The writing is on the wall : LA and Infil are not used by High BRs in Squad OPS compared to Heavy

I came across a reddit thread giving average class playtimes for some outfits on the Briggs server and the Server averages. Some very interesting results.

This script allows determining average class playtimes for your outfits.

I haven't included the names of the outfits because it will just promote size-comparing-contest offtopics and distract. Also, the forces that create these statistical similarities aren't specific to any one outfit or server.


These are all 48+ outfits with an average BR of 49+(indicating mainly reasonably experienced players).
Again, these aren't my stats or script. Source: this thread.

In the title by squad ops I really mean playing Planetside 2 instead of Farmside 2/CertGrindSide 2.


| Outfit # | Light Assault | Infiltrator | Heavy Assault | Average BR | Members |
|1-----------|9%------------- |9%----------|21%---------------|92---------------|76-----------|
|2-----------|14%------------|8%----------|19%---------------|70---------------|121----------|
|3-----------|13%------------|11%--------|22%----------------|49--------------|301----------|
|4-----------|12%------------|11%--------|23%----------------|51--------------|424----------|

Server average: LA:15%, Infil: 16%, Heavy 25%. Source: here.

Outlier

• I left out an outfit with 28% LA,13% infil and 21% Heavy, and an average BR of 74.

Complete stats There is clearly a systematic cultural difference here and the outfit is *deliberately* staying away from classes with a more beneficially distorted skill deal.

(e.g. they have the lowest max usage from that thread, and the lowest engineer usage by far (farm the least in vehicles).

So for the purposes of this discussion I'm excluding it.

People vote with their feet. Higby talked on reachcast about how gamers always try to find the path of least skill , and that even on exercise machine games they try to exploit it(IIRC!).


The server class averages show a strong Heavy bias, and the exaggeration of the trend of fewer LAs/Infiltrators in outfits as average BR increases is pretty damning.

The vast majority of reasonably experienced outfits just spew maxes and heavies with support in anything resembling serious OPS. For an encore they might resort to the safety first option of a medic. (There are a few well known outfits who are intentionally different like one of the outfits in the comm clash final, but they are the exception).

A serverwide class playtime breakdown for different intervals of BR/total playtime/SPM would be interesting, as it would give the average trend as players gain experience.

Important points:

• These are total playtimes. The true deviation from server average is more pronounced as players gain experience because earlier stats will lean towards the server average.
  • (The server average is biased towards newbie players who try different classes a before realising the skill/reward distorsions in Max/Heavy (and also vehicles). It's interesting that even the server average has high Heavy use, showing the advantage of more hitpoints is very obvious even to new players.)
• A lot of Infiltrator usage is skewed because sniping is an easy way for non-infiltrators to pad KDR from long range without being useful in squad ops (even vehicle players take the time to snipe). As it stands even zergfits will stop new players from sniping during anything resembling objective based gameplay.I would estimate the non-sniping playtime to be 2-3%.
• Players may play more LA outside squad OPS because jetpacking is fun and farms provide easy kills - because of newbies and everyone running around randomly instead or communicating and cooperating.
• Problems with maxes and skill can't really be shown by these stats. Max usage is around 6% and gated by resource timer and not being as fun to use because of mobility. Dedicating entire battlefield presence as engie to repair maxes needs to be considered too.
• This doesn't cover anything like every 48+/50+ average BR outfit on Briggs server, but it's enough to see the trend.

As was commented once, the Heavy/Max special ability is just more hitpoints- they also do the same job for a BR1 as a BR100 leaving only activation to skill.
In contrast, the special ability of LA and Infiltrator is mobility - which must be applied with skill to be effective.

Without the special ability, all classes have ~1000 base hitpoints and guns that do 1500-2000 DPS depending on their intended range. Max AI guns add up to a regular full-auto/shotgun in DPS, leaving only the hitpoints to stand out as the special ability.


There is a fundamental issue here with class design.


Each class/vehicle cert path should be equally effective, and rewarding in terms of certs.

• Certing a class is a huge time investment. Planetside 2 playtimes are huge in comparison to even the largest single player games (massive RPGs can take 100 hours or 4 days, while 50+ days is a common playtime for BR 100s or experienced leaders)

What can be done about it?
That's to be discussed, I can provide some categories:

• Extending classes
  • Infiltrator:
    • As is constantly said the infiltrator needs systems to be useful around.
    • Sniping should be ignored in future design mostly (even zergfits stop new players from playing sniper in squad OPS). It's ok to have it as an aside, but it doesn't deserve dev time until it becomes useful.
  • Light Assault
    • Light assault needs some 'big' ability that allows them to be *essential* during capping and defending bases. This can be related to base systems or other deployables etc.
    • Currently, other than the jetpack, unique LA abilities are pretty much c4-ing stuff from air.

Revamping classes to have a similar effectiveness with regards to skill

• Heavy assault: SOE are already working on a shield delay to remove the instant win element. However the special ability once active will still be hitpoints.
• Max:Max gameplay may as well be done by a bot script because the 'ability' is just having more hitpoints for AI max while not being able to move much.
  • (Alright, charge and NC shield require some decisions to use, ZOE and TR lockdown require a decision to not use. What I really mean is that relative to other classes there's less thought involved in doing as well on average when using a max - although specialist max players do consider things).
  • The class could be revamped from the ground up, while still being a mechanical+human unit.
  • Gameplay can revolve around something far more interesting than a tank unit, requiring use of an ability.

Equalised cert incentives

• I'm not suggesting a decrease for higher SPM (vehicle/max/heavy) users but SPM across LA/Infiltrator should conform to standard skill/cert relationships.
• A point to consider here is the ability of the target to fight back depending on loadout

LA and Inf are more specialized. I would make sense for them to be played less.

They are still important and useful though. There are only so many heavies you can jam into a door way before you start shooting each other.

You only need one Infiltrator for the darts. Light Assaults are situational, but often play a very large role in winning certain battles.

You always need Medics and HAs, you need multiple Engineers if you're bringing MAXes.

Protip: If you only have 5 data points you can't choose to leave one of them out as an "outlier" because it doesn't support your position.

Specialised and situational are different ways of saying they are underpowered compared to Heavy in the special ability in most situations.

Remember that:

I gave full stats, in case. Happily, I also considered the stats against the position that players reduce LA/Infil uwith experience because they are underpowered - and observed that outfits low use of vehicle farming class and max which suggested they were intentionally avoiding those classes.

As for the position that players on average use Heavy generally because of the skill/reward deal we have the entire server pop data which shows 25% usage, so no statistical analysis is required.

I didn't need that entire wall of text for you to tell me they're more situational and don't stack as well in groups as other classes. There's no reason to have more than 1 infiltrator per squad because that one infiltrator can handle covering the entire base in darts as long as there's an ammo pack. However, those sensor darts are more powerful than 10 LMGs, knowing where your enemy comes from is the most important thing in the game.

And the light assault has pretty much always been the lone wolf class. However, squad leaders frequently play light assault in order to put squad beacons in better locations. A well placed beacon can win an entire battle. The biggest reason that light assaults aren't used more often in squads is because they can't be reached by medics if they are playing the class correctly.

HA is best all around anti-infantry class, because game is all about damage resist. While LA is best anti-tank class.

I hate being that one guy to take the roof. Because its either swarming with LA or I am the only one up there.

5 outfits... such a big sample, lol, and on top of it you exclude one for being an "outlier", top tier statistical analysis here.

Btw, class breakdown isn't supposed to be 20/20/20/20/20, Heavy Assaults are supposed to be the "standard" class, with the other fulfilling either support roles or more specialized ones.

LAs and Infils are like Spies and Snipers in TF2: you don't want a lot of them. You only really need one or two infils for recon devices and hacking. You only need a couple of LA to cover the high ground. You only need a few engies to supply ammo and repairs. You do however need a good deal of medics and a even greater number of Heavies.

The thing with team based games is not every class is equal in a straight up fight nor should they be. Then there is the fact the the composition for a team does not scale upward equally. A single ammo pack can provide ammo everyone around it, more people around it doesn't mean you need more engies to provide more of them.

what if they combine LA and infil into one class??

*GASP* MIND BLOWN

Iridar uses Light Assault. It's super effective!

Thankfully, my outfit is quite liberal in terms of class composition during ops, and I'm free to default to my beloved LA most of the time. Unless we're doing a MAX crash or dedicated AA/AV is required.
Since I started rolling with Broken Arrow Company, my sessional KD nearly doubled, though that's probably massively inflated by the number of revives I'm getting. Still, it's pretty satisfying to see 4-6 KDR regularly on the TAB screen, even if I'm cheating myself a little

I feel that I'm still very useful during ops, and I do my best to relay scouting information to command. I'm often first on point, and I hunt down spawn beacons and motions spotters as priority targets. Flanking enemies while they're engaged with Broken Arrow ground forces is also very easy and satisfying.

That said, I do believe that LAs need a team utility that's instrumental in organized play. Myself I like the idea of spawn beacons. This is, after all what we saw in the CGI trailer - heroic lonesome LA breaks through the front lines and places the spawn beacon for his allied forces to deploy to.

It is quite doable right now, but requires being a squad leader, and is only usable by squad members - kinda severe limitations. Solution is very simple - make spawn beacon LA-specific tool. Still only squad members should be able to deploy on it, but any LA in a squad is able to place a spawn beacon. One spawn beacon per LA can be deployed at a time. Squad members can choose any of the spawn beacons to drop on, but deploy cooldown is shared among all beacons.

There, no new mechanics, no massive amounts of work, no balancing issues. Just slight tweaks to existing systems.

Incoming heavy assault defense team in 3...2...1...

Where in the class descriptions does it say that? Like I pointed out , the colour of the certs are the same..and the time required to cert is tremedously long, many times that required to complete massive RPGs.

It's the special ability that makes the Heavy assault a heavy. Without the special ability all classes are almost the same with respect to AI.

Although the abilities of different classes need different envelopes of effectiveness, the need and effectiveness of each class should be the same overall (not to mention cert gain per level of skill).

In a balanced game of this type usage stats of top outfits should show equal standings without outfits deliberately shunning certain classes.

i.e. only the few situations where a side ability becomes useful when weighed up against HA (Infils), or the special ability comes into it's own against the HA special ability(LAs).

In reality LA and CQC Infil are quite useful, but require a lot of experience to stand up against HAs with moderate experience.

It would be nice, but sort of minor - and you can instantly drop in as another class once the beacon is up. Spawn beacon range nerf and galaxies being able to spawn aren't helping. I don't think it can on it's own make LA on equal footing in terms of use.

An elaborate nerf HA post.
Fact of the matter HA and Maxes are front line fighters. Engineer, Medic are support and should not be playing Rambo, while LA and Inf are more tactical support and extremely useful in the hands of a smart player. A squad beacon placed in a hard to get to but easy to defend is a very powerful benefit to a team. Sensor beacons are incredibility effective.

This is the problem with PS2 (Hint player base) The tools are there for people to use to make this game very tactical, but instead everyone wants to Rambo, lone wolf and zerg. Its Ironic everyone complaining about boredom, broken systems, OP,UP,homogenized class system while almost literally in the same post ask to nerf another class or vehicle, and unfortunately SOE keeps on listening to these people.

Oh well keep on playing Rambo Online and keep on whining as I find it humorous that such a basic system can be totally overlooked... Oh well!

Ignoring a tiny sample size (and that the OP just left out [ ] an outfit that didn't "agree" with his pre-conclusion [most definatley not a null-hypothersis here] ).


I'm actually pretty surprised HA was so low compared to LA, given as mentioned that LA are basically a much more specialised class (specialised isn't the same thing as underpowered though, imagine giving HAs jetpacks.... yep, exactly... ).

I also don't understand the %

For example:

13% = LA
11% = Infiltrator
22% = HA

54% playing MAX, Engi and Medic (18% each?) again why are these left out? Did these again not "agree" with the OPs pre-conclusions?

To be honest given the prevalence of "HAs are GOD!!!11111111111 NERF!!!!11111" threads recently I was expecting HAs to be running at ~50%.

Light Assaults don't fit in well with squads because by their nature they're up in places where Medics can't easily revive them.

Any high BR squad that doesn't take at least one Infil for a Motion Detector is maybe not as pro as they think they are though. Motion Detectors are crazy useful.

Light Assaults and Infils are just more solo orientated classes. Nothing wrong with those existing.

I have to agree that Infiltrator and even more so Light Assault have limited use in orgaised squad play.

Most squads i see will tend to roll with atleast one Infiltrator now-a-days though, this is purely for motion detection ofcourse.

If i lead i tend to ask for a standard squad comp of:

3 Medics
2 Engineers
1 Infiltrator
6 Heavy Assault

I will also keep the Infiltartor when the squad goes to a max crash setup. Asking HAs to take up 4 Max suits and two Engis.

Just going to point out that Infy sniping is probably the most harmful ability in the game right now. It encourages long range snipe/countersnipe engagements that literally pass right over the heads of 95% of the combatants. It creates bewildering death scenarios for even experienced players but particularly for newbies. It makes large stretches of terrain impassible for most infantry and randomly so. It encourages aimbotting.

It's a bad game within a game because it is so disruptive in the one area that every player will pass through at some point: feet on the ground.