This is what I hate about Redployside.

You see a base with 12-24 enemy pop so your outfit pulls a couple of Galaxies and drops two squads on the point. You have your spawn beacons up and if you're lucky you managed to hack a terminal and get a friendly Sundy into play, or maybe managed to keeg a Galaxy in the air for your team to redploy from. You had initial surprise so you take the cap and set up a good point defence, mines and turrets placed, doors and choke points covered.

The enemy engages and it's a good back and forth fight. They know what they're doing, there's a hard won battle over the Sundy but they get an AV Max and a couple of Heavies into play and take it out. They make a push on Cap but thanks to your Medics and some coordinated fire you manage to hold them off. There's less than 30 seconds to cap and it's been a great fight on both sides.

96+ deploy into the Spawn Room. Half of them pull Maxes and zerg the cap. Sure, your mines, turrets and grenades take a lot of them out, but one by one your squad starts to go down. The enemy you kill just respawn. There's so many of them that the frame rate, lag, and hit detection has gone to sh*t anyway. If by some miracle you manage to keep your entire squad alive and on point during the zerg, well--they outnumber you by so much that the cap turns in their favour anyway regardless of your presence.

So much for tactics, training, skill.

Seriously this.

It's hard to find small-mid size fights when you have to dodge friendly and enemy zergs. These days, I don't play with platoons and I avoid all alert continents.

Blame the lattice for this. It was seriously the worst thing ever put into the game.

Before lattice there were loads of fights to choose from - massive ones (the biggest fights I ever saw were in the Hex system), medium one, small ones etc etc.

Now, since most bases have just 1 lattice link and ZERO options for changing the angle of attack when there are fights they are nearly always MASSIVE. And because there are only about 3-4 open places for battles on the map at a time, ALL those places have MASSIVE fights (particularly in alerts).

Under the hex, there were far more options and players were generally spread out more.

Totally agree with maxkeiser here! I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand the mechanics of the lattice system or how it changed from the hex system but the fights were many and various before it came in. Now I spend more time switching between my characters trying to find a decent fight that doesn't follow the same tired old pattern - or any fight that I can actually join - than actually playing the game (or so it seems).

That's not lattice issue. That's game allows you to deliberately spawn across the continent just because there is "reinforcements needed".

The problem with the lattice as it currently exists is that the developers weren't listening to the pitch. When the players who promoted the Lattice were promoting the Lattice, they pitched the secondary objectives that allowed to disrupt bases further down the lattice lanes than the front, and the gradual process of disrupting a single base somewhere on the lattice so thoroughly that it was rendered neutralized and could be captured by anyone. These are core Planetside Classic mechanics that elevate the concept of lattice above a stifling one-way street, fostered by a small group of relatively defensible bases with signficant encounter distances in betwen them and the meaningless to continental capture bases (towers in PS1) that allowed for smaller encounters that had nothing to do with the lattice. We were even considering how daunting base defense was when faced with any sort of significant population when pitching these thoughts.

All that was delivered was the barebones lattice. They completely ignored these secondary objectives we talked about, things that could actually spurn battles irregardless of the lattice that did not immediately lead to cracks in continental control. It took them a long time to even consider the resource revamp which, as written-up, was going to provide these secondary objectives and they still pushed that back until a future iteration of the system. The details of the second phase were even left murky ("when we get there").

In short, they keep putting off the real work that needs to be done, the kind of work that could have made people not hate the hex system for its indulgences. They had real problems understanding how to control the freedoms of a pure Hex system that were abusive to defenders or any population that had a disadvantage, and they failed to understand how the lattice was intended to simulate the freedoms of the hex system, by creating a balance between the power of large battles and the power of small battles in the fight of continental conquest, and only created a system that was abusive to attackers.

In retrospect, it's always felt like then-SOE now-Daybreak takes way too long to do simple things and that keeps cutting down on doing harder tasks. I can appreciate if they're following a cautious iterative testing procedure of some kind (permission to laugh granted) but at some point you have to stop and ask whether the process is getting in the way of the progress.

And if more bases are under attack (via the hex system), it's harder to redeploy smash a singular base without taking away from certain fronts.

Its more than just the lattice. The lattice doesn't help, but remember that before the lattice system, ppl were ghost capping all the time, which made the game equally boring.. I think the lattice is a good thing. there are still plenty of hexes to go to. Its not like every player is funneled into 1 or 2 hexes. The REAL problem is the redeploying mechanics. Sure.. they have a system in place that PREVENTs you from redeploying into a base if you already have more population. but that system doesn't work very well for numerous reasons.

Say you have a nice mid sized fight with 12-24 vs 12-24, and you guys are attacking that base. teams are pretty fair. at 50% vs 50%. Now for whatever reason, maybe a few guys from your side show up with some ESFs or a Lib.. whatever,, and all of a sudden, you're fighting 55% vs 45% in your favor. This now allows them to have ppl re-deploy into their base. If an organized outfit leader tells his members to redeploy at the same time, the game isn't programmed to check and say "hold on here, only 10 of your 48 members can redeploy there" NO.. it just lets everyone go and then by the time it realises "oh ****..this is bad" pop is already 12-24 vs 48-96 (30% vs 70%), Now the server won't let anyone else from the larger team redeploy, but its already too late and the damage is done. But, even tho it won't let anyone else redeploy, if in that 70% pop, there are squad leaders who have members in other spots of the map, they can just do squad deploy to end up spawning there anyways and completely bypass the "population check" system.

So, in theory, even if the system worked better and checked the population in real time and prevented players from redeploying if it knew that enough ppl were already redeploying, Organized outfits would easily bypass this by only having 4 ppl per platoon redeploy. AKA, the squad leaders, and then have everyone else do "Squad Deploy" which would end up with the same result.

So bottom line is, Redployside is a huge problem.. and IMO, the only way it can be fixed is by adding a resource cost to spawning outside of your current hex (whether by redeploying, dying, squad deploying) and increasing the resource cost, the further away you spawn. furthermore, adding a 10 minutes before you can do that again. Redeploying to Warpgate should always be free and never on cooldown, and instant action should also be free but share the same cooldown as redeploying (but can teleport you to a fight on any continent).

Yeah, when they announced the lattice system, I was ALL for it too! because I also played PS1 and I knew how GREAT the PS1 lattice worked. When I saw what they did and connected every single base to the lattice.. I was horrified. The lattice should have only connected the large bases.. (Biolabs, Techplants, Amp Stations ect) the small bases needed to remain off the lattice, like the towers in PS1.. This was a BIG mistake IMO.

Maybe they should just make a bunch of tiny maps so that battles can be predictably busy.

I agree, would be more interesting to see several inbound galaxies drop with 96+ instead, at least it shows they planned for it. That and you get to crap your pants longer for those seconds before they unload on the base!

Numbers will always almost always win most fights in PS2.

There are always exceptions however.

A well coordinated platoon can defend an attack on a Biolab against upwards of twice their number.

There are a couple other bases out there that have Spartan like bottlenecks that allow for a small, well coordinated force to defend against overwhelming odds.

I have to admit, those type of fights are the ones that I like most.

There's nothing like being in a squad/platoon who's leadership knows what they're doing.

You seem to remember a different game from me. I recall all the usual zergs and smaller forces... and they usually just left if you arrived and gave them decent resistance - and hit a different base somewhere near you, ignoring your set-uop defenses completely.

It was a game of mobile defense and attack where the zerg forces would just chase each other around the map, ignoring any strong point or, if they had to engage you, hit you where you were strong only to back off and hit yet another base if they could not break you.

It was terrible, because the art of defending and preparations meant nothing, the enemy force could simply ignore you and hit any other location. Lattice changed that, and with clear lines of attack you could go to that one base they can go to next and prep a defense - or send an advanced force ahead, say an infil team- to soften the next base and disrupt the attempts at setting up for you.

The only problem with the lattice is that it forces the zergs to hit one another - exactly as intended. But because you end up with a zerg vs zerg battle you get all the issues of the game struggling to keep up.

Basically, the lattice is the lesser of two evils. I'd sooner have this system than that endless ghost-chase that characterized the early system.

And so game goes back to "whack-a-mole". No thanks. Stop beating the dead horse.

If you guys have problems fighting at big fights thats YOUR problem. Go find a lesser fight elsewhere, you're not forced to stay at certain base or even continent.

The problem is not about lattice, PS1 had it and it worked fine. PS1 had no redeploy hop as we currently have and players had to use logistics and transportation to reach certain areas.

So basically your response for "no thank you whack-a-mole" is for that group to play whack-a-mole? Honestly, the lattice didn't even remove the whack-a-mole mess, only limited the number of areas it can occur. Now you want to make the whacking part longer to get from mole to mole rather than forcing people to quickly disperse and engage multiple moles at once. Which do you think is more fun... Traveling to a fight or being able to quickly enter one of dozens of fights?

Why are you looking for small skirmishes in a Massively All Out War Game?

I swear...people...

People don't disperse. They will still attack at numbers at certain area. But with lattice system it became predictable and I think it's good. Because when there was hex system there were zergs just circling around each other, avoiding each other and good fights were more like a rare occasion. Actually... with whole this Repaintside that was the hex system the fight were only at one single place - The Crown. Other areas were just futile to defend, because if you appear to defend contested outpost, attackers would just move to the next area and so chase begins. And that's in my opinion is terrible, because it was exploited and it will be exploited.

The point of the lattice system was to remove the chaos and empire warpgating.
The problem is, the Devs linked every single base to it!
All the small outposts need to be removed from it, and turned in to Hax linked bases.
That Lattice should only link major outposts and main bases, everything else should be like towers on PlanetSide 1.

The problem with Redeploy and the map is that the spawn points are based on Reinforcements needed.
So if an outfit or large squad decides to capture a major base, the spawning system will make that base spawnable from nearly any location, even off continent. Only Instant actions should have this Ability.. Bring back the Steel rain over spawn room heroes..
I Believe the Redeploy should only link to next base connected to the current lattice link you are in.
So you can redeploy to 1 base in any direction as long as it's the same track as your current location.
Other than that, the max distance it should travel is from you current location back to the Warpgate, no where in-between.

The other problem is, a lot of the new generation of PlanetSide 2 players will not like travelling great distances "On their own", too many new players are lone wolfs and solo players, who I don't care for that much.
There is a huge number of things new generation of players don't like, i,e they want this game to be more CoD like..
So any thread about slowing their Travel time, or introducing PlanetSide 1 stuff (that hinders their solo ability) in to PlanetSide 2 is just flame bait for these new-school players, who only care about kills or area style play, rather than actual gameplay and tactical team/squad play.


This doesn't mean much to players who have never played PlanetSide 1 when it was in it's prime.. But Nothing in the 2 and something years I've been playing PlanetSide 2, compares to anything near as good as the battles we had on PlanetSide 1.

Though techically the map were smaller.. the layout of the bases created much better MBT battles, and desolate areas in-between each base created huge conflicts when each empire was rolling out tanks, and catching each other at terrain chock points. (i,e Mountains, bridges, rivers..)

But since PlanetSide 2 has no chock points, it just a Straight line to the next base, it just creates a huge Zerg from point A to B.. which is always influenced by an outfit, and the zerg lasts as long as the outfits interested in that area. So the Zerg dies out after 2 or 3 bases because the outfit moves on.
And the fact that every spawn point is campable by a vehicle just makes this game worse.. The Tunnel system in PlanetSide 1 is what really distinguished the players, and gave us a break from players who only want to farm in Vehicles.

Redeploying isn't the problem, It's the "Arm Chair Generals" squad of 12 not being able to farm the 12 random guys at a base.

PS2 is about massive battles not useless 12 vs 12 fights, if that's what you want why are you here BF or CoD are way better for this, there are even F2P games that do this. I think this may just not be the game for you.

Most ppl don't mind the big fights. This is an MMOFPS as you pointed out. Redploying and Big fights are not the same thing. ppl shouldn't just magically teleport to create the big fights. The big fights should be created with convoys of vehicles, Tanks, Sunderers and Galaxies fully loaded with troops.

In its current state, PS2 caters far too much to the solo players, which in turns becomes extremely exploited by organized outfits. So many times you die, only to wait and stare at the map to see where can you instantly teleport to next to grab a cheap win and exp. This game has become all about redeploying to whatever cheap fight you win to make the most certs as fast as possible.

Most of the good large scale fights don't even last due to this very problem. Instead of having a large fight that could potentially last 30+ minutes, one platoon will eventually decide "**** this large even fight, lets go for a cheap easy fast win" and redeploy out of the fight, leaving the rest of their faction in a now uneven battle, and doomed to be decimated. Redeploying constantly ***** ppl over this way. one minute you're doing good, the next half your faction decided this was taking too long and left you behind to go capture a base they can capture in 2 minutes instead of 15 minutes.

THIS simply never happened in PS1. part of the reason is, redeploying was not out of control in PS1. Also, the bigger and longer the fight was, the more EXP you'd gain for capturing / defending a base. in PS2, the exp gain from capping bases is static.. which is pretty ******* stupid... especially considering they've had such an amazing system in PS1.