A rant at Waterson NC

This was taken from a post I made in another thread. I ended up ranting and the post started getting way out of context with what the thread was originally about, and I wanted to make this it's own thread, so I'm reposting it here.

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"Today, there was an alert an Amerish. There was an NC platoon sitting inside Ikanam Biolab with 80% population, doing absolutely nothing but sitting around waiting for it to capture. Meanwhile, only one hex away, Lithocorp Secure Mine was being taken by Vanu platoons. NC had 4% population at Lithocorp, so I used /orders and told all the people who were being completely and totally worthless at Ikanam to come help out at Lithocorp. Three minutes pass, NOBODY arrives, but Ikanam's population grew from 80% to 85%. So I send out another /orders telling people to get to Lithocorp ASAP, and once again, NOBODY arrives.

In the end, the NC still won the alert, but it was really painful watching the flood of /orders come in congratulating the NC and talking about how their "teamwork" and "coordination" was what caused us to win. Pffft... Yeah, because stationing everone inside an empty Biolab while the enemy effortlessly takes back their territory is a fine example of "teamwork" and "coordination". Playing as Waterson NC can be very heartbreaking at times.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/really-nc.123601/

I've given "organized" gameplay many tries, but in the end all the NC platoons on Waterson do is zerg. I rarely see advanced tactics displayed by the NC here. I'll see squads of Vanu/Terrans occupying the tops of our canyons, but the NC never bothered to do that when the VS/TR had the SE warpgate. I see VS Sunderer support squads, stacking multiple proximity repair sundy's around an ammo sunderer to keep their vehicles in top shape, but sunderers in general are a very rare sight in the NC.

The VS and TR just seem more organized overall. At first I thought I was experiencing the "grass is greener" effect, but then I actually tried playing in the TR for a bit, and the grass really is greener on the other side. Engineers that actually played a role as a pocket engineer for MAXes. Medics who actually went out of their way to revive people. There are occasions where you get good engineer support for your MAX as NC, and sometimes there is a great medic around who keeps everyone alive, but for the most part the NC engineers would rather sit in a MANA turret than repair a MAX, and the medics rarely bother to go out of their way to revive people, especially MAXes. I'll very often die as a MAX, and see 4 or 5 medic symbols walk straight across my body on the map, but nobody tries to revive me. Whenever I play as NC, it feels very much like a solo experience, even when in squads/platoons. When I tried out the TR, it felt like a team experience, and I wasn't even in a squad.

However, every now and then, I see the NC shine, even if it's only for a few short moments. Earlier today, we were defending Howling Pass Checkpoint from the TR. They had us locked into the spawn room, but someone had the heart to actually try and organize a counter attack. He got everyone in that spawn room to get MAXes, and had other people switch to engineer and medics to support them. They all rushed out to try and retake A, but the rush failed. Much to my surprise, he actually managed to organize another MAX squad, and tried for second time. That failed too, but it's the fact that he actually put effort to try and lead an organized counter-attack that impressed me. Do note, this was all done through proximity chat. That's right, it wasn't a platoon, it wasn't a squad, it was just a bunch of squadless pubs that came together to try and hold Howling Pass. If only our "organized" platoons could do the same thing, but instead whenever they are faced with situations like that, they just say "redeploy to the warpgate, we're getting a galaxy to go ghostcap some other territory" or "we're outnumbered, let's switch continents". It's pathetic.

I had better experiences with the Jaeger NC. Since the merge, all (most of) the major Jaeger outfits have dissolved or merged with DVS. Many active players who took leadership roles on Jaeger have stopped playing the game. It's a shame, really. The Jaeger NC actually tried to get things done, and the major outfits were always discussing things in /leader. I never see anything worth reading being written in /leader anymore on Waterson."

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Now, I'm sure many of you will come and tell me how wrong I am and how awesomely organized the Waterson NC are. I don't care. I log in every day and it's always the same stuff I discussed above.

Dude, Waterson isn't the place to be if you want organization.

I never picked Waterson. I was put here and the server I did choose (Jaeger) was terminated.

'The TR on Waterson are more organized then the NC'.

......

You haven't used your char on the TR long enough. Waterson in general is an unorganized zergy mess. How else do the Vanu occasionally win the alerts with a consistent 6-10% lower population. If you want organization on this server, roll Vanu, or join an MLG oriented outfit like TIW on the NC.

I know that. I never played my TR long enough to see real organized action, but I did play long enough to get a feel for the general competency of the players.

I chose NC because I like the NC, and I don't plan on swapping factions.

well it is if you are VS.. or for some of the TR... lol

We use voice coms. Don't generally require much assistance honestly. And not everybody has merged with DVS just yet.

Anyway, DVS knows who to call when they need something to get done right and right now. Do you?

The biolab is the natural habitat of the hacksaw max.

Laraso buddy, first of all, welcome to the Terran Republic. Strength in unity!

Secondly, there are people out there looking for some team play, but most of them are waiting for someone to display some leadership, just as you describe. Start up a squad and invite people. The serious players will stick by you as soon as they see that you will put some effort in making their game time easier and more fun. Later on they will repay you in loyalty and do anything they can to help out. This is basic human group psychology. Most people want to be a part of something and most want to feel appreciated. And - humans also want to have fun especially during recreation time.
The problem here is that leading means sacrificing. Forget about your own score progression as the game mechanics currently don't award effective leadership. You will need to get that Sunderer in place, put that spawn beacon out and stay out of action in order for your squaddies to "squad deploy" on your location. They will choose the "path of least resistance" and you will need to supply it. They are not going to wait for you to get in place. If you are not ready they spawn away all over the map and will be hopelessly gone with the wind.
You will also need to compliment them and let them know that you appreciate every step they take in the right direction. This means playing the game much through the chat panel. Yes, typing in the chat, because the in-game voice chat transmission quality is so bad that even your best Sennheiser headset won't help you. They will just shout at you to stop making their ears hurt with that static noise or put you on mute.
And you will have to accept that some do not even read the chat because their attention span is to short when they are under fire or simply because they are looking at the respawn interface where the chat is absent. This means that you will have to be patient and repeat yourself, a lot, till every new message gets out. And yes, not to mention that the chat is constantly flushed by automatic info lines about who is joining, leaving, online etc. The chat is even fading out of visibility, for all who hasn't manually changed that opacity setting, if nothing new is typed in like 5 seconds.

In fact all the important leadership mechanics are clumsy and underdeveloped. As a platoon commander you can only set one waypoint, and you cannot even see the way points that your squad leaders are putting out. There is no "platoon leadership chat" for PL to SL planning and deliberation. There is no way to see the location of other friendly leaders or where other platoons are heading.
And people hate to lose. If you can't hand them at least 3 victories out of every 4 tries most people will get bored and eventually abandon you. Sticking by your side has to be "the easy way". Staying is a choice that constantly has to be more rewarding than leaving. At first this will be all about the certs and the score rate, but later on the team play will constitute a social reward that will feel just as good for some.

In the end I enjoy the meta game of leading and organizing co-ops the most. This isn't what the game encourage me to do, quite the opposite actually. But it is such a great feeling to lay out the plan and accomplish something together with others. Planet Side 2 has great potential and a dedicated dev team. I trust them to understand that the joy that is chared brings twice the fun.

Plying with friends using third party voice chat is the easiest way of getting there for now.

Cheers, TR Commander Gridur, from Sweden.

Blah... you should've joined the under populated VS. On a side note, you barely got away from my lancer last night between broken arch road and cross roads. I nailed you twice and someone else finished your harrasser off. I saw your name plate when you bailed from it. I always like finding fellow forum dwellers in game combat.

Same. I miss Jaeger :'(

Check your fire I'm NC!

Everything is the same no team is better then the other. It's just based on who is getting ganged banged at the end of the alert.

I play TR we have been winning alot lately because we have had higher population. Yesterday we were almost warp gated during the alert. This was because NC and VS were sick of us winning so they tag teamed us the whole time and the queue was full and we were short on players and could get them to indar.


In your story the probably knew they were going to win and wanted the 1500 exp for the base cap. so they stayed

No it is. I've been in and out of a small handful of Waterson NC outfits and only one Jaeger NC outfit. Jaeger was very organized, comms were used for tactical purposes only, and military structures were in place. Well every Waterson NC outfit was either straight up incompetent, officers blamed the members when they lost, or had the mentality of "join up and follow the waypoint" and comms were mostly tea chat instead of tactics. There are some great players and moments of glory where people stand up and demand the kind of organization I witnessed on Jaeger, but it's drowned out by constant mediocrity. Laraso is dead on balls accurate... it's an industry term.

So you had good players and they all vanished even though you are still on the same server. All teams have good and bad players.

if you only played in one unit on the other server and it happened to be an organized one that doesn't mean there were not lots of ones that were not you just didn't play in those ones

They are waiting for the cap to get big XP from the biolab. You REALLY think anyone is going to leave before they get that? Yeah they SHOULD do it for their faction, its the best tactical decision, agreed.... but they are going to miss out on 1,000+ XP just because someone said they should move out over /orders.

This isn't the real army dude... we are here to have fun and a big part of that is getting XP for our efforts. Nobody is going to leave a secured, major, facility early and miss the XP just because some "leader" said to.

Leadership needs to realize this reality and work within these limitations yet still be effective. You don't have the loyalty and tools of real life military command & control structure to motivate your soldiers to do your bidding. Whining on the forums about it isn't going to make anyone listen to you more.

Oh and TR is the same way on Waterson.... I'd bet money every faction on every server is like this... nobody is going to ditch 1,000+ XP just to stop the cap on some po-dunk facility near by.

Never Forget....

Laraso, if you do not feel like remaking a character you could join one of the few organized NC outfits (TIW). But if you do re roll don't join TR as they still send platoons to deal with squads and they have enough population as is.

Same thing happens on Briggs and I'd assume every server.

People are too busy waiting around for 1000 XP, when they can gain that just by getting as few as 3 kills.

The whole points system is completely out of whack as it stands in my opinion.

I don't think its right that someone who jumps on a flash and drives as fast as they can to get the points for the cap gets just as many points for the capture as the people who secured the satellites, took out the generators, fought their way to SCU to bring it down and contained the enemy and defended against their attempts to block the cap. Its even more unfair that if the people who did the work leave before the cap is finished, they don't get ANY capture XP.