[Suggestion] Countering zerging and encouraging even fights

I've played planetside2 for quite some time and the one biggest problem I've encountered that prevents me from enjoying the game is the unbalanced fights (when you're outnumbered beyond 40% vs 60% fights tend to become extremely lopsided)

There needs to be more incentive to split up your forces and less reward for zerging. Below I've outlined several ideas that I believe will greatly help this issue:

-Add a accumulating respawn cooldown for individual sunderers where a mass of people are spawning in a short period of time.
For example: The respawn time on any one sunderer will be increased by 2% for the average spawning player/minute (numbers are just a example, focus on the concept). So if 50 people spawned every minute at that sunderer respawn time would be doubbled, up to 12 sec instead of 6.
This would make it harder and less rewarding to zerg as you would be limited in how quickly you could reinforce the army, would also make it much more beneficial to bring several sunderers to any one fight (for both atackers and defenders).

- Add base specific xp bonuses depending on population imbalance.
Currently fighting on a underpopulated continent gives you bonus experience. Just copy the same idea over to bases, so if you're outnumbered you get a % increase to xp gain, actively encouraging players to defend underpopulated bases instead of just going with the zerg.

-Change base cap reward.
Having 50+ people standing on a empty base because the game rewards them for doing so is stupid. My idea:
Whenever a base gets captured, anyone who earned xp in that base during the flip (capture meter must have been ticking down) will get the capture xp. Fighting in another contested base will make you lose your "attack xp" from previously assaulted, but not yet flipped, bases and tie your incoming xp bonus to that base instead.
This will encourage zerg to actually start moving out after the base is secured and start securing the next bases in the lattice links or scouring the nearby area for enemy armor/air, which will also open up the oppurtunity for defenders to spawn their own armor and pick of atackers that stray to far from the zerg. The problem with trying to atack the zerg is that it's like one big clumped up blob, and engaging it in any way shape or form means that you will quickly end up 10v1 as the entire zerg just rushes at the single target still left on the battlefield s everyone else is just hiding in the spawnrrom. Attackers don't camp spawn because they want to, they do it because it's more fun then just staring into a wall while waiting for the base to flip. Basically, spawn camping is your only source of XP during this time, if you don't do it your teammates sure as hell will, and you will be missing out on experience.

- More reward for successfully defending.
Not as big of a problem as it used to be, with the bonus 20% xp when defending, but I still feel like this is a reasonable change to add a feeling of accomplishment when you succesfully defend a base as well a tying in with the previous suggestion:
Whenever a base gets defended, anyone who earned xp in that base while the capture meter was ticking will get a bonus % xp based on any xp gained during the defense. Fighting in any other contested base (where the capture meter is ticking) will reset this bonus.
Basically, there isn't enough OMPH! when you successfully defend a base, It's nearly as anit-climatic as cont capture. Knowing that there is a big fat XP reward waiting for you when successfully defending will add a massive (and much needed) incentive to fight nail and tooth for the base instead of just going "Eh, we're kinda losing so I'll just go join our massive zerg five blocks away instead".

-Make reaching fights easier
The main problem with pubbies is that they lack the dedication to actively seek out the fights where they are actually needed, instant action is all good and well, but it's just too random and I honestly don't believe SOE will ever be able to perfect the system to such a degree that it will always drop you in the most ideal fighting zone:
The base specific xp bonus I suggested earlier should be displayed directly on the map by default (can be toggled of) to actively attract randoms to that base. Even if the only reason they spawn there is for spawn room camping, if a entire platoon of pubbies does this chances are you will end up saving the base.
Furthermore, make it possible to globally redeploy. I've been debating this one with myself for quite some time as having coordinated platoons just pop from one base to the next without warning could lead to frustrating gameplay, you think you have the base and then POOF! a zerg just pops out from the spawnroom. However, this is already doable by repeatedly suiciding and respawning at the next base until you reach your destination (something which I am guilty of doing quite often), and it is nowhere as bad as the old instant action where you could just instantly flood the base and just destroy all sunderers without the attackers having any warning or chance of defending.
So my suggestion:
Allow you to redepot to any base on the map regardless where you are currently spawning. There is a kicker though: The respawn time will be increased the further away from your point of death you want to redeploy. I don't have any numbers, but it should take roughly the same time as it currently does to repeatedly suicide-respawn your way across the map.
This would allow pubbies, who does not have a outfit who can organize gal drops, to actually relocate effectively. Many zerglings stay with the zerg simply because their only respawn options is either in the middle of the zerg, or at that base 2 hexes away that is either getting overrun by a massive enemy zerg, or is completely devoid of any action. Combine with fat xp rewards showing up on the respawn map and I think we will see a lot more zergs dispersing their numbers instead of simply clumping up into massive blobs.

I like your post, there are some good ideas about splitting the zerg. I do not like the idea of allowing people to redeploy to get to a base, we need to use all the transport vehicles that don't get used often enough.

Hex did that.
Lattice concentrated Zergs.
Players play in Zergs out of choice. Hex would force them to split up, or lose territory.
Lattice is stupid. Having the ability to protect territory that one has no forces in is ridiculous. No such defense would ever exist, that would protect supply lines.

Only Lattice or protection a supply line (behined enemy lines) should have, or bottlenecks created, should be by terrain only, and the enemy maintaining a frontline to stop anyone from getting behind it.

Zergs are boring.

Bring back hex, so smaller battles can happen, more tactics, spec ops and behind enemy lines disarray.

How about the more enemy in your sector, the more spawn points for the defenders open up. That way zergs can lead to an almighty battle - which is what we want

The problem isn't lattice. Back in the hex days we still had zergs, only we also had ghost capping. The only real difference lattice brought is that we now have bigger fights (if that's good or not is a matter of opinion.

The problem with zergs is that unless you already have a strong defending force they are incredibly hard to defend against as none wants to defend against it since everyone knows they will be outnumbered. It's a problem that fuels itself.

We need to introduce something that will motivate players to take the first step, and start defending. As I see it, there are two major problems here:
Lack of incentive
Lack of transport
Hence why I've suggested the global respawn and increased experience when defending while outnumbered.

Bigger battles isent really true......the battles seem pretty much the same in size......the main diffrence was before there was mostly only one zerg per team on eatch continent

now you will see 2 or 3 zergs instead of just one mostly only on indar, since the hex did spread out people a lot more.
Sometimes joining up as one resulting in a bigger zerg......not in bigger battles

Since as you pointed out nobody wants to get steam rolled.
And im sorry to say people just arent gonna pick a fight they cant win no matter the incentive.

yay! i get 2000% xp......but i havent killed anyone unless i play as a spawn room warrior
Not sure how you can give any kind of incentive to beat that.

So whats the point of Galaxies if you can just hit delete and be anywhere you think you need to be within a minuite?

Getting out of the spawn-room. Getting anywhere you have no spawn room (attacking) . Dropping on top of enemy sunderers. Setting up HA nests on mountains etc.

If there's two lessons I've learned from the movie "300" is that a small force can still be fearsome if they play smart and the larger force always wins.

PS: So lesson here kids is bring more people. After all isn't having big battles what Planetside is all about?

It is my personal opinion that fighting an "even" fight means someone has lost the battle tactically already.

This is supposed to be a game of strategy and tactics not an arena game of matched sides.

This is what was supposed to set PS 2 apart from the rest of the FPS's out there.

The lattice was designed to facilitate combat and what its done is force zerg to meet zerg.

Rofl, no. Hex forced this game into Crownside. Go away

No. Players turned it into Crownside. Also, you were not considering that there are 2 other continents people played on. Its not all about Indar.


It was players who left bases undefended.

It was players who decided to play with the Zerg.

Always the players.

But with hex, it allowed different players to play their way, how they wanted, where they wanted, and when they wanted.

So how about you go away.

In most RTS's, the counter to mindless zerging is artillery. I don't see why that can't be the case here. Somewhat inaccurate but devastating long range artillery vehicles, maybe using spotters to zero in on a location. The type of thing that's inaccurate enough that a small force would mostly see it as an inconvenience, but would decimate a large zerg out in the open.

So, maybe Orbital Bombardment which they've been talking about will be the go-to zerg counter once it appears.

Sorry buddy. Lattice is here to stay and so am I. See you in your next game

Sorry, buddy, I'm going to be right here offering my opinion, I'm not going anywhere.

I agree with this, something that could help would be to allow spawning in any place that has 48+ enemies. It's very hard to get the good back and forth battle going because once you get to the base you need to defend it is already completely spawn camped. At that point most people just leave and go elsewhere which just magnifies the problem because eventually they will form a big enough force that could actually combat the main enemy force but they are on the other side of the map.

The situation which pisses me of the most is when each empire has their main force ghost capping empty lattice lines instead fighting each others, sadly this happens way too often.

In theory it's so simple to start a good fight, only thing you need to do is to defend for 10~ minutes without getting spawn camped. This is enough time for people to gather from the defending empire to put up a fight. In practice it is very hard unless you control a major outfit.

In the past we have seen things such as cap timers but those won't help because the fight ends when enemies reach the spawn doors. Sure very organized large outfits can break those but outside that it is over. There is no simple fix for this really.

So yea good incentive and the ability to actually spawn places you need to defend would go a long way to alleviate these issues. Would it solve it completely? probably not but it's a start.

Hex caused Zergs to circle around each other. Now Zergs avoid each other on purpose. It's not Hex or Lattice that's the problem here.

All changes aimed at preventing zergs from forming are inherently flawed, in my opinion. Zergs are a main aspect of the game, a positive aspect, that is. The problem is getting the two zergs to fight.

I made this suggestion in the other two zerg threads (no idea why there is a third) but it's as follows:

When a large enough number of people appear in one zone, there would be like a mini-alert saying "massive enemy army detected" or whatever. Defeating the zerg in that zone would give faction wide XP rewards just like an alert, as well as a faction wide message that the enemy army was defeated (these would be smaller than alert notifications to avoid spam). This would, in my opinion, contribute to people trying to destroy enemy zergs out of faction pride and search for certs, instead of avoiding them.

The zergs will disappear once more continents are added(in the next few years). You have to remember that every is concentrated onto 2 small continents. Continent locking will also help(in the next few years)

No, they won't. Continent locking will leave things more or less like they are right now except the main fight will not be on Indar while the rest is only paid attention to during alerts, which is a good change. Also, when Hossin goes live, everyone will want to check it out and it will be massively popular for a time and maybe forever, since it's the "middle" continent in the continental lattice.

I doubt it will be too popular with MBT drivers, though.