Just Admit It: You Hate the Core of the Game

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

  1. Demigan

    Ah yes, rock-paper scissors:

    Infantry beats infantry
    Vehicles beat infantry and vehicles
    Aircraft beat aircraft, vehicles and infantry.

    Great rock paper scissors!

    Also rock-paper-scissors is the worst design imagineable for a game like PS2. "oh you showed up with X? Well we got Y so you lose".

    The best way to do it is with soft counters all the way. Even the hardest counter is basically just the strongest soft counter. The reason is simple: Any time someone dies and feels they couldn't really do anything about it, it's marked as an OP weapon. By using rock-paper-scissors you build that into the system to ensure everyone feels powerless against something. If you instead make it so players can always do something, even if they are at a disadvantage, then you have a better game.

    Ofcourse because someone will take it to the extreme and go "YA WANT EVERY SINGLE INFANTRYMAN TA KILL ANY TANK WITH TA PISOLAH THA'S ST'PID", soft counters can easily include non-lethal weapons, abilities and deployables that are available to everyone and not gated through some moronic arsenal system.


    I still don't know where this magic comes from.

    The Ambushers are very limited as they don't let you follow a vehicle. If you jump up to them and they do this thing they can do called "moving" then you can at best stick 1 C4 on them before they get away. 1 C4 is a party trick, 2 C4 is deadly. And you can absolutely go in CQC with vehicles against Ambushers if you want to, it's just that vehicles are so incredibly trained to feel safe and secure against infantry that they'll tunnel vision and not pay any attention at all. It has been so bad that you can C4 someone who takes cover next to a wall that he should know the opposing faction is hiding behind, then they'll just go back and try to farm at the exact same spot and be surprised that you C4 them again. Oooh if only there was some kind of system in your brain that learned from it's mistakes eh?

    Also vehicles tend to be solo-focused. Even the "teamplay" vehicles with gunner seats tend to be just a driver with some DPS tacked on since the gunner can just point and shoot and be smart enough when to do it 99% of the time. There's more "teamplay" in a solo LA trying to C4 vehicles since that LA requires his allies to be targeted by the vehicles to stand a chance of C4ring them.

  2. Snow Sheltie

    There's this nagging voice in the back of my head yelling "I'm a lone wolf!" Can you be a dear and go tell it to stop?

    This is the Battlefield series in a nutshell, and if I want to play that, why go play with an inferior product, aka Planetside 2?
  3. DarkStarAnubis

    in-game cooperation/communication means are poor to nonexistent, both at grand scale and tactical level. Couple that with casual players maybe speaking a different language and you have basically a bunch of players moving from base to base until they find something suited to their taste: it may be a Zerg, it may be Ghost-Capping, it may be an equally matched fight.

    Zergs are natural attractors: there is "safety in numbers", you can practice all kind of weird things without too much risk (most likely be rezzed by a nearby Medic) and get a kill of two, it is good for organized teams and lone wolves alike, it is like the old Koltyr... But on top, you get scores for the new base. What could be better?

    Sure for the elitist HA with high KPM/KDR who craves for 1:1 duels using AD-dance, insta-overshield + bobbing up and down and getting kills with 50 HP left that's not the most satisfactory environment, but there aren't that many.

    The player is base is composed by guys with limited knowledge of bases, tactics, weapon mechanics, usage of tools with a sub 1.0 KDR. They want to have fun (who wouldn't, sorry?) and not end up mercilessly killed over and over again by the try-hard 50% HSR BR120 guy who spend 8 hours a day playing and practicing. They would ALWAYS lose in a fair 1:1 fight against a vet.

    The difference between those two extremes (a difference that is unfortunately widening as time goes by, because the vets get more experience whereas the new guys start always at ground zero) is what make player retention a pipe dream.
    • Up x 2
  4. Snow Sheltie

    I really hope you're referring to the players and their unwillingness to play together as a team and not the in-game tools provided. If you're referring to the latter, you speak out of sheer ignorance.

    Once again, when Daybreak and the reddit mobsters did a damn good job of chasing away people who were willing to lead and teach people how to be a team player, this is the result you get after a couple of years. One massive cluster.

    I came across many experienced players in my game time who enjoyed being in platoons with a competent leader at the helm. They don't want to lead anything themselves, as much as I tried to persquade them otherwise. They just had much more than have fun playing in a (large) team and that's what kept them coming back. Makes the PL or SL's job a lot easier when teammates know how to play their role and not require an inate ability to herd cats all the time.
  5. DarkStarAnubis

    Think a little about what you have written. if the available in-game tools were so good, intuitive, quick-and-easy to grasp and use, why nobody is interested to play in a team and prefer to go lone-wolf joining the first Zerg availabe on the map? Daybreak even tried to have people auto-joining squads and everybody complained about that...

    You use those tools since ages and think "Those are good tools. I can do what is needed." (and you are right from your perspective) but the vast majority do not have any time or willingness to figure out those things while they are super-busy trying to find a way to survive more than 30 seconds before getting killed.

    The learning curve of PS2 (weapons, bases, mini-map, resources, lag mechanics, vehicles, equipment, tools, ...) is not steep, is super steep.

    And after a while floating at 0.5 KDR they simply give up, way before even understanding the fine points of CoF and RoF and bursting of the weapons they are using... Much less think about team-play mechanics and tools.

    Why do you imply people wants to play PS2 in a team?

    Yes obviously a team is way more powerful that a mob of disorganized players, but not everybody has the inclination or the mindset or the patience to operate in a team when they can get easy kills in other ways.

    PS2 does not even encourage new players to be team-players in the first place.
    • Up x 1
  6. Somentine

    New tools to help promote communication and organization for fire team/squad/platoon/faction play, especially if they are intuitive, are almost always a good thing. Current tools are pretty lacking and basically force people to use third party communications and extras.

    A quick example: while spotting is currently a very strong and pretty broken mechanic (dorito + minimap tracking + very limited ways of clearing spot), not being able to quickly alert people with actions (like in Apex) forces you to make call outs on voice. In-game voice is pretty awful, and a player may not want to use voice at the time (or ever).
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  7. AuricStarSand

    The only way to fix " zergs " is to make PUB platoons have WAY more abilities than outfit platoons have. Outfits are the main reason for zergs.

    Tho getting rid of the outfit resource page won't add to the game & even before that page was introduced, wildtards still monopolized the map just to showcase their flag & logo. Prior to alert win rewards even. So at that point I'd just ban all the zerg outfits. Hello? Outfit pop limit. Or else a map priority more useful or important, than outfit resources or a alert win is.

    Tho what I don't really understand, is people who complain about zergs generally. & not just for overpop. That would mean you like 24 man fights, I don't. I only like 48 to 98+ man fights usually. 24 man fights are for people with 80 to 120 fps, who enjoy those against other people with similar fps or else 1 guy is just wrecking the other 12 guys. So meh. Big fights are where it's at, where people with all fps types are tested. Play Counter Strike if you want small lobby sized situations.

    Tho I get wanting a break from big battles & just testing infantry gameplay via smaller zones. Tech I do get 60 to 80fps with this laptop or more for smaller fights. Still not a fan really, as the type of person who enjoys 12 to 24 man fights, usually is some ninja base ghost capper anyways & I'm not really a fan of lone base ninja'ers or a small squad ninja'ers. Sure when 3 factions are closely tied & the game is 20 mins from being over, sure go ninja, tho for other times when the match isn't close & the timer isn't near the end. Then no I don't like ninja'ers for most of the day, they split the army, slow the fights, & belittle the map action.

    How to penalize Outfits who ghostcap tech plants boringly for many hours per week. So tired of seeing Wildtards ghostcap a tech plant, I want to TK them all & they all deserve it for endless techplant ghostcaps, god they are so annoying with that. & repetitive. I'd honestly ban their outfit entirely from the game from making hundreds of people not of their outfit, sit boringly around a techplant with no action for so many months or years. Enough is enough.

    As for the spawn system, the youtuber channel " Zealous " he talks of how he wants the Spawn System reworked or returned to the original days of PS2. Not entirely sure what that means, tho I've heard a few vets want better spawn systems. Camikazee's channel asked for this as well. I don't know what kind of spawn they want, as I started play PS2 around 2016 & not 2011. All I remember was a more random drop pod instant action, which I liked a lot more than the one we have now, it was more random & wild. The IA drop pod system now was built too square, its too predictable, yet I'm assuming better for server performance? I don't know.

    Ultimately suggest the devs find the regions people fight at the least, or the regions people have 3 faction fights at the least, then hold events at those least played regions. Capture the flag event. So people actually travel to them. That's my suggestion for better map variety.

    On another note, the devs seem to tailor the base designs really safe, like they are walking on eggshells while base buildings or keeping it tailored really simple. I just wish they'd make some wacky bases once awhile, some wild bases, stack some rock bridges, stack some stairs, stack some towers, or downward dungeon tunnels, & other random things like laser beam trip wire. Or base turrets that shoot all factions, even if captured, like nso auto rogue turrets. Tripwire booby trapped nuetral grey bases that nobody is able to cap, yet has some event that brings people there. Other ways to cap a base. Tho ye base design that wasn't played safe when built. Just random. Just seems they are playing it too safe with any new base design they have, when they really have the option to go wild sandbox design any base however random. People like random bases, it's the predictable ones with narrow hallways & spawn room camping that people don't find amazing.

    For example: People liked the rock bridge, probably more than any of the edits they did around TI or Crown. I miss crouching around the boulders as infantry & now my harasser has 1 less major place to show off harasser skills. Aka rock bridge. Lastly, why is all the grass knee tall? Does any grass actually hide a infantry person for a miles worth of field? That's not even a unfair advantage for vehicles, tall grass. Sure vehicles won't see infantry shooting them, tho infantry won't see vehicles bout to run them over either. It's fair. Implement TONS of grass as tall as peoples height 6 foot tall grass across all planets all fields & more reasons to have a field fight aka " WW1 Trench Warefare events with tactical item *sandbags* added to the fray ".

    I REALLY want new capture facility modes. Capture the flag seems so easy to implement, It's like they won't implement it, just since Halo has CTP. Meh. Halo also has capture the hill, so it's not like PS2 doesn't have that. Deathmatch capture the facility? Advance hacking to capture a facility? Some maze game? Needing a get a ladder to attain another plateu. Needing to difuse a bomb. Needing to destroy a bases object. Needing to down a bubble to enter a base. Or more interestings was for vehicles to take a base, other than just parking near a point, like bashing through a built dev gate. Just many alternatives ways to gain a base other than king of the hill. Starting with capture the flag. Let a harasser take a flag from 1 region to the nextdoor region, have the mini map tell everyone where the flag carrier is on all factions. That gives harassers 1 more thing to enjoy. Then have another base where capture the flag isnt able to get attained with a harasser. Yet a infantry man carries the flag, from 1 side of the base to the other. For 10 times of scores, 10 flag holders from 1 side to the other of base wins the base.
  8. Somentine

    Bruh, big fights can be fun. Smaller fights are also fun. Saying anyone who likes smaller fights just wants to play CS or are just ghost capers is like someone saying anyone who likes big fights only enjoy overpops and spawn camping.

    Key differences: smaller fights tend to lean more on skill and typically have less bs. Bigger fights are harder to end (longer fun), typically involve more domains (inf, veh, air), have more bs but also more bodies soaking up the bs against you.

    What people complain about in regards to zergs is neither of these. It is almost always overpop at bad bases with a crap tonne of bs force multipliers, rolling down hexes basically unopposed until they hit a slightly longer/harder to cap base where defender pop shows up. This means that unless you want to join a zerg, you are either fighting a terrible fight against these zergs or waiting at a spawn screen for a quick to end small fight.
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  9. Snow Sheltie

    I feel like a broken record at this time so I'll just quote myself to save myself the time.


    Devs chased out everyone who would've been willing to lead, made some sort of attempt to remedy the issue too little too late, now I don't know what the hell they're doing with their game. I doubt even they truly know what they're doing anymore. All I know is I don't want any part of it. 'Tis a sad thing to watch for somebody who witnessed the game at launch.
    • Up x 1
  10. JibbaJabba

    Coordination was much better in years past.

    You got into a pubbie squad and lo and behold you would get comms and coordination.

    Now it's utterly silent. Lucky if a squad lead is talking let alone anyone else.

    They had the same tools then as we do now.
    • Up x 1
  11. BlackFox

    What does the OP mean?
    I love to stand in a zerg and effectivley doing nothing, or being spawncamped and effectivley doing nothing. Fighting vehicle convoys is my absolutely favourite though - all that shooting at them and doing effectivley nothing.

    What else can you want from an idle a shooter game?
  12. Snow Sheltie

    Tell me if I'm wrong but I shall assume you never played this game while under command of somebody who knew what they were (mostly) doing and were actually communicating with the platoon.



    To sum up the chaos of that video, an armor column was assembled to knock out enemy sunderers. Armor was then abandoned and the platoon switched to infantry to rush the point where the attackers were making a stand. An impromptu grenade rush called over proximity chat gave the opening to rush the remaining attackers. Finally, to the attacker's credit, they weren't completely wiped out, brought fresh sunderers, and the fighting resumed in the field east of the base until the continent was locked.
  13. Demigan

    As Jibba mentioned, the tools have been there but people have stopped using them.

    Showing an example of it working does not nullify the thousands of times it doesn't work. The problem has always been that the tools are inadequate, they don't invite people to use them, they are too narrow and require the fellow squad/platoon members to be automatons too much rather than players to accomplish the tasks.

    Again, the command and communication tools available discourage players from using them, outside of some hardcore players that play make-believe that these tools are somehow perfect. They don't even meet the minimum requirements for being true tools for teamwork on PS2 scales. PS2 isn't even build for cohesive teamplay this way, since players tend to die and by the time they returned someone else has died. Teamplay should always have been about "I'm here, there's an ally over there and his random/squad/platoon/outfit status doesn't matter because we have the tools and incentives to play together". But everything tries to stop this: Squads and platoons discourage cooperating with anyone outside of their hierarchy which basically means these players are encouraged to segregate themselves from other players. The communication tools are tough to use in groups of 3 in a way that lets all 3 of them get the information they have to the other 3, let alone an entire squad or platoon communicating and cooperating with one another since if the leader speaks no one else can communicate with their buddies. Worse is that if you were busy in a firefight you will likely lose most of the information being spoken as there's no way to check the information afterwards (which a simple map-based contextual icon could). The rewards almost all focus on the individual which means everyone acts as if their allies are competition for their rewards rather than teamplayers. The teamplay tools in PS2 are worse than DOA, they are directly discouraging it's active use outside of specialized teams.

    PS2's team and cooperative gameplay needs a serious overhaul. Simple stuff like adding a radial menu to the Q-spot of enemies with contextual messages that nearby players can see and react on. A similar radial menu for the V key but focused on designating area's. Rewards that focus on what the team accomplishes as a whole rather than the individual. Rewards that focus on fighting the hardest thing rather than seeking out the weakest thing and killing that over and over. An updated map system which lets you see the general whereabouts of spotted* enemies beyond the basic radar range so players are more easily able to make informed decisions on a fight's progress and what they need to do and leadership has an easier time communicating with one another and the allies in their groups about what they see and want done. Each one of these individually would do more for the entire teamplay of PS2 than everything done so far.

    *Q-spotted, visible through radars/motion spotters, spotted by firing.
  14. Your Secret Admirer

    As best we have information on, the daily quests are r direct instructions from the developers.

    The best way to play the game is to hold a point for 5 minutes, spread across three base captures.

    After that the platoon flies to three towers, and stands on them for 10 seconds before redeploying for the other towers.

    After that the entire squad uses naginatas, regardless of their utility in the given fight, until everyone has 30 kills.

    Then the entire platoon pulls ants, and then mines 10k Cortium, creating 9.6 fully fueled bases.

    And then the platoon pulls ammo gals, and sits just inside the closest hostile hex shooting air, to trigger resupply.

    The platoon redeploys and everybody pulls medic, and then everybody tries to get shot by a tank, while dropping shield bubbles in order to rack up that sweet sweet shield and heal XP.
    While doing so they raise each other from the dead.

    And then the platoon goes out hunting enemy players using a myriad of medic accessible weapons.

    And then they repull their heavies which they forgot about needing to get vehicle kills, so everybody hops into armor and starts shooting the turret fixtures across the map, until every player has killed the equivalent of a vanguard worth of hit points.

    Then they stand in front of the enemy and get shot until they take 1500 damage to their overshields, because let's face it everybody forgot to use their overshields.

    And then everybody pulls engineers and throws ammo kits at each other while shooting in the air, this goes on for about 15 minutes, and then they go off and try to capture bases and heal the turret fixtures they destroyed earlier, all the while shooting at bad guys trying to get 10 kills each.

    And then the platoon stands next to a drill for 15 minutes, two five. Minutes of uptime and a 5 minute period of downtime.

    The platoon then divides into two and flies 48 galaxies, to two hot spots across the map, and then spawns across them until the mission is completed.

    And then they pull 48 sunderers and spawn across them until everyone has spawned in to each 50 times,

    This takes about 33 and 1/2 hours of gameplay divided across all players, each player experiencing about 42 minutes of non-stop spawning.

    And then the platoon spawns 48 harassers and drives to four different bases independently, and all near the warp gate.

    There are more details, but this generally gives you the idea of how to win PlanetSide 2 as described by the developers

    Edit:

    I want to make it clear that the developers are teaching us that the best way to heal is to find infantry being shot at by a tank and healing them to get 30 ticks of XP
    • Up x 1
  15. Snow Sheltie

    The purpose of posting that video was to demonstrate in images to everyone posting here with some form of claiming that co-operation never existed in Planetside 2 that there used to be a better level of teamwork than what they experience now.

    This is far more of the fault of the players than the devs not knowing what the hell they're doing (though their meddling didn't help). It's something I'm going to dub the 'EVE' effect. Too many tryhards spying on the other faction's communication lines because winning the game at all costs was that bloody important to them. Add players with severe narcissism surrounded by yes-men vs fellow narcissists on the same team (and one stubborn Polak) and you get an atmosphere where players don't want to talk to each other because of all the blasted drama that results from it. I got a funny story about spies in leadership chat but that's for another day.



    I heartily disagree with this statement. The tools are often on par or better than equivalents in other games but there's no effort on the game's design to encourage their use. There isn't anything actively discouraging the use of the tools. If you wish to elaborate this quote further, I am intrigued.

    I agree that the tools for communication and information gathering/sharing ingame need a complete overhaul but not for the reasons you claim.
  16. Fr0Zen1Yes

    Speaking on the Miller TR Situation as I see it.

    We have AT LEAST half of our Population bound at the "Middle of the Map Base".
    Please lock those Bases again for at least 10min after the Map change.

    And then we have the Medic Problem.
    There is so much Cert farming going on, that it's destroying the Game. You often see 15/20 People being Medic and being effectively useless or even hindering any Progress.
    They can't deal with a Vehicle, they can't deal with an Aircraft... they can ress each other until the Opponent has mercy or gets scared off by someone who is a real Thread.

    And the whole Spawnroom Situation is extremely discouraging.
    There are often People camping in there until way past the 50/50 Pop. Not even talking about the Stacked Windows and Doors before.
    I don't know if it's the KDR holding them in there, staring out the Shields for Minutes... sad.
    Even if we get camped by Tanks, they still play Medic and Sniper.
    If you run out with a Launcher and die in Range, the Medics Vulture in a Dozen upon you instead of grabbing a Launcher themself.
    You see People taking the ress and being killed over and over. It is sad to see these poor Souls coming back to the Spawnroom, having to still reload their Launchers, and often even having to do the healing themself because the Vultures moved on to the next Victim.

    We even have Medics camping at our Sunderers! And People do take those Revives.
    They really can't wait 1sec Longer or need their KDR so much that they do not care that they stall the whole Advance because of them now having to wait for their Shields to replenish or their Guns to be reloaded.

    I think nerfing any EXP for everyone in the Spawnroom to ZERO is a Step to take, and also nerfing Medic EXP in general by at least 50% is in order.

    Yeah... That's the sad Story from TR Miller. We ain't getting much done lately.
  17. Fr0Zen1Yes

    Speaking on the Miller TR Situation as I see it.

    We have AT LEAST half of our Population bound at the "Middle of the Map Base".
    Please lock those Bases again for at least 10min after the Map change.

    And then we have the Medic Problem.
    There is so much Cert farming going on, that it's destroying the Game. You often see 15/20 People being Medic and being effectively useless or even hindering any Progress.
    They can't deal with a Vehicle, they can't deal with an Aircraft... they can ress each other until the Opponent has mercy or gets scared off by someone who is a real Thread.

    And the whole Spawnroom Situation is extremely discouraging.
    There are often People camping in there until way past the 50/50 Pop. Not even talking about the Stacked Windows and Doors before.
    I don't know if it's the KDR holding them in there, staring out the Shields for Minutes... sad.
    Even if we get camped by Tanks, they still play Medic and Sniper.
    If you run out with a Launcher and die in Range, the Medics Vulture in a Dozen upon you instead of grabbing a Launcher themself.
    You see People taking the ress and being killed over and over. It is sad to see these poor Souls coming back to the Spawnroom, having to still reload their Launchers, and often even having to do the healing themself because the Vultures moved on to the next Victim.

    We even have Medics camping at our Sunderers! And People do take those Revives.
    They really can't wait 1sec Longer or need their KDR so much that they do not care that they stall the whole Advance because of them now having to wait for their Shields to replenish or their Guns to be reloaded.

    I think nerfing any EXP for everyone in the Spawnroom to ZERO is a Step to take, and also nerfing Medic EXP in general by at least 50% is in order.

    Yeah... That's the sad Story from TR Miller. We ain't getting much done lately.

    ***Previous Reply got messed up by Copy/Paste. No clue how to fix that.***
    • Up x 1
  18. Your Secret Admirer

    KDR is useless when you spawn directly into a Banshees rain of fire.

    Or die in your drop pod.

    Or spawn under a mag rider.

    Or fall through the map.

    Or get hit from the impulse blast of an orbital from 5 minutes ago because the server forgot


    Or The developers literally place a tree where your ESF spawns on Hossin.

    Or...
  19. Demigan

    Multiple people have already explained this to you. But lets give an example:
    When construction was released EVERYONE joined in. Bases were build, based were attacked, people generally had a good time.
    However as time went on people got more in touch with how the system rewards them, and so builders started making murder-holes no one wanted to fight against and anyone attacking it would cheese it.
    You can claim that its the players doing this, but they do it because the way the system was set up taught them to do it. This was the only end meta that construction could get the way it was set up.

    This is 100% the fault of the developers, and your EVE effect is a perfect example.
    EVE at its core caters to lawlessness, screwing people over and administrative depths that deeper than many administrative jobs. Every aspect of the game and most of the interactions and talking points of the devs themselves underline this, so the meta that evolved was based on it: tryhards spying on communications and trying to win at all costs.
    Also the people you describe are quite literally the people you display in the video. Narcissists that think they are 5D chess supergeniuses that use Yes-men to capture bases with singular strategies (EVERYONE DO X!) on a map that is one step more complex than tic-tac-toe.

    In PS2 we've seen a different type of degradation: the tools, gameplay and reward systems all discourage playing the game as it was designed originally, so people stopped using them.

    Nothing discouraging their use aside from gameplay (it encourages Zerging, one-sentence strategies, competition for kills over cooperation, farming), or rewards (XP, medals and directives all allmost exclusively benefit from the player getting the last shot rather than cooperating with others).

    The tools on par or better than equivalents? It relies mostly on voice comms to transfer information even though that limits the amount of players that can transfer information to 1, in an MMO where up to 48 players can be at a time AND its only limited to those players and no one else. Then there's a selection of simplistic waypoints, the most complex and useful part of the communication system (map drawing) is gated to only squad/platoon leadership and then expressly limited to be viewable only on the mapscreen assuming people didnt turn it off, besides that it is needlessly complicated to do stuff like draw a simple line or create a box (god damn Microsoft Paint does it better, MICROSOFT PAINT).

    PS2's communication and coordination systems have always been archaic at best, completely misplaced and working against the MMOFPS design at worst.

    And what would you consider then?
  20. Snow Sheltie

    Okay, I am seeing a problem with our debate revolving around our definition of the word 'discourage' and correct me if I'm wrong on this.

    Your definition of discourage appears to be gameplay or gameplay mechanics that are favored over others which are then typically ignored or avoided because the former is just better.

    My definition of discourage is any style of gameplay that is actively punished through the gameplay mechanics. One example of this is the teamwork vs solo play in left4dead. The game was designed around the idea of four survivors working together to make it through the map and attempts to solo or leeroy the level are discouraged by gameplay elements severely punishing players who choose to ignore the teamwork aspect of the game. Special infected (hunters, smokers, jockeys, etc) are the most glaring example of game design discouraging a particular gameplay style or behavior, in this case, running solo. In Planetside 2's case, I am failing to see what elements of the game actively punish players for co-operating with each other.

    I suppose I should elaborate what I'm talking about. I am not referring to the average player, the 'grunt' on the ground here. I am referring to people in leadership roles (Outfit leaders, frequent Platoon/Squad Leads, etc) who often butt heads against each other because each of them is convinced only they know the winning move to victory and that everyone else is an idiot. Basically, they're more intertested in bossing each other around than trying to have a fun session. I've seen at least three, (maybe four?) "coalitions" within the NC on first Watterson, then Emerald. Each one failed for the same reason; One or two guys gets the idea for the coalition and almost immediatley begin attempting to pester or bully everyone else into this coalition, in a couple of instances even griefing outfits who refuse to play along. Eventually the toxic behavior causes in-fighting and the whole thing ends up collapsing in on itself.

    Are there other MMOFPS games of a simjilar scale you can tell me about that I am unfamiliar with with a better working system? I'd love to try them out if possible. I am aware of at least two other fps games (paid products, not f2p) with a similar degree of communication and coordination systems, Squad and Arma. Those games have better working setups but they are also far slower-paced which lets players better digest the information available. Squad in particular has a problem with many games involving little to no coordination mostly because either nobody wants to lead or nobody wants to listen, or a combination of both. I generally don't like to play that game unless it's with friends.

    It's through my general experience with both those games that I believe lack of coordination is far more based on the players than the game itself, and bear in mind neither of those games have a progression system to grind out.

    I'll get back to you on that when I can brainstorm an idea. Ideas I could think of are most likely going to be from a commander's point of view, seeing how that was my usual role I end up filling (mostly because nobody else wants to). Fixing that idiotic map drawing thing so you can see it on the minimap would be a start. I still don't know what idiot thought that was a bright idea, and what idiot approved it. If you can think of an idea, let's both brainstorm here. Anyone else is free to join in.