"farmers"

I started PS2 not long after launch on Connery... back then I started as a VS but later made an NC toon and have been NC main BR 86 (would be 120 but I keep taking time off) for the most part... I still play my VS and TR characters though BR 46/49 respectively.... I've been around so to speak, spoken with a lot of outfits and been in their platoons many times and personally worked with them... I hear things and see things from more angles than single faction players who only rarely play their alts... heh btw I have 3 toons on Emerald, 2 BR 20ish and an NC in the 30's heh.

I'm disheartened by the state of what I see at Alert time and most other times from particularly NC and TR. The farming mentality is out of control. It seems players are so lazy they'd rather stay in one base and farm for 4-6 hours than take 5-10 minutes to move to a more strategic fight for their FACTION... Some blame this on certain outfits but what is the excuse for all those not in those outfits going right along with the mindless farm?

This farming mentality would be bad enough if it went around evenly but that is far from the case. VS alert triggered, TR/NC stay locked in whatever fight, 70-80% chance VS wins easily (depending on time of day)... TR alert triggered, TR stays locked on NC while moving other units to take bases, VS about 50% likely to respond to the TR but I've seen both VS/TR smash NC to WG during a TR alert... (here is the good one) NC alert triggered, 90% chance that 30-50% of NC pop will remain locked on TR and grind uselessly at whatever useless base, 90% chance VS will respond, NC double teamed and hopelessly outnumbered, Crushed back to WG with about 10-15% chance of pulling a victory out....

Double teams are supposed to happen but they're supposed to happen organically, not based on some bias the ****** bag at the keyboard holds... Whichever of my toons I play the other TWO factions are the F***ing enemy (even though they may still be my friends) and I will work relentlessly to skull hump them as hard as possible whenever possible. I expect nothing less from them and enjoy seeing my friend's toon in the death screen "oooo you som-beetch imma gonna keel joo!" hehe all good fun =).

I keep taking time off from PS2 and coming back its always a bit different than before, outfits come and go, some old players replaced by new, base layouts change and need to be relearned, etc etc etc... This time back it honestly feels like half the population would rather have a game that is like Planetside 2 but with just single base maps where the fight never ends and you can just fight endlessly like a good little mindless zerglet. It honestly feels like 80% of the map is a total waste of space.

Just sort of wish all 3 factions would remember this game is best when it is played AS a 3 faction game... Yes TR is supposed to hate the NC rebel scum but they're also supposed to hate those alien grinding spandex jockies just as much... All 3 factions have reason to hate the other 2 and playing any other way just cheapens the entire game.

heh sorry for the long post.

Kind of a wall of text. But i think people like having fun? Thats why they are playing the game, and a lot of stuff in this game can be not very fun.

Building and attacking the player made bases is quite boring and thats why so few do it.

Standing at cap points waiting for the timer to go down and playing whackamole with the handful of defenders is not fun.

Most people just want a big fun battle where they can kill things.

I dont really care about bases or alerts or any of that clutter. I just wanna shoot other players.

The problem is that with current design of the deployment system(aka Redeployside 2),its very grindy,boring and counterintuitive to play the game competitively on an Alert basis.

You have to have many platoons redeploying every 2-3 minutes to overwhelm a base the enemy is trying to defend/capture by redeploying himself every 2-3 minutes.

Thats just flow breaking-fragmented gameplay.Add to that countering the base capturing motive by K/D stat tracking and 3 billion kills requirement to auraxium anything,and suddenly staying at a nice stable and grindy fight with lots of people to shoot at seems reeeeeally reasonable.

(Possible Solution:Make redeploying cost nanites or put a timer on it or something but you risk annoying newbies and casuals(no offence intended)).

The better solution is to increase base capture times to a minimum of 15 minutes so people can have their farm and still contribute to Alerts. When a base can be captured in 3-4 minutes, it makes constant redeploying a necessity to winning an alert. And guess what, spending 40+ seconds of every 3 minutes of game time doing nothing but watching redeploy screens is not fun - not to mention the time spent dead.

Further, people simply do not have time to learn a base or the battle flow when they are constantly hoping bases every 3 minutes.

Redeployment?

1. Save for AMS or Elysium tubes, deployment options only exist on a lattice lane between a player's current location and the friendly warp gate.
2. If more than one lattice-connected base can count as the local or closet friendly base exist, they are all available.
3. Three fixed options available: closest friendly major base, local or closest friendly hex base, friendly warp gate. Void if no valid location fits the said option.
4. If player is in the hex of a friendly base, that counts as their local or closest base.
5. If player is in the hex of a major facility, that counts as their local or closest base option.
6. Elysium tubes are always available while in the same hex or the hex of one of the previous locations.
7. Bound Elysium tubes are always available from anywhere on continent.
8. All friendly deployed AMS's within the same hex within 300m are available for spawn selection.
9. Vehicles that can be spawned in due to squad membership rules are available within 600m.
10. Squad beacons within 300m are available.
11. Upon login, a player who joins a squad may redeploy once from the friendly warp gate to their squad leader's closest spawn point or any "squad membership spawn" vehicle regardless of previous rules. If the player leaves the squad, the direct spawn option will reset after five minutes of non-squad activity. May only be used once per established squad.

You realize they had long cap timers once upon a time right?

You realize the Alerts we have now would be pointless if they changed the cap timers to that long?

This is where having meta game outside of the cap timer would create gameplay that wouldn't be dependent on sitting camping bases but it's not like people have talked about meta game for years now.

I've played for 4 years and never seen 15min minimum base timers. What do you mean by meta game?

The cap timers at one time at the larger bases where almost 10 mins long (maybe even 12 can't recall), it was a thing they decreased cap timers over the years. With different implementations of cap timers because it became to easy to redeploy and defend when the timers took to long to cap.

Meta game meaning objectives that are outside of say camping the spawn. Say for example having a shield generator outside of the base zone which needed to be fought over which has no tube spawns so people would push the fight away from the spawn areas to other parts of the map. This spawn tube would provide assistance to capture and fight over because it could possible turn the tide of the base fight. Just ideas like that, not saying this is the perfect idea but its an IDEA. Ways to force fights to other spots other than the base your at, which was what I was hoping construction would do but it didn't.

The reason PMBs force fewer fights is two fold. 1st, they simply do not matter much for an alert and are to easy to replace anyway. 2nd, they are too hard to destroy when 15-20 troops defend them. Normal bases will fall with a 45-55% population difference whereas a well made PMB can withstand a 25%-75% imbalance for a long time.

As an aside, that is more realistic because it has been a basic tactical rule for 1000s of years that an attacking force normally needs a 3-1 advantage to win sans a large technology or other gab. In real life, a 45%-55% fight would be suicide for the 55% attacking force.

The reason I think longer timers would be good is so that players could learn a base layout and battle flow better. It would change the alert system, but I do not see that as a big deal. Sure shorter timers mean it's harder to move forces to defend a base, but that just means the learning curve goes steeper, which is the last thing this game needs.

PMB are a waste of time and effort if not implemented into the gameplay somehow properly. I mean time and effort from the players and developers standpoint, but they most of believed somewhere along the lines to implement PMB's because they believed they had something. There really isn't much to talk about PMB's until they figure out what the purpose for them is.

Using realistic practices while describing PS2 doesn't really make sense to me, in a game that is not realistic and more importantly a video game. I would imagine you would design it around creating gameflow where population doesn't consume the enjoyment of the people being outpopulated. Video games are suppose to be enjoyable and if you wanted realistic shooter you would go play Red Orchestra probably not this game as per the TTK's are too high to have realism. I personally like lower TTK's but that just personal preference and hardly would anyone know how that would work in a game on this scale.

I'm not opposed to longer timers, I'm just stating it has been tried in the past and they made them shorter so redeployside wasn't the ultimate go to thing todo. Not that it fixed the issue cuz it still goes on today.

Unless the Lattice bases are re-worked, that is 15 minutes of spawn-camping, or parking around an empty base.
Once the base is secured by the Enemy, unless you are literally attacking the Base as the Defenders from the outside - that base is hopelessly screwed.
And unless something changed; You are still going to lose the vehicle game outside again & again.

In real life, loss means something.
With PMBs, everything is automated, and it's one-sided -- unlike everything else.

So, no, 15 minutes just means 15 minutes of absolutely nothing.
Unless there is a force that was not engaging at all - that could beat it down, that 15 minutes is a literal waste of time.
If you can't take the base back in 4 minutes, You aren't doing it in 15 Minutes.

No defense is going to hold, if it can't last 1 minute, even if given 30 minutes.
Let alone with the bases presently: They aren't breaking the enemy at 4 minutes, and it's a complete camp.
There is no inbetween.

1. If your platoon/squad leads are half competent they can redeploy back to the WG and pull Galaxies which INTELLIGENT players can then spawn in while on route to the new base thus minimizing the time required for normal squadies to relocate to the new combat area..... Sadly many players do not listen very well or this would work better... Some platoons pull it off well but almost all but fully organized outfit platoons have at least a few stragglers that just can't hear or won't listen

2. Again if platoon/squad leads are at least half competent they can spawn on a base near the new waypoint, pull sunderers, one for each squad so each squad has a vehicle to spawn in on route OR just deploy them and THEN call for the platoon redeploy.... Nobody but the leaders have to spend time traveling..... EASY

3. Platoon/squad leads, again of at least half competence, can use rapid transit vehicles (flash/esf), have squad redeploy and wait a moment. Place beacons for each squad, whole squad deploys from deployment screen nearly the same time...

These three ideas are so simple a half trained, half witted chimpanzee post lobotomy should be able to grasp how to manage them in a reasonable amount of time... If these are too difficult for you please do not further contaminate the gene pool with your DNA....

That being said a lot of a platoon's inability to pull off these simple tactics that reduce fighting down time for all but the 4 leaders who's job it is to do the work anyway lies in lack of competence of leadership, non-willingness or inability (language barrier) to listen and just plain laziness.

I guess it also helps that I'm not obsessed with directives. If I want to stay in one map and shoot people I could be playing any one of the dozens of other shooters that have come out over the last 20 years and get near the same experience probably better... If I wanted to just play tanks there are also any number of options that just do tanks better... ALSO flight is done MUCH better in many other games... The only thing that really sets PS2 aside from other shooters is that it combines all 3 in a moving rolling battle that changes moment to moment over a series of bases against 2 different factions with different capabilities. Playing PS2 as anything else makes it really not worth it.

If you make yourself annoying enough in the right places the fight will move to you...