Game seems little more than a zerg-fest

Game may indeed be little more than a zerg-fest (which is, after all, nothing but your opinion)...

...but at least I've played it and enjoyed it for 39 days, 8 hours longer than another game Starcraft II that actually WAS a zerg-fest!

I totally agree. Big maps are the ultimate freedom...the ability to go where ever you want. But the biproduct is numbers, or zergs. And being overpop is boring while being underpop is lame. In the beginning when the game was fresh it wasn't that way. In fact, it was a lot like the NC Planetside 2 trailer; massive fights. Absolute madness. But now it kinda feels like zerg, even fight, zerg, nother even fight. If there was a better way to help even out fights I think the game might have more steady players. Anyhow, I think this game is kinda the future of fps gaming. And although zerging might not be solved in this game it probably will be evened out in other games.

The game has steadily been moving towards big fights starting with the introduction of the lattice system. Used to be a few small squads could go capture a near by base and force some of the main offensive group to break off and take it back, thus relieving pressure on the main fight's defenders.

Really successful/well co-ordinated defensive squads could take those bases and cause the the main offence to collapse back. There were entire outfits that labelled themselves spec-ops or strike teams JUST for that purpose, it's what they did.

Somewhere along the lines SOE/Devs seemed to have decided that tactics are bad, possibly due to the e-sports influence, I'm not sure.

Either way, there used to be a lot more options and a lot more tactics.

They put in the lattice because of the ghostcap fest. Lattice created as many problems as it fixed, but going back won't help tactics until they create a system that gives a penalty for being cut off.

This is a question for SOE, not the OP.

But somehow, as if by magic, all zergs are created by platoons.

your playing the wrong game. even in ps1 long bridge battle stalemates were rare AWSOME but rare i still see those battles in ps2 but if you think a small group can hold a giant siege in any game your wrong.
People don't remember siege's cause the lil guy won. they remember them cause the lil guy fought hard before they died.

people fight in zergs? I've been doing it all wrong, I thought you're just suppose to stand around and get points after the timer.

Before everyone and their second accounts had CUD I-win buttons:

With the PS1 AMS/CE 40% can hold the advance of 60% permanently with moderate effort.
30% can hold the advance of 70% permanently if they play good enough.
20% can hold the advance of 80% for about 5 minutes if they play good enough.
10% can hold the advance of 90% for about 2 minutes if they play good enough.

Without the PS1 AMS/CE 40% gets rolled by 60%, there's nothing you can do about it
30% gets rolled by 70%, there's nothing you can do about it
20% gets rolled by 80%, there's nothing you can do about it
10% gets rolled by 90%, there's nothing you can do about it.

Where did you come up with these numbers? 10% vs 90% means the enemy has 800% more players. Say, you have 10 players and the enemy comes in with 90! The few CE's those 10 players could ever deploy would definitely NOT slow down anything at all. I would buy 2 seconds, but 2 minutes - that's just insane.

40% vs 60% means the attacker has 50% more players. Those extra players will certainly out-weight the CE. There's absolutely no question about it. The situation you have in mind is clearly about 40 experts vs 60 newbies, but you can't base your opinion on such skewed basis. It's pointless.

All of these threads are looking at too small a scale. If the enemy is 'zerging' you with 70% pop, that means there's 5 or 6 squads of enemies that are deployed to your fight and therefore not available elsewhere. Fights do not happen in isolation, they interact across the continents, and if you can hold up a platoon then your faction can exploit that elsewhere.

The problem currently is that once you get wiped, that enemy platoon can instantly be on the other lane where you were pushing. But that's a problem with redeployside, not population control ... and actually without redeployside you wouldn't see organised platoons zerging because it wouldn't be a good strategy (as opposed to a tactic on the base scale) any more.

Sick of overwhelming numbers?? Press delete and redeploy to a better region.

Better yet, join a squad and coordinate some fun ;P

Oh for ***** sake, there won't be a metagame if you want it to be given! It's not the company that creates it, it's the players.

We've tried before, we've discussed before. There isn't much you can do, if people (customers) don't want to play certain faction, follow other people or work with them. Only effective way is to hardcap other factions but would that be fair and not drive away even more players?

Unfortunately most PS2 platoon leads dont realise this. ALL you need to do is hold 2/3 points to win a battle. We often lose a base because we spend ALL our limited manpower trying to get A point, leaving B & C undefended. You idiots! protect B & C, and we'll have the base in 15 minutes. You wont get all 3 points if you're underpop, so protect what you have at all cost.


IMO, the playerbase is a large the reason why this game is so slow to progress. When i have a great platoon lead who forces squads to hold essential points, the game is less about numbers and more about strategy. The last few times i logged off out of frustration was because of incompetent platoon leads.

a 60/40 fight is EASY to win if you have a platoon that understands the importance of holding at least 2/3. The reason is, if you concentrate your manpower on those points, you actually have a numbers advantage at those individual points and can successfully protect them. Maybe you send Delta squad to harrass A every now and then to spread the zerg thin, but in general, its not that hard to keep more people on the strategic points if you're in an organized platoon.

Correct, we "create" the metagame, but the company gotta give us the tools. Right now we need more tools (i.e improved/bigger system).

Us EU players don't have much choice of battles.
You are either being zerged or zerging them, ghost capping or fighting against tanks and air, ooor you're in a good 12-24 fight and some people decide to pull a lib or couple of esfs. Vary rarely do I stubble upon good fights in EU servers anymore.

I would jump onto my Emerald ALTs but I ping jumped from 130-140 to 150+ recently.

Don't worry, soon the game will be even more of a zerg fest.

This is a pretty good analysis of the situation.

The way I run my squad is we actually exploit the tendency of a platoon to redeploy to threats. We do this by making ourselves bigger than we actually are. Now.. this is hard to do from across the continent, because 4-5 people, no matter how organized look like 1-12. but when we're around a 24-48 or 48+ area... we can hit from an angle that makes the enemy redeploy to that side of the pitched battle. Because we're coordinated... we can bog them down in a fight over nothing.

We don't usually make progress when it works. But you know what? We don't have to. If 2 squads come to deal with us. They're wasting 18-20 people on a small number. Thats 20 people that aren't in the main fight.

I always tell PL's that I group with what the numbers are. If we're defending a base and the enemy drops a zerg on us so the population goes to 60% in their favor I let the PL know. This way he can pull us out and send us somewhere else. If the enemy platoon redeploys to meet us.. then its platoon on platoon.. lets do it. The zerg isn't as quick to follow, more often than not, they'll just continue down the lattice line till our zerg meets them.

Its a cycle and those who know how to manipulate it and are patient enough can really make something out of it. And that is actually how you win alerts.

This is how you do it. Good on you man.

Who says strategy is dead?

Yeah I know it's shocking. You guys are used to getting rolled when it's 55:45, but truly in PS1 in 2004 (before everyone got their CUD I-win buttons) you could actually defend against much larger numbers successfully.