What happened to these "long battles" we were promised.

I remember now why I wanted to play planetside so badly, and why I left so abruptly. The devs can do whatever they want to try and keep the players or bring more to the game, but honestly, all the times I've played I've never seen an area taking longer than an hour or two to take. I expected before the game was released (mainly due to higby talking) that it would take a multitude of hours, heck even a day or two to capture a facility and in my opinion, that's exactly what I wanted. Planetside feels like a glorified battlefield (save for the gunplay, vehicles balance and aesthetics). I don't want to have to get on planetside, quick drop, take the area in about 10 minutes and drive to the next one.... Does anyone agree that the facilities and territories should take longer to capture? I mean they are continents and all...

hopefully we'll be seeing them with the changes to indar going on PTS. I haven't been able to get on during the focus tests to check though because i've been sleeping during that time :/

The planet we fight on is well... lame. Auraxis the first TR colony, but were are the colony buildings? Where are the cities the ruins of outposts and equipment.

At Vanu Archives was hoping to see well Vanu tech. I mean heck Command and Conquer did a better to show off alien tech.


Every building in game is built by the all powerful "NS" master race. Heck the VS even try to fill their armies with this tech.

I mean this game lacks soul or background.

This game has soul,

Are you kidding? I have seen a lot of really long fights in this game. I was involved in a battle at Allatum last week for about two and 1/2 hours. And the funny thing is I logged off for several hours, came back on and they were still there fighting. And they were still going when I went to bed so I have no idea how long the fight actually lasted. LOL When I came on the next day TR had control so they had won at some point during the night.

Revert this game to beta and you can have long battles.

The longest I remember was like 3 hours, right now we just roll in numbers by the safety of our indoor gameplay.

Lattice should fix it. People will have to be more direct and run into each other more.

This game is simply too fast-paced for long battles to happen. Battles in Planetside (1) often DID take hours on average (especially on weekends), and sometimes lasted days on end. I remember fighting over the same piece of Ishundar all 3 days of a Memorial Day weekend once. That all happened mostly because the pace of the gameplay was significantly slower.

But the devs probably thought that the modern day FPS crowd (ie Battlefield players) wouldn't like that.

Soe is trying to get rid of the long battles.

They are going to make the crown an absolute nightmare to defend and a cakewalk to take.
I am sure that Skydock and Vanu archives will be next.

Places like Skydock and Crown are impossible to take with overwhelming numbers/skill/luck/organization/better equipment once there is a certain amount of defenders that could be inferior in every way. Only times those bases get taken is when they are lightly defended (in other words below that certain number). Places like that simply should not exist.

Totally agree with another poster that latice system should increase battle time and make capturing a base mean something, since it will be much less likely to be ghost capped 2 min after you leave it.

I remember long battles when the game started and people still didn't have C4 or mines. Now either the attacking force is overwhelming, or has their sunderers blown up in a couple minutes, tops.

I think the main problem, at least on Briggs, is that it's simply not worth engaging in a long fight most of the time. Attacking or Defending one station for extended periods of time tends to end up with all the territories around you getting pushed. Engaging the enemy head-on is still the least efficient way of playing the game.
But maybe that's just because the population of Briggs is likely to be lower than NA or EU servers, so my experience may be different.

I think the idea of "long battles" has shifted from "battles over bases" to "battles over continents" somewhere along the line.

Vehicles killed them. They just gather around a spawn room, spam it with HE or lolpods, and the battle is over: a couple of attackers are chilling out by a capture point, while 40 other are sitting in their tanks and farming a spawn.

We took the Crown from multiple platoons in 6 minutes. Teamwork is OP!

We had those, the crown was a guaranteed long fight, but the tears came rushing in because it was a long fight. So its clear this game is not meant for fights to last over 10 minutes.

During alerts, battles on each continent can last up to an hour or more. O.O (Helios)

It's simple. SOE don't want defence to be viable. Look at the Crown. Look at amp stations with huge gaps in the walls and shields that let the enemy through. Someone made a decision, and we're suffering the consequences.

Longest spontaneous battle I ever took part in this game, was the battle of Crimson Bluff. The VS fought the TR between the tower and the Biolab outpost, we fought for those meaningless rocks for 3 hours or so. At the time I estimated that there were about 300-400 people in total. Both sides were determined to own that hill for some reason, and considered every gained/lost metre monumental to the war effort. Every now and then a single NC MAX would drop pod from the skies, landing in the middle of the confrontation, dying almost instantly. This was of course early beta, and remains about the only battle that I remember. I refuse to fight at the Crown.

What's the fun in ambushing an enemy only to have it run away, or worse- keep taking damage until help arrives, effectively putting the ambushing person at a disadvantage?

To promote longer battles, there must be more stuff to take and hold to win them, dividing the battle into stages where one side might win, only to get pushed back several times.
This in fact is coming- satellites of facilities will be their own little bases and control a bit of territory that must be captured to gain influence in the main control point.

Another thing is that there needs to be a slight change of player mentality- most people now defend until they can't spawn at a base anymore, so at the next base they arrive after the zerg and begin the defense with having to do the very difficult thing which is breaking out.

Now let's assume the defenders go to the next base while the attackers are still busy spawn camping whoever stays.

That way the attackers never arrive first, and when they do, they meet the defenders waiting for them with tanks, planes, base and Engy turrets, mine fields, working gate shields, a working SCU, machine guns, bazookas, Bursters and sniper rifles (among others).

I see where you're coming from, but the problem I'm having is waiting for all of that to actually happen. The devs from what I can tell have been senselessly pushing items and now they've gone and undetermined when the patches that people want are even coming out. I don't feel like waiting anymore. It's getting tedious I find

part of the problem with those extremely long battles is that it ties up an extremely large number of troops. You see it all the time on Indar with the Crown/TI/Allatum Region. 80% of your forces will sit in those areas, while the rest of your territory gets steam rollled over. You might win the battle by defending for 3 hours, but you'll lose the war every time. If the servers were able to handle more players, or troops were less spread out (which the lattice system might change) then you'll see larger battles last for longer.

Another reason why battles aren't extremely long, is that people get bored of running through a meat grinder after a while.