[Suggestion] Making Plane Side 2 infantry-centered again...

No, that's not a typo. This game is Plane Side 2.
As the devs put it, vehicles are like a "power up" that gives you more killing power than infantry but is limited by a timer and resources. BUT with high resource gain and different timers for all aircraft/tanks, you can bounce between them at will and never be outside of a vehicle. Because of this, anyone who has resources and isn't pulling a vehicle is actually hurting their team because it's one less person with this "power up".

In effect, this makes infantry completely inferior... so the more people on your team that want to play infantry, the more likely it is that your team will fail. If most bases were interior like Planetside 1 this would not be the case...

Proposed solutions:
1. Massively increase resource cost for vehicles. A 600 resource Liberator won't spend a lot of time in your face.
2. Cause all vehicles to share a single timer (or divide into "aircraft timer" and "ground vehicle timer") Lost my Lib? Pull an ESF. Lost my ESF? Pull an MBT. Lost my MBT? Pull a Lightning. Lost my Lightning? Lib is ready to go. Nope. Gotta end that. And for the record, Station Cash to double your resource gain is Pay2Win.
3. Limit vehicle access through character progression, as in Planetside 1
4. Some combination of the above

TL;DR
The current vehicle-as-powerup system is causing people who enjoy playing infantry to be a drain on their team.
Fix it by limiting access to vehicles through shared timers, increased resource cost, or limited access through character progression.

This problem will only get worse as people cert into vehicle timers!

All good ideas. I totally agree but I would go one further.

I think you should have to cert into vehicles. Think of it as getting your pilots/drivers licence.

Flash Licence: 150 Certs
ESF: 500 Certs
Liberators: 1500 Certs
Galaxy: 1000 Certs

Etc... You get the idea. After purchasing your licence I would make pulling vehicles adhere to your outline.

This is the exact reason that I only have played 4 hours in the past 2 weeks, im sick of the bs vehicle spam. Im not honestly interested in a game like this, infantry combat should be the core of this game, but its so far from it its not even funny. Base design is another huge problem that promotes veh battles. I mean if tanks and libs can spawn camp, you know you dropped the ball on base design and surely were not thinking clearly at all.

also add resource cost to secondery weapons

You need Infantry to capture bases. Tech plants, biodomes, everything.

I think the Liberator is a tad overpowered too, so it is not always fun playing infantry against it.
It is also not fun to play a lot of classes against tanks or planes.

This could be fixed to give some more classes possibilities to deal with them.

But i am absolutely against a game that is infantry centered. Outside in the open tanks and planes should dominate. Everyone has the same chance to get tanks maxes and planes. So cert them, get them and enjoy them. If you die, play infantry or take another vehicle.

The solution is not to dictate people more what they should play but to encourage certain playstyles that are underrepresented. Buff them and their cert gain and we will see them more. I don't want any infantryside. I enjoy tanks and planes and capturing tech plants and biolabs as Light or Heavy assault.

We also need certs for defending and denser server populations. Look at the crown and surroundings on peak time. A few tanks a few planes and craploads of infantry. Why? Because you cant win in tanks and planes alone! That is what we would get with more people per server and a better capture/defend and territory conquest mechanic but not from your weird ideas!

Better idea (imo) Make vehicles unlock based on time, kills and certs. Example

1 hr on an ATV (actively moving) and 100 certs unlocks the Lightening/ESF.
2 hrs in a Lightening with X amount of kills and 150 certs unlocks MBT/Sunderer.
2 hrs in ESF with X kills and 150 certs unlocks Liberator.
3 hrs with X kills in Liberator and 200 certs unlocks Galaxy.

Edit- Maybe even unlock the ATV and Lightening for new characters and do it this way

2 hrs in Lightening with X kills and 100 certs unlocks MBT/Sunderer
3 hrs in MBT with X kills and 150 certs unlocks ESF.
4 hrs in ESF with X kills and 200 certs unlocks Liberator.
5 hrs in Liberator with X kills and 250 certs unlocks Galaxy.

This system with give people access to 1 attack vehicle on start and work up from there.

This is what happens

zerg captures base, create more tanks and air vehicle spam. zergs another base. This is so boring.

Screw it, infantry is to op. Add resource costs to bullets, shields, hot drop vehicles, respawns, the ability to jump.

Infantry-centered gameplay? Sure, when gunplay and shooting mechanics stop sucking balls. Infantry gameplay is seriously unsatisfying compared to aircraft and vehicle gameplay. The only class I find remotely interesting is the light assault because their jetpacks makes it a bit more dynamic and adds more tactical depth.

I honestly play this game ONLY for the vehicles and aircrafts, they are well executed concepts, fun to play and make for some spectacular battles. They have some balance issues among themselves *cough*rocketpods*cough*, but they are still a far better experience then infantry gameplay.

Who wants to drive something they have no interest in? It reminds me of Beta when they had it so you had to buy a 3.5 scope before you could unlock the 1x reflex sight.

-It is too late to make people cert into vehicles as the guy you quote suggests. There are people who have certed them with thousands now. So that is pretty much off the table at this point.


Here is a question to the OP.. WHEN was it infantry centered in PS2? They have went against that idea since the beginning. It has always been a combined arms game. There was never a time in this game when it was about infantry over anything else. It makes sense. There are 100 games that do that. They went with a different formula here. Something other games do NOT do. Combined arms in a truly free manner.. where you can be a tank driver, a liberator pilot, and ESF pilot, a bus driver, a lightning driver.. or a myriad of infantry choices.

Thats kind of the point. You have to earn the right to drive the vehicle you want. Kinda like how PS1 worked. They didn;t just hand you a Vanguard, Reaver and a BFR. You had to usually spec into the lower class vehicle and unlock the privilege.

Your point? I'm not saying erase their certs and SC. They can still unlock their vehicles. Also by this point those players that have certed into them and spent time in those vehicles will have already unlocked the pre-req time and kills leaving only the initial unlock cost.

My point is.. go ahead and try to tell that guy who has 3000 certs invested into a vanguard that he has to pay more to use it after a month and a half.. or two months, or three if they happened to implement that later than now. Then tell those noobs that are getting camped by tanks from that big outfit rotating timers, how they have no chance to pull a noob tank and make a dent.

No, all those games have vehicles that are far more powerful than their infantry counterparts. The balance in those games is that you only get one helicopter and 2 tanks per map. In PS2 vehicles are supposed to be limited by resources and timers, but they really aren't. In PS1 infantry was required to capture -everything- on the map.

In this game, my Liberator pilot can hover over the enemy spawn of most bases, I can one-shot almost anything walking out of it with the Dalton, and our Light Assault tail gunner can drop down to cap the point and fly right back up to us. Or if it's empty, my pilot can land us right on the point to cap.

Vehicles kill everything in sight, people get out of vehicles to capture the point, people get back in to go to the next base. At a Tech Plant, I can put Zepher shells over the shield and kill any Sunderer that's set up inside the base, then we just farm anyone who has to spawn at the exterior spawn room. At an Amp Station, we secure the courtyard with vehicles, blow the shield gen, and my pilot can give me shots ON THE CONTROL POINT with the Zepher.

The point is, if you're fighting enemy infantry, and you're not in a Tech Plant or Bio Lab, then you're less effective than you could be in a vehicle. Because resources/timers are so easy, a vehicle is always available, and therefore you're always less effective than you could be if you're infantry.

Worse things have been done in games.

I remember getting a "flying license" three times for all three expansions in WoW with exponentially increased cost.

If someone has 3k certs in a vehicle, 100/250 more wont kill him. There could also always be free cert-resets at balance-changes (this should already have happened at least twice).

All I'm saying is that this wouldn't really have any sort of long term impact.
Sure 10 guys would up and quit out of principle, the other thousand would grind out 250 certs in a week.

If someone's Vanguard means so little to them that 150 certs completely ruins it for them then I'm sure they're a player no one would miss. Sorry but balance should come before the entitled pilots of PS2.

Noobs are already camped so its moot point. Noob rolls default Vanguard and gets rolled 30 seconds later by a Magrider with SC bought weapons.

Not always. Tell that to those idiots on Indar in 20 tanks jacked in the bottleneck while we farm them with HAs because we have the cliffs and they have no where to go on those roads. Tell that to the fools on Amerish that get caught the same way...

I know my idea is no longer possible. I was just saying how I think it should have been done. Also, no one wants to get rid of vehicles... But it is obvious that Air is too prevalent. It's unrealistic to have more aircraft than infantry. I mean...something is wrong when your faction has 50 infantry and 300 aircraft flying around. It's all about ratios. It just makes playing infantry pointless when every time you look up the liberator spam is blotting out the sun. Vehicles worked in BF3 because they were powerful and LIMITED IN NUMBER. What we have in PS2 are powerful vehicles that are endless and infinite. 2 liberators show up and start camping your spawn. You rally your squad and get out HA and AAMAX. You coordinate in voice chat and drop one while the other bugs out. You let out a cheer of victory....then 20 liberators fly over the mountain and waste you.

So what is that stopping then? If it is so easy to get around, why propose it? Just for the 250 cert sink? I mean in the end if that is what it is.. will it not lead to all getting 250 certs to unlock them and we will be back in the same place? To the guy who spent 3k in his tank, it is just a foolish tax at that point, no? Hence the anger he will show.

If I go forward in this thread I must state this; I am not that tank guy or a pilot. I play HA infantry 80% and dabble with a MBT and Lightning 20% of the time. I have not flown since beta.

Good point, I'll amend my original idea by adding people must specialize in either ground or air.