A History Lesson and how it applies to the Lattice System

I have read everything you have written Hotshot53, but I only partially agree with what you have written. Everything comes down to this section:

And especially this:

Then use your brain and creativity! There is now a new restriction, which makes things harder, but not everything is lost.
In fact, there is this fascinating phenomena that new restrictions tend to sparkle new ideas.
You can still flank an enemy even if you don't cap anything. You can still hack terminals and pull armor behind enemy lines. You can still aid your comrades on a different lane by pushing perpendicularly to the lattice. There are lots of stuff beyond capping that you can do.
The problem is, that the previous system made some people (especially ghostcappers) thinking about capping as the only mean of inflicting damage to enemy and now they are locked on this tunnel vision that can't see any other options.

When facing an enemy zerg I tend to think not "how can I defend this base?", but "how can I inflict maximum damage?". I agree with the fact that they will take the base, I just want them to pay for that. And usually I tend to be able to kill a few of sunderers and tanks myself before they advance (I wish there were more elaborate statistics about vehicle kills).
And while armor is not so overwhelming right now as before, killing an enemy armor can really help armor of your own faction to break the line and advance.

On the other hand I agree with you that too long chains of single-connected bases are not healthy for the game. I hope there will be a bit more connectivity, or - perhaps - some alternative ways of temporarily opening new attack paths. I would however consider this as a balance issue of the lattice system and not a fault of the whole lattice system itself.

I disagree. Massive battles are the point of Planetside. Yes there are currently major problems with defending, and vehicles being too weak/widespread, but I don't think you should fix those problems by avoiding them and diluting the fights.

What this game needs is better vehicles, less vehicles, the ability to do something without dying instantly (longer TTK), better defences so the enemy zerg doesn't just roll into your base and swarms you, and some valid options for smaller squads that make it harder for the enemy to advance but not stop it outright like hampering logistics.

Careful what you wish for!

I'd gladly have a smaller community in exchange for kicking out all the ignorant players whos first experience of shooters are CoD and BF3.

Establishing a game world that creates perfectly acceptable styles of play for 6+ months, then suddenly removing the ability to play that way isn't 'kicking out all the ignorant players.' It's a move to appease PS elitists who are already bored with the game that hope a magical, rushed change will remove their boredom. You don't like the current state of the zerg so you want to force zergs. But guess what, it's not sustainable. The 4th faction, NS weapons and too many servers then merges killed the chance of this new lattice system before it had a chance. There is no more faction loyalty and too many people will just log their alt to farm the certs. Meanwhile plenty of skilled players in small, tight-knit outfits who are not swapping alts and were happy fighting (and losing) skirmishes at smaller facilities are going to leave the game.

Who cares if someone played CoD or BF3? If they are playing PS2 now they probably are enjoying it more than either of those games. How does it matter where someone started? Being a hipster about a F2P game is more laughable than playing CoD or BF (I never played either).

It wasn't a "perfectly acceptable style of play" - It was a situation most people knew they'd have to live with until the devs had enough time to implement more continents and a better meta-game.
The reason I and many others held on was the believe that the devs would change the game to something better and not keep it in the unfished state it was at release.
And the Lattice is one of the many steps in the right direction.
Will everything be perfect afterwards? Hell no - but it's a good start!

And you mind reminding us all what the population locks on a continent were? 150?

One more thing: Devs always wanted and talked about introducing more continents.
I always thought that this is unnecessary as the front is already too thin and the extra continent will only spread people even further (thus more ghostcapping).
However, the lattice system - as you point it yourself - reduces the frontline width. With this new environment I expect to see more battles on other continents (during off-alert times) as well as the need for more continents. Consequently, I believe there will be areas worth fighting for with a bit lower population that smaller outfits could fight on even terms.

Sorry, but I'm not buying that. I doubt we'll sway each others opinions on this, but I'd be interested to see any hint or implication by Devs / Game Designers that the hex design was anything but the final intended design. I'd like to see anything that suggests any major design shifts other than more continents with the current hex system would be on any sort of roadmap, even in the extreme long-term.

In your opinion it was unfinished, but as far as I'm aware there was not a peep from the Devs about this until the mega-outfit-backed complaint threads popped up because their leaders got bored from playing crown <> amp station <> biolab Indar battles 8+ hours a day. Somehow people got convinced that lattice will make those fights more fun. Lattice will only make this worse, between faction population unbalancing toward the FoTM (faction of the month, in this case) and cont locking removing even more play options in the weeks after lattice going live.

I honestly cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not. Such is the state of these forums.

If (when) population drops to unsustainable levels and some other gaming company wants to make a purely PVP MMOFPS, all I have to say is this: Whatever you do, don't call it Planetside anything. Otherwise, you run the risk of increasingly curmudgeonly PS1 players dumping their smelly old-man turds on it, and, if you're not careful, your game will end up smelling of lattice and prunes.

Agreed OP - whilst playing in large battles is fun it can also be tiring. The constant explosions, dust, smoke, tracer and debris means you cannot see your targets. What the game needs is variety and options. Forcing everybody into corridors to artificially create chokepoints is going to get old fast.

What they could do is introduce the new corridor system on Indar only - that way people have the choice and everyone can really see how if will affect gameplay. I don't think the test last night was a proper indication of how this will be on a live and busy server.

I really, really have to disagree with this.

Please understand that the thing that will truly kill Planetside 2, is if new players can't understand the system. The HEX system was/is clearly a system designed by someone familiar with Planetside's meta strategies, and caters to people who are familiar with those meta strategies.

It is incredibly difficult to get a new player who is not being "coached" by a veteran to stick to this game right now, because the system is impenetrable. The lattice system is a huge improvement because it provides CLEAR direction to the flow of battle. This is what Planetside 2 needs to be accessible. If you feel that the game needs more layers of strategy beneath this to give veteran players something to do, I can agree with that-- but I think that should be fixed by providing more meaningful base incentives.

What I witnessed on the test server during the last two tests is a very, very far cry from "WW1 trench warfare", and involved more heated, bloody, and fast paced combat than the current system does.

Total ignorance here^^

Assuming everything he's never played = bad.

I couldn't agree more with the OP!

In the current system it's possible to find battles of any size, leaving the player/outfit to choose one that best fits into his playstyle.
Throwing the Lattice System now(as it is) will transform every encounter in some kind of trenches fight in every lane. This linearity will make every fight looks similar, becoming repetitive and boring, and that isn't fun at all!

I'm come to Planetside from a competitive background, and I was hooked with the possibility to a apply my skills and tactics in to a larger scale, and so far it beeb working pretty well.

Increasing numbers at every battle reduces the difference between skilled players to normal players, putting both in balance. Higher tactics and skills should be rewarded, but they will got crushed in massive battles where the only think that's matter is numbers.

I like the idea behind the lattice system, however, it's not ready to go live yet! To elimite the meaningless Zerg vs Zerg fights, and allow some malleability to non-zerg outfits and players, it needs a lot of work and implements to prevent the smaller end to be allways obliterate.
Releasing it before adding new features and structures will broke the game for a huge part of his players.

Some people are saying that if you don't like this changes you should just quit PS2 and go back to COD/BF3. Well, if this changes come live the way it is now, PS2 will look like COD more than ever! And I don't like COD.



P.S.: About ghost capping: I don't like, my outfit don't support it, and it should be completely remove from the game.

The solution to that is better tutorial materials. The lattice systems isn't any easier to understand - it's just different. If new players are having trouble understanding how the game works we need to make new player tutorials, game manuals, strategy guides, mentorship programs, and make it easier for players to find outfits.

What server do you play on? On Mattherson last night several VS outfits stopped a massive TR armor push by ambushing them from Mesa Comms and Rust Mesa, then pushed them back to Feldspar and gave them an object lesson on why you never pull armor when you're stuck in a canyon and the enemy controls the high-ground.

"Lack of fights" is rarely a problem during Mattherson daytime. It gets a little thin from 4am-2pm central, but you can't get around that with regional servers. I'm wondering if your problem is the hex system, or if you just don't have the necessary minimum population on your server to make planetside work. Population and lots of organized, high level outfits are what make Mattherson work - The people running each faction understand the meta intimately. "Ghost Cappers" are a tiny fraction of the total server population and aside from the occasional break-through don't have that much influence.

I agree something needs to be done to make the game easier to Learn. But the Lattice system doesn't make the game easier to learn, it makes it so you don't have anything to learn. That's boring, because a few days of play will show the same damn thing happening over and over again. When I say there was nothing we could do, I don't mean I couldn't think of it. I mean some of the best tactical and strategic minds I've seen couldn't make any move but try and hold for reinforcements. Some truly insane BR100 and 90s pilots couldn't keep their planes in the sky because there was so much damn flak. People with real world military experience and experience playing both PS1 and PS2 who had absolutely no options but run forward and die or fall back and try to defend. In the current system we have a lot of options. In an AMP station for example, we like to take a single squad in a galaxy and drop in a line on the horizontal and vertical generators simultaneously, and have well trained, experienced players who can take down those gens even if there is a platoon defending the base. In the Lattice System, we'd need to drop something like two squads on each gen to have a hope in hell of making a dent. As the fight gets larger, every player is less and less valuable. As one of our squad leaders put it "This system removed about 80% of the strategies I would normally use, and I needed a long detox break to consider playing the game again afterwords." This isn't beta anymore, I'm not a tester, I'm a paying customer. I have no intention of continuing to play the game if the devs say the lattice system will get better later on, I'm judging it as it exists right now. As it exists right now it makes the game not really worth my time and money, and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. I'm in no way saying the hex system is perfect. But you can work with it if you know what your doing. Its better for the game to fail at being easy to learn than to fail at being difficult to master, because if I've learned everything I need to know in a few weeks why should I bother spending money on the damn thing? New player retention is very important and it needs improvement, but paying customer retention is important too.I think a lot of the problems the Lattice system tries to solve are problems the players should confront, not the devs.

Here is my take on the entire thing, the lattice, like mentioned funnels a lot of players into a few predictable places. Meaning everything along those lanes is a meatgrinder, full of battle.

While I see your comparing it with WW1, but this is not entirely true, small squads or small 2-3 player teams can still have a very big impact on the game if the rest of the game get's changed, you know what has changed between WW1 and WW2? Tanks and Airborne Infantry. You know what exactly is very weak and rather bad doing right now in PS2? Driving Tanks and Gal dropping.

The reason why PS1 lattice worked so good was how everything around the system was setup. You only could spawn at the closest base, the closest AMS, the closest tower and one facility you could bind yourself to. What this means, at best you have 4 respawn locations, at worst 3 of those locations are all in one place that is being sieged.

Once a facility got sieged you could no longer easily pull Vehicles but those Vehicles also had no influence on the fight inside the base because most of it was underground, completely sealed of for Vehicles.

Speaking of Vehicles, they had a very big impact on the frontline in PS1. They were very powerful, easily shrugging of 20+ rockets, firing 3 times as fast as the current Tanks, while being able to 1hit splash kill multiple Infantry. They were keeping the battle moving between the bases.

Once the Vehicles gained supremacy over a base they could not take it and only secure the area. While the defenders either were battling it out inside in long corridors and hallways, the more Vehicle orientated players rallied up in the next base in the lattice and tried to form a re-secure push.

Because once the attackers lost Vehicle supremacy.. they lost all ways of attack again, the tower was easily camped by Vehicles and Vehicles also were very good at AMS hunting. PS1 battle was a lot more mobile between the bases. Taking a base felt like a well earned reward, the same also goes for successful re-secures.

In RL during WW2 there also was a lattice, the terrain, major forces were restricted by it. Why do you think all those big battles happened in WW2? Because of restrictions in the terrain, like a natural lattice. And the fact that Vehicles were a lot more powerful than Infantry, the defender had 2 Tanks in a town with 1 platoon of Infantry, well you would probably lose a lot of squads if you only can bring in mobile Infantry.

Another thing why the lattice worked was 1+1=3 Vehicle system. 1-seated Vehicles were weak, they had a role, but a 2-seated Vehicle needed 2 players to be operated but if done it was stronger than 2 1-seated Vehicles. This is just not existent in PS2.

You can still do a lot of tactical choices and things in PS2 even with the lattice, let's take Quartz Ridge Camp as an example, you can slightly bypass it, setup an AMS with AA and rain down fire from around the base, suddenly the entire base turns into a giant shooting range. Or you try to force your head through the Vehicle Shields and Bunkers manned with Infantry. This is how PS1 tactics worked. You had to move around the base and secure the outside to open up more angles of attack.

What else was there in PS1 that made the lattice work? Facility bonuses, generators and NTU. While the NTU system is something we cant really recreate in PS2, it could be emulated. As an example, if you lose the Warpgate link your facility runs on it's NTU silo and goes neutral after a very long time.

Facility bonuses were really important, Tech Plants allowed you to not only spawn Tanks... you could not spawn Reavers, only Mossies, meaning remove ESF spawns if you do not have Tech ... Remove Liberators if you do not have Tech. Tech was VERY important. And the Facility itself was the best one to spawn a lot of Vehicles because it had undergound Tank spawn and 2 Air spawns.

Generators were squad/platoon sized endcontend, atleast that's how they worked. You blow the Generator at a facility, the facility loses everything, no spawn, no terminals working, no shields, no facility bonus and everything that tried to pass bonuses through that facility get's cut off.

What usually happened was, 1-2 squads dropped on a enemy base deep into the enemy terrain. blowing up the Generator and make a last stand against anyone trying to get it back up. This often decided battles, because you cut the link to tech or the tech plant itself, removing ESFs, MBT's and Liberators as an option for the attackers.

If you know why the PS1 Lattice worked, you could also introduce it into PS2 if you change everything to support it.

Bases need to be more sealed off against Vehicles, spawns should not be easy to camp, instead there should be ways to turn off the spawns and shields at a base by destroying a highly defensible generator.

MBT's need to be mandatory crewed Vehicles, solo players can use the Lightning, that's it's role. Those crewed MBT's need to be way more powerful than they are right now.

ESF's need a huge hit by the nerf bat in the A2G role but a buff in the A2A role, Liberators need better ways to approach FLAK areas, allowing to make short duration passes possible or increase the range that they can operate outside of AA, giving those now more A2A focused ESF's a role.

That's my history lesson. PlanetSide is not about small size battles, if you want that, you should play a different game, the motto "Size Matters" is what PlanetSide should be all about, something we have drifted to far off, even without all the supporting features, the lattice NEEDS to make a return.

Those huge zergfests is what let's PlanetSide stand out. This should not be BF or CoD, the only thing it should have in common with those kind of games is the first person perspective and maybe the gunplay, anything else should be different. Especially the scale ...

There's a lot I could say, and a lot I ave said about the lattice. I even have a thread 3x as long as the OP.

But, the OP laid it out pretty well. I'll just add one thing:

Do you want a sandbox or themepark? A game that is dynamic or linear? A game where individual groups of players can affect the battle, or ones where the flow of battle was determined before you even logged on?

Is it really worth removing entire styles of play just so that one style can be reinforced?

The maker of this thread doesn't understand the lattice system. Looks like the 23 other people don't either. Wasted his time writing that.