[Suggestion] Too much vehicle kills the game!

THIS. Jesus H Christ, this. This is what every infantry player wants. They want tough tanks and destructive jets. We just want them to be an ALTERNATIVE to ground-pounding, not a straight-up upgrade. You know, make it something you need to think about.

wait are you saying that you would not use HE if it cost you more?

Wait are you saying that a shotgun will completely change the way I play this game? Wow, I'll have to try that
' as if driving a tank was easy as drinking a glass of water'
lol when you make stupid comments like that, it is much easier to drive a tank then drink(now excuse me wile I get a cloth to clean this up)

yes because a game with MBT, IFV, armored and unarmored transports, ATV, Fighters, Gunships, Attack helicopters, Scout helicopters, transport helicopters, and self propelled artillery is defendant for someone who doesn't like vehicles

This game is made to be played in large numbers. If people decide to go lone wolf then they will get crushed.
Besides we have all those classes. We need medics to revive, engineers to repair+resupply, infiltrators to hack and light assault to flank. But the main part of any infantry MUST be heavy assault. That is the way the game is designed. If every class was as good at this as the HA there would be no use for vehicles. Might as well play CoD.

@ Dingus148: Combined arms just means Infantry, Armor and Air working together. The numbers you mentioned are just how we do it on Earth with our current technology. If vehicles were as cheap (and they are) and abundant in RL as they are in this game we would use way more of them. The reason we don't is that the cost is prohibitive.

And your numbers disprove your "BF3 does it better" point. There are 64 people on the map. there are 2 jets, 2 helicopters, 2 or more tanks + IFVs and now even tank destroyers. way to many according to your numbers. In fact I'd bet that PS2 has a more realistic ratio.

Stop making sense, you're making the vehicle whiners anxious.

Exactly!

if the vehicles are cheap, why are we even bothering with infantry?
PS is not realistic, it's mid-20century tech in futuristic clothing. If these peeps could make tanks and planes for peanuts, they would also have tech enabling them to control mech remotely, in the early 21st century we have drones yet they can't have that even though they use lazorz and invisibility.

There needs to be balance for gameplay reasons.

In real life infantry is crucial in case of urban combat because ground mech is like a sitting duck. The problem in PS2 is on 90% of the map you have just few shacks and you can park your vehicle on top of the control point and shoot in every single window of the base.
BTW, did i really see scythe capping point by hovering over it yesterday? You don't even have to go outside? what is this, i don't even

Are you telling me you can't hit a hovering scythe with a dumbfire rocket and earn yourself a cert? Vehicles on cap points are sitting ducks waiting to be dumbfired to oblivion. And if your spawn room is camped then you have LOST the territory. Spawn back at the nearest outpost and counterattack.

There is balance. People have to stop thinking that they can blow up vehicles alone. Adapt. Improve. Overcome. It's that simple.
And before anyone says that I just wanna keep my vehicles to farm. I barely use any.

I wonder when the ifantry spam will stop. They are just to cheap and do have just a few seconds respawn timer. Maybe if you put up the timer to 5 minutes, people would use those to think about strategys to kill vehicles/not get killed by them.

I actually don´t see the Problem. In big zergs, there are sure a lot of them, but in a big zerg they also will die very fast. And i don´t see it where the Problem ist, handling them in smaller battles.

Not sure I can agree. In PS1 pretty much every infantryman in a footzerg was equipped with empire specific assault rifles and empire specific AV. Still vehicles were dominant, but they could be repelled. As it stands now, unless you are in a heavily defensible location, vehicles can obliterate infantry simply because there isn't enough outgoing AV firepower when only HA has access to it. I do agree, based on how game is designed now, that HA must be the backbone of any infantry action in open areas. However, besides outfit exclusive platoons, this rarely happens and you have an equal mix of everything... which means unorganized armor columns will shred them.

What also must be kept in mind when I draw a comparison to PS1 is that vehicles had no resource requirements, however they had timers. But there weren't loads of smaller bases where you could pull sunderers and such. Vehicles could ONLY be pulled at the facilities (PS1 never had any minor outposts, only facilities).

Put simple, PS1 had alot more infantry with access to AV weapons to repel armor. However PS1 had more vehicle access, but you had to drive for longer distances to get back into a fight due to the base layouts, and the amount of vehicles on the field limited itself because of that.

In PS2 there is extremely limited access to AV weapons for infantry unless you specifically run your platoon with 75% heavy assaults. There is much easier access to vehicles as they can be pulled from bases which (largely) are not more than a minute or two away from the frontlines. Furthermore the vehicles can have respawn timers reduced drastically... and the resource cost / gain is such that unless you get destroyed almost immediately after you pull a vehicle, you can afford a new one before you are killed... so it's a never-ending loop of vehicles being spawned.

Also, many people simply use a vehicle rotation, i.e. spawn as MBT... get killed... spawn as ESF... get killed... spawn as Lightning... get killed... spawn as Liberator... get killed... spawn as Sunderer... By keeping this loop, and not getting instant-killed after you spawn the vehicle, you can literally live within a vehicle and never footzerg at all.

That was not possible in Planetside 1 due to the fact that you didn't automagically have all vehicles unlocked. You had to focus your characters development into the various trees. If you had 20 certs available you had to choose if you wanted MBT, AMS, ESF.. or all the above and have no infantry weapons to speak off.

Without that limitation in PS2 you are free to live in vehicles your whole PS2 life and just go about farming infantry to your hearts desire... as long as you keep looping the vehicles you pull you never become limited by resources anyhow.

How long do you have to be there to flip the control point? It's not like it floats there for eternity, few seconds, done. Ground vehicles are limited by terrain in both field of vision and manouverability so they are more manageable, but ESF can bail in an instant and then pwn yoass with rockets from above.
i was an infiltrator just passing by and i was completely powerless. Should i actually make an effort of going 200m to the spawn shack to reclass just under his nose, while most likely he has the imbavision enabled and will wax me on sight? Besides, getting into the spawn shack would be actually the easy part, what about leaving it while he floats just above it and you don't see him even for 1 second? Besides, would you put yourself in a spawncamping 1v1 situation voluntarily?
If he had to leave the vehicle for even 5 sec to flip the point i would have a small window of opportunity to line quite an epic headshot and put him down. That would be fair but no, can't have that.

This game isn't meant for 1v1. When will people understand? And an infiltrator is in no way meant to be able to kill an ESF.
Teamwork. Join an outfit. The game is designed for it. You don't cut a steak with a fork, do you? You use a knife. Use the things that are given to you in the manner they were meant to work.
People are basically punching against a wall made of stone and then they complain that their hands are not effective. It's ridiculous.
Also: If that situation happens often on your server than it is deserted. That problem has NOTHING to do with vehicles.

@Ghroznak: If people wanna miss out on interesting Infantry battles it's their loss. Hell it's a good thing. Otherwise I'd have bought my Annihilator for nothing.
And if people aren't smart enough to switch to the class that is meant to destroy armor when there is a tank column headed their way then they deserve to get overrun. You don't even have to be in an Outfit for that one. Common sense would be enough.
And resources do become a problem unless you own most of the map. If your enemy doesn't hold a lot of the map and still has lots of vehicles you aren't destroying them fast enough.

Can´t every class except the Infil. get C4? Maybe we should just wait a bit more, till more people found out how to use it.

Obviously in your little infantry world everyone that is not on foot must be an HE camper.
I couldnt care less about HE, im a sundy driver.
I provide spawn points an defend them.
I dont even get to gun most of the time.
Why would a more developed veichle cost more resources?
If you specialized in that veichle eventually should cost LESS resources... makes sense doesnt it?
Also notice that tank drivers PAYED certs/money for their HE cannon, why would you want them to pay AGAIN (in terms of resources) everytime they get a tank at the terminal?

It completely changed the way i perform at CQC in this game.
Yes maybe you should try it, as you should try everything else that bothers you before suggesting nerfs...

If there is one thing I might be inclined to agree with it is this:

Basically, as soon as you join the game you can jump in any vehicle.
Admittedly your effectiveness with that vehicle at that point is probably going to be really really low, but it probably contributes to the impression of a "vehicle zerg" (since most of the vehicles in a zerg are in fact completely uncerted).

I don't know what could be done to make this less of an issue, or if it even is an issue (it doesn't bother me, always fun seeing tanks and aircraft go boom)

I wouldn't mind seeing an initial cert cost to vehicles or something along those lines but I don't think the devs want to make the game more restrictive to new players.

Good post. Agree.

Good post. Agree.

well then Mr Sundy, if it cost you more to equip s-ams would you stop using?(personally I think the cost of a sundy is too high but whatever)
and you are soooooo right a sunderer should not cost more then a flesh just because its more 'developed' ie has +11 seats and twice the number of guns./sarcasm
And clearly the better something is the less it should cost /sarcasm(sorry)
And now that I've PAYED certs for AT mines I should never have to pay AGAIN

one thing that I would like to say is that, with the whole render distends problem it is possible that there are more infantry in the fight then we can see, while all vehicles will almost always appear. leading to vehicles appearing to out number infantry.

Actually PS1 AV weapons are weaker than PS2 AV weapons, but PS1 also had the cloaking AMS, PS1 mines, PS1 spitfires and MBT required a driver and a gunner.

You are putting words in my mouth... care to quote me please? Oh wait i never said or thought anything like that so you cant .

This is not sarcasm, you are just very short on valid arguments .
If you were a driver you would be here whining about AT mines... because really you are a whiner, doesnt matter the cause.

ya the reall issue is they allowed a starting player full access to all vehicles. but yet not full access to all weapons in order to counter the vehicles.

in ps1 you only had a set number of certs in which to gain access to vehicles amor or weapons. you had to make a choice of what you wanted to do. you could NOT do everything. either you were a pilot or you were an infantry, you might have one or two vehciles for transportation or occasional tank fun. but if you were certed for infiltrator hacker. or max/heavy assault. or what ever. this is a fundamental flaw. honestly the devs did NOT do their research. and did NOT look at previous tried and true gameplay balancing. they are scratching their heads wonder what they are doing wrong and yet vehemently refusing to do what ps1 did to solve those issues.