Goodbye Hex! Hello lattice! Thoughts on latest version!

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by kidRiot, May 11, 2013.

  1. LordMondando

    I'm not really seeing any reasoning beyond 'it was in ps1, therefore ps2 lattice'. Care to expand why things might actually be ok, without referencing a completely different game engine?
  2. MightyMouser

    First you have to realize that the many people who make up the 'zerg' often made in part of players who just want to log in for a little while, shoot some people, diea bit, and log out. There're always people like this, PS1 had them, PS2 has them, it's called casual gaming, and anyone who is going to be successful has a cater to them in someway. There are also players who genuinely enjoy massive statement fights were nothing happens for an hour. This is the zerg, and they have a place in the game, might as well make it easy on them.

    As someone who lead a group of guys who specifically despised fighting alongside the zergs in PS1; the lattice (when implemented correctly) can still provide for non-zerg fights which can have massive impacts on the overall battle, in fact by giving the zergs a more directed battle line, it's easier to start smaller fights because it's less likely that you will end up with your small fight suddenly being overtaken by the very zerg you're trying to avoid; instead you know where they will be and so you know the area to avoid.

    It just means that those looking for smaller fights have choose their targets differently, following paths along the lattice the zerg doesn't want to follow, or doing gen holds to cut off lattice links of the enemy. There were plenty of options to stay away from the zerg with the lattice before, and this should be no different.
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  3. Alarox

    First, I do certainly understand the causal player and how they just want quicker enjoyment. However, they make more money off dedicated players I would assume. I also assume that most non-zerg players would fall into this category. But this is pretty off topic.

    Regarding Planetside 1, it's a very different game from what I understand. I'm not sure how many places to fight you had to choose from, but in the current lattice it looks to be 4-5 at any given time. When you've got 500+ people per faction on each side, that's 100 at each one of those (and I know PS1 had far less players per map).

    During an alert on Indar when it's completely full, you still have things for smaller groups to do that doesn't involve giant battles. With the lattice implemented, I don't see where those will be.
  4. Sifer2

    The article spends the entire time explaining the lattice more than it does giving thoughts on it lol. The short an skinny of it though is bases will be less vulnerable to attack, and it's more clear where you need to defend. Where as in the current system basically any time a single enemy colored hex is touching one of your territories it's vulnerable. So you often have 11 or more different areas you need to potentially defend. And realistically you can't which is why there is rampant back hacks.

    The controversy is mostly because some people like it like that. Being able to disrupt an break up the enemy armies front line push just by back hacking their stuff. The new system is definitely a nerf to that tactic. It doesn't remove it entirely but it will make more difficult as you have fewer options so will inevitably encounter heavier opposition in the few vulnerable locations. But this is good thing in my opinion. People either get in squads an prepare to fight for real or join the zerg an help the front line push/defense. Either way it should make the gameplay more exciting.
  5. ChaosRender

    The closer we get to the Lattice system the more I see this game dieing, because it kills off small fights and promotes only the type of worst fights "the Zerg". I have already seem what this game is like when it is only platoon on platoon zerf fights and nothing else with the previous WG positions.

    Mind you I'm not against large quality fights and a few Zerg fests, but when that is all you have this game gets boring fast. That and the only defense any one has for why the Lattice is better is PS1 which worked nothing like this game.
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  6. MightyMouser

    I don't know where this "PS1 had far less players" business got started, but we started out with no pop locks at all and there were thousands of players on the conts.

    I take issue with your assessment that 500+ people per cont will be divided equally among the available fights; that defies the very notion of a zerg, in truth what you end up with is 240 people in one area, 240 in another, and then the remaining 20 at a smaller fight. The addition of a lattice also brings back strategy that small groups can pull off that is meaningless with the hex system. Namely the ability to cut off links with gendrops/backhacks. As it stands now, it is infeasible for a small group to attempt to 'cutoff' the enemy's supply line, because you have to cover so much ground, with the lattice suddenly you can galaxy drop a good squad into a back base, drop the gen and try to keep it down, while making a big impact on the fight with just a few people.
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  7. Punker

    Great article kidriot. Like the majority of players, I'm looking forward to seeing this play out live. Will definitely add a whole new dimension to the game and really allow for some tactics to come through. This is a very important change and is definitely needed. The hex system was tired and boring, and i'm glad they are looking at dropping it.

    Just glad the devs are realising it's a loud minority that are opposed to this type of progress. imho a step in the right direction.
  8. Alarox

    I'm of the same opinion.

    I sometimes huge battles can be fun and are necessary, but I don't see the appeal of them being 24/7.
  9. gudman591

    Oh my god are you special? Read the last part of the sentence. It IS the situation people often refer to as "ghost back-capping".
  10. zukhov

    In my experience, the 'zerg' are the annoying peeps who cap bases in small groups or solo. For the most part people fighting in larger battles are part of a squad or platoon. I take issue with the general assumption that every large group of players is a mindless zerg. After all when someone ghost caps a base solo, they are technically zerging it.

    And for the sake of argument, true zergs form because that's how the majority of players want to fight, in large battles with other people. Not fighting small skirmishes over practically empty bases for no particular reason.
  11. St0mpy

    rofl i read and post here every day, and other forums, and spend hours ingame and do the test server etc, and guess what, this thread is the first place anyones ever mentioned a hybridised term called ghost back capping

    personally I think it was made up on the spot so please excuse me if I dont immediately fall over with recognition of mr specialbus gudman591s new term, its rubbish.
  12. PhantomOfKrankor

    For the sake of argument The Crown was the most popular single base in the game, was defensible with little vulnerability to armor and air, had large battles with other people, but could be taken with organization and commitment. Yet the same zerg whiners praising lattice (and the rest of these terrible changes) wanted to get rid of that and make it super easy to faceroll cap like the majority of the other poorly designed bases.

    It's not about the fights, it's about the steamroll 2 minute base caps.
  13. kidRiot

    Thought I did that already.

    Lattice = pushes towards enemy warpgate
    Pushes towards enemy warpgate = new meta
    Various lanes = smaller outfits can have more of an impact as an entire faction splits off into the various continental lattice lines.
    Various lanes = varied fights of sizes big and small.
    Zergs will be forced to meet head on and it will produce memorable in-game moments that people will talk about here on the forums. The "Were you there?" or "Did you see that?" kind of stuff.

    Just think about the intention behind lattice and its intended purpose and you can figure these things out for yourself too! ;)
  14. Morro

    Let me just be the first to say, not sure what it is about the lattice system I'm not so excited about, but as the Jedi used to say, "I've got a bad feeling about this." Though I do hope it works out for the better, maybe I'm just not too fond of the idea of being herded to my prophesied death like some over sized game of league of legends (Yes I know the lattice system is older than LoL).
  15. LordMondando

    This might get off the ground, if on several servers warpgating a given fraction and/or removing a cont bonus was not the only current metagame to speak of. It might slightly, slightly improve the drive of the casuals to do this. But its pretty much the only thing for outfits to aim towards allready.


    More metagame is sorely, sorely, sorely needed. Lattice promotes easier to find, larger battles. It does not really add much if anything on the metagame side, that is not already present in comparable degree in the hex system.

    I hold out for far, far more in the resource revamp and cont locking for metagame. This is why the lattice should just be deployed ASAP and all resources pushed firmly back into getting these systems ready to test. I think arguable lattice might frame them better, but in terms of casting the player in a grander stategic narrative, what is essentially reducing the number of strategic options and base capture logic from 4-5 to 1-3, is not going to do it.

    Your almost cashing it out here, as if theres no real base capture progression logic in the current hex system, there is. That was never the issue, the issue is force dispersion and back and ghostcapping.
    I'm hoping this is true, however, as I've made a point of saying numerous times now. We. Simple. Do. Not. Know.

    Not anywhere near enough people are turning up to the PTS in order to properly quantify and assess the likelihood of either of this. For all we know, 90% of the day outside of prime time, everyone piles into one big zerg v zerg in one lane, whilst a few people ghost cap the rest of the map as still no one considers territory' worth taking'.

    Then at prime time, population imbalances drive each empire onto a diffrent continent, to zerg what meager defenders bother to stick around.


    The is no basis, from either a conceptual standpoint given the mechanics of lattice, nor from evidence of a actual playtest to assign a prori the probabilities that what I've said will occur comparative to what you've said will occur.

    I'd like it that way, but I'm big on my scientific method me, and I will not make bricks without clay, we are sorely, sorely lacking in clay.

    I'd like to think that will be the case, however again, I see nothing in game mechanics that prevents people from taking the path of least resistance and most certs, which is not to run your zerg into a zerg of roughly comparable size, most times.

    As noted, I believe in an evidenced based approach to everything, not a faith based one. Including my favorite game.

    I think the intention was to promote more larger battles, by restricting the possible size of a front. I think, from what i've seen. This can promote larger battles that are easier to find. Whats jumping out at me, from my experiences with it - and what i'd wish more 'pro-lattice' commentators would engage with. Is that by doing this it may exacerbate population imbalance issues, which i've now seen in 2 of the tests I was at which were populated about 300-500 people on Indar. This is however, only a tentative hypothesis as 2 events sucks as a sample size. however, given the issue with population imbalances that exist in game, on nearly every sever. I would think this would have anyone who cared about the game (presumably both of us) sufficiently worried.

    I think other systems of changing how the game works both strategically, and what is an option tactically (base design , other gameplay mechanics like weapons systems and balance) can possible prevent these issues. but the lattice is what it is to an extend, if it is the case its going to inherently case a significant proportion of the time, 'zerg or be zerged' issues (which are not conductive to the large, and long battles you seem to be hoping for), then it might as well go live/ or stay on the test for the foreseeable future and effort needs to go into other parts of game development.
  16. DarkWeeble

    If SoE really wants this thing tested they're going to need to convert two servers a week into Lattice, have people play it for that week, then revert the servers, adjust the lattice, push it to two different servers. This may not be possible, but it's really the only way to test this thing. There's too much other crap going on in the public test to make it a reasonable source of information.

    If you have to use the Test server, test one thing at a time (the lattice with the new bases, everything else like Live) get some devs on every night to draw players in (sorry, I know you work hard already), and push that information to the Launcher and Splash screens so people see it.
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  17. MightyMouser

    I'm going to commit the (apparent) cardinal sin here and (yet again) analogize PS2 to PS1; I understand they are different and the games work differently, but the lattice system we are looking at is indeed very similar to the lattice that existed in PS1 and despite what seems to have become 'common knowledge' here, we did have this lattice under large populations with three-way fights so I feel the comparison is pretty valid. From what you've said earlier in the thread Mondando, I take it you never got the chance to play PS1, but as you point out the best source of reliable data is observation, and the truth is test servers never see a load anything like live servers, so PS1 is likely the best comparison we can make for full scale battle on Hexes (PS2) vs Lattice (PS1).

    So will the lattice exacerbate population imbalance issues? I don't think so, and here's why:
    Yes, the lattice will pit the zerg's against each other in the largest battles, and at times the lowest pop empire is going to end up on the wrong side of a double team and both of the other sides are going to try to warp gate them just for spite. When that happens, for a time the lowest popped empire is going to lose ground, very fast. BUT that part of the scenario happens whether we have Hexes or a Lattice, what changes is when the lowest popped empire gets down to just a few links or else to a chokepoint in the lattice, each of the other empires has fewer and fewer avenues to attack the underdog and they are forced into confrontation with each other and away from the underdog, giving their smaller population a chance to retake ground.

    I'm not pulling this scenario out of thin air, it progressed time and again in PS1; and anyone who played that game will undoubtedly remember the term CyssorSide, which referred to the never ending three-way which would occur on that continent because of this very scenario, yes a different game, but the same game mechanic made it possible: the lattice.

    In the end, like you said the only way we can really be sure is to see it on the live server, but I would suggest the data is in favor of the lattice helping with population imbalance, rather than hurting it.


    I'm pretty sure that's not possible, I'd imagine the update requires clientside revisions as well and it's not feasible to require different client versions per server
  18. Anantidaephobia

    Amen to that !
  19. St0mpy

    to what? continuing to ghost cap on the lattice?
  20. LordMondando

    I did Play PS1, briefly for about a fortnight as part of the reserves campaign. I do not claim to be an expert on the game (frankly I did not like it). However, one of the few game mechanics I got my head around before I gave up, probably was its lattice system.

    I will not deny it worked there, but it worked there as trying to spread 133 people over a fairly barren map with few objectives would have resulted at best in a series of 10v10 battles, which scant irregularity. ITs also hard to see how a lot of the combined arms aspects would have worked without it.

    THe real disanalogy as I've gone into, really is the scale of people and of the game space. The average busy PS1 map, lets say all three sides slugging it out over a major base roughly 133v133v133. Equates to only 1/5th the population cap of a modern PS2 map.

    And when you start adding in more people you get emergent stuff happening. One of the more effective tactics i've seen recently are reaver sucide swarms, i'm talking 30-40 people just flying their reaver at people barely even shooting, whilst a platoons sized battle goes on below. A phenomenon, namely the swarm phenomenon overwhelming a committed AA defence, simply impossible in PS1.

    thats the big thing.

    The only big thing, which I think breaks PS1 analogies, is that lattice was never just lattice in PS1. You have gens and ANTs from the get go. You also had far more sigificant base benefits, cont locking and a whole slew of other mechanics like sants and (later on) mobile teleport stations. Which created far more diversified strategic level of gameplay. Yes it mostly came down to the several battles going on per cont. But back when DL was the 58th, its major reason d'etre was going behind the lines and shutting down gens, which itself had some pretty sigificant impact.

    Now on top of that we also have not only fairly distinct combat mechanics which favour themselves towards things like supressive fire being a far larger factor in battles (simple in virtue of the fact you die quicker) and.

    So im sorry, but you can't just do a 1:1 lattice in Ps1 to lattice in Ps2 comparison. Its about as good an analogy as compring PS2's aim down sights to that of the orginal ww2 Call of duties.

    As i've said my problem here is two fold. Remeber also im not saying lattice creates a new problem in this regard, merely makes an existing one potentially worse.

    1) Its still the best certs (and arguably the funner game, being ground down or getting nowhere: coming up against a larger or roughly equal force is often frustrating) at present to ride the crest of the zerg, going around stomping on meager defences from base to base and getting base capture certs. I think the zergs will run into each other more often, but I don't see it inherently being more likely in virtue of any intentional choice anyone in said zerg is going to be making. If anything I wager it be more likely if the heat maps for pop were removed and people were not able to navigate towards the easier fights.
    2) I worry a lot about the 'quit the continent issue'. Why sit around and bother to defend indar if you at a 5% disadvantage, why not go to esamir where you have that advantage and have an easy series of steamrolling victories.

    this is the other great disanlogy between Ps1 and Ps2, there is no progression between continents. We don't fight on X to get to Y, or defend A to keep the TR away from B. You fight on the continent that has the best chances of giving you a fun fight.

    If its the case then that being overpopulated in 1/2th of your lanes is blatantly obvious and you're fighting a loosing battle, why do you stick around?

    This is what I mean when I say we need more than lattice, rather urgently.
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