Zergfits driving good players away from the game

"These outfits are shocking, They just go base to base ghost capping sometimes to lock an empty continent. The real deal here is there outfit leaders and squad leaders appear to have the tactical ability of a mouldy potato. Its common place for these zerg to just go base to base shooting at what little enemy get summoned by Instant Action. Don't these outfit leaders realise there just a waste of space on the server?

Dear Sony take away base cap XP if the population is 48+ v 1-12 stop these muppets for good ghost capping or zerg capping uncontested bases wasting the gameplay experience for everyone who has a braincell."

The other one got deleted within 2minutes thats a new record.

The lattice prevents large outfits from being able to spread their forces much, this is the result of game design not players. Nobody likes 48+ vs. 1-12 fights except maybe the 1-12 players who are getting free kills by staying in the spawn room. It isn't fun for offense and it's not rewarding cert-wise either, so taking base cap XP away wouldn't change much. You have to move through several small bases one or two at a time to reach one where you'll get serious opposition for a large force.

Hex worked fine when there were lots of players. Gave you lots of strategic options and kept people on their toes.

Redeploy + Lattice = zergs being funneled. It's garbage. Get rid of lattice, bring back hex.

With 30 seconds left on capture timer while being outnumbered (not even significantly, i'm talking about 60/40 % split here) defenders will usually leave. Making it more like 90/10 % split at the precise time of capture. So pretty much every base capture would yield no exp. That's one hole in OP's logic.

Another logic hole is large outfits remaining large (or zergfits remaining zergfits using OP's terminology). If it wasn't fun, people would either quit outfit or game. Yet large outfits tend to stay large somehow, meaning that they are having fun. Since constantly ghost capping is likely to be "not fun", the only explanation would be that large outfits don't just ghost cap all the time.

I have a question for OP. Don't people who use flawed logic (reasoning ability of a mouldy potato) realize they are just a waste of space on forums? Again, i'm just using his words. Now here comes the cool part. Substitute your (OP's) answer for answer of outfit leaders posed in original post question. Now you answered your own question!

I swear I have heard ENOUGH about hex vs Lattice. it is a VERY small minority that wants it back but they won't just give up! Hex was NOT FUN and stopped any sort of viable defense, as players would go around the battle. It's done. All of the bases are now designed for lattice and it's not coming back. Let it go.

Who cares what the majority wants? The majority of players probably also want perks and call-in airstrikes too.

The majority of players are mouth-breathing imbeciles who have no idea how balance works, much less how to design proper gameplay. Appealing to 'the majority' is why we have so many terrible designs in the game. Planetside 1 cert system? "The majority might be upset that they can't use any vehicle, any time they want!" Planetside 1 inventory system? "The majority might be upset that it's confusing!" Planetside 1 two-man tanks? "The majority might be upset that they have to work together to use a vehicle to unlock its full potential!" Planetside 1 NTU system? "The majority might be upset that they ran out of NTUs and are upset that it's boring to get more!"

The NTU system is on the roadmap and planned FYI.

We should never have had lattice. Mission system should have been used to funnel players, instead.

Konstantinn. I witness daily zergfits go empty base to empty base, on one occasion I witnessed a zergfit cap 16 empty uncontested bases in a row. I cant name this zergfit because the post will be removed. I also see daily zergfits ghost cap base after base and eventually they get confronted and beat. What does the zergfit do? Do they respawn at the previous base and launch a fresh attack? No they just leave and go elsewhere to ghost cap again. You are thick if you think this does not go on.

Why dont these zergfit outfit leaders put 4 squad leaders in charge of taking 4 bases instead of 1 and responding to whatever base needs help? eh eh? eh? eh? eh? need I go on Mr potato head?

Well, that could easily be explained by very open and aggressive recruiting of anyone without a tag. These zergfits don't tend to have many people above the sub-30's, so most of their players haven't exactly played long. I've seen how a zergfit works and when aggressive recruiting stops, their numbers quickly start falling off due to inactivity or just losing them to other outfits. I won't say being in a zergfit is what made them quit, but I'm not sure it helped anything.

You can't blame the players because their platoon leader is a ******* idiot.

Plus I doubt most people in this game feel safe thinning their numbers, they probably want the security of a over defended base when it's conquered.

You just need a smart leaders, ones that are going to send squads out to different places where they're needed, and only zerg if they need to break the enemy in certain areas.

i am in a small outfit, but i will regularly follow zergs into combat because after a short period they are almost guaranteed to run into significant resistance and that is where the truly epic battles happen. on connery the standard zerg carves through 1 or 2 minor bases until the enemy notices and then you will have another zerg come to counter or just tons of troops spawning at the bases.

I am sorry but I remember Planetside 1 in all its Glory! The Large outfits had an awesome reputation for tactics and strength. You know back in the day before some 12 year old invented the game term "Farm" (The normal comment on TS would be "wow I just got a lot of kills on that run", you know when the game wasn't totally played for bragging rights other than beating an outfits 15 minute hold of a base generator.

I saw a glimmer of hope the other day, I saw a heavy run past an ESF not even bothering with it to reach the point and join his outfit mates. Good show to you!

I used to lead massive numbers of players and I enjoyed the challenge. Most often standing there at a CC being killed because I am barely off my map. Running a platoon gives great rewards to a player as long as he can delegate effectively. Throwing numbers at a base unless it is needed is poor leadership. To be fair this whole idea of SOE keeping the action going and the battle flow quick sucks, it takes the fun out of having to group your squad arrange transport and travel the 3 or 4 minutes fighting barely to keep your crew alive and reach an objective or base.

There used to be so many different outfit play styles but now that's just honed down into a simplistic simpleton version (Here you stand near this A point and the base magically becomes yours, you don't even have to achieve a series of objectives before you can hold this point effectively.

Sooo... your gripe is really about the almost absolute lack of necessity to do anything but shove as much meat into a base as quickly as you possibly can to take it over?

Because that is what zergfits excel at after all - and as long as having superior numbers is pretty much is the "win" condition for taking bases in the game, there is really little incentive for zergfits to do anything but zerg until they are stopped by an equal or greater opposing zerg. There is really no reason to evolve and nurture talent when most fights basically come down to what faction can wield the most number of players, beyond maybe being able to pull some "off hours" shenanigans with fewer people on.

Basically I think you can attribute a lot of the zergfit behavior to the way the map, the base layouts and base capture mechanics work that all contribute to encourage zerg-like behavior - but I really don't think you can blame the players for how the game is designed.

We could start by making it such that taking a base would give ZERO xp on capture for just being in the area, but instead players would cash in xp based on what they actually contributed to the fight. Killed some enemy dudes? Have a bonus check. Repaired stuff to keep the fight going? Have a bonus check. Sat on your butt doing nothing? You don't get a Highby.

That way there'd be less of an incentive to wield massive force in anything but mission critical ops (like during alerts), as people would have an incentive to seek fights where they'd be able to actively contribute rather than stare at spawn room shields for five minutes.

All in all, I think it's a more complex matter than "zergfits ruin the game" - it's rooted deeper in the game mechanics that just reward that kind of organization more than actually being organized.

Ok...... This is what I am talking about. The game is broken.

I have one question, What is wrong with this picture?

....waits for the end parentheses

In WWIIONLINE there is no reward for base captures, and players still zerg a majority of the time.

Only solution is the PS1 AMS/CE, so the underpopped side can deal with zergs.

Population imbalance is not an outfit-related problem.