Fun Mass Infantry Fights RIP

The first week or so of PS2 was filled with lots of very fun mass infantry fights. However as the days have gone by, they seem fewer and fewer. Here is what typically happens:

- two sides infantry in decent numbers start battling over and around buildings
- the rocketpod air circus shows up and begins spamming over one side's spawn point
- due to the way the bases are laid out, there are very few places rocketspam cannot reach
- fun infantry combat dies out before it can even get rolling as one side realizes it cannot even leave its spawn room for a second without being obliterated by the rocketpodders

Yes, your side can bring A2A. But honestly, how often does that happen? There are way more certs farming infantry than fighting A2A so only a few stalwarts will advance solely by shooting down other aircraft. And if and when they do show up, by that time its too late - the infantry fights are dieing down as the side being farmed usually by then moves to respawn elsewhere.

I can't believe this is fun for infantry on either side. It must get boring as well sitting waiting for the base to cap while watching your side's rocketpodders rack up certs - killing opponents that you might otherwise enjoy a contest of skill against.

Sorry - that's becoming rarer and rarer. How many fun would-be infantry fights in the last week have gone down the spigot because there is almost nowhere on the map that cannot be raked by aircraft or vehicles?

Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse.

Im a vehicle lover, and will play with vehicles as much as humanly possible (within reason of course) and I find myself playing in inf battles more so than i do in tank, or air battles. Most bases require heavy infantry support to cap.

Sorry but inf fighting is not dead. Inf lovers just seem to have this weird idea that a vehicle centric game should not involve gameplay mechanics in which vehicles can kill infantry.

Back in planetside 1 the infantry/vehicle zerg ruled the day and it was fun as hell.
Sure going with the zerg could be stupid from time to time but no one knew they were being farmed by a ***** with rocket pods or anything such. I think if we say rocket pods as well as liberators tank on weapons which are powerful but difficult to use and see a increase in AA efficiency to the point that AIR cannot operate when there is AA up we could actually see the fun infantry battles start to happen again but they will never ruin the game for the farmers...

-rocket pods and reaver 'finger of god' weapons need to disappear
-infantry and vehicle battles will begin to happen again

Looks like evolution at work, to me.

Yep, it's only going to get worse. Many of us purchased SC on the special, and put it all into spam weapons. Rocketpods, chainguns, aa bursters, etc... Its going to be a spam fest, and we saw a lot of it tonite. As infantry we really couldnt go anywhere today, and its only going to get worse as people **** up their Libs and start some long distance hell.

Combat around The Crown and the few surrounding zones still seems to have a lot of infantry on the 3 servers I play.

Outside that however ...... yeah, it's a sad state of affairs.

That's because the Crown is the only base that is DEFENSIBLE -- albeit by geography, and not by design.

Devs, are you paying heed...?

Indeed.
That's why I have fun attacking and also defending that place - and almost all other places it's just spammed to death by rockets or HE tanks en mass.

The big battle lines that formed in PS1, with air and vehicles and infantry, were just awesome. We had this for the first week but it is gone now. I initially thought cheaters would be the biggest problem but I was wrong. This game just sucks in comparison to PS1. It is just a bad shooter on a really large map where the big forces hardly ever fight each other. Triple SC cash? Just a desperate grab for cash. They know this game is already dying. The epicness of this fail given that they knew what worked from PS1... is stunning. I think they all just drank and partied. 3x is probably them getting whatever cash they can for a New Year's blast.

SOE has been doing triple station cash for years and often. It doesn't only affect Planetside.

Yeah, not really. Very few bases require heavy infantry support. Most bases are not defensible. There are very few battles that are determined by boots on the ground. It's easier to head to another continent when the enemy zerg comes in than it is to even attempt to defend. It's why you have 3 empire zergs on 3 different continents. After the continent is capped they just rotate which continent they take next. A lot of people want to nerf rocketpods or remove air, but that's just a bandaid for bad base design.

And it's accidental *better* base design like this that makes it interesting.

Air and Tanks should be able to kill infantry every day of the week, 20 soldiers at a time. They shouldn't be able to do it over 95% of the map. Inside of a tech lab and under the bio dome are pretty much the only places that foster decent enough infantry combat. Even then, the bad spawn locations and system ruin it.

Pfft, just equip a HA rocket or AV Max and go outside the spawn roo...oh I'm dead.

Well this time I'll run outside to cover and....oh dead again.

Ok, I can't defend this base, I'll deploy over on this Sunderer and...oh I'm dead. Wish I could tell it was under attack, huh?

Fine, I'll deploy in another base, hmm some aircraft around, I'll equip a G2A missile and..well that thing flies as fast as paraplegic parrot, are you seri...oh I'm dead.

Well, Burster Max works, I'll go outsi...oh crap, enemy infantry, surely two heavy flak cannons designed to destroy armored aircraft can take care of...oh I'm dead.

*logout*

I dont think so. Then people will start calling tanks OP(they actually do now) and then when everything armor related is nerfed to hell the infantry weapons will have a turn. Never had any problems playing as infantry, not in beta, not now, and not in the future cause i dont suck. lol

First off, this isn't an epeen thread. So ok, you are good/great. The OP probably is as well. In fact, most responding are probably very good infantry players who love infantry battles where all 3 elements of PS2 make for a epic fight.

But lets see.... not everyone is good/great so what do they do when they just like to play infantry? THEY LEAVE THE GAME because infantry is very hard to play in PS2. That is a concept elitist f-***** like you don't understand. A MMO NEEDS a large casual player base otherwise why be an MMO? We'll be at small battles in no time in PS2... oh wait! We already are! The large fights we had during the first week or 2 are just about gone. And it is because of air's very large superiority and total availability (shoot one down, so what? they just come right back).

The bases need a massive redesign.

In good ol planetside 1 the bases were where infantry shined a lot, because vehicles were very hard to use to good effect against them, but in the battles between bases the vehicles ruled the day, now, its just vehicle spam, everywhere.

Quoting this!

Yeah, people want to nerf rocketpods or remove air or instagib tanks or whatever. The issue is the fact that boots on the ground isn't what wins control points in this game. Air and tanks should wreck the hell out of infantry and other vehicles. Between defensible bases. Kill those reinforcements quick, 50 infantry running across a field? One pass in an ESF kills them. That's fine. However once those infantry spawn or get to a defensible base they should be primarily worried about other infantry and not Libs, ESFs or MBTs.

The root of the problem is garbage base design - not overpowered vehicles.

What in hell can have made you think the mmofps planetside 2 was supposed to be vehicle centric??

Sounds like a good plan man. Remove all tanks and planes from the game, who the hell needs them anyway? You dont understand that people will always complain. It doesnt matter **** which game it is. If you getting killed by something its instantly overpowered and needs to be removed from the game. Instead of using your ******* head once in a while and not spawn on lost bases where all the enemy armor is or move alone without any tank/air support, its easier to complain in a thread.
If you want to leave go ahead, nobody gives a ****. I´d rather play with 200 sane people then 2000 ******* like i read in this forum.

its funny in real war, aircraft are so vulnerable to even low tech anti air that the military has spent billions on long range remote missiles to fire from jets.

The bases need underground areas where the capture point should be. It would makes sense for it to be deep in a bunker, not up the stairs past the snack bar