Balance Pass Post 2: Nanoweave and Related Features

Ah balls. Your right.

... For reasons I cannot explain, I was describing pre-buff nano-weave.

Totally disregard everything I've said. I'm wrong.

Chin up mate nothing shameful in being misinformed
And it's a humble trait to be able to admit defeat

Weird that Nanoweave won't protect your head though. Barring cosmetic enhancements, most factions have full coverage helmets, you would think they would plate the helmet with nanoweave as well. Logically it doesn't make sense, but game mechanics rarely have anything to do with logic.

I hope that Resist Shield and Nanoweave's damage resist will stack. Synergistic relationships between abilities always make things more interesting, like placing a Prox mine next to a tank mine to make a bigger explosion, or spamming smoke then using infrared scopes. Though didn't they make it so that Flak Armor and Resist Shield just took whichever ability had the higher resistance? If so, then they're probably going to do the same thing with Resist Shield and Nanoweave. Ah well. It'll be a shame if the HEAVY Assault class becomes significantly less tanky then before the balance pass.

Was it my imagination, but wasn't Nanoweave originally supposed to be a damage resist when Planetside 2 first started? I could have sworn that was what the description implied, rather than increased health. I thought it was a choice between 25% damage resistance to all damage with Nanoweave, or 50% damage resistance only to explosives with Flak Armor.

Great solution, better than anything I though of for it. Now I wonder how much it will resist and how much it'll be combined with resist shields. That's the hard part really, tempted to grab NW5 until this goes up and see if it feels different than 4 since we're getting refunds.

Great to see what the plan is though, the community interaction between devs and players on these forums is great, only game that I've played that takes this much direct player feedback into consideration. Keep up the great stuff, the O:MFG patch was one of the best things to happen to this game so far, I've noticed more players online and bigger battles with less lag.

Hmm, don't usually read those so you're probably right. I suppose that it's in there to protect them from legal action for things that might be perceived as bait and switching, even if it wasn't their intention. Still sucks that they can change weapons/camos willy nilly and they don't have to do a damn thing to reimburse people who got something they wanted, only for it to change into something they didn't want due to a "balance" pass.

I noticed that besides that refund in the beginning when they changed it so NS weapons purchased with SC could be used cross factions, they've never issued a refund for anything that could be purchased with SC. Things like Grenade Bandolier(and Nanoweave) that could only be purchased with Certs gained in game can be refunded with no problems, but they seem loathe to refund actual SC or items that can be bought with SC/Certs now. Understandable, since this is significantly more complicated with daily sales. I've seen a few people posting about the recent cosmetic changes to armor camos about requesting refunds for camos that look significantly different from when they bought it and being refused. I could be wrong and please, correct me if I am.

This is towards the developers involved in these changes at SOE:
Please test these changes in PTS first aswell as collaborate with the PTS community to balance the new nanoweave properly so that we don't see angry rants and more players quitting because these changes were implemented. I personally think making nanoweave any more complicated than it is requires extensive testing and not to be rushed into PU2, pretty please.

I'm not sure if I'm right. Though, If I am, then that means joshua's post also is wrong on the health pool part.

I'd rather see the pre-buffed Nanoweave back into the game though. After they had buffed Nanoweave people shifted from Flak armor and the Shield one and now almost everyone rolls with Nanoweave and only with Flak armor at certain times. This also caused almost every experienced Heavy Assault player to roll with Resist Shield instead of NMG and Adrenaline Shield.

Furthermore, OHK Bolt Rifle shots were instant kills until Nanoweave 5, I believe. Which personally, after an investment of over 1k certs into Nanoweave would actually make it fair instead of the damage drop at range that they're currently also tweaking.

But yeah, don't rush these specific changes to live just yet, please. Take your time.

Well Snipers are pretty easy to avoid. Just go inside. We do the same thing when a swarm of ESFs come and try to clear out a point we've just capped or are defending. Just doesn't make sense. The game is supposed to big, open and epic. But it just seems to be migrating towards Team Fortress more and more every day.

If the devs do this, I will be a little disappointed.

I quite like how NW, headshots, and infiltrators are balanced. Planetside 2 infantry is actually very balanced, aside from specific weapons.

If NW is implemented as suggested, THERE NEEDS TO BE MORE INFANTRY TERMINALS. As it is, buildings are very sparse in Planetside 2. Buildings not part of a base are practically nonexistent, meaning infantry have to run across giant expanses of open land between bases. And if they are pushing back defending infantry, (using NW) cue the infamous tank spam attack, everyone is unhappy. And dead. Unless you are the tanks. Yay. And there are plenty of more examples like this. PLEASE DON'T GET RID OF NW EXTRA HEALTH, just reduce it. Or if you have to add resistances, include them for everything, just less for explosions compared to infantry.

Another note: I don't want to have to buy a million loadout slots to fit all my new antinfantry based and antivehicle based loadouts. As it is, if a heavy has two different primary guns (ie shotgun and LMG) and two rocket lauchers (ie ground lock on and air lock on) they are already short one loadout (shotgun + antiground, shotgun + antiair, LMG + antiground, LMG + antiair) from the standard 3 loadouts. And if they add the NW change: shotgun + antiground + NW, shotgun + antiground + Flak, shotgun + antiair + flak, ... (i really don't want to list all options) there will be 8 required loadouts. And that's without C4 vs medkits, other primaries, secondaries, other rocket launchers, etc (you get the point)

Headshots are the difference between winning and losing an even 1v1 infantry battle. And NW helps give players who have spent more time in PS2 earning certs an advantage over noobs. But changing this, while making noobs stronger, makes skill a lot more important than pure effort and time. And as someone who has spent a good deal of time in PS2, I don't like this.

Infiltrator SMG loadouts will be even more OP with no headshot reduction. Cloak, go behind someone, aim at head, shoot a couple times, reload, repeat. I know I'll be investing in an SMG and higher level cloak soon.

As an player who plays as a sniping infiltrator, I don't want (or really, need) a limit to range. Especially if you DON'T CHANGE NW CAUSE THEY ALREADY BALANCED OUT. The amount of skill required to hit a moving target from >150m is immense. And if i manage to pull it off, I don't want the person I sniped to just hide some for a couple secs, then come find me and kill me. Especially if I wasted in excess of 1000 certs in sniper rifles. Cuz then I might as well have just stuck with the 100 cert one. Cuz there will be no difference between the two, as they both will be disappointing. A lot of things I bought I regret now, because they were nerfed or irrelevant. Such as A2A missiles (redundent because of flares), a shotgun (nerfs ), A2A launcher (cost reduced by half, STILL WAITING FOR MY CERT REFUND, SOE; flares), any vehicle utility besides flares ie scout radar (TR Striker), C4 (nerfs), and more things.

So SOE, please reconsider what you are doing. Nanoweave is fine as it is, DON'T make me waste more certs and station cash buying extra loadouts and both Flak and Nanoweave. I think just to earn the certs, I'll have to buy the liberator dalton. Headshots are fine as they are, I really didn't see any problems with them. What ain't broke, don't fix. Infiltrators will become much much much more close combat related and will inevitably be unhappy. I know I will be with the update. But I've been unhappy before, and I guess I'll try to see the light at the end of the tunnel (I can't now, sorry). And at the very least, if you do this, give all players over BR20 200 certs to compensate for the complete reset of the infantry certlines. But SOE, this accomplishes nothing. Don't do it.

This is probably just a derp post, but it's what I thought when I first saw this thread.

150m is an incredibly short distance.

I'm absolutely perplexed as to why snipers are getting nerfed in this way. Already the game treats snipers like an unwanted obligation rather than a fully supported playstyle choice. Snipers get no sniper-specific certs. The sniper rifles are all palette swaps and the only worthwhile mod to put on them is the scope. And now, one of those scopes, the 12x, will be completely useless. Additionally, the Parallax and its twin siblings will be an utterly useless gun, wince what made it useful (long range sniping) is now no longer a viable option.

SOE, if you wanted me to stop playing your game, you could have just sent me a PM.

150m is too short
the rest is good

The sniper part is interesting, you are gonna piss a lot of people off. haha

The nano weave part is pure fail, infantry balance is good where it is. IDK why you want to mess with it so much. Flak stops a lot of OHKs and nano weave stops a lot of OHKs, which OHKs piss you off more dictate which armor you run. People who aim for the head don't need more help killing people who don't. Silly changes that make no sense. GG derp.

It makes sense to me to set sniping OHK headshot range on a per-gun basis.

Something like:

Ghost - 150m
V10 - 250m
Parallax - 350m

Part of the problem with your post is it makes too much sense. I don't think SOE can handle that much sense in one single dose. Try to space it out.

How does it make sense to set OHK distance beyond infantry render distance?

There's been a couple posts in which people were claiming to have made headshots at 400m. Turns out people who post angry idiotic stuff on game forums are actually pretty dumb????

Indeed.

Whatever, let them rant, perhaps SOE will listen and make more changes that turn PS2 into 360 invisiquickscope galore. Because that's what PS2 needs the most, more infantry weapons that can kill you without you having any chance whatsover to respond (looking at you ceiling pump-action LA and corner-invisismg and below-floor-minefield). Because that makes for good gameplay for everyone involved, doesn't it?

Infantry render from further away if their using a vehicle or a turret. So AV turret users and flash riders still render past 300m.

All good examples of fun and exciting gameplay, but don't forget about UGBLs, the W+M1 auto-shotty, and spamming HE rounds at a tower for 20min!

Edit: OK, didn't think of engis on turrets rendering past 300m, fair enough.

engies in mana-turrets, the render distance from them is the same as vehicles.

Yeah, I edited my post. But did this ever work reliably? I thought only the turret rendered most of the time. Also I don't remember people specifying that.