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[icycalm]

On another note, I've got some basic ideas on platoon composition which I will outline here.

First off, I am the leader of the outfit and I'll play an Engineer. Generally, I will be with the assault group, but not on the actual frontline. I'll be hanging back with the troop carrier and other vehicles, repairing them when necessary, resupplying troops with ammo, etc., and poring over maps and picking waypoints and spawnpoints while everyone else fights the good fight.

Then, we'll have two squads as long as we are above 10 players: squad alpha headed by Qpo, and bravo headed by recoil. Second-in-command for each squad could be Masahiro for alpha and Somali Pirate ("taubleet" in the game) for beta, but we'll try other people too and see how it works out.

The squad leaders should probably play the Light Assault class, which is a scouting class that uses a jetpack and has therefore high mobility so as to always stay in charge of the situation.

The second-in-command could play the Heavy Assault class, and then we should also have at least one Medic in each squad (maybe two in the assault squad?), and the rest of the players could pick whatever they want to (there's still the Infiltrator and MAX classes which I haven't mentioned, but they seem hard to play effectively, so whoever picks them will need some practice).

Another useful thing would be if a couple of guys who are not playing a leading role could log into the game on their own and mess around with the planes until they become good at them, because they are really hard to use but could prove extremely useful. I imagine it would be really hard flying the planes right above the squads and providing support fire while avoiding getting lost or being shot down.

As for how the squads will operate, we will have two main methods of operation. In the one method we will use a leapfrog tactic in which one squad will hold the current base while the other advances on the next one, and when that is captured the defending squad will lead the next assault while the previously offensive squad will hold the base they just captured, and so on. That will be our bread and butter tactic, but when the enemy is not actively harassing our bases we'll go for the blitzkrieg method, by attacking a single base from two sides simultaneously, or, when the opposition is weak and we're feeling lucky, by sending each squad to attack a separate, but adjacent, base simultaneously.

That's all I have for now, I'll start a thread in the Strategy forum where we can discuss tactics. I just wanted to make this post here to give an idea to potential recruits of how awesome the game is.

[icycalm]

Strategy thread is up, so tactics discussion should be continued here: http://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=5074

[icycalm]

lol: http://www.planetside-universe.com/outf ... 255526.php

Forgot to add recoil yesterday, apparently. And don't worry Masa, I'll fix your rank next time.

Also, this is the outfit leaderboard but we are not on it yet because we need 12 members to qualify:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outf ... rboard.php

[icycalm]

Wow, there's even an inter-outfit leaderboard:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outf ... eaderboard

PA needs to adopt all this stuff fast. I'd be playing way more than I currently am if it had.

[Masahiro9891]

So icy, Some guy and I will be playing in about an hour, and we need at least two more players. If anyone else wants to play just hop onto Mumble.

[icycalm]

We'll play even if it's just the three of us. And if you haven't been on Mumble already message us on Steam while we are in-game, and someone will come out to help you get on. Even if you can only play for half an hour or an hour, hop on so that we can at least get the basics done so that you'll be ready to go on the weekend.

[immersedreality]

I had Windows 8.1 up and running on my Mac to play any games I was missing on the PC, but the hard drive crashed and now I'm back to square one. I would just reinstall Windows, but everything I was playing ran like absolute shit anyways.

I know PlanetSide 2 is hitting the PS4 soon, which I was super excited about, but now I feel like it would just be a waste not getting into it with you guys on PC. Too bad it's not cross-platform, but I imagine that would cause all sorts of problems.

Sounds like I need to contrive a way to get myself a PC ASAP!

[icycalm]

Yeah dude, do it if you can. You don't even need a very powerful one to run the game decently. I am playing on medium settings on a 600-euro laptop and it still looks great, which means you could get the same performance on a 300-dollar desktop. Masa is running the game on a Dell that costs that much, so it's cheaper than a new console.

We had a tough day today, much tougher than yesterday, but with a number of high points too. We had a 7-man squad for a while, but for most of the time it was 6 of us.

Also, check the inter-outfit leaderboard above: I am number 1 lol. But worst player in terms of K/D ratio. I think I get a lot of leadership points (no idea how -- maybe by just being the leader?), which translate to high experience.

So, really looking forward to tomorrow. See you all on Mumble when you are ready to jump in.

[icycalm]

Sometimes when I play this game with a large group that contains newbies I feel like someone who has invited a friend for dinner in a gourmet restaurant. First we get served the appetizer, and the friend agrees that "Yeah, I see what you are saying, that tasted good". But then there is a certain wait between the appetizer and all the other dishes, and the friend gets tired of waiting and runs off to get McDonalds. You feel like screaming at them, "But wait, the best is yet to come!", but you know that they'll reply that they are hungry right now and can't bear the wait, so you end up not saying anything. And lo and behold, the other dishes arrive a little later, one by one (and often enough, as if on cue, just after your friend has had enough of waiting and taken off), but the friend is nowhere to be seen, and you end up sitting there and eating them alone.

Thankfully there are a bunch of people in PS2 that stick it out with me every session, so I am never alone at that table, but unlike what happens in a restaurant (which after all can be perfectly enjoyed even when you are alone) our enjoyment is directly proportional to how many of us there are, so I am hoping we'll pick up a lot more people on the way who enjoy the game as much as we do and are into it for the long run.

My review is a ways off, but I'd like to say one thing that will be in it right away, because it might help retain some extra people, or convince some more newbies to give the game go. I want to talk about the sense of futility that the game undeniably gives those who play the game long enough and are sensitive enough to it. Without getting into the details of how the mechanics work at the strategic level (which would put a lot of people off, I think, if I explained them), the essential thing to realize is that the war began long before you enter the fray on any given day, and continues long after you leave it. There is a mechanic in place that keeps the war going forever, and this might make people feel -- when they take a step back from the moment-to-moment action, and think about everything that's going on -- as if their actions in the game don't matter at all. I certainly got this feeling, and I believe everyone is going to get it eventually if they are not a mindless zombie who just likes to shoot at things and never really thinks about anything.

Now I am not going to directly defend the developers' choice for introducing this mechanic to the game (I mean the mechanic for making the war endless). But I will defend it indirectly. Because consider the alternatives:


-Would you like the war to start the moment you load up the game?

Then you would have to play only with friends -- including in the opposing armies -- because no one else in the world would agree to start playing the game the exact moment you want to start playing it. So you can forget about taking part in something that feels like a real war, since presumably you could never hope to muster more than a few dozen friends, which means you can forget about PlanetSide.

-Would you like the war to end the moment you log off the game?

Then you once more would be forced to play only with friends, because no one else would agree to quit playing the game the exact moment when you decide to stop playing it.


The "endless war" mechanic, in other words, is a necessary mechanic if you want to simulate a proper war -- i.e. a military engagement between thousands of individuals as opposed to mere dozens of them as seen in other multiplayer FPSes. The way to deal with that then is to FORGET about achieving any longer-term objectives WHEN YOU ARE NOT PLAYING THE GAME. When you are not playing the game you are not playing the game, so don't think about it. You should only think about the game when you feel like taking part in a war. When you feel like this you jump in the game, and voila: you are instantly part of a brand-new (for you, not for the other players) ongoing war. You take part in it for as long as your body can handle it, and when you've had enough you turn off the computer and go to sleep, and that's the end of that. WITHIN your playing session there are countless achievable goals, small and large, that you will take a huge amount of pleasure in pursuing and perhaps even achieving; but when you are not playing the game its world might as well not exist as far as you are concerned (even though your previous actions will always be playing a role in how the war goes even when you are not engaged in it, all the way back to the very first firefight that occurred when the game launched in 2012 -- which is very close to how the real universe works, astonishingly enough lol).

To put it more simply, do you care what happens to Ryu, Ken and the rest of them every time you put SF2 aside, turn off the console or computer and go to sleep? Or do you just pick up the game every time you feel like having a good rumble?

That's the way you should also think of PlanetSide 2; and the fact that the game makes you contemplate its mechanics and setting in a way that you never did for any other game is not one of its FAILINGS but a TRIUMPH.

[icycalm]

Bottom line is that many people just don't know how to play games and reap the maximum enjoyment out of them any more than they know how to eat properly and reap the maximum amount of both pleasure and nutrition out of eating. And the dispiriting thing is that even having the number 1 authority on gaming over their heads downright TELLING them what to do step-by-step doesn't seem to help many of them. It does help some of them, but not by any means all. And if that doesn't work for them, imagine how much more useless a bunch of words on a screen must be (i.e. my reviews).

Last night at one point we were close to having 10 people, for example, and CTF suggested we stop playing and switch to Counter-Strike instead...

I mean I have no words...

And indeed I had no words. I didn't say anything -- I just let a bewildered cry, which probably was lost on everyone in the cacophony of battle (and I am glad that it did), and just kept playing.

And, what's worse, what he actually suggested was an inter-clan 5v5, which is the opposite of what people do when they play team games and go in the same team with randoms. For the way to maximize enjoyment in team games is to have your friends in your own team and strangers in the opponents'. This is no rocket science: it's basic evolutionary psychology. You maximize pleasure in this way because human beings have evolved enjoying co-operating with friends and fighting against strangers. Whoever enjoyed the opposite (i.e. co-operating with strangers -- as people who play in team games with randoms do -- and fighting against their friends -- as what CTF was suggesting that we do last night) was simply not going to pass their genes to the next generation, and that's why they've become extinct.

But just like with homosexuals, who remain a minority but never completely disappear because the high degree of "randomness" in the mutation process means that unsurvivable genes and configurations of genes will keep reappearing more or less forever, no matter how viciously the evolutionary process culls them with each generation, you get people even today who see no difference in pleasure whether they have friends or strangers on their team or in the opposing one, and it is as impossible to communicate with them and "explain" to them why the standard model is superior to their anti-natural version as it is to explain to homosexuals the superior pleasure in heterosexual sex over the homosexual kind (and vice versa, of course).

To be sure, many of them have simply not yet had the chance to try playing with friends in their own team and strangers in the opponents', so once you expose them to this way of playing you've turned them around for life. So for those people the problem is CULTURAL, and hence curable with judicious application of theory and example. But for the rest -- the ones who are incapable of getting it no matter what -- the problem is BIOLOGICAL, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

[Somali Pirate]

Slight defense for CTF: I think it can make sense to play the occasional inter-team 5v5, so we can all figure out our strengths and weaknesses, both individually and as a team. After a couple of rounds, as a sort of after action report (military does this as well after an operation, but obviously they are all on the same team).

What I mean is that by playing against each other, it's easier to spot others' mistakes and by trying to outsmart each other, we can more quickly get rid of those habits which might happen over and over again, if your enemy isn't telling you what is going wrong.

[CTF]

First off, I would like to say thanks. This morning I found myself thinking about our play session from last night and I had also felt that sense of futility you spoke of. I just felt like my impact on the game world was so small (and indeed it was). I wasn't about giving up on the game by any means because I haven't tried enough to get into it yet but your post certainly motivated me more.

Regarding my comment from last night I feel I should explain myself. Of course I appreciate playing with friends a lot more than I do with strangers. After a certain time playing DOTA for example, I (and most of my friends as well) refused to play the game unless we had a full 5-man team on the same Ventrilo channel. The reason I suggested an inhouse is that when you play versus friends sometimes they can point out flaws that they do not see in you when you are playing together (or if they do see them, playing against you makes those flaws a lot more glaring) which is another way of improving your skills. The way I see inhouse games is more as a different form of training (I say different because you obviously also improve your skills when playing vs. strangers so it's not the only form of training) and since having 10 people playing together is rare I thought it could be a good opportunity for that.

Also worth noting that another occasion which is extremely fun to play versus friends is in LAN parties. I have taken part in several 16-people LAN parties and they produced some of my most memorable gaming experiences. I do agree that most of the time spent should be playing with friends against strangers but on occasion there are merits to playing with friends versus friends.


Edit: I see Somali Pirate pretty much explained what I wanted to during the time I was typing this post. Our thoughts are similar on this subject, he is also correct that we do this a lot in the army. We take turns simulating a force attacking a fortified position and a force defending it, then after we are done we discuss what can be learned from the session, each side gives the other three examples of stuff they did well and three examples of stuff they must improve upon.

[icycalm]

Dudes, dudes, dudes...

I am talking about how to reap the most enjoyment out of a game, and you are talking about tactics on how to improve in it, which are most certainly NOT the same thing. The stuff you talk about is boring, and the only reason people do it in the army is because it is a LIFE AND DEATH MATTER there. But ask the soldiers themselves if they prefer their boring exercises to a videogame, and you'll know what they will all respond.

If getting better at the game was my number one priority I would be watching YouTube videos, reading strategy guides and so on and so forth.

You have to understand where the GOAL is coming from, in order to understand the CHOICES I make to get there. If you've got the wrong goal (which may be improving your performance, or teaching a moral lesson, or helping poor developers who can't get a real team together, and so on and so forth), then your choices will be crap, and so will your theory that's based on them. The goal in art is FUN -- and there is no other goal. If I am going to train in something I will train in a science or in a sport -- I will most certainly NOT train in a videogame. Rather, videogames are what I do to RELAX from real training. It is only people who do no real training in their lives who try to train in videogames. I have already explained all this stuff ad nauseam in countless essays, reviews and forum posts by now.

(I don't mind repeating it, however, every now and then, especially to people like you who seem able to understand it, what with repetition being the mother of learning and all that. I also seem to come up with slightly different ways to say the same thing each time, and with different examples, and I am sure that helps people too.)

[icycalm]

Screen by Masa: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =320053480

And it's not even on the highest detail.

[icycalm]

More on the sense of futility.

This is one motherfuckin' DEEP game. And that's why many people have such a hard time appreciating it. Let's try to understand one of the reasons why.

If you play a game and nothing you do in it seems to matter, then you become depressed about it. So the game needs to be made in such a way that you are ABLE to make a difference in it with your actions. But, at the same time, you don't want a game that can be easily and completely conquered by you, because then it becomes boring.

The problem, however, is that different people have different mental and physical capacities, so unless you design a game for a SINGLE person, you won't be able to satisfy everyone with it, and that's why, in single-player games, we have difficulty levels. In MULTIPLAYER, games, on the other hand, and especially in MASSIVELY multiplayer PVP games, in which moreover there are NO AIs in them, there is NO SUCH THING AS A DIFFICULTY LEVEL, because, if there were, it would mean that at least some of the players would not be allowed to do what they wanted, in order to accommodate the ability of the other players to select a difficulty level.

Do you see what I am saying? CTF felt his actions were futile because we were under siege in a base, and there was nothing we could do to break the siege, since we didn't have enough personnel, or skill, or resources, or a combination of all of these things. So we were BOUND to lose, and that depressed him. Hell, it depressed ALL of us, and was MEANT to depress us, because that's what defeat -- and especially defeat that's beyond our means to affect it -- does to human beings.

But is that the fault of the game, or is that OUR fault for 1) Not being good enough at the game, or 2) Not having brought enough friends along to staff our platoon with, or 3) Being caught in that base in the first place instead of reading the map better and placing ourselves in a position where we would have had more chances of succeeding?

So many things need to come together for this game to work its magic, and CTF simply hasn't had the fortune to be with us in our finest moments. The game we played today was fun, and had some great moments, but we've had much better ones on several occasions. And that too is a consequence of the absurd depth of the game. In Counter-Strike, which is an absurdly shallow game by comparison, you can jump in with a 5-man team any day of the week, any hour of the day, and you are almost guaranteed a standard experience that's about as good as the game gets, because there are almost no uncontrollable factors affecting this enjoyment. It'll always be five guys versus five guys (and moreover guys who are more or less evenly matched due to the ranking and matchmaking system), duking it out on one of a handful of carefully crafted and laboriously tested little maps. There are essentially NO factors that are not under your and the developers' control. It's like going for a swim in an indoor swimming pool, as opposed to out in the open ocean.

In PlanetSide, on the other hand, all of that fucking fagotry is out of the fucking window. There's no "matchmaking" or preaaranged battle locations or guaranteed 5v5 fights -- this is real fucking war. You can spawn with your two or three friends in the middle of a tiny base, and find yourself surrounded by that Spanish clan with two frigging platoons and dozens of tanks and aircraft that can pulverize you in 5 seconds. The casual fags will say "this game is not fair, and therefore it's not fun", whereas the hardcore gamers will say "this game is better than fucking SEX", and will either study the map well to make sure they carefully inject themselves only into situations in which they can be of use to their side and have an appreciable effect (which will be very few if they are only two or three people, and hence extremely hard to find), OR, if they are really cool dudes, like me for example, they will start their own clan, recruit a few dozen people in it, play THE FUCK out of the game to become good, level up their characters, and pick specialties and learn to co-ordinate well and work like a real platoon -- and THEN they'll go back to that little base, hunt down that Spanish clan, and ASSRAPE them so hard that they'll chase them out of the fucking continent and cause them to drop like a stone down the clan leaderboard.

Do you see what I am saying? Do you see what a piddling, pathetic little abortion of a game Counter-Strike is compared to this insane masterpiece?

Do you see the ABYSS OF POSSIBILITIES here, compared to the autistic repeat of Counter-Strike's pathetic little bomb-placing or bomb-defusing routine, which, to a person like me, is a million times more depressing than getting assraped in PlanetSide all day every day with no possibility of reprieve in sight?

But, the deeper the game, the deeper the player must be, and the more he has to invest of himself in it in order to fully appreciate it. For the hardcore, then, there's PlanetSide, while for everyone else there's Counter-Strike, or "indie" games, or whatever other pathetic little abortion of a game is fashionable these days. Let them play whatever game makes them happy, and I'll do the same myself, roaming the continents of Auraxis with my friends, building up my army and sharpening its skills while hunting down the armies of my enemies and waging eternal war against them.

[icycalm]

Another thing I wanted to say has to do with SP/taub. SP gets impatient every time we have to wait for anything for more than two minutes, and doesn't miss any opportunity to tell us that he doesn't believe in the effectiveness of tactics. However, this is a game about waiting for you teammates and about using tactics. So yes, we get it that you don't like this SP, but the rest of us seem to like it, so I would appreciate it if you could keep your whining to yourself and out of my goddamn headset. I mean it's not like 10 people are going to change how they play the game to accommodate you. So if you get impatient just run off on your own to shoot people without even telling us, which you've already done enough times already, and when you feel like rejoining us just do so whenever you feel like it.

Generally, he seems to enjoy the game more and behave better when the team is down to 4 or 5 people, but it is my goal to play with such a small squad as little as possible, and I suspect that if we ever get to 15 or 20 people, and have a chance to try out some real tactics, his whining will become unbearable. So please, SP, read what I am telling you here and fix your attitude asap. You don't have to fix your behavior in the game, if you don't want to, all you have to do is stop whining to us on Mumble.

[icycalm]

Hitler Loses Zurvan Amp Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBJ9hTjMVps

[icycalm]

I think we picked the best faction, at least aesthetically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KvLFA7qMq4

TR music is by far the best. NC and VS are just dumb rock and roll and electronic crap, it's not fitting at all for the "army" atmosphere.

Don't want to be egghead or terrorist? Join TR and become a soldier!



Hey, I'd rather be a "Nazi" than a corporate slave, or a brainwashed cultist.

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Terran_Republic

[icycalm]

It's awesome that they made recruitment videos for all the factions.

PlanetSide2: Choose Duty, Choose the Terran Republic [Official Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHN9CdBqSYM

[icycalm]

PlanetSide 2: Choose Freedom, Choose the New Conglomerate [Official Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErA4jNfVSIM

PlanetSide 2: Choose Vanu Sovereignty, Choose Enlightenment [Official Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkTnvST9Teg

lol how awesome is this game?

[icycalm]

PLANETSIDE 2 RAP | Dan Bull
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9x1q-QRg3w

This should have been the official trailer for the game.

[Somali Pirate]

I get your point. I'll try to be a little more quiet. It's just that I got about 50 hours ahead of you guys in the game, so when I see 5 enemy air ships incoming I'll jump into something anti air, and also tell you guys to do the same, but I can keep that to myself mostly.

I do enjoy playing in a tightly knitted group, but something I see a huge threat coming in and I can't help but go "JUMP INTO ANTI AIR GUYS", so I'll do that on my own and try take care of that myself, assuming that over time everyone will starting to recognize the threads themselves.

As you maybe could tell I was getting a bit frustrated when I was pointing the obvious threads and many of you were standing around on the roof getting sniped off, while I went to charge the sniper, spotted their Sunderer where they were spawning from, without getting any backup.

Regarding tactics, I think they are a tad bit overrated in a fast past game like this, where everyone has to keep a general sense of the battle going on, being it through spotting, calling out enemies where they are coming from, and then take initiative. But maybe that's just a habit I got from playing alone most of the time. I'll try to tone that down. But I'll still try to give intel (as everyone should do) and try to stick more together to the team. But sometimes someone just hast to break lose to flank and take out the pesky snipers.

Anyway, I'm having a blast and looking forward to playing with you guys some more.

Do you see what I am saying? CTF felt his actions were futile because we were under siege in a base, and there was nothing we could do to break the siege, since we didn't have enough personnel, or skill, or resources, or a combination of all of these things. So we were BOUND to lose, and that depressed him. Hell, it depressed ALL of us, and was MEANT to depress us, because that's what defeat -- and especially defeat that's beyond our means to affect it -- does to human beings.

So many things need to come together for this game to work its magic, and CTF simply hasn't had the fortune to be with us in our finest moments. The game we played today was fun, and had some great moments, but we've had much better ones on several occasions. And that too is a consequence of the absurd depth of the game. In Counter-Strike, which is an absurdly shallow game by comparison, you can jump in with a 5-man team any day of the week, any hour of the day, and you are almost guaranteed a standard experience that's about as good as the game gets, because there are almost no uncontrollable factors affecting this enjoyment. It'll always be five guys versus five guys (and moreover guys who are more or less evenly matched due to the ranking and matchmaking system), duking it out on one of a handful of carefully crafted and laboriously tested little maps. There are essentially NO factors that are not under your and the developers' control. It's like going for a swim in an indoor swimming pool, as opposed to out in the open ocean.

I think this can be curbed a bit by not deploying in the 50vs50 hotspots, and taking small bases at a time, where there are only a handful enemies we can more easily overpower, at least until they call in their huge zerg backup hehe.

[CTF]

Again, thanks for the detailed answers. I have a question and I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter. I also think that art is about having fun but can we also agree that winning is fun? That improving and mastering the game and in the process crushing stronger opponents is also fun? If so, then why are you against friendly training (assuming of course the training is also fun). The goal is still to have fun, the way I see improving in the game is not as a goal by itself but as means of reaching the real goal, means to increase the fun you get out of playing. Or do you think that training versus friends is a poor choice to make to get to the goal of having fun?

I was under the impression you don't read guides because they are outside the games. I also think that improving is a lot more fun if you improve by learning the game inside the game by playing it and not by reading a guide online.

I can try to answer this myself but if I am wrong I would be happy to hear your answers:

1. In my questions I had to assume that training is also fun. If someone doesn't enjoy playing versus his friends then training in this manner is not fun for him and he is better off improving only by playing the game with his friends versus strangers.

2. You said playing videogames is something you do to relax from real training. So, if you find training in a video game not relaxing it is a poor way to play the game.

3. You do not think playing vs friends can give important insights as to how to improve any better than the ones you get while playing the game vs strangers.

Bottoms line is: It is not only better to play the game with friends versus strangers but also it is better to improve in the game in the same manner than with friends versus friends.

Am I on the right track here? Do I understand you correctly?

Regarding the rest of your comments, I see your point and I whole-heartily agree. As I have said yesterday, that session was a great deal better than the first one. I guess in the first session there really were sub optimal conditions to play the game for the first time (I wont lie, I felt totally lost for a lot of reasons) but leaving a game as complex as this without giving it a real shot is a shame so I did come back for more and understood a lot more during yesterday's session. I guess this game also just gets better and better with time and your investment in it but unfortunately for now I have only 2-3 hours during the weekdays to play, I'll do my best though. I can totally see how better the game gets with each player in the squad and I hope that our group will grow. Being part of something huge and organized like that Spanish clan from yesterday seems like an AMAZING experience.

Getting wrecked like that really motivates me to improve and fight back, here's hoping that one day Auraxis will be ours!

[recoil]

I get your point. I'll try to be a little more quiet. It's just that I got about 50 hours ahead of you guys in the game, so when I see 5 enemy air ships incoming I'll jump into something anti air, and also tell you guys to do the same, but I can keep that to myself mostly.

I do enjoy playing in a tightly knitted group, but something I see a huge threat coming in and I can't help but go "JUMP INTO ANTI AIR GUYS", so I'll do that on my own and try take care of that myself, assuming that over time everyone will starting to recognize the threads themselves.

As you maybe could tell I was getting a bit frustrated when I was pointing the obvious threads and many of you were standing around on the roof getting sniped off, while I went to charge the sniper, spotted their Sunderer where they were spawning from, without getting any backup.

Considering you have more experience, I'd say you should take a squad leader role. The only issue I see so far is that we haven't really been keeping a strict chain of command. So I would suggest that once we get another organized session going that all players need to follow their squad leader and stick close to them, which would mean spawning together, moving together, and dying together.

Regarding tactics, I think they are a tad bit overrated in a fast past game lie this, where everyone has to keep a general sense of the battle going on, being it through spotting, calling out enemies where they are coming from, and then take initiative. But maybe that's just a habit I got from playing alone most of the time. I'll try to tone that down. But I'll still try to give intel (as everyone should do) and try to stick more together to the team. But sometimes someone just hast to break lose to flank and take out the pesky snipers.

I would not underestimate the role of tactics. You employ them yourself when you make the decisions to charge snipers and take out air vehicles. Again, the issue is that we haven't been using a strict chain of command. For instance, if you were the squad leader and told your squad to charge a sniper, you could have split up your squad to provide cover fire while someone goes for a flanking maneuver.

[icycalm]

lol SP can be squad leader after I've moved to another game. Until then there's no chance in hell this will happen. He hates strategy and tactical games. He misses no opportunity to denigrate our attempts to move in a more coordinated, tactical manner. Every time we take a base and consider what our next move should be, he ALWAYS quips in an impatient manner that we should "just move on to the next one". Newsflash: I don't give a fuck about your opinion, SP. And even if I did, there is no reason for you to repeat it to me, because I already know it: keep moving forward until we reach the end of the continent. But that is not only a stupid strategy, it is a boring one too, that basically almost reduces the game to a corridor shooter, which appears to be SP's favorite genre.

So, like I said, SP will remain a part of the team and is free to do as he pleases as long as he can keep his whining to himself. After all, as long as he's not shooting us or our allies he is contributing in some way to our side. But I will not inflict his command on any other players. I mean, he even started something new today. He started slurring his words and speaking in a hushed voice. He sounds depressed or something, or as if he's doing us a favor by playing with us. Half of the time I have no idea what he's mumbling, and have to ask him to repeat it. And you want this guy to coordinate a team of 12 people, while at the same time checking in and reporting to me and the other squad leaders?

I'll be back to respond to the other posts in the thread later. Gotta eat and get back in the game now. You should join us if you have the time today, recoil. jeff is now in the team and infernovia is downloading the game, so we are up to 12 people now and should be 13 soon. Which by the way also means that we are now ranked on the outfit leaderboard:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/outf ... 255526.php

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