Quick fix for redeployside issue

Just put a cap on being able to redeploy to the fight. Once the friendly population reaches 50% in a friendly territory, it is no longer possible for allies to continue redeploying to that location.
If it already exists, there is a severe delay and thats why there are 75% defensive pop floods.
Sometimes though, redeploying is the only way to put up a resistsnce in time against am overwhelmingly large enemy force. If you see 75% hostile population in your territory, YOURE GONNA WANT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I mean, shame on those people for trying to ghost cap with a 96+.

That's part of it yeah, and it would need to be fixed to update in real time. But even then as long as you can get your 4 squad leaders in the other 44 people can spawn in that base using "spawn on squad leader" regardless of the population. That needs to change as well.

If you can fix those two things you've basically solved the problem. And a platoon could still redeploy a single squad to a 12v24 fight, but no more than that. Though they'd run the risk of leaving some people behind if a few randoms decide to redeploy to that base at the same time. That would be part of the risk you take when you don't bother to pull a Galaxy.

Ok, so we know where the problem is. Now, who will go somewhere where devs pay attention and shove it to their faces ?

Edit: I think the counter could work in real time. Of course counting players in every hex every X ms is not feasible but you could leave that for player's computers. Player could just check himself in what hex he is and when he crosses the line to other hex it alerts server and server will add/substract one from appropriate counters.
Just an idea, might be stupid or not.

If we assume that redeployside is really a gamebreaking issue then I agree that 50% hard cap might be a solution – only solution that doesn't hinder the actions both the attackers and defenders may take to cap or defend the base.

However, I do not agree that mass redeploying is killing the strategic play in this game. On the contrary. Redeploying (including mass redeploying) is just one of the factors that you have to take into consideration when leading a squad or platoon. Seriously. Ask squad and platoon leaders that participate in the alerts. Make yourself a squad, hang around leader voice chat. Then you'll see that redeploying is often used as a tool i.e. to draw enemy forces to a particular location, by forcing them to pull out of a lane and join the fight that just got overpopulated. As such it is a part of the strategic play in Planetside 2.

What's more, it's not like you can just hop with the whole platoon all around the map every time you want to. More often than not you are redeploying to squad vehicles (Galaxies, Sundies, Valkyries) that are making their way to the fight – glorified logistics.

Just my 2 cents on the subject, but what if xp were nerfed and then cut once a certain OVERPOP were attained. As a example:

TR is at Mani Biolab with 12-24
NC then show up with numbers that are within say 10% of the TRs numbers

The xp would stay the same as normal

Next case but this time:

TR 12-24
NC 48-96
Pop difference is 60%

NC would start seeing a 60% decrease is xp earned but on the flip side TR would start to see a increase of 60% (or none at all to make sure there is no xp padding)

I think xp earned might be a better way of spreading out the population. In this way you can have a slightly overwhelming force but nothing that is going to steam roll over any and everything, unless you don't care about xp. If this is the case then maybe when a overpopped faction gets a kill: Congrats its a kill but no kill is awarded since it is such a easy task.

While redeploy is a needed function as others have demonstrated above there are other ways to make a 96+ zerg spread out some. Even make it so that no xp is awarded even for a Capture or any objectives in the hex.

Also if you were to make it so that unless there are enemy players in a certain radius around a hex then you can take a Cap point to neutral but not all the way so that you cannot ghost cap something on the other side of the map. I think its safe to say that no one or group is going to stay at every Cap point to make sure that one person does not come and start a recap. This removes one of the reasons that people ghost cap (Far away from the action and knowing that its going to either make someone or some group do multiple redeploys to come and recap it or that no one may notice and the cap the point.) Most of the time though when the person gets there, no one is there or even in the surrounding hexs, Flip and go.

Thoughts on my 2 Cents? (Well....maybe 6 cents)

Agree with this.

The game needs quick re-deploying and I think the balance is just about right already i.e. the options on redeploying are already fairly limited - to the point where I often need to redeploy 3-4 times just to get where I want to go.

Any restrictions will just lead to large armies effectively ghostcapping (I hate that term) along the map.

I think the game is just about in the right spot already. Just bring back the hex.

Your right solo players dont have access to all the squad benefits, why would they? I dont see a problem here tbh, its a players choice to solo after all.
I dont understand, you said solo players will be affected by removing redeploy and then list all the things that squaded players can do, soloists cant do that currently so im not sure i get your angle here.

Nothing wrong with IA, it takes you to the enemy quickly, does its job imo. If a player wants to specify their fight then they can but theyd have to use logistical vehicles in order to transport themselves there, i kinda like the idea of that.

(personal opinion following) Flying isnt hard, not at all, anyone hiding behind that excuse must not have their monitor switched on when they play. Dogfighting isnt even hard, whats hard is competing with pilots who have 1000s of hours dogfighting. The actual flying mechanics are very intuitive. 350 res is back in 7 mins, and still leaves you with 400, so if infantry only they can still use 8 AV / conc / frag grenades or 16 decoy / flash / healing / smoke grenades or 5 revive grenades or 5 C4 / AI mines or 8 med kits or 16 restoration kits or 8 AV mines. You can pull 8 flash, 2 harasser, 1 lightning, 2 sundies, 1 valkyrie or another ESF.
Besides that, maybe it should cost resources if you want to specify your fight to your liking.

I like the game how it is, but i can see the point OP makes and i do think the game would be more enjoyable for both solo players and indeed organised outfits if we redeployside were reduced a bit, but thats probably just because it would fit my playstyle of driving to the action instead of teleporting there.

While i dont think redeploy will change now, i dont however believe there will never be any more changes to the game or that the next change will be the final one, although ive always been more optimistic than pessimistic about this game, much to my own detrement.

No, you can. That's the problem. You can spend the entire alert redeploying your platoon from one "reinforcements needed" spawn to the next without ever touching a vehicle, and many outfits do just that.

To be clear I've got no problem with platoons redeploying into vehicles. That's what they should be doing.

The reinforcements spawns have a 50% population cap for a reason and if it wasn't for platoons abusing their other spawn options to bypass it the system would work just fine.

You hate the word but you use it incorrectly, 'large armies capping uncontested' is what your looking for, a large army can never be a ghost since a large army is easy to see / hear and its obvious who has hacked the base.

A ghost is the complete opposite to that. A ghost hack is when a player hacks a base and the leaves, or goes to hides somewhere away from the point. When you (the resecurer) turn up at the base to rehack there appears to be no-one there, you may well say to yourself 'a ghost must have hacked this'. It becomes even more relevant when after you leave the enemy player again hacks the point and then runs off, you rehack, they hack, you rehack etc. Basically a ghost hacker is some1 who has no intent on fighting to take a base.

In a nutshell:
If there is lots of enemies its NOT a ghost cap
If there is no1 there it IS a ghost cap

This is what its meant for more than a decade, im suprised you used it wrong tbh.

Nice to see someone recognise that fact

There needs to be more strategy for holding territory and bases. The simple land rush Alerts are boring.

Well, I'm glad you said the above was your personal opinion. I've played enough flying games in the past to say that, in my personal opinion, the "mechanics" in this game are not intuitive at all. Besides, I always use a joystick for flying, and last time I looked there is no support for joysticks. Game pads are second best but better than nothing I suppose... Keyboard and mouse for flying... I don't even bother to practice.

If i image my mouse as the tip of a joystick it works exactly the same way does it not?
Throttle up / down - W / S
Yaw(? can never remember the names of these things) left or right is A or D.

Im confused as to why you seem to have such a hard time with it, i jumped right into it from the first minute and ive never played any air games asside from ace combat on the playstation over a decade ago and that was only a demo, or was it PC hazy memory must be 15 years now at least.

Pull down on mouse craft points up, pull left it rolls left......whats so confusing?

Like some1 in another thread did, my guess would be you exagerate the difficulty level to support your own opinion.

This would be ok if redeploy wouldn't make a full platoon to teleport into an even fight making population imbalanced in 10 seconds.

Moreover redeploy is so fast and effective as tool for territory control that it became more than an option during alerts: if you want to win you MUST abuse redeploy whenever it's possible. In a game where territory control gives victory having a free mass teleporter is a stupid game design mistake. It kills strategy and open world feeling.

Last week I joined Goons open platoon on Miller and during the alert the PL made us redeploy like 14 times in 1 hour. This **** went too far, we're teleporting all day like Star trek officiers.

Such a ******** would have never ever been taken in consideration in ps1.

A way let lonewolves get into action quickly must remain. But redeploy as it id must go, it's pure garbage.

I'd be OK with that. They are likely already in the areay anway. Currently you can only spawn on a friendly sundy like 2 bases away anyway. Unlike how you can redpeloy accross the continent to defend a base as long as you have < 50%

So fly your big butt out there and save it? Often times you can't spawn accross the map to these situations anyway. I don't know what the problem is with the game but I can't count how many times I've seen some dweeb ghost capping a base.... 100% enemy activity... 1-12 enemies... I can't spawn there to defend it.

Really wouldn't be any different!

This could work.

I support trying it out.

Recognized it a decade ago when the game design heavily shifted focus to more casualization.

At first I thought the developers had all lost thir mind and were completely clueless in how to design a game....

then I realized they were chasing a broader market.

The only REAL games you'll ever really find are almost all <500k budget games, that sell for $30 or less, and peak at <10k users.

I still enjoy the over casualized games of today, with their zero commitment required, anyone can get a lucky kill gameplay, but they really aren't the same.

TBH, I don't really have the time to dedicate to be truly competitive anyways. I'd be average at best for real games. Well, maybe slightly above average, but that's still not a high percentile. Top 10% is leagues beyond. Practically untouchable in the right game design.

I agree to this. Actually, it should not be possible to retake points in non-connected territory. That is the very logic of the lattice system and the connection to the warp gate. How often do you see these never-ending fights in cut-off isolated territories.
Implementing this would also add more strategy to cutting off territory and put emphasis on owning crucial nodes!

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Redeploy is one of the essential features of Planetside, but the problem is precisely that it is being abused to population-nuke fights just before they are decided. That is part of the strategy in a way, but ruins many good fights.

The solution would be to simply rate-limit redeploys/respawns based on population imbalance: The timer simply prolongs proportionally to the rate of respawns and population.

What would that change:

• one wouldn't be able to redeploy a platoon (or more) instantly due to the increasing counter, but would have to transport the army actively to the fight
• deaths would be more detrimental to the overpopping faction
• more focus on medic revives
• more strategy in transporting squads
• more fights between bases

Secondly!

The real issue is the mobility of redeploy. It is meant to get you to your squad, or back to a base after bailing a vehicle/aircraft - not more. However, one can easily redeploy to the other end of the map, making it too easy to drop the population nuke.

I suggest that redeploy should simply be much more restrictive: it should only allow you to redeploy to:

• the warpgate
• your squad leader's position (squad spawns)
• adjacent (i.e. linked) hexes

Further, redeploy - once used - should have a significant cooldown of >1min, to limit redeploy jumping.

Instant action is broken! More often than not it drops you next to a full enemy squad, or alternatively into an empty, unconnected hex where the points cannot even be capped. It is influenced by attack/defense requests, but not as directly as it maybe could be. Instant action should take solo-players to even out fights primarily. These locations can be generated automatically by the game, but the player should be able to steer the landing zone more. The timer should also be prolonged.
For squads, instant action does not make too much sense: it doesn't always take everyone to the same place, and why use it when you should be sticking together? When in a squad, instant action should always take you to the location of the squad leader (or the location of the team). Thus, it will be more like a last-resort deploy if all other spawns are down.
Thus, instant action should work differently, depending on whether you're in a squad, or not.

Taken together, I think this would be a better mechanic. Both for solo players and platoons.

You said:
"solo players have the exact same access to vehicles as squad players"

You did not say:
"solo players have access to the exact same vehicles as squad players"

Most Solo Players RELY on Deployside as their sole method of starting transportation for each play session. With exceptions being Pilots, new players who don't know about Deployside, and some experienced players that may want to use Instant Action to spawn into a high Faction Underpop.

So getting rid of Deployside really hurts Solo Players, because most don't have the wealth of Rapid Transportation options that Squad Players have.

For most players, IA is the equivalent of joining an FPS game onto a team that is both heavily outnumbered and out gunned. And for most solo players, that is simply not playable.

I'll reply based on my experience flying, as mostly a solo ESF Pilot.

Flying is hard for almost all players. ESFs are fast and deadly, Libs are deadly and usually fast enough, and winning is based mostly on experience, flight & aim skill, and numbers.

At its hardest, Flying is dominated by Ace Pilots and Gank Squads, who either (1) travel along the entire Battlefront (including outside their Factions borders) or (2) simply travel deep into enemy territory to Farm, often enough just camping the enemy Warpgate.

If you radically boost the number of Sky Taxis, it is very likely you are going to boost the number and frequency of Gank Farming. Just as pushing Solo Players to travel by themselves in ground Vehicles to front lines will motivate Air (or Harasser) to Gank them.

There are potential part solutions to all this. You can add Air Radar that shows any enemy within Allied Air. But this is SOE/DBG and we all know that they do not have the vision or grasp or drive to see, understand, or implement such things. That will have to come down the road, from a different company, in a different game.

I can appreciate you and others don't like Redeployside. And I fully think in a better game it's not needed. And even in a player-type segregated version of the current game, it could be successfully removed for certain player-type Servers. But I feel removing it from the Kitchen Sink servers of the game we have now would be a huge blow to viability of Solo play.

I agree. I don't think PS2 is dead as far as new changes go. But I don't expect much more (unless the game gets new Revenue life), and the only changes I expect are:
1) unbalanced, half-baked new Features/Units
2) various cosmetics
3) crude, sluggish, and randomly effective re-balancing
4) more bugs
4) tuning to try and make the game more Organized Player advantaged