End work on Lattice now before any more effort is wasted.

Heh.

I logged on today and this is what I saw:

http://postimg.org/image/vgi86cb5t/

It was even worse earlier today, when the NC were Warpgating TR, TR were warp gating VS, and the VS held Scarred Mesa (with no influence mind you, ENEMY PLATOONS DETECTED!!) which I assume was an attempt to warpgate NC.

Oh, and the middle of Indar was NC and TR ghost capping each other.

Yeah. Enjoy that.

Because population imbalance dont effect Live server.

Oh wait, they do- unless organized platoons were fighting. And if theres more organized platoons fighting in one faction, well, then they deserve the continent cap.

Hey, at brings out good points for the Devs to look at. As long as it improvs the meta-game, talk all you can, they CRAVE this salty-feedback-goodness

Well, after reading your whole post, I can gladly say you are right, Lattice is certainly not enough. The population imbalance can be put to rest since servers like Matherson have fairly balanced populations (factions are RARELY EVER in 40% range, unless you play at crazy times).

Lattice is putting emphasis on the actual bases, and thats what needs to be rebalanced. If you take away movement, you need to add the strategy you've taken away. Lattice is currently a nerf of movement, which might help, but it instead needs to become a rebalance- add to the capture mechanics.

Doing one thread talking about it? Ok.

Doing 6? Not ok.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/122314/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/122034/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/122523/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/119263/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/118531/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/118418/

All by the same person, THAT is spam.

HOOOOOOO BOY, that is dedication if I've ever seen it! That's Rhapsody levels of pessimism!

The tactic is the same, once the thread has too many people saying that Lattice is better than the current Hex he just makes a new one and starts all over again. Over and over again until it sticks.

I can see a big problem in that map, and that's the deployment options available: Dahaka is under imminent threat, Mao is getting actively fought for by your people, but you can't deploy there. Instead, you can go to Rust Mesa Lookout, which is cut off, deep inside enemy territory and a strategically worthless drain of resources in your current situation, Zurvan, which is less worthless but still cut off and simply not a priority and to Allatum, where you only need enough forces to pin down (not dislodge!) the VS troops.

Other than that, a reasonably clear situation (speaking as TR):

* Rust Mesa troops need to withdraw towards Crimson Bluff and hold there.
* Taking Rashnu is not a priority, but nice to have. If the troops at the point can do it, fine; if not, no problem.
* Toops from Zurvan need to redeploy to Mao and East Canyon, and try to take The Pallisade after Mao and any ghost cappers in the vicinity were dealt with, to free up the defenders at Galaxy Solar who then can reinforce whichever part of the front is needed.
* Ceres Hydroponics, TI Alloys and West Highlands need to hold position, shifting troops between them as necessary (especially West Highlands should have a bunch of Galaxies on stand-by to move around quickly).
* Troops at Allatum keep the pressure at VS, but try not to get into NC's way.
* Set up defence at Indar Excavation, with a quick response team or two stationed at Hvar to resecure NS Secure Data and Sandstone Gulch as necessary (neither place is particularly defensible, don't bother). In case of a breakthrough in either, make sure you have some people with AA on guard in Quartz Ridge, just in case.
* Get the hell out of Ayani and Highlands Solar; the VS needs those to be able to concentrate on NC. You want them to fight each other as much as possible.
* Deal with Indar Comm Array and Seabed Listening Post ASAP; send a whole platoon (split it!) if necessary, to make sure there's a guard in each of the surrounding areas until it's secured.
* After that's done (in about 30-45 minutes, I'm guessing), re-evaluate the situation and issue new orders accordingly.

Simple and easy. All of, at most, five minutes of thinking about the map. Obviously, I don't have the access to the friendly or enemy activity maps for that moment, which could modify the plan if there's an offensive to stop or weakness to exploit.

The problem here? We don't have the tools to effectively decide on such a plan, nor to communicate the current orders to the players. It's an interface problem, not a map problem.

I forget which GU it was that completely screwed over the deployment options, but if there was any reason to go back to the old system, this is it.

The fact that influence was taken out doesn't help matters either.

Yeah, no.

Everything you just said doesn't mean a damn thing. You wanna know why?

No on cared.

Everyone was trying to warpgate each other. Everyone was ghost capping each other. We could take care of it, yeah. But what's the point? All the actions at scarred Mesa or Ceres hydro or at Allatum.

Oh, and I forgot to metion we had enemy SQUADS at half the ghost capping areas, becuase the other half of NC was at Scarred Mesa.

You're not really wrong, you just weren't there and didn't fully grasp the situation.

If there's enemy squads, it's not ghost capping.

Influence just made things even more complicated. You'd focus so much on one base, while everything else on the map loses to the other factions. People keep acting as if Influence was the premier of strategic mechanics, and no, it just complicated things when you had this many hexes. The games working just fine with standardized capturing, it allows you to properly plan defenses or take backs.

However, I'm ok with influence returning in Lattice. It makes more sense, it's easy to grasp, and it would give a little strategy back. But hecks no, Beta Hex system is and should be gone.

Yeah, it kinda is when NC aren't fighting the TR, who were capping points right under their noses.

Many people seem to think that the lattice is good basically for no other reason than it was in Planetside 1; which was apparently a great game. They are attributing the entire enjoyment of Planetside 1 on the lattice based capture system. However there was much more in that game NTUs, Defensible Bases, Combat Engineering etc. I think Sony would be wise to implement these type of things before implementing the lattice. Just to see if the lattice truly was as greatly designed as some believe. They probably won't unfortunately. Sony has not said they will add anything besides the lattice system. That's my problem with it. It's not a "step in the right direction," because you cannot see the rest of the staircase. Just because they picked one feature doesn't mean they'll pick another one.

Also Go is more fun than Chess.

There's a time in a game companies' life where they need to ignore the players...SOE has done it before in SWG with the CU and NGE...and it bit them in the ***...

At this point...they should IGNORE the forum idiots and let the lattice do it's job unopposed.

Influence was a great system. It allowed mobile, smarter platoons to completely outmaneuver mindless zergballs, slowing them down to a crawl. It made the bases feel connected; in many ways, it made the hex system make sense. Surround the big territories and cap them. Support your own team's zerg by capping the base next door. It gave people more reason to fight over small bases.

But it's just too hard for zerglings and zergfits to understand, so they took it out in preparation for even further dumbing-down.

No, look, this term has an actual definition. Ghost capping is when your base is being captured, you go there to resecure, and no one's there. Who did it? A ghost, obviously. Ninja capping is when one person is in a hex, hides from the resecuring forces, and re-caps once they leave. What you're talking about is simply unopposed territory grabs, in which case, most of the people involved should go somewhere else instead of just padding their stats and cert farming by watching a bar tick down.

Hex influence was great in theory...

in practice is was a giant game of ring-around-the-rosey-whack-a-mole

It's funny because the exact same thing is happening here that happened to the force-sensitive character slot. Basically, even starting a Jedi character was hard.

What do you think happened? The players complained. It didn't meet their expectations; it was too hard, too complicated, too much effort. "This game says Star Wars on it, and I can't be a Jedi! Help, SOE! Please fix it so I can just be one without having to work so hard for it!"

Now? Complicated (and now awfully simplified) territory capture system. Offers alternatives to zerging when a lot of players just want to zerg and are wondering why no one's fighting them. "Help, SOE! Please restrict territory capture to lanes so they can't avoid our overpowering zergballs anymore!"

It still won't work, though, because while SOE can restrict player options in the game, they can't restrict people from not playing it.

Cue the PVE in 3, 2...

I'm very sure people care. I know there are people who keep directing the people in [Orders] on my server (Miller), and they obviously care; I don't think your server's TR faction is all that different. The problem is, they had almost no chance to direct people to do what's right, they simply have no tools to do so. Even as simple a thing as letting people know you have an armoured platoon ready for action at some place on the map needs third-party tools: inter-commander voice comms and a "shared map" software like MapTool.

I obviously don't fully grasp it since I wasn't there and have just the one map to work with. I noted as much in my post.

Not fully true, I had situations were a full VS Galaxy just took off after we arrived with 3 Tanks and a Sundy ... There are organized squads doing nothing but take the point, load up in a Gal and wait ... if 1-3 guys come to retake it, they kill them, if a squad shows up they leave ...