Lack of Base Defense

I am seeing quite a trend in the game on on the forums discussing the lack of defense of bases.

Base captures seem to be more like a Chinese Firedrill (no offense to the Chinese intended)

People roll into a base, it is lightly defended, defenders get killed and don't come back. Cap a base and leave for the new one. Continent is "almost" captured and most of the attackers leave for other continents.

This is EXACTLY what we went through in PS1. I remember it vividly.

The solution for PS1? The lattice system. Once that was put in place people had no choice but to defend the bases.

The other solution would be to make base defenses give XP rewards over and above the kill bonuses. Make defending bases mean more XP than capturing new ones and people will stay to defend.

Even better, make the defense bonus based on how much activity happens in the Sphere of Influence (like PS1). You know, truly epic hours long battles end up with 3,000-5,000 xp or more.

Seems like a simple solution that wouldn't require changing the whole gameplay scheme that adding a Lattice would.

What was the lattice system?

Never gonna happen Smed outright denied any chance of a lattice like system. With the tech plant changes they made today we may as well go to instanced maps where we fight for a tech plant and once it's won you get an atta boy achievement and the next map starts loading where we'll fight in a bio lab.

Too many crybabies pushing this game in the wrong direction while we made a massive effort in beta to push it in the right direction (which they were going towards at the end of beta).

Can't say I'm really excited to play tonight .

That's dumb and delusional

You know what we really need ?
Putting the spawns adjacent to High-activity hexes on top of the respawn list.
And a proper global redeployment system (and not the /suicide-leapfrog from outpost to outpost)

And the zerg will follow.

In PS1 each base was connected to the others by link lines. They directed the fight to be at the right bases. It is similar to the adjacency system we have now but typically there were only a couple links to each base. It brought everyone together to fight on the same fights.

It also forced you to defend bases. If you lost a link, your attack was stalled there.

They almost have a lattice system now. I think honestly that it is probably fine as it is.

The bigger issue is that no one wants to defend because there is not a suitable reward for defending. You can stay in a base and hope it gets attacked or you can move on to the next one to get 250-1000 xp as soon as it is capped.

Adding a SOI (Sphere of Influence) activity bonus to the defense and attack would make people want to fight more rather than just run around capping undefended bases.

Lattice system here means 500 vs 500 headlong fights. Every fight would be a massive grind. Would not be fun at all.

Unless they plan on knocking the cont population down by about 50%, the lattice system would only make this game a 24/7 Metro-like grind. Boring for anybody who doesn't love CoD.

This is exactly how I feel.

When I came to PS2 I was hoping for a much improved PS1 with the scale of WWIIOL. But instead I get what can be best described as BF2142 Online.

The game is okay, I am enjoying it for now, but a month from now I may be play SWG-*** more, because its better balanced and more depth to it.

There is a reason I havent put another dime to the game since release, I dont see a need or want to spend money. When items are constantly in a state of flux, no full account access to the items I bought or at least the certs. If I buy a 1000cert weapon like a Skyguard I should be able to use it on ANY one of my account toons. And with the 1 man Ghost cap I just find it hard to get people in my outfit to want to do anything. Several have gone back to DOTA/LoL.

Several lessons can be learned from both Planetside 1 and World War II Online.

Here's the lessons A) Don't make the game an MMORPG first and an FPS second B) Don't fire all of your programmers. Those are the lessons learned from PS1 and WWII Online.

The solution is make ALL bases easier to defend. Defenders need an advantage to hold off the zerg. The devs stupidly removed this is the latest patch with the changes to the tech plant. The smaller outfits are willing to defend but they are going to be defending against the zerg. Therefore defenders need an advantage to hold off the superior numbers of the attackers.

FARMING is the motivation for defending.

Why should I bother defending an indefensible on AMP station on Amerish when I can simply jump to Indar and defend a Biolab which currently offers the strongest defenses against the zerg.

If all the bases offered a strong defender advantage players wouldn't just pick a choose to defend / resecure the strong bases.

After this patch the only base worth defending is the Biolab.

No, even you missed it.

Stick with the original concept and ignore the children screaming about wants and nerfs, until EVERYTHING is in the game.

The original concept didn't sell well in either of the games mentioned. Why would they stick with that?

Think about it. You cannot keep going to Sony and asking for money to fund a game that's going to follow the design decisions of a poor performing game. They'll laugh in your face.

You cannot keep trying to milk the same gameplay style that was clearly not working well all because you have it in your head that it will somehow work if you just don't listen to the "kids" on the forums. You'll never secure any investment that way.

A agree, they need to do something soon. There really is little benefit to defense at this point.

Ah, yeah I don't think we need the lattice system.

Adding better rewards for defenders would be a start. Its just a start though, they still need to implement a system to break the zerg mentality.

And that is different from our current cap zergs in which way?

Increase defense bonus and/or give a flat payout to successful defense, and/or reduce the bonus for base capping. Any combination of these could work if set up properly.

There should be no need to give rewards to the defenders. They should already be rewarded by getting massive exp from the defense itself. The problem is that most bases and towers and pretty much all outposts are extremely unfavorable to the defenders. They get surrounded and pounded by 50+ tanks, a few dozen ESF and 6 or so Libs, the defender never sees any chance to even kill something. And that is the whole problem there. The defenders should have the advantages on their side. For every defender that dies there should be 2 attackers that died if the player numbers are even, but currently usually it is that one attacker dies for every 4 or so defenders.
That is the reason people actually defend Tech Plants, the Crown and the Mesa Skydock, despite the latter 2 not having any tactical or stratetical value whatsoever. They actually can be defended, that is the only magic involved there.

Also standing around and waiting for attackers to show up is boring, so players should not be forced to do that.
Sadly capturing times on bases are so short and defenders can be "caged" inside spawns so easiely that you have to be already there and waiting with a signifficant force if you want to defend. If the bigger part of the defenders arrive while the attack is already in progress the spawn will be already surrounded and the generators will be blown up already, making any defense from that point onwards impossible.

My suggestions to that would be 2 things:
1.) Make bases more defensible. I actually do not know how to archieve that. More indoor fighting might help, as that blocks out MBT and air spam. Also add several spawnrooms into each base to lessen the impact of spawncamping, but give each room a seperate minimum spawn timer (2 minutes or something).

2.) Base attacks need more "stages". Add multiple layers of defense or several defensive lines that need to be broken, each one with its own generators. That gives people time to react and put up a defensive force.
As an example the layers for an AMP station could be:
a.) Outer buildings.
b.) Walls and inner buildings.
c.) Main building.
You can't start working at the c objectives if you're still in stage a. That can be enforced by clever use of generators and shields.
The goal here is to buy time for the defenders to actually organize a defense. Compensate the attackers by giving each stage a seperate xp reward.
Might also add use to the shield diffusor cert on the sundy.

the base design in this game is so bad its not even funny. From a tactical stand point, its ridiculous. Vehicle spam all day in this game is beyond stupid. INFANTRY should be able to take bases not armor spawn camping you all day. ARMOR is pulled to counter ARMOR, the infantry fights in this game is inferior. Unfortunate for our outfit since we are centered around infantry combat. Im losing faith in this game more and more, this new tech plant change is beyond my comprehension. Yay, now we get to be spawned camped by tanks in our only spawn location at the tech plant......these changes are just...............speechless.


This game is way to vehicle centered, its a vehicle shooter now thats about it, infantry combat is a complete joke in this game. Base's need to be redone, more focused around INFANTRY combat. These ***** in these tanks need to get off there fat ***'s and go fight for a base not camp **** all day.

This game has some serious fundamental flaws that are more apparent now everyday, at this rate I cant see myself playing this game anymore than a year or so. PS1 had me since 2004.

Sorry to say, but at this rate, I would of taken a re skin of PS1 anyday over what this is turning out to be.

The lack of base defence is BORING! Running with the zerg is BORING. Something needs to change. I remember epic hallway battles in PS1 and sweating bullets as the hacker tried to get the door open. None of that here, though.

Defending is broken. It's really hard to defend while a tank is litterally blocking the door to my spawn room or 27 attackers are waiting like a firing squad to gun me down the moment exit. Pull your head out, Smed.

The spawn room locations in this game is beyond ridiculous. As some posters have already said, that you can camp these locations with pretty much any vehicle is a factor in the problem of no one defending.

The game is WAYYY too rewarding for the lone tanker and the lone flyer. And since you can't cater to everyone, it's pretty apparent who they chose to cater to.

The original concept is why tens of thousands of players sign up, not because its a new shiny. The problems start when they start trying to overly simplify a game thats already simple or overly complicate a game thats simple, instead of sticking to the original concept until it is at least complete.

Lets take MWO for example. PGI has all but given up on the original concept of factional warfare and sticking to the table top rules, when the twitch player showed up and cried louder than a thousand Banshees in a howling contest with a Bagpipe brigade from the Scotts Guards.

Some things should be adjusted yes, but giving up on things that are a BIG part of the original concept of the game is another. I know quite a few people who paid 120USD to play the above mentioned game only to have it not be what they thought they were paying for. I was smart enough not to do that.

But I have seen this time and time again in several games, from Mortal Online to WWIIOL. Players who only come for the beta free time cry and get their way because the weak willed developers are cowering to the wants of these few snot nosed children. Its best to just ignore them like their parents do and put on your big boy pants and stick to your guns.