I can see now why this game was headed in such a "NS" oriented direction. The sort of ****-storm the Canis brought about being the first ES addition in months if not longer. They had to rush out an update to fix that one weapon which broke a whole bunch of unrelated things including skywalls and the Ceres Hydroponics/crown cap. We lost two players in my group with the CAI update, one because of the Prowler RoF nerf. TR almost never wins alerts from 6PM-11PM eastern time when I'm online. It's usually VS victory. My group has been leveling up our NC chars/loadouts just so we can use/avoid the PHoenix+ Mjolner I can really see why the game was moving away from empire-specific for so long. A company with such a tight budget can't thoroughly test and keep up with the constant need to balance every time something becomes added to the game. I'm tempted to say they should just drop the whole faction-specific idea all-together and just allow all factions access to all items, but possibly with a penalty nanite cost for items that aren't home-faction. I know they wouldn't do it, but I think it would make maintaining the game a lot easier and it would add more variety of threats to face from each opponent and it would help combat predictable engagements.
It's hard to balance ES traits because devs can't balance anything from the first try. Even if their community suggests and tells them about potential imbalances/grievances over certain changes, DBG ignores everything and does something completely random just to appease to whomever. I wouldn't consider ES traits being hard to balance as a proper reason ES is being avoided, I'd say it's much more about NS weapons making more money and DBG being impressively incompetent. See for yourself, completely random nerfs popping out of nowhere, unnecessary weapon revamps, over-nerfing etc etc. PlanetSide 1 balanced ES traits fairly well, not 100% perfect but it was definitely good, some other games have also balanced out factions fairly well (even asymmetric balance!). The community was commenting on the Canis being OP even when it was out on PTS, but DBG didn't listen. Makes me wonder why we even have PTS lol. IMO it's another proof of DBG's lack of competence, fixing one thing just to unintentionally break a few others doesn't happen to other devs or games. PS2's code might be a different animal entirely, but random bugs popping out after updates is probably dev-related. Kind of interesting concept for "nanite penalty for non-home faction items", but I disagree with removing ES entirely. The vast majority of ES infantry weapons are already well balanced, and whether or not vehicles are well balanced around each other is hotly debated (depends on the faction one mains and how big his victim complex is). It can be done. We wouldn't have these issues if devs were at least competent, very significant and positive changes can be done with a small budget. I think that there should be better balancing within weapon categories (i.e currently you'd be out of your mind to pick a Kobalt/Basilisk harasser over a Mjolnir/Aphelion/Vulcan harasser, AP and HEAT don't exist cause HESH is so much better, CQC LMGs and NS15 are very powerful and seem to overshadow other LMGs, CQC snipers reign supreme currently etc etc), that'd probably add much more variety.
I regularly wonder why so many games do this: -have their own forum -instead use twitter / reddit and IGNORE their own forum... The phrase "Don't play on patch day." I've learned from WoW and they've got the crew, budget and test servers and yet fail(ed) in the same way. Multiple times. ----- While a game with copy & paste concepts of weapons, armor, vehicles, aircraft and classes sure is as balanced as it gets it's also as boring as it gets. I don't know if anyone working at PS2 has ever played Starcraft 1, where all races are vastly different and yet it's pretty much balanced and lots of fun to play or Team Fortress where the classes all have unique roles and concepts opposed to just different equipment and the maps are pretty well adapted to that. If anyone has then it should be easy to point out that differences not only allow but also enforce different strategies ,which makes the game more interesting along with it's factions, and that balance isn't just a game of 1:1 directly compareable numbers but about balancing required efforts with the potential outcomes.
Just for fits and giggles ... does it have to be just equipment that is faction specific though? Like for instance the same gun/vehicle/etc could have different capabilities depending on the faction using it... so more of a broad stroke approach than having to renerf/buff individual kit?
the only real intresting thing bout starcraft is its spellcasters and way of basebuilding of the factions, still even on the SCforums there are many that talk about how any faction seems to be OP and yada yada (not to mention how broken unitpathing is with bigger groundunits).. thing is all that aside even in starcraft all factions kinda have their version of an archetype be it melee, aoesplash or air and ground infantry-vehicle-aircraft all with mere statdifferences .. funny thing is especialy starcraft 1 is VERY limited in its unitpools and has many samey units
Although I liked SC1, I'd still use SC2 as an example of game balance with different races. Truth is, it has much bigger selection of units, techs and upgrades but it still has a fairly decent balance considering how different races are from one another. Not only it includes more casters, but there are all kinds of specialists and a new generation of super units.
i play SC2 occationaly .. yes it has a greater variety of units, thank god for that .. and cold fusion but still i feel (for the game itself!) there are again many units that fill the same archtype and aren´t otherwise all THAT intresting besides the unitarchtypes that you had in SC1 and with few exception more or less carried over to SC2 .. especialy with the recent patch i feel they kinda even further closed the gap in unitdiversaty across factions .. here is the thing though comparing faction ballance between a fps like planetside 2 and a rts like starcraft 2 (or even supreme commander: forged alliance) is not realy that good a idea, at the very least it just isn´t simple primarily because every action you take in a fps can be manipulated by far finer variations than your actions in said rts in short you as a infantryman watching through his eye´s have a greater variety of where or how you are able to shoot than the infantryunit controled from a birdseyeview in starcraft .. in sc2 when it shoots it never misses and does always a set ammount of damage and whatever modifiers it uses through upgrades, these are set ... in planetside 2 you have a lot more tendencies to human error in every unit not just in simple positioning and firing but aiming and general awareness as well ... and this raises the question how far can you go with faction diversity and then ballance that in such a game? it´s obvious but just translate the units of stacraft 2 into planetside 2 ... say for example marauder-stalker-hydralisk ... marauder - shoots grenades with splash and further a sloweffect, is not allowed to shoot up so pitch up is limited, gets a multiplyer against armored units stalker - can fire both on ground with a high dmg, low rof weapon has ability to imidiately teleport a distance away hydralisk - can fire both on ground and air with a medium dmg, medium rof weapon, can borrow in place to be invisible .. i don´t think i need to explain how much bigger the impact in differences would be for planetside 2 even if you were to take the marine (who i consider the same archetype to the stalker and hydralisk as they can all shoot air and groundtargets) and i didn´t even mention the factiontraits ... there is just no way you can go that crazy with MBT´s f.e.
