[Suggestion] My Take on the Heavy Assault Problem

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Man I haven't been here in two years now I think and people are still complaining about HA

That's what happens when jack **** get's fixed in two years.

They complain about what kill them.
Enemy are OP, please nerf.

Well, you're about as useful as NC strategy

OK I can see the irony was too subtle...

Let me help you: If you say in one message that HA is the pinnacle of PS2 and in another message that you are sure that a lot of people would rather not play HA I wouldn't entirely rule out bipolar disorders.

Is it clearer now?

In general I'm not fond of delays of any sort. I find them annoying and unpleasant to deal with in a fast-paced game such as this. Unfun mechanics are just as bad as broken and unbalanced ones, in my opinion.

A raw statistical analysis of player population by class shows an overwhelming number of both heavies and engineers. Assuming 80-90% of the engies are in or with vehicles, that leaves the vast majority of the player base as HAs. AKA, there is no false perception in saying there are more HAs running around than anyone else. From a game design perspective, this is an issue.

I play all five classes, though in recent days not so much Engineer. Quite recently I've played LA almost exclusively, having aurax'd the GODSAW and Jackhammer with little else to do as HA. Medic is next, after just one or two more purple hearts.

The problem of the game is that the only thing most players care about is killing. There is no denying this, and when one class is universally better at killing with a minimal skill requirement, it becomes overused. I find this dull.

There is no "knee jerk reaction," repetitive gameplay often does not equate to fun gameplay. I don't know about you, but I like fun.

Maybe, maybe not. I know personally there have been times where I wished I could have both a carbine and a launcher at the same time. (And don't say "Rocklet Rifle." )

I highly doubt this would make any significant difference. Third-party stat sites as well as things like the Recursion Stat-Tracker would undoubtedly still cater to their target audience and would still allow players to measure their electronic c0cks.

Well, I would be more than happy to complain about a host of other issues, such as the cacophony of unsolved bug, plaguing me for years now. But those problems aren't as interesting to others.

Have been playing this game since closed beta. Have been hearing compains about Heavies since beta. Honestly I don't get why people hate them so much. Yes, they are hard to take down, yes, they have their shield and rocket launchers. But they cannot revive and they cannot jump over that mountain. They are brutes, they spawn, they go, they die, they repeat. Nothing else. Of course they have more HP in order for them to survive (though that doesn't guarantee they will, sometimes I flank and wipe them out). I mainly play LA and often kill them even in one on one engagements. It doesn't matter really. They are balanced just about right IMHO. Sure, some MLG 360noscope annihilators can do miracles with heavy shield, Orion and medikits by dodging left-right and constantly surviving millions of bullets, but that's ingame mechaincs and netcode flaw. Arcady gunplay and characters behaviour cannot be fixed at that point sadly but literally everyone can do this. Heavy simply have more HP.

Brute forcing my way through things has always been boring. I only play HAs for anti-vehicle, I much prefer LAs or Infils for combat. I don't have the hate for heavies like some people do, but I do think the game would be better without that shield, and I really like Campagne's proposal.

It's not the small "hardcore" for want of a better word KD fans that determine the game's influence, it's the average joe. By redirecting the basic attention away from KD and on to other stats, you get people who start farming specific stats or suddenly find the playstyles they already knew about are being rewarded more.

Someone who points to you and says "Ha! Low KD player!" could suddenly to told "but I have 5 times the vehicle kills, and still manage to keep a +1 KD. That's pretty badass". You might also be able to point out who used a farmvehicle in a low-pop fight to mercilessly murder enemies with little resistance not for winning the area, but purely for the KD, and who actually was badass enough to go head-first into a chokepoint and blow it wide-open. I admire the guy with 0,5 KD because he keeps effectively disrupting enemy chokepoints a lot more than the guy with 10+KD that only fights when he's got protection from a Zerg and a vehicle to shoot at defenseless enemies with while his allies die to protect him.

About chokepoints and other defended area's: The game should make these a specific objective. Say on average there's X players on a 50m area for an extended period of time (say a minute), then it can be designated as a defended area. If someone manages to kill or (heavily) damage players shortly before the area is cleared out of enemies, you get an extra point to clearing out a defended area. Since attackers require to hold on to area to advance just as much as the defenders you can earn these points regardless of what you are doing.

But again: If you pull attention to other stuff, you can get people to try and farm that stuff. I've seen players in the latest UT who would desparately throw themselves at any large group of enemies, preferably alone, to get as large a killstreak in as short a time as possible. That's the exact opposite of what you have in PS2, so just that shows it can work!
Put that KD on the player page, but don't show it on the TAB screen. Show score per minute, damage taken/dealt, vehicles blown up, points captured (and held for a minimun amount of time), average resource use per life, average redeploys shortly after a lost combat (gotta have a way of pointing out them bailers!) and whatever else we could make a valuable trait. Have players farm these stats by simply playing the game. And damn I'm rambling again, but it's so damn important to just use this psychological megatool to steer players into what to do in the game!

I highly doubt being given a list of new stats will ever change how anyone plays. People don't change, and all the new players will still see MLG Pro HAs /yelling about how great their KDR is. Wishful thinking to believe players would ever serve the good of their faction over hiding as far away as possible from objectives while hipfiring their LMGs.

Regardless though, reducing the sheer demand for HAs doesn't necessarily mean there would be less HAs. As long as they are one-button powerhouses there will never not be mainly HAs running around.

A greater influence on the importance of achieving objectives in a team-based game would be highly welcomed, though.

i think that the HA is actually at a predominant disadvantage and i think that, that started with first shield nerf. i cant tell you how many times ive been beaten 1v1 by an LA, Infi, Medic jsut because of cyclic rate alone. im not missing my shots either recursion puts me at around 40-60% accuracy with my lmg's but most commonly i just lose the fight due to lack of ttk on weps and too little health because of nerfs. then you throw the BS implants like carapace and now an LA can fight and with easy and unless i throw down hard cash ill never get such implants. and no playing thousands of more hours isnt viable for the current state of the game.

THIS

KDR is just a stat, and as people have attested, in the beta before KDR was a thing no one really cared. Then when it was added during beta and suddenly people started caring.
Someone screaming about their KDR stat only gets attention now because there are barely any other stats to look at. Adding those will absolutely change people, just like the KDR stat already did!

Why are there suddenly more LA's during a tower fight than during other fights? Because the sheer demand for HA's is lower. Why waste time trying to fight up a stairs and through a chokepoint if you can just fly up?
Now imagine if there wasn't just one thing (the tower in this case) that makes it more useful to be other classes, but several things. The HA would simply be used less as other classes become better to achieve your goals. And with shifting statpadding goals by making other stats much more prominent on the TAB page for example you can get even more players into other classes!
Sure there will always be an old guard that keeps using things like Recursion to measure their Epeen, but they will have a far lower influence on the game when they can't encourage so many other players to measure Epeen with the same stick.

If people really cared about evening out the class population, each class would have a periodic representation of about 16% (16.66%). That would triple the current single-digit number of MAXes. Is someone willing to commit to that?

Yep. Looks like HA's are headed for the nerfed-to-uselessness. The players who depend on that I WIN button to keep their ego intact have made it clear they will never accept any real balancing.

Oh well. I won't cry when the worst happens to them. The only real question now is does it happen in time to keep the game going or is it going to be another case of needed change happening long after most of the players it would have retained have left.

Maxes are really a different beast. They're more vehicle than infantry.

But they still are partially Infantry and abide by some of the rules of being "infantry."

A thread complaining about the distribution of units of play should not be allowed to discriminate about what units of game it is discussing. On the other hand, whether or not that were not hypocritical in my eyes, and, instead, we regulate the proportion of MAXes just as we hope to regulate other Vehicles, then there would still have to be an explosion of MAX units compared to their current numbers, and that would interact with the Pure Infantry Class realm anyway.

There isnt any HA problem. There is a no incentive for teamwork problem however, designed and maintained by the devs in order to transform PS2 into a mix between an arena shooter and a giant TDM. Catering only to the farmers and causing new players to **** of this game as fast as possible (helped by the implant system). No changes to the heavy class will fix this - sure by nering it's tanky-ness might make more ppl play, say medic - for it's amazing guns, but this defies the concept of Planetside.

All balancing lately is to cater to no teamwork and solo players and I partially blame Wrel, I loved his channel back when it was good but it was always about solo play. Having the only playing dev being a solo player balancing from his mindset is NOT helping. Thing is - unlike they promised - theres no transparancy so I have no idea why they keep cocking up this game so bad.

Ammo Printer: bye bye ammo sunderer.
All new op implants: bye bye engi and medic and even infiltrators.
Combined arms initiative: Don't make me laugh, we might be stupid but calling a global nerf to vehicles a "combined arms" initiative is not fooling anyone. Basically it's an effort to separate vehicle play from infantry play the way air has been separate for ages now. "Nerfing lethality" Jesus Christ is there even anyone with any game-design experience left in the dev team, that has a say?

As for maxes: Wrel wanted to remove the charge ability from maxes to "prevent them from disengaging". It's just a testament to his solo-play mindset. Max sprint was used among other things for breaching choke points. Charging past defenders and attacking them from the back. Removing that and giving them an autoheal? Result: Campy maxes that can heal themselves - making them far less eager to to their job and instead just farm kills from a save spot... And Weee for engineers - no more repping maxes. Add to this the fact that both tr and nc esf's with AI nosegun can tank a dual burster max and gank it in a 1v1... The old tactic for that was using sprint to disengange. ***** sake they don't even need rocket pods. Oh well, I haven't really played max for years, I always pulled it to achieve a team goal and as there are no team goals on cobalt as nobody really runs platoons there anymore I guess I win. After all I only have about 20k certs in the Max build on my main. But hey - who's counting. I don't wanna hide and farm with it but I guess I can adapt. GG devs. And for the record - any heavy worth his salt will gank a max in a low pop fight. It's a 1-2 kill. Using overshield and medkits it can EASILY be done, but for a high skill player you won't even need that. RPG and Vehicle nades...

There is definitely a HA problem; these threads have been popping up constantly since the games release and as they say where there's smoke there's fire.

The problem with HA is there's too much reward for no risk compared to other classes. Why work harder to achieve the same results when you can play heavy and just press F? Wrel thinks theres a problem with the class though so I wouldn't be surprised if the shields or weapons get nerfed in the future.