The problem with nerfing Redeployside

2) Actualy ghost hacking derives from PS1, where on c-chat some1 would say, 'Ghannon has been hacked' to which some1 would reply, 'im already resecuring - no1 here - it was a ghost'. This new PS2 lingo is incorrect.

Very interesting comparison.
Thumbs up.

My suggestion for a 5 min timer between redeploys was not necessarily a hard number, but you are correct the main reason for this timer is to limit hoping from fight to fight, or using it as an alternative transportation method. While I agree it may be a slight inconvenience, that is the point. As it stands now it is too convenient and players are forgoing utilizing other transportation and just hitting redeploy and sitting on it while they watch the map for a Sunderer or other spawn point to become available close or at their desired destination and then spawning on that sunderer as soon as it deploys.

As for new players many of us have been discussing ways we could give them temporary starter buffs, to help level the playing field vs veteran players, reducing or removing this redeploy timer would be one thing that could be easily done, to allow them to more easily transverse the map or shift from fight to fight, without needing a vehicle.

Thx for the feed back..

Unfortunately Mustard your example is horribly flawed. Have a closer look at the video, it's from a long time ago when there were no population indicators and influence driven cap timers. Buzz sends his entire outfit back because they are all currently unoccupied there is no possible way to tell how many reinforcements are needed nor the time to suss that out either. When the tech plant is minutes from falling, the SCU is down, all satellite hard spawns are down and you don't know how many opponents are present there isn't time to figure out a balanced solution.

We would move squads and platoons based on the appropriate amount of reinforcements needed but only when we had the time to accurately gauge the amount of help needed. This isn't one of those times.

And more the point, that Galaxy resecure? It can be intercepted and thinned out at the very least. The current redeployside mechanics of suddenly spawning a ******** of dudes into a base and crushing the offense isn't counterable.

Don't forget Instant Action and steel rain. It was even worse than the actual Reinforcements Needed

Logistics never mattered. Logisticside is a pure invention of this thread, as it never actually existed in PS2. It lasted for about a month during the beta where you couldn't spawn Sunderers at every single outpost. And that's it.

This thread is just conforting the delusion of Redeployside that it's the best possible situation.

It doesn't keep the game fun, it keeps the game dumb.
Dumb because instead of reflecting on a potential way to balance out the system so it remains coherent on a global scale while offering options for players that just logged in to spawn quickly on the frontline, there's those threads coming up claiming that the zerger the game, the better.

You're condoning the Dumbing down of PS2.

Nerf redeploys, give me the original spawn beacon/squad deploy mechanics back. Problem solved, DA goes on attacks more than 30% of the time again, everyone wins.

Honestly Flap, that's a damn good suggestion. I really enjoyed the squad cohesion and "last man standing" feel of being able to deploy on your squad leader, instead of just at the nearest base they were at. I would be willing to give up redeploy to have that back.

That's a fair point - I didn't take time to scour the internet looking for something to strictly support my argument. Buzz actually has 10 "resecure" videos on his youtube channel, I skimmed and picked one which sort of illustrates what I worry about. Instead of letting redeploy allocate players to fronts in a numerically balanced fashion through limits on how much pop you can throw in a hex, we get entire outfits loading up and piling on single bases.

My concerns could be completely invalid. However, being on Emerald, I see the dangers of zerging to the health of the game. And no, not just "big outfit = zerg" type of complaints. We have entire factions clustering on different continents each night, so you are either stomping the enemy 3:1, or going to a hostile continent to find every base spawn camped. And within continents on Emerald, we have zergs capping around each other - which sadly even the lattice can stop. And my biggest concern with removing redeploy is that we take away options for players to relocate to counter a zerg, and we take away options for players who are in a zerg to relocate to a less populated front. Yes, you can go to the warp gate. But if I know anything about player behavior in this game, instead of going to the warp gate, most of them will simply footzerg it to the next lattice link and keep shooting at the spawn room.

Why not make it part of the alert mechanic. When an alert pops on a continent just make it a no redeploy continent.

1) Goes with a story "factions have blocked teleporter systems on Blank Continent" Now is the time to push the defenders back with our Superior "tactics, tech or shotguns" depending on the faction.

2) Its is small scale 1 continent only during an alert so 2 hours. It could even be scheduled to allow for people/outfits who want to play "tactically" to setup ops time during the event.
a) It could be expanded as needed and warranted

3) When a person wants to switch to the continent can be told "A alert is active this is a no redeply zone. Please confirm continent transfer. Not recommended for casual play or solo play"

3) SOE can test how it works.

4) Players can provide positive and negative feedback aka ***** or praise how it works.
a) Forumside gets a bump in pop.

5) If you don't want to play like that. Then while the alert is on stay on another continent. For only 2 hours at which point it will be over.

6) . . . . .?

7) Profit!

Logistics is the vulnerability of moving of armies and supplies in a way that they can be interdicted, blocked and interrupted.

You could interdict, block and interrupt zergs in PS1 with the PS1 AMS, PS1 mines, PS1 spitfires, PS1 motion detectors.

Logistics in PS2 is just inconveniencing the player by making them walk/drive longer distances, nobody is going to disrupt their walking/driving. Nobody disrupts their walking/driving as it is. All action in this game takes place within a 100 meter radius of the spawn room, all that other flyover country might as well not exist.

Steel rain with C4 & tank mines, no vehicle was safe. Those were crazy days.

All I have to say is that NO ONE fights for territory.

There is no strategic imperative since the only thing anyone cares about is a good fight. There isn't anything else to do.

This is a drop-in FPS and nothing more.

PlanetSiegeFarm2...

I don't know why anyone expects much else from the game since there isn't anything to build upon.

Why do you think that they push the MLG crap so much? There is only personal stats and the individual experience to work with.

Anyone asking for anything more than this is delusional since the present game doesn't allow for it.

1. Quick 'redeploy' = kill yourself; counts as a death, affects kDr
2. 'Proper' redeploy = find nearest spawnroom and 'deconstruct'
3. 'Redeploy'-button = recall to Warpgate(/Sanctuary)
4. ...
5. 'DejaMoo' ;-)

[Suggestion] Add the ability for players(/SL/PL) to bind to a facility, it will always be available as a spawnpoint as long as your empire has ownership.

You are correct it's a problem but you're barking up the wrong tree for a solution.

The root of the problem is a familiar song in Planetside: There's no metagame worth talking about.

The problem is territory does not matter unless a specific alert is running. What's to punish AOD for their usual Autism on Demand where they roll 3 platoons deep into territory that has almost 0 enemy presence (I say this having participated in AOD "operations", not from hearsay). Nothing. Nothing stops them, nothing punishes them for grouping up. So they might as well seeing as they have some sort of inhuman stamina and patience, they never get bored of standing around in empty bases.

We need territory to matter, specifically alongside severe punishments for losing major facilities (lol, AMP stations give empire benefits?) there needs to be the constant threat of if you don't stop an enemy force driving towards your warpgate, you get kicked off the continent. No questions asked. None this driving up to the warpgate then twiddling your thumbs. If the 3 lanes leading towards a warpgate are always important then it's always important to be defending all of it, not just balling up in one lane.

Don't forget that if one faction does choose to zerg it also makes them vulnerable on another front.

As for how powerful and desirable zergs are, yeah, that's another issue. The Resource Revamp should help more than anything else has with that. Right now more players = more vehicles and grenades when it should be less because they're sharing the resources. Of course, if you turn up in a vehicle to help fight the zerg you're immediately outnumbered and destroyed.

And that's another thing, the mission system - if it includes countdown timers as well as duration timers - will allow large coordination of the right type of roles where and when they are needed. Solo players, random squads, less verbal outfits etc. Everyone is on the same page.


You may be one of the players that likes to leave when a zerg occurs Mustarde, but right now the gameplay rewards zerging so a lot of players like to be in them. That's the root issue.

So lemme see, in the Test server:

Territory don't give extra resources.
Respawn now is 10 secs.
Resources ticks every minute(50~60 per minute)
Inside vehicles you don't get resources.
C4 Still 75 resources, 3~4 minutes and you can buy 2 of those.


SOE can i sell my account?

Add SCU's to ALL bases that become vulnerable after 50% cap.

This will allow attackers to kill possiblity of reinforcements close to cap where redeployside is most problematic.

SCU's should always be located either in a room next to spawn or in a room next to a room accessible by spawn room teleport so defenders can easilt defend it

(Apologies in advance for the wall of text. I wound up rambling a bit, but tried to keep the rambling on-topic. Yes, there's a lot to read, but it's coming from a newer player.)

To start off with some context (I'm relatively new, so have trouble keeping track of what's where): Last night I was on Connery, playing Vanu. Not having an outfit or anything, I wound up randomly joining a squad in a fight in the north-east corner of the map as an Engineer (whichever of the original three continents wasn't locked at the time). That did not go well. Our squad leader spent the entire time alone in a Liberator. I wound up randomly finding a MAX and supporting him. Well, the fight wound up zerging, and we kept advancing. I followed the MAX, and kept him supplied and healed. Eventually, I pulled out a Sundie and brought that up to the fight, a little behind because I got lost on the way to the map. And we wound up in a siege position. Eventually, a single Liberator came in and blew up all the Sunderers we had deployed to the area (I think there were 6, plus mine). The entire group (including our squad leader) basically threw their hands up in the air and said "Well, this is boring." Then they redeployed to the southwest corner. An entire zerg redeployed because they felt that was easier than bringing up new Sunderers (in a test, it took about 2 minutes to run back to the base, if I didn't feel like redeploying). I had just gotten my fifth ribbon bonus for the day, so when the fight left, so did I. It left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

Why do I play Planetside 2? Well, because I have a medical issue that causes nerve degradation. I like FPS games in general, but can't aim. I wouldn't be supprised to find my KDR is 1:10 or worse. So I play support. And TF2 gets boring when you spend the entire match repairing the teleporter. Every time. Here, I can feel like I'm actually contributing and being helpful. The problem is that it seems like that sort of mindset has very little place in a zerg. So I often wind up getting bored. That's not to say the game doesn't have great moments. One of my favorites is when a MAX with AA weapons climbed up on a hill, I followed, and we denied the adjacent 3 hexes to any form of enemy aircraft for about 30 minutes. We were out of sight of tanks, and aircraft couldn't get us, so I died to someone actually bringing a Flash up the hill and landing it on me. I don't know what happened to the MAX. Another nice moment was winning beating a pistol-wielding cloaked infiltrator with my knife. Parking my ammo-dispensing Sundie far enough back that a failed push lets our tanks regroup and hold the line to push forward again. The times where NOT being on the front line made a larger difference than a 20 kill streak. It's these sorts of moments that keep me coming back, just because I want something similar to happen.

So, what needs to be done? Speaking as someone relatively new, without lots of experience, you get the sense that the game is saying "Go join a zerg if you want to do anything." The problem is not the massive battles. The problem is not the resource imbalance. The problem is that there is NOTHING to do besides front-line fighting. You're supporting with a sniper rifle, you're in a tank or aircraft, but you're ALWAYS on the front lines. Redeploy is just a symptom of the larger problem. Yes, Planetside 2 is supposed to be about these huge, coordinated battles. But there needs to be something that lets the average random player feel like they're contributing without having to join the zerg. Major assaults and defenses should be done via coordination. The random player shouldn't expect to log in and play a major role in an assault. But they should have things that allow them to be successful and feel like they're having a major contribution without having to coordinate. There needs to be something to do at places besides the dotted yellow line, and that needs to have a visible benefit on the dotted yellow line. That's not to say zerging shouldn't happen. But it shouldn't be the ONLY thing happening.

There comes a point in the life of every long-term when the developers face a difficult decision. They have worked themselves into one specific vision. Unfortunately, players are leaving because they don't like that vision. Then the developers have to make a hard choice: Abandon the vision and make drastic changes, possibly driving away those they have in favor of MAYBE attracting some new blood. Or stick with a current player base that slowly fades over time. Planetside 2 is a follow-up to Planetside 1. And as such, it has an interesting situation. But look at what happened with D&D. Fourth Edition was a drastic change. Fifth Edition seems to have moved away from that, back to what D&D was like before. I look at Planetside 2 and say "This game needs a lot of major changes, and needs them soon."

To get back to the subject of redeploy: It needs fixing. The ability to zap around a full platoon with no cost is a bad thing. But it does provide some flexibility. Here's my thoughts: Initial spawn upon login can be anywhere. Redeploy has a long-ish cooldown (at least 5 minutes). You can always redeploy to the warp gate without affecting the cooldown (it won't put redeploy on cooldown, nor will it stop working while redeploy is on cooldown). The cooldown is continent-specific. This allows for longer timers to shut down spam without (overly) limiting the ability of a solo or casual to find a fight. You can redeploy to any friendly spawn room on the map that isn't connected to something via a yellow dotted line. You can also redeploy freely to any adjacent region, as if you had died there. With this, make squad spawns longer-range (2 or 3 regions away), but not unlimited across the map. This adds a benefit to playing in a squad, but also a risk of sending one person over alone to drop a squad deploy beacon (or whatever).

In my view, Planetside 2 needs four changes to bring back the original fans, and those who loved the original. The first is fixing redeploy, and making planning more valuable. The second is making it so that battles don't happen only at bases, which means fewer bases, and more space in between. The third is making faction weapons unique, and provide each faction with a distinct feel. NS can handle all the generic guns. My suggestions for Vanu weapons are off-topic, but SOE is going to need to bite the bullet and rebalance the existing weapons. It hurts them now, but it gives them more possibilities in the future (if they do it well). It also shows that they really mean it when they say they're working to make the game better. The fourth is adjusting the lattice system, possibly linking only the major bases and strongholds, and providing each one with supporting outposts that aren't on the network, but can only be captured if you control an adjacent outpost. Although you can't take control of an outpost if you don't have control of the "parent" lattice node or an adjacent one (to prevent people from just running around and dodging the big bases). The smaller bases could provide bonuses, like an easier way in or out of the main base (jump pads?), an infantry respawn location, a vehicle resupply base, or something along those lines. It makes dispersing for the little fights valuable, but also permits skipping them to hit your main objective. Thus it allows for small skirmishes and larger battles at the same time, adding more options for both lone wolfs and smaller units to contribute to the war. But the major spots need to be buffed to compensate. There needs to be some reason to hold them.

I guess, at this point, the best idea would be to have a base design competition, then put the winners down on a brand-new continent, where they setup a prototype of all these systems. If they commit that continent to always being different in terms of mechanics (and make it unable to lock, at least for now), then that might bring back some players who left. Also, outsourcing much of the design to the community reduces their development costs, making it less of a risk to them. But a combination of new base designs and the modified lattice system I suggested (which is just a variation on some ideas elsewhere on the forum, I am NOT claiming it is original), plus some of the other suggestions in this thread could make the game into what the core players want.

If I had to summarize this, for the TL;DR folks, it would be two sentences. Redeploy isn't the problem. The problem is that it feels like you can't accomplish anything without fighting on the front lines.

That was all fine and dandy until people started abusing it to kill sundies. Plus you could squad deploy on a dead body which was totally broken. People would also use it to indefinitely be able to set up beacons. Beacon dies, squad leader is dead, squad deploy, pass lead > new beacon up. Too many things that could be abused with it.

A good read. It seems to amalgamate a lot of the ideas floating around on the forums.

I agree with most - although I tend to prefer closely balanced factions and change the way the weapons function, look and sound without actually changing their role or capability (for example, MAXes are not balanced).

Once we get people ferrying resources around we'll have another way to impact the front line. Likewise if redeploy is weakened and people use transports.


An option to redeploy to friendly bases behind the front line on a global cooldown, rather than individual cooldown, is exactly what I'd like to see, similar to the PS1 HART. This elegantly solves the silly "redeploy hopping" where people don't have the option to go where they want and just redeploy over and over to get there, without filling the screen with spawn options. Of course, that would mean local spawn options can only change if you physically move hex otherwise redeploy hopping will still exist.

Squad spawns are a tricky one. We certainly need to stop people from redeploying / transporting one player and then teleporting the rest, since it completely destroys squad transport and avoids the population percent limit SOE added to Reinforcements Needed.

Preventing that is easy. Adding back the usefulness to people joining the squad and, maybe, occasionally getting separated without being abusable is a bit of a challenge. I'm sure it's perfectly doable with appropriate limits though.

Alright, I'll have a shot at it, tell me what you think:

• Squad deploy will take you to the nearest spawn to your SL
• Squad deploy is only available if you are in a different territory to your SL, since it is aimed at people regrouping with their squad.
  • The squad beacon continues to be the option for respawning alongside your SL during a fight. It is only available for players inside the territory or within 200m
• Squad deploy has a squad based timer of 1m to 1m 30s. This allows individuals joining or lost to catch up with the squad but prevents mass squad teleportation and encourages transport.
• Promoting a SL will reset the squad timer (to avoid abuse)

If there are no holes I'll add that to the last system I proposed for changing Redeploy:

• "Redeploy options continue to be restricted to surrounding territories, the nearest tower and nearest facility.
  • However, the options do not update by redeploying. You have to physically move to a new territory.
• All common forms of redeploy (so minus Instant Action and HART) cost a small amount of resources (roughly equivalent to using a grenade, probably best to wait for resource revamp) with the exceptions of:
  • Warpgate
  • Any spawns within the territory you are currently in
  • Any spawns within 150m (to account for being near an AMS / beacon etc. across the border
  • If in enemy territory, the closest adjacent friendly base and any player spawns in that territory (so it'll cost if you're further behind enemy lines with no adjacent friendly base)
• HART system is added, allowing people to drop pod to any friendly base they choose that is NOT being contested.
  • Only accessible from the Warpgate
  • Has a global timer of 10 to 15 minutes.
• Instant Action is unchanged
• Reinforcements Needed now applies to deployed Sunderers in contested enemy territory.
  • Reinforcements option expires when friendly population reaches 48%, whether offensive or defensive.
• Reinforcements Needed options now each have a global queue
  • This increases by 7.5 seconds per player
  • Players redeploying from another territory are subject to this queue for all common forms of redeploy unless they are within 200m."

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...nstead-of-embraced.188110/page-6#post-2727013

Updates:
-Reinforcements Needed should expire at 55% to maximize the number of players in a relatively even fight. (I didn't want it to grow from redeploys before but it'd be too slow to matter).

Yeah, that was far too abusable.