As I said before, the number of kills means nothing, there are a lot of factors that affect that completely unrelated to something being OP or not. Number of kills by itself only tells me that more people are using it, why are more people using it? There are a few reasons I could think of that affect not only how many people use it, but how often they use it, both things together increase the number of kills largely (and the "how often" also affects the KPU, which is the reason why KPU is a bad metric): 1) More fun to use (at least for me, this is an undeniable truth, more speed = more fun). Before the nerf to ZOE I was racking a lot more kills than before the nerf, but after the nerf my killstreaks were pretty similar to what they were without ZOE, but I still used it more often, why? Because it's really fun to use, just that. That's the same reason why if you gave me a Striker and a Lancer, I would use the Lancer all day. 2) Perception of power: If people believe something to be powerful, they will tend to use it more, it doesn't necessarily need to be actually more powerful. A good example on the opposite direction is the Lancer, it's the less used ESRL with the less kills overall because the common perception is that it's a bad weapon, but is it? As one of the top Lancer killers across the world, I can safely say that the Lancer is an awesome weapon. The same thing happened with the VS MAX before the changes to the weapons and all of that, for practical purposes VS and TR MAX were the same, yet the VS MAX was much less used because the overall perception was that it was bad. The same thing that happens with ZOE MAX happens (in a much larger scale) with the TR Harrasser, while I do believe that both the ZOE MAX is the best AI MAX and the TR Harrasser is the best Harrasser, let's be honest, the diference is not that big, the TR harrasser has more kills than the VS and NC combined, but I would never say it's twice as good.
Just to prove my point about WoW.... Right now the Warrior seems to be their ZOE MAX. Just a random sample (from the WoW forums) of threads from people crying about nerfs and how the game is unbalanced: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10358026201 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10357946508 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10312101637 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10358026240 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10357946458 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10389128894 And all of these are just from ONE sub-forum (Battlegrounds) and from just the FIRST FREAKING PAGE, not the entire forum. There are endless complaints about the lack of balance. So if WoW can't balance the game with nerfs after all of these years, how exactly do you think it will work with PS2?
Your forgot the biggest whine and the first real PS2 nerf: the HE nerf...and you also forgot the nerf Carv/fury threads To be honest 95% of that list should be nerfed/was OP when it was introduced I play both TR and Vanu, i dont see a point in giving the TR+NC MAX an equal broken MAX ability - just like i dont think Vanu/TR should get shotguns on their MAX's. A broken item/class isnt fixed by giving it to all fractions - its fixed by nerfing/removing it. Look at the old Zephyr/HE lighting spam, everyone could do it and it more or less broke the game and scared a lot of newbies away from PS2.
That's why I said it was just a sample of the nerfs. If I posted a full list of people's whines i'd be here all day. But I don't agree with nerfing except in extreme cases. Most problems can be fixed by adding a weapon that counters the other one or by boosting something else. When PS2 was first released the aircraft controlled the game and there was no real counter to it. All they needed to do was make the AA better and everything would be fine. Boosting is always better than nerfing. And I didn't say we should give the weapon in question to all factions, I said we should boost the items the other factions have that are supposed to be the equivalent of this one. So in this case they should make the Aegis and Lockdown better and I even posted ideas for doing that.
2 problems with buffing, instead nerfing: a) You get a insane power creep/inflation, because you constantly needs to buff a lot of weapons. b) the amount of work that goes into balance. Nerfing can be hard enough, buffing multiple weapons to create balance towards one weapon might break balance another place in the game. Example: We got problems with harasser-vs-tanks right now. So you buff tank armour/weapons, now the harasser-vs-tanks is right, but tanks are now very hard to kill for infantry/aircrafts. In that case its just easier to nerf the harasser. Same with ZOE, right now its too good, because of the combat speed. If you buff all infantry speed, then you got a problem with infantry C4'ing tanks, because they now can catch tanks driving away.
Well, you're never going to have real balance in a game in the eyes of the community so we should just give up on that dream right now. It will never happen. I'm not saying that buffing is going to fix everything because it won't..... But I just think its a better alternative than making people mad by nerfing all of their weapons. And at this rate, at the same time next year there won't be many weapons left that haven't been nerfed at least once. LOL If you want a real solution to balance, do what I do.... Stop worrying about it and learn to use the weapons you have available to you to the best of your ability. If people did that then they could probably learn to kill the people using weapons that they think are OP. Basically my solution is to adapt instead of blame. It really does work.
No, you made out like it is impossible, giving two positives for one negative. It is not impossible, it may be hard to balance, but it is not impossible. I then threw in that line to show you how actually it's pretty ******* trivial to get it right.
Do you have any stats on TR ESF kills over other factions? or what about Empire specific rocket launcher stats? So the VS max kicks butt, but I want to see other numbers other than picking on one specific thing. I know I get killed by enemy TR ESF and Strikers more then anything (waterson) and our VS MAX ZOE is not working to well there. Tell me man, and don't be biased, out of everything in this game is the ZOE that much of a problem? What faction kills what with what more? Honest question. If you give me some facts and references then you might change my mind, but for now I honestly don't think the ZOE is not the #1 thing that needs nerfing, nore should it get nerfed any more. I challenge you to come up with data and facts about what vehicle/weapon kills most out of everything. Prove a good case and we can take it from there. PS: The VS are probably pulling more MAX's with ZOE because we are under popped. We can't stick our heads outside because enemy air/ground take us out by numbers. So we have to resort to staying indoors and locking points down. We go anti infantry and clear rooms and lock them down with our MAX and then you get mad because we do it well? How does this make sense? I get my lib shot down right out of the gate, my ESF gets strikered before I'm in striking distance. My tanks get mowed down by harrasser vulcans or prowler with vulcans OR strikers again. Tell me how the ZOE is so bad when the whole arsenal of the TR is dominating in every other aspect? TR rule in vehicle/air combat, and your infantry has the numbers. So we VS mow your infantry down as our only true defense. If you hate the ZOE max so much, make a VS toon and give it a try, especially on waterson. Then let's see if you stick to your guns on it. I actually like fighting NC because it's a fair fight....TR is always numbers, strikers, numbers, vulcans ,numbers, strikers ect
I did not once complain about the NC during beta and their ridiculous weapons, not once did I complain about the over populated TR and all of their fancy lock on weapons. You kids had your turn, get over it. The moment Vanu are making a difference, everyone looses their ****. Vanu have always had better players from PS1 to PS2, its time to accept the fact that there are people who work hard to get where they are. Nothing was handed to us, and all of us were patient and honing our skills during the time of darkness. If you want to win, learn how to counter a fast moving target with low HP. TR and thier numbers can easily focus fire on a single target regardless of what they are using, and the default NC LMG can kill a zoe just under a full clip. Or just use rockets like a sane person, if a person can hit air vehicles with a demolisher I don't see why you guys cant hit a ground target with an arsenal over 20.
The difference between fighting TR/NC MAXes and ZOEs is huge. Fighting one of these two groups is a lot easier and much less annoying than the other. There's nothing subjective or subtle about it if you let go of your bias. Okay? Lockdown is still terrible right now. Buffing everything is dumb and creates power creep. Better to nerf something than bring everything else up to it's level. I bet you many more people would have quit if the solution to skillsaws being OP would be to buff Mercies to 167 and Cosmos to 200 damage to get equal TTK.
Then you could never balance this kind of game because you can never quantify systems that don't share a common baseline with numerical analysis that provides definitive proof something is overpowered (which is also a largely subjective term). If you want to go with your...clinical...point of view, you can't even say ZOE is better than the other MAX abilities because you can't quantify "better".
I'm not sure why you think a buff cycle is any better than a nerf cycle. The funny part of your argument using WoW is that they often severely buff classes to help the underpowered ones, which make them the new overpowered flavors of the month. You should follow the progression of Retribution Paladins (or Feral Druids) if you want to understand why buff cycles can be a hugely dangerous situation. It's amusing that most of the "nerf this" cries you read on their forums are in direct response to classes being buffed to be "on the same level" as classes that were overpowered, which is precisely what many of us have been warning you against in this thread.
They need to revise infantry resources. They could make the MAX cost 550 resources instead of 350. No ressurrect, no RUN, NO CHARGE. The problem is evident in ZOEs but also TR and NC when abusing MAXes make the game orrible. Only conter is MAXES. MAXes are not very entertaining for the general gameplay experience. They are simply too easy, too easy to pull, too strong. And you can cap a point by just having 1 infantry and 11 MAXES.
Do we have the ability to know when ZOE was active with regards to those two metrics? If not, it wouldn't be a good benchmark.
Those numbers only show that it is not the VS Max that is OP, but the TR and NC Max need some buffs. Would you guys rather they make every Max bland, boring, and useless, or that each Max has a fun, unique playstyle that is also useful for contributing to your teammates in roles other than Max Crashes and standing by that door so nobody comes in.
Deny it all you want. To a well enough degree, there is something about the VS MAX that puts it above the TR and NC MAX. Functionally, the AI guns between the TR and VS guns are virtually the same, so we can definitely look to the special abilities as a differentiating point, of which, ZOE >>>> Lock down. Don't even deny it. If lock-down offered additional mitigation (a lot more) it might be justifiable, but right now it's not. Yes, MORE people using the MAX can equate to more kills. WHY are the VS using their MAX more than the other two then? "Perceived" power only lasts so long before reality sets in, and people see the true power of the item. Lock down and the riot shield aren't all that great. I laugh at the NC MAXes (still) and I've never been killed by a lock down TR MAX... because they're so damn easy to flank. More people are using ZOE MAX than the other two empire MAX specials, and noticeably doing better too. There is no way in hell there isn't a balancing concern here. "Seems the VS only use something when it's obviously OP." Truer words have never been spoken, and he was only half joking.
