Upcoming adjustments to Air vs Ground balance

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Higby, Dec 5, 2012.

  1. Goonbandito

    If the Anti-Tank guided missile launcher will now require a lock-on to fire, can you at least make it so it fires like a Javelin (ie a top-down attack?). If the missile flew upwards, then came down to hit the top-armour of its target you would have a justified reason for making it need a lock-on. Plus it would stop it from doing stupid things like hitting little bumps or hills before it even gets to the tank. There is little reason as is to use the guided missile over the dumbfire - please don't make even less reasons.
    • Up x 3
  2. Metsuro

    No one would have.
    • Up x 3
  3. Bags

    They obviously can't fix render distance and do this.

    the people working on fixing the render distance are totally on the art and balance team.
    • Up x 1
  4. Dubious

    Hopefully the will refund both G2A and G2G rocket launchers so whoever want them can just buy them back
    There is no loss in doing this and everybody is happy..
    • Up x 5
  5. videogamesaregames

    While I don't disagree that flak in general is kind of bad right now, I really despise these "one size fits all" balance changes for flak.

    Right now bursters are pretty good. The skyguard however is awful and base turrets are somewhere in between. Assuming these changes are being applied to ALL flak sources it's a bad change, because that's simply not what needs to happen.

    An equal buff to all these sources of flak is not solving the problem.
  6. Dubious

    Javelin will most likely be the next HA AV weapon.... like lat next year
  7. Griz

    it's already not very good as AA because every decent pilot has flares to counter A2A missiles. that's not changing so it's still going to be bad AA that now comes with the cost of being completely ineffective against ground units.
  8. MistaN

    Sooooo a SERIOUS question to all of those that dont like the fact that the functionality of a weapon, you bought, has changed.
    Were you in the camp that wanted STAT changes to rocketpods (IE. damage & range nerfs)?

    If you were then how can you seriously whine about them changing functionality of a weapon rather than directly changing stats? The role of the G2A launcher stays exactly the same. You get faster reload times rather than dumb fire. Dumb fire for G2A made it a G2G weapon, which it's not supposed to be. You're actually getting the weapon that you bought.

    ITS A G2A WEAPON, not G2G. It's supposed to be ineffective against ground units. If you want to be effective against ground units then get a G2G weapon...
  9. Dubious

    What he said..

    Skyguard should be better than MAX, at this point its worthless and this buff will just make MAX even better
  10. Dubious

    The weapon functionality have changed completely

    Rocketpod change is only a minor change that wont affect the good pilots at all
    Rocket spamming infantry is not good flying..

    oh and rocketpods are A2G, not A2A, so with your theory, rockets should do no damage to aircrafts
  11. Flarestar

    I'll be one of those. I, and I'm guessing quite a lot of other people, bought the weapon for its ability to lock onto air in exchange for reduced damage against ground targets. I found that compromise to be perfectly acceptable - the damage reduction is significant, and even if the range is increased the weapon will still not be particularly effective for killing air, simply for being a deterrent to getting anywhere near me.

    What I DIDN'T buy it to do was be a specialized anti-air weapon, nor was it presented as such. If I'd wanted that, I'd have just bought a primary Burster for my MAX loadout.
  12. xTEExGOWx

    Sir, have you forgotten that flares exists?
  13. Maximilious

    No brah, if air (ESF) gets rocket pods (good vs air / ground) then whinny ground wants same too, being able to pop air and ground with a G2A launcher :cool:

    flares are not something that make you god forever, they last 5 seconds with a 45s cooldown (1minute) the one launching the guided missile will just reload and lock you again.
  14. Lambchopz

    I think this is a pretty good start. As a Pilot myself, I have no problem with trying to introduce more skill into using Rocket Pods. That seems like a pretty good compromise. They will still be as effective as they are now in the hands of a good Pilot, but bad Pilots can't just randomly spam anymore and get free kills. Makes sense.

    Flak Armor buff is good, if for no other reason than the fact that it actually means people can viably use something besides Nanoweave.

    I hope the buff to Flak really is *minor* as we don't want the opposite issue of no-fly zones that popped up in beta again.

    A30 Walker buff is much appreciated, but I have to wonder why you decided to buff that, but not buff the Skyguard? I think the Skyguard needed a buff as much if not more then the A30.

    Overall, I like how this sounds. Seems like you are taking a more careful approach to balancing this, which is smart. Air and Ground are hard to balance.

    One thing is that I definitely think Flares need a re-working if you're going to continue down this route of adding more lock-on stuff. Not a linear buff necessarily, I think the best suggestion I've seen is make them ammo-based instead of CD based. Also, nerf the tracking a bit on A2A missiles imo. That **** is ridiculous.
  15. Dakkaface

    These changes are nice, and will contribute to end the reign of rocketspam and air-zerg.

    Unfortunately, if your end goal for G2A is for it to purely be a deterrent, then none of these changes address the core issue with it - playing AA is not rewarding or fun. If a fighter can fly around and spam some rockets every 2 minutes and pick up a vehicle kill+driver kill, he's getting 200+ XP every two minutes. If an AA MAX, Skyguard or AA turret gunner sits in a base and wards off fighters and libs for 10 minutes, they might pick up a kill and an assist or two. I stress the might. The pilots are earning 5 times(or more) the XP, can zip around the map to a new location if one depletes of targets or gets too hot, and can pick targets as they please. The AA gunners are sitting in a largely stationary position so they can maintain an ammo supply, and can do nothing but peer at the skies and wait for a plane to appear - and when one does, it's unlikely you'll get a kill, or even an assist.

    AA often isn't fun to play and definitely isn't rewarding in terms of XP - the only time it comes out is when air is already dominating an area, and by then it's often too late. Will be seeing any tweaks to how AA earns XP, or at least a slight buff vs infantry or vehicles so that AA can do something if there's no planes in the area? Also, any word on the Burster Extended Mag bug?

    On a tangentially related note - when can we expect account-bound SC buys to kick in? I picked up the Skyguard and left hand Burster on my character on Helios, but have since started playing with some friends on Genudine.
    • Up x 2
  16. Stncold

    When heavy AA/AV launchers have a timer and cost resources to spawn, I'm all for them being equal and a hard counter.
  17. Flarestar

    I honestly don't care about flare buffs, rockets are easy enough to shake off without them that I didn't even bother certing into them on my NC character for like a week after I started playing him. Certed into them day one on my VS guy and honestly mostly have felt they're wasted.
  18. Kich

    I already get destroyed by a burster max in one volley... So now not only flares are mandatory, now composite armor is.

    I feel it's too many changes at once.

    Especially the flak armor change. It should just be an extra bonus against air explosive, not all explosives.
  19. {joer

    I hope you guys realize this will basically end the airwar as anything but a fast transport system. Glad I didn't spend that many certs.
  20. wowie

    I can get behind this. Hopefully it doesn't see-saw all the way back to the beta balance, though, lol. :)
    My attitude towards the PS2 team has completely changed after reading this.