Huge Outfits and PlanetSide 2

[robocpf1]

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.

[maradine]

Originally Posted by robocpf1

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".

I don't think there's much you can do about that. Your comms are out of game, and your coordination is opaque to most. Not a bad thing, just a thing.

[Miir]

At first glance it is easy to put the blame on large outfits for unbalancing the game. But really it's the games design that's at fault here. Getting steam rolled all the time is not fun. Not for the smaller group and even over time not for the larger group either. Unless the intent was to make a game that only a few large outfits play and everyone else just sits on the side lines they have a lot of work to do.

They really need their mission system to be able to pair up outfits based on size so fighting was more balanced that way.

They also need a way to coordinate with alliance members. I posted this back in beta. Still applies.

Originally Posted by Miir

I would like SOE to consider adding in some sort of multi-outfit Alliance organization features in game. Sort of like the a Platoon feature for squads but at the Outfit level.

This Alliance feature would allow leadership in each outfit to merge into an Alliance and see where the other members of the Alliance are on the map and coordinate better.

Suggest feature list:

- Map markers to request air/armor/infantry
- Map markers to flag enemy locations (air/armor/infantry)
- Alliance way points for each outfit. (Perhaps with outfit logo on the map)
- Alliance voice chat (only leadership levels of each outfit would have access)

I know likely some of these feature are coming down the pipes for high level commanders. However given the large gap between smaller outfits and large outfits in the games current state. I think for the sake of keeping the smaller groups happy this would be a great addition to the game. Even if it costs a little station cash to purchase on day one.

However there needs to be a cap on the amount of members you can have in an alliance. If there is no cap what would likely happen with a tool like this is it would be allow larger outfits to form into even larger groups and we'd continue to have the same issues we are having now. The alliance feature needs to be for the smaller groups to organize at the same level as a large outfit.

A large outfit might have 100 members online. So an alliance should be capped at 100 members. Maybe this could be dynamic based on the largest enemy outfit online at the time?

[basti]

Originally Posted by Miir

At first glance it is easy to put the blame on large outfits for unbalancing the game. But really it's the games design that's at fault here. Getting steam rolled all the time is not fun. Not for the smaller group and even over time not for the larger group either. Unless the intent was to make a game that only a few large outfits play and everyone else just sits on the side lines they have a lot of work to do.

They really need their mission system to be able to pair up outfits based on size so fighting was more balanced that way.

They also need a way to coordinate with alliance members. I posted this back in beta. Still applies.



However there needs to be a cap on the amount of members you can have in an alliance. If there is no cap what would likely happen with a tool like this is it would be allow larger outfits to form into even larger groups and we'd continue to have the same issues we are having now. The alliance feature needs to be for the smaller groups to organize at the same level as a large outfit.

A large outfit might have 100 members online. So an alliance should be capped at 100 members. Maybe this could be dynamic based on the largest enemy outfit online at the time?

Ingame systems are pointless. I dont need an ingame alliance system, i use TS3 and a forum anyway. That ingame alliance system my give us access to some fancy tools, but we can just create 2, 4 or a hundred alliances if we need to.


Same with a member limit to outfits. Just create more outfits.



There really is no problem folks, large outfits are fine. Smaller outfits can deal with them, if they team up and work together. In the end, 100 people will always win against 10, thats just the way it is and always has been.






Folks, really, stop trying to find issues in the game when the only reason those issues exist is you. Fix stuff yourself, form an alliance.