The state of PS2 and what I feel must change.

I really wanted to like the hex system; it sounds so much better in theory. Unfortunately, and I don't know why, it doesn't work. Buzzcutpsycho makes some valid points about why it has become a failure and I can only assume those are the reasons why.

Either way, the Lattice System needs to make a comeback. Most of the problems concerning "flow" which Buzz outlined in his post could be solved by this one change to the game.

I know the developers have said they'd never do it, but that was then and this is now: they need to recognize that the hexes just are not working. We need the structured flow that only a Lattice System can give us.

Buzz is absolutely right and, when I read Buzz's arguments all laid out by him in this post, I only became more sure of this fact: the Lattice System must be implemented if Planetside 2 is to survive.

Before people just agree with it, they should think about it by looking at it from different perspectives.
Im tired and only read down to the auto-turrets which i dont agree with. I'll read the rest tomorrow.

My instant thoughts are that the OP just wants his zerg outfit to take bases quicker so they can try and continent lock in a few hours.

SCU painfield spawn lockouts ....... grab 20 Gals with 5-6 ppl in, drop them on surrounding bases to take out the SCU so no one can spawn there?
It will change the 'boring' spawn camping?...will it not be just as boring with no spawn camping while waiting to cap the base?

Limited options on places to spawn, trying to force bigger battles ......... does everyone want these big battles with the rendering issue?

New players dropped into a hot zone ...... gets killed, SCU gone, no sundies up, left to spawn at another base with no one attacking yet is somehow better than it is now?

Time removed from instant action drops ...... none stop drop podding? Find the sundy, keep dropping till you land on it with your C4? Snipers none stop dropping till they find a sweet spot on a cliff, building or tree?

These are just off top of my head for now. Its nice to see some constructive complaints about the game. But at the end of the day its a sandbox game and no matter what tools/toys/changes they add/make to the game the same people will still complain about it.

great post, would love to see this implemented.

Rather than lattice, the devs should integrate Azure Twilight's neutral hex/supply lines idea. Would achieve the same thing but more organically. It also gives importance to outfit/organised spec ops squads to try and back cap important hexes that cut supply lines, and corresponding defenders' quick reaction forces to come in and try to stop them. All the while the zergs form an epic front line that is more directed thanks to the neutral hexes limiting the attack options.

Anything that isn't popular opinion and posted to /r/planetside daily I disagree with completely.

• SCU at every base is beyond dumb. They tried it in beta and was incredibly boring. Your solution to make it so that a base must be attackable does not help in the slightest. During an average day, only 2-3 bases are being 'attacked' at a time. The rest are No Activity or Enemies Detected. It takes 4-5 people to just drop the SCU and the base is left undefendable. This would make defense impossible.
• Pain Fields after the SCU goes down is not a new concept. Personally, I want the shields in the spawn room to drop so you can clean them out after the SCU dies.
• Influence system lets bases cap faster when there is no fight. I don't know why you want base caps to take longer than they do already...I can't think of any fight we have ever been in where the fight wasn't already lost when the point gets taken. The only time it has mattered, it was VSA vs non-TE TR at Tumas. It was a good fight with even numbers.
• Instant action is not used for Joe Schmoe to find a fight, the Reinforcements Needed spawn option is. Instant Action is for outfits to mass deploy on a target and take the base. Removing the IA timer would effectivly destroy any semblance of front line and make bases impossible to defend. The strategy would become Outfit Ops just mass deploying on fights and overwhelming the defenders by attacking suddenly from every angle. You are the leader of TE, you should know exactly how this will play out because you do it every op. A better solution here would be to include assaults in 'Reinforcements needed' spawn selection, not just defense. IF AND ONLY IF: IA becomes a random drop, this idea would be alright. I still think assaults should be in the reinforcements needed tab on the spawn menu.
• The Crown is a common complaint, you are not new here.
• Merging Servers is posted to reddit 3 times a day. SOE should do something related to this.
• No Deploy Zones should be a secondary objective. A common idea (and probably the best one here) is to make a 'No Deploy Generator' that players must destroy to drop the area in which you can't deploy sunderers. I think it's the best solution because it gives defenders and attackers something to do to further the attack.
• Cloaking bubbles would be a good utility slot for the sunderer. Right now the meta shift moved to mineguard and without any SOE buffs/nerf it will not move from that slot. Perhaps allow cloaked AMSes, giving players a choice.
• Resource system is a joke, my current thought on the matter is to remove it completely and create outfit resources. Allow outfits to build things (and plaster their logo/name all over the map) at certain bases that help them defend it. Also, There should be some resource points that Outfits can build harvesters at to collect resources. If the stuff here that an outfit can build is good, there will be outfits that focus on getting resources and building good things. Other faction's outfits will do combined ops to take those resources and deny them from the other side. This is the metagame Planetside 2 needs.
• The hex system is a lattice, just with more edges on the graph. Consider each base a node and each border an edge to that neighboring base. Suddenly, a lattice system.

Omg, did you read his ******* post!? The hex system is a complete failure. The lattice system was not restrictive in the least. 2-5 potential targets at any one time on a given continent not to mention the possibility to back hack behind enemy lines. It most importantly gave a visual note of where the action was at. The hex system is so convoluted and confusing it should be scrapped immediately. It serves no purpose other than to spread out the fight between bases, which again, fails at its function. The lattice system is much better in every regard.

I'm not against it either, and people do change their minds. I don't think its impossible to get a lattice system in place but if its just simply not on the table what other ways could you think of to direct players? Giant arrows? Making nearby enemy bases worth more to capture after capturing one initially?

You mentioned that you were tired so its understandable how you would forget it, but with regards to instant action drop podding, he advocates making it an entirely random system which outfits like his specifically can't abuse like they do now. Furthermore, I believe he makes the case later in the post that drop pods themselves should never deposit you inside the base itself, rather on the outskirts of the hex where the advance is pushing from.

Good post. I like my outfit, but I have lost most of my interest in this game. Also a paying player (and one who has spent a fair bit).

This game is really hurting for meta elements, but even in lieu of that, it is hurting for genuine instant action.

There are better games (for my tastes) to play right now.

SOE would be wise to listen to Buzz if not specifically, then at least the spirit of his concerns, because he speaks for a lot of players, regardless of faction.

He points out in the post that the difference between SCU's now and SCU's then is that, in beta, you could take them down with rifle fire in a few seconds. That's why they were taken from every facility. I believe he was praising the current implementation of SCU's (where they have a timer) and that is why they would work in every facility this time.

If you increase the time it takes to overheat or whatever an SCU, then I believe that would further allay your fears, though I don't think Buzz advocates for that - I wonder if that's going too far actually.

SCU then Vs SCU now still doesn't make it a good idea

im just going to ignoring most of your text i will say this, and ahve been since beta, all multipoint bases / facilities need SCU's ie the Crown so you can end the fight instead of promoting the farm

You can't drop on a base and capture the objectives without having a link to it, right? Why would a generator be any different? It wouldn't. Objectives would be contestable only when a link is available.

No, the shields need to stay up. While cleaning it out is a solution the defenders need to be forced out. Get them out, don't let them have the mentality of setting up traps or a defense for the interior of the spawn room because that's part of the problem. If they know they're going to be forced out by a pain field they will have no motivation whatsoever to stay inside in the first place.

Wrong. Influence is everything that I said it was. Archaic and no longer needed.

You didn't even read the IA part did you?

Okay, and?

Okay, and? I don't read Reddit.

Similar but not the same.

Here's the lattice system we all want in PS2:

Not this ****:

You condensed a lot of good ideas. The only big issue I have is your influence section. Many others have tackled this problem in threads and come up with strong suggestions usually involving minimum caps. The core idea being that if a point is 0/6 then the cap goes down. Bases would have a minimum cap and an influence cap. Same for outposts. So 0/1/2 for a point indicates current/minimum/maximum. A key outpost might require a single person at A, B, and C for instance to begin capping. If this is not met then the cap would slowly go back down. Very flexible.

I don't really see the issue you presented. There is always a maximum cap time. I think what would be more useful is a map UI for every base and outpost with a bar indicating who holds it and if people are hacking it and if so how many people are in the hex from each faction. (You own the hex after all so you'd have sensors or whatever can explain it). This allows defenders to quickly assess if they are needed at a location. Often I'll spawn to defend a base to realize that I'm not needed there. This happens a lot where you see 100 people instant action to a base that requires only 20. Really messes with the flow of the battle on the front line.

You have many of the same criticisms of the resource system I have Buzz, but I noticed that this was the one issue which you didn't provide a real solution for. I feel the resource system may be so deeply flawed that it is simply irredeemable. The resource system can only ever be unfair in some way, or completely irrelevant.

I don't think that it is feasible to have resource scarcity a balance mechanic in this game. For balance to be fair to everyone, It is necessary to assume that resources don't exist while balancing. That begs the question why they exist at all.

If you have any further thoughts on resources, besides that they should matter more, I would love to hear. I just don't see any reasonable way to make resources work in this game.

As per the rest of the posts, I am in complete agreement, besides for one caveat. If instant action isn't on a timer, it should merely spawn the player at the location, the same way inserting to a squad leader does.

I think that retains the "randomness" problem he talks about in his post. If you change the capture timer in any way, it makes it too hard to know when the base will flip.

His problem isn't that the influence system is pointless, it's that it actually gets in the way of solid gameplay (I think that's what he's saying).

I agree; just get rid of the influence system. There is no reason to save it, especially if Lattice System is implemented. If the times are flipping around, it's too random. If I want to pick a territory to go defend, it's better if I know for sure how long the timer is so going there isn't a complete waste.

I don't know that adjacency spawning restrictions would solve the problem of lack of flow. If the attackers had taken the time and actually had someone or some outfit that bothered to take surrounding bases, sure, the entire defense force goes to one or two bases. But let's take everyone's favorite...Allatum. NC from the north, they have west higlands and maybe Alloys, but can't get data storage cause TR have Hvar. VS hold the snake ravine, and I think Archives has a one hex adjacency.

Herein lies the problem ... Not the variety of spawns, but the incessant 3 ways. I know all you old PS1 hands remember 04-05 when two empires would fight each other on a cont without the third interferjng, and if you did get back hacked, you'd be fighting on two well defined fronts. That would solve our "not enough big battles" problem, bringing that back. How do we achieve that? Hossin, I hope, and each empire having a home cont. We'll see.

The suggested change to the spawn mechanic would also send lots and lots of defenders, especially those in organized outfits, back to the WG after a loss. This may or may not be a good thing, though: medium and large outfits that recall and reorganize will certainly counterattack in an organizes fashion. Ask yourself: would your outfit counterattack directly into the enemy zerg, or strike where they are weak? I know what experience has shown me with many of the major outfits on all three empires.

In the end, the recommendations wouldn't hurt. But I don't think they will solve the problem.

We all want ? .. I don't think you speak for everyone ...

But anyhow any idea's the Dev's think are ok should be put on the Roadmap so people can up vote and yes down vote them individually

Agree with 90% of your stuff Buzz, thanks for constructing another eye opening analysis.

Great post. I love the ideas you present and you did a good job of explaining your reasoning. I really think this is one of the best posts I've seen.