The problem with nerfing Redeployside

All it would do is force players to leave outfits to redeploy and join back.

Redeploy is essential but only at initial logon/squad join to get your squad/platoon together or to allow the solo player to travel to the initial fight.

Constant access to redeploy is a cancer, it is the fastest, safest, easiest, least resistance method of traveling from A<>B. For the most part and in most use cases it is the method used to avoid fighting and get into a more favorable position with no effort. An infantry player can literally travel long distance across the map faster than an ESF can fly there, there is no way to disrupt the influx of reinforcements or attackers, no way to cunningly intercept troops en-route, few dynamic battles opening up for most of the map (since large numbers of people avoid most of the terrain by teleporting base to base).

This game has become so schizophrenic it is trying on the one hand to be equally accessible to team and solo play and really not finding a happy middle ground between the two, trying to be massive and 'fight for every inch' whilst at the same time balancing critical game features (troop logistics) around teleportation.

Bases are so close together as it is, the reality is that if redeploy was severely restricted (although always available at login) once you had made the single effort to get 'to the fight' then you would not be spending much time at all traveling since everyone would already be at 'the fight', anyone wanting to move the fight elsewhere would have to transport themselves (free code-less logistics). If more people were encouraged to travel there would be better quality vehicle and air play, less reason for vehicles and air to hang around spawn rooms like flies around a turd.

IMO at the moment Planetside 2 has strayed much to far from promoting combined arms, vehicles and air are only still in the game to give infantry something to shoot at from the spawn rooms.

With regard to comments about attracting new players, yes this is important but if you cannot retain your current player base then your game is not growing, Planetside 2 is not growing that is clear, what is also clear to me is many of the players that I started out with in beta (some planetside vets, some from other FPS games I play as well as new players) are no longer playing and a significant proportion of those have no intention of returning unless some more of the 'planetside' is injected into this game.

I dislike the current redeploy mechanics, far too easy for a large force to jump from attack to defense.
Chosing to put your effort into an all out attack of a tech lab should come with the possible chance of loosing other areas of the map. A tech lab is of particular importance so should it should be favoured over smaller outposts that can and will be lost during a harsh tech lab fight.
The ability to say, o look we are loosing a base over on the west, then to instantly switch your 40+ strong platoon to clear up the defense (taking just a minute or 2), only to instantly switch back to the tech lab attack is too much power too easy. There is no consequence to that descision to attack a hard target like a tech lab. On top of that it takes more time to resecure a tech than it does a small 1 point outpost, so the tech defenders wont reap any real benefit from those 40 people leaving for a minute, they still have to fight the rest of the attackers to recap the point, they still have to find the attacking ams in the large facility, and if they manage to cap the point it ticks back to the defenders at the same rate as the attackers take it.
I personaly think large redeployments like that should be the reserve of the galaxy and the squad spawn beacon. I say the beacon since if redeploy was limited enough it would take the SL (or designate) pretty much the same time to get to the defending base as it would the entire squad in a gal, the beacon just cuts out waiting for all the randoms or hard of hearing squad members (you know who you are!).
For solo players (me alot of the time recently ) the instant action needs to be improved, no more spawning at a 1v1 on ghostamir. Possibly make it so IA always take you to the most hotly contested fight on the cont your currently on, then you could change conts to receive an IA on another cont.
That and make the eject seat for ESFs more affordable, my ESF has max AB and eject seat (possibly racer aswel, god knows...) for the exact reason of getting to fights quickly, plus theres the satisfaction of watching an enemy ESF hottly chasing your empty shell as you float safely to the floor.

EDIT: forgot about squad deploy, perhaps only allow it from the warpgate so it enables squads to group up quickly but doesnt give insanely fast teleport abilities. It wouldnt take long to deploy at warpgate then squad deploy so we wouldnt be loosing a game mechanic.

Have a timer on Leaving and joining like in some other MMO's ... 6 or 12 or 24 hours or w/e ..

Could also add benefits to be in an outfit based on time served .. Which is reset on leaving and bonus's lost ..

Or if they wanted to be really simple they could add Redeploy points .. Say a player gets 3 free redeploys per hour , non stackable and resets on the hour ... But has the option to buy more using resources ( have to be used instantly ) ... Ie: 150 Nanites per bought redeploy

If i was the leader i would make the outfit works only via TS.

Outfit in this game don't give any benefits anyway, Showing that X outfit captured the base is only a ego thing. I would live without that.

And if you add benefit to outfit it would have to be a HUGE benefit to pay for the lack of the best strategy in the game.

In short it is easier and better to just remove or LIMIT the redeploy.


PS: The game shouldn't "care" about the solo player. Is a Team game, and more than that, a MMO. Why are you playing solo to start with?
The game shouldn't expel these players. But SOE need to make it CLEAR that you shouldn't be playing solo.

Why not ?

The game isn't rocket science .. Despite what some people might want you to believe you don't need to be Sun Tzu to grasp it's very basic strategies and tactics, and does not require being in an outfit to know how to capture or defend a cap point, or what maybe are the best ways to approach that goal ..

I play solo .. always have ...

Caps need capping, bases needs defending , dead people need rezzing, Max's need repairing , Gens need blowing , choke points need mining etc etc etc etc .. Don't need a " Commander " telling me those most basic of gameplay items and playing solo doesn't equal " devoid of team work " ..

But we kinda getting off topic

Would it be fun to reach a battle in 3 minutes and get rayped by AA or AV fire, OR instantly get there, right into the heat of war. Yeah, I'm going with the second option. Just because 2003 was strategic, doesn't mean the Present should be:/

Again. I'm not saying SOE should expel solo players.

But they shouldn't focus on them. Is a simple as it gets.

I for most of time play solo. And i don't think SOE should focus on me.

And "non-solo" means you play with a squad. Outfits in this game means nothing. Seriously i coul point at least 4 NC Outfits of Emerald that SHOULD dissapear. Why?

They are solo players that are worst than the average zerg player. But when you say something to them they brag that they are from X outfit who captured X base. And because of that they REFUSE to listen/learn.
Outfit doesn't mean they actually know how to play or aren't solo players.

And sincerely. The game as it stands, focused in the solo players as it's, is nothing else than a Death-Match.

It's impossible to balance the game around solo and group players. If not impossible Very, but very close of it.

The best thing that SOE can do is pick one lane. I hope they pick the group lane.

PS: And before someone say that i'm trying to make ppl play the way i want.

twitch.tv/divinorium/b/549516816

At 3:16 I told him it because he was a non-outfit players. Something as simples as that, with players from some outfits would trigger a good "Shut up i know what i'm doing."

That's the sad truth of NC in Emerald.

I agree no they shouldn't .. Solo play shouldn't be the priority BUT the game does need to be accessible to those that wish to play solo.

The current problem is kinda weird since changes would penalize the solo player the most, when it's not the solo players that are the problem ..

That's where comes the balance path they need to choose. Is the sad truth but every change to balance something have influence over everyone. In this case to balance organized play they need to hurt solo players.

This may have already been stated, but i'll say it anyway - I'm too lazy to read entire posts before replying this early in the morning.

If you have a member of another squad in the galaxy as well, that entire squad can spawn in as well. Keep one member of each squad in the gal, and you can spawn your entire platoon quite rapidly, provided new spawns drop out fast. A pilot + 3 gunners can rain the other 45 platoon members down on points if you coordinate well enough.

Removing redeploy won't make the game deeper, it will make the large majority of the playerbase quit, have fun not killing anyone I guess. Finding fights with how the zergling mentality is right now is hard enough to make it even worse. Remove redeploy and it becomes ghostcapside 2

That's why the solution is to not let anyone outside the hex redeploy into it if the pop % is over a certain number unless you have a spawn beacon or sunderer deployed by your squad.

not true anymore. with the first implementation this was possible but then they fixed it and now the the Gal/sundy has to be Owned and Occupied by a squadmember

Hm, interesting - I wasnt aware they changed this. I don't suppose you recall where the patch note is on this? (If there was one, that is.) On Friday, I was sniped repairing my own Galaxy. Another squad member was in my gal, and it let me deploy directly into it again - I wonder if they changed things again...

Eh, i'll test it once my shift is over.

the owner and occupant do not Need to be the same Person, just in the same squad

Consider it from another angle, not 'i want, i want, i want it NOW'.
Consider it from 'what is good for an engaging and ongoing game'.
This is a war after all and in war descisions either win you the battle or cause a loss, currently with the teleport anywhere in 10 seconds lark there are no consequences for choosing the wrong fight, or focusing too much resource into attack and not defense.
Take the territory alerts, if TR has 37% with 20 mins to go and the entire empire can instantly switch to whatever base needs defending it makes continuing the fight pretty pointless, while i would commend the level of organisation it wasnt exactly hard to come by, just click delete, then click spawn. Instead of redeploying to warpgate / base loading up a gal / sundy and dropping to reinforce the fight. It might sound super easy (and with experienced players it is) but it takes that amount of time longer compared to just spawning.

Of course we'd all not be having this discussion if it wasnt for invincible spawn cubes.

Ah, that makes more sense, thanks.
*runs off to upgrade coffee*

Of course it will. When players' location in the game has more meaning, it becomes part of the strategy. All that's needed is lighter limits on sunderers (cost reduction) and more bases with access to full tank/air terms (so that if your respawn is limited to the nearby bases it never prevents you from rejoining the battle rapidly in the right vehicle for the job) and fixing any part of continents where terrain is too constraining (Kessel vs. Chac Fusion in north Hossin.)

So even the changes they've already made under the hood with which bases have 'reinforcements needed' have dramatically changed the game's depth (first to make it much shallower, and then to make it a little deeper.)

At that point sadly, it's too late anyway. Transport and logistics could have been a critical part of the game, but by now too many players have joined and invested in this game as a glorified quake-like where you can swap to a different highly populated map at any time. Anything that delays the farm or doesn't give an advantage through mouse-skills is a no-no. Take their redeploy away, and those players will leave, since that's not the game they joined.

We've got the tools with ground and air transport, and with conceding the redeploy back to warpgate, no base is that far away with galaxies. But it would take some effort, some thinking, and some planning ahead, rather than hitting redeploy and using the heatmap to look for big numbers instant action.

I don't see how all of that will prevent ghostcapside 2, right now I already see most fights having lopsided odds as it is right now (either for the attacking side or the defending side), restricting redeploying in that way won't solve this, it will make it worse. You have to make it easier to redeploy into fights with bad odds, and just remove it from fights where you have better odds. Even fights are what makes the game fun.