[suggestion] low population test server

1. really calling me dude repeatedly. Not helping the maturity level of your arguments. Just saying.

2. Correlation does not imply causation the game loosing players is not proof that the current capture system is broken there are hundreds of reasons for players leaving and most of them are posted on here somewhere the map not being a lattice is not in the top 10 probably not in the top 100.

3. who in there right mind passively screens you look at the map for enemy activity and this is one thing that I actually liked on the test server the increase in the amount of information the map screen provides. That in itself will do more for the flow of battle then the lattice system.

4. I have been in successful defenses both in open field and at facilities one of the reasons they are successful is that right now it is possible for part of your force to flank and cut off adjacency. Something which is much more difficult under the new system.

5. I made my suggestion DO NOT DO THIS TO AN EXISTING MAP THAT WAS NOT DESIGNED FOR THE LATTICE SYSTEM. this is not a fix the way it has been done if they started with a new map from the terrain design up to incorporate the lattice system that would be fine and good I would applaud them for their foresight and embracement of diverse and interesting maps, did you even read my post. But instead they take the most popular map and hack it to pieces in such a way that it does not work. Your point that remains does not logically follow there is no reason they need to change every continent for this experiment and it makes even less sense to start with the only continent that has a consistent and large playerbase. If they did this on Amerish nobody would even realize it until the alert.

6. I agree that they need something above and beyond the individual continent this is not it however it does nothing to address the issues you are pointing out there will still be times when a single faction will outnumber the others and take the continent only now the smaller force cannot outmaneuver the larger they must come straight on

7. Nothing is actually stopping them in the new system except you need to kill them head on instead of being able to cut them off from influence first to slow their advance.

8. so what your saying is that the enemy having better tactics then you "with a single well placed Capture" you want to eliminate all strategies, except the frontal assault, from the game?

9. You think now is a meat grinder? Wait until you have two zergs meet in one of the middle bases both being told by the map that the others base is the only place they can go. The new system adds nothing takes away options and will encourage the meat grinders where only outnumbering your opponent will matter in the long run.

As stated in just about every post on this thread I have nothing against the lattice I just think that Indar is the wrong place to experiment with it. If they want to implement a lattice do it on the new upcoming map from the terrain up with careful thought to base and facility placements so that they line up properly without these long corridors of no cross paths and bases that can physically see each other and are one of the most popular avenues of attack not have connections to each other.

You do not do it with the most popular and consistently populated map as your testing ground. The current maps are just not set up for lattice to even get it to fit they have had to drop 1/3rd of the outposts with more being dropped every update.

As for the second part depends on the situation, and how good of defensive position we have gotten and enemy coordination and tank assets, but this will not stop 200 vs 20 it will make it so that only having 20 people together worthless because it is designed so that everything is a frontal assault where the biggest numbers always win so basically you want to fight with only your own outfit. Tough you still have to join the zerg because that is going to be the only way to take any territory.

-If I don't know where to battle --> so I'll move on the territory with a lot of enemies --> ZERG and unbalanced of the population --> a lot of empty territories
-If I know where to battle (thanks to the pie chart of population and timers of conquests) --> so I'll move in the territories with unbalanced population --> no ZERG, but epic battles in each territories!

The actuall hex-territory system is too dispersive

Actually I'm secretly insulting you, kudos if you've figured this out by now.

You are correct that correlation does not imply causation, but the fact that the Development Team, the people who have access to all the in-game data and are responsible for DEVELOPING this game, feel the need for such a drastic overhaul in the first place STRONGLY suggest that there is a SERIOUS issue with the current system.

Careful dude, your CoDdie noobishness is showing...
Remember, THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT!
The whole reason they are using Indar in the first place is because it was the CONCEPT MAP we used in Beta, which for the longest time was the ONLY MAP we had.
It's patchwork nature of three tangentially related Biomes is because it was originally drawn with the idea that the three Factions would be stuck constantly fighting over it!
Notice how each of the three regions have visible boarders that happen to mark out where a Faction's ideal share of the Continent should be?

And of COURSE they are hacking it to pieces, they just that all through the Beta!
Were you not around when Quartz Ridge was just a single Capture Point behind some buildings along side the road to West Pass Checkpoint?

It's not like these are irreversible, permanent changes that absolutely WILL go into the next Game Update... That's the beauty of working with a Digital Medium, you can easily roll something back to a previous state as long as you have the data.

Flanking is not a Defensive maneuver, it is a Counter-offensive one!

]

Again your CoDdie noobishness is showing dude, you're thinking of everything in means of Offensive.
This is a Warfare simulator and unlike other shooters this means there is more to the game then "Attack attack attack."

...Have you ever bothered with Basic Military History, like the Battle of Thermopylae, or why D-Day was such a big ******* deal?

I will concede that more information is better, but that's just a fact in War.

I didn't say "well thought out," just well placed.

A stopped watch is right twice a day after all, just the same as any idiot flaying a couple of sword around has a small chance of nicking a vital artery of a Master Fencer.

Hey I'm not claiming the Lattice is perfect, that's the whole reason we're TESTING it in the FIRST PLACE!
If that's the case, then maybe their are to few of these "lanes" and we need a denser network or a few more connection.

Problem right now is Zergs actively AVOID one another, only bothering to clash when the absolutely have to.

That normally only happens right outside of a Warpgate, or if there is some tasty morsel of an incentive dangled in front of their collective nose!
Forcing Zerg Clashes isn't a bad thing really, as their cat-herd mentality causes them to naturally disperse if they hit a particularly hard point of Resistance...
Thing is, with the current system that single point of Resistance is just like a Rock in a Stream; the water will just flow around it if it can't pick it up and carry it off outright!
You'd need an entire DAM of Rocks to have any hope of stemming the flow of the Stream, in other words having EVERY base along a boarder readily manned in the event they have to SCREEN an oncoming Attack.

The Lattice however, is like a series of tubes a water pipeline with various safety valves at different points; the Zerg need to have built-up enough Pressure to force open a closed valve (IE a defended base), or else they will be redirected elsewhere.

Yeah okay you need to work on the "secret" part, in case you haven't noticed I have been insulting you the whole time as well. Okay maybe more of condescending then insulting but it amounts to the same thing.

Now I had a detailed reply to your points but my browser decided to delete it so instead I am going to simply ask the only part of my posts that you consistently ignore but is really the only part I care about.

Why do they not simply leave indar as it is and do the lattice on the new map

PS I have never played CoD I have been around here since early Beta and I played PS1.

PPS D-Day and Thermopylae are your examples really and your trying to insult my military history. D-Day relied on the Allies convincing Hitler to reposition his reserves for an invasion of France while the Allies went into Normandy something not really possible in the game since there is no high command. Thermopylae you do realize that the Spartans lost because of a flanking maneuver then retreated leaving their allies to fight the rest of the war on their own? Better examples as an example of a outnumbered force holding the line would probably be from WW1 trench warfare maybe Second Ypres or the Hundred Days Offensive.

The lattice is the best thing that ever happened to this game. I'd love to mess with it more, but it keeps crashing and no one is on...

Since you have proven yourself a step above the common fodder, I shall skip the usual theatrics and straight to the point...

Indar is THE TESTING Map.

It was the first Continent conceived because it gave the Developers a balanced, three-way fight map that they could then extrapolate data from for future map design...
The Warpgate and Major Facility placements allow it to serve as a microcosm of a larger world map using the same system.
(Personally, I see Esamir and Amerish as two-way Continents that are currently set up in such a way that a third Faction has somehow forced their way through the one off-Continent Warpgate, but that's a discussion for another thread.)

Let me spin this another way for you, if they spent all their time creating an ENTIRELY NEW Map to test this new system on and it DOESN'T WORK like you said, what happens to all that time they spent on a Map that needs to be entirely redone from the ground up?

Yes Indar was the testing map in the early beta and if it was just for testing and I did not think they were going to implement it regardless of how this test goes that might be fine but I know and You know they are going to change at least Indar on the live servers before they realize this might be a mistake.

My point is they have made a new map already, its there its done and paid for, it was supposed to be released next month it is ready or close to ready but is being delayed to wait for the lattice system. You have to assume they have put some thought into this system change and it was not just thought up last week so it should have been in the works for awhile. Now instead of building the map for the new system and using it for the test they have spent time making the map and now will have to spend more time on changing the map.

Ok, you lost any respect I had for you with this sentence...

The whole point of this PUBLIC TESTING SERVER is to make sure this new system will actually work under real game conditions.
Now yes, they probably did rush out of Beta and into Launch way too soon and one Continent too short, but this can probably be attributed to development taking longer then projected and they're needing to start turning a profit before Corporate would drop them like a piece of raw uranium.

They're bosses are SONY after all, who've done there best to screwed themselves out of sure money ideas in the past.

Just because they have a draft lying around doesn't mean its by any means a finished product...

It could just be a rouge wire frame 3-D landscape for all I know, have you been on this new map yourself?

Okay let me repeat myself again the continent is done or close to being done it was scheduled for MAY thats next month when they announced a delay less then 2 weeks ago that is in APRIL the beginning of this month citing the reasoning for the delay as that they were going to wait for the new lattice system. What gets me is the implications that they developed both the new system and the new map at the same time and NOONE seems to have thought maybe we should design the new map to use the new system instead they delay the new map.

Whether they released it too soon is besides the point and why they did matters even less. Because they have released it and that means that they cannot get away with some of the **** a beta can, without people calling foul. In case your wondering Screwing around with something this fundamental as the entire capture mechanics of the game on existing maps is definitely one of those things. The only reason more people are not mad at this is because they have not bothered to play on the test server.

Also I do not work for Sony so of course I have not played the new map I am just going by what is announced and what the Devs have told us and they said that the map was basically done and being delayed until the new lattice system was brought to the live server.

Dude, they also claimed that Hossin would be out a "little while after launch" back in November of last year.
They're called PROJECT DELAYS, and they ******* happen!

Its probably at the point right now where they could start finishing it up with a Capture Layout, but still not far enough along that they can easily adapted to either system!

Yes and the "shortly after release" comment was made when everyone was assuming that the game would be released in late February early March oh look May shortly after March. This was the first time they had a specific release window instead of vague soon after release or sometime in the spring platitudes. I don't know about this team but most companies it would be have been in internal testing sometime last month to release live content next month. Which is why I said done or almost done. Maybe I'm wrong maybe they were going to skip testing all together maybe they have spent the last 4 months fixing all the bugs that the premature launch engendered rather then work on new stuff, maybe they ended up on TVtropes and only managed to get out last week for the progress report meeting. But they should have been done or almost done if the announcement date when they announced it was to be believed.

Besides getting back to the original point of this thread before you started attacking me on my dislike of the implementation of the lattice system in an almost Pavlovian response to the late unlamented debates of the Beta forums. Note I said implementation not the lattice system as a concept.

They would have gotten a much better turnout if they had put out the new map on the test server since more people care about things like new terrain then the capture system. Especially since they just follow the zerg and have no idea where the battle flow lines are in this system as it stands now.

I see your point about using Indar, however, that map has been an utter mess since beta and needs reworked. The reduction of facilities is a good idea as there is virtually no room for air and armor to move around. This is even getting even worse with the dramatic increases in lock-on anti-tank.

Hehe, try about 5 continents too short. They should not have released this game without a global lattice that provides area's where 3-way fights are rare, and contains a global hotspot/blackhole such as the Crown.

Personally, I wish pop-caps would come way, way down and more continents sat ready for any incoming expansion. Hopefully then manpower vacuums such as the Crown would not suck in the entire server late at night.

I agree with this guy!

Right now as the game stands, we have the hex system, which allows you to pretty much attack any direction you want. Hmmm sort of like a realistic battle scenario. Maybe you don't WANT to attack the NC in the biolab, because you know they will have 100+ scat maxes waiting for you. With the lattice system, you will have no choice. I'm sure the NC are licking their lips at the coming kill streaks they will be scoring in their biolabs.

The issue with the hex is not the movement options of troops, its the fact that defending has no incentive. I think this is for 3 main reasons:
1. Base defenses are STATIC, they stay the same no matter what. 10 AA turrets, 12 AV turrets or whatever. Engineers really don't improve this at all. we need DYNAMIC base defenses.
2. Attacking bases is easy with a zerg. 40 sunderers, 20 tanks, 10 libs can roll over a base, regardless of the number of defenders. Why? because of issue #1.
3. there is no CHAIN OF COMMAND in this game. Instead we have a squad leader cert tree which allows anybody to purchase abilities to lead troops. Now you have dozens of "leaders" barking orders and arguing among each other. We need a system to select a leader for a period of time, with contingencies in place if that leader isn't the best choice.

I feel the current hex system is fine and can be improved on. Not by the mechanics of capturing, but by changing how the command is structured, and adding defensive incentives. In my sig you can find my post of my ideas. Its a long read, but if you have the time come check it out.I elaborate on ways to promote a unified combat plan, and improve on current defense techniques.

Engineers should be able to team up and add to base defenses by beefing up turrets and adding immovable barriers for vehicles. these should require some time to construct, and encourage multiple engineers working together. Also, medics should be able to create and boost pain fields, to make DEFENDING easier. Such as a pain field in the generator room. It would give you time to pop the gen, but it would leave you with damage to your characters health, giving defenders an edge in defending the generator rooms. Also, attackers couldn't sit in the generator rooms, due to the pain field.

Right now this game is about ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK. one mob of players stomps through the map capturing everything in its path. Once 2 "zergs" clash, its a long standing battle, were the faction with the numbers ends up usually winning. That is not a STRATEGY.

Look at the real/fictional battle we hear/read/watch all the time. Generals commanding smaller forces to defeat larger ones, with battle plans and strategy. Or how about the 300 spartans, who stood against thousands of persians. All of these are commanders rallying their troops under the same agenda. Right now, there is no "leadership". Sure you have outfits leading each other, but what about the mindless "zerg", who leads them?

another issue i see with this system, what about back hacking? What about smaller squads that want more tactical fights, not 200 vs 200 battles? maybe me and my 5 buddies want to setup an AA platform on a cliff near a small base. Well if 200 enemies are there, because that's next on the stepping stone, that kinda ruins the game play a bit.

What about FLANKING??? taking adjacent areas? If i can only move to 2 bases from my current position, that narrows my options tremendously.

DEVs please tread lightly with your ideas, you have so many ideas, so many good ones, but I feel your timing is wrong.

The hex system can still be saved.

This isn't the problem. The problem is that the game population isn't big enough to support a test server with a map of it's scale. Let me explain.

In any game a test server barely even has 5% of the game's overall population. In major games like WoW a test server gets filled up simply because there's so many people but in a game like this you're lucky to even get 400. The problem is the map is so large people are bound to be one continent, another continent, some here. Some there. So while 400 people might be good enough to test features the population is so spread out it becomes very thin. What they need to do is remove esamir and amerish as options and scale down the map to a smaller locale.

If I was the devs I'd try just indar first and if it's still too small cut it in half.

Yeah, I think the issue here is they gave us one of their internal builds to test, so it basically came with everything from the Live version...

Alright then... who SHOULD lead?
And what's going to happen when people don't listen to their Orders anyways?

The problem with instituting Chains of Command in Warfare MMOs is that you either get Leaders people shouldn't listen to because they don't know what they are doing, or Leaders they WON'T listen to because said Leaders are obnoxious, self important ********.

Ok, it's not as Black and White as that, but it is very rare in an Online setting that you find someone people would generally agree on as a Figure of Authority, much less be qualified for a position of Absolute Authority.


Honestly, the issue with the Hex system is that it's TOO open...
Look at it this way, people don't want to sit around at the twelve or so Bases along their Faction's boarders waiting for an Attack that might NEVER come, and even when they do the Enemy just ends going AROUND them by taking another base that isn't Defended.

With a Lattice, if the Enemy just took Base Q, you now know they might push on either Base R or Base N as well as those being the best Bases to launch a Counter-attack to re-take Q.

As for your questions on Flanking; It's still there, just MUCH harder to do.
You can no longer just "flow around" points of Resistance, so Flanking is much more meaningful since it is harder to pull off.

If 200 charge a Single Lane, then while that 20 keep them occupied, the rest of your Faction's 180 can easily push the rest of their undefended Bases.
By the time the 200 man Zerg has gotten anywhere NEAR your Warpgate, which should take them QUITE a while with the new Capture Times, they'll have already been cut-off and surrounded.


Your concerns on Small Squad actions on the Lattice though aren't without warrant, as not every Faction has access to my Strategic Brilliance, but some of us have been brainstorming on things for them to do.
One of the things we've been bouncing around is putting Radar Stations in the current "Neutral Zones" that would determine how well your Faction could Detect Enemy Activity, which would be a perfect Spec Ops Target to weaken an Enemy Faction's Defenses

If you read my post in my sig, you would see HOW the leaders would be chosen. If you ever played battlefield 2, it had the commander voting system, where 1 player would act as the commander for the match, or until they stepped down. I based my idea off of that, and aspects of PS1. Commanders wont be just anybody off the street. They will be people who have put in time, no LOTS OF TIME leading platoons and outfits. If you read my post, you will see i made a requirement for the different Command Ranks or CR. When different players would compete for leadership, players will be able to pull up their leader record or profile and see how many players they have led, how long they have led, how many successful captures/defends they have, and other leadership info.

This would allow players to choose the BEST candidate for that given battle or time period. I was thinking 2 hour time blocks, and then they can re-apply for the next command block. If players hate the way he/she leads, then its simple, don't vote for them again. also, a like/dislike system can be in place to show how popular they are.

My idea is not to promote a handful of players becoming "in charge" of everybody, quite the contrary. Instead select, QUALIFIED players will compete for temporary leadership of the entire faction, thus giving them access to top level orders, and other command assets available to them. You really should read my sig post.

Also there's a video from battlefield 2 to give an idea. The commander gets an overview of the entire battle. Where each squad is, and has a list of assets on coo ldown, such as UAVs, artillery strikes, supply drops, etc. These are requested by the squads/platoons and the commander then chooses how to allocate his assets.

Right now, the leadership system quite frankly SUCKS. All you have to do is spend a few hundred certs and BAM you can now bark orders and place attack/defend icons on the map....REALLY....any jack-wad can do that! My proposed system allows a track record to be created and maintained to show the merit of ones leadership SEPARATE from the Battle rank system. Battle rank, or BR, is a measure of your COMBAT PROFICIENCY NOT your leadership abilities.

I see your point, but you really should read my entire idea when you have a few minutes!

I am not a veteran in any sort of capacity. I really only started playing half a month ago. I truly love this game though and have sunk about 30 hours into it with my schedule which is a lot. So. having said that, these are my reasons for not trying out the new server.

1. An 8GB download. This is a massive download, and for me it is a major roadblock with my cap. I would download the client if reason #2 was fixed.

2. There is no reward for playing on this test server. There is nothing I can bring back to the real game. I have MAYBE 3 hours a day to play videogames. I choose to spend those 3 hours playing PS2. I like gaining certs and making my guy better. That is part of the fun for me. Using my limited time to play on a server where essentially I have nothing to show for it in the end does not appeal to me. I would like to test out the new features, but you have to give me SOME incentive to do it.

So yeah, reason 1 would be nulled if reason 2 was solved. If the download was like a gig or something, I would probably check it out out of pure curiosity, but 8gb puts that option out of the equation.