Why people hate tanks/combined arms? (or at least seem to)

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by NinjaTurtle, Jun 29, 2014.

  1. NinjaTurtle

    Disclaimer:
    Now this is coming from a primarily infantry player I am a terrible tanker and an even worse pilot and everything I am about to say could be wrong. If any full time tankers feel I'm talking out of my **** feel free to slap me :D

    What should the role of a tank be?
    A tank is for pressing the attack from base to base.
    A tank is to help break the defense lines of the opposing force.
    A tank should be the primary form of AV
    A tank is to gain ground superiority of the vicinity.
    A tank is to provide infantry with cover and support as the attack is pressed.
    A tank is to provide suppression of enemy forces, this suppression however should never extend to the spawn room.

    A tank should be able to gain access to a base but should never under any circumstance have direct line of sight on the spawn room or be able to create any form of splash damage near the spawn <---- this is one of the main hates people have had


    Some random rambling
    I don't hate tanks or should I say the idea of tanks. Having combined arms in the game increases the scope of what can happen tremendously and makes the game 100x more fun than it would be if it were just infantry.

    Now real tankers from my perspective don't farm infantry or don't at least go out of their way to do so. Real tankers or at least the top level ones primarily go after other vehicles and kill infantry only if they happen to get in their way rather than actively seeking them out.

    The reason people hate tanks/air is because of the people that use tanks as a quick farming tool or because tankers get bored sitting at a base waiting for it to cap and decide "meh **** it I'll spam the spawn shields while I'm waiting"

    Luckily better base design is minimizing the spawn shelling to a degree or at least it's less of an issue than it is on Indar where there are so many hills over looking bases and Hossin seems to have made tanking to claustrophobic to have any where near of a powerful effect as on other continents

    What can be done about it?
    Simply tanks need more to do or at least they seem to need more to do. Tanks need more tanks to kill. Tanks need a better play ground instead of being funneled to infantry. Too often you see a huge entourage of tanks sitting around a base waiting for the clock to countdown

    Long term
    - The next continent what ever that happens to be needs to have this in mind. There needs to be wider more open space for tanks to fight rather than having them funneled down small paths straight into positions where they can't do anything other than sit back and focus on infantry.

    - There needs to be multiple exits from spawns especially if line of sight can be achieved on the spawn by any form of vehicle. Teleporters, tunnels etc at more bases. Many bases have a couple of exits but not enough offer the choice

    Short term
    I'm not to sure to be honest of any quick fixes. Maybe HE should never have been included and maybe should be removed. HEAT provides the mix of AI an AV that tanks require. Though even if this were removed would it make any difference?


    Am I way off the mark here or am I somewhat on the right lines

    TLDR: I don't hate tanks or combined arms. I am simply wondering how a happy medium can be achieved where no form of any vehicle can farm so easily and are given more to do in achieving objectives
    • Up x 7
  2. Konfuzfanten

    simple:
    Make it so that tanks or air cant interfere with base battles, aka walls/building all around and an anti-dome above the base or every base underground. Problem solved.
    • Up x 1
  3. ABATTLEDONKEY

    That doesnt fix the problem, that dissolves it by making this game an infantry FPS with a minor supplement from vehicles. Thats an infantry-only solution, not a balanced CA solution.
    • Up x 16
  4. ABATTLEDONKEY

    CA games also include air power :D.

    Balance in a CA game isnt a simple description, for balance can only be achieved through very speficic balance decisions based on current gameplay mechanics I.E. how many types of vehicles, and their accessibility determines needed balance decisions. IMO, true balance can ONLY be achieved as a collective balance, through a series of smaller, serious imbalances, for a true CA game.

    There is only one universal truth for CA balance that needs to be understood before the foundations of balance can be achieved; vehicles are force multipliers, and will always > infantry. Infantry are the backbone, and the basis for all FPS's, but they are NOT the head, neck, arms, legs and "trophy parts" of the body as many infantry only player would love to see. With very few exceptions, infantry are always more numerous, easiest to quire, infinite by nature, and the most versatile. they should not be that strong on an individual basis.
    • Up x 2
  5. Konfuzfanten

    You would still need vehicles between bases.

    And lets be honest here, if there was a good fix for the problems with vehicles farming infantry the devs would already have implemented it.

    Right now we can choose between:
    a) Infantry farm simulator 2014.
    b) Infantry battles with vehicles battles bolted on the side.

    The devs have already made it clear we are moving towards option B (see amerish/hossin/esamir base design).
    • Up x 3
  6. Inex

    That's probably the most effective way to improve the tank game, but has very little to do with base design. Esamir solved spawn spam by simply walling in most bases. There are a few outliers, but generally you don't need to worry about spawn spam there (at least not by tanks). People aren't too happy with it though because all it means is that you can get stuck in a tomb. Even if they tanks can't hit the spawn, you still have a hard time fighting your way out of a base that's been surrounded.


    Instead, I'd rather see them make it far easier to keep tank battles going by making it far easier to get tanks. There are few better ways to get tanks to stop bombarding a spawn room than with a tank column of your own. The way it works right now though, two tank groups will fight and the winner is free to camp for 10 minutes until the other side's timers are up. And even then you only have to worry about an outfit pulling a whole group of tanks as no lone player is silly enough to pull a solo tank against a camp.
    • Up x 2
  7. ABATTLEDONKEY

    Yes, this decision by the devs is why I have largely stopped playing this game, as I tend to enjoy more dynamic, complex gameplay.

    I do not believe that "if there was a solution, the devs would have already implemented it". These devs are either horribly understaffed, or are very lazy in their approaches to the games current woes. IMO the game is broken to its very core, in that we have infinite revives/repairs/spawns/ammo all readily accessible from anywhere on the map. If the devs wished to end spawn caming, there are a few dozen threads with excellent ideas o how to do it. If devs wanted bases to be infantry battles, and inbetweens to be vehicle wars, they would expand the distance between bases, and design maps/bases around this idea. Unfortunately they dont. They are going for option B, but thats not for lack of creativity, ability, or inspiration (hell almost all games from 1995-2004 were more dynamic than this one). Its because they want options B, and for a very specific reason (my guess in revenue increase from the masses on infantry only playing youth)
    • Up x 2
  8. z1967

    Once vehicles, MAXes, and aircraft have something to do (other than farm infantry) the CA value of the game will begin to show more.
    • Up x 2
  9. Alarox

    The solution is actually pretty simple. Field fights have to be more prevalent.

    Since the bases are fairly set in stone you need something like a macro-lattice. Where he only bases in the lattice itself are the major facilities, while the other bases are optional captures. The smaller bases exist to provide a staging ground for the assault on major facilities or would have some significant impact in terms of capture time/resources.

    This would mean a more significant use of terrain/fields and more strategic variety like we had in the Hex, but with the structure of the Lattice.
    • Up x 7
  10. Copperhead

    For me the biggest reason for tanks spamming spawn rooms is redeployside. Think about it, what's the point of waiting for enemy reinforcements coming from the next base along the lattice when they can just respawn straight to the spawn room and negate the enemy armour surrounding the base. Then they come on to forumside and complain about tanks spamming the spawns. Remove redeployside and have reinforcements actually have to use some logistics and break the siege from outside.

    I never run HE on my Vanguard (AP all day, every day) and sure I'll take shots at enemy infantry leaving the spawn if I'm bored waiting for an enemy counter attack that never happens. To me, it seems like most infantry want to have their cake and eat it by being able to deploy wherever they want without having to use transport and be completely cut off from the combined arms this game champions. Either you have one or the other, not both.
    • Up x 7
  11. Iridar51

    Agreed, though I'd like to clarify that this suppression should present its form in Kobalt and AP cannon at best. Armored beast with OHK cannon and powerful machinegun is a serious threat in itself, and should be enough to fulfill support/suppression role.
    I wouldn't mind giving up C4, or making it considerably less effective against tanks if this was the case.
    • Up x 2
  12. Cinnamon

    Tanks can rarely fulfil any primary role of taking ground because infantry av options are very effective when it come to taking them out. Terrain also makes them irrelevant in many places.

    But MBT are a pretty effective way of dealing with sunderers although there are many other ways of doing this.

    Mainly going AV you can play them in this game as stealth units where you sneak around trying to get into a position where you can kill another tank without it having a fair chance to fight back. That is if you can avoid being spotted by air or ambushed by infantry. This is not really combined arms gameplay as it involves tanks going off by themselves with no infantry support but it is maybe the sort of thing that doesn't give tanks such a reputation of ruining base fights.

    The main use is just farming infantry in bases from a safe distance which is combined arms but sort of backwards. The tanks rely on the infantry leading an attack and distracting players who might use the very powerful infantry av weapons to drive them away. They are then free to take easy shots at infantry. This is more of an artillery role but instead of firing ahead of friendly infantry the tanks are normally firing right at friendly infantry.

    I don't know what to say about tanks role in this game or the concept of combined arms. Tanks should be closer to the front line of fighting and should have some sort of reason to push territory outside bases for some reason other than it being a good perch to shell a base from. But they could make a lot of large changes to basic gameplay and rules and it might not be better.
    • Up x 3
  13. Saboera

    I am/was a tanker, 2/2 Prowler with an AP cannon and Vulcan setup playing alongside a friend, both communicating on teamspeak. We both quit 6 months ago because of the state of vehicles in the game and both gave it another go when Hossin came out. Sadly we're gonna leave it again and not come back unless major changes happen. It stopped being fun since the resource system was introduced.

    Combine arms is never gonna work with the state the game is in. Vehicles like the MBTs are too expensive to pull out and too fragile to do what they should be doing, which is push forward. The timer certification has been rendered absolutely useless ever since the revamp. Not only that but it pushes players away from vehicles since they can't learn properly and keep practicing. Even if you do well, it's a frustrating experience when you run out of resources and are now literally forced to go play infantry with sub par certifications. When you prefer to log out, you know the game has issues.

    The role of vehicles should be outside of bases but as it stands, nothing really happens outside of bases beside small skirmishes which are irrelevant. Infantry should be shining in the bases without doubt. You fix the farming issue of vehicles by giving and requiring them to be active outside of bases.

    To be honest, the fix to combine arms in my opinion is extremely simple. Move combat away from the spawning rooms. Make it so a contested zone cannot be spawned in beside sunderers. This effectively makes the contested base a neutral zone where every player's action and kills/deaths are incredibly meaningful. After that you can increase the strength of base defensive structures in areas where it's not contested to discourage simply camping the next base over if it's needed.

    Not only does this have a major impact on how infantry would play out but this would also push the vehicle gameplay to the level it would need to be. Instead of having spawn rooms being camped and endless soldiers dying while coming out of them, you now have transports hauling soldiers around from the next bases over alongside their escort. Then you could have ambushes pre-planned by outfits around key roads and areas. They got the lattice to support this, why they aren't using something like this is beyond me.

    If nothing is done tho, the game is gonna be dead within a few years. If it's not financially, it's gonna be the player base. The server merge is already a bad omen.
    • Up x 12
  14. Dethfield

    Everyone so far has valid points. I think one thing to remember is that MAX's, despite being a sort of vehicle in its own right, are actually very useful to have around specifically because they are small enough to enter buildings with normal infantry. In this way, they act as an MBT of sorts inside buildings and more importantly, capture points. The most important fights tend to take place around these points and inside buildings, so MAX's can still contribute quite a bit to their team's efforts despite being a vehicle (doesnt hurt they give infantry their own version of Flak weaponry as well).

    The problem with tanks (and ESFs/Libs to a certain extent) is that they cannot enter buidings (nor can they demolish them like their real-world counterparts, one of the key uses for real tanks) nor can they cap points even if they can sit on them in the odd base. What ends up happening is these vehicles just sit outside throwing shells at the enemy spawn room but never really contibuting to the key objective of taking and holding the points (The NC on Emerald seem to have a particularly bad habit of doing this).

    Armor is good in the open fields, and while some battles do occur there, they are not really numerous enough especially with the easy redeploy system we currently have. The short distances between bases, as well the ease of getting to said bases also makes the value of armor questionable. It is true they can be quite good at killing sunderers, but so can aircraft (which do not suffer the drawbacks of the redploy system that armor does) and even infantry (C4's throwing Light assaults, tank mine engy's, heavies with rockets, etc).
    • Up x 1
  15. Govedo13

    I would be just happy when ignorant Infantry only players just move to infantry only games.
    This game provides countless gameplay styles and AV counters, it is your damn fault that you refuse to play the game and use those counters properly by utilizing teamplay.

    Why there are no topics about farming tanks with AV mana AT mines AV MAXes and C4s?
    It is just hypocrite to whine about farming because it does not exist. Using this flawed self-serving logic killing anything in this game is "farming".
    Want to "farm" vehicles? Get 3 AV Manas or 3 AV Maxes or 3 heavies or Liberator or C4s or mines or even your own vehicles. Whining about players that use vehicles in combined arms game is plain idiotic.
    IF you refuse to play the various playstyles provided you are not entitled to dictate how others should play the game.

    Simple fixes are to reduce MBTs speed boost their armour make them 3 man vehicles where the driver have built in kobalt remove HE buff AI secondary to PPA level, add rumble seats and reduce infantry kill XP to 50XP buff vehicle kills bonus via vehicles vs vehicle kill ribbon.
    MBTs Res are fine good crews can keep themselves tanking 40 min out of hour with 3 people it would be full cycle.
  16. KodiakX

    Tanks in this game suffer a number of problems:

    1. The biggest problem tanks suffer is that anyone and everyone can pull a tank. Why is this a problem? Because it creates a potential force multiplier in a moment's notice for any group of individuals. What this means is someone cay say, "Everyone go pull tanks!" and even with no intention of keeping the tanks alive that group is suddenly vastly stronger for it. This ultimately leads to them being balanced around this point which leaves the tanks of PS2 in a weaker state than what you'd expect out of a tank.

    2. The design of the tank, where the main gun is in control of the driver, furthers that problem because generally speaking pulling two tanks is ultimately stronger than pulling a tank and a secondary gunner (especially because when forced you can always swap back and forth to the secondary to counter anti infantry or air etc). The cost of the freedom of not needing another person to make your tank effective (which was the intent of the current system) is that it's going to be balanced weaker even further for it.

    3. Tanks have no limitations in the kind of gear you can have as the driver which leads to them effectively operating like an exosuit (MAX) with treads and a turret. While, arguably, an Engineer has the best time of it (since they can repair their "suit") I've seen just as good luck for people playing as HA with a rocket launcher simply exiting their vehicle at the last moment and then using the rocket (or LMG against infantry) to counter those who got them. How much is this held against the tank in terms of balance since 1v1 if the tank fails you can always just hop out and be just as effective as the enemy?

    4. Tanks, being so weak from the first three points, are now naturally and easily overwhelmed and countered by any variety of mechanisms in game. Invisible infantry who don't render due to the size of the battle, in which you render as a priority to them, just makes you an easy priority target to be taken out by invisible sources of damage. Most decent pilots of any vehicle can still take any tank out with little to medium effort (if the tanker knows to guard his rear). All of this leads to tanks basically not feeling or being like tanks.

    5. Then the real kick in the balls is the cool down timers which even in the best of scenarios is no cool down to wait after thousands of certs investment but still minutes to go back to a battle in which you can die in seconds. Add in a sprinkle of resource costs (which they will eventually alleviate) and you got the recipe for the current version of tanks in PS2.

    TLDR: Why do you need combined arms when infantry can counter everything?
    • Up x 8
  17. Icedude94

    I drive tanks a lot in PS2. I drove tanks during the merger smash. The community has made combined arms impossible. I also lead infantry squads and have said countless times, "don't worry about all those tanks. They can't do anything at this base."

    Tanks play a very small role if any in most base fights. Instead of falling back a base to pull armor, the community wanted the devs to put walls up in tower bases and around almost all bases, especially on Esamir.

    Tanks just barely do anything now once the fight leaves the open field. I've gotten so bored waiting outside a base in my AP/halberd vanguard that I've become very good at shooting ESF's and liberators out of the air.

    By walling off bases or surrounding them with impassable terrain, it leaves very few places to park sunderers, giving tanks only a couple minutes of work in mopping them up. It also makes it hard for any vehicles defending those sunderers since most of those prime deploy locations are very exposed.

    You want to use an HE tank to help friendly infantry blast through a chokepoint? Sorry, the players kept complaining about that instead of pulling their own armor so we put up walls to block you.

    You want to help keep the enemy spawn suppressed by shelling the spawn and intercepting any incoming sunderers? Sorry, people kept complaining instead of bringing in additional sunderers with escorts so we added a teleporter out of the spawn room.

    You want to help your own infantry advance by using a liberator to clear out enemy firing positions? Sorry, people kept complaining about air so we put rooftops over the best firing positions. We even gave sunderers a garage because people kept complaining that nobody is protecting their sunderers.

    You gal-dropped a base with a platoon in a surprise attack and now you have the roads mined and guarded to cut off reinforcements? Sorry, but it doesn't matter. People kept complaining it was too hard to move players around so we added a re-deploy mechanic that allows any empire to teleport 10 platoons to a base 1000x faster than galaxies can.

    Whine thread damage is too OP, SOE. It does more damage to tanks and aircraft than my outfit's phoenix missile or AP/enforcer vanguard squads. Welcome to Call of Auraxis.

    It's more a player attitude issue at the root of everything. People would rather say that MAXes are OP and need to be nerfed rather than say that they don't know how to deal with them and ask for advice from better players. Try going into one of those threads and post tips/strategies. You get flamed by an angry mob who says that your tips and tactics don't work because they say it's still clearly unbalanced.
    • Up x 8
  18. Govedo13

    Icedude summed it well. The thing that I wish to add is that all of those bad moves decreased the servers populations and led to server merging.
    Listening to the whining and catering for the bad players brought nothing good for the game, players and SOE profits.
  19. Regpuppy

    What the devs need to do.

    1. Cut down the number of bases: There are currently too many and even if we tweak redeploy more, the lack of logistics will be an issue because of this. More travel-time between bases means a higher likelyhood of responding to an incoming enemy attack and even more field fighting, assuming terrain is made interesting for such a thing. A lot of the awesome Terrain on all four continents will never be fully utilized with how close bases are to each other. This also would help with performance and continent development time. With the lattice, we really do not need THAT many bases.

    2. Resource Revamp: Put resource nodes between bases and bring back some form of ANT. Creating seige tactics, an option to win a base the slow way. This creates objectives in the open field. The alternative is just requiring the ANT to run the resources from a base closer to the warpgate on the same lattice lane. Either way, vehicles would either need to kill or protect the ANT. Tanks should take a dominant role here with infantry taking a support role.

    3. Make bases more infantry dominant: To varying degrees, but ultimately they should be infantry focused. No vehicle should have direct access/line of sight to any point and getting from point to point should be relatively unhampered by vehicles. Bases should also ALL be multipoint, to prevent the whole of a servers population in one room. Infantry should take a dominant role here while tanks take up the supporting role.

    4. Finally, Buff Ground Vehicle durability: Buff their armor against themselves and against infantry AV. Give xp for damaging ground vehicles like we do with air vehicles as well. (for both other vehicles and infantry trying to AV)


    Bonus points for separating drive and gunner in MBT's as well
    • Up x 1
  20. Silkensmooth

    One cool thing they could do with all vehicles is to make AV loadouts cheaper.

    For example, to pull a magrider with a saron hrb and an fpc would cost 100 resources and have no acquisition timer.

    An ESF with AB tanks and an a2a nosegun would cost 100 resources and have no acquisition timer.

    An HE maggy with a ppa strapped on the back would cost 750 resources.

    An FPC maggy with a ppa on the back maybe stay the same at 450.

    This would get a lot more vehicle vs vehicle fights happening without causing vehicle vs infantry spam to increase.

    Probably you would have to add a system where each weapon you put on has a different resource cost. AV weapons being very cheap, and AI weapons being very expensive.

    You could even change the acquisition timers to be tied to various weapons. For example you could only pull an HE cannon every 10 mins, but you could pull an AV weapon with no timer.

    Plus having no acquisition timers on AV vehicles would be the best possible thing you could do for new players.
    • Up x 1