We've had Lattice for about three days and the gloss is already wearing off

What's even more pathetic is that you and others never learned to play the game on the new systems, so you moaned and cried for 8 months instead of learning how to play the game.

Then there is the "ghost capping" whine, when you actually need people on the point to flip it.

Then there is the conspiracy theory that anti latticers are only 4 or 5 people with hundreds of computers and accounts.

Then there is the ghost capping, ( which doesn't exist ) is a terrorist tactic and doing this is playing like a terrorist.

Then there is the blind I can't see that thousands of people hate this., because there are only 5 thumbs up on their posts, this must lead back to the conspiracy theory.

Then there is NO, you have fun the way I tell you to, or else, no compromise on the game, MY GAME, do what I say.

Then there is the blindness in seeing that even on the actual severs the lettuce is already becoming stale.

Do you want me to continue on how pathetic this is?

What is pathetic is a small minority of people who cannot accept that in the 8 months hex was live, many people found the whack a mole gameplay uninteresting. They (minority) during that time did not come up with any alternative fixes that were balanced and would work with the hex system. The design goal behind the hex system was decent (fight for every inch) however it is an oxymoron when taken with the other goal (massive battles) you cannot be spread everywhere and also have massive battles.

The majority of 'tactics' banded about when referring to the hex system were tactics of avoidance, avoiding meeting enemies or as many as possible to capture territory with as little effort as possible, hex promoted only assault it literally was not worthwhile to hang around in a base you just capped in order to keep it secure. Hex would require large organisation of groups of people who would basically have to patrol empty regions in order to keep a small minority of people from back hacking or ghosting bases, this happened day after day after day.

Lattice allows you to secure the lines behind the territory you captured, meaning that you can push forward to move on without worrying that a few people will slip behind to backhack while the majority of the player base are fighting elsewhere. It also allows you to predict the movements of the majority of players, brings back the importance of terrain and positioning, ambushes are viable now as you know areas your ground troops must pass through in order to reach their goal, in hex they could have gone mostly anywhere.

There is still plenty of scope for tactics within the lattice framework, and thats all it is a framework. Lattice should become more important as base benefits get a rework and more continents are added to planetside2. Many of these "OMG its the ZERG!!!" are compounded because we don't have as wide a choice of places to go as we did in planetside 1.

If you want small fights you can still get them on esamir/amerish, if you want to take part in the 'tactics' you so lament the loss of you can go there and do it. Fact is at the moment unless there is an alert on amerish/esamir most of the player base is fighting on indar, and more and more lately even when there is an alert on amerish/esamir more people are staying on Indar, i wonder why if the setup there is so terrible?

Well I did learn how to play the game I was given. I was redeploying around the map like a friggin madman, going LA and slapping down cap attempts 2 or 3 people at a time. I got good at it, and it SSSSSUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKEEEEDDDDDD! It was a schizophrenic existence at best watching the map every four minutes. Every time I wanted to do something, odds are it would get fracked over by someone playing an entirely different game (I had a whole post about how this was incredibly crappy game design. Half a mind to dig it back up).

I know you lot want to play the game your way and there is nothing wrong with that. However, there is a conflict is jacking over the flow of the game making the efforts of everybody completely meaningless. This is just one of of those points PS2 has to decide what game is it going to be. A tactical FPS, or a strateg... OK F*** it. It's a FIRST PERSON SHOOTER! Stop trying to implement a strategy game where it does not belong. It kills the game focus and muddles the overall experience.

The lattice is the best damn step to happen to this game. It's not perfect, there are still a lot of elements that are missing, but It focus the game into a continuous experience and in an objective based shooter, thats worth more than any hodge-podge of mismatched game mechanics.

Yeah, what would be great for that would be like player run missions? or revamped resources?
You know, like stuff that were announced as work in progress on the roadmap.

If 12 year olds can follow quests in WoW they can certainly do it too in ps2. But it would be even better because it would be asked by outfit/platoon leaders that know what they need. It's the best of both worlds. Solo players keep their freedom but have the advantages of platton leaders providing content to them without having to do the effort to listen to them. And at the same time, platoon leaders get free workforce they don't have to deal with micro managing.

Also, revamping resources to matter would finally give value to some of the territories. Add to that real buffs to the facilities bonus.

There have been many stuff suggested, simple or complex, that weren't even tried in game, that would have improved the hex.
But I guess none of them were spammed strongly enough to compete with the lattice spam as the silent majority was content playing the game or had more pressing issues.

Could it even be that..
There were too many ideas on how to improve the Hex system.
It's a lot harder to get support on dozens of improvement ideas which are sometimes at odds with each other than it is to get support on a single idea ("bring back the lattice").

It seems like Lattice The Idea was defined as "bring back lattice, it's great", while the other ideas for improving hex were detailed and as such also included things people could disagree with. Once you disagree with something, you don't support it. You might add your improvement ideas and then someone adds improvement ideas to that and the whole thing starts spreading all over the place. Multiply that for each thread.

It didn't happen to Lattice threads because lattice threads rarely had nothing concrete to argue about.


---

Also, one more reminder that Hex and Lattice are essentially exactly the same systems, just the amount of connections differs. Hexes were never nothing more than a visual representation of region borders, which themselves were unimportant from a gameplay point of view (they might have had/still have some purpose on the backend of things, like determining areas you get info from. We all know that being in a region isn't enough to receive information about base status/xp from capture, for example.. the region borders might have been such a border as I recall at least some complaints about scout radar not working over them).

Metagame is what is needed but I think a complete redesign of maps and bases are required - right now it's like someone chose the most tactically useless landscape and put the most undefensible bases in the worst strategic places on the map!

I think things that can generate missions if players want to like
- The ANT runs or whatever they called them in PS - basically protect/attack the convoy
- Tech power plant - located near the warpgate, if you can hack the systems and hold it for 10 minutes you can destroy the generator and make the enemies tech plant less effective
- Capture/Rescue the officer - players gain special bonuses if they capture the enemies officer which is teleported (for easy of gameplay) to a secure location (which is where the rescue part comes in).

These can add to the overall game and gives side objectives but don't really deter from the main big fight - it doesn't matter what they are but sometimes you want to do something a little different.

As for improving the hex you either do that by making the map 10 times bigger or removing a lot of the cappabale bases and extend the territories - the map is too small. When you can drive for less than 60 seconds and can start ghost capping base and making the whole point of taking bases worthless if you can easily go around them it makes the game more pointless than it already is - which is pretty ******* pointless right now.

Metagame is what is needed but I think a complete redesign of maps and bases are required - right now it's like someone chose the most tactically useless landscape and put the most undefensible bases in the worst strategic places on the map!

I think things that can generate missions if players want to like
- The ANT runs or whatever they called them in PS - basically protect/attack the convoy
- Tech power plant - located near the warpgate, if you can hack the systems and hold it for 10 minutes you can destroy the generator and make the enemies tech plant less effective
- Capture/Rescue the officer - players gain special bonuses if they capture the enemies officer which is teleported (for easy of gameplay) to a secure location (which is where the rescue part comes in).

These can add to the overall game and gives side objectives but don't really deter from the main big fight - it doesn't matter what they are but sometimes you want to do something a little different.

As for improving the hex you either do that by making the map 10 times bigger or removing a lot of the cappabale bases and extend the territories - the map is too small. When you can drive for less than 60 seconds and can start ghost capping base and making the whole point of taking bases worthless if you can easily go around them it makes the game more pointless than it already is - which is pretty ******* pointless right now.

^^ UGG

You need people on the point to cap, ghost capping is starting the cap then running away, hence "ghost cap"

/face palm.

Jex, you don't even know how to play the game, you don't even understand what "ghost capping" was. Can't even have a conversation with you because you don't know what you are talking about, just the same rehashed BS.

Here this is what I said because it's becomming more and more obvious you really don't have a clue then you have the lack of brainpower enough to tell me what I don't know when in fact I do

"When you can drive for less than 60 seconds and can start ghost capping base and making the whole point of taking bases worthless..."

To which you replied,

"ghost capping is starting a cap and then leaving it"

YES????

And you're point is?

Do you not know people start them off and then come back to them just to get the cap xp?

How long have you been playing this game and you don't know this simple fact?

here I'll see your facepalm and knock yours out the water with a nuclear depth charge....

No not with



Not even with.....



but with........

FACEPLANET!!!!!!!!!



But it's ok I know you were just grabbing at anything to get out of this conversation with me. May peace and huggy bees be with you.

Point goes neutral when no one is on it, also this isn't an issue during peak hours, also outfits have squads that fly in gals to deal with issues like these, this was never really a big enough issue to go and destroy the whole game only to turn it into checkers, or castle defence.

Also capping bases without adjancety or influace takes so much longer that the minimal xp you would get for it makes it worthless to do what you say, it's been so long since this was even an issue.

Almost like you are in a time warp bubble from way back in the past, when this was an issue, like 6 months ago, the argument doesn't even validate a response it's so silly.

Please learn how the game works before you comment more, for your own sake.

Kind sound like you are playing on empty continents during non peak hours when barely a soul is online.

That or you just lone wolf in circles chasing caps that have been capped, or re-secured by squads in gals, either way, you've missed the whole point of the game, kinda sad really that you are so misinformed about how the game really worked.

So you didn't answer my question which i'll ask you again...

Here this is what I said because it's becoming more and more obvious you really don't have a clue then you have the lack of brainpower enough to tell me what I don't know when in fact I do

"When you can drive for less than 60 seconds and can start ghost capping base and making the whole point of taking bases worthless..."

To which you replied,

"ghost capping is starting a cap and then leaving it"

YES????

And you're point is?

I know exactly what ghost capping is, something which you asserted I didn't, like you asserted this piece of fallacious BS....

Bollocks!

So it's such a non issue now like it wasn't 6 months ago that they have galaxy squadrons on standby just for this kind of thing? Make up your mind ffs!

the galaxy squads in our outfit that would respond to a "back hack" since ghost caps do exist anymore and have not for a long time also had man, many other resonsibilities, they were not just sitting around waiting for this to happen.

They were ahead of the front line attackers, back hackers, send to back up flex infantry in times of need, told to be a meat grinder and hold a point as long as they could, even if it was hopeless, and would repsond to back hacks.

The whole premise of "ghost hacking" is a silly argument, since the xp you get is so minimal.

ALSO YOU NEED ACTUAL PEOPLE ON THE POINT TO CAP IT.

That actually makes sense. The best PR move was to go the way of most vocality.
That's actually sad, as I am sure that all the discussion must have spawned some pretty neat idea on their end.
Why they never took the chance to implement them and try stuff on the test server is beyond me.

Popularity isn't a good metric for game concepts. Quite the opposite.

This isn't true.
I've heard it plenty of times, and each time I try to answer it.

The lattice is a graph, the hex is a valued graph.
The hex lines where there to graphically show the value of the link. value that was then used in the calculation of influence.
The hex system is an expanded version of the lattice system, if you want to nitpick.

Valued graphs can be expanded even further by having one sided connections, conditional connections, a matrix of values and most likely other concepts I don't remember.
The values can be used for more than influence. it could be used for resource/fuel trinkles, electric/water/fuel/nanites distribution.
The conditional links could be used for bridges or tunnels.
One sided connections could be used for Stargate type links, or simply rappeling down a mountain.

So no, the lattice system and the hex system aren't the same thing. And there could be even more concepts that would add to the game in a meaningful way.

Reasons to fight are meta game.
Resources, valuable territory and other incentives are reasons to fight.
Expanding them is adding meta game.

yes, those would be great alerts. Alerts are pretty much server run missions.

What I talked about was player run mission. A player that sets up a task and a bounty, and other players can accept it and accomplish it. It would be more like "need air support there", or "destroy this sunderer" or if we had a proper scouting system "go spot enemies in this location"(adds figurines on the map)

These would be directly related to the main fight, and would add a sense of purpose to solo players or small groups.

I actually think that what would improve the hex is more specific type of links, and some with more than one value.
Also, I think that we should keep the same amount of bases but increase the amount of territories.

For instance, between the two stone beach and Frostbite harbor, there could be several territory to caps without spawnrooms.
Like a hill, or an abandonned fishing shack.
Those would permit a progressive open field battle, with parallel hex that can be capped together as a front line or just cap one by one as a straight line to get straight to the next spawnroom but risk being cutoff.
It would help direct the flow of player between bases and keep spawn camping to the minimum while having a wider variety of fights.

If you want a better explanation of my idea, please read the link in my signature.

You've made some compelling points here, I'll admit. If I were to respond to every point here I'd just be repeating myself so I think that's signal for closure of this discussion. IF the devs decided to actually act on the better suggestions for the hex design, I've no doubt that it would improve. I don't know if it will be as fun as lattice, but I'd be willing to give it a try. I think I'll just leave it at that.

Very good discussion Frosth, very engaging. I think we made good points on both sides. I think we've provided ample feedback for the devs as well. I'll see ya.

Agreed. I felt I was repeating myself too with the last message.
We'll see what happens. I do hope the devs consider at least testing hex evolutions on amerish.
Then we could have comparative feed back.

I still think the best would be a third system, one that does both things right.