[Guide] Why Nay-Sayers to the Prototype Hex System are Wrong

But hey, you keep pretending that capturing and abandoning empty hexes in perpetually recurring 5 minute cycles is the epitome of strategic play, and I'll try not to remind you that you and your super special "small outfit" have accomplished nothing and have not had a place in Planetside every since the sequel decided that lattices and cont-locks were not worth adding to Battefield-side.

I am appalled to see such radical thinking smearing the good reputation this board has for well considered ideas and opinions.

When I log on to Planetside 2; I want to camp a sunderer for 20 minutes, I want to blindly follow the gigantic throng of army ants that is the zerg. I want to pointlessly fight over the same no-name base for the 10th time this hour only to lose it again once we capture it. I want my outfit and I to fly in a circle around a continent, capturing empty outposts for 2 hours at a time for the XP grind.

When I am playing Planetside 2; I do not want my delicate sensibilites to be offended by far out concepts such as; "depth", "logistics", "worthwhile battles", "global strategy" or "Infantry tactics".

If you are of sound mind and taste like me; I propose we boycott outlandish threads like this one and get back to the real matters at hand; like adding Care Packages and MLG decals to the Roadmap.

Believe it or not, fighting people is not the same as shooting in their general direction. In fact, it can be done by outsmarting them and not having to shoot a single bullet (or plasma bolt for my Vanu brethren).

Imagine that.

Well the point is that there are few battles anywhere other than a few places on the map, the lattice system will take the battles to each base along the way. When the lattice system gets you to a choice of 3 directions, there will still be smaller fights to have.

This is WAY better than having a 36 sq km map that only 4sq km's get used, where ridiculous ghost capping goes on and no fights occur at the majority of bases.

It will be interesting to see how the base designs take this - in PS1 as far as I can work out, the lattice system worked because the base designs also worked - current base design in PS2 is rubbish but as PS2 to is right now, I'd rather play something else tbh. The lattice system might just make it worth playing again.

The lattice system will also make bases that now are pretty much pointless become important as you need them to be able to continue down the lane or take them to get to a flanking lane. Hopefully it will also make some of the hexes make more sense, take Bridge Ward/Glacier Station on Esamir for example. For some reason Glacier Station controls the bridge and connects to elli amp instead of bridgeward base being the one that controls the bridge. There are many examples like this.

It's actually the people who can't muster the attention span of a gnat or be bothered to defend anything after they capture it that are the reason we get so little resistance when making beneficial strategic moves.

You know what should happen when a force with no situational awareness or strategic sense meets one that does?

Apparently they should expect the devs to coddle them and remove that advantage so they don't have to step up their game and do anything about it.

Surprised me, too.

Ghost capping needs to die.

On another hand, there needs to be something to be sabotaged further in the enemy's territory to cut off their ability to spawn at the frontline if this goes live. Because, for some reason, every d*mn outpost in the a*s end of nowhere can spawn enough sunderers, armor and air to blockade your warpgate within the span of a couple of minutes - which makes any kind of ambushes inside enemy territory useless.

There are also technical limitations to consider. Will the game be able to support such concentrated action? Or will every fight degrade into Ti Alloys with all wonders of FPS drops and render distance culling in tow? I was under the impression that current hex system was specifically made to decentralize fighting because of that?

Also, inter-hex underground lanes of attack sound salivating.

Terminal Hack timer maybe

A hacked terminal goes into a 5 - 10 minute " offline " cooldown. Destroying the Terminal doesn't remove it , so it will not be able to be just destroyed and repaired.
Unhacked destroyed Term's would repair as normal.

Would maybe make covert OP's meaningful, Cutting off peoples ability to reinforce their frontlines etc

This is exactly what the game needs right now. More linearity. With the current hex system, there's just too much freedom on where to go. It's overwhelming. It's common to have 20-30 different places you can attack or defend, unless you're pushed back near your warpgate. The new system will look to keep this number down to around 10 or less (it's tough to tell since we haven't seen much of the map).

Its no wonder so few people defend. With so many places that are vulnerable you have no idea if going and sitting at a base will yield a fight or you sitting there with nothing to do. So the best option is to go looking for one. With so many options though it's more often you find the base empty than defended. Yes it happens, but mostly at larger bases when zergs are pushed back and people know enemy zergs are incoming. It rarely happens at smaller bases, if ever at many of them.

The current system also discourages defending since enemies can just as easily move around you. Setting up a strong defense at The Stronghold, for example, can lead to some good fights. however, you holding it means diddly to the war effort as the enemy can just as easily capture surrounding territory and leave you surrounded. In the new system, The Stronghold becomes a strategic point to control traffic moving between Blackshard Iridium, Blackshard Platinum, and Feldspar.

People talking about removing power from smaller groups that can open up new attack fronts or get territory to surround an enemy forget that large groups can do those things just as well, but far more efficiently. I know my outfit has sent out gal drops to 10+ bases to quickly capture a string of territory, completely removing any and all momentum the enemy was having in the manner of minutes as the ground behind them is taken. Doing that in the new system will now be much harder (which is better).

Well, it would still be kinda useless unless the terminals at the frontline are camped already. I mean, why spawn something further inside your territory and then waste time getting back to the frontline if you can just spawn what you need right there?

I was thinking more of a generator-like object that would turn off the terminals that are connected to the warpgate through it if it is busted. Or maybe it would deny resource ticks for the people at the frontline hex. Something like that.

NVM wasn't able to word my thought's clearly lol .. more coffee

People don't like defending because:

a). a*s-backwards base design that requires defenders to have close to 1:1 ratios (or even worse) in most bases to actually have a chance of holding out for any prolonged period of time to allow reinforcements time to react;

b). there is no reason to - the base itself doesn't grant any real benefit to its owners; there is simply no reason to fight for anything sans the Tech Plant.

Proposed changes don't help any of that.

Posted pretty much the same in another Thread

You mean exactly how the game is now?

Don't know what to say man. On miller, if your in an outfit - need not be.

Good to see more people as concerned as I am about this new system. Sadly I believe the PS1 players are swarming all over this, and we probably have no more say in it.

The thread creator already shows his intentions by stating:

This shouts "I want it my way and I will listen to nothing anyone else says".

Myself and others have already expressed our concerns in the other 10 threads on the same subject. In short, this will simplify the game and reduce player freedom, in an attempt to solve problems that are better solved in an incentive format rather than an enforced one.

But there is no debating with the PS1 crowd that is blindly dedicated to seeing everything from PS1 added into PS2. Debating is rather pointless anyhow since the developers never respond to it. Something about twitter...

Thing is its not the entire PS1 crowd, I for one played ps1 very briefly and was utterly turned off by its linearity. Likewise I think a vocal element of 'bitter ps1 vets, who want ps2 to simply be ps1 with better textures and people doodz to shoot' are distorting plenty of people who played PS1 who were well aware of its flaws and limitations.

I think at the same time the chats of 'you have no say, this is happening anyway'. Are in reality a little desperate and self conscious of the poverty of their position.

Especially as unlike, other stuff which SoE might have sided with due to popular vote. SoE are intimately familiar with the business model of Ps1 and its game mechanics.

If it makes buisness sense, they'll do it. But I think you'll find, they are aware of two things.
1) Smaller outfits, tend to have a lot of people who contribute a disproportionate amount of cash.
2) What people want now, may have clear implications of creating a worse game in the future.

So the whole, lattice, big battlez, yay giv people what they want - ZERG V ZERG FIGHT - shut up you! you have no say!. thesis, is not as strong or as happily received as its proponents believe.

I've never had a problem choosing a target. I open the map and set a medium/long term goal such as taking an enemy tech plant to deny them MBTs or a defensible location between a large enemy force and a target that allied forces are pushing towards to disrupt their relief efforts. Then I select the route that looks to have the best chance of succeeding. Sometimes that means circumventing, sometimes that means hitting them head on to demoralize them. It is a constantly shifting series of variables that changes minute-by-minute.

Open the map. Flip to the enemy activity view. Send out scouts to see which way they are going. Redeploy your forces as needed.

Be fast, be mobile, be flexible.

Are you stuck in cement?

We all have the same capability to move at the same speed, why are you sitting there letting them capture multiple territories to surround you? Go fight them.

You can't sit there with your thumbs up your butts and then complain about 'ghost capping' (really uncontested capping, but the negative connotations of the former serve the purposes of those wishing to silence dissent) as if there were nothing you could have possibly done about it.

If you can pull off mass coordination like 10 gal drops while your enemy is a lumbering beast that takes 5 minutes to even figure out it's happening, I don't see the problem with it having devastating results. The enemy can adapt and learn or suffer defeat. I really don't get why that's a problem.

I don't see a system where there's not much difference in results between pulling off a complex, coordinated strategic effort and hulk-smash zerging as 'better.'

No, it shouts that this system is ultimately far superior to the current one in every single way. I've concisely displayed it does not simplify the game and does not reduce player freedom.
If you want an "incentive" format, propose one. I would love to see how it would improve the game. Because it reality, the kind of incentive formats that are compatible with the current hex system would all be butchered up lattice systems coupled with throwbacks to the day of people AFK'ing while they harvested Auraxium. No thanks, I'd rather not make one line of bases more valuable than all the other bases in the way an incentive format would. It's laughable that you think it would work, if a base is obviously more valuable or has more incentive than the next one, that makes the enemy movements extremely predictable in a way this prototype system avoids. And if they're all equally incentivised, welcome to what we have now.

Think before posting.

By the way, I never played PS1, nice genetic fallacy.

Signed, I agree with every point. The current system encourages ghost capping and certain outfits think that ghost capping is "strategic". Sorry, no, that's boring!