What defines a good outfit?

Sounds pretty useless to me.

No, it is certainly not.

As a platoon-leader you can control:

• the target
• the resources
• the nature of the attack (rock, paper or scissors)

What you can't control is every single player, but unfortunately that's exactly the trap that many leaders fall into.

Back in Planetside 1 as a commmand-rank 5 player you could give global commands to the whole empire. I did this for about a year for NC on Werner Server. What I did was actually very simple: I told people via global chat why it would be a good idea to attack this base and not the other ones. Once the "Zerg" arrived at the base, I gave them simple pointers how to cap such a structure.

That's it! It worked perfectly well, because people were convinced that they were doing the right thing and the results confirmed it. Everyone had the right to ignore this of course, but a lot of people didn't. So in an essence it was democracy at work. It was voting by doing. Outfits or any other structures were not needed and maybe that made it so attractive for the random casual players.

Part of the problem in Planetside 2 is simply that the global orders are restricted by the timer. If this channel was open, some guy would eventually come out on top and get the general acceptance of the empire without having to force anything.

For goodness' sake, if you haven't got anything nice to say, then don't say anything. So what if outfits or squads, in terms of team-play, aren't overly required? Outfits and squads are in this game to encourage a more social aspect to playing; that players can choose to play with their friends, or establish an outfit together to feel that they have a purpose in this game, and play as a part of a group that defines them in this game.

Go to the outfit recruitment areas of this forum, and take a look at some of the pages there. The positivity and buzzing Community spirit in those threads makes outfits more than worthwhile; showing examples of friends playing together and enjoying the game together, and being kind and respectful to one another. That is what matters. Who cares if outfits and squads have little or no tactical relevance? It's a freaking game, and games are supposed to be fun. I see being friendly and sharing your game with those close to you enormous fun.

If you feel that PlanetSide 2 doesn't have the tactical element that you'd like it to, then I'm sorry. If it doesn't tick the right boxes for your interpretation of fun, then I apologise. Though don't come here, spouting your unwanted negativity. If PlanetSide 2 is such a bad game in your eyes, then don't play it, and don't come here being unnecessarily gloomy.

¿Comprende?

This social rule applies in a situation when people don't want to hurt each others feelings. It does not apply when you analyze something. If you cut out all the negative stuff, you will never see the true picture.

If you cut out all the unnecessarily negative stuff, the discussion will be far more productive, instead of simply being gloomy and depressing. There are negative aspects to each feature in this game, just as well as there are negative aspects to everything. Though when you heighten them and dismiss the positive side of things is when comments become disagreeable. One should always look at the negative side of things, though it is easy to take one's negativity too far.

Doesn't matter how strongly you believe this, you are wrong. If this context the rowers needs to focus on rythm and not constantly on the guy infront/back of them. Going off-rythm even from a movement might lose you the race, which is why the team leader's job is to allow the rowers to have a singular focus on following just the right rythm. You don't have to look at the other boats, you don't have to consider the others, and you follow the pace set by the team leader.

Essentially, it is teamwork and leadership. Each team member focus on a particular goal, be it macro or micro goals, which creates a stronger team. Remove one, and the whole team suffers, and to measure it like you do is the exact opposite of being a team player.

I can guarantee you, if it wasn't for the rules of rowing competitions, they would throw the guy out of the boat to save weight and come up with another system to synchronize. The guy in the last seat can see all the other guys in front of him also

Sure it can bring a social element to it but it is getting REALLY old seeing people say "oh my goood it's cause you're not in an outfit" or "our team always wins through communication and strategy!" Like get the **** outta here we know Outfits are total useless crap setting aside the social part.

So in your view, we should replace all coaches from all sports and put that responsibility on a player who has to focus doing his already, physically and mentally, taxing job right. Yeah, that'll be super-effective, I'm sure. I wonder why no one has thought of this before. I'm sure you're just ahead of the curve.

Depends entirely on your playstyle. If you want to farm, an outfit or squad will only slow you down. Better players will snatch your kills and worse players will drag you down. Unless you want to farm in a vehicle that has more than one seat.
If you want to play the objective, an Outfit or at least some coordination is absolutley necessary, especially when attacking.

Not in this case. The person he is talking about is actually trying to hurt the game in a small way. He literally has nothing good to say about FPS's or PS2 at all. He hates the game and the genre. It would would be like someone who is into sports going to a SciFi convention and calling everyone nerds and the works there pointless.

You'd be able to see this if you see his other posts. (and everything beyond this point does NOT reference the person I quoted)

Anyone here can tell why squads, platoons, and outfits are needed. Its so you can work together as a team and coordinate through chat or voice. Its very simple, if your opponent has a team and you don't. You lose. If they don't have a team either it comes down to numbers or luck. If you want a skill based competition you go work as a team and sometimes you get to test yourselves by fighting another team when it pops up.

There's really only two types of players.

1. Objective based players trying to win.
2. Non-objective players trying to pad stats, certs, or directives, and don't care if they win or lose (in fact they prefer stalemates and meatgrinders).

Those in group 2 aren't 'wrong'. Its just a different playstyle. But they at least need to be honest about it. Its actually quite ironic. Most objective players don't care about non-objective ones. They're there or not there. They don't really impact anything (other than filling the forums up with complaints). But the non-objective ones try to hide their status around excuses and personal attacks. In fact the only one's who think its wrong are the ones who do it. They act with guilt.

Course you all have seen me deride them on occassion and that is due to them really making complaints every freaking day. I don't give a damn about how OP a liberator is for example. But they have been droning on about it for 3 years. You know what I do (and other objective players) do when a Lib flies over head? I get in the building with the control point and defend it from attack/counterattack.

But a non-objective player can't stand it. If they're infantry based they see 2-3 people in the air, getting certs, getting a higher KDR. And they want them on the ground to have 'a good fight'.

It was said best... objective players should work in teams. Non-objective shouldn't.

So if you're stat padding, cert farming, directive farming, or in general a solo player. This discussion literally has nothing to do with you. Whatever the outcome is, it won't affect you.

Know what I do when I see an enemy liberator?

I tell my squad to kill it. And then it gets pelted by missiles and explodes.

Boom.
Leadership.
Teamwork.
Victory.

Case closed.

If you think its worth the effort. But if you want the base, I prefer putting my peeps on the control point.

I mean, if we're already on the capture point, or very close to it sure. I'm not gonna have my squad abandon a defensive position to go shoot at a lib that can't impact an indoors capture point. Otherwise, even if the lib isn't firing at us specifically, killing it will help the team. No one expects a liberator to go down to ground lock-ons, especially not the lib crew, but when you have 5-7 heavies firing at it in unison, suddenly that liberator is in world of hurt.

You're an objective based player.

If you weren't. You'd probably be whining that your KDR wasn't higher then that Lib crew.

Nope, don't replace all coaches, but make sure that the coaches know who did the real work. Besides that, the guy in the boat isn't necessarily the coach.

Once again, the typical leadership on a squad-level in Planetside is a player playing his own game and asking the rest of the squad to follow him or to do the same. That's it. In an essence it is commented gameplay, where the decisions of that person do not get questioned. If he decides to run into death, people are supposed to follow like lemmings, because that's what discipline is all about. If this guy sucks as a player, the whole squad will suck and in the end he screams at them, because they failed.

On platoon-level it isn't much different. You usually have guys from bigger outfits do the job, who simply got into the position by being nice and friendly, in other words because of sympathy. They are just average normal video gamers who may be working as a postman or a butcher in real life, whatever. It's like, let's have random Joe Doe lead us today.

In the end it comes down to a simple point: Many of these so called leaders aren't more qualified than the guys whom they are leading. In some cases, they are even worse in any aspect of the game. There are exceptions of course, but in such a case you will never have anyone complain. The trouble only occurs when the leaders are showing signs of incompetence, so in a way it is a self-regulating system. This bring me back to the outfit that I was talking about. If the "charismatic leader" is leading, everything works out rather well, if he doesn't the whole operation immediately turns to ****, so that the best decision would be to simply quit.

Lots of outfits put their events up on youtube or twitch. This is a nice opportunity to look what is going on behind the curtain.

When you watch these videos, look for some pointers:

• Are they playing on less populated continents, especially during alerts? If yes, then the leader usually wants to exploit 2:1 or 3:1 advantages or even ghostcap bases in order to create the illusion of success.
• Especially during ghostcaps, monitor how active the command channel is. In a situation where you could simply go afk and win, they usually keep up the pace to the maximum, so you get the illusion that there is something going on, while in reality nothing is happening at all.
• Sometimes situations come up where infantry-based outfits fight vehicles, for instance Lightnings on a road. Note how much time and effort they spend with their whole platoon of roughly 40 guys to destroy 2-3 Lightnings. That's another illusion of success when in fact 40 guys killed 3 guys and even took a couple of minutes to do so.
• Last but not least, you usually get the chance to take a peek at the map during such videos. Always look for the population count. If the outfit in question usually fails in 50:50 spots, it's absolutely clear that they don't perform better than random people.

These points are more true when you consider the larger outfits. Numbers gets stacked because they want to include everyone. I wished there would be some indication of when a large outfit rolled out, similar to an open challenge to other outfits. I know there are a lot of players who want this, as for them it would be a way to get;

1. Recognition. Ego plays a part in games and sport, even if you are a good sport about it.
2. Better fights. Most players in the smaller(2-3 squad outfits) who focus on team work actually look for long odds and being outnumbered. Strats/tactics do matter in this game but it takes some effort, and most who claim it is useless never actually try to do something about it OR are simply too jaded to care. In this sense, they'd see who the outfits are who run these type of outfits.
3. Increase outfit rivalry. In other games you recognise good players names very easily due to fewer numbers, and I PS2 needs something like it. Indeed, it would be pretty awesome to see which outfits are present in a fight rather than simply listing "96+."
4. We'd also be able to spot who the outfits are who overstack on numbers versus those who don't, which like point 2 would make it easier for players to avoid getting stuck in such outfits.

Currently the game is too anonymous, you, and your outfit, just ends up being lost in the numbers and random encounters.

I see your point, but for me it is a moral obligation - at least for the most prominent outfits - to participate in alerts.