Just Admit It: You Hate the Core of the Game

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Snow Sheltie, Sep 3, 2022.

  1. Snow Sheltie

    Zerg this. Zerg that. Zerg Zerg Zergity Zerg,

    It's all I ever see as the core complaint. And whenever pressed to define what a "zerg" is, it inevitably ends up in some variant of X number of players fighting over a single location or moving in a single direction, with the value of X varying in some degree but usually somewhere in the ballpark of 48, the size of a platoon in this game. It does not matter to the dissenter what those players are doing or if there's any sort of organization within that group of players.

    This begs the question: Why the hell are you even playing this game? It becomes very clear you all are not interested in large scale warfare but instead want to play some hyper-competative Call of Duty style came but with a few random vehicles mixed in. Planetside 2 was never developed with this in mind.

    Planetside had emphasized large scale battles at its core and Sony attempted to put this in place when they started development for PS2. At the time of its release in 2012 there wasn't quite anything like it, in spite of the mess the game was in. Now I played the game for years because I enjoyed getting involved in large-scale but organized (mostly) warfare that nobody else could provide. This really was only possible because of the way the platoon system and, more importantly, the way the in-game voice system was set up. There really was no other game other than Arma at the time that had it and it allowed for an incredible level of precision for a bunch of random strangers granting you had players who were willing to work as a team and who were willing to actually use the bloody system.

    I never liked this game as a lone-wolf. Every solo session I had was miserable with only one exception where I went random vanu in a TR/NC crown fight and assasinated one of my outfit's seargents who then dropped into the teamspeak channel I was in to yell at me about it. I only really found enjoyment in this game working with my outfit and very often leading squads or platoon(s) into battle and treating the game more like a RTS than a FPS. Maybe it's my RTS years giving me the urge to command (and conquer) and from everything I observed, very few players ever lead more than just "Attack Eli Amp Station." and never giving further instructions on how to attack it, like assigning squads to attack generators or harass the spawn room. I and a few like-minded people were able to foster a culture of "leadership by example" within the outfit I operated in and it let us stand out from our peers for a while.

    Eventually the game was changed to a point where it was difficult to impossible to play with my outfit because either one opposing faction or the other didn't feel like playing that night. Combine this with a psychotic player base who seems to despise seeing anyone having fun that's not their version of fun, and I decided to grab my hat and head out the door. It's sad but I guess when you got idiots who fail to understand why a game was made the way it was screeching on reddit all day long about it and the devs decide to listen to them instead of the players who were playing the game as it was originally designed for, well you get the mess you see in this pitiful excuse for a game today.

    Maybe I should turn this into a video, I don't know. I need my coffee now, go away.
    • Up x 1
  2. brutes359

    You know. In any other circumstance I would disagree, but in truth this person is correct. The planetside 2 is WAY different than the version we had ten years ago with a FAR greater emphasize on individual play and faster paced combat then it did all those years ago. Many of the components of the game since that time that focused on support and force amplification (Rocket Launchers, Max suits, Tanks and General, thermal optics, AA, and more), have repeatedly been nerfed into the ground while other aspects that focus on empowering the individual player (implants, buffs to the LA class in the forms of ambushers and rocklet launchers, removing of counters such as thermal optics to empower infiltrators, the addition of the new war assets like orbital strikes) have been added to cater to the adrenaline junkies that spilled out of COD after the failure of BO3 roughly 4-5 years ago, and the addition of Wrel to the weapon balancing team (who was EXTREMELY biased towards lone wolf tactics and classes).

    Now some of these concepts are useful and beneficial to the games core concept, such as the deployable shields, repair grenades', and other support weapons. However, the vast majority of changes to the game have specifically hurt the games core concept of a grueling, attrition based war between factions, and the result has been the current meta that we have. That of course being the existence of single zergs with no counter zerg to battle. An alert begins, and everyone either flocks to a single faction to form a zerg (usually Vanu) or they simply get off and thus the zerg has no challenger. Arguably this could also be because of lower population numbers since Planetsides original release prevent more than a single zerg from forming at times, but the fact remains that the continuous nerfs to force multiplier platforms has made it extremely difficult for players to mount effective defenses against these types of strategies, and no real punishment exists to stop them when just two or so years ago the hardpoint bases such as the crown, the auraxis firearms corporation, TI alloys Inc. the Bastion and others did exactly that.

    Do I think then that Zergs are a bad thing? No, not at all. I think they can do great and be great fun when they have a big opponent to crash into, and in the past the hardpoint bases like the crown allowed for huge battles to occur between two different zergs, or even for a zerg to be forced to a halt by a smaller force with a terrain advantage. However, that is not the case anymore because of the reworks to those bases that favor the attackers over the defenders.

    So in short, I believe the issue is the developers have been favoring aggressive gameplay over defensive gameplay and put too much effort into making each player a one man army rather than focusing on the combined arms combat that the game was originally known for. To fix this issue, buffs to defensive gameplay assets such as base defenses and force multiplier platforms such as MAX suit survivability and rocket launcher range and velocity as well as the addition of faction lock-ins during alerts would go a long way in fixing the issue of lone zergs without compromising the games core values.
  3. Somentine

    @OP
    Key word: BATTLES. Rolling down 4-5 hexes nearly completely unopposed hardly qualifies.

    The who, where, and with what also play key roles in fun 'large scale battles'.

    @Brutes
    Having people with hero classes and abilities (like maxes, HESH, a2g, etc.) that allow them to ignore a lot of threats and/or significantly boost their power is the exact opposite of what you are describing.

    You want more defensive gameplay? Create better bases and nerf the hell out of braindead mechanics like above.
    • Up x 3
  4. Liewec123

    there is a huge difference between having a lot of players and having a lot of players fighting a lot of players.

    around the start of outfit wars a few years back base caps became way more rewarding than prolonged fighting,
    (more resources to build more outfit stuff, more merit.)
    so the bulk of each faction's forces decided to stop fighting eachother and start zerging instead.
    so now what we get is multiple zergs all snowballing down lattice lanes, and that's not fun for anyone.
    • Up x 3
  5. Johannes Kaiser

    When I see big groups, they ar efighting each other in 2/10 cases. 8/10 they are avoiding each other like the plague and are behaving exactly as this plague to some poor dudes trying to hold onto a facility but end up outnumbered 5 to 1 at least. Ya know, maybe zergs *are* the plague, then, considering they behave as such and see each other as such as well.
    • Up x 2
  6. DarkStarAnubis

    It has been repeated to death that PS2 is a sandbox meaning there isn't a "way" to play the game, therefore both solo players and groups find their way to have fun (whatever fun means to them).

    Zergs are a way to have some fun, at least for the attackers (even if it short lived). As defender with the Swiss Cheese bases we have you can only fire/retreat/fire a few times until you are confined in the Spawn and that in the lucky case the base has some sort of barrier preventing tanks to directly surround the Spawn from the beginning, otherwise it is game over immediately.

    IMHO you cannot really blame players to join Zergs, blame the designers instead to have created a mechanism that not only allows, but encourage players to move in Zergs to achieve something.

    Mind you its polar opposite, ghost capping bases with a stalker infiltrator playing hide and seek is equally boring and stupid but for different reasons: not sure what is worse.
    • Up x 1
  7. Demigan

    Neither of you seems to understand what you are talking about.

    Snow sheltie for example thinks that a Zerg needs some kind of agreed upon population to make it a Zerg, but the whole point of the Zerg is that its not defined as a set number.
    Dumping 6 people on a 4v4 is already a Zerg, since you try to win using sheer numbers over skill/effort. This is however more rare than a very full platoon dumping itself somewhere, and the influx of 30+ people is almost always enough to create Zerg conditions.


    As for Brute's whole "I hate Lone Wolf" and "the game caters to Lone Wolf gameplay" is also a huge swing and a miss. The developers have specifically neutered lone wolf gameplay by making it harder for them and excessively rewarding azzhole teamplay (base capture being more important than good fights, outfit arsenal designed to **** over the rest and any counters are all outfit gear).
    Things like Thermals although justly (but too harshly) nerfed were also nerfs to the individual using it, it wasnt some team oriented item.


    The core gameplay has always been large playercounts fighting one another in various ways. The secondary gameplay that was pushed never complemented that. The "team"play of capturing bases for alerts or outfits always pushed for avoiding combat.
    Also that "team"play was never fleshed out. There's no groundwork for players to easily play together and even systems that make them competition rather than allies (the way XP, achievements, ribbons and medals are earned). Its the opposite of teamplay. And the squads and platoons just encourage players to ignore anyone outside of that hierarchy and see them as competition.

    At every turn the game breaks down its own core gameplay. Too much reward for avoiding combat and cheese "team"play tactics (Zerging) and too little actual support for players to truly work together with the players around them.
  8. Demigan

    Even sandboxes have ways to play them, and that is expressed in the gameplay.

    You COULD play Doom as a cover shooter. But the way the gameplay is set up and rewards you is as an in-your-face run&gun shooter. Because there IS a main gameplay that the developers tried to encourage.

    The same is true for PS2, however the devs never managed to create a unifying core gameplay. Things have always been designed just off, rarely improving on the core gameplay loop of facilitating big fights and always pulling itself apart. The XP, achievements, ribbons and medals all focus on individualistic farming and killing of the weakest and easiest to achieve them, the "team"play elements encourage players to avoid fights or shut them down for a victory while the actual mechanics to facilitate that "team"play are horrendously underdesigned as they focus almost exclusively on the person at the top screaming orders without facilitating any easy communication and coordination between the people under them or even the people outside of the self-segregating groupings of squad/platoon/outfit.
  9. DarkStarAnubis

    But that's the problem.

    PS2 has no gameplay. Players are simply put in an endless spawn-die-repeat cycle without any goal aside from racking XP/kills/medals/...
    • Up x 1
  10. Somentine

    You have continent locks, base captures, point captures.

    Those three things are designed to give players an objective to fight over. Choosing not to, or to do it somewhere else, is why it is considered a sandbox.
  11. OpolE

    Always have hated the core came. Been calling for PLANETSIDE 1 METAGAME FOR 10 FRIKKIN YEARS!

    We must be 100% in control of what continents we open, close or fight days for. That's the end game! WORLD DOMINATION
  12. Mechwolf

    Not that we'd have the resources to do it, but this whole game would need to be changed, from a game that focuses on hour and a half battles, to week long conquests, that's what the first game was closer to.

    There would have to be something drastically done to assist the losing side to keep it fun for them, whether it's increased nanite gain, or extra health when the losing team is too condensed, or war assets that only are available when you're at a certain losing threshold.

    Not to mention there would need to be something that gave the players a higher sense of accomplishment, accurate statistics recorded throughout the week to credit the players who did the most would be a good addition.

    Other additions would be to reward team-based gameplay more often, such as giving defensive directive rewards instead of offensive, and not singular defensive like Overshield, things like deployable Seraph shields, deployable speed mines (you'd run over them to run faster, probably 10-15%) the NC had a nice ability to give everybody in an aura 25% damage resistance during the campaign, light assaults had a deployable jump pad that made you jump a little higher than a jumping implant for 20 seconds (definitely needed to increase the time and jump height).

    Instead of just having temporary campaign items, they could have more permanent additions, that actually cost certs that we're all waiting to spend.
  13. Demigan

    While related to the problem I don't think it's the problem itself.

    The simple points base capture system provides the basic gameplay. It guides players towards a goal where they'll meet and fight. This was true for the beginning of the game and it's true now as we see bases that have the base capture points removed become ghost towns no one fights at anymore.
    It does have a major double-sided flaw. If players try to make capturing efficient then they are encouraged to avoid the core gameplay of fighting one another. So either players will not make it efficient, meaning a stale metagame where players are discouraged from trying to optimize strategies and weapons which is actually very important as we have entire games around that now (Satisfactory, Factorio, Subnautica etc). Or you do have incentives that let players build a metagame which will automatically destroy the core gameplay of fighting one another.
    The devs decided to go for option B, by adding alerts, victory points, outfit wars and the outfit resources+arsenal system all creating incentives to avoid combat and just capture bases ASAP.

    The way forwards would be to change that core of the problem: Capturing bases as fast and efficiently as possible means avoiding or destroying the ability to fight. If you change that, a proper meta will follow at least partially. It would still need help by building a proper teamplay basis rather than the "leader screams at his subordinates and if they don't follow immediately they are the problem" technique that is followed right now. At it's most basic teamplay should be about "I see another player here, he is not my competition and I can do something with him regardless of their outfit/squad/platoon/random status and I am encouraged to do so".
  14. Snow Sheltie

    Well I found something I can mostly agree with. To add to your post, it turns into a matter of players' seemingly natural instinct to min/max everything they can and thus prioritize certain locations over others. I watched many times where a string of bases would be captured unopposed by one advancing squad or platoon until they reached a critical facility that the other faction cannot afford to lose and only then did the fighting actually begin. Some bases would almost never see action until the end of alerts. Eventually I would figure out what bases were like this and either patiently bide my time fighting over another facility or send a single squad (or two) along the lattice line towards whatever my ultimate goal for that session was.


    The problem wasn't that players weren't willing to fight, it was that they became very picky on where they were willing to fight so most battles ended up focused on a few key facilities, thus many bases would have little or no action whatsoever. This could've been a sign that there are just too many capturable bases to begin with and maybe the game would benefit from fewer bases and more open space between them.

    Nobody ever mentioned this problem in 2017 before I quit. The entire focus was on how the "zerg" was the real problem and if only Daybreak would ruin anyone's ability to "zerg" then the game would be great! The playerbase (or at least the reddit knuckleheads) wanted to kill off large outfits that didn't go with whatever bleedin 'meta' they had in their smooth brains at the time.

    I did not experience whatever happened shortly after Daybreak decreed that all three factions must have equal population no matter what. It was no fun when I couldn't play with my outfit due to arbitrary and ascinine population rules. I have observed what happened afterwards by watching an old buddy of mine who still plays the game and holy smokes had the game gone downhill as if the devs and community had successfully chased away anyone insane enough to try to take on a leadership role in a responsible manner and everything had devolved into generic COD/Battlefield gameplay, every man for himself, nobody in command.
  15. TR5L4Y3R

    leading in this game much less communicating and strategising across the whole faction is a joke anyway.
    there are by far not enough ways to communicate strategy in this game other than "go here", "defend here", "go to waypoint" ... which is BS .. the reason people don´t want to lead is it´s both too difficult, limited AND intimidating ...
    • Up x 1
  16. Snow Sheltie

    It is. No ingame mechanics to realy promote this, though the players themselves do a horrible job of it on their own. I can recall at least four times the NC on Waterson and then Emerald attempted to create "coalitions" They always failed due to infighting.

    Personally I could usually count on having anywhere from one or two outfit-controlled platoons at my command and having two with competent leadership in two platoons opens up a lot of strategies and the capacity to operate completely independent of the rest of the NC. Give me three platoons (on a few occasions) and then I can do a hell of a lot of damage.

    Yes the core parts of the game is attack and defend. However, where's your sense of imagination? Here's some examples I used, a number of them quite frequently.

    "First platoon redeploy back to the warpgate! I want one galaxy per squad! We're moving out in two minutes! I say again, redeploy back to the warpgate! One galaxy per squad! We are moving out in two minutes! Stop fighting at the old base and get back to the warpgate!"

    "Second Platoon we are setting up an armor column to push ahead of first platoon! Rally up at the Platoon waypoint! I need Sunderers and Vanguards at the waypoint! We're moving out in 3 minutes!"
    "Second Platoon let's roll out! Squad waypoints mark the route you need to take! Do not charge directly at the enemy! Flank by the waypoints!"

    "First Platoon we are attacking the horizontal generator, Second Platoon is handling verticle! Waypoints are showing an alternate route to the generator, I want us to use those to flank the enemy! Move before they realize it!"

    "Alright Charlie, we need to defend this building. Fireteam one hold the north room at squad waypoint, Fireteam two hold the second room! Call out if your room is about to be overrun so the other team can support you!"

    -Communicating what specific actions the platoon or squad needs to do to succeed is extremely important. That often comes with experience or guidance by an experienced veteren. Repeating orders (since players can very easily miss the first two times it gets called out due to all the chaos around them) is helpful. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is also very helpful.
    -Getting outfit mates trained so they just act instead of thinking is important. Do you really want your medics running ahead and dying first or taking cover and reviving the max? Do you want your heavy assaults panicing when they come across an enemy max or instinctively taking cover, pulling out their rockets, and then engaging the max? Do you want your galaxies racing to the objective and dropping squads within a time span of 60 seconds or do you want the whole platoon dropping at once within 5 seconds? Have you ever been the reciepient of a well-timed and (semi) coordinated grenade rush? I have, it's both impressive and not fun to deal with.
    -Waypoints used as rally locations, waypoints used to guide troops along specific pathways (because players will always take the most direct route to the objective they can find), waypoints to establish a 'front' out in those rare field battles.

    There were some things that were implemented into the game so badly that nobody ever touched them. The ability to draw lines on the map was one such example (Why the hell would you create that ability and NOT have it show up on the minimap?)

    Side note: A lot of the leadership type players in this game seem to have this ascine way of thinking how 'training' in this game should be and my outfit was the target of many a troll and otherwise idiotic griefers for our training methods, particularly the OPFOR training we held weekly.

    Agree with you here. It takes a certain type of person to be wanting and willing to lead. That being said, the game's 'limitation' still far outpaces most similar games. Once again with the battlefield series example, none of them can hold a candle to planetside 2 for command and control capability. Player imagination is simply lacking.
  17. D.C.V.

    I don't hate the zergs or the big fights as long as they're EVEN. I hate the percentage imbalances that blitzkrieg zergs usually cause. If it's 100v100, it's fun. If it's 50vs50 and then turns into 50v100 spawncamp, it's AIDS. And it's always the latter that happens. They cap a base and then all mass deploy to another one across the map, steamrolling everything. The hex pop goes from 50/50 % to 20/80 % within 30 seconds. Primetime alerts are the worst, when all the zergfit leaders coordinate their braindead zombie armies to ruin every fight they can.
    • Up x 2
  18. JibbaJabba

    I absolutely love the core game.

    Which is why I hate zergs.

    96 people crushing 12 is not "large scale warfare". It's stupid and it's not fun for anyone.
    • Up x 2
  19. OneShadowWarrior

    They allocated to much time and resources to Outfit Wars. They have worked hard and fast to add new changes without digesting it all. Stack more bugs on top of more bugs and really smacking balance into another realm. Big fights aren’t fun when your server crashes, your FPS tanks regardless of setting even you have a low or high end computer rig, it doesn’t matter it runs like crap. I used to use Planetside as my corner stone as a game that performed well compared to up coming title games at this point I find Star Citizen in Alpha to run with better stability and performance. It’s where I been off to.

    They have some very serious bugs that are long overdue to being addressed from audio hitching, shadows creating artifacting such as headless opponents or tank canopies, degrading graphics on sharpness of images as fights get’s progressively bigger and not updating software like putting in DLSS or better anti aliasing choices. So many things need to be gutted out in this engine to embrace DX11.
  20. brutes359



    I disagree with your conclusion. My argument is that the catering to lone wolf style gameplay has greatly contributed to the current meta due to it jacking up the popularity of infantry combat and eliminating the rock-paper-scissor type specialist system planetside used to have. For instance, the addition of the ambusher jumpjets and rocklet launchers to the LA classes rendered close range tank combat virtually suicide, but the nerfing of the lock on range and per-shot damage of HA launchers made long range combat more appealing, this is a prime example of why so many tanks now simply sit on hills away from the battle, because its safer.

    Likewise, infantry saw the implementation of implants, weapons that favored close to mid-range combat, and, most importantly, new weapons that could fill specialist roles traditionally filled by other classes such as the rocklet launchers, AMRs, and now the masthead. Meanwhile, the bases continue to be reworked to further punish defensive gameplay and favor offense while "Disrupter" units such as MAX suit, who traditionally acted both as the epitamy of specialist style gameplay and the force multipliers needed make or break sieges, got nerfed into the ground over and over again because people considered them "Low Skill Weapons" purely because of their kill to death ratios; despite their sheer cert cost for outfitting, sheer number of hard-counters, and their dedicated specialization into roles disqualifying the argument.

    The Devs themselves can be quoted as seeking out a design that allowed an uninterrupted "Flow of Combat", and we see that in what we have now. A massive endless wave of infantry zergs passing unimpeded through base after base because no one has a means of stopping them. So no, my point still stands, you simply read the conclusion of the statement wrong.

    Planetside does indeed cater to lone wolf gameplay, and just because you have one hundred people swarming together over bases does not invalidate that. The highest played classes in the came still range from HA to LA and Infiltrator because the new system and style of play supports them and them alone. You even agree to this by stating that the systems in place do not provide the framework for cooperation between individual players or provide ample rewards to do so. Essentially, you have huge armies of players swarming over bases, but each and every one of them is no longer reliant on the support of other classes or combined arms tactics to succeed. Everybody is an army onto themselves with a counter to everything the come across in some form or another.
    • Up x 1