The state of PS2 and what I feel must change.

That's why the lattice system has to take into consideration the natural flow of territory. If you see the quoted lattice picture from OrangeSoda he implemented it just right that it took advantage of natural choke points etc. He also called for certain bases to be upgraded in regard to defense. You can't just slap lattice over hex and call it a day. A lot of work needs to go into it, but it can be done.

Th akward momnet when this has more views and posts than higby's post in a day

Ya but in PS1, all you had to worry about to get to the objectives was infantry because once the courtyard was taken, it was an all indoor fight. In PS2 Tech plants and Amp Stations, you have to worry about Infantry, tanks, and aircraft between you and the objectives. I posted a while ago in beta how I thought it's funny how the Bio Lab when from the worst base to defend in PS1 because of the gen being on the roof and the vehicle spam that would prevent you from getting to it, to the best base to defend in PS2 because you don't have to worry about vehicle spam.

First sentence is true, but rest is ignorant. You don't know my PS1 experiences just like I don't know yours. All either of have to go on is the word of a stranger, which isn't worth much on the internet sadly. You weren't at every base capture there ever was in PS1, and neither was I, but a lot of the ones I was at did have a "last stand" feel to it. Upon typing that sentence I realized that we both probably have a different definition of "last stand" lol.

1. there are hundreds if not thousands of equally worthy (if less lengthy) posts on the forums. it's revolting to see that this one gets SOE attention. i guess you need to be some sort of minor e-celeb to get responded to? (sorry buzz, but you ain't TB or Fatal1ty, no offence)

2. i disagree with the no AMS field unless it can be disabled in some way. something with similar mechanics to the SCU or the generators would be fine. but I utterly disagree that it should be a static fixture on every facility and hex. such a change would have an extremely detrimental effect on squad sized play or lower, preventing a highly organized strike team from influencing the battle

3. while your points are well thought out buzz,and i do agree with many of them, you do not speak for all of us. since you are one of the lucky few SOE listens to, i ask that you please remember that/

Great thread - some very well thought out points. The server merger point cannot be emphasized enough and needs to happen soon.

Let me start by saying, I agree with all your posts, I read through all of them and I agree. But I think I need to comment on this first post. The reason people camp inside the spawn room is not because they want cheesy kills, it is because there are 50 tanks outside (or equivalent infantry) that are camping them. To be honest, the firefights can be pretty entertaining (especially because it all comes down to doing natural selection), but we all know in the end the attackers win. Nobody has incentive to defend the SCU because you can't defend it in this situation, attackers are everywhere. And adding a pain field will only make people just sit there and die (give up) like they always do, denying the kills to the attackers (no fun when you are attacking). The idea of adding SCUs to all the bases, that is an excellent idea. So, assuming that is done (and this would work in major bases even if it isn't), instead of a painfield being added when the SCU is down, the shield of the spawn room go down (like when teleporter rooms switch hands in the Biolabs), and now the attackers can rush in the spawn room and the trapped surviving defenders must do a final stand. Perhaps the shields only come back up when the SCU is repaired, either by victorious defenders or by the attackers after they captured the base, which might make for some interesting situations. I would recommend having the consoles inside the spawn room still operational (not turn neutral), and definitely, don't make spawn rooms out of bounds at anytime anymore, out of bounds should not exist in first-person shooters, this isn't football or basketball.

And while we are at it, I think Planetside 2 should adopt what Battlefield 3 did, aircraft should have different out of bounds lines at the edge of the map than ground units.

Well, Buzz makes alot of great points that are hard to argue with. Buzz usually does. I'd just be afraid of the Dev's changing ATON of stuff all at once. They make epic foul ups of minor adjustments, that many changes could have all sorts of unknown consequences, and doint it all at once would mean you could never figure out what went right and what went wrong.

I'd like to see some of the stuff Buzz talks about, but I'd like to see it phazed in a little at a time, so the game/metagame etc can adjust and so we can see exploits and have them addressed.

Great post Buzz. Nail on the head.

Very well said, thank you for your time and effort. You have said what I was unable formulate in a clear well formulated manner.

bumpcutpsycho

Excellent post Buzz. I think we all understand how hard it is to design a sandbox game such as PS2 but these are some very well thought out ideas and direction. We all love the game and want it to be successful.

haha, that's what I was thinking

You twisted my writing or perhaps misunderstood it. I will attempt to clarify for you.

Your opinion is not reality, although I am happy you claim you have "entered it."

When I said "options" I did not mean to ghost capture. What I mean is more bases to capture, period. If I meant ghost capture, I would have stated "more things to ghost capture."

Just because the current system is providing a specific result does not mean that tweaking the system will produce the same result. Nor are all tweaks equal, so you can discard the "we've already tweaked for 3 (8) months" argument. What I like about the current hex system is that you have many more directions to attack the enemy than just two or three. At any time, I know the enemy could be attacking any one of perhaps ten locations. Flanking is an option, for example. It seems one of your opinions is that this high number of possibilities is causing the problem. If so, I agree that perhaps we need to limit the choices or provide incentives to attack a fewer number of choices. I prefer incentives to limited options as I think removing choices can be too limiting.

That aside, just because the current hex system isn't working ideally, it doesn't mean you throw it out. I mean, really... 8 whole months (only 3 of which were in the released product) and it's not perfect? Oh no.

What I do not want, what you're suggesting, is to bring back the lattice system which limited the flow of battle to only two or three possible bases. With the map layout of Planetside 1, that usually meant one or two. Further, I think the current map of Indar would have to be massively redesigned to implement the lattice. Can you imagine a lattice connecting all those bases? Even worse; a lattice with more than 2 or 3 choices connecting all those bases? It'd look like a pound of spaghetti dropped on a map.

PS1's lattice system did create a great metagame; that was a great result. And while it didn't shoehorn anything, it was shoehorned into development at the last minute. It was a quick fix that could have been more thoroughly researched. While the links could be updated, the nature of the design itself was too limited to provide anything but a predictable battlefield.

tl;dr
incentives to streamline probability of battle directions = yes
lattice which provided perhaps 2 or 3 possibilities per battle = no

This is not a sandbox game ಠ_ಠ

This is a FPS with relative freedom and gameplay diversity

How? How would a no AMS field be detrimental to anything? If you're attacking a force of equal size to you then the fight should be fair. But if you expect to go into a base as a single squad and be able to win (By parking an AMS on points) then you are ludicrously stupid. Squad sized play is important, but the attackers should have to run the SAME distance as the defenders do to the objective. Otherwise it's just stupid.
Attackers right now can ENDLESSLY respawn DIRECTLY onto points which makes defending stupidly hard.

This is exactly what I do NOT want. If I'm NC and moving to attack the VS from that upper-left base, this gives me two options. In fact, all VS defense against the NC can be paired down to only 3 bases. And as I learned from PS1, only 1 of those options is very likely (the shortest route).

If I'm NC attacking the TR, I have two options.

That would be boring as hell.

These truly are great ideas, we need to keep this thread up.

I would love to find out from the devs what ideas they are willing to look at, and what ideas have no chance of being implemented. This will save us all a lot of time debating back & forth about certain ideas. There are a lot of drastic changes being proposed in this thread. I have my doubts that drastic changes will get implemented, or any changes not on the Roadmap will get considered. It's hard to get a read on the Planetside 2 devs.

With that said, on the subject of meta game, I think the devs should look at how Dark Age of Camelot did it 12 years ago. DAOC did invent 3 realms RvR, and they went through a lot of growing pain initially as well. But the game to this day is still the best and most balanced 3 faction RvR game, no other MMO's have been able to imitate it.

I think what's missing is a reason to take bases, any bases. People for the most part do it for exp/certs, but that's about it. There's no grand finale, there's no last final battle. In DAOC, because the land was designated, each faction had their own land. So when enemies come to your land and take your bases, you tend to want to go defend them because they are yours. Here however, facilities can be swapped, they are not anybody's, no faction tags own them, no reason to not give up one tech plant for another that you could own just down a ways. Because of this, there's no direction, no reason for attacking & defending, no reason to call out help because the final battle was about to begin. It would really help if certain facilities are supposed to be certain faction's.

In DAOC say you're an Albion and you advance into Hibernia. You would start off by taking towers, then castle fortresses. You have to take all the fortresses in order to drop the defense of the relic fortress. Without taking all the fortresses, the relic forts have super duper guards that will pwn your raids. So if you're able to take all the castles down, the relic fort now is vulnerable for an attack. Everybody in Hibernia would know about it, there's a broadcast, and everybody would rush to defend it. It's a last stand, the final battle. You lose the relic fort you lose your faction relic which gave you power.

There's no final battles in Planetside 2, there are no faction owned land that you would want to defend. It's just everybody going every which way, wherever the action is, wherever the best exp farm is. Continent locking will help people get to other continents, but it still does not give people that feeling of taking something that belonged to other factions. Still no final battle, no last stand. And without this final battle, the 3 faction rule doesn't work.

See when designing a 3 faction system, the idea is that 2 lesser populated faction would band up to fight against the dominant faction. Even if there's no formal alliance, it's to everybody's interest to make sure that larger, dominant faction does not own all faction relics. So say on a server where TR is dominating, it's to VS & NC's interest to make sure TR doesn't go and grab the relics from both VS and NC. Which means when TR is pushing on say NC's relic fort, the final battle, VS would be there to help push TR back because TR gaining the relic means the TR would become even harder for VS to fight against.

Because there's no such mechanic in this game like the relics, you don't see the lesser factions fighting against the larger faction as often. It's kind of everybody for themselves, so you often have a faction that gets warpgated and nobody would give a darn about it. This creates population problems for that particular faction on that server, because nobody likes to get beat back all the time and get warpgated all the time. When people are on the losing side in a FPS game, they change servers, change maps, and in this game they change faction/servers.

TL;DR, the devs would do themselves good by studying Dark Age of Camelot's 3 realm system, it's the best 3 faction RvR system to date. Give each factions their own territories on each continent, this way people know what's supposed to be theirs, so things get more personal when another faction takes them. Also design a final battle, a last stand, something that gives meaning to all the base taking & swapping. Like a very hard facility to take, designed specifically to be near impossible for attackers. Inside this final facility there would be something special, your faction's relic, or in this game call it power generator, tech chip, cpu, secret data, etc.. Enemies would stand there, press E, and pickup this item. They'll have to carry it home safely to capture it....making it like a capture the flag game mechanic. You would of course have a chance to chase the relic down and get it back home.

Gonna bump and hope for a better response from the devs.

a static no ams field would prevent the following (a tactic which i've seen an organized outfit pull a few times on indar)

1 take a shield breaker sundy, and charge through the shields to an amp station, and charge through the shields.
2 infiltrators and the rest of the squad poor out and quickly take over the point.
3 the infiltrators hack and pull a AMS sundy to reinforce the interior point. The entire defense now needs to turn on it's heel and attack the interior point, allowing the attacking forces previously stationed at the walls/perimiter to advance to the generators and get the main attacking force inside the amp perimeter/ up close to the tech spawn room.

if the no AMS field were generator controlled, the the strike team would devote a person or 2 to taking that out before getting their interior AMS up. something that could be done if executed fast enough, or perhaps by an infiltrator before the battle properly begins.

if it was static, the strike team would need wait 2-3 minutes to get the various shield generators down to the point where they could drive their sundy out to spawning range... something that could pretty much only be accomplished against an empty base. it would also even further limit the effectiveness of the shield breaker bus. just think, how many of those do you actually see on a regular basis?


so in the end, this isn't "one super squad takes on the world and wins"
this is "i want a squad to be able to materially effect the battle"