Past few weeks trying to play have been bad. Most of the fights suck, but I didn't really understand why other than that it was probably the critical mass update's fault. I was feeling the symptom of awful fights and bad gameplay, but I didn't know what to pin it on until about a week ago in a thread I made on this forum somebody shared this video with me and it all became clear. It emphasized to me just what a bad direction the game is going in. I have a hard time wanting to play the game anymore. I have a squad though so as long as we're together I will still log on to play with them, but with an exception. We're not going to be chasing the alerts with much seriousness anymore until they fix or revert them (not optimistic). Things we focus on now include: 1. Setting up road-block construction bases 2. Anti-Aircraft behind enemy lines/outside enemy warpgates 3. Setting up obnoxious Orbital Strike bases behind enemy lines, possibly on enemy silohs. 4. Guerrilla warfare. Tank mines, EMP when enemies run over their own mines, V terminal camping, cloak flashes and any other means of getting high K/D and magnifying our small squad's damage output. Basically anything that puts us into positions where the enemy will fight on our terms and not this new stupid meta.
I like most the videos that guy does. But the one you linked I just don't agree with or like. He suggests the lame "PS2 is only fun/proper through Outfit play". He declares that overpops don't cause bad fights, and players logging into underpop won't improve fights. Wrong... for me and others (mostly casual players) and the type of gameplay we like. What he's really saying is, "I play in an Outfit and I want rules that let me-and-my-outfit easily log on and do what we want, regardless of how it affects other people. And if someone not me doesn't like something, then it doesn't count as a problem." I understand he wants what he wants. But that doesn't make what he wants what I or other casual players want. And if he doesn't care about what we want, I likewise take the stance of discarding care for what he wants. I also do understand that sticking players in VR with massive wait-to-play timeouts drives away players. It's poison. And, I believe that the game is probably better off player-retention-wise as horribly overpop continents full of ghost zergs (as ugly as that is), rather than as locked out maps spent in VR. "Faction and Outfit identity" can take a flying in my book, if it means ruining the game for others. I just want good fights for casuals. PS2 should have split the players into 2 groups from the start: Outfit players on one Server, non-Outfit players on another Server. These 2 groups don't mix well, and want totally different things out of the game and how it should be designed.
1. I think that's closer to what PMBs should be actually, not tucked away in corners. 2. That's just trolling, but at least it's not combat effective. 3. Whatever, if it kills bad guys then keep at it. 4. This is actually the biggest thing this game is missing. Most groups of actual friends are 1/2 a squad or so, the rest are fillers. PS2 should focus on small squad roles instead of letting zergs be the be all end all tactic.
AFAIK there are small squad FPS games out there but PS2 is a large army combat game. I've no objection to there being a place where you can log in to fight little team games as an option on PS2 but I would be sad to see the big battles being lost, or not being the main purpose of the game. In fact, the arena option might even draw some of the the high BR MLG pros away and give us poor, average-to-weak players a little bit more of a chance .
I'm absolutely not arguing for dismantling small battles, only for adding additional options for small squads. I'm in love with that Hybrid Lattice proposal which is floating around. It eliminates facing a zerg head on as the only option. It lets a small squad take smaller territories and bleed opponents off of the main force. Of course I don't want to end large scale warfare.
You'd be surprised. A cloak sundy with a walker+Ranger is lethal for camping airpads. Get maybe a third guy with lock ons or if you have 4 just get two cloaked sundys and you can camp outside the enemy's warpgate. Build a small base somewhere just outside their WG's No-deploy and use it as a base for these operations. Other things we use is turbo ants with rangers because they can outrun most predators and turbo into anything light enough to chase them while at the same time having the ability to chase wounded aircraft. Skyguards are also effective for these groups because they can provide some support from other vehicles when your friendlies are also focusing fire. Using cloak sundies you can also park behind enemy lines near roads that see good traffic and drop tank mines in unpredictable spots. Can't tell you how many ANT drivers who filled up at the warpgate I must have pissed off using this.
past few weeks coincides with the sunder nerf from the 5th anniversary patch (18th november), you can't stop zergs anymore and you can't capture biolabs (without a huuuuuge zerg) there has been a huge loss of players since then... and i keep talking about it in the hope that they'll come to their senses and change it back!
Oh yeah, that's messed up that they created a Meta that encourages such zergs and then has the nerve to prevent us from putting the sunderer in a good position to try and hold it off. People who want to help in such a fight look at the map and see "we can't do a proper defense from these spawn points" and that's probably why they log off if I had to guess.
