factors). Of course, this could be abused by, let's say not defend at all but on the flip side zerging would be equally punished since there is no one but them in the battle so the zerging in general would be disincentivized meaning people would seek out more even fights.

Like you say, it has be tweaked and tested since when it comes to mechanics like this you never quite know how they'll pan out until they go live (or at least on PTS).

Yep - no one thing will fix this and the law of unintended consequences can always apply, however I think a move away from rewards for farming kills and better rewards for more objective based play can only be a good thing.

They did this to Planetside 1 apart from they REALLY REALLY ruined Planetside 2 lol

Babysittingside 2.

No, you can't fight there, if you do we'll punish you for it.

No, you can't have more people than the enemy or we'll punish you.

Did we say you can cap that base? No. You're punished with some lazy made up storm that's gonna kill everyone because DBG don't want you to do anything but what they say. .l..

Micromanagementside 2.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink it.

^^ Carrots are harder to grow than simply finding sticks.

Rather than encourage people to fight by making areas enjoyable and rewarding (carrot) - it's easier to just hit you with a stick if you fight somewhere they don't want you to.

There really aren't that simple solutions.
If the capture bar has to be filled, how are you going to be rewarded if you successfully keep them from the points but can't push them away? You would get players deliberately seeding a point only to take it back which we already see in the new outfit system so outfits can earn resources for bases that they then take. A fight doesn't end just because you held all your point long enough to reset it's capture timer. There's also always the question: How do you reward players for losing? PS2 has more loss scenario's where you really weren't to blame for the loss, but you still want to be rewarded for the effort put in. You don't want attackers who fought hard but were thwarted by redeployside zergling defenders to leave empty-handed.

Absolutely correct. Hence the second idea as a follow-up. Short version: XP for being in owned territory with a noticable hostile presence.

You seemed to focus mostly on the objective of "capture a base". If not then my bad.

The problem with most objectives you could achieve is that they lack context. An infantry kill lacks the context of how tough or useful that kill was. Was it someone just ambling around? Was it a guy holding a chokepoint that is way harder to kill? Did your kill progress your allies into the base?

That is why I suggested contextual objectives. Use heat maps to locate area's where lots of players of one faction hang around, locate area's where lots of players are dying. Locate hard to attack spawns and easy to attack spawns and many more of these contextual area's. Add other context, such as what the population balance is and put steps in earnings based on that so if you simply out-zerg an enemy strongpoint you get less than if you are equal pop (and possibly use local number superiority). Use these to create objectives for players where most of the XP of any attack or defense will come from. If you can create and maintain such an objectiven on the map you get small rewards for it (besides that you've just found a spot that enemies apparently need/want to pass through). If you can break it you can now pass through, or get smaller rewards for trying to break it. Vice versa leaving the chokepoint and managing to push farther also earns you a larger reward. This will encourage players to attack and defend as hard as possible and eventually take the base or push enemies off. There's less reason to farm captures against low pop enemies, there's less incentive to try and create a stalemate to farm kills. It pushes players not to capture or kill, but to push on regardless of them being defenders or attackers.

Yes having the rewards scale the more outpopped you are is a good idea. I tried to suggest similar with making XP earnings based on the team rather than the individual since a larger team means more people to distribute it over.

This doesn't work. If a Zerg reaches a crossroads they rarely break up. Best case scenario the Zerg breaks into enough pieces that you can stop some pieces, but most of those pieces would just rampage farther. The whole point of you not being able to stop the Zerg was it's numbers, just because it breaks up locally does not mean you suddenly are able to stop it. And another problem there is that the moment you have success against any part of that Zerg, that piece will simply reform over the main body.

You also get problems with back-capping. Currently the rules are very clear and for clear reasons: If your base's point gets captured you cannot capture the point of your enemy anymore until you clear it. This is specifically done to make sure players can find each other and do battle, and to prevent just a handful of players to ghost-cap behind enemy lines and draw many more players away from fights they actually want to be at. Worse ofcourse is that the Zerg has more players that can do this "tactic", so the defenders remain outpopped and remain unable to really break it apart as they'll get torn apart or their cap time is increased farther and farther as the Zerg marches on.

This should only count this way at extremely low population numbers for the attackers. Let's say less than 4 players. That way Ghost cappers can more easily be tracked down but if you are in a normal battle you aren't required to leave one person idling in the pointroom just to keep it captured, in many situations the fight does not take place at the pointroom as you try to halt the defenders farther down the line.

I did have trouble understanding that last part, should have asked for clarification. Sorry about that.

That would still mean you can have situations where players get rewarded for creating stalemates, as they get the defense XP then. I would prefer we look at as many systems that drive people to push their enemies. If they are defenders they should want to push the attackers until there are no more attackers and the defenders can take to the field and become the attackers. The attackers are pushed not to just kill or to capture a base, but to capture bases using the lowest amount of attackers and taking down defenders as much as possible while they do.

One of the ways I proposed it to use heat maps to locate player concentrations or events happening in the game and make objectives out of that.
Another way would be to let players build secondary objectives, like Forward Stations, spawn jammers, power shields and other things that help your attack or defense while the enemy tries to shut them down. If the (preferably shared) reward for destruction or proper placement of these things gets you the good XP, players are driven to hunt down those of the enemy while maintaining their own until the enemy is no more. Then repeat the process at the next area.

Good idea. That could probably be achieved by giving a big chunk of XP when the hostile presence in a given territory is reduced below a certain threshold (should not be 0 as there will always be stragglers, passing vehicles and stuff). The one problem with this solution is that when the attacking force is small and the threshold is set to 10% (because with 10% the attackers are effecticely neutralized) that can happen as a result of the defenders simply sending an entire platoon and get instnat-XP. Potential solution? All Sunderers, beacons and routers have to be eliminated? So conditions for defender XP would be : 1) Reduce attackers below 10% population, 2) The number of attacker spawns within 200m of the capture points must be 0. Limited the second one to a radius because otherwise some ******* attackers would just part some spawn at the very border of the territory in a place where noone would look just to deny the defender-bonus.

Yep - that could work. Once you have a reasonable number of attackers at a base, it stops being a ghostcap and becomes a fight.

At least it would curtail lone wolf Wraith Flash/ESF ghostcappers.