Everything is nerfed. Why was the vehicle gameplay ruined?

Why the hate against vehicle gameplay?

Most of the guns were ruined.
From ground to air.
Lighting weapons nerfed (Viper , everything feels weak and slow).
Liberator weapons nerfed (Zepher is a joke)

Even the A2A lockons that helped new players counter sky knights were totally destroyed?.
It's nice to play again but you guys ruined everything that was nice about playing with vehicles.

Even thermal optics were removed.

Bad move, really bad move.

Because they were waaaay to OP for something that any Tom Dick and Harry could get and require 1/10th the skill to use compared to what infantry had to go through? Even today the vehicle weapons are OP as all hell compared to what infantry can throw at it. In fact vehicle AI ability was buffed during CAI when infantry rocketlaunchers started requiring more rockets for a kill forcing more exposure to OHK fire while the tanks on the other hand weren't punished with vastly less AV capabilities when pulling HE guns.
Also have you ever seen what the old Banshee and LPPA did to bases? The Banshee could wipe out a single squad in one fly-by, LPPA could wipe out squads by just hanging in the air and firing at a busy spot from a safe distance. It was an unbalanced mess, and it still is but it's a slightly more fair unbalanced mess.

That said, vehicles could use some more variety and upgrades. The "small explosion, medium explosion, large explosion" for AV, HEAT and AI weapons respectively is a horrible way to create some variety to these guns. Adding a few autocanon-style weapons that require accuracy to kill infantry rather than AOE would be wonderful.

Thermals were cheatvision™ that ruined it all for opponents. Why learn to check your surroundings if you can just use something that highlights enemies with giant neon signs saying "THEY ARE RIGHT HERE YA DUMMY". It didn't add to the gameplay of the vehicle user and it didn't add to the gameplay of the infantry user who can't even use stealthy movement and smarts anymore to avoid detection.
Now if they had altered it so that Thermals would only highlight spotted enemies, and not with giant neon signs but with subtle wire-frames for example that would have been useful as players could support each other more easily. You could even allow Q-spotted enemies that are simultaneously visible through recon devices to have their wire-frame show up through walls and terrain, allowing vehicles to spot these targets beforehand and anticipate. It would build on teamplay as you need combinations of support to achieve this but it would be well worth it for anyone using thermal vision and whoever helps them achieve it.

As for the Viper, you realize it's an AV weapon now right?

No real explanation was given I think? Instead players were fed BS explanations such as "For most ground vehicles, the time to kill has been lengthened ... This allows players to risk being more mobile, and worry less about peeking in and out of cover to repair chip damage." (source: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/pc-game-update-9-26-critical-mass.247191/) In reality all armor upgraded vehicles along with the Vanguard were given +10-20% healthpools as a replacement for resistance making them more repair reliant vehicles.

You forgot the rocket launchers are pea-shooters now.



To sum it up:

Air dominates everything

Harassers, cloak flashes wreck havoc against armor.

A light assault scares away MBTs, destroy sunderers.

All launchers suck, the decimator is the best of the worst. Masamune is ok against galaxies and liberators.

AA "deters" air, usually up to 300m (at this point the already ineffective AA becomes even less effective).



It's been like this really since the Combined Arms Initiative patch, it's no surprise a majority of players left. And really, good luck finding anybody interested in doing the Ground vehicle and Launcher directives now

like... I don't even mind that Vehicles vs. Infantry is in such a bad place right now.... to me the really Offensive part about it is that they didn't THEN DROP THE OTHER SHOE, and change around a lot of the Hex Bases to have a lot more of their cap points exposed to Vehicle capture. There's really only a couple points on Indar that allow for that. (and the cap timers are over so quickly that nothing interesting usually has time to take place on them)

Everything else across Amerish/Esamir, and HOSSIN especially is still a maze of Call of Duty kill-funnel corridors that only plays well for the tryhard HeavyAssult Head-clickers who never ever had to learn how to use any vehicles effectively. Even long range Bolt Action infils and most people with Scout Rifles are excluded from having any chances of affecting 90% of Hex capture/defend efforts in this game still. It's inconceivable how the Devs still haven't made some kind of official statement on just how Segregated they're keeping these 2 modes of play that should in theory go together like peanut butter and chocolate

The last thing we heard from them about this was Oshur being canceled which I think proves their total lack of a Vision going forward

That's because vehicles still obliterate infantry unless they are using dedicated AA/AV options.

I was gone for a couple of years, so I don't know everything that happened, but yes, vehicles have been heavily nerfed across the board. Apparently there was something called a Combined Arms Initiative patch that pratically did the exact opposite than what the name suggests. Now, in a somewhat even battle, air fights air, armor fights armor and infantry fights infantry. The only thing you really need to hold a point is infantry most of the time. Can I still "farm" with my Airhammer that had it's damage cut by 2/3 and thermals removed? Yes, but only in a battle we're already winning.

Vehicles are too cheap, too plentiful and way too weak overall.

My suggestions:
1. Increase vehicle costs by a lot, and reimplement the longer timers we had in the early days. Split Nanites for Infantry and Vehicles (but keep air/ground vehicle ressources combined). Chainpulling vehicles should be less encouraged. Alternating between vehicles and infantry should be encouraged. It's also important to get our Infantryside players into vehicles, so they understand their strenghts and weaknesses better. 99% of the people who're complaing about air/tanks have no idea what they're talking about. It's one of the more frustrating things when argueing on this forum.
2. Increase damage of vehicle weapons back to a more lethal state. Fix the broken weapons like the Fury.
3. Increase healthpool and front/top resistance of vehicles generously.
4. Damage received should disable Sunderer/Galaxy proximity repair on that vehicle for 5 seconds. Damage received while repairing should overheat the Engineer repair tool.

Vehicles should be more powerful, but losing one should hurt more.

Funny how the meta has been infantry-only redeployside for about a year now...


Lib anti-infantry weapons are a joke. A single burster max shuts down ESF A2G at most bases. As primarily a pilot, we never pull air when I squad lead if we're playing objectively. It's just not as efficient as rifles. Why get 2 kills every pass, then leave to repair and very often reload, when I can just stay on scene with an LMG and keep on killing?

Yes, I can see clearly that you are one of the guys that think that the game should be infantry focused. There is tons of other games only with infantry focus.

What they did is ruin the gameplay for a lot of people just to make someone like you happy.

Why not just boost anti armor guns , make them actually do more damage to tanks and the rest.
May ESF cockpits vulenrable.

But nerf everything?? Everything now feels so weak it's just baad.

They should have made counters stronger, not completely ruin the gameplays.
That only makes certain players who only like to play infantry the main focus of the game.

To be honest, they never really got this right.
Starting with the boxy bases, the under powered guns , the extremely high TTK makes it annoying more than enjoyable.

Supposedly is a futuristic games but guns are completely trash and nerfed lol.

Make everything more deadly not such a bad nerf.

I can see clearly you are one of the guys that think vehicles should be your skill-less crutch that are almost untouchable by anything non-tank.

Now that we have the insults out of the way, can we get going with an actual discussion?
In the old days the tanks could farm infantry with reckless abandon (they still can just not as much). This might be enjoyable for the tanker (if you prefer dumbed down gameplay like that) but it wasn't enjoyable for the 40+ people he was farming. In the Thermal days a single tank could stop an entire squad, HE tanks especially the Prowler could stop platoons and weapons like the PPA could do the same. You can't say "well it's fun for me so screw those 40+ dudes".

Tanks are easymode. They require less skill to operate (faster, more range, more firepower, more resiliance, more health), it takes virtually no skill to pull one and they are so powerful that 99% of the bases in the game had to get walls and segregate infantry and tanks from each other otherwise tanks would dominate all. Even today any base where tanks can fire into the base is lost the moment they get to that position, that is how powerful tanks are despite the nerfs. You can't kill infantry blindfolded anymore, big deal. You can still farm them with ease!

We used to have AV guns that dealt more damage to tanks, but that didn't solve the problem. All it meant was that everyone took the AP gun as a one-size-fits-all weapon and the HE Weapons were pulled when the farm was on. AP guns still OHK and their higher velocity made that easier, which is handy for the moments when infantry isn't below you can you have to hit them directly anyway.

If you want solutions here are some:

• Give infantry weapons that can actually deal with tanks. Some resource-costing utility weapons would be ideal as it would mean that resources destroy resources. And no it wouldn't be a rocketlauncher that fires C4 rounds, just weapons that actually have the range and firepower to kill a tank before it slips behind cover.
• Make tanks less resiliant to fire.You know that annoying thing when you can't OHK an infantryman and every time you hit them they just slip behind cover and heal up? One of the current problems is that tanks can simply drive out of infantry effective range or behind cover and repair up over and over again. This should partially be solved by the utility weapons offered to infantry.
• Make tanks swiss-army knives. Co-ax guns, top-mounted remote controlled turrets (mainly for light AA), mortar/rocket racks, ability to switch fire-modes, resource-costing boosts, various scan devices, deployables etc should all make the tank capable of handling a variety of situations to compensate for their higher vulnerability.
• Make tanks cheaper. Make vanilla tanks and tanks with low-power modifications that aren't used a lot even cheaper or costless. Just like infantry play you should never be hindered in playing what you want. Most of the resource-costs would go into gadgets and abilities that cost nanites on the vehicle, like deploying a high-power regenerating shield for temporary cover.
• Remove the ridiculous walls around bases. With neither vehicles nor infantry dominating one another you can allow them to duke it out inside and outside bases so we don't need those walls anymore.
• Make vehicle spawns easier to defend. It's stupid that vehicle spawns are so easily camped. Just one vehicle showing up to the outside of a base is often enough to stop the flow of vehicles entirely. Vehicle spawns should be more internal to the base, with infantry being able to provide a screen to protect it and allow vehicles to spawn and keep a vehicle fight going.
• Allow players to interrupt the auto-drive feature. If you do nothing you will simply drive off normally, but if you try to drive the vehicle yourself you should instantly be able to control, fire and use the vehicle to it's full extend. This would help with in-combat spawning at the pad and with those traffic jams where you have to wait a moment while the auto-drive tries to plow through the vehicle in front before you finally get control, if you don't get to be the last guy in the line and get despawned by the next vehicle without ever gaining control.

The goal is to make it fun for everyone, not just the vehicle players, not just the infantry players. And if players leave because they can't farm 40+ people anymore then fine, they damage the game more than they support it.

So you are advocating a free frame and the modifications cost resources, so any loadout would come with an individual price attached?
Sounds pretty good, especially since people who are new to tank driving aren't being deterred by the fact they cost so much.

That says 2 things about you: you clearly are mediocre at flying, and you have a general misconception of infantryside. It's ok, we're not all good players, and I'm a terrible pilot too.



But a pilot who has a basic idea of what they are doing can rack up lots of kills, and stay alive extremely long.


Also AA "deters"; it's not meant to kill things, and it rarely does. Really, you can charge a burster MAX with your esf and win, with half your health left too.

It usually takes 3 AA options to deal with an esf. That's the reason why in 7+ years of play, I've never seen a single AA weapon auraxed (the guys who have their AA lock-on launcher aurax didn't do so killing air btw).

That's a good start, but you didn't address the biggest issue:

A2G "gameplay"



Otherwise I agree, make tanks more accessible to newer players, And don't make the light assault the go to class to wreck tanks. And make dumbfires 1hk esfs, and my Kraken 1hk even composite esfs.

Would it be hard to add the A2G gameplay improvements on the upgrades already proposed?

A micro-missile rack to deal damage to ESF. Deployable upwards facing shields for both the infantry utility slot and the vehicular utility slot (that needs to be added. Different shields for vehicles ofcourse). An airburst concussion projectile that creates a light concussion effect on aircraft. That tertiary remote-control gun that the driver can switch to could have light AA duties to deal light direct damage and nerf aircraft maneuverability. The secondary gunturrets could also get their own abilities. Imagine if one of those could project a Large NC MAX shield that covered a good portion of the tank's middle when looking from the top. Those mortar racks could create broad smokescreens several meters above the tank and obscure vision to the vehicle and perhaps also protect against spots from above.
And my usual idea's for autocannon-style AA weapons and upgrading the HEAT canon's elevation range to make it function as AAA that is limited in range due to its muzzle velocity, shell drop and lack of flak.

As an infantry player, ground vehicle player and MAINLY ESF player, i kinda like all in the current situation. One main thing you're doing wrong is, you want to counter EVERYTHING just by YOURSELF. This is a massive combat. You can't change any situations by yourself. If you buff a vehicle too much, imagine theres 100 of that vehicle. Game allows you to do that.

If there's a horde of MBT's, then you need to counter them with your MBT's and explosive infantries, but not just you, a whole faction needs to do it. You can't just "oh there are 10 prowlers coming. Let me pull a liberator and kill them all. No, that's not gonna work.

Or, there are bunch of scythes comin at you. Let me pull 1 skyguard and clear the hell out of them. No, you're gonna need at least 2-3 skyguards and some AA Maxes maybe.

Only thing i'm kinda getting raged is how liberator's dalton one shots the ESF's and really hard to kill. But i'm also cool with that as a primary ESF player. Because no matter how i rage "THIS THING IS NOT DYING AND ONE SHOTTING ME", i'm aware that i am trying to kill a big bomber badass with a single small fighter. That won't work. If we can organize 3 ESF's against that, he will die.

Every vehicle has a situation that it will be overpowered. You can't just expect it to be OP every time. I sometimes kill dozens of infantry in 30 sec.s with ESF, and sometimes not a single assist and get killed instantly. Just use your arsenal wisely.

Salty pathetic attitudes like this make people leave.

totally not the frustration of seeing their favorite game get driven into the ground right?


I've been playing since second week beta, I was dragged into the game by a friend who participated in the first week. We had our outfits and made over 50 friends join along the way, had our fun for sure. Now I'm the only one that still plays this game.


Many people love this game, or are at least interested in what it has to offer. What causes people to leave is not me pointing out why people are leaving, it's just the state of the game.


For example, I really dislike COD, I find it's boring, poor gameplay and doesn't offer anything amusing. Has my "pathetic attitude" towards the game caused anybody to leave? No, people don't care about me pointing out that people are leaving or why. If people are having fun and enjoying the game, you really think they care if a 'TRspy' on the internet posted "nonono, bad game, don't play"?


No, people leave because they aren't having fun, and the game they once loved has changed directions. Me pointing that out has absolutely no effect on people leaving. In fact, my love for the game is why I critique it when I see it's not doing well (for example, massive loss of pop). I wouldn't be wasting my time here if the game was doing well!

Think what you want about me, but live gameplay speaks for itself. The best outfits at taking bases and winning alerts use aircraft as taxis. I would have agreed with you before CAI, but wherever a Banshee touched you in the past left some pretty obvious scars.

Oddly I don't recall air being as much of a bother before the CAI.


If I'm trying to understand, you're telling me that air is under powered?


So we're just going to ignore the fact that AA doesn't kill air, and a decent pilot can wreck anything on the ground with an infinitely small chance of dying? You find it normal that an esf can easily take out mbts, sunderers, and farm infantry for hours on end with no counter?


Really dude, I'm not sure you're playing Planetside 2. Bastions are also under-powered amirite?


The live gameplay does speak for itself, try fighting a decent pilot, you lose in 99% of scenarios. The only counter to air right now is pulling one of your own. Considering how much of a challenge flying is, good luck doing that for the average player.