Tell SOE What You Think of ZOE - Before It's Too Late!

All NS weapons will be affected far less by, or not at all by the new abilities. Even SOE can figure out that Lockdown Bursters would be incredibly unbalanced. Sadly, it seems they can't figure out that ZOE sucks, in every implementation that's been on the Test Server (and I have tested almost all of them).

And yeah... for the love of Vanu.. sparkly pink... even the Picard double facepalm doesn't begin to cover it.

Most Vanu players don't want any new weapon.

Lacer? We don't want it!
Vortex? We don't want it!
ZOE? We don't want it!
If they gave Vanu the striker they would not want that either because its just another lock on with low damage.

NC don't want their shield.
TR don't want lock down because they don't want to see all our max weapons get nerfed over it. We don't want to be forced to use lockdown to get the same damage pre-nerf. I guess Vanu fear the same will happen with ZOE.

Add ability = nerf weapons to balance the ability. LOL

Vanu you do't know how lucky you are to get ZOE. At least your weapons won't get nerfed and you can move while using it.

soe please sell a pink vanu camo too would be amazing

Wait, they're removing the one feature of the power that actually fits VS philosophy?!

you mean running away like all the little magrider babies ?

Lancer was shocking to begin with - we raged and it was made an effective weapon.

The Vortex is terrible compared to the other two, with significantly less utility.

And ZOE... yeah. I wouldn't mind the Striker tbh, would be nice to give TR a taste of the no-fly zone that NC & VS experience every day since it was released

I think i'd cry then

Short lesson on the lancer and vortex.
There was a lot of talk over whether the mechanic would be useful or not. You gave up the indoor v max ability and reflexive anti air shots of the s1. You didn't gain the advantage of being able to down aircraft no matter how well they maneuvered. The lancer in theory also couldn't compete with the annihilator at the time. The day before it was released we all saw a demo of it and how effective it would be and how cool the animation was, spinning battery and an on weapon ammo counter-it was awesome and awesome looking. They released a totally different version of it:
-longer charge time
-less damage
-broken animation&no ammo counter
-COF spread even on charged shots
-damage drop off
Nobody bought it because it was not the weapon they were shown. SOE was forced to buff it over and over again before it would finally get almost as many users as the ESRLs (its about even now)

Fast forward to vortex:
-no zoom
-massive damage drop off
-COF spread even on charged shots
-less damage
-less accurate than the other max AV weapons
-worse v maxes
-doesn't fit max aesthetics

It has all the crappy things that made nobody buy the lancer except now it costs twice as much and requires infantry resources-why wouldn't we complain?

well the ability dont cost money. only certs.
so no reason to buff it if noone use it

As a profound vanu seer i can forsee that GU09 will bring another -5% population to VS again, ZOE will get last minute tweaks to be amazingly balanced according to TR/NC which means that it dies faster, kills slower and moves slower than it does without ZOE, meanwhile higby will twitter that ZoE is indeed good when used in groups.

NC shield will be able to survive a nuclear blast and the TR's bland ability, proves to be amazingly effective.

Forums will be flooded with VS threads that contains "WTF?!" for a week while TR/NC farms with their new toys.
Couple days go by and a hotfix comes out with a sympathy buff to ZoE, TR/NC see the patch notes logs onto the forums to call VS whiners.

A week after that GU10...

The vortex has one useful mode that is not generally realised due to the poorly designed charging mechanic. And that is the high rof needler. Dual weilding can see burst of 340rpm high velocity laser projectiles sent downrange. That is cool.

The lancer is also cool when used in the situation it is designed for.

I have confidence that ZOE will be the same and I'll be certing into all but the last slot on the day it comes out. Why? because it is empire specific, and offers a unique challenge to see what can be done with it.

Anyone claiming that the lancer or vortexes are rubbish (apart from the vortexes lack of claw) to me just says they haven't actually given them a good go. Anyone currently claiming the same for ZOE is in the same bracket, as it is not live yet.

Pre-emptive whining just makes future calls for balancing look bad.

I predict TR max weapon nerfs due to lock-down.... forcing tr to use it....
NC using their shield for kicks and giggles.... No nerfs....
VS getting a ok ability that slightly increases your dps and speed. No nerfs....

Who's better off?

well what do you want by nc?
maybe that our maxes only run half speed now becuase we could use a blue sensless shield?

To clarify, I personally love the lancer. It requires coordination to be useful not just the "good in groups" that others say. Everything is good groups, however few things are as good in coordination as the lancer. Vortexes don't have that bonus and I see no place were I'd rather use a vortex over the lancer.
ZOE also does not have a "good in groups" classification. In fact I believe it will scale negatively like magrider strafe: I.E. actually gets worse in groups due to lack of maneuverability. So I personally feel this ability unlike the others will only be good for lone wolves and have no use in the coordinated outfit play I practice.

40 pages of suggestions and a legacy jetpack power to look forward to. The Max is the coolest looking model in the game (to me anyway!) The composite armour makes it look like a true alien death machine and is the reason I joined Vanu alongside the Magrider.

40 pages of ideas, some were complicated, some were easy, many were unique and gave tools to play differently. This is -the- power that defines us, if it was an NS power, wouldn't care but this is a power that is meant to go 'hey new player! if you chose my faction, you get this!'

We tried telling them this was a bad power... The mere concept of this ability when it was given to us should have been a sign to everyone that it was going to be crap. Instead of becoming an LA, we become an HA with shields permanently on... I didn't sign up to play the HA class MORE! What will this power do, I mean really, head to head fight will be resolved exactly the same as we have a slightly smaller health pool and do slightly more damage. Our speed is infantry based so if you can't hit infantry then you might have more problems with the game than just a VS MAX.

The power gives us nothing new, and I've been saying this since the power was freaking announced! Balance it all you want you'll just end up diluting it until it basically offers nothing. Speed on a MAX? Sure that could be dangerous, but infantry speed still means you can run alongside it and it has less health and has a kick me sign on it...

I hate to be negative OP but we've been telling the devs for MONTHS. They aren't listening and even if they are they don't care. Balanced doesn't have to be =/= fun just as fun doesn't have to be OP/UP. ZOE might have been fun with the exploited sprint run but I dont consider infantry speed 'fun' enough to want it as a locked power to our empire...

ZOE sucks. I want my Max to be tough to protect my allies and points, not be more fragile to do a bit more damage while jumping like a ******* monkey.

I'd say the vortex does have the good in groups classification still, however it is not as integral, thus not as pronounced, due to the higher rof, and fact you get two of them anyway.

Yeh ZOE definitely doesn't have that classification. Though it might be useful for quick/sneak attacks; I dunno, its too early to tell, need the actually figures for movement speed and damage taken increase. The damage output increase will be at least slightly useful I'm sure.
It raises another point about balance though, how will they balance these abilities without getting confused by our ES weapon abilities. Imo there still needs to be a bit of balance between the ES AV gear, the results of which might skew how this new stuff is balanced. Mind you, if the threads around here are anything to go by, the uptake might be pretty low...

All of you need to save the tears for when they go live.

it really doesn't seem like SOE has been listening to the feedback on the Max ability. No faction really likes their ability. The TR have been asking not to get lockdown since it was announced, the VS have been petitioning against ZOE since it was leaked, and the NC have been complaining about their shield since its damage absorption was halved, making it much less useful. I hope these abilities are not coming out this Wednesday, because in there current state, they just are not ready.

It's actually fairly simple (if I'm reading it right...) every weapon is affected different, why things like bursters will be getting next to zero benefit from the weapons which leads me to believe they have a 'zoe does %' written into each weapon to be different since all of our AI weapons are pretty much exactly the same though im assuming this is why it's mostly a flat 20% where as the AV weapons are treated differently.

As for the sneaking around and such, i see this being vastly contradictory as well... MAXs can't overload generators, they can't capture points and they're slow and ponderous. The fact that they're relatively infantry sized though means they can do something that ESFs and Tanks can't do! Go into buildings. This means they're by design, shocktroopers or infantry bodyguards or basically the big heavy that helps clear an objective! It's a tank! Now buffs and nerfs and OP/UP aside, the TR lockdown gives them tremendous defending power as they can clear any hallway they're positioned in or any other location. The Aegis shield allows you to sustain a fight or enter one without taking damage. The ZOE 'even if minimal' makes our ability to take a head on fight worse. Our speed is nice for shocktrooping but then so is charge and that's the problem. The only time leaving the zoe on is beneficial is when you're not taking any return fire, and that only happens when you catch people off guard... And honestly, being able to kill faster in an ambush really isn't something I'd say is effective...

A MAX's job is to be on the front line or crowd control, it's a shock trooper that clears an area for it's allies to safely enter. Jetpacks would actually benefit LAs! in that a max could leap over walls and help clear rooms for the la to overload a generator or start taking an objective. Reversely, since it wouldn't offer any extra offensive power or defensive power, a lockdown MAX or a shield MAX could still be on equal or better footing. Either way, this is about the ZOE and it's still worthless... The only saving grace is the instant turn on/off switch which I also think is broken since it encourages people to use it like charge and discard it in a fight...