Higby on rule sets and lattice

Its sad that they had to do it this way as its broken, gameplay is broken, boring, stale... insert other
With little lateral thinking they could have made it less intensive to colaborate.
Squad and platoon managments is terrible and actualy does not exist.

If cooperation was what was missing then they could have added better interface for finding squads, adding orders.
There are a lot of good ideas in the improvement forum thread. With lot of WG ideas that could have made coordination and cooperation more efficient. Not like today when you cant even say where and what is your faction doing on a continent.

Im sad when I see the new commander interface for BF4.

Nice example but all of you should remember one thing.
New GU11 will increase resource costs

Lettuce is static, and everyone playing on Indar will get bored to hell when they pull a tank and it gets destroyed. "But I got accusation timer certed so I can pull a tank every 5minutes" ... no, because you have no resources.
There will be no more tank rush, everyone will take care of its tank/plane. Battles will drag on and on as no one will advance fearing the destruction of their precious tank.

Its gona be sooo fun on Indar when GU11 comes out, my LA with C4 will be a happy camper.

Now hex, and especial hex with influence system like it had in the beginning has more sense than lettuce.
Now you have a reason to attack a certain hexes, and it was done without lettuce getting in the way.

Higby said they're doing it because of player feedback.

Except most player feedback was negative.

I called it months ago. Egos and careers are riding on the lattice system, it will ship no matter what.

Whats that, 80% of the response is negative? Sounds good, ship it.

Heh, I just have this **** eating grin on my face when listening to Higby's facade of an appeal. "You need rules" There were rules. "Yes but with only that amount of rules its a toy, not a game" You're really reaching. "Yes I am"

Its going in because it must, not because it should. If you spend a lot of time and money on something, you must have something to show for it, or else there are career limiting consequences.

Welp.

The word is "replying".

I have given multiple in depth posts explaining why the Lattice was put in place. The Devs told you directly (though one Dev) in the OPs video. I will reply to your post all I want, and you ignoring everything above really just makes me want to reply, if only to refer you back to those points.

I didn't have to answer why Lattice was put in place, as I said the Devs already did. I just explained why arguments against Lattice are usually faulty. Your hyperbolic rants are entertaining but unproductive.

I remember WAR, didn't play it. It seems to have faded into obscurity as well, so I can't fully say if your claim that WAR had a sandbox design that would be applicable (or even functional) in a persistent MMOFPS of the size PS2 is. I could just repeat my points that you have failed to address again, but I assume you know how to use the "prev" button.

Hmmm... so simply put and so correct.
"There are so few advantages to defending".

Hope the resource cost increase will take care of that. Now, there will be a reason to defend.

Well I did

Im gunna throw in my two bits. Played on indar for the first time in a while last night (not because of the new system, just because I dont like Indar, not a fan of sand). My outfit had less people on so we were rolling smaller numbers. It was great attacking. Even when we hit the crown, we could hold the NC there until we won the nightly mission. Then we skipped down to the south to stop a TR zerg at the skydock. We lost it and red ridge, but seeing that they could only attack one more base (Recycling) we could set up a defense with more space for a counter zerg. We ended up exhausting their zerg and pushing them back, all because we knew where they were coming from. That was, in my opinion, a beautiful example of the new system cooperating with a small defensive force and the terrain. And like I said, it didnt stop us attacking earlier in the night. Infact, its fixed attack paths allowed us to make better decisions. We could have pulled out of Zurvan pump to defend Xeno when it came under attack, but that was the only place the TR could have gained at that time, and we could see Xeno would take a min of 3 min to take at the time we considered it, while the mission would only run for another 2:30, allowing us to win by 3% and 30 seconds.

So in my book, lets stop complaining, and give it a go on the other continents. If it fails on Amerish (unlikely, as it will follow the already limited access routes) or Esamir (more likely, as its the flattest continent, meaning its the easiest to blitz across) then we can build up a strong anti-case and get them to change it.

Pains me to agree with you but I do.
Still, Im of opinion that it could have been dealt with another way. Not with lettuce crap.

Lets see what resource cost increase does to lettuce and hex.
My predicion is that Indar will turn to infantry zerg fight. And tanks will be kept in the background.
Esamir and Amerish, could look a lot different. With ability to cap "behind" and get to resource producing hexes it will be colorfull.

A lot of bad players upset they have to fight in a wargame itt.

They have done something similar
Expecting GU11.

Lot of Hex advocates sound like people who think this game is a grand-strategy game and not just a very large FPS.
Newsflash: This game is going to PS4 and needs to be fun for loners too.

There is no interface to do that, no easy way to coordinate.

I'm hearing the words strategy and tactics used (and often misused) on the forums here.so i figured i would add my 3 cents.

In order to have tactics and strategy both to work in a functional manner you need a few things.

1. A general who oversee's multiple platoons or all, and is in charge of large portions of the map or all of it. This is so defences are setup, forces are not spread to thing or to thick and so everyone is following one main plain reguardless of where they are. This creates bordom because no one wants to sit and wait at a base where no one is attacking.

2. A real army. Lets face it. It's a game. We all need to log off and we are free to tell our squad leaders and platoon leaders to **** off! If there is nothing at risk, no edge is given to the commanders, no reason for the troops to follow them, then you can't use tactics. with no insentive to follow orders, and everyone doing their own thing, there is no way to use tactics in any meaningful way.

3. Missions/Orders. There needs to be a way for the leader to communicate to their squad's and platoons that is not voice, but something concrete, like labeled way points and people assigned to those way points. Simple commands, and the ability to draw on the map. In otherwords a battle plan. Not everyone has voice chat enabled, and the current system simple encourages "go here" Zerging mentality. It needs to be clear so people can follow it.

4. better sensors. The reason no one defended a base because by the time you redeployed and spawned there, it would already have 3 points flipped and the spawn surounded. There needs to be a way to have the people setup a realisitic defence and fight them with some messurable numbers tword the begaiing of the fight, otherwise it will always be adventagious over the enemy.


In order for the old system of adjacency to work you need to put the following in game.

1. Incentives for players to follow commands, commanders, orders, etc

2. A formal colliation so either a cental figure is elected, or the outfits can talk so everyone follows a general strategy. (Note: Command chat does not work for this, as anyone can disrupt command chat simply by buying it with 200 certs.

3. Add a square and a circle on the squad/platoon leaders maps. Let them draw over an area, and let his squad/platoon see it. Have it so these squares and circles have names, and so you can add a simple description like "Repair Generator" or "enemy is here, flank here".

4. Add better sensors, some way to slow the enemey down, or some way to fill up the base bfore the enemy gets all the cap points.

Until sony can solve those 3 problems, the lattice system will always be better then the adjacency.

I just saw this while backreading a bit. You are wrong. Lattice does not force more even fights.

At the slightest hint of "not winning" people just leave. Meaning the numbers for the outnumbered side tend to dwindle down to nothing very quickly. Resulting in the following...

Lane 1 - MASSIVE NC zerg, 12 TR defenders.
Lane 2 - MASSIVE TR zerg, 12 NC defenders.

If anything, I've found it to increase the attacking advantage, right up to the point where at long last, TR zerg notices NC zerg on the next lane across (normally takes about a half hour or so) and moves to finally do something... At which point there is a two hour meatgrinder, long after the few people who made the effort have logged off out of frustration, getting bored of being run over by 15x their number.

Furthermore, the difficulty in fighting against the odds is a little tricky to understand.

12 vs 24 is a fight which a skilled team will manage to win when outnumbered.

128 vs 256? Good luck to whoever's outnumbered. The numerical advantage, although still 2 - 1 as in the first example, becomes overwhealming as the whole fight is scaled up.

As (generally) a loner, I find myself with far, far more opportunities to make a difference (offensively or defensively) in hex than lattice. There's simply more places where one guy can get something done.

For some of us, trying to actually fight in one of those "massive battles" (multiple platoons on each side crammed into one base) is a lot like trying to swim in this.

Erm, teamspeak? Voice comms? On Woodman vanu outfits coordinate, pushing across entire fronts using multiple platoons. NC have done similar on Miller on occasion.

Coordination is easy.

errr..

arr In game mechanics for cooperation? Having third party software just shows how broken the system of factions, platoons and squads actually is.

Thir

Third party software does not count. In no co-ooperation based game should there EVER be a need, a requirement to use outside resources. All the tools needed to fully function must be present in the product. Third party add-ons are just quality of life things.

We do have rather comprehensive VoIP systems in place. The problem is that most people don't have them set up properly, or as in EU servers, there's also the language/culture barrier. Trying to command a squad of people where at best one has some inkling of an idea of what you're saying is frustrating at best.
Drawing on maps would be a nice add-on. Removal of the command tree from the cert line must also be a requirement. Command should never be provided by "money". It should be earned with command experience. I have never played PS1 but as far as I heard, that system comes pretty close.

I can understand that rules are necessary, but there have to be ways to circumvent the "set in stone" paths. It mustn't be easy, it must be difficult and demanding to pull of, but it should be possible.

they need to add downvoting.

I might just be thick, but please bare with me. Whats wrong with the ingame Voice coms? I have found they work rather well for built in coms. Is it a button problem? I really dont know as I bound Platoon Chat to one mouse side button and Squad Chat to another. I access both with my thumb, so it doesnt impede my mouse control. Its responsive and with a bit of fiddling I now have all my outfit levels individually set (whiteshadow is super quiet while Polo is bloody loud! Now they are the same level, just above background noise).