My own 2cents on Metagame

[PoisonTaco]

Throwing in my own ideas to improve the metagame. We all know it's something that needs to be worked on so the more the better. The three I'm going to cover are respawns, radar and base benefits.

Respawning

When you died too often in Planetside 1 you took a penalty to your respawn timer. This should be implemented in Planetside 2. This makes it so that one side can outperform another and push them back. If attackers keep throwing themselves at a base and get killed by a smaller group of players over and over again, that small group will be able to thin them out and be able to push out and remove their spawns. Right now they can't do that. If 100 players are fighting 20, those 100 players are going to keep coming out of their sunderer in droves and those 20 players will get overrun.

Don't be afraid to make players wait 15-20 seconds or more if they die too often. If you die in Counter-Strike you have to wait until the round is over to respawn. If you die in League or Legends or Dota you sometimes have to wait up to a whole minute. Maybe add exceptions to squad beacons and spawn options that are far away.

Radar

The lattice system in Planetside 1 made it easy to predict enemy attacks. Facility A is connected to Facility B. When the enemy takes Facility A, I immediately know Facility B is next. I know that's where attackers are going to go, and I know where to take my team and make a defense. Personally I don't want a lattice in PS2. Instead I would like to be able to see enemy troop movement.

Implement radar towers. Any enemy players within range of these towers would pick up as red dots on the map. Maybe have it so you need to be a squad leader to have access to the radar information. Maybe you need to cert into it. This would make it possible to observe and predict troop movement. You could see enemy players moving from one base to the next and properly prepare defenses.

Base Benefits and Facility Ownership

Anyone who's fought on Esamir knows how important tech plant Eisa is. If you don't own that tech plant, you can only spawn MBT's at your warpgate. That's a big deal. For people who lead outfits, squads and platoons they know this and they ultimately direct the fights. How come biolabs and amp stations aren't as valuable as tech plants? If my faction only had a biolab and your faction only had a tech plant you have a huge strategic advantage over me. You can pull tanks, I can... heal myself out of combat? The other two facility types need benefits that matter to players. People don't care about a health regen out of combat. They don't care about reduced heat in facility turrets. The difference is that the tech plant offers a strategic advantage where as the other two bases offer tactical advantages.

Take my idea on respawn penalties and tie that into the biolab benefit. As an example if you die 10 times within 5 minutes your respawn timer goes up to 15-20 seconds. When your team owns a Biolab have it so that if you die 15 times within 5 minutes your respawn timer goes up to 15-20 seconds. All of a sudden owning a biolab gives your faction a strategic advantage over a faction that does not own a biolab. It helps your team resist attacks and could make a difference in big fights.

Take the radar towers I suggested and put them into small outposts. Their range should be x number of hexes. Have it so amp stations increase the radius of radar towers. So when you own an amp station, you can see movement further into enemy territory. All of a sudden owning small outposts and amp stations provide a big benefit to your empire.

Well those are my ideas. Tried to put together something that wouldn't involve a massive revamp of the entire game or require rebuilding any bases. The bases are defensible now. You just need to be able to push back from an attack, you also need to be able to predict them.

[Phreec]

Regarding the Radar suggestion, it's already in the game. It's not as widely used since it's sort of a dirty little secret that not many care to invest their certs into but since it's able to win battles it's more than worth it. I'm of course talking about the Scout Radar for the Flash.

Other vehicles also have access to it but Flash is by far the most available, cheapest and easiest to hide. It's radar also reaches further than the other vehicles radar do. I've started using it as often I can and I've seen more and more enemy Flashes with that little mushroom on the backseat just abandoned around bases.

So there you have it, radar. Only difference is that it requires a player to enable it, just like it should. So much is getting automated by the games themselves these days, I'm glad PS2 is working against that trend since it creates a deeper gameplay experience.