Simply put: Game is divided into three (food chains) denominators -- but everyone plays the highest denominator (food chain) because the lowest one is weak and dies easily. Which ends up into the game becoming a Higby fest because of such. You know why this game isn't newbie friendly? It's because of the above. The "newbie" doesn't want to die. He wants to win. He wants to feel "significant" -- and restricting said player to use the (highest denominator) makes him leave the game. A new player sees a tank throwing shells of death against its spawn room... decides to try it out... to end up getting killed for the lack of experience -and- quitting the game altogether to realize he has to wait 9 minutes in order to spawn another "tank of death". And there's also the "clientside" factor that makes this game even more messed up -- giving it a false impression that the game is loaded with cheaters. And you know what saddens me the most? That this can't be "fixed" -- unless someone else makes another MMOFPS from scratch.
Planetside 2 was never a suitable game for those seeking instant gratification. And only a game seriously lacking in depth of mechanics and room to improve(compared to PS2) will be appealing to them.
Which doesn't make this game any less "toxic" compared to "standard" FPS shooters. This game "genre" promotes toxic/"cancerous" behavior (even elitism, to a extent); "Why I'd play as a infantryman when I can always spawn my tank and rain death from up a hill?". Then again, the "general newbie" -does- want instant gratification. If you divide the game intro three sectors, show the newbie that "this one is better than the one you're playing right now" and put it a "experience wall" of sorts behind it altogether a 9 minute limit -- the newbie will definitely -not- wait that much of time until he can spawn another tank. Because that is what the game is "teaching him" -- that infantry is a waste of time and that he -must- spawn into a vehicle in order to learn how the game works. Personally, I can't wait until Brethesda or (whoeverhastheidea) to make a MMOFPS game that is strictly infantry-based, with two factions only. Something like a "Quake World" of sorts. Because sadly, people are arseholes.
The view that vehicles are somehow more effective than infantry in killing things is pretty ridiculous and easily dispelled by data. Consider, for example, the highest KPH Lightning and MBT primary weapons: Lightning HESH (NC)- 55 KPH Prowler HESH- 50 KPH I means sure, 50-55 KPH seems high... until you notice that: NS-15MP- 67 KPH SVA-GG- 64 KPH Now even if you argue that those are purchased weapons which surely must represent more experienced players, consider that: Anchor- 47 KPH Equinox Burst- 46 KPH T1B Cycler- 45 KPH So even with standard unlockable infantry primary weapons, you're not doing that much worse than a tank... and infantry are absolutely free. The reason for this is that tanks have travel time and can't get into most fights. Tankers need time to pull a tank and move into position, and that's assuming they don't get intercepted along the way by enemy vehicles. Infantry, on the other hand, can jump right into any fight in seconds due to the magic of redeploy and start racking up kills. As explained, the answer is simply that infantry are not only just about as good as tanks, but they are free and much more mobile. That's why in terms of playtime tanks actually have fairly few users... tanks only have a fraction of a playtime that infantry small arms have. You would think that if tanks were so good at killing, then more people would be using them. The truth is that they simply aren't worth the cost, which is why most players ignore them completely.
Nevermind the incessant waves of HESH lightnings that we all see with alarming regularity posting up in firing lines and shelling everything that moves, since there's no reason to pull AP or HEAT anymore. Esamir is the worst for this, they designed bases with short walls so tanks couldn't shell into them at ground level but never accounted for the massive slopes, and mountain formations that litter the landscape. That being said, each base is now a near literal recreation of "shooting fish in a barrel", There's almost no way from that base to counteract that kind of farming, your lock-on anti-tank launcher does like 1/8th the damage of a single HESH round, and it takes 4 of them to get a single HESH farmer to even consider backing off to repair for the 10 seconds he needs to return to farming infantry. While OP isn't correct for most of their argument, at a more detailed glance, the disparity between balance of HESH, HEAT, and AP is absurdly out of whack. Why use AP when HESH does roughly the same Anti-armor damage, but with 50 more splash damage than infantry have health? Why use heat when the same reason above is stated? HESH needs to be toned down yet again, for the Nth time so people stop pulling it as the end-all-be-all weapon. Alright, i'm done ranting. Just had to get that off my chest. As an infantry main, HESH farmers piss me the hell off.
Chingles! Still blocking me for telling you some truths you didn't like? How about this truth: You are full of it once again. You've used this argument before and I've told you before that it's a bad argument. If you have the choice between fighting a tank that takes minutes for infantry to take down and has a high failure rate, or you fight another infantry player with about 50/50 chace of success, you take the 50/50 chance. And the thing is that if you fail, your enemy infantry will just have scored an infantry kill. While dead, your KPH stops ticking because you aren't holding any weapons. So besides a preference for shooting friendly infantry, KPH is favorable for infantry dying a lot and having short travel times before dying again. In the meantime vehicles spend a lot of time maneuvering by Chingle's his own admission, maneuvers to fight other vehicles for example. Despite that, the moment the vehicles start killing infantry they easily keep up with most other weapons. Chingles naturally nitpicked his KPH to favor his lie I mean "argument". So in essence, Chingles is trying to convince people that because infantry have short travel times and have long times their KPH isn't counted, that suddenly their weapons are superior to HESH weapons. He's barking at a correlation of spawn+travel times (not to mention preference to attack something you can actually kill), not weapon power.
"Game is divided into three (food chains) " =/= combined arms combined arms is these 3 foodchains working toghether ...
*spots* a dead highest denominator. *revives* the highest denominator. *Points* them in the direction of the enemy, *grabs* belt loop of highest denominator. *sings* "I'm the one they call Doctor Feelgood...I'm the the one that makes you feel alright!"
infantry whined incessantly about how OP AP was which required direct hits. devs cave in to infantryside whining and merely replace AP as the pop choice to HESH which is much more problematic for infantry, tank mains TOLD them it was a bad idea for both infantry and tanks. there is no reason not to pull HESH it's the most effective AI tank gun due to splash and there is negligable downside to not equipping AP. before if you picked HESH you were meat for AP and to a lesser degree HEAT users, AP requires direct hits to kill infantry that's what kept it balanced as the popular choice, infantry whine over it boils down to "a tank gun shouldn't be able to OHK me! waaah!" the developers have a consistant problem of focusing mostly on infantry feedback while ignoring vehicle users (with the exception of air) tankers understand both sides better then infantry mains unless you are highly skilled or social you are not going to be able to play in a tank all the time in ether gunner or driver roles. now they are going along and going to nerf lockdown all because infantry mains don't want combined arms, they want a CoD deathmatch game. it's called path of least resistance for most infantry mains, you always have the choice to soft or hard counter vehicles but people don't because: 1) it takes certs to kit out a vehicle so you aren't a stock easy kill 2) they have to ether use teamwork or run to a vehicle terminal 3) it's more cert profitable to pull the free unit that can access almost all the terrain so you can get more kills on average. 4) vehicles have no real role outside killing anything that moves. 5)they don't want combined arms or tactical thought outside infantry vs infantry maneuvers as long as the devs treat the game like a deathmatch game with a larger map, the game will never be a strategic/tactic combined arms game. combined arms is about combining different units to cover each other's weaknesses and compliment each others strengths. instead force multipliers on the ground are treated like cert pinatas to be constantly nerfed because one infantry dude with a rocket launcher can't rambo a mobile tank that is being played smartly.
This game is open world with no match maker. There's no way a "newbie" will dominate better players, and nor should he. He should stick with a group until he learns the ropes. And anything that could fix your perceived problems would ruin what makes Planetside so great.
You're missing the point here. Are there more: HESH Lightnings or... Infantry? I would posit that the greatest farmers in this game are infantry, with their fairly inexpensive explosives and even small arms. That's why you see most players playing as infantry; farming as infantry has the greatest reward over tanking. The KPH show that it is true... if you want to rack up the most kills in the least amount of time, you are better served with a SVA-GG than a Lightning HESH. Even taking a more basic Anchor LMG means that you are doing almost as well as a HESH MBT while paying nothing to spawn.
Even though this is true, people still pull vehicles en-mass the moment the environment allows them the time and safety to do so before the enemy arrives. That said, stock vehicles should be just as powerful as upgraded one's. Upgraded one's should only get changes in versatility and combat-readiness (IE more ammo for upgraded versions). Any direct upgrades to firepower should be minimal and not required. We already see that this works pretty well with infantry. The basic weapons you receive are for the most part some of the best weapons you'll receive in the game. They are often jack-of-all-trades versions and you can buy specialized weapons that sacrifice something to get extra power, such as a CQC weapon sacrificing range and having worse damage degradation for better CQC combat. Yes, and the vehicles don't require teamwork at all either. So why should infantry suddenly need it? Vehicles should have a far larger focus on teamwork. Currently they are mostly competitors on the battlefield rather than people doing teamwork. If that happens, infantry can also have a larger focus on teamwork. "teamwork" does not mean "has to communicate every little tidbit of information to work together" but "if two people meet up, they require minimal or even zero communication to work together". Disagree. It depends on the situation. As an attacker, I often find that farming enemies with vehicles is very very certworthy. You have little risk of enemy vehicle attacks and you can just shoot infantry in a shooting gallery and repair up whenever you get hit for more XP. As Defender however... Yeah that's going to be a lot more difficult. Whenever I use a vehicle as defender, I have to make sure the terrain and battle situation look just right before I can start shooting people. As defender I'm more inclined to drive all the way around and rear-end attacker vehicles coming from the next base over than actually attack vehicles and infantry at the base under attack. Vehicles definitely should have more roles. FOB's that can only be captured by vehicles after which the FOB serves as a defensive/offensive platform to launch attacks from could already enhance the vehicle stage and give vehicles more tasks. FOB's could also offer teleporters and a router-spire (like the one on PTS but as a non-destructible structure) to give attackers and defenders toys to make their job easier, giving a larger emphasis on capturing and defending FOB's away from bases. Other options would be hitpoint sinks that require vehicles to effectively destroy them, but the vehicles would have to move through vulnerable area's where infantry needs to protect them, enhancing that combined-arms that people keep talking about. Vice-versa more bases like AMP stations where you first need to open shields before vehicles can push through could do wonders, especially when vehicles into the base is pretty much required to push through unless you have overwhelming numbers. Or a CTF style thing where vehicles need to collect cores, bring it to a nearby FOB and then something happens, from simply starting to capture the base to parts of the base being disabled to gaining special powers in the area like being able to drop-pod somewhere into the target base etc. No one seems to want real combined arms. Tanks want to nerf infantry so they don't need to worry about them and farm them with impunity, infantry wants to be able to deal with vehicles without needing to use anything else than infantry (although they have a right to with the current state of the game, you can't really bring in vehicles as the defender team so you have to have effective Infantry). If people want combined arms, they need to look further than "nerf my opponent" or "give me bigger guns". The game needs features to encourage the combined arms people crave. Features that make sure that every single unit has a role to play at all times regardless of how far you are in the capture/defense of a base, and the combination of these roles will win you more than having a single unit-type. What do you think the construction system was about? They screwed up by making it too separate from the rest of the game, but they are trying to fix that now.
Back after a long leave. What the hell even is this thread, haha. Like I can't even. Find something better to waste your time typing about. The only thing I see toxic here is a direct attack on the core of the gameplay. No you're not going to beat a concerted tank pull without the same kind of organization, get your **** together. This isn't Overwatch.
