How about to let the community balance the game? A game called Starmade do this. His dev team is too busy to code ( because he is alone) so he let a group of concerned old players doing the trick of balancing the game.They call that QuickFire initiative. A bit of RP guy, PVP guy and PVE guy currently try to balance the game. As far i can see, Ps2 devs are not enough to do the job correctly. Because they are no enough to spend lot of time in game and see what happen on large battle, little fight ect... Why can't we do that too on PS2? Can dev create a group of concerned players allow them to modify all the config of the game, all of the 3 faction. Vanu, TR, NC main(but who already played all factions). Vehicule guy, Air guy and planetman. Vet and casuals. Who can simply study the balance of the game together on a dedicated server? I know, seem like devs don't read it anymore but i alway hope, one day... lol
How exactly do you want to do this? VS players think they are the worst off and will buff their faction while nerfing the other two. The NC players think they are the worst off and will buff their faction while nerfing the other two. The TR players think they are... What about the A2G+G2A balance? Who's going to have the final say? The aircraft players who say "as long as players are forced into providing more targets for me to own it's OK" or the ground players who say "G2A needs to practically instakill aircraft"? There's other sentiments ofcourse but that would just mean more things to choose from. I've made multiple threads on a lot of topics but there's so many different opinions about everything and people who don't understand. For example I made a thread where I proposed the Valkyrie, Liberator and Galaxy got new AA, AV and AI loadouts while the ESF got it's rocketpods and Hornets removed or nerfed (they went to the Valkyrie) and received dumb bombs instead so it could divebomb. The reaction? "You got killed by air, just calm down and respawn". Despite upgrading the Valkyrie, Liberator and Galaxy while shifting the role of the ESF these people thought I was nerfing aircraft. Can you really balance a game based on the community if a certain portion of that community, most specifically a large portion of the aircraft players, is dumb as a brick and only out to improve their own position at the cost of everyone else?
You could do what old school runescape does and have players vote in the poll in-game. Things needed a super-majority to be done (so more than 66%) otherwise they was not implemented. Though in this game's community, you'd probably end up with no vehicles at all and just infantry lol.
You would need to look at the average turnout and votes, then try to adapt the majority to that. If you can never have more than 55% votes in favor of something nothing would ever change, and trying out things should be a factor of this system. Actually considering the immense amount of vehicle players that continuously lament the supposed infantry-centric updates I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's infantry that gets deleted instead of vehicles. I mean come on they remove the negatives of pulling an HE gun while simultaneously forcing infantry to expose themselves more often to kill a vehicle and the vehicle players say this is a bad thing for them?
Community is divided. Say that I was a main community figure who got to balance stuff. That would make a lot of people angry and a few people happy. My posts are controversial and are usually divided. It would be the same effect with the community. I guess we could host polls and "hire" community members to develop for free, but the risk could be that if they do something without permission, their game character and account would be terminated, and they would be "fired." I can't code, but I have some ideas, most of which pertain to the things I play..
Community doesn't play each faction in a complete haul. Players will always prefer their main faction. Doing so will be the bad old days back when the developers openly admitted to all being VS mains.
to be fair changing the shots to kill on HE, HEAT VS armor was a bad idea in the first place as it removed the advantage AP tanks had over HEAT and HE in tank vs tank engagements, also the normalization of front/side armor as a stock option was stupid. favoring one playstyle doesn't mean you rubber stamp every buff/nerf in that playstyle. also death cam was also a bad idea.
...let's see how this could go wrong. How do you decided who is a "concerned player"? At this point, after 7 years of play, aren't we all "concerned players"? We all have different view for the game. Not that it's a good or bad thing, but even after playing all factions and having stuck with the game since beta, I would still have some bias towards TR and totally hate infils, and I know a bunch of players would all be similar. We all have our favorite playstyle, our favorite faction, and even though I (and others) can reasonably reflect and account for that, it's not always the case, and not everyone can do it. How do you manage a bunch of people, who even though they wish the game's success, all have conflicting agendas? It'd be like the Senate, a bunch of people debating all the time and therefore not accomplishing anything in the end. You simply can't give players full access to the game, much less pinpoint a few who would be allowed to make changes, while the rest of the community who are just as involved would also want in. A better alternative would be to allow players to share their code for new bases, continents, vehicles on a platform where the community can upvote and then let the devs rework the idea in order to implement it properly in the game. Basically, what these forums were meant/used to be.
**** no. Players (as a group) are stupid. Every man and his dog has some weapon / vehicle / tactic -thingy that they just can't seem to counter and which absolutely gets on their ****, and no matter how balanced it might be *objectively*, you'll never convince them that it isn't OP. Similarly, every single player has some weapon that they can't use for ****, which they'll *swear* is UP, whether it's *objectively* balanced or not. Hell... most players even swear that the *devs* are biased and buff <not my faction> and nerf <my faction> all the time. Even when talking about the same dev, there are people on all factions saying the same thing. I'm not even totally convinced that I'd trust *ME* to make balance changes. I'd really, really try to be objective. I'd try to base it on mathematics, game data and the evolving meta as much as possible. But there's always that *one ******* thing* that just needs to die (gorram A2G ESF's) which I'd end up nerfing into the ground no matter how hard I'd try to be objective. So, no... players *cannot* be trusted to balance a PvP multiplayer game!
If we want this to work, we need unbiased players. we can't do things by polls because of bias there and the results being untrue. What they need to do is come to the forums and look at what we want, then think if it is a good idea or not. They can ask us questions about the idea, and give their own balancing to it. They put it up on the test server, and we try it out. We give our feedback, and that determines if it goes in or not, but the devs can put it in or take it out if they want to. We just give more incentive. Pleasing the community, y'know? They could also take a few of us from the forums and reddit and put us in a group. We suggest ideas to them. There would be a certain amount of players from each faction. For instance, 10 NC, 10 TR, 10 VS, and 10 crossplay factioners. That way, we can have a better group to choose from, instead of literally everyone. Then they ask us to be their testers, and we do just that, and maybe we could *ahem* get some rewards for it, like maybe a "Crash Tester" tag or special crash test camo (y'know how crash test dummies look) along with a special crash test helmet or armor. I'd thoroughly enjoy any of those, but maybe just having Planetside 2 get more players is reward enough...
i think i could do a good job at balancing, i'd make ZOE great again, i'd give NC maxies their shotguns back but with greater damage dropoff and without slugs i'd restore pounders to their AI glory with a bit of their old splash and give them much more reserve ammo. i'd also take the c4 resistance from max ordnance armour and make it baseline, no more oneshotting 450 cost units. and thats just maxes! i'd remove (or atleast increase) the range limit of Lancers again, they don't deal much damage the range was all that they had. i'd make charger work on a "per burst" basis instead of per reload, i'd reduce the delay between TRAP burst fires and also reduce the vertical recoil. i'd make AA lock-ons "ok" again so newbies aren't just cannonfodder for Skyknights, i'd remove the god damn dalton oneshots (not sure why they bought that back)
I'd make the Buzzard not trash, nerf CQC sniper rifles while still making them worth it, add a bow (thats not balance, but I still want it), listen to other balance requests, make cortium do something for regular bases, and I'd make the Railjack more than just "a good sniper". Edit: Oh, and on the TR side, I'd see how their pillager plays out, and see if it needs a buff. It is really good in Flash v Flash combat, but I want to see the AI potential. Do you have to kill yourself to get a kill? Can you take down a whole horde effectively? Should the flames penetrate targets? Things like that. On the VS side, I don't really know what I'd do for them. They look like they got lots of things sorted out balance-wise.
If I was in charge I would... Consolidate the current guns. Do we really need 40 different assault rifles that are virtually identical? Overhaul the damage system, the current one is incredibly confusing. It would be modeled to something World of Tanks like. Have the rocket rifle and Thumper switch places. Nerf harrasser, it's incredibly OP for a buggy Re-add deplorable galaxies Get rid of hex system and bring back the SOI system from PS1 Make faction identity relevant again. Faction specific buggies and maybe even sunderers. Add more caves Rework NS lore Rework sunderer cert tree (will explain in separate topic, this will make sundeerers not the primary spawnpoint anymore) Add the AMS from PS1. It will be unaffected by no deploy zones, but cannot equip gate shield diffuser and has no weapons of any kind. Its only defense is its cloak bubble and has little health Seats two people. Rework Ti Alloys Add Capricorn Dig site from this That's all I have at the moment.
