We've had Lattice for about three days and the gloss is already wearing off

Folks are already starting to notice that this system forces highly repetitive, predictable battles. They're also starting to realize that numbers are king and nothing else is relevant. It's been shiny and new and cool for a couple of days and the gigantic battles are kind of thrilling. But they're already taking on a sort of dull saminess - You can only fight back and forth from Indar Ex to Helios in a straight line so many times before you start to wonder why you're bothering, especially since winning or losing is determined solely by who has more people in the lane.

So now we have big, huge, epic battles all the time.

And those battles are shallow, boring, repetitive, and meaningless, all tinged with the knowledge that what you're doing doesn't really matter - You're just one more number if the brutal mathematics. If they outnumber you then you lose.

Add to that - You can't leave a fight. You can't pack in and go somewhere else. No matter how boring the fight in a give lane may be, or how many pointless hours you've slogged back and forth over the same 30m of ground, if you leave now your forces will be outnumbered and the lane will collapse.

There's no way to mitigate numbers or maneuver or do anything except go straight through, so leaving a lane to go do something else puts your team in the lane at a disadvantage. If you leave Indar to fight on another continent you're hurting your entire faction - Once the steamroller starts there's no way to stop it except to slam more numbers into the lane.

Lattice calls to mind Skyrim - Skyrim was a very, very big game. It was epic, it was pretty, it was very flashy.

It was also shallow as a puddle, predictable, and repetitive. The combat had no depth, the quests were all the same, and one cave was pretty much the same as another. As wide as an ocean, as shallow as a puddle.

Lattice has the same problem. It's arguably "Epic" in a dumb, Michael Bay summer blockbuster way - There's lots of stuff blowing up on your screen. But it has no depth at all to give meaning or context to those battles. The battle isn't important. It doesn't matter. If you "Win" it's not because you did something cool or fought better or harder than the enemy - It's because you had more guys. Every time. No real exceptions. Even perfect play doesn't change that - You can be the best, tightest, most masterful squad in the world with perfect tactics and cohesion and you'll still get drowned out by odds as low as 1:1.25.

Obivously I'm asking for Hex back. If we have to cut some adjacency out or something to placate the Giant Team Death Match crowd then so be it, but we've been at this for only a few days and while the battles are occaisionally thrilling they're mostly just repetitive. If you're actually looking at things from a strategic perspective they go straight through repetitive to demoralizing and exhausting - If you've got eyes on the map all the time then the small victories of a successful firefight are washed out by the awareness that the enemy still outnumbers you. If you can see the big picture you know that picture is always a balancing of accounts and if your troop numbers are in the red you will lose no matter how brilliant or effective your troops are.


The tag line is "Massive Combat on an Epic Scale". What we're getting is "Massive Population Density on HO Scale Rails"

Because ghost capping was SOOO much fun.

It's always been this way, but it has only become more pronounced as of GU09. It's just harder to run away now. I'm not saying that's how it should, I'm saying that's how it is.

In its current state I can agree with you. However, if SoE listens to its player base they can make it better. Assuming SoE adds things like more secondary objectives and slightly expand the lattice systems connections (give people a few more options on what territories to hit) the lattice system will be a lot better. In its current state it is far too restrictive and forces smaller outfits to fight with zergs. The big battles that lattice has brought to the game I believe is a good thing for the crowd who likes those types of things. You do bring up a good point that once the newness of a large battle wears off and you realize it is just a numbers game and very repetitive people might start thinking on how to make it better. Also, another thing that PS2 has failed in general is in its optimization. Which makes these large battles hell on FPS and render distance.

The lattice is shockingly bad, i'm getting overly familar with the inside of certain spawn rooms. You spawn there, theres 58 tanks waiting outside. Boring.

I've given it a decent chance but it's just an awful zerg fest, there's no variety to the bases you can play at now. You get 4 hexes down the line with a massive zerg, the enemy reacts and pushes you straight back through those 4 hexes. It's dull

I'd rather the Developers worked on improving the few minor things that need some polish on the Lattice system then go back to trying to make the Hex system work.

Another crying thread.... what a surprise.

Seriously though, this should be closed and a perm crying thread about lattice should tagged.

Well, eventually even the perfect system might wear off. There is such a thing as fatigue.

Why not add a little variety? Why not introduce the concept of game-modes? Some games have Capture The Flag, King Of The Hill and Team Deathmatch in one and the same game.


Currently we have two game-modes running simultaneously.

Different people have different tastes and look for different things in PS2. There's no need to alienate hundreds of potential customers by forcing one group's preference on everyone.

Why don't we accommodate everyone? Different continents have different game-modes right now. We could keep it that way.

Planetside 2 would be a better game with BOTH the Lattice and an improved Hex.

It's either that or an exodus of Hexers and a whole type of player that will never be interested in PS2.

They call this "Duckspeak".

"Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all" - 1984

You're making noises that sound like intelligent speech. A casual observer might even mistake it for intelligent speech. But you're not saying anything. You're just making mindless noises.

They still are working on it. its a work in progress. we all know soe listen to us unlike 95% of other devs in other games.

Thats why his post has twice the "likes" as yours... and I agree with him. Im not saying the system is perfect, but its preferred over what we use to have...

You were saying?

That's kind of a strawman.

Wait, that's THE strawman.
You can't just raise "GHOSTCAPPING !" and deny others the use of "ZERGING !" at the same time.

You can still ghost cap.

See, that's an intelligent statement - You offered a qualified and nuanced statement of preference.

"LoLGHOSTCAPPING" is, and always has been, an attempt to dismiss critiques of Lattice or support for Hex by claiming everyone supporting Hex does nothing but run to an undefended base and huddle there until someone tries to shoot them. It is, and always has been, bollocks.

The Wiki, as always, provides

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9
"Ghost Capping" is a thought-terminating cliche in the truest, purest, most text-book sense.

How about the Hex gets a chance to be further developed? Right now we have 3 continents. One with the lattice and two with the Hex. I suggest we keep one continent Hex and there the Hexers can go play to their heart's delight and the devs can use this continent to further develop and improve the Hex.

Also, one should take into account that these arguments ignore the simple fact that different people want different things out of the game.

The Lattice will appeal to one type of player, the Hex to another. It's not very nice, rational or financially lucrative to force a personal, subjective opinion on EVERYONE if there is a possibility of accommodating everyone the ones who are about to be oppressed.

Hence why we need BOTH.

WWI was epic combat on a massive scale....funny how nobody enjoyed it.

Fix the spawns so I have a choice of where to fight. I don't want to beat my head against a base that isn't making progress, but I don't want to spend 10-15 minutes trekking across empty territory to find another fight.

Do you think this is desirable? That player input is irrelevant and only the number of players should count? Is this the kind of game you want to play?

Vietnam was epic combat on a small scale, nobody enjoyed that either.