BRING BACK THERMALS!

Players? You mean cry babys.

Surely

Ah yes... the mating call of the air *****.

Wake the **** up. Planetside 2 is a GAME. People play it for fun. If your fun is ruining the fun of a larger group of people, expect your fun to be nerfed or tweaked or balanced. But this is DBG, so nerfed is probably most accurate.

They're not "crybabies" because they complain that certain mechanics are ruining things - by that logic, whining about your stupidly OP thermals when the devs implement a justified (if stupidly designed) change makes you a crybaby too.


I won't argue that the devs broke thermals in a stupid way. I mainly play infantry (largely because I'm busy completing all the directives in order) and even I think that the change was stupid. I won't argue that they shouldn't have done a refund - even if those Thermals have paid for themselves over and over and over already - because they should have. But choosing to nerf thermals WAS the right thing to do, whether you accept it or not. And if you don't..... you're a crybaby. Your words / logic.

Bump

And those that no longer have Thermal Optics have the option to play countless numbers of other air based games that do not have infantry.

They want infantry but not ones that can shoot back....

If you're locked use flares: unless you hover over a nest of infantry there is no way footsoldiers can destroy you. With Stealth and Flares you almost nullify any lock on launcher.

But I bet you want to prevent people from shooting you and have Fire Suppression.

I'm pretty sure no one said that or ever wanted that.
In fact people who do want that I will gladly shoot out of the sky.

People want balance, people want vehicles to feel like vehicles, therms were not the reason rock had beaten paper, rock simply sat on paper until it died of depression instead of actually doing something about rock.

Vice versa Infantryside only players had ruined a lot of things in this game. But why should someone care about vehicle ****ters?(also this includes MAXes)

Yes the crybabies, nearly every vehicle weapon got nerfed through the years some of them several times, and
some got nerfed to a ridiculous point such as Lightning´s HEAT.
Of course(as part time vehicle ****ter) the newest nerfs are not acceptable. Also they did more nerfs against vehicles in the past, not only damage reduction an examle is Auto Repair.

But what got changed for infantry against vehicles? I know some Reddit respond, and they will tell you Engi´s have
a passive repair now(could this be also/or a buff to Engi class?), they nerfed AV Mana and base turret´s range.
And maybe they will touch C4, in the way that two bricks can´t destroy a full health MBT.

Edit. They don´´t let me write s h i t t e r = ****ter

You're missing the point..... people are what they are. People play what they want to play. Although I'm primarily an infantry player, I've started trying to learn how to vehicle because I think my Planetside experience is poorer if I don't. But not everybody's like me. Some people only infantry. Some people only vehicle. Who am I, or you, to say what constitutes a valid playstyle? Either they're all valid, or none of them are. Yes, spawn-room-snipers are the scum of the earth (imo), but they're players just like you and me and are allowed to play this game however they feel like (within the ToS and EULA obviously).

Since we play for fun, anything that makes things unfun (particularly when you feel like you can't respond) is going to get complained about. That's why air gets complained about WAY more than anything else. Apart from learning to skyknight, which is massively time and skill intensive and limited to only a small number of players, there simply aren't any effective counters to air. The G2A options in the game are a joke.

So... given that "we're all equal" or whatever, and given that DBG is a business, the only logical approach is to work to please as many people as possible. And the simple fact of the matter is that there is more infantry than vehicles around. And so, when something happens that screws over infantry, without infantry being able to respond (like A2G ****tery), chances are that a nerf is pretty much inevitable.

To return to my original point - if infantry players complaining about A2G whoring making things unfun is "crybabying", then when the inevitable nerf comes, and the A2G people complain that their immortal death wagon no longer has ez-mode-farm-o-vision, it pretty much makes THEM the "crybabies". People who live in glass houses and all that.

Here is the point. If you are reading things like this.

And you know the weapon on your tank got several times nerfed, and it has lost a lot of effectivity, but back
in the days...
I gave the HEAT example no HEAT turret can OHK infantry by splash damage these days, but back... it surely
was OP with a OHK within one meter?

Talking about unfun, nerfs can be overdone. And yes, we had back in this years OP stuff.

I always thought the ESF design like they did failed, high damage output and low health. If you are A2G it forces
you to fight in small battles, because flying about zerg and you will be shredded in seconds.
Also this harsh learning curve is to much. And I don´t want to talk about Mister Skyknight, ganks every noob from
the sky.

You realize that you are included amongst the players?
But yes, you are a crybaby.

Yes, surely that.
If you ever read my proposals on the subject, here's a TLR:
Vehicles get more CQC firepower to encourage them to get closer, rather than shelling from range. CQC firepower in the form of co-ax guns, better elevation ranges, improved AI guns and short-range abilities to name a few.
Infantry get more consistent firepower at range so vehicles don't have a safe-zone anymore to stay at. And they get resource-costing AV utilities that give them the power to destroy tanks, assuming the infantry uses small groups or enough resources. Which is fair: resources destroying resources. Considering the fact that these infantry-AV weapons would cost resources per use and that failure means wasted resources on nothing, these weapons would require less resources to get a kill than the cost of the victim.

Not to mention idea's to give vehicles more roles to play, such as adding FOB's, vehicular capture points, removing walls around bases so vehicles and infantry are no longer completely segregated (despite infantry still being able to fight out of buildings) etc.

Well here's the thing. Imagine two weapons. One weapon started out 3x more powerful than it was supposed to be, the other weapon started out perfectly fine.
Now the OP weapon starts to get nerfed. The developers aren't sure yet about it's power so they nerf it gradually. The first nerf is a "harsh" one where they cut off 1/3rd of it's power. Oh my god 1/3rd gone in one nerf! The horror! While in effect the weapon is still twice as powerful as it's supposed to be.
Then more nerfs come, and more, and more. After a dozen or so nerfs the weapon is still functioning at 1.3 times the power it should. But now jaded people will say "but our weapon has been nerfed so many times!". Well here's a newsflash for you:

It doesn't matter how many times something has been nerfed. It doesn't matter how many times something has been buffed. The only thing that matters is the overall balance and fun that's achieved with it.

Again. Let me step back into a neutral arbitration role (I sometimes step out of that role, mind you). As a Valkyrie, I have a foot in both spheres.

I need other air units to be effective, and to work, for the following reasons:

1) Soften up landing zones
2) Knock down enemy AA
3) Intercept air units going after me or targeting the troops I've just landed
4) To chase after me, looking for easy kills, rather than engaging my ground units or other vital air assets. Every Lololololpod ESF going for an easy (They think) kill on me is another one not spamming my sundy.
5) Help me nail enemy sundies
6) Sometimes challenge me, such as when I have to peel off an ESF.

I need ground units to work for the following reasons:

1) To actually attack the point, and net me transport assists
2) To engage tanks and AA that can shoot at me
3) To lookup and shoot-up at enemy air units
4) To shoot at me in a semi-effective manner. Every round, smg, and ineffectual swarm missile barrage heading my way is one less that is focusing on my allies. This is the "Weasel" build of the Valkyrie
5) To provide challenges. I want to feel the rush of dodging a missile, of personally ending a MAX unit's reign of terror.

So you can see, my chosen role (I spend a ridiculous amount of time in the Valk. When I look it up, it makes me uncomfortable) mandates a complex yet neutral balance between A2G, G2A, and A2A.

I understand that many people on the ground felt that thermals are evil, unnecessary farm tools. And when used by single ESFs in low pop situations, they can be annoying, I'll admit. But they also enable air units to support you on the ground. No one likes running into a 40-60 pop situation, charging up a hill against overwhelming odds, getting farmed by spawn campers. Whether you like it or not, air units can assist in this regard. Thermals help us quickly acquire targets, allowing us to fire and escape faster than by eyesight alone.

But I also acknowledge that thermals could be a bit of an over advantage. The range could have perhaps been adjusted down. But the complete and total change of thermals was not necessary. They are now effectively useless, and this has the side effect of making night combat dramatically less effective for air units.

From a personal perspective, I needed the thermals for two different reasons.
Firstly, I needed them as a gunner's tool. The Valkyrie that lives longest is one that moves around frequently. The gun turret on the Valkyrie is often jerky and unstabilized. When I pull a high-g manuever, my gunner needs to re-acquire whatever infantry target he was shooting at, rapidly. The thermals help dramatically in this regard, particularly for casual gunners or those that are under skilled.
Secondly, I used them as an ISR tool. When running the Valk without scout radar, thermals allow me to setup and observe the enemy.

I believe they should be brought back and tweaked, or otherwise refunded. Other options leave a bad taste in my mouth.

The IR sight nerf isnt a small thing it changes so much Daybreak is doing a trump they ar changing things without thinking big now if they had do somthing to its range or made less dangerus tagets hard to see like they say they call it a threat detection after all but heavies and MEXES arent a threat is a joke hiy tanker guys that c4 farie above your tank isnt a threat hes just sprinkling you with magic dust

You did it nearly right.

And now you want to tell me they need YEARS to figure out Fury, Bulldog and Thermals are too powerfull...

Talking about random.

It takes years to perfect a game where access to vehicles is completely up to the players and where population balancing happens based on the whim of where the players want to fight. That's one nasty thing to balance.
And the developers have been doing things right. Removing the timer for vehicles for instance, making vehicles easier to purchase by increasing resource gain and other things. That way vehicles are less of a problem to lose, less of a strategic importance. But that also means that vehicles can't be ultra-powerful and defeat infantry on a whim, especially not in a game where the attackers are guaranteed to have vehicle superiority and the defenders are most likely dependent on infantry for 95% of their time to ward of vehicular attackers as well as infantry.

Ofcourse you can make up weird stuff all day, but how about you just tell everyone exactly what you want? Just tell everyone how you would balance vehicles in the grand scheme of things.

Threat Detection is essentially useless because vehicles can be seen in the day with Zoom just fine and by night with Night Vision.

Bring back Thermal Optics and simply add a "Cold Blooded" Implant that people may choose to avoid being seen by thermals if they want to. At the very least show Maxes and Heavy Infantry on Threat Detection as well because they're a threat to vehicles.

What are you saying? I use flares all the time. I wish they remove hovering so aircraft can only just do attack runs like a fighter, and thermal was very usuful for split second targetting acquisition. I don't mind infantry having deci damage level lockons either if it didn't take me 7 minute to pull another ESF. Or shoot a hovering aircraft with your gun, it does decent damage to ESF if 4+ guns are aiming at it.

Also the tradeoff for flares is, I can't fight A2A as well because I can't heal for 25+% of my health, and my focus won't be in the air; I'll be prone to getting jump by other esf. So I rely on my fellow wingman to provide friendly air support. Just like in a armour column, if you have a skyguard, and a repair sunday, who gonna mess with your tank unless its another organized or bigger force of armour or air. Teamwork too strong?

When the devs touches aspect of the game, they ***** it up in some way and we have to live with it because god knows they don't remove "features". Take the air radar for instance, well ****, doesn't help any new pilot out does it, it did help veteran out with spotting easy prey because almost every vet is running stealth now. Or how about coyotes on the radar patch, people who flew knew that it was way too strong since they reworked the mechanic to ignore stealth, took them 3 months to tone the damage down. The hornet nerf is one recently, I can agree that needed toning down on the splash damage, or have no splash at all since its an AV weapon, but how the **** is a 25% damage nerf makes a weapon more "hit and run". If you want more a more "hit and run" or bombing runs style, remove hover, because as long as that exist, some idiot will be hovering and shooting at a tank until its dead or they get shot down by flak or an AP shell. This just make it longer for said idiot to get shot down if he is using the hornet.

Wrel plays infantry and I'm critical of him because he is a dev now and he does balance. Everything he's done have been a benefit to his playstyle, and hes done **** all for air balance, now its ground vehicle's turn and they are not done yet. Thermal is only the beginning, the fury is/was apparently an AV weapon, well it is one now. Maybe the grand vision he recently mention will take a longer time to see light but he's ignorant at best and downright bias otherwise.

I want thermal back because PPA + thermal was awesome to clear out biolab landingpads. Now this endless, brainless biolab landing pad fights last for hours. Also i really enjoyed supporting groundtroops by taking out force multipliers like snipers, light infantry or max with the esf.

yes, definitely feels that way. simply stupid!

I'm a ground pounder and tbh I havent really noticed anything different. I still die just as much to A2G as I did before. I guess pilots just got on with it.

I prefer thermals because I could lure ESF's into rocket range by standing and waving my arms before diving for cover and blasting rockets at them. Now I cant do that.

Considering my deaths to A2G account for maybe 0.05% of my total I really dont know why they bothered nerfing it.../shrug