Months back and further, I was of a certain mindset about the demographic of outfits and their leadership. This isn't relegated purely to just Leaders, but Officers and Veteran notable persons within an outfit as well. So my questions to you guys: Which of your outfits were heavily influenced by PS1 Vets and still run in that manner and/or are still run by PS1 vets? What were/are your hardest challenges currently in keeping your outfits going in PS2? What do you think can help with your organization/operation in PS2? (Not necessarily just stuff devs can implement, but community run stuff as well). I ask these as I feel my mindset about the outfits I fight with/against may need to drastically change in the near future. And perhaps we all gain some insight as to why certain things are done and or if they may change.
Never played PS 1. I am a Beta Tester here though. Player retention, but it's a PS 2 wide issue. By the time a member gets to be a veteran who knows all the tricks, he or she leaves the game. A "Division" or "Specialization" category in the outfit menu, along with the "Rank" would allow to know what each of the 30/300 (3000?) members likes to do what without asking everybody. The ability to draw stuff on the map for other leaders to see. The ability for leaders to give missions for each other and lone wolves, which everyone could decide to take or ignore (by clicking the proper button on the popup), would also help empire wide organization. PS 2 is a series of isolated local battles rather than one big war without leaders working together. A subforum for each faction of each server here on forums.station.sony.com/ps2 would also be fun to have.
The hardest challenges for me are keeping the game interesting enough for all participating outfit members, as well as finding enough people to lead squads. Capturing the point is only going to be fun for so long, and officers are hard to come by these days. Pretty much everything BengalTiger mentioned above. I'd also like to be able to set waypoints at the point I'm aiming at (instead of having to use the minimap for everything). It would be nice to have more ranks available. There should be an in-game system for outfit recruitment. People should be motivated more to follow squad leaders' orders, e.g. by giving them an exp boost for doing so (more of a general issue, but still). It would be nice to have more active leader comms outside of alerts as well.
They have created this game to favor large battles, for some this is difficult to embrace because they don't seem to contribute anything meaningful. This is why it's so important for leaders to communicate goals that are obtainable to their soldiers. There has to be a sense of accomplishment, winning/capturing builds fury/fanaticism makes people fight harder, you can then ride the wave. Just like the ocean zergs/waves rise on a indefinite basis. It's not bad to lose vs a bigger zerg, just reform somewhere else and do it all over again. Ya the small squads and tactical groups don't like it and I get called the pro zerg herder and what not, but I'm not looking to fight the small guys, I have a goal I'm getting to where I know there will be a big battle, I'm leading a public 48, I need to keep the momentum and need to keep everyone together for that. Sorry if you get steamrolled. If I have good squad leads and people that can follow orders I can mix it up, otherwise it's the "Purple zergroller of Doom."
A good 60% of our outfit are PS1 vets, I beta tested Ps1, a few of us were cr5's for a number of years in Ps1 most of the rest were picked up in Planetside2 shortly after Tech Test or came from our affiliations with other games such as quake/cs/bf etc (it has to be mentioned that a lot of the people who never played Ps1 have since stopped playing Ps2 because they are disatisfied with how the game is). Apathy, frustration and disinterest a lot of us 'vets' are just getting tired of waiting 'for the game'. Ps1 had so much more content and strategy than Ps2 does at release. We are a year down the line now, promised many things over the year, bought our memberships/alpha squads etc, pumped a few quid in to keep things ticking over, but few of the things we wanted have been delivered, (a lot of things we didn't want have) so a lot of our outfit are playing Ps2 only occasionally at the moment and playing/paying for other games instead. Most of our members have been stung with SC purchases (buying things that were later nerfed into uselessness so much so that generic 'NS' weaponry is more attractive than empire specific) once Star Citizen is released you probably wont see any of us for dust. Its really kind of weird it feels like the number of players scaled up and the ability to coordinate and communicate scaled down (since ps1) we absolutely need at bare minimum, separate per continent command voice/chat. We also need a way to broadcast to all connected friendly territories (as we had in ps1). The warpgate sanctuaries should have a large billboard that players can interact with to browse outfit recruitment, or to find a squad. There should be a ticker tape/news thing showing latest captures/defenses by outfits/squads. There should be in game support for teaming up with more than one platoon with discrete chat/voice channels for these ad-hoc alliances, and enhanced map information for participants (SL/PL positions etc) this would make the largest difference to coordination and communication meaning that our operations do not interfere with the 'global' chat allowing us to coordinate without distraction or interfering with others play.
1. No real connection to PS1. 2. Wear and tear on squad and platoon leads is somewhat high. People do it as long as it feels fun, then you notice you could actually do something else then just look at the map for 85% of the gametime. Additionally you have the normal MMO challenges. 3. Better lead tools (Same problems still exist from beta times and been pointed out numerous times). PLSL only cosmetic items that you have automaticly while in that role. Leader upgraded sundy with smoke/flare launchers and UAV. Overall PL and SL tasks need to be less of a sacrifice of your personal game enjoyment. Outfit decals and camo that becomes available when in the outfit and disappear when you are no longer in it.
Not an outfit leader I am a Lt. General in the Blue Lions. We're a large outfit on Mattherson. I am XO of operations. There are four above me in our outfit, but I am quite vocal so stepping up to answer your questions, since they're actually quite good.
I'm gonna compile a few recurring issues now and then. 1) Vets 3, Non-Vets 2, N/A 2 2) Hard time keeping things fun for an outfit to keep up retention. Stale gameplay is leading to player attrition. Loss of willing/able Leaders often a setback. 3) More Outfit and Squad/Platoon organizational tool required. More to be added as other recurring issues appear. I'll also add Praetorian Guard now. 1) We had many PS1 vets that began initially. Now there're just a handful of us. Luckily, our leadership structure and, mostly, organization style have survived the transition from PS1 > 2. 2) As mentioned, biggest issue is keeping players. We took a blow after this last Holiday season where people just decided to move on. We had to do a zerg style recruiting drive to up our numbers. While our, gameplay wise, quality has suffered, the quality of people we have is excellent and so our overall ability will only increase with time. But again, it's always a fight to keep things fun for players. (My Pov) All the ins and outs, odds and ends that we could strategize and implement in PS1 have been replaced by Respawn here, Respawn here, Respawn here. Very few battles are prolonged and enjoyable because everything is so fast paced. IMO, that faster pace suits a smaller game where shuffling forces around a map has a bigger impact. Here, if you're not shuffling a platoon+, it's hard to impact anything w/o a great deal of skill. I have nothing wrong with being a smaller unit as a bigger zerg, but it's not something I want to have to do 100% of the time to have an impact on the grander scheme of things. 3) See Above.
We don't have any planetside 1 vets. Most of our senior officers started playing after PS2 was released. Maybe a couple played the beta. We always keep an open mind though. Before lattice, we acted like an aggressive recon force that would gal drop a base and hold the point until it could cap. After lattice we adapted to the changes in gameplay and focused more on making a decisive impact in the large 48+ vs 48+ battles. Burn out. What we do to win requires a lot of focus and coordination. People need to take breaks from it and go play other games for some casual fun. In order for us to win, it takes a lot of focus and concentration on the squad leaders so they burn out first. People see that so even though we have many members with leadership potential, they choose not to take the reins. A major contributor to that burn out is the current in-game system for leadership. Waypoints and smoke isn't enough. People in my outfit want a ARMA style map system where we can double click on a point in the map, cycle between different icons, and be able to type in a custom label. Make it so that squad leaders and platoon leaders can do that with the map and make it visible to everyone in the outfit. I know this is far simpler than the mission system SOE has planned but simple is sometimes better. The players in my outfit and I aren't really looking forward to the mission system and we don't think we'll utilize it much. The mission system seems more catered to inter-outfit teamwork which doesn't really happen, even during alerts. We'd rather have a better system to help the different squads within our own outfit coordinate better. I really think that SOE should follow the example of CCP and EVE Online and more actively encourage players to seek and join outfits(the planned in-game outfit recruiting tools are a great start!) and give a better interface and tools for those outfits. It's not going to be the gameplay that keeps players in PS2, it's the communities formed from being in an outfit that will.
I go into a bit more detail as to would I'd like to see to help with organization in this thread I made in the suggestions forum. https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...rnative-add-on-to-the-missions-system.182764/
I'm not a leader, but I'll answer this nonetheless (and this is of course just one of many many things): We really need a way for all players to mark targets. Spotting only works within 200meters (or was it 150?) of other friendlies and isn't very spesific. Basically there is no way to scout and relay info in this game. If you find a high-priority target like the enemys main spawn sunderer or just an advancing tank-zerg while flying around you currently have no option but to (A) describe with words where the target is, which is annoying and ineffective or (B) have the squadleader have to micromanage the squadlead over to you so you can set a waypoint, and then you have to give the lead back - which is annoying, inefficient and time-consuming, not to mention likely to get you killed while doing it. What is needed is a simple button that "shoots" out an invisible nodamage hitscan bullet that generates a marker (with your number on it). It would work like any other waypoint, except it should be less obtrusive on the HUD (just a simple double-circle with the appropriate squadcolor/number to identify who placed the marker). Also visible from the map. The marker should deteriorate after some time - say 30 or 60 seconds just to clean up old markers that could clutter the map over time otherwise. Now this allows a sniper on a hill, or an ESF pilot to mark a target any time needed without ever going into any menu - and all you need to say is "i found that enemy sunderer guys, It's tagged alpha8". Squadleaders should also be able to do the same thing with all the waypoints (via different hotkeys) so that the only time you need to actually use the map to set waypoints or mark locations is when the target is far away or out of line of sight. Also I might want to add that the spawn beacon mechanic needs an overhaul. Currently it kind of works I guess, except for the fact that you basically HAVE exploit the mechanic and cycle the lead around to various squadmembers to replace lost beacons or set up new ones in forward positions. If you don't then the beacon functionality is very "gimped" compared to what you could otherwise do with it, and if you do exploit this then the official leadership of the squad gets handed everywhere and people get annoyed with having to mid-battle go into menus and change stuff around. It just adds a ton of unnessecary annoyance factor, especially for squad leaders who have to try to lead while half the time not even having the leadership. This needs to be made consistent - either disallow hot-swapping like this by not giving the new leader a beacon until it goes off cooldown (which would be a huge nerf to current squadbeacons) or just allow the whole squad to deploy beacons as needed (still only 1 pr squad obviously) and basically retain the gameplay as-is, but without all the annoying micromanagement. (or rewamp the mechanic entirely by doing something different with it...) Oh and lastly (sorry for the ranting) - let anyone "invite themselves" to squads just like how squadmembers an suggest people for the approval of the leader. /squad join playername shoudl just send an approval-message to whoever is the lead of the squad that that person happens to be in. I know my comments are a bit more focused on squad-play than "managing an outfit" but.... this does play into it too since outfit leaders are often squad/platoon leaders too, and the less annoying it is to lead the more likely people are to keep leading. -Stigma
To my knowledge none of our leaders played PS1, although some our members did. Because of this, we have not been influenced by PS1 in any way. Many of our members have simply left PS2. Our largest issue has been having enough involved players on to have fun, and getting members that wear our tag but are un-involved to get involved. A better platform to reach our members through would be nice, as a message of the day and outfit chat just doesn't cut it. As mentioned above, many of our members refuse to visit our site, or get on TS.
not a leader.... but definitely an advisor so..... I'd say what's different is, lack of purpose. 50% or more of what my outfit does now is straight up trolling at this point. Farming's too boring. And high-BR members already got everything unlocked they really want at this point. Yeah it started out with real aspirations.... it swelled well past 1500 members. It even has "tactical" right in its name. Yet there's just been no purpose. The casual players never play enough to make a full platoon anymore. And filling those slots with Pubbers is just completely pointless with how terrible the average NC pubber is. And a single squad can't even begin to influence resources or the outcomes on a continent like they could in PS1 nomatter how good their K/D might be in some random hex... All they can do is go straight for the Social "presence" aspect which means using all the leadership tools for highjinks of varying degrees of intent.... I have no idea what would really help at this late stage of decline. Sorry.
First a small background of my outfit Quantum Dawn on Waterson (US East). We are a medium size outfit of 170 players currently and we play both casually and hardcore. Most nights we get a squad going while our schedule operation nights gather 2 - 3 squads throughout the couple hours but never more than 3 squads at one time. Which of your outfits were heavily influenced by PS1 Vets and still run in that manner and/or are still run by PS1 vets? None of my officers, including me, have played PS1. We started during beta with the mind to run a community based around this game. What were/are your hardest challenges currently in keeping your outfits going in PS2?Like many outfit leaders (OL) I also have trouble keeping spirits up. I try to balance the game with nights were we run hardcore focused operations, nights where we run around in tanks listening to heavy metal or do impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and some nights we just run around soloing. I try to get involved with all the community events including the server smash and outfit vs outfit community races. However casuals do not run often with us and the hardcore only plays one to two nights a week. I try to be on as much as possible however other games and RL take precedence to PS2. Still I am very fortunate to have the membership in my outfit that has stayed strong this past couple of years and I know we will continue onto Planetside 3 whenever it comes out. What do you think can help with your organization/operation in PS2? (Not necessarily just stuff devs can implement, but community run stuff as well). Like above posters I would like to draw on the map exactly the route I want my squads to go. Often I either have to lead them myself or use the smoke to guide them. Also I would like to see games or better alerts like capture the flag.