If you could remove Outfits and Platoons, would you?

Impossible, of course. Even if the functionality was stripped from the game, it would simply be (and already is) recreated through third party tools.

But would you, through the magic of hypotheticals?

They aren't completely negative of course. There's the sense of camaraderie, and belonging that comes with a [TAG]. But their impact on gameplay is almost purely degenerate and counterproductive.

The most meme-worthy behavior is of course, Redeployside. Whole platoons materializing out of thin air to turn an even fight into a 75-25 blowout. Only to vanish again at the behest of the voice on the Platoon chat comms.

Have you ever fought alongside such a zergfit? I've done my time under the command of a leader who will look at an oncoming horde of red doritos, and decide their platoon is better suited for that 1-12 fight a few lattice links down. Before that, I had never before realized how boring Planetside could be.

But it's not all roflstomps and vanishing acts. If the outfits do decide to fight eachother, is that any better? How many bases are set up for a 200v200 fight? The Techs do fairly well, but other than that maybe a dozen bases in the entire game can hold a couple of outfits that decide to go to war. It's not as boring, but I wouldn't call the slideshow of 4+ Platoons trying to cram themselves into Allatum for 3 hours any better.

The servers can't handle it when Outfits fight together, and the meta can't handle it when they don't.

Would you get rid of them if you could?

Outfits are fine, but what we need is a draft!

I just log on because i like shooting stuff, on my own. There i said it.

I'd remove the ability for squad members to spawn on squad leaders position. This would somewhat lessen the Redeployisde.

I hate huge fights not because of lower frames per second but because those fights are fairly static in nature. I get more action and consequently certs in smaller balanced fights. Problem is that base designed for 24v24 isn't suited for 150v150. That is why they need to add dynamic control points that become active or turn off depending on player population in the region. IMHO bases should have control point for every 12 attackers in the region. If fight is small to medium then control points will be within base, if fight gets large then there should be some control points on the open fields outside the base. That would give vehicles something to do.

I'm not sure why you would want to. I'm mean everyone is free to solo and if redeployside is the problem you want to fix, it's not the fault of the outfits that it exists it's a purposeful choice by the devs.

The de facto removal of these things had already taken place a long time ago.

They are shadows of what they were or might have been and are nearly useless in the grand "farming" exercise that is PS2.

If they removed outfits, I'd stop playing... period.

Why bother? Outfits and platoons mean nothing, the most organized of them last for about 30 minutes and things just break down or the otherside finally reacts and overwhelms them with numbers, which is all outfits and platoons do in the first place, overwhelm with numbers.

So it's not redeployside you are complaining about really but large fights? Large fights are what the game is all about.

Absolutely not. Teams win this game.

I roll lonewolf 99% of the time.


I belong to outfits for those random occasions when I want to experience some "Holy Higby" moments of half a dozen loaded gals dropping on a base.


They have their uses.

Nope. Take my outfit from me and I no longer play this game. The friends I've made over two years are a huge part of what keeps me coming back. Sorry the game is all about grinding objectives, KDR, and Redeployside for some, but when it comes down to it, having fun with my friends is the main reason why I am still playing this game.

hmmm, well, this is silly, you go up against a well lead outfit, you might as well logoff cuz you'll know asap.
That said, many are not (no names ) , but we're all just having fun right? it doesn't have to be 'oh so serious' all the time.

lol, no, populations win this game, teams just usually put the population in a certain area quicker, theres also a point where at most bases more pop doesn't solve anything because you're already trying to squeeze 100 guys into a room thats 20x20.

its not as simple as that lothbrook, if you could sit and watch it work, you'd be in awe,
there's some very smart people that play, and its amazing to watch them work, numbers mean nothing to them
because 90% of us suck, me included.

I've played with outfits and platoons most of the time.

If you shut them off i would play a different game.

I also find it funny people complain about redeployside
. Its a valid tactic and if you can't counter it, well your faction needs better comms.

Nothing feels better than spawning in 100 guys on a point the enemy thinks they cam take and wipe them from the territory. Silly leet outfit, capping territories is for real players...

If it bothers you so much I hear there is a version of ps2 on ps4 you can play that's all watered down.

Maybe for the NC

if i couldn't change the redeploy that can't be stopped to be replaced by redeploy via airdrop/ground convoy i'd do the following:

*you can see on the map your own faction's squads/platoons in any hex with a strength in number of squads and squads member %, number of vehicles

*you can see on the map your enemies squads/platoons with a strength in number of squads and a general indication of membership (i.e 1-3 light , 4-6 medium, 7-12 heavy), number of currently spotted vehicles, when they are in hexes you control or hexes that you are flipping enough points to capture the base.

*friendly squads/platoon's icon on the map is based on the type of specialty, combined arms/infantry/ground vehicles.

*friendly squads/platoons map markers displayed when within 2-3 hexes of your current position to herd randoms and lone wolves where they can be useful if they wish to be.

Removing outfits would do nothing.

Long before we had guild/outfit/clan/tribe/unit/fellowship/ect functionality in games. Large groups were formed outside the game in question and had their own forums, websites, and sign ups. Much like how it works now minus the ingame GUI and functions. Even as far back as 1998 we had Voice Coms over things like Roger Wilco and BattleCom.

Point being, remove outfits and coordinated redeploys will happen. You just wouldn't see outfit tags. That'd be the only difference.

To fix the redeploy issue is to do the following:

When you die, you can respawn at any facility spawn or sundy within range (say 500m, or if you are more than 500m from any spawn, then its the closest spawn or the warpgate), or any sundy, gal, or valk owned by your squad, and your warpgate.

If you redeploy, you can only spawn where the above allows.

All reinforcements have to be done by transport or on foot from other locations.

Not exactly. It's the undesirable effects of having 50+ people all moving around the map at the behest of a single person that breaks things. You either end up with 300 people fighting over a base that's less than 200m across, or 50 people hunting down a couple of BR9s because they realized "Hey, we can win this fight!".

Ideally, you find a way to encourage even fights without removing the community aspects of Outfits.

I don't doubt it. Without the community provided by guilds MMOs like WoW would have died years ago. So I don't expect them to remove that, or even be able to. But I know that every time I think to myself "This fight sucks.", it's usually because an organized outfit showed up.

But it's an even smaller portion of people who are really good, and really willing to fight. I've seen a few outfits hold off double their number in pubbies. I've also seen those same players redeploy out of an even fight because they were killed a couple of times and got worried about their KDR.

Which I think is the crux of the issues. If you can depend on herding pubbies, it's a lot easier to build great fights. It's why "Instant Action" is a better system than "Redeploy" - the devs can take the fight choice out of your hands and put you somewhere that benefits the entire battlefield.

Unfortunately, that usually conflicts with what I want to do as a player. Maybe I want to farm, maybe I want to join my squad, maybe I just don't want to be crammed into an Indar meat grinder.