Ugh, lattice is boring

I know we're stuck with it now, and I guess it serves its purpose of creating big battles, but I'm so bored fighting in the same places every day. It's like I'm fighting on the old Crown except now I don't have a choice to go anywhere else. Anyone else wish we had the hex system again?

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/a-solution-to-the-lattice-hex-issue.130282/

An old thread but with valid points. I Believe i made a recap on page 7 too, so you don't have to read through the whole thing

Hope I do not come off as ragey but the HEX wasn't boring?

I played Hex a whole lot back in the day but I could go hours without finding a decent battle. As soon as the battle started other guys would be back capping them or us. It was a terrible style of combat and only worked when the continent was full but the fights were so spread out it did not feel full.

However I do not want to come across as a Lattice super fan cause I'm not. The links are terribly designed. Having only 2 links to a base, which means you have to attack it and their is no way around, imo was terrible implementation and honestly does not seem extremely thought out.

I also am not a fan of most of the hybrid ideas flying around. Lattice is fine if done right...this lattice is not that.

I dont mind the lattice so much as the maps. I dont like new Esamir and i have reached a peak of Indar from which now on it goes downwards. Finding so many bases boring. Only 40% of Indar is fun.

Hex needed 10000 players per continent to work properly, Crown fights were the symptom of us not being able to find a proper fight.

Imo the best way to solve this mess is to make lattice connect only big important stuff which coincidentally is exactly what PS1 did. Do 3 shacks in the middle of nowhere deserve being a part of the military network/territory control? It's ridiculous that a ****** outpost can stall entire platoons.
Map in PS2 works is very much like the territory control medieval times. There were bigass castles, strongholds and villages. Villages never granted territory control, because they were utterly indefensible and anybody could just waltz in an take them.


The problem with the hex system stemmed from the fact it was profitable to run in circles, avoiding each other. Sure, not as profitable as meatgrinding in intense battles, but still it was a respectable gain considering the low effort. Flip the point, put 6 dudes on it, base is yours 1 minute later, ca-ching!, move to the next outpost, wash, rinse, repeat. If you sucked *** in combat and scoring 2 kills/minute was a pipe dream, 0 risk cap xp was the best thing available.
Remove the concept of worthless bases located every 300m that can be flipped for a non trivial amount of xp and you get rid of the problem entirely. These outposts should provide support like spawn or vehicle terminal but should be too small to bother for anything bigger than a single squad. That's how you create secondary goals for people who don't feel at home in 100v100 meatgrinders, if only for fps reasons.

Old Esamir was epic good stuff and so much fun. It beats constant Indar-side. Now, Esamir is an unplayable senseless mess, so aside from the times we get enough people on Amerish, its just the same old Indar-side. As boring as it might get, it still beats stupid new Esamir.

RIP Esamir.

Not exactly. The problem was that there weren't enough players on each continent to force big fights. Immediately after the Waterson-Jaeger merger, there was no running in circles. Then numers dwindled. Then circles came back.

The current lattice is a ham-handed attempt that forces people along a very limited number of lanes and into stalemates at the usual choke points.

Worst thing about it now is that all movement is predictable and people will cherry pick where they want to fight.

Goddamn I hate going after Allatum, Crossroads and Indar excavation site. There's always a billion people in there just waiting to camp every bottleneck and spawn point.

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/meta-jumpbridges-yes-eve.127580/#post-1753614



Eve Jump bridge






PS2 Jump bridge

Nope.

So you are saying that if you have a ****ton of people that makes all bases overflow with people, big fights happen? Well duh. But not every time is prime time with login queues. I can bet my left nut that even then, when the load dropped to 50% of primetime (night, early afternoon, whatever) there were these circles happening all over the place.

You have 2 ways to force battles:
- hard way: literally force people to meet eg with lattice links pretty much destroying the strategic layer completely. Pure unadulterated, mindnumbing crap but that's what we have.
- soft way: decrease the number of points of interest. Fewer points of interest = the value of each one is greater and they are more likely to draw people in. This is the smart way, people don't feel constrained by the railway stations every 300m forced upon them. The available primary goals are less numerous, but how you achieve them is entirely up to your wits and skills.

If you have 5 territories and each side has only 1 squad each, the chance they meet is low because there is no real incentive for that. Hunger for battle may be enough of an incentive for you but in general it doesn't cut it, people may opt for a 0 risk xp farming and will avoid confrontation.
Reduce the number from 5 to 1 or 2, well ****, magic happens!

I created a big thread about this problem not too long ago. And like someone else mentioned, only large bases should be connected by the lattice. Smaller outposts should not be part of the lattice.. Now.. This could cause ppl to resort to ghost capping like they did pre-lattice, but a simple adjustment to xp gained could fix this. If capturing a base or an outpost only provided xp based on how much "fighting" was accomplished, to capture the base, short undefended ghost caps would give negligible XP while large 30+ minutes fights would provide increased XP rewards. That's how PS1 worked.. I don't know why they standardized the xp gains in PS2 but it really makes no sense as capturing something that's completely undefended should not give anyone experience under their belt.

So if only large bases were connected by the lattice, and we reduced the number of small hexes / outposts, as well as change the XP system to what I proposed, players would still have a good idea of which large base might be attacked next while still having the freedom of attacking any smaller hex/outpost based on strategy and not on gaining easy fast exp from ghost capping.

Pretty much. The maps were designed for 2000 players. If they are not full, lattice or no, ghost capping in circles.

We see how well Amerish fares without lattice

I think I liked the hex system better than the lettuce. As a platoon leader it was much more involved making decisions about enemy movements based on cap and def timers, enemy numbers and natural geographic funneling etc. The lettuce has taken all the fun out of that aspect of the game, the great game of chess is more or less finished. At least on Indar and Esamir it has anyway.

I also think it was a necessary evil though. At the end of the day the fighting units using the hex/influence system for grand strategy were vastly out numbered by massive pub zergs actively avoiding each other in order to secure ghost caps.

It's a shame. The original vision the devs had for this game was awesome. The lazy and spineless masses however ruined it and it quickly became necessary to herd them with artificial means in order to ensure some actual fighting happened.

yes, i am just saying that the number of nodes is a big factor and that you don't have to force premade routes on people, cutting down number of bases would work even better.
If you have 5 worthless hex territories between facility A and facility B or you have 2 minor rails connecting A and B you can as well skip the nonsense, get rid of these hexes and these microrails and say that from A you can go to B but everything in between is fair game. It's hard to avoid each other if your only overarching goal is to get the other facility. Given that the lattice locks bases if the other end is contested switching places is impossible so there is no benefit in avoiding.

I loved taking the Tawrich-Xenotech shortcut as an inf who had no business in hanging out with huge armored columns and to this day i curse the overly rigid lattice we have :/

false dichotomy. Amerish has more problems than lack of lattice, despite having the most interesting bases.
1. it's not Indar
2. it's aggravating to mech users (tight serpentine roads turning tanks into ESF food)
3. it's not Indar

nah, ideas are dime a dozen, execution is more important. Not taking mentality of the average gamer into account is a design fail, especially when you specifically cater to people with ADD who feel at home in Modern Duty: Call of Battlefield. There are too many bases, period. That means 1. their importance is watered down 2. it's easy to avoid by going the other way. Cut the number of territory related bases in half and you will see big improvement.

I don't really wanna spread what little playerbase we have out more.

Lattice was implemented before players had a chance to figure out hex.

Lattice wrecks replayability and player control.

I was wondering...perhaps lattice was implemented in order to help with performance issues? When the game only has to track people in certain places, are resources freed?

This.

Main bases should be linked via a lattice that you have to move along on sequence. Outposts and towers should be cappable at any time by anyone, their benefit being the resources and the spawn point. This game needs to put more emphasis on fights for main bases, not getting stuck all day at Quartz Ridge because Indar Excavation Site is absolutely impossible to take off the TR.