There is a link between the rise of "vehicleside" and the downfall of the games popularity

Notice how this game was created as a "combined arms" game and marketed as such, yet as that factor has been nerfed overtime the games popularity has declined.


I've been in this game dev stuff for a long while now, and I see a clear pattern.

Now some of you will disagree with this assessment and thats fine, but if you deny this & are not willing to research then you are putting your head in the sand about this.

"Vehicleside" =/= Planetside

It's not about being infantry biased, its about understanding that Combined Arms is Planetside, and by nerfing the combined arms ability to fight back, the game is effectively suiciding itself to pander/cater to a small vocal minority of Vehicle elitists that more then likely have jumped ship to other games.

Combined Arms is about Infantry,Vehicles & Aircraft all having a place in the combat ecosystem, fighting eachother & helping eachother. Balance between them is certainly important, but its a very delicate relationship.

If one of them becomes significantly weaker over time then the other 2(such as what Infantry have now become), then it creates a imbalance with multiple harmful ripple effects to the game happening.

To those who say "Infantry killing Vehicles/Aircraft is bad", let me ask you something.

Why is it that after every infantry nerf the games population declines?


The devs bias to vehicleside in the past ( striker nerf & fracture nerf are a shining example of this) has been increasingly prevalent.

It's almost as if they have no idea how to balance a combined arms game of this scale(It does not have to be done similar to an RTS lets put it that way).


What attracted players to the game wasn't HE/lolpod circlejerking, it was the fact that ONLY IN THIS GAME can you see Armies of Infantry,Vehicles & Aircraft fighting it out in large scale combat.

Remember that, and remember this post. Don't ignore the truth, no matter how much you want to crawl back into your safe space "ignorance is bliss" mindstate about this.

Maybe I got into PlanetSide for infantry, but I stayed for vehicles

Vehicles are the only reason why I keep playing. Infantry is just filler content

While the continued lack of prone is a choice I don't agree with, the infantry game has remained strong.

There're definitely players in vehicles who have no intention of exiting them that cause some frustration for me on 1-12 battles, but, I'm okay with it.

At least I've been able to avoid BioLabs and still had a good time.

But how these large groups of people playing parade simulator have chosen to spend their time, still boggles me.

Eh... it's really not that funny when everyone knows that this is infantryside. People just don't play tanks. As proof:

MBT Primary Unique Users- 6,401
Monthly Peak Players- 61,429

So assuming that each MBT user was different (ie not a person jumping into an AP MBT and then a HEAT MBT), at most only 10.4% of players try out a MBT. That's extremely low, and it shows that most players are playing as infantry.

MBT Primary Hours- 2,153.4
LMG Hours- 9,639.3

Pretty much for every hour that a player spends in a MBT, there are 4.5 hours spent as a HA alone. If we assume that HA's make up ~30% of the population (probably a conservative estimate), that's maybe 32,131 hours spent as infantry... meaning that tanks only make up 6.7% of the hours that infantry play as.

If this game was truly combined arms, you would see much closer margins than that. But it is as plain as day that this is a game of infantryside, and vehicle play is only tacked on top.

I'm waiting for the part where he actually argues his statement and backs up his thread instead of mocking another thread.

No it wouldn't. The US Army has single-digit thousand MBTs, compared to hundreds of thousands of 'infantry' in PS2 terms (including engineers, etc). Combined arms will always imply vastly more infantry than MBTs. It sounds like you don't want combined arms but something more like this.

That would be the thread with such pearls of wisdom as "the game is effectively suiciding itself to pander/cater to a small vocal minority of Infantry elitists". As Colonel Chingles has conveniently pointed out above, "tanks only make up 6.7% of the hours that infantry play as." I think it's pretty clear who the small vocal minority are...

I play infantry only. I get killed more by tanks or aircraft now than previously (even inside bases). I only travel between bases by sundy if possible, to avoid being run over by my own side or picked off by esf or harasser, which is also more common nowadays.

I'm not complaining - it's part of the game. Just saying that on the EU servers I see the trend over the last year or two.

I also notice much more 'nade, C4 and RL use against infantry. Explosive AoE is easier than shooting at people I guess. And these forums regularly have posts calling for even more destructive uber weapons. I suppose people are just looking for ever easier ways to rack up the kills instead of the skills. But then, everyone wants the most powerful stuff they can get don't they?

This pretty much sums up how I feel about it, there was once a time where I enjoyed playing as an infantryman but nowadays it's all curved corner shots and insta-deaths ( courtesy of lag / desync ) so currently I spend my days driving around people in my trusty Harasser because even though desync / lag still finds it way to me while driving ( tank shell going one direction on my client but the game deciding that even though it missed me by 3 lengths I still got hit ) , I feel at least somewhat in charge of my planetman's fate.

Ps: Nerf Liberator belly flop please.

I don't think it's amusing how Scr1n keeps bumping his thread forever, but there's definitely the same caliber of manbaby behind this thread

For me the biggest problem is that vehicles enter the base. one vehicle change the course of battle. Many of the base is not protected from the bombing campaign from some of the surrounding hills. I do not know how anyone interesting in taking thin with HE ammunition and 200-400 m shooting at one and the same place for hours. Yesterday I saw Magrider in Bio Lab .Air Farm with rockets. Infantry can not defend himself. If he inflict enough damage to the vehicle will only be withdrawn for a minute fix and continue where stao.Air vehicles destroyed Infantry even better and easier. Behaves cowardly as soon as they saw burster max on earth. For me the problem vehicle vs Infantry: 1. The vehicles are very easy to repair (repairs to increase the time, or only to certain areas can be repairs) 2. weapon with a high-explosive ammunition 3 very easy to enter the base and disrupt Infantry fighting. (Why would Vehicle weapon was locked when stored in a base where there should be) 4. Appropriate Infantry No weapon to fight against the vehicle remotely. (R.launcher are limited to 300m (why not 500 m) I saw the driver who complain that they can not see the MAX greater distances and he is located at 400 m from any threats. MAX no optics can imagine how hard it hit the vehicle at these distances I do not like does not equal battles such as vehicle vs infantry.

Oh please, stop kidding yourself. You know damn well how fights tend to be when vehicles are completely barred from the fight. Just look at Biolabs and Subterranean Nanite Analysis.

It just boils down to a complete ****fest of lag-shooting that drags on for up to hours without a conclusive end while everyone involved gradually loses sight of the bigger picture.


Lattice gridlocks are the most annoying thing in the entire game: If I wanted a fight at the same very small base for hours to end, I wouldn't have played Planetside 2. I would have fired up Battlefield or failing that, buy Call of Duty, because they both have much better designed battle areas for this kind of slugfest.

Did I trigger a butterball manchild cuck? Oh yes I did.


So you decide to parody my more successful and hard hitting thread: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps...-games-popularity.242027/page-16#post-3415677

As someone who has cheesed mbt's regardless of a tankers skill level, i think they lack in the tanky department, especially mags and prowlers. Maybe a new mbt for each faction might work, or a cert line that increases health and armour at the cost of firepower.

Really there is nothing a tanker can do to stop even a half decent and patient player from destroying any vehicle.

In case anyone wants to accuse me of being a tank centric player http://ps4eu.ps2.fisu.pw/player/?name=terranaxiom&show=statistics not in the slightest.

And I'm not trying to counter your point Ryme, just speaking my mind.

In case you didn't notice, Ryme doesn't have a point here. He literally copied Scr1n's thread, switched "infantry" bits with "vehicle" and vice versa. I don't agree with the original thread, but this thread is as sad and immature as it gets which tells quite a lot when used in the context of this forum

I personally think it is a very good point. Sure, there are more elegant ways to argue, but a little ammount of humor wont hurt anyone x)

I like good comedy as much as the next guy, but I'll draw a line when it gets to kindergarten level stuff. Best way to make a point is to post it in the thread itself, it's annoying to see crap spreading out to another/new threads and even in Reddit.

Technically about 80% of those personnel are REMFs (like me, I'm a lowly wrench monkey ) who will never see a battlefield in their life. The REMFs are (mostly) an important part of the military machine of course, we fix equipment, cook meals, make sure beans and bullets (sometimes) end up where they're needed, all that good stuff, but you're not going to see us charging across the Somme. Not all personnel are 11Bs.

Additionally, while the Army does only have "a couple thousand-ish" MBTs, they also employ a wide variety of other combat vehicles such as IFVs, SPGs, MRAPs, HMMWVs, MLRSes, and whatever the heck the Stryker is.

So vehicles are significantly more abundant as a share of the battlespace than you're trying to imply with those numbers there. A good rule of thumb is "nobody likes to walk, so everybody's going to fit inside the transportation".

Right, Reddit, the epitome of constructive discussion Not saying these forums are much better, but Reddit is (also?) a cesspool of stupidity/memes/circlejerks and generally not a good place for constructive and objective balance discussions in a game with warring factions.