Community Suggestion: Make More Speciality Squads

Ok if you want some more constructive advice: Advertise this.

We already have tons of outfit video's and such that show off teamplay, but almost exclusively the cheesy bits are used but nothing else. You have the unenviable task of making video's that are superior in almost every way to these outfit video's and spread them over Reddit and the forums to spread the knowledge.

Since PS2 does not grow team-oriented gameplay from the start and randomly throws in some late-stage command structure that should rely on numerous small teamplay mechanics you are going to have to bring the knowledge, experience and enjoyability of working as a team to them without any real ground to stand on. You have to get a message across that if a random player sees your team do something that he has heard of it, knows what it means, how it would be executed in this area, how it could be more enjoyable for him to join and based on what he sees what he could do to help. On top of that any tactics should be known by name, if you say "I want to do a Fluffy Dragon" everyone should know what it means rightaway.

You would basically have to create a student/military structure to inspire people. These organizations have lots in common to make people form groups instead of stay individuals. Often they unite them through a trial by fire. Students do things like hazing and infighting (where legal, it goes wrong every time the morons abuse power) so that the new group feels more unified. They went through it together, they got to join together. Armies use the stereotypical hard-butt bootcamp officers to unite the group by making them go through the same hardships and have a common thing to talk about (that **** fistus that is ordering us around).

You can't really haze or force people to go through hardships in a game as they would simply leave if it ain't fun, but you can do other stuff. Singing for example, singing together equalizes breathing and heartrates which (probably no causal connection) also inspires more group-oriented thinking. Keep the songs simple, and try to use unique songs for different tasks. For example go sing "country roads" when you are gathering tanks for a flanking attack (which will likely take a bit longer than a straight drive into the enemy). The problem with that is that the next random who tries it needs the tools to play songs across the channel and you want to make sure that anyone can take up the mantle of leader so using marching songs and the like is better. The text needs to be simple, easy to sing along with by randoms if they've heard it once or twice and be unique enough to designate a certain task.

Pick strategies that mostly equalize itself, and change it up almost immediately if you make yourself obsolete. A large-scale tank battle is fun, but after you've destroyed the enemy vehicles they have no real way of spawning enough tanks to counter you in a safe, timely and enjoyable fashion. This would devolve in a farm almost immediately after the last tanks are destroyed unless you can set the next task afterwards that outweighs the feeling of efficiency and joy of just farming infantry that can hardly defend itself. This is basically a late-stage tactic you need to show off not because of it's difficulty but because the lure to do your own thing and just farm for KD or XP is too high yet.
Strategies need to be simple due to the lacking tools. If you can use the stragetic map drawing tool, and keep everyone updated about it's status to encourage players to look at it. So each time you make an adaptation you need to tell everyone the map is updated (the single message that pops up is easily overlooked especially during a fight). Make sure people get to see the benefit of this. So if you put this in a video, you need to have both the vision of the commander who draws a few quick and simple contextual things on the map and the vision of a grunt who, during a death for example, quickly checks the map, selects one of the tactics chosen by the commander and has fun executing it.

If you are successful than the feeling of belonging to a group can overshadow the KD oriented play. Like a dog on a leash that tries to chase a cat, all he needs is that first "I'm gonna get ya" feeling of starting to run to be rewarded (even though most non-hunting dogs view cats as friendly playfriends, it's just that the signs for "I want to play" for a dog say "I'm hunting you" to a cat). Players need to enjoy any action that is with the team. If you say "charge" then everyone needs to charge (preferably while screaming charge in proxy together), even the random that just arrived should feel the need to open up proxychat and scream charge, running after everyone. And even if you lose the most common reaction should be "let's do that again!"


This is a monumental task. You need to get the knowledge out, make sure that everyone has either seen or heard of it, you need the first few video's with already inspired people who not only follow your commands (and you follow theirs! One-sided video's with one person leading are anathema to team play and don't inspire others to follow your lead and become leaders! Show them you can follow as easily as lead!) but also have fun following them. If one person starts to sing, all of you should start to sing along and the enjoyment needs to sound through it even if you get your head splashed across 2 continents six times in a row.

Good luck.

Thank you. I still can't record, so I can't make any videos to promote Planetside 2, but I will see what I can do to get this idea out there. I think that people who are amazing commanders should go down in history for Planetside and have their memory recalled daily, weekly, monthly. If we can get that going too, there will be very little stopping you from achieving greatness.

Don't get me wrong, I also think that PS2 has the seeds to become a classic that can go on for 10 years more if it is well executed. I just don't think the current setup has what it takes, and I've been bombarded with too many people who assume that a squad with voice chat can already be considered adequate teamplay, even though voice chat only works for small teams (say 2 to 4 people) unless the game allows you to develop interplay between players that is easily defined. Say "V gen rush" should have meant an attack on the vertical lined generator and players should have known what classes, routes and attack methods to take to get there, secure the area, what classes would be necessary based on the composition you already have and what the enemy has (information that should also be easily available at a glance even if you just arrived at the fight). All this from 3 abbreviated words. That is how you get real cooperation, by having a base knowledge of the game and using that. The voice comms should at best be the start of the tactic, not the leading element of the entire movement where the leader basically has to bully people into doing 15 things and no one can communicate jack as soon as one player is talking. Again, that's because large-scale groups can only function on voice-chat if there is a solid amount of non-verbal information, knowledge and actions that can be combined and learned to achieve things together so that the slow way voice-chat works isn't directing the teamplay but starting sequences of teamplay.

Yeah I understand. More effective tools would encourage more effective teamplay. I'm just saying I don't think its gonna happen, chief. We gotta make do with what we got. When we do good with it, we can get the updates we need to make it better. Someone said that they don't even read the forums. We gotta do this stuff ingame. Less say say, more show show.

Since no one is talking still, here is another advantage. How many rockets does it take to end a sundy's career? It takes 7-ish. If you had a squad of 12 Heavies, you could instantly destroy a sundy. Thats how powerful a speciality squad is. Even if you only had 3 Heavies shooting at the same sundy, same tank, same MAX, same aircraft, same anything, you would take things down extremely fast.

What about a squad of 12 medics? You can revive each other and revive anyone you need to. You keep your team alive and you keep the battle alive. Because of you, you are more likely to win any battle.

What about a squad of 12 Engineers? You can repair any vehicle you need and cause chaos with your MANA turrets and spitfires. You can deploy at wherever you need to, to make sure the other team can't get past you.

What about a squad of 12 Infiltrators? At long range, instant devastation. If 2 of you aim at the same guy, he is dead instantly, no matter if you headshot or not. 6 guys dead instantly, in theory. You will wipe the floor with the corpses of your victims. In close range as stalkers, you can instantly light up anyone who gets on point, and they won't be able to get you all without darklights.

What about a squad of 12 MAXes? One word: Oof.

What about a squad of Light Assaults? You can rocklet anything to death, C4 anything to death, and attack from any angle needed to suprise the enemy. Obliteration.

Now, compare that to a mixed squad. A mixed squad can do a little bit of everything. 2 of all 6 classes mean you can still do a lot. A speciality squad helps you do a certain thing. I just needed to say that.