A common G2A complaint which irks me greatly

As an AA aficionado, all you need to do is target me from three hundred meters or more away and you're golden. Though I would like to see a an aircraft start spouting obscenities from some loudspeakers as it spirals out of control @.,@

People say this because it's mostly true. They are not useless because they work well against pilots who over-extend. But they are easily avoided and even easier to counter (push button for several seconds of immunity.. plenty of time to finish a run and egress). I don't even bother with flares on my mossie anymore. They're also infuriating to use, but only slightly less so than doing nothing about the aircraft attacking the area.

It's definitely not much different.

80% of the problem are infantry-only players expecting to meet with success outdoors, and failing to realize the outdoors is the domain of vehicles and infantry are just fodder.

The remaining part of the problem are genuine balance issues (like how well libs do against their actual counter, ESFs).

G2A lock-ons are just in a weird spot where they act as a time limit on enemy air presence but since they cost you nothing they really aren't (and can't be/shouldn't be) a counter to air. And it's weird because their description can't really communicate this nuance, so new players will pick it up and expect to do well and be completely destroyed.

uh sure stay here instead and just argue over what's OP instead of actually see what the link is about, that's much better then educating yourself just a little bit about gaming

If tanks could move at 4 times their current speed and had turbo as default, it would be no different.

However currently they don't.

You're right. this game needs to be more realistic and have tons of OHK man-portable launchers.

THEN this game would be fun! YAH! InfantrySide 2 W00T W00T!

If you dont see the difference between shooting at tankers and shooting at ESFs its becuase you dont do it. Tankers cant shoot while moving over bumpy terrain so they have a tendency to stay in one place to shoot from. If that place is in sight of your lock on the lock is aquired and the shot is successful before they can run off because they were advised of your lock.
You in a plane however come rushing in and the lock takes forever and a day to aquire. Most pilots learn to deal with lock ons and fly low coming in, so by the time I see you and start a lock it takes enough time to complete that you have made it to where I am or the Spawn room of the A point room and dumped your rocket pods and the then afterburn out of there. The moment you change direction the lock is gone and I have to turn to try to re aquire a lock on your tail which is fruitless as you will fly off low and trees or mountains or valleys will disrupt it. If on the odd chance you did get cuaght taking too long you pop flares and by the time I can reaquire a lock is over your gone. So....screw planes as the only real deterrent is dual burster Maxs which have no lock on timer agaisnt experienced pilots. The problem there is that if a Max is out in the open a few planes rocket poddding him and hes dead. He has no mobility like the plane. He is easily killed by tankers and LIBs who are usually ALSO shooting at him..
Planes should not be allowed to hover and a 50 KM/HR speed should be minimum, they aren't helicopters. They're jets who bug out at high speed, which helicopters cant do. Libs should have to keep moving. No plane should have radar that tells them where the ground troops are. Or...if you wnat intelligence then every base would have it, too right where I can tell form the mini map where the planes are comming from for a mile away instead of getting informed ONLY when you are on top of me and tell me where all the enemy is at any given time,cause I am at a base and bases have radar and intelligence. No plane should be able to self heal and should have to fly off to ENGI heal. And...Libs should not get flares cause ....THEY ARE SO RESISTANT TO DAMAGE ANYWAY. Libs should only get standard damage resistance and should not be allowed to cert into higher damage resistance. In large battles the higher damage resistance wont help them, but in smaller fights it makes a huge difference as a single lib can lock down a base. Since you have no-deploy Sundy zones, how about a no deploy air zone as only a certain number of planes would be allowed over the bases air space at a time, your guns wouldn't work if viollated.

Skyguards are pretty fun actually, as long as air keeps coming, it feels good to know that the screen of whoever you're shooting at is violently shaking, and they are likely panicking.

Of course, I wouldn't shoot at a lib unless it's vulnerable/trying to nail someone else, because otherwise, I will attract it onto myself. If it's well distracted, your chances of killing it go up by a lot, and it won't be able to switch targets quickly enough to deal with you.

Also, you're forgetting option 3, Pulling air.

However much the complaint gets repeated doesn't make it any less true.

Since someone had the bright idea to revert G2A missile flight mechanic improvements back to square one, at least half ESF I see don't even need to bother with flares and/or stealth to make devastating strafing runs on my team repeatedly without dying to concentrated lock-on fire for ten-twenty minutes in a row. Lock-on time is just way too long and missiles are prone to burrowing into earth way too often.

Liberators aren't quite as nimble as that, but bug**** huge effective hp + the ability to rapidly repair the damage dealt while in mid-air without even slowing down makes scoring a kill with lock-on a very remote possibility. Usually you just chase it away for maybe thirty seconds before it tries to poop on your parade again.

And if one of you chucklehygbys mutter one word about flak, I'd suggest you to shut your mouth. Those "specialised weapons" require 2:1/3:1 numerical advantage on each target to actually kill anything flying with any kind of guarantee. And those folks that are tied up on AA duty become useless against armor/infantry pushes for the duration too.

You misunderstand my meaning. I do NOT want to be killing everything in one hit. I didn't say we need uniform or strict realism. I have never said that in any of my posts in any of the threads that I've posted in. I also don't want my preferred class or vehicle to be more powerful just because I want it to be.

My suggestions are based on experience. I"ve played a lot of games. Casual, hardcore, sim, arcade. I know what makes gameplay gratifying and I generally have a pretty good idea as to why.

For example, why is DayZ so engaging? All you do is run for hours and then die almost instantly to some random bandit or bean warrior. What's the fun there? The fun is in the tension of your survival. Knowing that you can be killed at any moment but try your best to survive. How long you survive and indeed how you survive is what makes the game so gratifying.

Dark Souls is another example. What makes Dark Souls so fun when the advertisements guarantee that you're going to die a thousand different ways? Struggling against adversity is a powerful motivator in video games. That's why these games are so popular right now. That's why WoW started losing subscribers and that's why CoD is finally starting to see a decline(however slight) in sales.

What I want isn't to be able to kill or be killed instantaneously. I just want things to make sense for the game-world. Right now we've got tracked vehicles that take extreme amounts of damage from plastic explosives which would actually do nothing remarkable to the vehicle itself(but would definitely kill the crew), aircraft that somehow manage to carry ten loads of rockets in eight or sixteen tubes and anti-vehicle weapons that are worse at damaging vehicles than a tool that was actually designed to take out structures. It's bizarre, really.

Oh, I see the problem.

Let me assist you.

http://www.arma3.com/

http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/107410/

You'll be much happier.

Your welcome.

You're a very counter-productive individual. I find you amusing. Thank you for this amusement.

But no, I already play ArmA. Planetside 2 is a different game in a different world. I appreciate it for what it is, but want it to be a better game. I want Planetside to have as many players as ArmA...it'd be nice if we could get even more players than ArmA has. But that's not going to happen unless we get improved game mechanics...which is what the gameplay discussion and suggestion forums are all about.

...

EXACTLY.

It's an entirely different game.

Infantry already chew through tanks like a hot knife through butter... and you want to make tanks WEAKER?!? (seriously, you shoulda seen the assault we did with about 20+ HA's running down a hill road firing rockets as we sprinted from cover to cover at the tanks trying to come up the road... it was hilarious, and awe inspiring)

We do that and we'll also need to bring back old splash values from launch and then buff them.

The end result will everyone has a life expectancy of precisely .002 seconds.

This game has far too many players, with faaar to many sources of damage to lower it's TTK on pretty much anything. The only thing even arguably too tough right now is the Liberator... and really the only reason that has any merit is it's ability to fight ESF's (Just make it drop faster when rolling 90° or more).

EDIT: Oh, and I'm counter-productive how exactly? Snarky maybe....

This is a false assumption. I would in-fact prefer it if tanks were more powerful and infantry were more vulnerable out in the open(tanks too in that regard). But that is a topic for another discussion.

The fact of the matter is that ArmA and Planetside are the same at their core. Both are large-scale combined operations war games with thousands of bodies running around buying weapons and vehicles to capture cities, outposts and what-not for the glory of their own faction. It just so happens that the way Bohemia Interactive handles this core design concept pulls in far more players than SOE manages to do with Planetside 2.

Problem that I as a groundpounder have with ESF's are multiple.

Flares, my number one per grief.
They provide some magical super-happy ****** immunity. That's NOT how flares should work! All they should do, and I mean ALL they should do is shoo away rockets already locked on and reset timers on currently processing locks. That's it.
No way should you be granted some idiotic 10 second immunity. If anything I'd love to see the Striker being the only lock-on weapon to not give a crap about flares or smokes.

Not only that, but it takes AGES to get a lock, and if you manage to live long enough to actually fire, the mechanic behind rockets is ********, half my locks just fly into the ground. Why can't they fly forward five meters then head straight up for a while before tracking? Or possibly allow the shooter to get the lock, then aim away from the target to fire the rocket in a direction of choosing where it flies like 20m in a line before going for the target.

Now as for my personal suggestions:
Pilots should not get a lock on warning unless the lock-on rocket has been fired. Meaning the guy might be sitting there, holding a lock on you for an hour and you wouldn't know about it before he pulls the trigger.

In any case, I hate ESF's. I admit I can't fly very well (I do think of myself as a pretty spankin' Lib pilot) but being on the ground it's just frustrating having to fight any ESF's with "dedicated AA" weapons. I honestly stopped using my Grounder a couple months back since actually doing damage was easier with my LMG and if my "Shots to kill" ratio seems to be quite a bite higher with the standard ML-7.

No... no, they aren't. Hardly at all even.

Outside of the fact they're both FPS of course, and combined arms.

Planetside 2 is FAR more like Battlefield than it is ArmA.

Planetside 2 (and Battlefield) is an ARCADE shooter. ArmA is a SIM shooter. That makes for HUUUUUGE differences in playstyle.

Battlefield is an arcade shooter and has many many times more players than ArmA does... so going by the logic of affecting PS2's playerbase, to go the sim route would actually REDUCE player count (I have little doubt that it would).

ArmA has the players it does because it's the only sim game worth any merit and so it has basically every single FPS sim fan playing it.

Oh, and there's no way ArmA can handle thousands of bodies in 1 server.... lol. Most peoples machines choke with 64 players

Obviously

Unfortunately for us, Planetside 2 has already been developed in the direction of Battlefield. It's not working for us. People want more depth to the gameplay. I never said Planetside needs to stray into the Sim world of gaming, just that we need to lean in that direction, rather than the direction we're leaning currently.

For example, World of Tanks has extremely complex vehicle mechanics. That game has over seventy MILLION accounts worldwide and tens of thousands of players every day. Arcade game with the spirit of a simulator...that is what SOE needs to aspire to emulate with Planetside 2.

Actually, it can. Not thousands of players, just bodies. The largest server I've seen for ArmA 2(not even 3) had over a hundred players at peak time. Each player can hire a squadron of about ten(or up to twenty, depending on mission type) AI. Every town also has...anywhere from twenty to sixty infantry plus a handful of vehicles protecting them in the name of a neutral faction(also depending on mission parameters). On top of all of that, EVERY structure, tree, wall segment, fence is destructible. Well, not all of them, just most of them. Not to mention extremely advanced lighting mechanics and the ballistics themselves. All of this runs off a single computer hosting the server application which doesn't even properly utilize multiple CPU cores.

So yes, ArmA2(again, not even the latest) can definitely handle thousands of bodies running around, shooting things, blowing things up in the dark with advanced lighting effects, foliage, THOUSANDS of trees(that can each also get destroyed and fall over) with both infantry and vehicles...vehicles that have advanced hitboxes. All on one computer hosting the server. It an even be a listen server...though you'd probably get some crazy framerate issues if you did that.

I don't know what sort of business they've got running each continent for each server for Planetside 2, but they could easily split that load between clusters of machines per server...EVE Online is run by...well, six years ago it was 150+ computers, now it's probably more than that.

Everything you're stating is opinion.

You THINK Planetside 2 would be better leaning in that direction.

I vehemently disagree.

These are our opinions.

Oh, and WoT... simulator? lawl. Game is easily as arcady as PS2... just with more P2W.

BTW: PS2 has tens of thousands log in daily with millions of accounts created too.

I get it, you like ArmA. So... play that.