Hello Devs, I've played ps2 since beta and probably spent as much time as anyone in game, currently 5 levels off my 3rd level 100 char on emerald. I have experienced all the iterations of rebalances and meta changes and have a shortlist from my perspective on how to "fix" ps2. Overall Balance The original vision of ps2 contained a litany of deadly vehicle weapons with mega splash and required a team effort to repel. Most weapons in this category have had their splash radius reduce splash damage reduced and in most cases direct damage increased. Infantry players, especially new ones, were turned off by getting continually farmed by HE spam so this was the response. I think this has been good overall but needs to be tuned back just a bit. The effectiveness of rocked pods, zephyr, duster, bulldog, and fury vs infantry is currently laughable and needs a slight touch in blast range and splash damage. I am not saying bring back the old dalton, just make HE a bit more realistic and not nerfed to the ground in response to complaining infantry who are unwilling to counter vehicle play. Aircraft are currently all too squishy and need to return to their pre-nerf health pools. Flack has gone from a deterrence weapon to a gank weapon and completely reduced the need for lock on missiles or proper air to air counters. The Valkerie For adding a new vehicle to the game the Valkyrie is missing anything that would make people excited about it at all. The valkerie has too low of a health pool, lacks the speed to effectively reduce damage, sacrifices its flares or autorep to be functional as a squad spawn, and offers no general spawning like a sunderer. I would suggest adding an over shield or afterburners, increasing the speed and health pool, make them available to spawn out of squad, and increasing the effectiveness of all of their front weapons. Also the design of the sides makes it very difficult to operate rocket launches out of the side without taking extreme risks and holding very still. Increase the cost to 400 and now you have a viable platform. Furthermore I would suggest a more accessible "launch all" function to allow the pilot to dump his entire crew with 1 click instead of having to go into the vehicle menu and being suck on a straight path. A transport request system would also make this vehicle more useful if a team of players could get picked up at the spawn of the previous lattice and dump players on or near point at the next enemy base with the pilot completing some xp reward. AP The recent buff to AP lightings/mbt was a good one but I feel the turret ranges need to be reduced on AP. Too often aircraft are hit by AP at what seems to be impossible straight up angles. Increased damage seems to be a fair trade off to decreased upward tilt. Maxes AV maxes of all 3 factions are too powerful right now. A rear facing battle bus can tank 2/3 AP sources with 2 engineers repping but as soon as an AV max shows up it folds like a wet paper bag. Maxes in general seem impervious to anything but direct hits and this makes them almost impossible to kill especially when in a high pop fight with some lag. NC maxes also have a disproportionate infantry advantage over the other 2 factions even at medium ranges. The 1 click is fine but it should be a head-shot and at closer range. Leadership and fire-teams There are 2 types of fights in ps2: Strategic and Infantry. Strategic fights are what gets you from point a to point b on attack. You deal with armor, air and sunderers blocking you from reaching a base to attack and set up for the infantry fight. Once you have vehicle dominance and can park your sunderers many bases require a strict infantry only effort to clear the point (eg. biolabs). It would be beneficial for the platoon leaders to designate roles and split his force by assigning squads to infanty or strategic modes. Strategic play would be more free form allowing players to pull and man vehicles on the ground and in air to their preference and appropriate to the resistance they face. A strategic squad would look just like normal squads do now. An infantry squad requires a much greater level of cohesion and shoulder to shoulder play. Once the platoon leader designates a squad to an infantry task the in game squad system could assist in grouping everyone together in to tactical fire-teams. Here is an example of what a full squad would look like: Left Side Fire-team 1. Squad leader / Fire-team Left leader 2. Point-man (max/heavy) 3. Supporting shooter (heavy) 4. Medic 5. Light assault (flash or smoke carrier for cqb breaches) 6. Engineer Right Side Fire-team 1. Fire-team Right leader 2. Point-man (max/heavy) 3. Support (heavy) 4. Engineer 5. Medic 6. Infiltrator This is just a simple outline of what these teams could look like with each team naturally hugging opposite sides to ensure crossfire. The in-game system would only need to designate fire-teams, fire-team leaders, and point-men. The Point-man would automatically switch when the existing point dies and automatically return when the point-man is picked up by medics. A system like this would help overcome the chaos of the game and give leaders a way to group their players up in a sensible way instead of streaming into battle piecemeal. It will also make it glaringly obvious when someone in your squad isn't where he is supposed to be like fighting elsewhere on the map. ***Please give some other class than light assault Flashes/smokes PLEASE! Everyone who plays counter-strike will thank you. Also fix the fact that smoke can be turned off in the settings. Mini map changes: One of my favorite parts of the early days of ps2 was the fact you could see where all your teammates were on the map at any fight. This would give you a sense of where you could somewhat safely traverse to get into the action without worrying too much. When the optimization cycle went through the mini-map became much more local and many times I see confused players hunkered down in safe areas because they can't see their allies in the real fight ahead. Optimization is good but I would really like to see my factions positions, at least on an "every once and a while" time frame.
It's the most useable thing with splash, it doesn't completely suck, but it along with just about every other weapon with splash is lacking severely.
Grenades are still good, Rocket splash is still good, the Bulldog exists, the Lasher is great if you have high ground, Light PPA still good, Rocket Pods still good, AP mines, Tank Mines, C4... Prowler HE is far from the best when it comes to splash damage. I'd much rather have a Lib/Gal mounted Bulldog over a 2 shot HE cannon with tiny splash radius mounted to a tank. Everyone runs AP anyway, because if you aren't part of a faceroll ghostcapping zerg, it's blindly dumb to not put AP on your tank.
If you're getting sniped by tanks in aircraft, and your right above them, then the tank has to be on a significant hill facing upward to get that angle. Tanks have a fairly low angle on their barrels already, especially the Magrider.
Lockdown HE Prowler is still very strong. Everything else is either AP, Viper, or Skyguard. Not much of a reason to use the others. (Lightning HEAT... why do you exist??) I will say that I think infantry is trending towards overpowered right now. Anecdotally I do pull tanks, muck about for several minutes trying to find something outside to shoot at, and be forced into going inside where I'll just go on back to back to back 10+ kill streaks as a medic or something. Now, I can do that as a ESF too, but tanks are hard for me to maintain KPH with.
Good post paco and good ideas. Personally I don't fly much, so I can't really comment on how effective Flak and AA missiles are, however with my ground pounding perspective it seems ok - enough to deter but unless the aircraft is daft it shouldn't get wrecked unless there is a zerg - which there is often enough. The core problem is that aircraft are focused on farming ground targets, if we could properly split the A2A and A2G aircraft then we would have an easier time, but I know that I focus on aircraft as every one is a threat to ground forces. The only exception to the above is the Valk, and I agree with all your points. Tanks I think are in a good place, perhaps a slight buff to HE is warranted, however I am not convinced it is needed. Projectile speed is OK - there are simply a lot of very skilled tankers out there that know their guns and can hit even fast moving aircraft. It's much easier with the AP Van/Lightning and the locked down Prowler with their higher velocity than the Mag, but it is certainly doable. Fire teams is something that I really want, and hope that we get them within the next few months as they were on the roadmap a while back.
I disagree, normal nades wound more than they kill. AV nades are interesting but meh. Stickies are hilarious but can be finicky at times. Rocket splash is almost nothing outside of maybe decimator. Bulldog was neutered. Lasher is fine if your enemies are clumped up, not looking at you, don't have armor, are distracted, are stationary or close, outside of that and it having the longest TTK in the game sure i guess. Light PPA requires you to linger in an area at max render distance, any ESF you run across has a massive advantage over you. Lolpods sure. Mines aren't for splash and C4 splash was nerfed a long time ago.
BUMP*** I'm mostly talking about prowler/vangaurds/ap lightnings and the issue is that ap's speed was drastically increased in a recent patch which greatly affects their range and ability to hit aircraft in almost any situation. I've been killed at what seems like a 70 degree angle straight up and that's not right for a main cannon on relatively flat ground.
If you reduce the ability of tanks to shoot aircraft with AP you'll bring down a fury from tankers like you've never seen, especially from Magrider drivers. The OP primarily seems concerned about getting shot randomly while flying overhead. It is generally accepted that there are only two ways of flying to your destination: Low enough to be almost invisible, or high enough to be out of range. If any ESF dies to any ground fire at all, it's because they were somewhere in the middle. Trust me. You don't think you're a giant target until you've learned to fly in a Liberator. OP makes no mention of A2G interaction. ESFs are more effective against ground vehicles than they have any right to be to begin with, especially where Hornets are concerned (dat ammo pool). ESFs do not need any more assistance. Liberators have it slightly on the rough side, but only if they get spotted. Also being unable to aim up would make it completely impossible to shoot targets with even a modest height advantage at range.
