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

i actually prefer defending now, but only if i'm not alone, i have the 3 month 50% xp boost, defending gives you an other 15%, if its an alert an other 20%, and there always some extra bonus XP's, i shoot down air or land vehicles while defending i make up the capture XP in average 3 kills (thats the difference between the XP defending or attacking, no the kill, each kill is as much then a big base capture, an EMPTY surrender is 900XP for example, a turret is ~175XP)

It's sort of fun sitting alone in an amp station spawn room while the zerg keeps parking tanks by doorways and infantry walk up to the spawn shield. Just can't shoot in enough directions at once.

The benefit is a 15% exp bonus while defending. I suppose that is enough if there is a big enough battle going on. Unfortunately the other points counters the 15% argument perfectly. What's the point of defending when you end up just getting farmed because bases are not defensible. It also takes too long to spawn at a secondary location and drive a force from the outside.

I find plenty of big and lengthy fights, but would prefer to see more. There are 2 problems that prevent this, however.

The first is the lack of incentive for defending. Sure, you get that 15%, but that pales in comparison to the giant flashing +1000 when you capture a facility. It's just human nature. Your average zergling doesn't want to defend. Another thing that feeds into this problem is the lack of benefit for holding a base, aside from a tech plant. The amp station and bio benefits are mostly worthless. Multiply all this by bases that are not very defensible (more so than beta and release, but still not very defensible) and you have a situation where defense is unpopular. So unless you genuinely care about the grand tactics of the game and turning the map whatever color you choose, chances are that our happy little zerglings that make up a sizeable portion of your force are not going to get caught up in one of these fights.

The second, and bigger problem, is the constant three way battle. Imagine, if you will, a phenomenal, protracted multiple platoon battle that sees the heroic TR soldiers valiantly defending Tawrich from the lowly NC for multiple hours, fending off flanking attacks against surrounding minor bases, etc ... simultaneously, the cowardly VS would snag Rashnu, Zurvan and Hvar. That's just the nature of the game. What this causes is for anyone that cares about the tactical aspect of the game - i.e. the only dudes that would bother defending a base in the first place - CAN'T stay there to prolong the battle, because they have to fall back and protect other bits of territory. You see? One of the few things about PS1 that I actually miss (instead of just being nostalgic) is two way pop locked fights. Back in 04, you'd frequently see each empire fighting one of the other two on two different continents, with minimal backhack interference. It was glorious. We won't see it till they release at least one more continent, and it will require a major shift in playerbase mindset.

That's the point. To get people off Indar and onto the other continents. Which the new system does quite well.

I'm free to suggestions, but I feel anywhere from an hour to a day would be sufficient depending on the facility. Bigger ones should take at least an 3-5 hours seeing as they matter so much, but smaller facilities I'd be okay with an hour even

I like both styles of gameplay, but unless the attackers and defenders are evenly matched, then the fight is going to move on pretty quickly. It's just the reality of mechanized warfare.

-too low ttk
-7 shots to kill compared to the 3 or 4 of most games
-people who land those 7 shots within the (unrealistic) TTK deserve the ~.5 seconds to kill.

Nice, it's about time. I should have checked to see what's coming in the next update. I guess I just thought it was so simple to add, we wouldn't need to wait so long for it. I'll jump on the test server to have look, thanks for the heads-up guys.

I will go out on a limb and say that the Planetside 2 devs took out allot of the sandbox elements in the game. It is WAY less of a sandbox game that Planetside (1) was.

Ghost capping.

This is the reason why you will never see long battles, because enemies meeting any meaningful resistance just go round your position, and leave you stranded behind enemy lines. It's a poor mechanic, and does not reward actual fighting.

Proper walls around bases.
If 80% of the bases allow enemy tanks to arrive in front of the spawn buildind or having clear LOF from all around the base, battles will never last long.

Proper bases full stop. The PS1 designs were supposed to be bad, but PS2 bases are near indefensible unless you have superior numbers, or the attackers are just plain stupid. I think this is why people tend to just sit the cap out in their spawn, shooting anyone foolish enough to cross their LoS; doing anything else is probably a waste of time.

It's a good mechanic, awards smart players who use maneuver, not just mouse clicking.

Mouse clicking my backside, you're not doing anything but sitting by a point, flipping the base, and then moving on. There's even less thinking involved than in a real battle, so please don't try to claim otherwise.

It's simply rewarding those who are unable to participate in real PvP, for whatever reason. I guess some people simply find capping an emply base more enjoyable than earning it through combat. Takes all sorts I suppose.

Nope, it's rewarding those players who use flanking and strategy to help their teammates. Sometimes it's necessary to split huge dumb enemy zerg. That's why people do backcaping.

You see nothing wrong with a game built around the entire concept of big battles rewarding players for avoiding fighting as much as possible?

Nothing wrong in being smart and playing strategic. Clusterf*cks are annoying. Instead of "big battles" we have dumb zerging and power in numbers.

Flanking and strategy, watch-words for being bad at the game, and needing to farm certs elsewhere.

I hear CoD has the battle size you are looking for.

You missed out. We had all that in Planetside 1. Was great too. It wasnt a respawn mill and fights were hard. Especially if it was a fight across a bridge to take a tower. That fight could take a few hours then you hoped the third faction didnt decide to back cap you and if they did then bring on the 3 way!

That fun will never be captured in this game.