Oh surely you forget the improvements to gun angles, while not buffing them outright made them easier to use, and as a consequence more popular. Or the buff to ESF fire suppression and Liberator racer/afterburner. And what did tanks get? A nerfhammer to the enforcer, vulcan, saron, Marauder and PPA (c85mod was always bad, but technically you can add it on the list too when it lost the heavy av damage). No I don't jest.
Fixed, but I'm going to quote you again for context before moving ahead. None of the things you listed were ever asked for en mass, no great threads arose because fire suppression didn't heal ESFs for enough nor was there a rabble about how Racer frame wasn't fast enough for Liberators. And I'm not sure what ground nerfs took place because air had problems dealing with a situation. Though it may seem so, no secret hotlines to SoE are in place for all aspects of the game save for armor, I assure you Flag. So insinuating otherwise is very unbecoming of you and the rest of the justly irate tankers. You should know that most changes that happen in this game are all willy-nilly with sometimes little context as to why they went in one direction and not the other, and most assuredly, with no interaction with the people making these decisions and those who use (affected item/vehicle) the most. If that weren't the case, Harassers wouldn't have been over-nerfed and by proxy tank secondaries, Liberator resistance changes would never have happened, Coyotes and Strikers would never have existed, and so forth and so on. On the other hand the mass rabble isn't always wrong (launch Zepher/rocketpods/Zoe), and so there is always good things among the bad.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if it was asked for en mass or not (besides the angle thing for the lib, was asked for but for the tail it was made too good). The bottom line is that so far air and tanks are balanced (questionable term) according to different standards. I'm not suggesting that the flying players themselves have some secret hotline, but that said the result of how SoE have balanced things leaves tanks as the most abused part of the game. For the most part I've just lived with it. But when sky knights bring their complaints to places such as this forum, reddit or the like I find myself lacking sympathy. So how about it? Why not -force- the flying vehicles to go through the same amount of specialization as their cousins on the ground? There is nothing intrinsically unfair with the idea, yet that is what people are calling the suggestion whenever it gets brought up (by people like me). I could rant on this for a good hour, but I won't. Just save yourself the time trying to excuse the situation by us players having a lacking impact on game design decisions.
Moin I completly agree with that one. AP rounds should hurt, atm it's too easy to shrug them of. Apart from that I think libs are fine (the shredder could use some bullet drop). I had a little ~40 halberd killstreak yesterday, killing infantry, some tanks, an ESF and a liberator. I don't wanna say "tanks are fine", because I don't play them often enough, but from my perspective tanks are still the to-go choice if you wanna siege a base. Way easier to hide than a liberator. The only times where we get stomped by libs is when trying to flank out in the open. Really? From my experience casuals don't live long in their lib. Most often they get shot down as soon as they arrive at a battle. If I look at who killed me with a lib it's usually high, well known BRs or alts from other factions/servers.
Tanks have more or less lost any and all the importance they held when the game launched, I completely agree. Logistics are almost non-existent in this game, nothing needs escorting, and tanks cant even see into most bases nowadays. While your previous choice of words suggests otherwise, anyone who has any decent grasp on the workings of this game would agree with you whole-heartily. Myself included. Who's complaining? The pilots who are still figuring out how things work in the air and don't quite know what they are talking about? Because that's usually what you're reading, and that should be very apparent. I believe you yourself have been a front-runner in vocalizing the unfair treatment of armor, with which I agree. So instead of fix tanks, it's "drag everything else down with us"? That's just spiteful and, frankly, the wrong way to go about fixing any problem. I'm not trying to excuse any situation, be it Liberator, tank, or otherwise. I'm just trying to call one of the many guilty parties from either side making balance discussions nothing more than pity-party, name calling, circle-jerks, and just plain non-constructive. I can't remember the last time I read a thread that was truly constructive by both parties on these forums. I'd refer back to your earlier post and point out the play at favoritism, but it would be glaringly redundant at this point. Tanks need buffs and purpose restored to them in general. Air needs balancing, but not at the cost Harassers and Tanks payed. also NB4 threadlock
With the hopes of staying constructive, here are few things Liberators really need: -Increased (new) audio -Something preventing seat swapping abuses (sorry solo libbers and freefall abusers) -Resistances reverted (lowered) to pre-update vaules -Dalton adjusted to 2-hit kill a Liberator (coming a Shredder pilot) -Increased Max resistance to Shredder damage -Resource cost increased to 400-450 (quite easy staying airborne with 2-3 players) -25 to 33% reduction in ammo capacity for belly-guns -Spawn locations limited to Warpgate and large facilities -Range of motion for all belly-guns reduced to the ranges of the Shredder (yes it's different)
Generally it's complaints at being invalidated in such and such of a situation, with a general failing or unwillingness to understand why they get invalidated. And when the situation is adjusted to be about ground rather than air the same people (no name-calling) will suddenly argue from the other side of the table. The thing, and this is something I've said a lot in the past, is that you can't solve this by just buffing everything. At that point you're fighting broken with broken. Doesn't really change the experience of frustration when you're at the receiving end of <insert broken concept here>, even if things can be called "more balanced" the frustrating bits are left in and people just get angry and annoyed. That's why you don't. For the record, "broken" in this case means something that is both versatile and strong, or something that stacks too well with itself. I'm sure you can think of some examples. I'd like for you to elaborate on what you had in mind when you used the word "buff". Compared to certain other parts of the game tanks aren't horrible, it's just that the things that do counter them do so at a ridiculous rate. There's a long chain (or web rather) of dependencies, and tanks are but one of them.
I think SOE should take the opposite direction of what most people are asking for, rather than nefing stuff they should buff a2a weapons so it is more distinct to ground orientated weapons. # firstly, make a2a lock on weapons have a a small increase in lockon range. # to counter these buffs two types of armour, air armour and flak. Air armour reduces the damage from A2A weapons (lock ons, rotary ect), flack stays the same. #gals should have an awacs module, they should have a large air radar that relays that info to nearby aircraft. It can also increase the range of lock on weapons for nearby ESF and give nose cannons a lead aim target for any enemy ESF in view. #this would increase team play. I think this game will slowly die if it keeps focusing in on small duels and 1v1. I think there needs to be bigger battles and benefits of grouping up other than being a Zerg. ## this is other changes to air and ground that i think improves air ground play that builds onto this post. I think vehicles should be more about supporting infantry rather than be there to farm them. I think these changes would make a much more exciting game with more teamwork and options for squad and platoon leaders other than waypoints. It would make intel more valuable as well. Air should have much less armour and HP, they should be more like a glass cannon with much much more firepower. So they dont turn into farming machines they should very inaccurate. To make Air usefull to a fight they should have ground targeting support. This can be done in a number of ways, infil laser, squad and platoon leader command console, tank commander command console that uses a drone to designate. MBT should have much more, HP and resilience against all arms. They are there to give infantry cover to advance and to counter enemy armour. They should be effective in open ground but their turrets should only have a maximum rotation of 60 degrees on either side of the forward facing reference point. this and a slower rotating turret limits their ability to fight in close spaces. Their weapons should be excellent at medium to longer ranges but useless up close. These changes would make the game much more fun with diversity and tactical options. It encourages greater teamwork and give leaders a reason to be a leader. squad and platoon leaders should have access to more powerful weapons. Platoon commanders could be the only ones with access to carpet bombs where as squad leaders could be restricted to a single jdam or something like an A10 tankbuster run whereas infils may only get access to lightning tank with a mortar barrage. These weapons will have to have a limited range due to rending issues but the target assist allows aircraft to duck in and out much faster. After a target has been marked, either by device or on a command console map and the ordinance selected, then a mission is given to near by available aircraft with that ordinance. They can then accept or decline the mission. lightnings could have more light support weapons, the skygard gets boring after awhile. turning it into a missile system to lock on to aircraft would allow it to deploy hydraulics and allow it to do a rocket mortar barrage. Missile locks could be helped by nearby radar support systems. More open maps with more space for tank battles, then make the larger bases even more urban for infantry with 6 outer bases rather than 3. make it into more like a city. vehicles only enter at their own peril. Counters for these new weapons could be things like laser detection warning. If a air strike is ordered by a CUD then a smoke marker for where the air/mortar strike will land etc. This would make the game more dynamic and interesting
Exactly. Libs have become way more popular in recent times, and this is basically destroying tanking for people who like doing it apart from the zerg (with full stealth). You leave your mass-aa bubble, and you're as good as dead. Bringing your own skyguard along doesn't help either--you need at least 3 of them to prevent libs instagibbing your tank and getting away with it. It's frustrating. Yet, we get to hear "oh, just use a lib to kill libs". This is for all the pilots: Imagine we reversed the situation. Now, whenever you want to take your lib out for a spin and you want to do something other than hovering over a friendly zerg, you need to bring an escort of at least 3 ESF (or worse: ground support vehicles) along. Otherwise, you can be blasted out of the sky by a single enemy unit in 2-3 seconds. Even worse, when that unit finds you unescorted and is really bad, you can still not prevent dying to it. Sounds like fun, eh?
That. Solves. Nothing. At best it's a band-aid, flimsy one at that. Better yet, tell them that if they want to engage tanks, they have to leave their sky chariots and pull some MBTs. Always gets people riled up.
And if your experience is as an AA pilot, or a member of an outfit platoon I'm sure it works pretty close to that. For the rest of us, not so much. We get to deal with having a 20v20 at Saero while being buzzed by 3 Libs the whole time (we actually managed to kill a couple, but if it wasn't for the fiery explosion I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between "Left the battle for a moment to repair" and "Left the battle for a moment to pull a new Lib"). Or 6v6 at Skydock when 2 Libs and a Lolpod show up.
If we want to have Hard-counters and let a Liberator tank-bust a MBT in 3 seconds, we should let the ESF destroy a Liberator in 3 seconds. Why not? Hard-counters are fun right? And when Liberator pilots complain we can just tell them to L2P and fly with ESF escorts. Right? After-all, the logic displayed by Liberator pilots is that ground units should have two Skyguards around them at all times to prevent this virtual insta-gibbing... the same logic should equally apply to Liberators without ESF escort. Stupid right? I agree. Hard-counters suck and have no place in this game.
No one really seems dissatisfied with armor. Their still 5-15 of them camping bases with AP guns every cap attempt. This is War. The Lib was designed to destroy tanks, essentially a bomber that takes a bigger risk to take out tanks. If your having trouble against Libs, branch out and try some combined arms instead of sitting in your tank farming infantry until you get blown up.
Not quite. If there are 5-15 tanks, they're mostly standing outside the base wishing they could actually do something that qualifies as meaningful. As a side note, having 15 crewed AP(or AV) MBTs outside of a base means you're 30 people short on the inside, so it might actually be detrimental to the attackers, to the point where the MBTs are what's preventing base capture. The more you know...
Exactly. Tanks are useless outside of Open-Field battles, but so is every other vehicle. People still use them though, because offerings to the holy god of certifications must be made.
I may disagree with the suggestion that a Lib takes a bigger risk to take out tanks - seriously - how many Libs have been killed by a solo tank ? Even a Skyguard, with no other purpose, stands little chance. Someone suggested a while ago that the best way to get rid of a Lib is to pull one yourself and crash into it. Pretty cheesy - but it works. I think a lot of the problems people see (zerging, camping) is, somewhat ironically, caused by the Liberator. I don't solo any more in a tank - as you simply don't last very long. Liberators can be fought off with a lot of AA so they keep away from those spots and hunt on the periphery, where a solo MBT will have no realistic chance of survival if discovered. So - we stick together and hope there is enough AA to keep them away. People have complained about the Liberator for a long time now and not much has changed (well - ok the secondaries on some MBTs were nerfed - but i'm not counting that !)
Lib gunners sorted by KDR have MUCH higher KDRs than that: The highest Zephyr gunner KDR is OVER 9000 (10,556).
The question is, are these facts misleading? How many of them play LA and simply bail out before they die to make these stats look better? I mean, 1 death to 1,000 kills?
