The Lattice: why we need it even if we hate it

Yeah because they run into a bigger zerg. The biggest zerg then goes unchallenged, while the losing zerg is absorbed into the other zergs of their faction.

Few fights remain 50ish% vs 50ish% for more than 15 minutes. Sooner or later the bigger zerg forms and wins. Just watch the map for an hour one day. It will repeat constantly.

By the sound of it, both systems are equally frustrating.

As someone else said, Many PS players just aren't willing to cooperate.

I was on Esamir, on the HEX system. I had just taken over for 10 minutes or so from the regular platoon leader while he went and did something.

TR was hammering Freyr, including my platoon, but we just weren't getting through the NC's defences (Which were very good by the way, well played guys). So rather than just putting them through a meatgrinder for the next hour I tried to make them encircle Freyr by taking the bases around, while letting the VS do our dirty work for us by going round Snowsheer, the Traverse, and Esamir Munitions, but by the time we got to Esamir Munitions, all but two of my 2 squad strong force had dropped out and decided going through the Freyr meatgrinder was more fun.

Maybe I expected too much of them, but I did the same a couple of days before, the squad listened and we dominated the continent.
Either that says alot about PS players or my squad just wasn't willing, I'm not sure. I haven't yet experienced Lattice, guess I'll find out if it makes things better. By the sound of it though, it sounds like it just encourages you even more just to charge at the base with no strategic plan.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but soldiers < more soldiers, so it's only natural that side with bigger numbers wins.
Numbers advantage is the easiest advantage one side can achieve over the other, especially assuming that all sides have equal count of players on all skill levels. That last point varies heavily on the server. In GU13 they have improved that suggested server thingy, perhaps that will fix it. Someday, at least.

Pre-update base design (we still have yet to see what became of esamir) makes bases hard to defend, even after many improvements like tunnels and two-level spawnrooms. The end result is the same, that you get camped in a spawnroom.
That is a defendable base. Until we see that, number of soldiers will still win.

Well, that's the problem. Dominating the continent doesn't give you anything. Yet.

This thread makes me laugh so hard at both sides arguing.

You guys have been running with the WRONG outfits and playing the wrong way completely.

It's all about who you run with. Military or Civilian; you are only as good as your understanding of the game and how well you work with others. (You can understand the strategy of this game if you play chess for god sake)

Common sense runs rampant, but all you see is numbers and immediately get scared and run away.

I relish uneven fights. I love destroying zergs. I love over coming the odds. I work with other outfit commanders to get things done and we have no quarrels over ****** or who has the better military record or even K/D.

It's pure teamwork that you are missing in your experiences which is leading to blame the system and not yourself for adapting to the parameters.

Lattice or Hex; We win and lose fights at the same rate regardless.

As a loyal VS commander since HELIOS. We adapted.

Did you?

You should make "Why Bonus Capture Points is Good", Bring it back.

Not to sound too snobbish but that's what nearly all of PS1 vets kept saying from the very moment PS2 was born.





On a side note - military training argument is unapplicable in case of PS2 (not in particular, actually), because of several reasons:

1. People don't bleed out and die from a single bullet to the arm
2. People respawn on the frontline (we don't take respawning in the WG, because the WG is a conditional "heartland", so technically all those respawning there can be new soldiers)
3. Which they are not, since they keep experience from their previous deaths
4. There's just no such thing as fear of death, that makes many people rush instead of maneuver (you can compare a casual outfit playing vs KDR-crazed outfit and see the difference)
5. The game doesn't have enough physics to provide the actual acrobatic maneuvers a human can do on the battlefield. Starting with prone, ending with such things as hoists ledgegrabs, etc. (Well, we can close our eyes to stamina there, typical military training does that too, so we can, I think)

...Apart from a minor discount, of which arguably Esamir is the most important in -10% on mechenised purchases

That guy's a dumba**.

Discount? On what? Resources? Haven't seen those, sorry.

(I mean resource system doesn't function)

So a Lightning that would usually cost 300 cost 270

My post has nothing to do with world pop, but you seem stuck on this. Waterson is very balanced lately.

Well, I don't understand then what your problem is. That side that manages to get more soldiers in one hex wins? Why it shouldn't be so?

Blasting a different playlist in squad voice doesn't mean you've adapted

In real war, such things are dictated by the participants. In Planetside 2, such things don't exist. Such things can only exist if you give the players the mechanisms to enforce them. At the very least, the Hex allowed this to an extent. The Lattice does not. The Lattice does nothing more than forcing players to fight where the game tells them to.

That much should be obvious to someone who is a student of military history. Your post is utterly pretentious without substance.

The Lattice is, as others have mentioned, the very definition of a strategy-free game. It was instituted because players/outifts were incapable of dealing with a wide front line and small-squad actions. And in all fairness to said players/outfits, the game does not support faction or continent/level coordination of forces. As platoons do not exceed more than 5 squads, the front line presented by the hex system, is too wide to deal with.

Furthermore, the game itself does not reward defense nearly enough. I'm not talking certs or exp, but straight up gaming entertainment. If a group of players garrison a small outpost, they may have to wait for a long time before anything happens. Obviously, this doesn't translate into entertainment.

Furthermore, it's not reasonable to apply real-world strategic paradigms to this game. The list of reasons for that, is too long to itemize. Principal among them - as already mentioned - is the lack consequences/death as well as the fast-respawn mechanic. Equally obvious is the fact that no game could or should fully simulate either as it would be complete death-sentence for any game.

In my personal opinion, the best compromise would be to remove the lattice, but reduce the number of hexes/bases on each map. On one hand it would make it less predictable where any one group would go next and at the same time ensure that there would defensive presence in almost every hex along the front line.

Most importantly, SOE should fix the performance issues. Whether players are for or against the lattice, I suspect we are all united in our loathing of the massive lag/desynch that these so-called "epic" fights always come with!

In Hex, the problem was most ghost-caps were done by either a force so small as to make engaging it pointless, or a force so big as to make engaging it impossible. Lattice forces big vs. big - so we have fights now, but the level of strategy remains the same (i.e. very little).

What we need is better ways to break the zerg, to utilise force multipliers and to interfere with not just the enemy front line, but their supply/logistics as well. This means taking a small squad (squad, not individual) and going somewhere to create an incident that requires a response. Not just 'oh, maybe...'. Requires. Thus, while the two zergs will continue to clash a few small squad vs. small squad battles are also being fought that will have a serious impact on the larger action. If the small squad ends up requiring a larger investment from one side, their zerg will suffer accordingly for its reduced size.

When we can do that, we'll see more strategy. Until then any system we get will either promote zerg-on-zerg headbutting or ghost-capping. Because people will follow the path of least resistance.

Why wouldn't you want what I suggested? The massive advantage, contrary to the current lattice dictatorship, is that a real sandbox allows for many different playstyles.

I just can't picture how this would work.
If the only difference from current gameplay is that there would be a general for each side, setting waypoints, "need reinforcements" markers and bonus exp hexes, then sure, why not.
I guess this would even add to the game some social/drama component, because that general could be voted for by all members of the faction and give orders, for example, a week. Or a set of 3-5 generals to ensure that orders coverage is close to 24/7.


To go further into Eve-style, ability to actually build bases and fortify them by engineers/support vehicles also would be kind of fun, but I'm just not sure this is what planetside wants to be. Currently it's a meat/cert grinding shooter. Fun to play for couple of hours on evenings. But making players to actually build and fortify and hold bases, excluding the warpgate, would make desirable to very select members of the playerbase, and promote no-life gameplay because "omagosh I can'y log off now, cuz I'm the only engineer this base is holding on, and then the whole line will crumble". I'm afraid that would create too much social drama.