What would happen if you removed thermal optics from vehicles?

I do think it was an exceptionally stupid idea to lower the cost of lock on launchers last year to 250 certs rather than addressing problems with base design and battle flow. Even though I have the A/V turret unlocked on 2 of my primary characters, I always thought it was a pretty bad idea in any implementation.

Vehicles shouldn't necessarily be pigeon holed, but more specialized. Highly specific in load outs and tasks that are able to be completed with that load out. I think they're a bit too diverse with the exception of the MBT, the MBT needs to have HE removed and a few more primary cannons, such as an artillery cannon with a high arc . There also needs to be a way to swap vehicle load outs, even if it's only at specific facilities.

as a tank user: I use thermal over zoom because zoom borks the already borken drop indicator. you give me a proper mil dot system that is consistent between zoomed and unzoomed states and I might use it. even then I like being able to see through smoke.

Removing thermals and doritos from vehicle views would probably change the game completely.

3D Spotting is one of the worst mechanics ever to be introduced in online shooters.

Needs more MLG. OP hasn't even called thermals 'cheese'...

And as for those 'comparative images', one taken from outside infantry render distance (314m) and the other from 100m away? Astounding...

I see absolutely no reason to remove them. I wouldn't mind if other scopes got a bit of a buff to make it more of a choice though.

I don't myself. If anything, we've seen what base design changes has done to battle flow. Instead of combined arms actions, we now get vehicle fights between bases, zerg vs. zerg due to lattice, and when everyone gets to those bases on Amerish that's pretty much infantry only or bio-labs, then vehicles are just parked/dumped, and the fight continues, infantry only.

Its just a terrible evolution for a combined arms game. I miss the days when in Esamir, we had epic battles across the river, you had infantry, tanks, air all fighting, it wasn't any spawn camping, just everyone fighting together, in the open.

I'll leave it at that, what you're looking for I understand, but it detracts from the combined arms vision some of us have for the game and love. And as for base design, I'm not even sure who those blast shields at the new Quartz Ridge helps out more... its actually shields air from ground fire if used correctly. Which is why stuff like those dome shields are absolute abominations and hopefully never get added to the game, enough with the silly segregation.

Look at amp stations, we had open sides in some and now a lot of the sides are closed off in some. Infantry on top of those ramparts had an advantage attacking vehicles outside from those more open designs. Now, we just don't even bother with those fights anymore, its time to hoof it on feet into the amp station and just ditch the vehicles outside.

Being able to see all infantry within a 250m radius, that isn't totally obscured by cover, is a bit on the OP side.

Tanks\ESF's can dish out so much damage at a safe distance, with little risk to themselves. If you actually took away their ability to aquire targets so easily it would make the game a lot more enjoyable for the vast majority of players.

Tanks would still be strong and still capable of taking out large numbers of infantry but it would raise the skill ceiling for tank drivers\gunners and give infantry more of a chance to push out to try and capture\defend a point.

ESF's would be more likely to focus on vehicles.

I like the idea someone said of not letting vehicles see spotted infantry. What's the point in wearing camo etc if people see you through the dorito anyway? Especially if they can just spam HE weapons, which require little skill.

The other idea I liked was lessening the thermal range on infantry but increasing it on vehicles.

I'm not a tank or esf ***** but I'm experienced with both. 4,300+ magrider kills 2,300+ scythe kills 34.000 total kills.

Tanking vs infantry in a well certed tank isn't hard, ground pounding in a well certed ESF isn't hard. That's why so many people do it, and why so many people who are bad tankers complain when they get killed by infantry, despite the fact most times you die to infantry in a tank, it's your own fault.

To any tankers who get taken out by LA's or AV turrets often you need to work on your situational awareness and improve your game. Quit complaining about how much your tank cost you to pull. I don't complain when I die to stuff that didn't cost as much. You got too close\greedy, didn't anticipate AV turrets being setup at points in certain bases, didn't have viable cover nearby.

Getting back to the main topic though ... I'd never really considered taking thermal away until I read this post, but the more I think about it the more I think it would benefit the overall game experience for most players, especially newer ones.

If the level of farming from vehicles in the game isn't toned down a bit the game will lose so many new players who just give up due to it. Yeah, it's a combined arms game and vehicles should be strong but not overpowered. I think taking away thermal would go a long way to helping the current situation.

Not even gonna lie. Thermal OP. When you don't have thermal on a bulldog/zepher/dalton/shredder infantry farming is much harder, seriously, much harder. It shouldn't be that easy and I have cheesed 2k kills off it.

I agree with pretty much everything you stated. I started out as a tanker or light assault but as players stopped fighting each other after launch I started to primarily infantry only. I play infantry because I'm good at it and there is always a need for it, because I won't go to where my faction has pop. I also small squad because of feeling like I lived in the woods every time I joined a larger platoon. I play too inconsistently to join a good organized outfit, but refuse to join an outfit where I out skill the vast majority of the players since I don't even think I'm that great or anything, just better than average.

The best fights that I consider great happen at tech plants, which provide multiple types of combat. There is fun for everyone and more facilities like those should be added. Facilities where there is plenty of infantry and vehicle combat, and vehicles can contribute to the flow of the infantry battles when defenders let their guards down (letting generators get taken down etc.). Vehicles help infantry push into tech plants, then once in close proximity of the objective, the infantry have to push to allow the vehicles to help with capping and keeping infantry at bay.

I hate the new amp stations and think they simply needed to change the location of the vehicle shield gens so attackers have easier access to it and shield the point a bit more from tanks. I love tanking in PS2. I think tanking was what got me hooked on this game, but because there aren't any objectives for vehicles or that I frequently had to abandon them to actually feel useful, I just stopped pulling them as often. I love my fully certed mag rider and would dare any vanguard to come at me!

I would love for SOE to add some tank superiority type bases to this game. If your not familiar with it, tank superiority was a game mode in BF3, where there were usually lots of hills and trenches where tanks fought over points, places where infantry were as useless as vehicles are at most outposts in this game. It wasn't that infantry wasn't able to contribute to that game mode, it was more that the points were out in the open and infantry would die horribly if they even tried to do anything but support. It's not that I don't like vehicles, it's that I like feeling useful and playing the objective.

Ya...I cant believe that when i am shooting someone at close range my gun when aimed cant follow them as fast as they are running and jumping BUT....when i am 10 feet from a tank and running and jumping the Tank can swing it heavy barrel around and kill me easily, WTF? I had jumped on the back of a lightning and another tank killed me leaving a huge black powder burn on the back of the lightning, i am sorry the lightning would be dead from a direct hit from another tank but... sadly no. Appearantly i soaked up ALL the damage and the tank got none.

i had a pretty decent run with my Scout/Stealth Scythe with a PPA w/ Thermals and Afterbuners.
i don't think there was a single player who had some fun playing cat and mouse that i didn't piss off by ruining all his effort.

thats about all thermal optics do. they create a totally different game for the users of thermals compared to Infantry or non thermal vehicle users. Without thermals you try to make out Infantry players and have to pay attention if you don't want them to slip trough. there is alot of tension and your success is dependent on the combination of your awerness skills, your positional skills and your aiming skills.
With Thermals all that matters is positioning and aim. it cuts down an entire area of skill. and it's not even like Nanoweave that allows you to be abit bad and still succed, it is 100% performance. Thermal range is 250m. Thats pretty much Infantry render range. Every single target that would have been in danger of beeing brought against the awerness skill of the vehicle user is 100% of the time discovered.
Thermal is not an optic like Zoom (higher zoom allows higher precision at range because you can easier hit the point where you need to aim) which compensates for a lack of skill in a slight manner. it completly takes place of an entire skill far outperforming any person that would ever use his skill.

Thermalscopes are the real crutches of the game. HA shields compensate for 60% situational awerness and aim and Medkits compensate a lack of teamplay. but they all still require a minimum of skill from the user to get any benefit from. Thermal doesn't. Thermal is more of an 'i win' button than the Vanguard shield.

You can even see vanu wearing default camo when using thermal.

Possibly the outlines of infantry should not be so clear at nearer the range limit.

It might be interesting to have a deployable flare thing that gives off a huge image on thermal and night vision. Personally I would be happier if they removed smoke grenades and replaced them completely with anti night vision grenades.

Your 70 kill streak will become 700 if thermal is removed

What would happen?
You'd get a lot of people asking for it to come back.


Personally, i like it because it is easy mode. I dont have enough time to just hover around in my ESF over the zerg to find those tiny moving ants. I'd be dead by the time i find one of those people

Look at your second (unthermaled picture) you cant see any infantry peasants

As a 'Vehicle User' I would have to say no to this idea for the reason that thermal is a good defensive measure for ground vehicles, allowing them to attempt to protect themselves from infantry who are a legitimate threat to vehicles. C4, Tank mines, Rocket Launchers, and Max's. Considering the resource costs of the vehicles and the fact that SOE had to INCREASE MBT health removing thermal from vehicles is a bad idea.

weapons on vehicles have been nerfed in various ways to be less OP against infantry. Not to mention issues like render range, and I dare not mention rocketpods, and the prowler HE.

Instead I will just mention a few of what has been done.

HE cannons: had damage, rate of fire, and splash radius reduced.

Night Vision: at one point was able to work like IRNV scope's for vehicles and it was of course cheap and had greater visual range than Thermal. It does not show heat on infantry anymore, or anything else for that matter.

Thermal: Very short ranged, costs 200 certs. It used to have much greater visual range, and sniper cloaking was NOT able hide from it.

HE was nerfed so hard that I've been using AP round for AI purpose for a time.

Texture hacks and anti-vehicle weapons that can farm infantry have always been a part of Planetside2.

I wouldn't hold your breath for that to change anytime soon. Just ain't gonna happen.

I agree, and think a big part of the change in base design philosophy is due to how good vehicles are at spamming bases and putting a halt to meaningful combat. The solution as it stands now? Design bases that don't let vehicles participate in a meaningful way. Esamir is the worst offender in this category, as you look at bases like the octagon, or several others designed in a similar way.

I believe that part of this problem stems from how easy it is for vehicles to farm infantry. And part of that comes from the fact that you can have every single infantry light up like a christmas tree within 250m. Maybe without thermals, there wouldn't be a need to take such drastic steps in base design.

I missed the part where I indicated that I didn't want to have a discussion about this! Come on bro, I may have an opinion on this subject, but I am here to ask the question, make a suggestion, and see where it goes. And to be honest, the responses so far have been very... interesting. I'd genuinely like to hear what you think in more detail.

It's not cheese. It's how the vehicles are designed, and I don't think anyone should call it cheese when it's a superior option to other optics.

And yes, I grabbed those images from part of my next video, as I approach the tower. It's not the perfect side by side representation, I wish I had a better example. But truth be told, I think the first screen showing every single soldier in that tower illustrates my point well enough. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered pulling the screen from before I flicked on the thermals.

I will take that as a complement But I will disagree with you that I do not have the ability to make a reasoned argument about non-infiltrator aspects of the game. I spend more time using other classes, vehicles and weapons than people realize. And I've logged enough time playing this game that even things I don't use often probably exceed the experience of 90% of average PS2 users. As an example, I auraxium'd the AP prowler cannon before almost every dedicated tanker in BWC (though a few of them had me well beat with HE/Heat).

You're putting the cart before the horse here.
Base design allows infantry to be farmed by tanks. Thermal vision makes it easier to farm infantry.
However, thermal vision by itself does not allow farming. For example, it is harder to farm infantry with tanks on Wallamir because of base design, regardless of whether or not they have thermal.