A Response to General feelings around Air Ground Balance

I originally Put this as a response to this thread: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...d-to-shred-tanks-to-pieces-in-a-second.99618/

But it was lost in the general flow of the thread and wasn't really addressed. My post was the following:

I would also like to add that I feel that there are too many soft counters for Air at the moment and this is going to make it very difficult to balance going forward.

I now expect either no responses or a large amount of unconstructive comments.

I personally think that the air ground balance is pretty balanced @ least on my server. I think most people that complain about the air are people that don't fly and don't know what it takes to get those kills. I also think that is hard to get a real answer when all of the servers are not fighting the same way.

On waterson everything including the tree's have AA on them. If you are getting kills you deserver every one of them. Now I do understand it from the ground side as well because I love playing support classes like the medic / eng and now and then the air power is just insane but, that is only when no one is trying to counter them.

Every person has the ability to counter the air but, people are more worried about getting certs or keeping k/d then the planes bombing the entire faction into submission.

The balance is already in place people just need to use the equipment @ hand. I use to be in the same boat, I would b1tch about air until I realized that I never tried to counter them. So I started fighting back w/ the max and our friend the lock on rocket. When that failed I started flying esf to counter the esf. Now I play everything. In order to be effective @ this game you have to know how to play more then one thing.

People that just want to play one thing tank / infi / air and complain about the other really have no reason to complain because they have not witnessed the carnage from both sides.

Air is balance as is as long as people try to stop the air. If they sit there and do nothing they will get farmed and you can't blame the fly boys for it either. If you could go to a bank and get $1,000 every day for free w/ no repercussions.. you would do it.

I Don't blame them for it, It's just that every AA counter is behind a Paywall and the most effective counter is behind a resource wall as well (I wouldn't want to pull a dual burster max to deal with one aircraft as you have then a obligation to remain as a AA max Until you die and your unable to be any help to a defence after the Aircraft are warded off) 75% of the maps have no faculty to protect from air as a layman while every man gets given a good counter to ground vehicles out of the gate.
The only vehicle that can counter aircraft as stock is another Aircraft which if your using it as stock your going to be outplayed by the more experienced airmen and the only other thing that can reliably hurt aircraft as stock is The single burster max.

Edit: The main issue I have is that there are things you can use to eliminate ground vehicles almost instantly (the rocket pods them selves for example) If the driver is playing badly but there's only one thing that can punish Aircraft in the same way(AA Max) and even then there freedom from terrain means that they can still escape to fight another day.

I don't know why you wouldn't call a skyguard/AA turrets/lock missiles a hard counter to air. They destroy aircraft so fast now; it's ridiculous. It's to the point where you literally cannot fly near groups of enemies of 10+ people or enemy bases whatsoever. You will be instantly killed before you can react.

Last night, there was a large battle going on. The silly thing was that we had about 10 reavers on our side just sitting there waiting, and they had about 15 mosquitos sitting on their side waiting... and no one could go to the other side because the G2A AA is just too strong nowadays to survive for more than 3 seconds. The AA is now so strong that it ruins ESF dogfighting because it effectively zones out all enemy aircraft no middle ground.

The balance aint perfect but it is far better than before.I think the nerf on lock-ons went a bit too far though, they should prolly reduce the lock on time by 0.5s or something because right now it is barely useful. On my personal experience a lock on against air tends to work the following way most of the time: aircraft shows up in the air coming at the ground troops and u begin locking in, when u finally locked on the air is near your troops or already lolpoding them, you shoot air uses flares, air starts running away and either you dont get to lock on a second time or you get to shoot another missile when it is about to leave your render distance, sometimes that missile will hit and sometimes the air will dodge/force it on the ground or any other type of cover. If by chance u hit the player will go to a safe location repair and come back for another lolpod attack.

Not saying that using lock ons should be exactly as before but they should find a middle ground between before and the current nerf. Other than lock ons my biggest issue with going AA is that it aint rewarding and that pushes alot of players out of that role, the air surface damage exp bonus was a nice addition but some mechanisms should be changed. The majority of the time if u are playing AA when u manage to cause enough damage to the air couple things happen very often:

1-Player on the aircraft trying to doge your shoots or purposely trying to deny you exp will crash on a wall/tree denying you the full exp for the aircraft kill and the player kill.
2-Player will bail of the aircraft making it fall to the ground and crashing denying you the full aircraft kill exp and the player exp if he committed suicide. If he managed to survive the fall good for him but if he died whoever forced him to jump in the first place should get the kill and the certs that come with it.

Right now alot of people dont wanna stick to AA roles because while it is a vital position in certain fights it brings in very few kills and certs and the majority of this game population care alot about both.

Exactly There needed to be something that was a fun counter to air that people could go to switch to to deal with air threats which can be satisfying. But I feel adding such a thing when combined with the existing AA would be overkill. I'm hoping that Flash rumble seats will help fill the gap as adding a sense of speed to Infantry AA making it more engaging and you can chase down fleeing aircraft instead of them just taking some damage and running away to the next base over to repair and rearm and be back a few moments later.

Look at my sig. Now back to me. Alright, now that we've got that out of the way...

I find currently I only manage to kill stupid pilots(I pilot as well, just not as a main "job") consistantly. Many times when I'm with a few other skyguards, bursters, etc. smart pilots will initiate a strafing run, fire 2-3 missles, realize hes going to die if he pursues, then fly the hell out quickly, flaring if HA's are locking. Hes gone possibly with a kill and at least repair XP, I got my 20XP, everyones happy.
Unskilled pilots iniate a run, fire 2-3 missles, continue pursuit of our Sunderer, MAXes, Frontline, etc. and die shortly after running into a hailstorm of Flak. We all get our 30-200 EXP's, he died, maybe got the kill he wanted, we're happy, he learns or dies more in future.

I find this fair.

Air is definitley balanced... dare I say it a bit too balanced. * wink *
Any more of your suggested "hard counters" against air and the game will be 100% clear free of Aircrafts and need to be called GroundSide 2.

Yhea I suppose I'm just stuck on a server that doesn't have enough of a player balance for me to see the current games AA balance put too effect. And I'm too poor to properly experience it my self.

I Agree with you I suppose, I knew That adding any more AA is over kill as I said before but I wish SOE had attempted to find balance with a more clear cut system. Instead of adding a whole bunch of expensive side grades to counter air threat they could of added something at stock tier as the go to air defence. By just having a AA turret at all outposts it would of plugged most of the issues, or having a dedicated AA platform as a spawnable vehicle without paying for it (although general opinion I hear is that the skygaurd isn't even up to the job at it's cost).

And what happens when you take any other unit in the game and get close to groups of 10+ enemies or an enemy base?

They will be releasing a AA turret real soon. I seen the concept samples. Don't know if it's portable or static. Portable as in it's made for an Engie?

A solo player...should not have the edge against anything. *Shrugs* If he is playing a game by himself...he is going to be food for bigger sharks. If you are worried so much about ESF's honestly...then don't go places by yourself!!!

Honestly...I'm not trying to be a dick. But it's like taking a Vacation to Iran when you are an American...if you are unwilling to accept the risk you may very well be taken prisoner and accused of being a spy and used as a political pawn. YOU JUST SHOULDN'T GO THERE!

The same applies to planetside. If you are unwilling to accept the risk that as a single guy or small group that you may very well be hunted down and killed by one or more aircraft and you didn't bring some sort of counter. Then you should most likely just avoid the situation. You just simply cant ask for a solution to a problem you are putting yourself into.

Just to say it simpler...if you swim with a shark and don't have a cage. You shouldn't be surprised if you get bit.

I think we have the best balance since launch right now. Not saying it's perfect. In December, aircrafts roamed free and there was no real way to take them on unless you were another aircraft. The podders could hover around and rain death upon the lands. Then came the AA buffs and the lock-on launchers together with some air nerfs which tipped the balance in the wrong direction. Air was all but extinct for a while. Now when they adjusted the Annihilator, and I guess the pilots needed some time to adjust as well, air is back and air is dangerous but it's no longer dominating. I guess it could use some more tweaks but now we are in the right ballpark.

One lone infantry shouldn't be able to take down an ESF or Liberator unless the pilot is stupid. Like all the pilots I have treated with a Decimator to the face when they are stupid enough to hover in front of the spawn room shield. That's evolution right there. If a pilot is smart, I can't kill him on my own. I can harass him and disrupt his activities quite effective but I can't kill him. Unless we gather in a group.

I missed your post earlier, The reason I don't consider them hard counters as you can't use one to counter the other in a 1:1 scenario. If your a HA with a lock on launcher alone against 1 person in a Aircraft The aircraft is designed to win that scenario as your 1 infantry and he is in a highly mobile vehicle that has more health than you and has a resource cost. The HA can still win using skill and the ESF not.
To guarantee the kill you need three Lock on launchers and co-operation. Turrets are effective counters but there not every were and experienced airmen can completely nullify the turrets in 1:1 by flying low and Rpodding from below their firing angle.
I don't know about skygaurds as there rumoured ineffectiveness and high cost means there a rare sight but as lightnings by them selves are easy pickings to most Air to Ground they need a lot of bite to make sure they come out on top in a 1:1 fight.
A AA MAX is the only thing that can stand up to most aircraft but it's little more that a walking AA turret and requires the user to be Dedicated AA until they Die or they waste the spent resources.

The thing is Most aircraft have the luxury of easy retreat and escape should any AA come in to play while you can only hide from aircraft if your not one of the above, and until the aoe nerf next patch not even that could save you.

The only experience I hear from airmen who say that AA is too much at the moment isn't considering the fact your 1 guy in a jet against several defending a area who over half of them can only scratch you with bullets or not at all if your 2 to 3 men in a gunship.
Your force multiplier is much higher than on the ground as for every wingman you have you need more than equal dedicated AA.

You know you can rearm at terminals as a MAX, so you can at least switch to an AI MAX and makes those resources worth something. The only AA stuck as AA is the Skyguard.

My opinions, take them with a grain of salt from an avid AA player and mediocre pilot.

That's why I think it's stupid that AA falls to infantry, There shouldn't be a balance gained by having mass small fire as the only option to take something down especially when every thing else has something that can execute it very fast as well as the more conventional chip away until it dies approach. There should of been something standard that completed the Rock Paper Scissors balance that most combined arms strategy strives for.

I think you're wrong, and that's why your response got ignored, because people couldn't be bothered to waste their time on someone who is insane enough to think there is no hard counter to air when there are four.

The irony is I did get a response, after I had already made this thread some one responded to my original post.

And any way this thread if you had read it you might of realised that I have reconsidered my opinion of GtA balance due to the discussion with others.

I'm really not sure if I am understanding the OP correctly. Are we suggesting that air be even easier to counter than it already is?

If air tries to focus on infantry, they get killed by the abundant AA in the game, if they try to focus tanks, they get killed by the abundant AA in the game, if they stay at 500+ meters and try to focus aircraft, they get killed by the abundant AA in the game.

I wish more people would actually try aircraft before saying they need more counters for it.