Huge Outfits and PlanetSide 2 - Page 5

ringring · 2012-12-20, 11:22 AM

Originally Posted by PoisonTaco

Another short term solution would be to make resources more scarce. When a zerg gets rolling they just mass up tanks and go. Perhaps one way to defend against a zerg is while they attack a base you go and take all the small outposts with resources and they run out of steam.

The only time resources matter in this game is when you have nothing on a continent. Resources should matter all the time and going after the enemy's economy should be a valid tactic.

Well, I know presently resources barely register on the 'things to think about' list when you're playing but I reckon that if people run out of ground vehicle resources and are unable to pull tanks, sundies it will just cause a lot of frustration.

I don't see any real alternative to doing the obvious - make the bases more defensible. (Although spec ops targets like being able remove a tech link would help)

NewSith · 2012-12-20, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by Sleepy

PS2 lacks several components (not an exhaustive list - there are more) which curtail smaller groups or outfits from feeling more effective:

1) Defensibility. Smaller outfits in PS1 could hold towers and bases from moderately greater numbers, as well as carry out Generator holds, etc.. Defense is where small outfits should most easily find a niche, but PS2's base design offers few killzones; no doors; no swathes of infantry-only areas (underground or otherwise) where vehicles cannot camp and one shot.

2) Defense xp. Yes, the 15% is there supposedly, but it's not enough to encourage it, IMO. Especially given Point #1, where most people don't want to simply be farmed when outnumbered - adding more significant rewards would help this a slight bit.

3) Strategic Meta. In the absence of a Lattice or a game system which might funnel Empires to more predictable areas to conquer, it's tough to know where to set up a Defense - since all hexes can be capped at any time, you could be quite bored awaiting that assault for an hour. Even improving Empire-chat tools might assist in this, as players could report sightings of Enemy movement. All we have is /yell.

As a smallish outfit, you can of course be on Offense as well, but the quick-flipping of territories (5 mins after you cap, it's back to the other side already) and absent Metagame (to feel like it's made a difference), even the Big Outfits will grow bored as well.

Pretty much this, minus one aspect.

@Hamma, I can safely say that there are many smaller outfits that simply cannot shine at all due to base not having any field of occupation for them, and that's valid for many outfits. Some of them were quite famous for being able to hold interlinks against twice the enemy population, "professional" tower farms, and effective backhacking, but now there's not much to do for them, partially because there is no predictability to the fight on a tactical level. From a strategical standpoint, the game is on contra way too predictable and only big outfits can change the tide of battle, without high chance of getting zerged.

Also, check your PM.

Dragonskin · 2012-12-20, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

Eh, it's a mix bagged really...

A single man can cut off Resources and Facility Benifits if he's smart about the adjecent territories he captures, but that's because no one bothers to defend...

...The defensive game is going to need a huge improvement before you can even think about this either way though.

Right, well for this to matter enough for people to worry about it then resources have to scarce enough to care what is taken. Right now you get resources so fast it doesn't really matter. Facility benefits are nice, but in the end they aren't enough focus either except for the tech plant so you can pull MBTs on the field.

Bocheezu · 2012-12-20, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by ringring

Bases were defensible.
Engineers could lay more mines - which doubled as anti armour and anti-personel.
AMS had an invisibility bubble - which helps the smaller force and isn't necessary on a larger force.
Buildings had doors and windows, ie tanks spam couldn't happen.
The previous base took longer to hack, which means if you were kicked out of a base you could retreat to the next one and have time to set up a defensive position before the enemy arrived.
ttk was slower therefore it was easier to hold positions.

And zerglings couldn't drive tanks. Well, they could drive them, but they couldn't shoot them.

There's been a lot of conversation about lack of defense and how people just cap a base and leave. It's because there is literally no way to defend that base. Lay mines? So you blow up 3-4 tanks. There are 12873013710928 zerg tanks right behind it. You would need just about every player in the area to lay mines for it to be effective and I don't think that many people have the cert.

All those people that complained to no avail about driver/gunner were right. In PS1, MBTs were pretty much outfit-only. You could run a single tank with your buddy, but you wouldn't be very effective. In order to get a big convoy of tanks, you needed an outfit. In this game, you don't need that at all. The zerg is way too powerful and just completely dominates the game.

This is sort of an aside about base defense, but really I feel the lack of base defense is the core of the issue. I feel the addition of the light assault class was stupid. There should not be an infantry class that just completely bypasses defense and jumps over walls. Everyone should have to walk through that outer shield, and that shield should not have a fucking generator 10 meters away from it that will make it go away. In PS1, the generator that made the shield go away was usually buried 2 floors underground. Good luck getting in the courtyard, assholes.

RykerStruvian · 2012-12-20, 12:06 PM

Defending bases in its current form is really terrible. One reason is that you can't make anywhere near as much resources defending a base as you would typically make when on the offensive. I went from 40 something flash grenades and c4 charges on my light assault character to zero after a night of playing defense.

The next day, I was strictly on offense and now I'm restocked and maxed out once again. Aside from that and the other already explained reasons, defending needs to be looked over.

As for the topic regarding outfits, I think the size of the outfit isn't the issue as much as it is how people use them. You just need to organize and enforce particular methods in regards to how2play in a large-scale setting with multiple units. For instance, dedicate particular squads to air, others to ground, and give them their specialized objectives. This makes them more efficient and less 'zergy'.

maradine · 2012-12-20, 12:09 PM

My outfit runs one squad. We'd like to be bigger, but we generally don't invite people we don't know personally (like, can shake a hand on a regular basis). As a result, we field 6-10 on most nights.

I have to admit, on many nights, it's hard to find something optimal for the team. We're not large enough to crack the zerg, but we're wasted on sweeping the undefended stretches the zerg ignores. Occasionally we bump into a similarly-sized NC or TR group at an objective, and then we tend to party up and down Auraxis, taking and giving ground until someone has to log. Those are good nights.

We've dabbled in application-specific work, ie, providing a dedicated anti-aircraft pit, or running vehicle resupply and repair. These are entertaining sub tasks, but communicating with the zerg that these services are available is largely fruitless.

I don't want to make it sound grim; we definitely enjoy our few hours a week. I do think higher pops would help things immensely, though. Is this what we get for consciously avoiding the big outfit West server? Perhaps. I suspect, if the pop trends continue, we'll have the opportunity to rectify that.

Ghoest9 · 2012-12-20, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by Beerbeer

The problem is server population.

Merging servers would provide for more smaller platoon level action on the periphery of the the main zerg and brighten up activity on multiple continents.

Simple solution.

This doesnt doesnt pass even the briefest of common sense analysis.

1 Servers are dominated by giant outfits.
2 Forcing many of these giant outfits together on one server will result more fights for small out?
3 Does not compute.

Beerbeer · 2012-12-20, 12:23 PM

All these suggestions sound nice, but so long as the population is low, there will always be just one blob with little else.

Base defense, lattice, etc. It really won't matter if smaller outfits can defend these better if there's no one to defend them against other than the one big blob.

Just needs more people playing and I bet there will be a healthy mix of battle sizes all over the place, including that one giant blob. Smaller outfits will have many more opportunities to strike out along tangents from the blob and actually see defenders.

Sledgecrushr · 2012-12-20, 12:25 PM

I invite everyone to watch Sujieun in his stream and the small outfit he is with is incredibly effective. I think a lot of us could learn from the tactics that they employ in small outfit play.

NewSith · 2012-12-20, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Beerbeer

All these suggestions sound nice, but so long as the population is low, there will always be just one blob with little else.

Base defense, lattice, etc. It really won't matter if smaller outfits can defend these better if there's no one to defend them against other than the one big blob.

Just needs more people playing and I bet there will be a healthy mix of battle sizes all over the place, including that one giant blob. Smaller outfits will have many more opportunities to strike out along tangents from the blob and actually see defenders.

With attack being more beneficial than defense, it simply doesn't work that way.

Ghoest9 · 2012-12-20, 12:29 PM

What we are rapidly approaching is a game where
-outfit air armadas will be 99+% of the fight
-tanks will serve no purpose
-infantry will just be teams in to clean buildings

Its a shift that has just started this week. But its going to happen because its so effective as a plan. Pretty much everything but biolabs can be dominated simply with an organized air armada.

james · 2012-12-20, 12:34 PM

I'm in one of the largest outfits in the game, so i may be bias on this. On ops nights we may run upwards of 300 guys.

But i don't feel large outfits are the problem, its more the game. As the game currently works, to take a continent most times you zerg across it with 60% or more of the population. Do to the lower population cap, 100+ people can majorly change population and bring the zerg over.
I does seem that the originally idea was to have the huge outfits all on one server, and i know some of them tried. It just didn't end up that way.
There is always a place for smaller outfits. Do to the smaller size you may be able to move troops faster, and help win battles.

To the common person we look like a zerg, but we are far more organized. If anyone was on our TS during ops you could see we are an army not a zerg.

robocpf1 · 2012-12-20, 12:34 PM

From the other side of the fence - as the leader of a large outfit - we want more tactical stuff, too. We want more metagame and strategy. Every single post we see paints us as "zergfits" and we don't have any way to stop that. No matter what we do, how we explain our tactics or our organization, people will just say "yeah, but you've got 150 people, you're just zerging".

Enclave's got 12 independent squads taking different objectives simultaneously, people call that zerging.

GOTR uses three different divisions, controlling air, land, and buildings at the same time, and people call that zerging.

What do we have to do to stop being labeled as zergfits? We want to show the rest of the game we aren't just throwing 150 people at a door and steamrolling it because of our numbers. Our leaders and officers put a lot of time into training and coordination, but nobody sees any of that - they just see "zerg".

So by all means, put as much strategy and tactics and metagame into PS2 as you want, we are ALL for it. We loved that about PS1. The large outfits aren't fighting you guys on this, we want it as much as you do, for sure. It lets us distance ourselves from the outfits that actually do just put down a waypoint and say "All 150 of you, go there".

And the sad part is, that's still a really effective push because of the way PS2 is designed. We want to prove we're better than the actual zergfits, but we can't, because both our strategies and the rush work fine.

Lattice, killing base adjacency, more benefits to deny, more resources to deny, all of that. I have a spec ops division that has almost nothing to do in game anymore. In PS1 the were drawing off large portions of the population, dropping the interlink generators to kill radar, sitting in the air in Phantasms giving me up-to-the-minute intel on other large outfit movement. All of that's gone now, it's just taking territory and killing more of the enemy than they kill of you.

Small outfits are frustrated because they don't see anything for them to accomplish, they can't find a niche where they're effective.

Large outfits are frustrated because our accomplishments are tainted for the sole reason that we're large, and the perception is we just zerg everything.

Both of those need to change for this game to continue to succeed.

SGTHACK · 2012-12-20, 12:39 PM

I see doom and gloom for this game. In beta, the fights were spectacular between small and large units. Now we have nothing but zergs and low populated continents with nothing. SOE will try events to get interest back. Sad.....

Oroshi · 2012-12-20, 12:42 PM

To me it seems to be the reward mechanic, all those big XP deposits, outshine the lots of small one. Then on top of that farmable spawn rooms, that keep popping out fresh XP, and you don't need to get out of your vehicle of choice. These form the zerg, add world population bonus, making there no point to playing on a low faction pop continent.

I would add these features in to give bonus to people doing things in smaller numbers.

Population XP bonus should be based on continent, and much more noticeable, encouraging a spread of population across the continents. This would reduce the Zerg size.

Reduce the bases cap XP, during the last double XP weekend when it did not effect base cap XP, I saw more fights, and less Zerging. Also limit the base cap XP verse region population, get too many people, then the amount of XP received drops, have far too many then no XP if given for capping the base.

Say when attack a small outpost, the ideal amount is 50 people, over that the XP per person for capping goes down, if it was to reach 100 people attacking, they don't get XP at all for the cap. Does not force the Zerg to split up, does how ever make them think if I follow all these people I'll get no XP.

Added in additional objectives, I would remove the resource bonus away from the capture nodes, and added in new targets, that need to be defended to keep your resources coming in. These new targets would always be attack-able, no mater how far from the front lines they are. Basically they represent the empire logistics.

Imagine a resource silo, that fills up with resources say air, when its full it starts to give out air resources to your empire members, a hostile force could raid and steal these resources, and added them to their own empire's, and you'ld lose yours till it refills again. You give it a multiple step process so a team has to do it, 3 to 4 steps would do it, while they are emptying the silo they can not fight, so they would need some guards. While under attack it would flash and allow people to respond to it. The Zerg could be capping territory to their hearts content, and suddenly find they can't pull any more vehicles, as all their resources had been stolen.

Just some thoughts, once you start adding objectives and start to encourage zergs to split up, smaller outfits have a places, along side the larger ones too.