Why do people relocate when it gets tough?

95% of the time you can predict the outcome of a fight by looking at the pops. Couple that with the fact that there's always some stupidly indefensible outpost ready to be spawn camped and you have very little reason for players to stick around in a fight that they can't steamroll within seconds of entering the hex.

The key words were " I went back to the base for a new Sunderer "
why did you do that? I am assuming its becuase you didn't have a place to spawn and you were attacking?
If so, then the others couldn't spawn either until you dropped your Sundy to spawn from, so they gave up and went to another base.
They may come back, checking to see if a Sundy is available but...your team lost the momentum whne they didn't have 2 or 3 Sundys to spawn from and then the over pop for the defenders got much easier at killng off any newly arriving Sundys.

I think "Lots of Platoon Leaders don't want close fights" is far more appropriate there. Outfit groups though cause that both from vacating fights because inferior farm/not roflstomping fast enough/"Alerts are totally worth it", or from deciding that taking their full platoon to a 15 v 15 fight is a great use of their time.

Randoms and Lone Wolves will leave if they're going 0-12, but so long as they are getting some kills you won't see that sort of "OMG, where'd the fight go?" from them. About the only time you'll see them all leave at once is - you guessed it - when an outfit shows up and just stomps them into the curb (whether through numbers, or just more organized play).

I think "lots of people" was sufficiently vague. Of course, PLs have the most sway but if enough players preferred a different approach then they could ask the PL to play that way, join a different squad/platoon, form their own, play solo, or quit. These options are all available to individuals every time the PL asks them to leave what seems to be a good fight. In practice, they rarely happen.

Though I was being cynical. I think most players would prefer close fights but don't feel as though they can change the way the game currently plays, so they give in. It's groupthink, everyone plays the redeploy meta because everyone else does.

Some players may enjoy it. But the rest of us have to speak up on how it is damaging gameplay and severely restricting our fun.

Most players don't want to be in even fights, they want to be in a fight where they outnumber the enemy by at least 2:1..
Just look at the map sometime and this will become obvious to you..

My Platoon leader often give us the order to redeploy, to fight for a "more important" objective (for example, defend a Techplant during a techplant alert...)

Why do people remove their hand when they stick it in fire?
Its called not being a masochist.

There's a difference between carefully tipping the scales in your favor in strategic locations (be it certain fronts on a continent or parts of a single base) and overwhelming an enemy for a completely unchallenging fight that lasts a matter of seconds.

Bases take minutes to capture but mass redeploying is near-instantaneous. The idea of "battle fronts" begins to fall apart when everyone can immediately redeploy, pile into one base and win so fast that they can redeploy back where they were and still be in time to stop the cap. Forces aren't shared, so we see these massive clumps.

When it takes longer to move your forces, and they are vulnerable to being intercepted, there's much more strategy and fine tuning. Sending everyone is a bad idea unless you are willing to sacrifice that front. This means you need to already be winning or be able to delay the enemy.

Both teams can try to predict their enemies movements and intercept any reinforcements. If you're caught off guard, you can't just redeploy a platoon without any effort. You've got to react quickly and transport yourselves there.

Strategy doesn't need teleporting for it to exist.

It's entirely understandable that players are going to do everything they can to win. This doesn't mean we should make it so easy to overwhelm opponents that we create boring fights for everyone involved.

It may be a snowball effect. A few people leave the (balanced) fight. More people look at the map and see the numbers going down and then redeploy out of the "loosing battle" until everyone is gone.
Could also be an outfit platoon recall causing a large number of people to leave a fight, also resulting in regular people leaving because of the lack of numbers.
All in all, i think the average player just hates fighting a loosing battle.
They want to just have fun and shoot things, but they also want to win. I guess.

Just to clarify, you had 4-5 spawn options in PS1 (in relations to where you die).
Nearest base, Nearest tower, nearest AMS. Or sanctuary.
(I love how it made AMS placement matter in relations to directing the flow of battle across continents)

A 5th option was your matrixed base.
(When you went to a base and used the matrix pannel next to the spawn tube, it made you able to spawn at that base, no matter where you were, or what continent you were on)

The PS1 version of the instant action allowed you to select where to drop (Except directly over bases/towers).
The 30minute GLOBAL timer made it fun to organise "zerg" drops, where most of the empire would recall to all drop on the same location =D

Depends on what you mean "Tough". Because I'm sure to deploy elsewhere if there are only 20" left for cap and we're crammed in Spawn, or if there's 6-8 ESFs and 2 Libs preying on 2-3 people in the Spawn... Or if the Spawn is being constantly bombarded by 983272138473 MBTs and Lightnings so we can't go out, we can't aim and we can't actually play.

Stop worrying about what others do, stay if you want. Fight the Good Fight. We'll catch up on how it worked out for you on the next Base in line to be farmed by all those things. And at least, until we reach 20" to cap we might pretend we can work with SOE's childish designs and systems.

That was my problem with it.

Hundreds of people as a mob can be herded through things like the mission system. But all it takes is a single PL with a half baked understanding of game theory to leave a trail of ruined fights across the server. If you have a problem with fights going well and then suddenly ending, look no further than the wingnuts who certed command chat.

Dear SOE,

I WILL PAY YOU LOADS OF MONEY TO GET THIS KIND OF TENSION IN GAME. MY CREDIT CARD IS IN MY HAND RIGHT NOW, JUST MAKE THE CHANGE TO BRING SOMETHING LIKE THIS BACK

That feel when this will probably never come to PS2

I personally stick it out no matter what. The only time I move on is if all points are capped - we have less than a minute to go and there are 50 people sitting in spawn. I will usually call for a rush and if that fails - redeploy.

No. NO. Don't do this to me. ARgh. **** you nostalgia, **** you!


... I miss being a cloaker medic and reviving entire squads in the generator room ;_;

On topic, i agree witht hose commenting about the squads. Often a squad leaves because other objectives are more v aluable to hold. Other times its because whoever the ******* is that has the only sunderer in the area decides to pack it up and move it to antoher spot in the base... Which just has a good 20-30 people drop from the fight because no spawn points!

Seriously. If you drive a sundy LEAVE IT THE **** THERE.

I addressed this in a post in another thread...

I haven't actually played this week, but I heard that Squad Leader spawn was removed.

If not, it should be. Why you ask? So they can control reinforcements across the continent to be no more than needed to make a fight fair (and allow both sides to continually add participants so long as each side keeps reinforcing)

Outfits/Squads/Platoons should be using Gals and Sunderers or other transport to move their troops around, unless a base is 48 players down, THEN all 48 individual players could each reinforce that base...

But the problem is that just squad leads can (or could) reinforce to a fight only 4 players down, then bring the other 44 players over with beacons or deploying to closest spawn from sqd lead.

In one sense, the squad ldr spawn system was good to get squad mates to relink up with the squad, but it should be disabled if the region Sqd Ldr is in their faction has 10% pop advantage.

I solo an engineer most of the time and I leave when I am getting farmed by an outfit or when the fight is in the early stages of a lost cause. I have terrible k/d's as it is and I don't feel the need to die 3 or 4 more times in the fight until I wind up in the ready room Alamo.

It is strategy. If team is organized to do a quick mass redeploy, it will take at least several minutes for other team to react. You effectively just put the other team on halt. Use those several minutes to hit elsewhere. By the time they react it will be too late. In fact in a 3 faction game you can switch attack from faction to faction. TR won't reinforce NC, VS won't reinforce TR, and so on. Hit a stalemate, move. Hit stalemate there too? Move again. Keep moving, eventually you will succeed and take territory. It's an absolutely valid strategy.

What the delay does is it sacrifices those that aren't organized. They keep pushing a failed front. Like the OP said. Suddenly he realized he's there pretty much by himself. For a few minutes he will keep trying. He is the one that makes the enemy think assault isn't over yet and makes them stick around, while another organized force just quickly redeployed and is making a big difference elsewhere. You have a choice here, be part of organized group and know what is going on, or be by yourself and be perpetually stuck in those little delays. One makes the game feel like you're winning more often, the other makes you feel like you are losing more often. There will always be both types of players.

There is always strategy, so long as every player is playing by same rules. If you don't use teleporting when your enemy can, you are taking a very useful tool out of your inventory and making yourself more likely to fail. Put those chess pieces where they count the most, sometimes you even have to sacrifice a pawn or two.

We already had an iteration of the game where people all used teleporting. It was essentially "Ghost-capping: the multi-million dollar standing around simulator".

I only redeploy if I die 3-4 times in a row a few meters outside the spawn room or tele room. Other than that I am prepared to fight even outnumbered.