Frustrated with large battles

So many people think this is the case and are simply wrong!

If you just keeping running down that same choke point trying to get to the point, ofcourse you will just keep wiping. Instead what you should be doing is looking at ways to LOWER THE ENEMY TEAMS POPULATION!

For example: Re-deploy your entire squad to the warpgate, pull a galaxy packed with LA / Heavy / Engi with C4, drop on enemy spawn locations and blow as many of them up as you can. The sit back smug as you like and watch their population plummet! This is not going to work if you are a stat padder, your going to DIE...... A LOT, but atleast you are actually doing something more worth while and giving the "others" a fighting chance. I know this works as its what sqauds in my outfit prioritize and we have influanced sooooo many outcomes this way.

There are certain fights where admitably you are donald ducked (Biolabs spring to mind) but a lot of the time you can reduce that pop and win the fight.

EDIT: Also, i guess Cont locking will do something for the size of fights as things should hopefully get a little more spread out.

Most of the stuff i mentioned before counts for the old indar bases. But still even in the new maps there is not enough space inbetween the bases. Pulling a sunderer and moving it to the next base takes like 30 seconds, which supports the spawn camping. More "non base" structures in between bases could lead into nice fights. For example the building between quartz ridge and indar excavation side A shield generator could be placed inside, which holds the shield to the road to the next base. Several garages behind and infront this structures for sunderer placement etc.
Or maybe a tunnel from these structures to the main base, so infantry units could advance not seen by enemies.

etc. etc. etc.

It does seem like people seem to get into this routine of "alright we HAVE to push through the enemy to get to our objective" rather than looking for alternative solutions when charging into gunfire isn't working.

I think SOE is somewhat clueless with Planetside. The predecessor was mostly about open field battles which ended with an indoor base battle. I'd estimate that we spent probably 60% of the time outside in between the bases. The hills, the forests and the bridges provided a natural platform for the battles. Everything was kept running by Cloaked "Sunderers" (AMS's in PS1) and their deployment sort of dictated the place where the battle was fought. Obviously it wasn't a static place. It moved depending on what happened in the battle. Some areas we had multiple AMS's deployed forming a wide battlefront. The feeling of a huge battle was something no other game was able to provide. It was simply great!

The last 40% of the time was spent inside the bases or capturing towers. These battles could last for hours and in my humble opinion they were the absolute worst part of the game. Lot's of players packed into small spaces where the players who had certed Heavy Assault ruled. It was super tedious for everyone else.

If PS2 has taken something from PS1 then it is the worst part which they have expanded to cover the entire game. PS2 is practically all about base fights where numbers very often dictate the outcome. Yes, SOE could increase the respawn time to highlight skill, but it wouldn't make any difference, because the battles are very lopsided the most of the time. And why are they lopsided? Well, the same reason which killed the battles between the bases is also killing the gameplay at the bases - the stupid outposts. They cover the areas which provided dynamic open field battles in PS1 and their large number is also forcing the empires to split into too many groups which in return causes the lopsided gameplay.

What SOE should have done is to take the part of PS1 which did work and improve that! I would have personally tried to make the open field battles the center point of the gameplay. The bases would have had good defenses at the walls with no stupid teleports allowing the enemy to get inside. Also, by the time the enemy manages to get inside the walls a some sort of power drain would step in and drain the base reserves to zero in 10 minutes. If the defender fails to refill the reserves then the base would turn neutral and the respawning wouldn't be possible anymore. The point is that the refill must be done in the courtyard without any proper cover like ANTs in PS1. Thus if the enemy controls the courtyard then it would be game over for the defender unless they can retake it in 10 minutes. That ofcourse would be quite difficult to do due to the liberators and vehicles. This way the battles at the bases wouldn't last for hours. We could concentrate on the gameplay which Planetside was originally known for!

And exactly there is the problem. Squadleader/Platoonleader right now have to decide exactly 2 things inside bases:

A) to many enemies, so destroy sundys (drops, cloaker flash, light assaults) to lower enemy population so you can do B)
B) push/crash/drop point to stop timer (if they bring in a new sundy you go for A)

In fights outside of bases there are far more options you have... flanking, higher positions, pushing, falling back, counter enemy tanks with air, counter enemy air with flak... but no... all you need is A combined with B

Problem is, there rarely are alternative solutions, especially when attacking. Defender spawn points are invulnerable and can be reinforced by a large force from across the map instantly. Depending on base, attacker only has 1 option and that is to bring large enough force (+60%) to hold a capture point. Only large facilities have the option to disable spawn point, usually after destroying a generator or holding a cap point for set amount of time. Even then the solution remains the same; bring large enough force to hold objective until you can move on to second one and disable spawns. There are no logistical or strategic solutions to this. The bases have infinite power and we all know resources don't matter. Cutting a base off of lattice has no effect on facility functions, other than it might lose the potential tech plant bonus.

For attacker, only viable solution is to have so large force that it can sustain itself, a zerg. Crush the enemy with the sheer weight of numbers.

Problems with this game right now:

- Possiblity of sudden and significant reinforcing of a base, several bases away. Best way is to spawn massive force directly inside and sally. You can spawn from another base to try to relieve defenders from outside but that is almost always redundant.
- No real penalty for being killed. Dying has no effect apart from being out of action for 10 seconds.
- No gameplay that would reflect on the scale of the game; logistics and resources don't exist or are completely negligible.
- Few tactical and strategic options for both defender and attacker. There are no real alternative solutions other than "go to another base".
- All fights are about the number of people involved. Larger the fight, less important individual skills or abilties become.
- No specialization or real progression. Anyone and their grandmother can play every role all the time. Players are not made to make significant decisions.

As previously stated, game is very much glorified TDM without kill limits once you see how the game plays. I don't expect this to change any time soon as I've heard devs state that they don't want to slow down the pace of the game. Problem with that is that they have elements that are suited for slow paced gameplay that don't fit in fast paced FPS. For example base capture: 1-3 capture points with 3-25 minute long timer that starts ticking once opposition holds majority of points. What you'd expect was tug-of-war kind of mechanic, where attackers would have to capture objectives in certain order and would face opposition that gets stronger and stronger the closer they get to last objective. Once it is captured, the base ownership changes. If they wanted to limit the time battles can last, THEN they could either put a long timer that would reward the defenders for holding for so long and/or resource system that would make the base run out of resources unless it is kept resupplied.

You Sir said exactly what iam thinking. For example on the amerish capturing alert last night on Miller, my squad spent 2 hours just redeploying/dropping from base to base every 2-4 mins, just to quickly destroy all enemy AMS and recapturing the point. We barely had time to even attack any base, because we had like 20% population during the alert.
So i guess i spent 50% of my time by redeploying to the Galaxy/Substation instead of having nice battles on the open field or with other designs even in bases.
If we were attacking a (sub)station, suddenly the ragezerg of 48+ redeployed to our position and wiped us, when the timer was getting low.

I think he was referring to the main base itself. Even linking the satellite bases like that only perpetrates the exercise in frustration.

I am currently working on the thought that forcing attackers into indirect methods of access - jumppads and teleports - actually makes the experience intolerable because that disrupts any method of intervention short of storming the captured satellite base en masse. It also leads to the required teleport room camping and eventually jumppad reverse camping that then incites people landing, firing off a rocket or dropping C4, and trying to jump back. Even using the elevator pads in front of the flight decks isn't enjoyable because it's entirely an on-rails affair that throws attackers to the wolves, and defenders feel helpless to push forward so they stand around the edge. It locks in defenders because the attacker's routes lack required mode of transportation that could be intercepted at any other point. The whole process of BioLab attacking and defending is just not fun at its most core level, the empty pleasure of experience counting notwithstanding.

Bring all of the satellite bases closer and you just have the new Amp Stations, with or without the tug of war that are the quickly-changing hard-spawns.

There was no "Heavy Assault" cert in PS; there was Reinforced Exoskeleton but that wasn't a Heavy Assault class by any means. For instance I had a sniper load out that was a Reinforced Exoskeleton config. The Reinforced Exoskeleton simply meant that you had a larger inventory so could carry weaponry such as The Thumper etc.

In my opinion the cause of the problem is not entirely down to base design and how many people it can cope with for the "ideal" fight. It's more to do with dis-organised platoons mainly consisting of randoms (I class myself as one) who are always looking at something to shoot at.

It's human nature: not much "real" group strategy is actually employed much. If there were more thing to do/protect etc.. to thin out the troops in a given area (also maybe additional spawn locations in medium sized bases). A lot of the updated Amerish bases actually employ such design. Unfortunately fights on those bases happen few and far between.

Having been away from PS2 for over a year I'm amazed to come back and find EXACTLY the same crap being *****ed about on the forums. Air's too OP, bases are all copy/paste. Having played a little the last couple of days it seems to be much the same for the 8gb update I had to download. Pity to see the same forum posts I was reading over a year ago.

This is very good point. In PS1 the towers or "Outposts" were there to provide a static spawn point and first foothold for the attacker and first line of defence for defenders. In PS2 these have been turned into entire bases that are connected to the lattice and thus they are as valuable as any larger facility. In PS1 they were not connected to lattice.

I wasn't talking about the armor. It's the cert for a set of empire specific weapons! Jackhammer, MCG and Lasher + Maelstrom. The weapons which dominated indoors and whose balance was under debate in Planetside 1 forums every single day since the launch. How can you not remember that?