Why ghost capping should not be lauded, not criticized

Here you have a player who, instead of fighting in the big battles, getting kills and racking up cert points, is choosing to help his faction by being a thorn in the enemy's side, flipping points and moving on, forcing his opponents to have to redirect troops from the front lines. He might even manage to cap the base if the enemy can't be bothered to come back.
Assuming no-one challenges him and he leaves immediately after flipping the point, all he gets for his troubles is a meager few xp.
This is teamplay.
On the other hand, you have a lot of people who complain about ghost cappers. Very often the same people who champion the ideals of teamplay, these people are irritated that they have to leave their cert farming for approximately five minutes to reflip the point.
Take pride in your ghost cappers. They do the job that you can't be bothered to do.

It's about fun man. It's not fun to sit and defend an empty base. They didn't design this game to make it fun so people go to where the fights are. They should not be punished for this. Ghost capping punishes the playstyle the game encourages.

Ghost capping is required to PTFO.

That's why SOE is designing a system that will hopefully make PTFOing actually entertaining.

not true, Ghost cappers are vital to the game play an should be encouraged at every turn.If you cant be bothered to defend bases, whos fault is it? not the Ghost capper, its yours.

Waitwaitwait...Is it now your turn to deside what others find funny and not? A normal reaction would be "hey someone is stealing our land..lets defend it" but nooo 99% of all ppl rather keep zerging while they loose everything istead of facing them and have some smallscale-fighting. You know if I get into one of those "encouraged" fights then I can restart the game every 10 minutes..yeha stable games ftw.

Presumably the thread title is a typo.

I have more (bewildered) respect for all those people who dedicated themselves to ANT runs on dead continents in Planetside 1.

Devs seem to disagree as they are making Ghost capping harder, and forcing more front line fights. HEX system is being reworked to work more like the way people are encouraged to actually play the game. Sorry if you want a medal for standing on an empty point somewhere for a couple seconds then leaving. I doubt they will give you one.

The only back captures that are applause worthy are one's that are done by squads for specific reasons. Such as grabbing a tower in a strategic spot so you can launch vehicles at a nearby base or something. This type of thing will still be possible from the looks of it though it will be easier to predict which places are vulnerable to that.

lol only reason they are nerfing freedom of play an diversity is because the forum warriors cry an moan day in day out for weeks tearing up over the horrors of being made to think for themselves. SOE always panders to that type of player.
Some of us like to have freedom to play as we please.

Back capping to cut off a base, or to get an enemy Empire's attention and set up a fight isn't "Ghost Capping". Ghost capping would be a random chasing empty bases for "Xp". God forbid we have any freedom, sand boxes are obviously bad and forcing everyone to fight at predetermined points in a predetermined order is >>> all.

The only thing the new "lattice system" will do is Zerg Herd. PlanetSheep2 shall be born:





On a similar note, I heard we will all get a free vehicle horn.....BAAAA! BAAAA!

I find fixing ghost caps refreshing after spending to much time in garbage cert farm fight that go no where. But I also very rarely see ghost capping mostly small squad capping, which is very fun to counter.

Ghost capping = capping undefended bases. It's a stupid phrase meant to deflect blame away from lazy outfits and demonize the activities of small squads and teams.

Coul this be, has this forum gained +100 smarts. PLEASE don't go away people, we need more players like this. Everyone have been herded toward large zerg outfits and now they make smaller squads the villians and terrorists of PS2

Help your Empire to do what? Since we dont have any endgame purpose ghostcaps are kinda useless.

Hrhr I know what you mean but for 99% of the playerbase Capping alone=ghostcapping while at the same time they talk about capping it and leaving to the next base. Like that is the same thing. -.-

You mean beside the fact that a zergfront looses the moment they cant respawn any MBT`s? Or run out of resources because they dont connected territory? There are many ways to screw them that still helps your team win the fight. If the game doesnt have goals then maybe you should start making your own.

Yep so I used to do that when I was new to the game, then I realized my empire doesn't give a **** and I'm sacrificing my fun.

There are reasons people hole up at the Crown or in Bio-labs and let everything else go:

1. They're in a fun fight.
2. They're in a rewarding fight.
3. They can't be arsed to leave their current fight on the premise of stopping one or two "tacticool" guys that think what they're doing is GOOD for and EFFECTIVE at fostering fun gameplay. Hint: for 99% of the player base that isn't responding to the back cappers, chasing a few guys is not fun. This shouldn't be too shocking, since if they wanted small squad on squad action, they'd be playing CoD or Battlefield.

Just... deal with the changes. No, you can no longer circumnavigate an entire zerg and take everything by your lonesome. Work with the rest of your TEAM, on the frontlines, to take a base, then move on to the next base. Tell me again how taking undefended territory by your lonesome or with a ****-buddy is a team effort OR strategic thinking? Sounds like child logic to me. I pulled that maneuver in a game called Shattered Galaxy over ten years ago, then I wisened up and accepted that the Crater territory (equivalent to the Crown) was the most important location on the map.

Makes sense right? Easily defended, center of the map, so it's equidistant from everything, can provide armor and air support... there is no reason NOT to desire this location. Same goes for Esamir's Eisa tech plant. Amerish's twin peaks is a failed experiment. A central fortress only works if it can act as a forward staging point for all future operations on the continent, not a secluded little battle arena with no influence over the rest of the campaign.

Maybe if resources were treated in the more classical RTS style, the system prevented people from circumnavigating the frontline to take everything behind it giving land some actual value, then maybe resource cut off would actually FEEL like a game of maintaining supply routes, and there would be a REAL ebb and flow to opposing forces. The foundations of that system are found in the new hex-lane system. We'll see the ebb and flow, now all SOE has to do is look into the ANT, warpgate energy powering bases, and incorporating a base/tower inf/mech/air resource storage that is used in tandem with personal resources to limit the pulls of vehicles from a facility before needing more of a specific resource. The personal resources are to LIMIT how much one may pull in a short amount of time.

IT is the lone wolf metagame.

It neither compelling or fun for both sides, I'll be glad when it is gone.

The sooner they remove ghost capping, the better.

Zerglings, lemmings and sheep hate "Ghost" capping. How dare they not let them farm them!

Ghost capping is a legit tactic used by all sides. I've witnessed several Zerg's fail from being cut off from resources, having to break up into smaller groups to re cap, but can't think for themselves or be coordinated, so it fails. A couple of small squads of 2-4 peeps can really hamper the Zerg. I case down Ghost cappers, set booby traps for them and maybe cap 1-2 of there territories to keep em' busy if I'm to far away from the action.

Their not hard to stop. Press "M", see whats flashing on the map, break off and retake, kill and booby tap.

I do a lot of what some idiots would call "ghost capping." There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it's essential for your empire to make any progress at all. I hate playing with the zerg, and IMO small fights are much more enjoyable.

The problem is that defending isn't rewarding right now, and the zerg has the attention span of a 2-year old on speed.

Funny that there are NC here complaining about ghost capping, considering (at least on Mattherson) they have it down to a science to control Amerish since neither of the other factions has enough population to cover all three continents, what with Indarside.

Oh, and btw, this isn't "lone wolf." My entire outfit is largely organized for the purpose of controlling small territories.

DEVS--if you're listening, DON'T TAKE OUT ALL THE CONTENT IN PS2 FOR SMALL SQUADS! I'm reserving judgment on the upcoming metagaming changes, but I have to say I'm definitely nervous, and will be looking with a critical eye when they're released.