Why don't people want to work together?

It could be literally thousands of (good) reasons why people do seemingly weird things.
Most of them probably related to real-life.

I know of someone who broke his arm. All he could do was walk in straight lines and stand in one spot moving his mouse around.
He mostly did recon darts and AA burster defense from the spawnroom until he got C4'd and literally quit the game.

It's extremely frustrating for sure but I understand the common player mentality completely. It's so much more fun most of the time to just run around and death match or farm the masses with a vehicle.

I run with a very good outfit and while most of the players are very good fps players few of them have any real understanding of true squad tactics. I spent 4 yrs in the army so I understand firing lines and overlapping fields of fire and how to cover a friendly when they are moving, then moving when they are set and covering me, how to breach a room, how to use cover/concealment etc, etc.

All that goes out the window most of the time. Heck even finding someone to cover my flank seems unlikely unless we have overwhelming numbers and then it's just coincidence a friendly is in the right spot.

Seems every time I engage an enemy someone shoots me from the side or the back. How do you counter that? Well you play like a twitch based shooter. You run around as fast as you can never moving in a straight line never stoping anywhere or slowing down for more than 1/4 of a second so that when the shot from behind does come you have time to react and move out of LOS or hope you are quick enough to kill them while ADAD dancing.

Most serious tactics are very unrewarding and boring. Shooting mans is fun. Ghosting that link to cut off lattice to win an alert is probably the closest thing to strategy you'll find and that can be pretty dang boring. Babysitting capture points for 5 minutes is tiresome and most players can't be bothered. Take Amp stations 1 or 2 guys can usually keep the shield gens up because no one sticks around longer than 30 seconds after the gen is down to make sure it stays down.

Anyways I forgot where I was going with this. Oh yeah. Lone wolf DM and farming nets you more kills and by virtue of that a better SPM most of the time. Blame the game mechanics for not better reinforcing squad tactical play.

Having platoon led for 100s of hours, i can tell you that getting people to work together is all about the leader. Just like they tell us in the military there are no such things as bad teams, just bad leaders. If you cant get your squad or platoon to work together its your fault. It starts with clear tactics, dont run people into grinders, no when to bail and wipe a skirmish, talk to people, get rid of non participants, lead by example.

Platoon leads and squad leads are responsible for getting people where they need to be, that means get sundies in place, beacons, or other spawn points like galaxies or valkyries. Stack your squads appropriately, dont put markers all over the map, keep things focused. Mix things up, play offense and defense, give players breaks from hard fights, like pulling off and defending for a bit. Anyway there are tons of ways to keep people interested without being an *****.

They do work together, but only as Infantry platoons. There is just a serious lack of organized vehicle teamplay, but the developers also seem to not care about this, although there are many ways to improve this..

The thing to remember about Planetside is

It is only pubs

Once this is grasped, it's not hard to understand why people are running around having fun rather than implementing complex strats.

the nc have it the worst though, hardly anybody takes the effort to lead a good squad/platoon. One of these days i'm going to start leading my own squad just because there are no good options.

I think DQCraze nailed it on why it happens on the macro level. Long story short, it is down to leadership.

The easiest way to "platoon lead" is to place a giant 'zerg this' waypoint on the next base down the lattice, it is also boring as hell for everyone involved except for 2 groups of people- the spawn room warrior padding his stats by killing the attackers when they inevitably get bored sitting around and start licking spawn room windows, and the armchair strategist whose idea of winning is coloring the map by staring at empty spawn rooms for 3-7 minutes.

I don't necessarily agree with what ColonelChingles' brother did but I can definitely understand it. I don't know the exact details of the fight he was in, but if his platoon was zerging the bejesus out of bases with no opposition over and over, I would have probably redeployed to an actual fight too. Definitely leave the squad/platoon first though. Wouldn't want to take the spot of someone who enjoys this type of gameplay.

Good leadership in pub platoons is hard to find, and even if someone IS a good leader, chances are a lot of people in his platoon won't take him seriously, at least until he proves he knows what he's doing, because they've been burned in the past by bad leaders.If you're looking for teamwork, I'd say join an outfit and play with outfit squads/platoons. Generally speaking the people leading those have had practice leading and got to that position because they know what they're doing. Also people in your squad are more likely to follow orders coming from a higher up in the outfit instead of some random ******** shouting into his mic.

That's on the strategic level though, on the micro level, there could be a lot of reasons, too many to list really. TrolKabu has got a pretty good list to start with.

As a solo player, finding good squads/platoons is difficult. Many of the available public platoons are either leaderless zergs (AFK leaders, people all over the continent regardless of squad, even people on different continents altogether), or way too organized (bossy leader, everyone has to do exactly as they say or be kicked, regardless of how ridiculous it is. They make less of a difference than a few random Rambos).

As for being asked to be a gunner, it's very conflicting. I never gun for liberators, I'm awful and won't learn. Or using unfamiliar weapons (for a while I wouldn't gun for Magriders because I had no clue what the new guns did). The worst is gunning for strangers and not being an engineer when they need repairs.
As a driver sometimes it's difficult to decide where to go, am I bringing a full Sunderer to turn the tide of battle or am I leading a squad's worth of people to their deaths? Where do these people want to go? Obviously these problems don't occur if the next objective is obvious.

Also, never make me squad-lead! My BR doesn't make me a good leader. I will wish you luck and leave.

This... this right here is why the vast majority of players seem like bots. Some have actual shooting skill, but still.. they are only a lonewolf player looking for endless 1v1 encounters. Streaming into point buildings one by one to get mowed down. An organized squad, even of questionable skill can hold against this type of attack.

Its also where the organic zerg comes from. Not the organized zergfit drops or stuff like that, but the seemingly mindless zerg that will just go base to base following the next set of explosions. Drawn to the sound of combat and following the stream of other players attacking them.

If they are enjoying themselves more power to them. If the devs choose to balance stuff based on those players though, then you get issues happening when the outfits coordinate and use weapons en masse. (IE, why the lancer is meh... but a squad of lances melts armor, same with AV turrets, armor, sunderers, etc)

To me, leading squads is like a bank. As a squad leader, when you lead your squad into good fights and show strong leadership, you make a deposit. When you order your squad to secure a boring position because it's important, you make a withdrawal.

If your squad generally has had good experiences with you, they'll stick around when you have the occasional ghost cap. Maybe because they know if they leave they'll be out a good squad. Maybe they trust you when you say the objective is important. So long as your bank balance is positive, a squad will generally do what you ask.

That's also an important lesson for platoon leaders too. Don't keep throwing poor Delta into those ghost caps or back caps. Rotate your squad duties, so that each squad occasionally has to handle the boring stuff. Relying on the same squad over and over for the not-fun jobs can quickly demoralise that squad.

What you have to remember about pickup squads is that the SLs are either herding cats (a bunch of randoms with a bunch of different goals) or are trying to keep things tight and thus seem like bossy leaders. Honestly, SLs that run public squads are a special breed as it takes a lot of patience to do more than just mindless put up waypoints and hope your guys follow you. I have a lot of respect for SLs that are willing to run public squads. Even the bad ones are to be commended for even trying. It's F'n hard to do. Try it sometime, I'm betting not many will attempt it more than a few times.

This is where outfits come in. They are groups of like-minded individuals. If you find the right outfit, then you'll have teammates you can count on. Players join outfits so they can be effective together... part of that is grouping up and agreeing to a single target or goal. That doesn't necessarily mean listening to a bossy outfit leader and being part of a pseudo military organization or something. A lot of outfits are just social groups of players that enjoy being effective while working together. It's all about finding the right outfit that fits you.

For me, It was a vehicle centric outfit where I know that if they have that tag, they are at the very least decent as gunners and usually decent at driving. Not because we are elitist or require a certain skill, but because we all have the same interest, vehicles. The same can be said about the flying outfits, or the infantry-focused ones, or even the combined arms one. The members are better because that's where they put effort in becoming better at.

When you are talking random pubs, you are dealing with the unknown.

I don't think this is a problem of bad leaders.

The most "inspiring" leaders I've seen? They went for singular, easy tactics. There was little coordination except "everyone get these two/three classes, on the count of 3 everybody rush through the chokepoint". Alternative strategies are 100% bad. These "inspiring" leaders would rather tell people to go through the same heavily guarded chokepoint multiple times instead of taking a slightly deviant path into the same area. Why? Because the players don't listen if you use a deviant path. You can only coordinate them into the tactics and goals that these players would use normally anyway.

Why does this happen? Because PS2 doesn't offer many rewards for teamplay. If you stick around to prevent a generator from being repaired you quickly get bored, there's no challenge nor enjoyment in the act since so few people will try to repair it. If you pick an alternate route you will usually just be alone and get gunned down (we are talking the average person here). Just moving through the same paths with the same tactics over and over again gets you the most rewards, since you can be doing the shooty explody and killy you want to accomplish and someone behind you could potentially push through.

Another problem with PS2's teamplay: Sticking together. When your squad/platoon buddy gets shot, he needs to respawn and travel back to you. By then you've already had a few more fights, and other buddies (or you yourself) are respawning.
The game is extremely unfriendly towards working together with anyone. Are you in another squad/platoon than the other player? Then you can't really communicate or work together outside of "let's point our guns in the same direction and kill people faster!"

Right now if two players meet each other they maybe run in the same direction, but they don't care much if their buddy is killed other than "where's the killer I'm going to kill him!". They don't care if they accidentally split up. There's no real incentive to stick together. That's why Zergs are so powerful. Just having more people run around is more powerful than teamwork.
What PS2 needs is more rewards for teamplay and sticking together. If two players meet each other their first and foremost thought should be "what class is he? Ok we can use the following tactics <...>" and stick together. They should want their newfound buddy to survive. If a third and fourth player join them they should all want to stick together. And when one player dies... You should be able to replace him with the very next friendly player you meet.


Macro teamwork through microphones and beacons and that kind of crap is all well and good, but there's a reason these things are mostly used by above-average outfits and high-end competitive gameplay in most games--> they require more experience and skill to pull off, as well as the mythical "patience" to stick to a plan or the mythical "trust" that the leader knows what he's doing and follow his words when he changes tactics.
What we need is a solid micro teamwork. Not just an engineer who can throw down ammo that most players will never need or a Medic running after people to heal and revive them only to be insulted when you can't safely get to someone. Any class should be able to work together with every other class on the same level an Engineer and MAX can work together.