The Emerald TR and zergfits...

The numbers game is really draining my fun on Emerald. I don't feel like writing a long post, so I'll skip my anecdote about NC deploying 2+ platoons of 'highly skilled warriors' onto a nearly even 12-24 vs 12-24 fight. I'll also skip detailing how the outfits mentioned above contribute a significant portion of my daily deaths because they can't control their members' actions in the warpgate.

The long & short of it, IMO, is that we don't have to fly or drive from fight to fight. There is no real logistics, no travel time. My anecdote above, there wasn't 24 other guys within 3 hexes, suddenly they have an 80% pop advantage at that fight. How are we supposed to defend against that? It doesn't really matter what faction we're talking about here, they are all the same. Forcing people to use vehicle resources for transport cuts down significantly on offensive vehicle spam. It also gives defenders time to setup actual defense, or at least muster reinforcements.

I'm getting really fed up with PS2. I'm not even sure why I play anymore, let alone post on the forums. I was really excited about the merge initially; now, I almost wish we had under-pop Waterson back, where we could actually get medium-scale fights, where you could go 2v2 in tanks without 25 other MBTs backing you up or clogging the roads.

'The population swings are too damn high.'

But your're a 1337 player you should be worth like 10 of those zerglings just by yourself!?!? Am i right? Should have no problem outscoring them and putting your outfit tag on those bases! Yet... you don't.... so.... maybe just maybe, you are wrong.

A player is a player. An organized player is better than a lone wolf. AOD organizes players. How is it bad? All I'm seeing is jealousy. They do it better than you, so more people join them. Perhaps you think TR on emerald would benefit from less organization? Just run in 10 different directions without any thought? What do you think AOD platoon leaders don't look at the map and plan? I know they're not perfect, but they try. Are you perfect? If so then how come you're not an outfit leader of outfit that has more people and is more organized than AOD? I have no more questions for you, I think I made my point.

Agreed. I seriously, SERIOUSLY DO NOT GET this obsession with 100+ v 100+ fights. It's not even like you get to actually SEE the huge fights. If every single player on the continent merged into one fight, you would honestly not notice the difference at all. The game only renders a handful of players and enemies at a time. There's no perceptible difference between a 75v75 and a 200v200. At all.

At that level, individual skill doesn't matter at all anymore. Tactics don't matter. Nothing matters. In huge fights the only 'gameplay' is people piling up at defensive points, spraying explosives and gunfire wildly HOPING to kill someone, getting killed, and then instantly being revived. It's a complete zero-sum game. Frequently the only way these fights are won is an entire platoon on one side gets bored and leaves and the other side just crushes them with raw numbers.

It's blisteringly moronic idiocy. HOW IS THIS FUN? You have an entire continent to fight on, miles of open space to plan attacks, and yet the vast majority of players only care about stacking up two teams on opposite sides of a single doorway, and that's what's supposed to make this game great?

SERIOUSLY?

If this is what people actually want, why don't we just have a triangular continent of completely featureless, flat, untextured land that consists of three warpgates connected to just one single Biolab in the middle? The jump pads and teleporters are all located inside each faction's warpgate.

Wow, such Planetside.

What's wrong with AOD and TRAF? (and I don't think ODMN has the numbers anymore to qualify as a "zergfit" )

I mean, they aren't exactly the most tactical of groups, but they bring numbers to bear... that's enough isn't it?

Bigger problem IMO is on Emerald the TR and NC get into brutal all out slugfights with each other and let VS walk all over whereever they want to go practically unopposed.

When the VS went all in pushing the TR warpgate, the NC didn't take advantage of a poorly defended north in order to retake their techplant, and instead kept fighting towards the TR's Amp station that they didn't even need!

It's bad... REALLY REALLY BAD how the VS are just left to conquer w/e they want. It's like the VS show up and people go "oh well, better move on instead of wasting my time"

WHAT?!?

god, the amount of facepalming I did over the weekend.

It's all score based. I'm pretty sure phx AOD and DAPP don't cap that many bases when a decent outfit is there. They cannot compete. Most of the time decent outfits don't stay around ghost caps or overpop fights.

There are good smaller outfits on the TR. You tired of zerging? Apply to The Cohort.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...e-cohort-airborne-shock-infantry-xcox.191752/

And you know this how? I can tell you from experience AOD had plenty of good fights since I joined them. How can you sit there and tell 100s of people that you are better than them? Show me one outfit that has never lost a fight, that has never been pushed out of a base, that has never failed in an attempt to capture a base. You're just combining everything bad you have ever heard and not seeing any of the good.

Most of you don't even know how AOD is organized, all you see is AOD tags. It's tiered membership, get involved as much or as little as you wish. All you see are open for anyone to join AOD platoons up and running at full strength most of the time you log in. Name an outfit you think is good, and I'll show you their members joining AOD run platoons whenever they wish. Every single full member of AOD is a squad or a platoon leader on regular basis, that's outfit policy. But you don't know who is who just by seeing an AOD tag.

AOD also has a lot of casual members, they don't use Ventrillo, they never lead a squad or platoon, they don't participate or even register for forums. They just log in, join AOD platoon, and have fun. It's a very flexible outfit, which has contributed to its success. Look at BWC (just using them as example), great outfit, but look at the hoops you have to jump through to join them. Minimal participation requirements, all in policy, and so on and so forth. None of that with AOD. If you'd like you can log in right now I'll send you an invite (any full member can invite). Eventually those casual members may learn a few things and want to get more involved. They always have that option. You're not willing to teach new players because you're scared they'll make you look bad, you are not willing to lead, you haven't come up with a good outfit structure that endured for 15 years, and it seems like have no idea how much effort and dedication goes into keeping a good outfit running, yet all you keep saying is "zerg"...

PS - I'm not trying to single you out Aeflic when I say "You", I'm replying to everyone who posted about AOD here.

I was recurring to outfit base capture saying the outfit that did the most score. Aka just bc an outfit has the most players there doesn't mean they auto win the base capture it usually doesn't.

In reply to your post I am the outfit lead at VCO. Start very casual like AOD. If I never kicked inactive or anyone at all we would be similar in size, although I took a different approach. VCO runs public platoons all the time but we are much more effective. I just have a different vision and dream for VCO. I've fought against AOD A LOT. I know how they work as an opponent.

Also I've had nights where my leads go over to TR and literally take over an AOD platoon. So yes I've fought AOD and I've even had some of my leads LEAD AOD for the hell of it. I understand AOD pretty well even though I'm not in it.

Dirty spy!!

Yea... I'm not part of AOD or VCO... but I'd take a VCO pubbie platoon anyday over an AOD one.

It's easy to tell in the first 5 seconds whether a pubbie platoon is competent or not. Just look at the map. Are the colored numbered dots mostly clustered together (doesn't have to be one giant blob, can be 2-3 smaller blobs)?

If those colored dots are grouped up and looking organized, then it's a good pubbie platoon.

If those colored dots are mixed up but at least in the right hex, then it's an okay pubbie platoon.

If those colored dots are mixed up and in different hexes, then it's a terrible pubbie platoon.

VCO pubbie platoons are usually in the first group, with some of the second.

AOD pubbie platoons are a mix between the second and third groups.

In other words, listen to Aeflic. He and chris know what they're doing. You might even want to hop on your NC alt and take notes as part of their pubbie platoons.

Because the NC is simply more fun to fight than the VS. I find that whenever I try to fight the VS either DA/AC will show up and cert farm or GOKU will come in with PPA spam and ruin any semblance of a fair fight. Why get curbstomped at every base by the VS when you could go to the NC front and have an even fight? One of the biggest problems with Emerald is that nobody on the TR or NC wants to man up and fight the VS. When the TR actually tries to fight the VS, the NC just goes ATRA on us which causes us to say "**** it." and go after the easier faction.

This could be fixed by either the VS dumbing themselves down a bit to make themselves less intimidating, or by the NC being less stupid, because no underpopped faction can survive a double team no matter how coordinated they are.

TR need to accept that they're a faction and not a bunch of loosely allied guilds solely dependent on a single leader to coordinate their efforts (#Enclavemadethetrainsrunontime). VS call for reinforcements and announce armor columns/drops/MAX crashes in order/region pretty frequently, and regardless of which outfit is talking, typically someone responds, hence why GOKU, DA and the rest seem to suddenly materialize out of nowhere during fights.

I say this not to berate, but to inform: TR have the numbers now, they just need to coordinate and stop thinking that their success or failure depends on a particular outfit's continued existence.

Zerg outfits are awsome.

There organize your player base and get them fighting the same targets. Not everyone is a highly skilled level 100 BR FPS player.

You want mobs of normal players working for you to. TR Dominated waterson with a iron fist because ODAM was capping land 24/7 for us. You can't hate and them all you want......But we took a big blow when they broke up.

Because it's the point of the game. If you want less people.....There are much better games to choose from. You make huge sacrifices in the game engine to be able to run 100 vs 100 fights. If you don't use them there is no real point in playing when you could get an engine that is built to support smaller fights only

How is it the point of the game when the engine is literally incapable of even processing half of that fight?

Cause if you had BF4/BF3 physics and destruction the game would explode into a ball of fire. You give up stuff like that to have more people in this game

You don't even need to be running a platoon in order to get that. If you zerg a base with 3 platoons of absolute sh*t it will still get the icon. I sigh every time I see an AOD tag on a base because I know for a fact that they would've been zerging it with their platoons while we were getting our sh*t pushed somewhere else.

My problem with AOD is not that they exist, it's that they're f*cking dumb as sh*t while doing so. If they want to be tactically inept, they should at least be tactically inept in a place where they can be meat shields, not showing up to a squad sized fight with 2 or 3 platoons and then ghost capping down a lattice chain until they get met with a similar number, wrecked and repeat the process down another empty lattice chain.

Their strategy is great for an outfit of 2 squads, not an outfit of 2 platoons.

I'm sure there are plenty of good players in AOD, I've experienced some decent player-level play when in the midst of their zergs, but their idea of strategy and playing the game is simply all wrong for the simple numbers they bring. They could be making themselves so much more useful but wont.

There's a parallel universe discussion of this here :
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/ugggggh-emerald-nc.192691/page-4#post-2798216

This sounds like the same sequence of time I was talking about in my reply. It was only poorly defended until we moved towards the biolab or tech plant, then VS showed up immediately. We had little to no organization on Hossin so we lost those bases even strength or at a pop advantage every time we took them.

NC isn't being stupid, we fight TR for the same reason(s) TR fight us : VS are less fun to fight, and have more organized players.

As for Mattherson, those of you that played back then remember what happened to TR when TE outfit disbanded. Yet now you sit there and speak out against other big outfits. Small outfits are great at ghost capping, until a real force shows up. Then they run. Most people in this thread call it "Strategy". Who are you going to call in command when you suddenly get hit by 3 VS platoons if AOD and other big outfits disappear? You don't understand that it's a lot easier to deal and cooperate with 1 leader that has 2 platoons instead of 8 leaders with 1 squad a piece. If you disagree on that simple point, then you seriously overestimate your personal influence.

Tonight the TR actually had its **** together and utterly smashed the VS offensive on Hossin and took much of their territory as we pushed them out. This was the work of HNYB, LUXE, 903, 382, and a few other outfits. I saw AOD for none of it. This just goes to show that we don't need AOD to fight off a zerg. If we need to call on a zerg for backup then we can call on 382, as they do it better than AOD does. The reason the VS always beats us is because the VS is composed of mostly small-medium sized coordinated outfits with like one or two average sized coordinated zergfits. The TR is composed of two mega zergfits and a few coordinated small-medium sized outfits.

We only need one megazerg, and 382 is far better than AOD, so AOD should split up its players into smaller and more coordinated outfits. Similar to what ODMN did. In general, smaller outfits are far better at coordinating assaults than zergfits are (TE being the notable exception.). Smaller outfits can be assigned to do various tasks within a battle with more skill and efficiency then one zergfit doing it. A megazergfit should serve as cannon fodder to support the smaller outfits, and 382 is better at this than AOD.