SOE, do not listen to INFANTRY telling you how to balance the game

My most played class is engineer. Immediately people will taunt me about this. I get insults from other faction members all the time about "vehicle whoring".

Truth is, out of my 20,000+ kills, only about 8,000 have come from vehicles. I have thousands upon thousands of kills on my light assault, heavy, MAX, supports, etc. I truly try to experience this game for what it strives for... a COMBINED ARMS experience, not Cowwadooty Auraxis map DLC.

Everywhere I post about the balance situation between air, tanks, and infantry, I've noticed a huge pattern: Infantry players do not want balance, they want biodome shells placed over every zone in the game. They would be happy if every vehicle in the game got removed immediately. They will guise this opinion in balance discussions by pretending to "contribute" with suggestions that annihilators aren't OP, that liberators aren't completely useless now, and that after 3 months of whining somehow its vehicle users that are the whiners who need to deal with it.

I've always tried to be fair in these discussions. I never defended the magrider's advantage, I knew rocket pods needed to be toned down and anti-air needed to be buffed up. But anyone who, like me, enjoys variety between infantry, vehicles, and air can tell you that (at least before the latest hotfix, we'll see) the balance swung too far in favor of infantry.

TL;DR Even the most "hardcore" pilots on my server still spend at least half the game fighting as infantry. We want balance for all gameplay styles, however the vast majority of players are "infantry" farmers who would never leave a biolab again if they could. These players do not have an incentive for a "balanced" game they simply want air and tanks to be as dead as possible.

Shut up Vehicle *****. You guys just want to keep feasting on Infantry and having an easy time. Soon as it gets a bit hard, you flood the forums with your tears.

Come join the rest of the folks - You know, who have to worry about ground and air.

There's a reason most Pilots have huge K/D ratios. It's easymode.

"Only" 40% of your kills have come from vehicles. You do realize that's an absurdly high number, right? The vast majority of your time and kills should be spent on foot. Around 20% is a decent number, that provides a decent amount of variety while still prioritizing infantry. And why should infantry have the most kills by far? Look around a battlefield, and tell me approximately what proportion of vehicles you see compared to infantry.

Libs are easy mode; more so because of their ridiculous armor than their cannons. Their weapons are as powerful as they should be, but they should be a bit easier to destroy; especially through concentrated fire from multiple sources.

ESF and Ground Vehicles are just the right amount of OP against Infantry.

Infantry and vehicles should *not* be on an even playing field to each other. If you go 1v1 as infantry against a tank or plane, you *should* lose, unless the tank/plane pilot is just really, really bad.

Who says? This isn't Call of Duty, if someone wanted they could spend ALL of their time and kills in a vehicle.


And how the hell is the OP getting insulted all the time for being in a vehicle? And being taunted for being a Engineer...

What the hell, where am I?

Did you even read the rest of my post?

You mean the other parts where you tried to offer reasons and even as to what percentages of people's kills should come from vehicles or infantry? Sure.

Yes SOE, please listen to the vehicle drivers because...you know, they drive vehicles. I mean, duh.

SOE, do not listen to posters telling you do not listen to INFANTRY telling you how to balance the game.

Your turn again OP.

This thread is the perfect example of how clueless players can be.

The fact that there are seperated rival "camps" of infantry guy vs vehicle guy demonstrates you folks just do not comprehend the rather simple nature of the game.
There are no "flyboys" and no "groundpounders". There's only your faction vs the other factions.
They got tanks? Pull AP tanks, G2G / annihilator squads and dalton libs.
They have air? Pull bursters, skyguards, A2A/Afterburner ESFs and G2A / annihilator squads
They got infantry pull infantry, HE tanks, zepher libs.

They got everything? Pull all of the above!

It's NOT

They got tanks? Keep on trucking with medic / infiltrator. Tanks are OP!
They got air? Who cares, someone else will deal with it - keeps on playing as decimator heavy pewpewing enemy infantry (like everyone else) - Gets farmed repeatedly by rocketpawds and libs that can hover without a care in the world. Makes angry forum thread nº476/B on how air is so OP it's ruining PS2.
They got infantry? The game is finally balanced!

They got everything? Why are all these vehicles interfering with my fun - makes forum thread on how vehicles need to be nerfed into the ground.

It's faction vs faction - your faction has tanks, ESF's, libs, exactly the same thing the enemy is throwing at you. Take the challenge on and defeat it with the means available to you - stop crying like children.

You people are sad.

Libs make up around 2% of my kills but calling them easy mode makes you sound like another cowwadooty transplant. It's the only vehicle in the game that requires a CREW to effectively operate and that crew has to be using voice comms to coordinate their movement and ground targeting. If anything in this game deserves to be a powerhouse it's the liberator and it's DEAD. Yes that's right, the LIBERATOR IS DEAD. In the current metagame liberators are FLYING XP CHESTS to enemy factions and nothing more.

I posted a video yesterday of me surveying the air on Indar during prime-time. 500+ players, 0 liberators, <20 ESF's. We have gone beyond balance and toward "APPEASE THE MOB WE NEED MORE SMEDBUX, NERF AIR AGAIN!".

This is from the patch notes of this morning's hotfix:

• Lock-on weapons (A2A Missiles & Lock-on heavy assault weapons)
  • Lock-on Angle reduced. Targets must be closer to the center of the crosshair in order to lock-on.
• NS Annihilator
  • Base lock-on acquire time increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

So obviously SOE is not listening to infantry only when it comes to balance. Not to mention the AA nerfs we've had in the past, that were too strong and had to be buffed again.

Dev's shouldn't listen to any player's when it comes to balancing the game .. Player concerns should be a reason to look to see if something need's changing, not the reason changes are made

I've been playing the last few months and my grand total of kills playing solely as infantry is 178 kills. I can vouch for others who have been playing a lot longer than me while they may have gotten 1000 kill medals for some of their guns they don't have anywhere close to 22,000 kills.

Consider this, If SoE cater to those "Planetside Pilots" and completely unbalance the scale in terms of power then you will a sizable increase in new pilots and/or a sizable decrease in population which means less money for SoE.
If you wish to say that the infantry players don't want balance then I would say you are more a fool than an NC who can't tell the difference between an giraffe and a VS. I speak to TR, NC and our own VS in battles over yell and on forums. It seems from what I have gathered is that they agree the Annihilator needs to be toned down a little.

Now to speak to you from the perspective of a pilot.
You're an idiot.. a fringe idiot who can't learn how to dodge. I have dodged i don't know how many missiles and rockets. If you cannot adapt to the changing battlefield then I suggest you go roll an NC scattermax, i hear they aren't nerfed yet.

SOE, do not listen to players. Period. We will complain no matter what you do, so you might as well do what you like.

Yeah, I one shot LIb's all the time. I mean, you can kill a lib with just one rocket, right?

I love you, you are one of the few people on this forum who "gets it". Most vehicle trolls play this game like Smedly personally disabled their vehicle terminals. God forbid we have a game where you counter liberators with A2A ESF's and not forum tears. Unfortunately that's what's worked for them so far. The liberator is nothing more than a large XP chest now. The annihilator is SOE's way of cashing in on the crowd who apparently only wants a CoD MMO, heavies in a footzerg now counter EVERYTHING.

It's actually 2-shots with a decimator, you were close though. It's actually funny people keep yelling for libs to just "fly low near terrain" now. Flying low in a lib WILL get you 2-shot by the newly buffed tank guns or the few players who made the mistake of getting decimators before annihilators were released.

I personally think SOE should take in the feedback from that one group of people who play this game.

I think they're called "Everyone."

"You just want COD" is a really, REALLY tired and overplayed meme on these forums.

I don't want COD. I want Planetside. The people that are fine with vehicles being one-man OP machines want Battlefield: Auraxis Edition. I want vehicles to have mount and dismount animations that leave you vulnerable when entering/exiting, to REQUIRE multiple crew (driver + gunner), to be more powerful and more survivable, and to have a DEFINED role on the battlefield -- dominating and pushing the field battle TO a base, but not curbstomping all over everything AT the base.

Vehicles right now are pay-to-win powerups. Go to a terminal, spend some (easily acquired) resources, BAM you now have mega-armor and a splash-damage instagib EZCannon, no teamwork or skill required. They are accordingly easy to destroy. You can have tougher vehicles when they actually COST you something and are more than just "CLICK HERE FOR MEGA POWER" buttons.