The Vicious Cycle of Farming

Why bother? Go ahead, tell your friends and family how you run people over in a video game plane. I'm sure everyone will be so impressed.

*puts down ammo pack and farms the farmers being farmed*

I could give 2 hoots about the map without the tools to defend population imbalances: PS1 AMS, PS1 mines, PS1 spitfires, PS1 motion detectors.

I have to bring along a squad of AA or "team up with a pro air outfit" just to not get roflfarmed by random Liberators? I have to convince a bunch of people to babysit me and move around as a small zerg? Totally fair.

You seem like the kind of person who thinks anything is balanced as long as there is some way to counter it, regardless of the specifics. It doesn't matter how unbalanced the situation is, it doesn't matter how much you have to sacrifice, it doesn't matter what you have to do.

The point of the game is to have fun. I have fun fighting almost everything in this game, whether I'm in a vehicle or whether I'm slugging it out as infantry. The only things I have fighting are ones that completely ruin my fun by being incredibly frustrating and unrewarding to counter. Prime example: Liberator.

this cycle could be ended IF THEY REMOVE TANK HE ROUNDS.


Also balancing the liberator properly.

A farmer: Infantry camping door

Farming the farmer: Shooting the infantry that's camping your door.

Farming the farmers that are getting farmed: Putting down an ammo pack inside the spawn room

Farming the farmer who's farming the farmer: The guy who waits patiently for the base to flip to get the engineer putting down the ammo pack inside the spawn room.

You seem like the kind of person who still has the single player mindset. Your happily sitting in your tank, farming infantry and maybe other tanks, and then a Lib comes along and wrecks you. You rage at being killed in a couple of seconds instead of asking yourself why. The reason is, that PS2 is a teamwork based game. The 2-3 people working together in a Lib should easily be able to take down you working independently. For one, its a bomber. WW2 tank drivers knew the risk of being killed by bombers, that's why they covered everything with AA. How do you counter this? Teamwork.
Sadly, you clearly cannot appreciate the whole philosophy of Planetside as you're too busy comparing the millionths place on your KD to your buddies. The whole point it pulling together many different kinds of players and getting them to work together to reach a common goal. You may not get much material gain, but to me, the whole reward is the feeling of satisfaction that you teamed up with others and became more than the sum of your parts, capping or defending a base.

Edit: Wow that way pretty rude, but its all from the heart. I love the idea of the game and don't want it to turn into COD.

While teamwork is certainly a factor in this game, we can't lose sight of the fact that the players are the content. Making the game too frustrating for lone wolf players will not help sustain the game's population in the long run. If enough lone wolfs are driven off, the outfits will start leaving as well when they discover it's hard to find a good fight. The game is running out of servers to merge.

There was a very wise man who lived around 2000 years ago who said it best.

He who has never farmed may farm the first farm.

I'm a lone wolf and still I work a lot with my faction, I just dislike enter in platoons/outfits because none until today played like I expected: as an elite group of soldiers, with real strategies and tactics. They never do this sort of things, just "we need X; we need Y; etc, etc", but most of the time the players talk a lot of pointless conversation for the game, like they have nobody else to.

But since the majority of lone wolves doesn't play like me, the game should have clear directions, like Super Mario World have. But Planetside2 "act" as a MMORPG with grind, instead of a Civilization + AoE + FPS. You haven't clear objectives, in fact you can do nothing for the faction and still play the game normally, gain exp, certs, and run for k/d. This part of the game upset me a lot, and I think that's the reason of playerbase decrease: PS2 is just another FPS, like we have a lot of MMORPGs and none can survive for so long because don't bring nothing new for the market. PS2 have this opportunity, but waste.

[ocasionally I have to say: sorry for my errors, I'm still improving my english]

Tax incentives, Planetside Edition.

Look man, I'm telling you. If we give triple EXP incentives for Terrans to go and pave their roads on Indar, we'll have the most attractive and effective roads on Auraxis, and they'll get they're asphalt farming out of the way! Everybody wins!

No, but seriously. Incentives for doing things is a genius idea, and also incentives for not doing things, like farming. Vehicles should definitely get less EXP for farming infantry. When you kill another dude just as an infantry, it's an equal, rewarding experience. The guy with multiple-launch rocket (autokilling) systems and rapid-firing explosive mobile sh*tstorms on his flying death machine of murder should not get the same reward for killing measly ground peasants.

2 people are not a team. By your definition it should take 3 or 4 people in vehicles to kill a tank.

That's what's missing, give LA the ability to teleport up to a lib and C4 it. Then it will be balanced with tank.

Not really trying to troll here, but this weird idea of 2 people being able to shift the tide of a 300 person battle is not only flawed, but broken.

Your example is not really true. For one, 2 tanks to kill a tank? As I have said before, though maybe not on this thread, Libs can't do much unless there's under 6 armor units. If you watched any Lib video on YouTube, you would see them taking out lone tanks and sunderers. World War 2 tanks never pushed without AA, because they knew that they would be bombed if they didn't.

I pull my skyguard fairly frequently. It's the most boring and least rewarding aspect of this game. For about 5 minutes it's fun and exciting as you chase off aircraft and maybe... just maybe... score a kill. You'll get a few assists which are nice. The new ribbons are a great move in the right direction. However the aircraft quickly catch on and move out to a fight where there isn't any AA and repeat.

Meanwhile I'm rolling around in my skyguard looking for some action. I don't know when they actually leave for good because they constantly leave, repair, and come back. Then one time they don't come back.... I wait 5 minutes... maybe one comes back and I scare him off... another 5 minutes and nothing... 10 minutes... ok I guess they are gone now. So I just wasted 15 to 30 minutes getting a few assists and maybe a kill which were all in the first 5 or 10 minutes and the remainder of the time I drove around wondering I'll see any more action.

That's assuming some other vehicle doesn't find me and smoke me. A lot of times another vehicle geared for AV (heck even most AI load outs are a leathal threat to my skyguard!) wrecks me.

Then there are the really good pilots who work together and kill my skyguard faster than I can even get any of them to half health.

Skyguard is nothing more than a deterant for moderate to low skilled pilots. It's a thankless, low reward, boring role.

only reason people get shot from the spawn room is because they're standing right there, they want to get shot.

All vehicles should explode thirty seconds after they're pulled.

So, you're infantry trying to resecure a base. It's a low pop time of day and there are only a few of you - which is fine because there are only a few attackers too and it should be a good enjoyable fight - except for that bleep-bleep lib over the spawns farming the kills. There is nothing you can do, absolutely nothing and it's no good saying team-up because it's low pop and there's only 1.5 mins on the hack.

Adjusting xp gain won't make any difference whatsoever.

In fact I doubt the lib changes will make any difference either.

Libs can be killed. Got three one day right in a row, just bad pilots i dunno, seemed to know what they were doing though,
what you need are a few other guys running around doing whatever,
and a few good cover points, and get the hell away from the spawn room, very important.
watch the mini map, when they turn, RL them, move to next cover, repeat.
If you die, re-spawn and start over. At the very least they will leave for awhile to repair if they are smart.
very satisfying if you can make it work.

[PSA] OP's stupidity and failure to understand what PSA is.

I am going to chime in here and say that the Infantry, Ground, Air balance in Planetside 2 is actually in a really good place.

This comes from a player who prefers infantry 80% of the time, but divides that remaining 20% between flying and tanking. So I see all sides of the equation frequently enough; and it really comes down to two things -

Skill and Numbers.

The way the balance works right now is that the unskilled in anything (MAX to Liberator) are not a threat and can be dispatched at leisure, the moderately skilled in anything have to be prioritized based on the situation, and the extremely skilled have to be prioritized above all else.

Playing all sides I know that it is a skill in and of itself just to keep the Liberator airborne. As soon as those hoverjets kick on you are instantly Public Enemy #1 to everyone on the ground - to the point that if you are at the edge of render and unspotted, friendlies will shoot at you until they get a loud enough "stop!" buzzer to know you are friendly. Without friendly air support you are going to be preyed on by the first fighter to come along.

I know when I am in my ESF, I will go after a lib before anything on the ground. Its easier and less risky. I know exactly where the death is going to come out of on that lib, and I can keep my plane out of the kill zones. Sure I screw up or get out flown by the lib time to time, but I still go for that juicy pinata that is free certs half the time.

Then there is the mater of the skill of choosing your fights. Flying a fully crewed Lib to a 1-12 battle will probably net you some kills with minimal resistance, but save for a select few, people will find that dull quickly; and the risk will rapidly become disproportional to reward because again. Public enemy #1. You now have 1-12 people who just got kicked out of a base, and they are all pissed off at YOU.

This takes us to numbers.

Whoever has more of anything will win in Planetside 2. This is just how wars of attrition work. If they bring 20 fighters and we bring 10, unless the stars align just right, the 20 is going to win.

Most people start to have a problem when 5 Liberators show up and suppress 24 infantry. Fact is folks, this is what vehicles role in combined arms is. They are a force multiplier. However, as in life it is in Planetside, the vehicles themselves can't take or hold ground... and every day the bases get better and better designed so that the defender has a way to get from the spawn to the point minimally exposed to vehicles.

Not every base is like this, and it is a slow transition, but it is happening. It doesn't matter if there are 50 Prowlers locked down in a circle around the spawn if there isn't atleast 1 infantryman with them to get to the point, and if this is 48+ vs 48+, that 1 infantryman is going to have to deal with atleast 48 very pissed off infantrymen.

The main problem with the game currently, is'nt so much the vehicles themselves or how they are being used, it's what they are not being used for. A lot of mechanics that were around have been stripped out, or simply were never really put in to begin with.
As a gal pilot I can give an easy example of this. From beta on, gal's have been told to be a transport vessel. I like that, i like being able to move squads here and there, i like co-ordinating within platoons, flying in formation with other gals and doing precision drops. I get crap all for points, but the fact that i'm working as part of a team, that makes it worth it, or at least, it did. With re deploy, you can jump from one side of the map to the other instantly. Then you have squad drop, beacon drop, instant action, hell you can redeploy from one continent to another from anywhere at any time. So what exactly is my role, other than to do what I shouldn't do, be a gunship. The new spawn system in gals changed nothing. People spawn in once, see their favorite gun is taken, then don't spawn back. why bother when you simply jump to any point any time.?
Things like this exist for each vehicle, be it tanks, esfs and yes even libs. By opening the game up, you essentially cripple what made it fun in the first place. the diversity. By making it easier to find a fight, you also make it easier to farm those fights, and leave fun jobs or crucial tactics out in the cold.