Do you ever feel like you're better off alone?

I do.
This is the 4th Outfit I join and I often feel like I'm better off when I play on my own.

Most of so-called Squad Leader just set a WP on the minimap (often on the same lane) then just tell in Squad Chat "Push" or "Redeploy". In the best case all we have is a Gal Drop.
And I often feel like there is no teamplay at all, no strategy, no one is even looking at the map: I'm sick and tired of Squad Leaders asking to push for a Biolab where we are getting farmed for 1 hour when the other faction wins the afternoon alter with a 60% percentage. HOLY **** it's Bioalb! If you can't capture it quickly just give up otherwise you'll be stuck all day!
A Squad Leader today called a 20 men drop on a base where the enemy had 96+ forces: we lasted like 10 seconds. I died over and over again because there was no ******* medic around (there were actually some, but their first priority must be the AR grinding instead of ressing team mates). I'm seeing day by day Squad Leader unable to keep their team mates together, so they're scattered all around the continent. If you can't even coordinate 10 soldiers, why the hell do you insist at being a Squad Leader?
Today no one seemed to be smart enough to establish a defensive perimeter: no landmines, no Spitfire, no turrets repair... holy god today TR on Miller didn't even care to repair generators once they captured a base. This makes me think that either TR on Miller are terrible players or they're just so focused on their KDR that they forget all the rest. Who cares if we lost every alter today, the important is farming.

What's the point of a team if everyone is playing like a lone wolf?
**** off, today I felt like if playing an Outfit or alone makes totally no difference, so why bother? I'll be a lone wolf. I quit this outfit and I toggle on the reject invitation.

What criteria do you have when deciding whether or not to (ask to) join an Outfit?

I'd bet there are proper outfits that do employ proper tactics but a lot of them are just randoms culled from the warpgate. Outfits like 'DiG' are worse than useless, they just zerg everything and you take your life in your hands if you try and occupy the same space as them because they just kill anything that moves, including teammates.

Today I was invited into a squad, usually I don't bother but I figured I might as well. After awhile I noticed I was SL as we were attacking a base so I thought I would actually try and so some leading. I typed a few orders into chat to congregate at the waypoint but no one took any notice so I selected someone else to be squad lead and went back to lone wolfing.

In all fairness most people just ignore orders so after a while squad leaders just stop trying. Squad leading public players in majority of cases is like herding cats.

But overall I share your sentiment regarding the playerbase.

The first was my old ps1 outfit. Then I joined random teams until I found good outfits. One I left because it was too small do I couldn't find my mates online every now and then. In general it seems to me some fights are good more because of the leadership of few good players than because of the outfit themeselves.
Depending on who's online the fight can be exciting or just depressing. Then in general today Miller's tr were thinking about chicks instead if winning alerts.

When I play Vanu on Emerald, I either play with my Outfit which is often organized; or join public squads - some of which are pretty organized as well!
But when I join Miller (Vanu as well), I cycle through all available squads.... nothing! No orders, waypoint not updated.... or just zerg.
Once I saw an organized Vanu movement and asked for being invited. Sorry. Only for spanish-speaking people. Which I understand, but also makes me sad....

i played recently with one of the biggest outfit
the first 15 minutes i liked it, the leader was using vocal commands and it looked like he knew what he was doing
after 15 minutes the TR started to fight back with a slightly bigger force and that leader became unsuitable to lead in a fair fight

one moment he ordered to pull tanks 2 minutes later he ordered to leave the tanks and redeploy at the warp gate
telling us he would kick us from the team if we did not listen
at this moment i would leave the team but i was curios to see what would happen next and stayed
now fighting at a different base he ordered to pull max's and again after 2 minutes he demanded we redeploy at a new base
again with the kick warning
this went on and on until the TR pushed hard and our team was depleted of resources

now i say again this was the leader of one of the biggest outfits
well if he ask me ever again to join his team i will politely decline
i play rather alone or with a small outfit

i used to play medic all the time and follow my team but then i saw it was kind of pointless medics didnt revive engies didnt repair and i was team killed more than enemy killed so i changed to sniper i support in my own way but when it comes down to my outfit i always play with them with tanks or sundies or whatever we do everything together but when they are not on i play alone drop darts and cover my teamates so they wont be able to team kill me!

Yes, after all the girls I've dated, it does seem better to...

Oh, that's not what this is about. Staying on topic, it looks like you've just had a bad run with leaders. Outfits, especially the big ones tend to have a variety of different leaders. Personally speaking I've played in lots of squads with 382 (Emerald TR Outfit) and I've had both great and bad experiences under them. For example, sometimes they used nutty tactics like stealth footmarches into enemy bases, or made the entire platoon comprised of vehicle-hungry light assaults with smokes. Other times, they do what you described above.

From what I can tell it really depends on luck whether you have a good/bad leader. Apparently you were unlucky those 4 times. Still though, IMO the memorable experiences you have with good commandants is worth the trouble of getting many bad ones, so I wouldn't lone wolf mate.

PS. It's hard to coordinate a squad without a mic. Players tend not to look at the chat much b/c of everything else on their screen, so to command well you and any other squad/platoon lead need a mic.

i used to play with an outfit back on my old server (DVS) its was pretty ok, the original players were all PS1 vets, but it didn't last long after new dudes started to lead platoons.

the new leads either saw the game as some weird military fantasy or would go around doing dumb crap. i left and went looking for another outfit, and i found that the same pattern would repeat. either you had some weirdo lead who would misquote Patton and talk about immigrants taking his job, or you had some dude who thought that asking "everyone pull a gal, we are going to whalecrush some tanks OMG LOLZ" every frigging 15 minutes was fun...

its hard to find an outfit that stays in the middle. eventually i made my own outfit so people would stop inviting me. ICBG has more than a couple of based capped under its belt, i even got one with the new system where you have to have the most points among every other outfit involved, fact im very proud of.

i tried leading for a while and had fun with it, ended up with a group of 10 regulars, we weren't an outfit, just players that enjoyed the same play style. i wasn't a "lead", that role mainly consisted on rotating leads so we could get beacons up all the time, and what to do was naturally agreed upon without having to force people to redeploy or play in a way they didn't like.

we played to have fun, but played smart. some pretty amazing small objective victories, even on losing battles. eventually i had to stop playing for IRL reasons now i could only find 4 that still play. :/

its amazing how much 10 dudes who can follow the simple concept of a fire lane can accomplish defending a position. more than once, the base would fall and we could hold out points for ages till a barrage of lolgrenades would ruin our fun.

moral of the story is simple, outfits can either suck, or not, but small bands of players will always be more fun. no drama, no "orders", and no uncomfortable ******** on comms.

I don't follow orders.

I play alone and with friends only.

Anyone tells me I gotta redeploy and I'm more apt to shoot him in the head than do what he's telling me.

I play games for fun, not have flashbacks to the fragging army

If I have to be farmed for hours I better blame my poor skills than my squad leader. So I decided I'll quit the team every time the Squad Leader is not doing his job.

And I'll try to lead for a while, maybe I will learn something.

I never join squads!

I do agree with a lot of what you said. My old fit stopped playing Ps2, and i tend to lone wolf 99% of the time. Sometimes its because i dont always play prime time or maybe only popping on for 40 mins or so but on Miller, some so called leaders or clans are no where near as organized as the VS on miller, im really impressed with the VS on that.

People whine about big fights, but 20 V 96 including tanks is just pointless, so i would rather play along with a zerg or big fights, i just dont like small fights, but thats just me. I play Ps2 because i like big fights.

If you fancy hooking up then by all means add me. ( not in that way, im married with a kid lol )

TL;DR My opinion on different ways to play the game based on a lot of exp lonewolfing and a little on leading squads and platoons of random people.

Coordinating yourself is absolutely easy but not efficient. As most things in this game require more than 1 player. You take decisions by yourself and tend to go where people are needed.

Coordinating 2-3 people can be extremely efficient. It's a lot more fun than playing alone and you can do stuff like 2 men harasser, lib and MBT. Also infantry tactics like 2 stalkers or 2 medics but the vehicle ones tend to be more... productive.

Coordinating a whole squad is harder. You have to look at the map, the population at every base, what's the tendency to change in the next couple of minutes and what to do with what/who you got. It can't be done by everyone. At least not in a fun AND progressive way. But it has a lot more potential than the above. As you can use the same strategies but on a larger scale.

Coordinating a platoon is where **** gets serious. Unless you've got 3 squad leaders that are semi-gods. Then it is not much harder than being a squad leader, it's basically the same. But that doesn't happen with randoms on open squads, you usually have to do the work of 4 squad leaders. Some non-squad leaders are usually experienced and reasonable and help you out with ideas and such. The alternative here is to just zerg everything and not care. People tend to obey what you commanded if it is within reason and you give them enough time. But 10% just ignore completely every order, they just join platoons for the boosts I guess.

Anyway, this is all to say that it is not easy and requires full knowledge of the game, of how to deal with people, patience and experience by leading or at least observing what good leaders do. If you think there are not good leaders out there: Try and become one. I dare you. Leaders tend to go to the dark side. To the zergside. To redeployside.

Welcome to Planetside. If you play on emerald I'd be happy to do some (sort of attempt at) efficient squad'n.

A hard fact about Planetside 2 is that good leaders are few and far in between. Judging a whole outfit because of one or two bad nights isn't exactly fair because they might be hiding a really talented leader who only comes out once or twice a week, and rightfully so since proper leading is a tiring task and doing it too often can easily lead to burnouts.

Honestly, just sounds like you are joining up with the wrong outfits or at the very least playing with players that are inexperienced. If you do not like the way other players are leading their squads. I would suggest you lead you own squad or keep looking until you find a group that plays to your style.

As for solo vs team play. There is no comparison, playing in a group is far superior to playing solo for the most part. Even if you are only playing with 1 or two other players, if you two are in vehicles together or following one another you will ALWAYS be more effective.

I've been in the same outfit since Beta and I play with a group of about 10-20 mostly BR100's and while we do not get super tactical. its really not needed because we all know what we are doing, but we do try and stick together at all times, because that works best...

I never feel like I'm alone, I feel like I'm surrounded by noobs and idiots.

I feel I'm better off alone but for different reasons. A lot of outfit/squad play requires a reasonably good amount of communication and communicating with others isn't something I'm good at because I get terrible social anxiety. It's not so bad if I'm talking to one other person but if I'm in a group of a few people and they're pretty chatty or actually know each other in one way or another, I feel like anything I say/suggest will sound stupid or bad so in the end I tend to be rather mute and leave the communicating to others.

Sometimes I'll say something in Yell chat if someone asks a question I know the answer to, or I'll say something in Region chat if I feel the team needs to know of something such as if there's an enemy Sunderer deployed in a position to flank us or there's an attack I've spotted heading for the area. Otherwise the only time I'm ok communicating is with a friend who I'm extremely comfortable with.

Overall I tend to play in reasonably large fights without joining a squad, so I'll still be playing with other people, I just won't be communicating much, if at all, with them. It's not as though I haven't been in an outfit which has had exceptionally good communication and tactics, but my personal difficulties amongst other things helped me make the decision that I'm probably better off just playing alone or with my friend.

As for random squads, at least for me, I learnt a long time ago that random squads are only good for the extra XP. The squad/platoon leaders rarely communicated and only ever dumped down markers with no explanation as to why they placed them there, further reminding me why playing alone was better.

When it comes to random squads you rarely get any more coordination than that aforementioned "push here next" marker. Most random groups may not even get that - as they are leaderless ghost-groups where the original leader left and noone bothered to take up the reins.

If you want a proper teamwork experience there is no substitute for joining a reputable outfit with its own teamspeak or similar.
Going solo can be fun, but you severely limit your ability to influence anything meaningful in the game - and that can risk the game becoming a boring after a while if all you do is passively follow the tide of war to farm.

Also - this seems relevant somehow

-Stigma