Rocket Launcher Primary needs to go

Why do bad players allow themselves to be hit by rockets?

Even more poignant, why do bad players allow themselves to be terrified of rockets to the point of convincing themselves that their only option is to cry until the bad man is stopped?

The only problem with rocket launchers imo is the fact that they instagib at point-blank and at impossible to dodge with average reaction time distances. On the other hand, if you get hit by a rocket from 50 meters or more, well, you deserve it, you had time to dodge it. So my proposed solution (that I already mentioned several times) is a rocket's damage should increase with distance (as opposed to every infantry weapon in the game) but only against infantry in such a way that from 40-50 meters onwards it deals the same damage it deals now, but if you're closer it doesn't deal enough damage to ohk.

You seem to be on an honorable quest of banishing the cheese from PS2, and I won't try to stop you.
I just wanted to say the if people are so bothered by being OHKed by rockets, they should pull out their heads out of the sand and wear flak armor.

Well that is the main issue with implementing a backblast mechanic. If your creating more problems by implementing a solution to fix a problem, the game isn't progressing. I don't think it is good game design to fix problems and those fixes leading to more problems. As you said, no one likes being TK'd and unless SoE does a complete overhaul of the grief system, people who continue to use rocket primary's will not get weapons locked/banned for doing it. Only thing it will lead to is more TK'ing and people getting angry and getting revenge, which leads to more TK'ing.

Not sure who you are responding to but let me make my 2 cents. If PS2 implemented the same idea from PS1 by reducing damage done to non max infantry from rockets, it would greatly help the situation. Currently a direct hit from a rocket will one shot kill an infantry (unless they are a heavy with a shield on). My suggestion is to make rocket launchers not being able to one shot an infantry player with full health and full shields on a direct hit. Obviously, it should still do a decent amount of damage, just not kill. Now this change would not make rocket launchers useless against MAX suits at all, only non max infantry. SoE should be able to modify the damage of a rocket launcher based upon what target it is hitting.

I love how most will say that the explosive damage has to be a direct hit to work after nerf. Uh Huh......I die from repeated blasts to the outside of a building wihile i'm inside or being in a pocket created by a rock outcropping impossible to hit by tank and still die to blasts directed at the area. It is what it is and sometimes any changes they make only make things worse. The LIB is about the only thing I think needs nerfing. The LIB should not be allowed to have flares to ward off rockets when they have extreme health. The libs should not be able to have self heal nanite repair and should HAVE TO go off to Engi heal, giving more of a break, instead of just going higher past the range of lock ons. The LIB should not be able to increase it's health beyond the stock level as that is plenty of health.

Interesting, that sounds like a reasonable middle ground to me. Would the damage change apply to hitting MAXes too, or not?

I feel this could easily incorporate a 10m arming distance too. It makes zero difference to direct hits and it's already on the UBGL. The only thing it changes is firing in CQC and expecting to be able to splash 1, or multiple, targets.


I will admit that I'm not really bothered by reaction times at medium ranges for the person being shot at. However, I feel like the time aspect is the wrong way around: the rocket takes ages to reach the target while the user can instantly pop off shots.

Faster rockets, with less drop, would help dumb-fires compete with lock-ons at longer ranges to some degree.

Meanwhile, if there were a slight delay on firing when you click then users would be that little bit more vulnerable. All RLs have clear usability downsides in taking a while to swap to and to reload, plus the lock-ons have to gain a lock. Dumb-fires seem to have escaped any firing delay, although I wouldn't want it to be more than half a second.

EDIT: I'm not sure whether it was you or someone else in DA, but I distinctly remember harassing as an Infiltrator outside Crossroads Watchtower and someone fired a rocket in my general direction when I cloaked... I pretty much walked into it and laughed.

I'm getting tired of reading your $hit posts and you have nothing to offer to actual balance conversation. Instead you essentially make posts like "get better" or "cry more". You want to call me bad because i'm one of the voices that has been calling a nerf to rocket primary's (against infantry) or perhaps you are calling Mustarde bad for saying they are pretty ridiculous against infantry. If you want to call us bad then lets see your stats. Here is ours.

http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/Drippyskippy
http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/mustarde

More skilled players are that way due to a better understanding of the game and therefore have a better idea of what is and isn't balanced. Esports games are balanced based upon the top 1% of its player base, not the bottom 99%. I'm not saying i'm part of that 1%, but i'm sure neither are you and i'm willing to bet my infantry stats are a hell of a lot better than yours. I don't want to make this a dick measuring contest, but i'm tired of you posts and i'm going to put you to bed here and now.

I could see this working. The only problem I foresee is designing the weapon. Essentially, if you make a rocket launcher do more damage at further ranges it will do more damage to tanks as well, not just infantry. I'm not a coder, but I haven't seen any weapons before that do both more or less damage at specific ranges and do more or less damage against specific targets. All PS2 weapons are designed to do a specific amount of damage at different ranges and do the same damage to all armor types (infantry, vehicles). See the issue? I'm not sure if its possible since I haven't seen it before (unless I'm missing something) so i'm unsure if a weapon like this could be designed. Otherwise, I think it is a pretty great solution if it could be designed.

Well, the damage drop-off exists in every infantry weapon, I'm not a programmer but I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be able to program the damage drop-off formula (well, inverted actually) to apply only when hitting infantry.

I wouldn't apply it to MAXes, 2 hit kill at any range is okay imo.

Counter-sniping is one of my favourite uses of the S1, so it could have been me

Normally i take the time to write out a thoughtful response, giving examples and i take into consideration both sides of the matter. However, as an experienced player (over 60k kills on Vanu alone), I have a hard time taking this concern of rocket primary OHKs seriously.

I only post on this thread because it seems to be continually bumped everyday.

The killing power of the rocket primary is offset by the long reload, the splash damage to self (point blank shots), low velocity, and time required to switch to a different weapon.

Your average player isn't going to hit anything with a rocket primary, and the weapon performs very poorly on any moving targets. Similar to a OHK from BASRs, the only people dying are those who are standing still for extended amounts of time.

I honestly feel like the cry for a rocket primary nerf against infantry is a big troll, something akin to two players who jokingly said "Man, SoE will nerf anything the forums complain about. I bet i could even get them to nerf Rocket Primaries!".

Like many posts have stated, they miss they are dead. Its annoying but once you know someone is in a battle who uses this tactic bait him to fire when you are in a good position to dodge it. He misses you kill him.

You know Op I was standing on point after I had killed 9 in a row, a AV grenade was throw into the point from a angle I wasn't watching and bang I was dead.

Was I annoyed? Yes I was.

Did I go to forumside and make a post saying AV nades should only hurt tanks not infantry? No I didn't. Why because I die to a lot of things in this game that annoys me. I think I should die to it just as I think I should die to a RL.

There are large numbers of PS2 players who believe they are let killing machines that shouldn't be killed by anything. Anything that kills them should be nerfed until it no longer kills them. We all have moments when we start believing that we are better then we are.

Have you every wondered why higher level BR's don't use rocket primaries as often as lower BR's? Maybe because it is as many people have stated a risky move that can result in death. It is not because people have standards and look down on it.

Just look at ZOE Maxes back in their prime. They were the biggest cheese I ve seen in this game way out in front of shotgun inf's but did you see the number of high BR's running it? Almost all of them, because it was so effective.

I hope Op that you didn't use this broken annoying game breaking skill suit? Because by saying rocket primaries are a tactic used by people getting kills by cheese not skill I hope you didn't use the ZOE crutch.

So no, leave rockets as is. All factions can use it which provides balance. The most I see people getting kill streaks is in single figures while there are many other weapons that get much higher streaks.

Game is pretty balanced at the moment. People on low pop factions tend to ask for nerf's and buff's to move pop to the FOTM. Which they want to be their faction.

Sure, force the tankers to adapt to poor gameplay by forcing them to use prox radar all the time.

Forcing people to wear Flak 5 to counter a single 'cheap' thing is not good gameplay, you're simply proving the OP's point.

Not that I give 2 craps about dying to RL's personally, it's cheap but unreliable, and that's the reason it's not overpowered or poor gameplay. As an HA I love firing my RL into a crowd of people camping spawns and such sometimes. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

There's many other things flak armor protects from.

I certainly won't fault you for having a differing opinion from mine. But I do want to point out a few things, and if you haven't seen the video I made on the first page of this thread, check it out.

Long reload: easily mitigated in the same way that the UGBL was spammed in its glory day and that snipers are able to spend 5 minutes in the same location without moving - find a good place to spam the rocket from cover. It's as simple as finding the battle lines of a relatively large fight, peeking out from cover, flinging a rocket and reloading from safety, with allies by your side. Or finding a high ground (roof of amp station for example) and getting your rocket kills from an advantageous location. (again, watch my video, I fire a lot of rockets at zero risk to myself).

Splash damage to self: Just watch my video. I point blank several players with the rocket without breaking through the overshield. And with adrenaline pump, I get it all back anways!

Time to swap weapons: this is a real problem for the RP user, as you will inevitably get caught off guard, miss your shot or kill your target but get caught in the reload. I found the best solution was to pull the sidearm, my preference was the commissioner. With the overshield, as well as a deadly pistol, I could dispatch at least one additional target. This would either buy me enough time to get my 100 round T9 Carv out, or clear my location so I could reload and go back to shooting rockets. Sometimes it wasn't enough and I would indeed die, but not as often as you would think.

Moving targets: just like sniping, once you get a feel for the rocket launcher, it's actually pretty easy to hit moving targets. Sure, at 100m you are only really hitting stationary targets or getting lucky, but I didn't have much trouble dispatching mobile targets within 20-30m.

Baiting a rocket primary user may work if they are foolish and bad, but if they know what they are doing, you will have a harder time than you think dealing with them.

I die a LOT in this game. Sometimes it's frustrating, other times it's not. I think RP is a problem because of how low-risk it is (and when you watch my video you will see how little danger I am in half the time), and how contrary it is to have players using their AV weapon instead of the AI weapon to kill infantry. The kills you get against infantry with a rocket launcher are indeed, cheesy. I cringed watching my video again just now, looking at all those moments where I just flung a rocket at someone and got 1-3 kills at once.

High BR players are usually collecting auraxium medals, farming or doing stuff with their outfit. Some use the RP, some don't. That doesn't really mean anything when it comes to game balance. And yes, many of us do look down on the use of rockets as a primary means to kill infantry. Maybe we are simply holding ourselves back with our arrogance. I certainly had fun letting go of my shame and cheesing everyone on Mattherson for a week.

For the record, my solution is to reduce damage done to infantry so it's not a OHK. Give all dumbfires the same treatment the phoenix got. Strong vs. vehicles, strong vs. infantry but not OHK.

Ok. But if you're in CQB (maybe a Biolab) where there is no issue with those, why can't I use any of the other options other than Flak? If by your logic you must always wear flak to avoid dying to RL's...

I'm playing devils advocate here, I actually don't care about them, just trying to prove a point that forcing people to use a single kit option at all times is not appropriate arguments to give against changing something. IE: C4 fairy BS etc.

Nobody's forcing anyone. I'm just saying that if someone really hates dying to RLs, there is indeed an option to help him survive it, and maybe that someone should exercise it before complaining.

I'm not sure what C4 fairy BS you're talking about, but the same principle applies to C4 vs tanks. Tanker can:
1) l2p
2) get proximity radar
3) die to C4
It's as simple as that.

This guy gets my vote. HA's are pretty much the only way to fight anyway nowadays unless you're repping maxes or healing teammates. I mean, sure let them be the bread and butter of a fight but they are harder to take down and have multiple ways of ruining your day unlike other classes which have a downside of some sort.

Honestly, I think the RL spam thing could be fixed not by having them do less damage, but instead by having HA's take like 5 seconds to swap from their RL to another weapon (or from another weapon to the RL etc).

Yep, instead of balancing weapons let's all just L2P instead.

Why are you even defending poor gameplay? It's counterintuitive to demand people counter poor gameplay mechanics. RL spam heavies are poor gameplay because they're cowering in their cover blind firing RL's at the enemy lines instead of doing anything else that might actually help take the objective. C4 fairies are poor gameplay because they're dying over and over to score their 1 kill on a tank for their youtube compilation of how badass they are instead of attacking objectives, etc.

Ok so if a rocket is built to kill/damage a ARMORED TANK why wouldn't it turn a person into a blast mark on the ground? If a rocket couldn't kill a person, how would it ever damage a armored tank.