The Problem With Planetside 2...

The title of this post was meant to be misleading just so you would click it. The problem with Planetside 2 is not Planetside 2. It's YOU. When I say you, I don't mean as a group. I mean the choices you make as individuals. Let me explain. (If you don't want to read a whole essay basically, skip towards the end.)

Players in Planetside 2 play it as a game. In a sense, that's the right thing to do, but with a game like Planetside 2, you have to do more. Take an Infiltrator for example. What does he do? The average player would say that it is the sniping class, but it also has another cloak for standing still indefinitely, only draining when they move, but the downside is that they can only has sidearms. Other players may say that it can also be used to sneakily charge bases with SMG's/Scout Rifles. That is all correct. But what I am suggesting is that we do MORE. When we use our recon devices, we don't just aim and shoot it at where we want to know when enemies are coming. When we are sniping with a squad, we shouldn't just snipe who we can. What I am suggesting is that as an infil, you take recon to the highest level you can. You tell people what you see, you use your insight to see what is about to happen. "Guys, there is a MAX rush coming. Prepare." "Hey guys, they are all getting vehicles. Can you do something?" That's the type of coordination we need.

Take a Heavy Assault. The average player may say that they blow stuff up and make other infantry eat lead. That is correct, but they should do more. Hey, if you have access to C4, and that infil says a MAX rush is coming, place your C4 at the doorways, and have a coordinated defense when they rush up. If your recon specialists are telling you whats going on, you take care of it. You listen to your buddies in your squad and even those who aren't and get coordinated.

What about Medics? Notice they are called COMBAT MEDICS! What you do is shoot at people with your Carbines until the moment your friendly drops, then you go pick him back up. You help out your team with your restorative shields. You save them. You really save them.

Light Assaults, what can you do to make Planetside 2 better? Carnage. Absolute carnage. Flank the enemy team and take them down. Coordinate with your other Jump Jetter friends and destroy them. Heck, even use your C4 to blow up Sundies if that is needed. Just help out your fellow teammates and coordinate via Numpad 4 voicechat or squad voicechat.

Engineers, you repair, you lay your artillery down and you fire. You resupply your team. They need ammo, and you are there to supply it. Just be coordinated.

And last but not least, MAX's. You MAX's are the Hulk, but weaker. D-E-S-T-R-O-Y! You protect your team by your heavy weaponry and your high health. Absorb bullets for your friendlies. Tell them to get down and always have your engineer buddy with you to help you do just that.

Now, onto another issue, your mindsets. It's not that all of you are selfish, but a lot of people in Planetside 2 are. Look at the bigger picture. This isn't a 6v6 game where you may be able to 1v1 a bunch of people. THIS IS A COMBINED ARMS GAME! We are to work together to lock the continent, and we should do so consistently if we do just that. Work together. Too many people are focused on getting as many kills they can that they don't realize they are being flanked or whatever. Let's look at the zerg for instance. When you zerg with high numbers, you leave so much exposed as you push back to the warpgate, then get pushed back after they regroup. What you may not realize is that THERE IS A COUNTER. How many zergs have you seen that happen on a 1-12 population when they are zerging 48-96 or 24-48? I have seen way too many of those and they are stupid. The way you beat a zerg is to go AROUND. If you are being zerged, leave the zerg, and go to another base. After you have done that, flank. Most of the zerg will stay at the zerg, while few go to fight you. When you flank, cut them off. They literally just lost there territory. When they regroup and come back to fight, you will want a ton of people to already be there, with defenses set up for them to run right into it. We need teamwork and coordination, looking at the big picture, not to individual kills.

At this point, I want to talk about strategies. Not just any strategies, CRAZY strategies that are actually quite logical. When you get into a base, what do most people do? "Hue hue hue, lemme just run in and gun down the enemy, then if I die I get revived and we gotta slowly push the point. We will get in eventually if we have enough people." That can be true, but it's the wrong way of doing things. How about doing this? Coordinate an assault. Tell your squadmates and friendlies to throw all their nades onto the point at different angles. When the enemies move back or they do not, you push in. You will either have the enemies move back and you push in, or you will kill the enemies and push in. Worst case scenario, ya die. But that's why Numpad 4 voicechat is so helpful. For the people that don't listen to you and didn't push, they will buy you just enough time for you to get back.

Now I know that lots of you are annoyed with various nerfs and buffs. What I am suggesting is that you FUGGET ABOUT IT! Its a new part of the game. Don't complain unless you have a good reason to do so. Take the Wraith Cloak for the Flash. I see so many people saying "R.I.P Flash" and "Daybreak nerfs good things." The Wraith Flash is not dead. Think about it. You are seeing a MBT rush coming to you. All hope seems lost. Then one person suggests a plan. "Why don't we all get our Wraith Flashes, get Heavies and Medics on the back seat of them, and drive past the Tanks and take the base, while our MBT people absorb bullets and distract them? Then we can hack the vehicle term and take a sundy when we get there, while we keep wheeling people over to the base, back and forth." If you can coordinate that with all the Blueberries, Strawberries, and Grapes, you know what you have? You got a plan. Thats what i am suggesting. A Nerf just means a new way to play. It just means it isn't as easy, but it's do able. It impacts the game, but all you need to do is try a new way of doing things. Also, we should network with other squads, other platoons, and other Guilds or Clans or whatever they are called. (I literally just forgot.)

What I am suggesting is that we as individuals take on a new mental state, a state of helping others out, of protecting our teammates, of mentoring new players via voice chat or squad, of listening to our crazy friendlies crazy plans, of trying new things and new ways of playing an amazing game, and of doing what we do best. Fighting this war of Auraxis.

Sincerely,
Scroffel, AKA TetsuyiWST and Tetsuyi

P.S. I was just gonna share this with NC on Connery to make them a better faction, but now I shared it with everyone. It was just a random thought I had yesterday.

I will add more when I think of more ways that we can improve Planetside as individuals and as groups, and zi will post it down here in the comments.

I read this entire thing, wondering to myself why you can't find this current teamwork already implemented. Then I read this...

NC on Connery has notoriously bad teamwork. VS coordinates around the clock, and TR does a great job during US primetime.

If you play during US prime time, then you should search around for an outfit that already coordinates like this.

If you play any other time of the day, and aren't Chinese, then you'll have to slowly build up your friends list and start something yourself.

Keep searching for an outfit. You'll be surprised how much cooperation you can find in this game.

This is true BUT speaking personally, is highly dependent on whether i'm in a squad (almost always) or alone (rare).

I find that my k/d is much higher if I go it alone as i'll play very carefully, usually on the outskirts of a skirmish and pick off my victims minimising my exposure. I do play selfishly.

However - when in a squad, I very much play for the benefit of the team - so i'll be the one who LAs to the enemy spawn beacon to take it down, take time to reach a good spot for our spawn beacon, try to C4 the defended Sundy, endlessly heap my carcass onto a point that is lost etc. etc. It's mostly very high risk stuff.

Trouble is - apart from the knowledge of 'taking one for the team' - the high risk stuff isn't actually that rewarding from a certs or stats point of view. You would do far better to hold back and play support or go lone ranger.

It doesn't bother me at all - I have more certs and DBC than I can shake a stick at, but I know it bothers some people very much...

(I'm not saying you can't play carefully when in a squad - but at the very least if you're following orders, you'll inevitably re-enact the Charge of the Light Brigade).

The problem isn't with the players, but how the game promotes behaviours in them.

For example you say that infiltrators need to speak to their allies and tell them what is happening. But this is a terrible, terrible way to communicate. First of all you can only communicate to people in a squad, platoon or anyone in the vicinity with proxy chat. Even if you make it that you can talk to larger audiences, it also means that only one player can talk. Imagine you are saying "Hey, there's a bunch of tanks outside". Half the players aren't going to be using that info, and the other half will aks themselves "which side, where exactly, how far, are they spotted? If I go there will they show up on the radar or am I too far for that? Are they in the open or behind cover?" etc. And while you are talking, no one else can talk and warn of the MAX crash. Voice comms only works in games with limited players and tight teams, outside of that it becomes instantly useless.

Then there's the lack of reward for teamplay. Sure you can call out "my god a MAX crash!", but what's it going to accomplish? Players will be at their posts anyway, there's barely a thing you can do to prepare for a MAX crash in advance before they arrive as there's rarely a place to change classes nearby nor any equipment or tools useful that won't hamper you against normal targets. The exception may be mines, but there's only so many you can throw in their path and many will blow up your own troops or will be cleared beforehand so... What did your warning accomplish? Practically nothing, as there's precious little teamwork that can really work in the game. "teamwork"="stand near each other and hope you get the kill" in PS2.

Then there's stuff like KD. There's very little goals players can pursue in the game. Capturing bases and continents can be done but the next time you log in that area is from someone else again. KD however is persistent, meaning players prefer to go for that instead. And KD in PS2 is heavily paddable as it asks you to kill the lowest form a player can get with anything you can get your hands on. It doesn't matter how unfair the combat is, like an HE tank vs a doorway of a main route to the point, it scores the same as killing an MBT with a pocket knife (if that were possible).

If you wanted effective teamplay, you need to change the game and not the players. Promote other stats than KD, such as destroying vehicles, dealing damage, getting the most score from assisting friendlies, taking down tougher targets like MAX's etc.
Further, you need to make communication quick, instant and targeted. A player at the other side of a base should not be bothered with the information of a target he can do nothing about and will not even encounter. On the other hand, if that player wants to help out he should be able to make an informed decision. We already have something for this in the spot system. You Q-spot something, you don't need to tell everyone "hey there's a guy over there, looking in that direction, he's at the tree at gridpoint whatever". No you can just spot him and the information is handed over to everyone within a certain radius (300m I believe). Players who are nearby can benefit from the information by looking at IFF tags and the radar, anyone who the information has no effect on will not pay attention to it as they either won't see it or they will focus their attention somewhere else. It's perfect! Expand this to the entire mapscreen so that you can see information on the other side of the continent and make informed decisions based on information that's readily available to the players there and you already have a big step up in teamwork! Ofcourse, this information doesn't have to be detailed (and to save the server from commiting suicide it shouldn't be), but we already have the hotspot system in the game which would only need to use this spotting information and create general area's of enemy movement and enemy type to relay the information you want out of it. Details will come when you get closer.

Further, actual synergy by playing together should be focused on. Currently two players standing close to each other is just about as effective as two players who heavily work together, simply because there's a lack of synergy from actually working together. Create small gameplay advantages that can be gained by playing together, from enhanced effects for using a flashbang on someone spotted by a recon dart to deployables and throwables that enhance effects of the user and nearby players or debuff enemies etc. These teamwork advantages should not require a lot of work, they should be simple and almost instantly executeable without any communication. This is the first and most important step in teamwork, and from there you can encourage players to start working together in more complex and advanced ways by adding more goals and secondary objectives that can be pursued, both defensively and offensively, to get people to start working together.

But as it stands? Blaming the player base for not playing together even though there's little reason to is like asking the grass to collectively grow stronger fiber and hope to dull the lawnmower before it reaches the end of the grasspatch. It works in theory....

You assume people will listen when someone speaks The tactics and coordination you are speaking of requires a group of friends or people used to coordinating with each other, so a core group of an outfit. Everyone else though - not necessarily on the same level.

Secondly - commitment. Using myself as an example, sometimes I stop being a stat ***** and I go full in, if I see a possibility to snowball and start wrecking faces. But Im not going to commit to doing that on a grindfest flank where both teams are just rolling back and forth perpetually, or worse off, are getting pushed heavily. There's just no point, I'll throw a lot of work away for absolutely nothing.

And finally - fun. SOme people don't find the abstract concept of wrangling land from the enemy fun. Some people just want to go on massive kill streaks and feel like Rambo. Or just fly around in the sky wrecking aircraft. Whatever floats their boat, as long as they do not break the ToS.

I'm not saying you are wrong though, people whine far too much for all the wrong reasons. IMHO - you should be able to have fun in any way you want which doesn't break ToS, as long as you accept responsibility for that. If you spent the last 3 hours constructinga base so far behind the lines that you need to book a business trip to go and see it should not complain that their team lost the alert.


Tl;dr - People should not complain about things that they can influence but don't bother.

That is why I was saying that its a problem with the players. If people were to listen when someone else spoke, then you could coordinate something, but no one does listen. And about the problem with the mics, I agree, but there is also region chat, which goes out a little farther. And if there are tanks or MAX's coming, I'm pretty sure people would like to know, or just whatever problem is going down, people would or at least should want to know. Sure, Devs could reward teamwork more, but it doesn't change the mindset of their community to actually want it. They just get something out of it.

PS2 is not designed to give people a quick path to rewarding gameplay if the reward is to win.
Generally we mass to a point and fight to capture it. Capture, hold, repeat. The flow of PS2 is not player driven. Objective options, cert farming, events, population, the number of capture points, and the possibility of an influx of enemies upon capture of a different continent direct the gameplay.

Players have more control than you think really. If we just go where we are told to go via the game giving you directions, we lose out on the other bases we aren't close enough for the directions to change to. If you use your insight, you can see into a situation and take advantage of it. If we make choices based off of that, we control the game more than doing whatever. And yes, outfits and squads and platoons have a lot more of a teamplay aspect to it. I know, I have been in an outfit before, but it went down. We did the stuff I am talking about here. But if we extend that experience to even those who aren't in a squad to coordinate that way, despite the mic issue that Demigan said, we can control the game more. If the mics didn't do the stuff Demigan said and people had the mindset of helping their team, we could change the feel of the game. Sure, people may be at their posts that they want to be at and sure they may not be able to do anything about a tank or MAX crash or that heavy camping the spawn room or whatever, its better that the information is out there than for it to be withheld. I'd rather know something bad that needs to be taken care of than to not know it.

When I am on Connery on NC, if I say something, someone typically responds. "Hey, did you two take down that sundy? It was on the North-West side of the base." "Yeah, we got it." Then I thank them for what they did, and then you work better together. I got into a conversation with a nice guy, and we talked about the game and stuff. Then we started to get attacked, and we worked better together. And I bet that if you interface with other outfits, spread plans along to them, tell everyone you can, then thats something that goes down in Planetside 2. Sure, it may be verbal and not written, but it doesn't matter. What if you made a plan, gave it a name, and passed it along to every outfit, who then passed it along to everyone else in the game? Then you say "Initiate Plan-name" or "Counter-defenses!" and everyone knew what you meant? That would make the game so much better. You just really need to start somewhere, which is why I posted this thread.

The simpler problem with Planetside: It's so called gunplay is a mile wide but only 1 inch deep. That's why its always bleeding players

Also there's no real resource management, it's so blantant when most people's Ammo Pools don't even come into play because the TTK is too short and other factors that should be instrumental in making squad class composition really matter ...just plain don't come into play either. The ONLY TTK they finally got correct (after tons of tweaking) in the entire game is DPS of Anti-Air / Phoenix, and the survival rate of Harassers / DeployShield Sundies

(Stupid 30 minutes editing Timeout)...
What I'm actually talking about here... is that STRATEGY doesn't come into play like the OP is talking about, B/C the public elements of it.... Target calling especially is Designed to be too short-lived for a Reason, and that reason is that engagements themselves are designed to be too short-lived, usually resolving (death) in seconds. You just can't have longer lasting reconnaissance features ... especially Hex-Wide ones in a system designed so heavily around extremely brief & Temporary strategic decisions ONLY

I've got that PMA.

Attitude - Bad Brains.

OP,

It is a very good post and what you says make a lot of sense. There is an "however":

-in a squad oriented game (so anything more tactical than a pvp arena) you need strong coordination mechanisms across the team members and a clear objective to reach. In PS2 the coordination is basically someone saying "go there" / "hold your ground" and there aren't clear objectives except the ones defined on the spot ("let's go to A point")

-this loose coordination can work if the team members known each other and are accustomed to operate In a certain way. So there is a basic stability in the team.

-it gets worse (more complicated) if you put air and ground assets in the fray. The coordination is far more complex and difficult. The highest peak of combined arm in ps2 is a zerg, so a lot of assets thrown against an enemy base. Hardly impressive.

-on top of this, ps2 does reward individual actions far more than team/faction events. If you kill an air or ground asset you get as much score (if not more) than securing a base. If I snipe 10 enemies I get far more score than holding a control point.

So I have a combined arms game with air/ground.assets and infantry coupled with weak coordination mechanisms and a scoring system valuing more individual actions than team/faction contributions.

It is hard to blame players with such scenario.

At the very least the game should PROMOTE coordination by giving a lot of XP to team-oriented actions and far less XP to individual actions, which would require a more sophisticated system compared to what we have today.

Ideally, the game should also have a squad/team oriented game mechanistic (e.g. Auto enrollment in squad at the warp game) instead of allowing solo behavior and associated communication/ coordination systems.

As it is now, the fundamentally confused design of ps2 does only promote solo game play while being presented as a combined arm game.

Thank you for your comments, especially you DarkStarAnubis. What if we do more than just tell others what to do? What if we do something revolutionary? What if we try to teach players a new way of playing?

I bet that many of us came onto Planetside 2, got accustomed to it, and developed new ways of playing over time. If not, guess it was just me. What if we show new players how to play a better way? Then that could be all they know when they first get on. When I played with my Outfit, who, yes, were accustomed to playing like one, we worked well together and we knew each other. If we taught newer players how to work together even with people who they don't know, all because we are all on the same side, it could make a difference in the community. This thread was just somewhere to start for all that I wanted to plan.

Just imagine it! Everyone working their best together in whatever way they know how. The right person shouts out a code-name for a faction plan that everyone knows. They all get into position. The players that don't know are showed the way. They then know. They spread it on to others. Soon, you don't just have fighters or soldiers. You have an army, and you have a faction.

In a real war, everyone is trained. Now, we can't do that online because of the way the game integrates new players, but we sure can try our bests, as Outfit Leaders, as Mentorship Squad leaders, as that friendly soldier who made a difference in your experience, and as individuals. We can at least try it out.

If you see a new player or even an experienced group of players, we can still work together, we can still come up with a plan to take that one base, in hopes that they will try to help out others too.

If we could pull something like this off, the game would be more impressive, if you could take any random player and show them how to play the game cooperatively. If you had plans, stories, and legends floating around the community, told orally or on reddit, that'd be really cool and add to this game something more. Something immersive. Imagine it. What if, for instance, TR initiated a formation, called Breaking Point. We obviously couldn't hear mics as the other faction, but you have seen the plan in action before. You tell a squad leader what is going on, as the formation breaks out. Troops are sent out left and right to counter it. You push headon against the center of the formation and break it up, disperse TR, and they are sent back to regroup, then the counter you just made is given a name. Stories are told about what happened, the battle is recorded as something special. Everyone knows what you have done. You create more formations, more counters are created. Skirmishes need miniature formations and a little coordination from randoms and squads, or just whoever is there. Everyone starts to work together, the new players start to thrive, more players join Planetside, and the game grows. Daybreak gets a flood of money from people who are paying for an experience, DBG grows and expands. Soon we have more updates more frequently, the game continues to grow more popular, and we get more out of the game. Us as players continue to grow, creating more formations, one-time plans, and stories. Certain Outfit leaders get popularized as Legends in Planetside 2. Everyone starts to have more fun, and less people drop the game. We all get something out of it.

Just ask yourself, "What if?"

It DID have that for a while, and it was f***ing AWFUL b/c you'd always have these ABUSIVE platoon leaders who were constantly shrieking for everyone to meet up at the Warpgagte and jump in their stupid *** Whale planes which did nothing but waste most competent players' time. ...most players even back then were way more efficient (and stayed alive longer) overall when they pulled their own vehicles from nearby outposts close to wherever the Platoon leader placed their Way-Point

What the Devs really should have done instead back then, but assign a XP DEBUFF when players fought outside the Platoon designated hex but gave a nice bonus or resource recovery rate buff when they played inside that designated Hex.

And thats why I say that we should try to help each other, because I have been there before, with Platoon leaders yelling at you, and all that redeploying. Thats not beneficial for your team or for the game, to redeploy everywhere all the time all across the map to spam into a base. I told them that I was lagging, and they were just like "Ok then we will do it without you." So that's why I feel it's better to be able to work with individuals outside the squad and platoon atmosphere and show them how to play.

I get what you're saying, but there still has to be a HARD incentives system attached to it otherwise most people will skip it just like they tend to skip Tutorials or big walls of Text

Oh Puh-lease. If by "coordinated" you mean Connery VS just zergs better than the other factions, then sure, they're better. TWC coordinates with nobody but themselves, sucking in all the new players and churning out brain-dead chronic teamkilling lemmings while the few legitimately good outfits that are left are trying to pick up where FPSK left a gap.

The problem is a lack of viable tactics, lack of incentives and lack of leadership tools.

What exactly are you going to teach people? It has to be executeable with below average skill or it wont be useable. And 9 out of 10 of the squad tactics I did and have seen do by outfits relied more on the individual fighting skill than on actual teamwork.
Who's going to use these tactics? If you have the choice of stepping in line for a potential enemy threat or going to a source of enemies to stomp their faces and have a guaranteed reward, what are you going to do? The average player isnt even going to take the time to flip you off and will be beelining to whatever he thought of at the time.
How are you going to coordinate this? You would have to force people into platoons, and then force them to stay near the platoon leader because even right now you'll find most players in the platoon just doing their thing while trying to benefit from someone who makes spawning easier, and just as often they'll do their own thing entirely. Teamspeak for large groups is also useless for anything but broad tactics (zerging mostly), and the detailed information distribution necessary for teamwork just cant be done in a squad or platoon.
Even if you did have the tools for large scale teamwork you are still missing a natural way for Players to actually start using it. The natural way for Players to get into a game's teamwork is: mess about with the game alone. Meet players a few times and have good gameplay with them (requires mechanics that lets them interact with eachother positively regardless of class), try to stick to players they had good experiences with through first squads and the like, then outfits or clans. Only then will the average player be ready for large scale teamplay.

We have a small amount of ectremely crude tools for large scale teamplay, but practically nothing for small-scale teamplay. Its why Zerging is the status quo: it is the least amount of effort with a high rate of success.