Change the drop pod mechanic already!

And my Axe!


....waaaiiit.......

It was on either the roadmap or Test Server awhile back that swapping SL would immediately put every in the squads beacon on cooldown.

It's funny how the chaotic and stalemate-breaking fun that this game can offer is so immediately screamed at by some people.

Some want some bland, genteel "even numbers both sides, nothing disruptive happening" e-sport snoozing, where you're kept awake by the obnoxious shouting of the announcer.

And the rest of us enjoy turning the tables with surprises sometimes.

ah the fun of when you get that drop pod to land right at the very top point of the tower and proceed to get a 20 kill streak shooting down at guys on the landing pads before they even think to look up

What about some sort of disorientation effect from landing in a drop pod? Say for 5-10 seconds after landing you can't use any weapons. In my view thats' the biggest problem, the easy instadrop C4 Sundy killing that can't be defended against. I'd also say make it so that squad deploy can only be used from the warpgate so that it becomes more focussed a tool on catching up with a squad already in the field rather than the pseudo offensive on demand weapon it is now.

I'm not so bothered about pods hitting the occasional ESF. Frankly, it's really quite hard to hit flying vehicles in a pod and is either down to luck, or the pilot in questions being incredibly lazy with their flying and going low and slow - and quite frankly this game allows pilots to get away with bad flying far too often.

I have no issue with drop pods just as they are.

This is just another issue where no changes are needed.

How is this even related to the subject?
You can do the same "surprise" with a whole lot range of tools available already. They are just a little bit more complicated to use than the "push a button and kill that AMS" that the droppod mecanism allows today, so people disregard them. Apparently, requiring some effort to achieve a goal is something a lot of PS2 players cannot cope with, as you can see by the number of people jumping to defend the noob-easy tool.

Get blockade armor. Or mineguard. Or maybe have someone man one of the guns. Or don't be an idiot and deploy your sunderer in a ridiculous spot.

I'm confused as to how you can stop C4 drop pods by placing your sundy somewhere else, all they need to do to drop your sundy is die anywhere near it, take lead then BAM. lol. Plus destroying blockade sundies is just as easy, just use a heavy with C4 and a decimator, sets the sundy on fire and explodes in a few seconds unless the engineer is already standing there ready to repair which they never are. Not that you couldn't just send 2 people to destroy it instantly anyways.

Again, you're not responding to the subject. It's not "AMS go down too fast"
It's how easy it is to push a button and drop on AMS compared to other possible techniques, making these techniques obsoletes and unused, because PS2 players can't do anything more complicated than "push a button to achieve objective".
Nice try at derailing the subject, though

As I said before...... there is no "surprise" element to drop podding. Some players have got it in their mind that it is somehow tactical or that their idea to drop 4 outfit mates on a beacon placed safely inside their base who then drift hundreds of metres to land squarely on top of the NME spawn point is somehow worthy of Eisenhower himself.

You're all kidding yourselves. Delusional. There is nothing, I repeat nothing tactical, surprising or difficult about clicking the redeploy button. It is easy mode 101.

"Turning the tables with surprise" *gigglesnort*

And what I want, to answer your point, is the removal of a mechanic that has no counter. Doesn't sound too much to ask, unless of course you're hopeless at the game, scared of having to actually use some skill and gameplay to achieve results and need the crutch of drop podding to make you feel like you're impacting the game.

During one of the WDS Ops Nights, Malorn talked about faster dropping, less steerable drop pods. Because they will drop faster, they will have more inertia so he also was going to make the drop pods less durable (less HP) at the same time to make an impact with a vehicle more survivable for the vehicle.

I do not remember if it was something that he wanted to implement, or is implementing, though.

It is stupid yes, it should:
-Not disappear
-Have 5 machine guns and 3 grenade launchers
-Have 2x stronger armor than MBT
-Able to call in orbital bombardment
-Have ability to function as spawn beacon

I'd be happy if the damn things rendered before they were 10 ft off the ground. You're supposed to be able to shoot them down with AA, but in practice it's impossible to do enough damage to it before it's down because the render distance is so short.

Has it been mentioned yet, that the drop pod mechanics are changing?

The changes in place put the pods down faster, and with less manuverability, so you have about a cone of 20m on the ground you'll be landing in. Also the squad deploy just puts you at the nearest base to your squad, it doesn't drop you on your squad leader anymore.

These are the changes on the WDS, and also the changes that were discussed by malorn some time ago.

I wasn't derailing the subject, and I did respond to the subject. The subject is about people using drop pods to help get to and destroy one of the many AMS deployed. The OP is whining about his poor sunderer getting "instagibbed" because someone uses a "stupid, unbalanced, overpowered" method of deploying that has always existed. Why should someone have to run a hundred meters, past swarms of enemies, to try to destroy the enemies' spawn point, with little chance to succeed?

Oh my god. I despair of these forums. They really do need an idiot filter at the door.

As it happens I use this mechanic far, far more than it is used against me. That's right...... I'm advocating the removal of a mechanic I myself abuse! *gasp*

Why? Because it's game-breaking to anyone with just a modicum of common sense, something that clearly a lot of the self-serving players on these forums lack. You and others call my OP whinning, yet look at all the screaming babies crawling out of the woodwork to defend drop podding.

"WAA.... WAA.... don't take away my easy-mode methods! WAA!" How ironic.

/facepalm

It's game-breaking? Really? Just get another sunderer if it's such a problem. If those get destroyed pull more.

If you can't think about another method to go kill a sundie than "respawn at closest (and under attack) spawn point and try to lemming my way to the objective", I can see why you absolutely need a button on the respawn screen to do the job for you, yes

"Omg! There's no more this button which dropped me on teh sundeh, how teh frek am I sapposed to get zere???111"

Again, the subject is not "my AMS has been killed". It's "SOE, you're making your playerbase dumber by making them dependant on zero-brain technics"
Seeing how your first reaction is "am I supposed to run hundreds of meters past tons of ennemies", I'd say the OP is spot on.

Just pull more isn't really a good enough argument. Sundy's are expensive and on a stupid long timer. 400 vehicle resources and 20 minutes for something that dies from a few quick mouse clicks is pretty ridiculous. As it is the only people bothering to field them are organized outfits or the three charitable people per server. Everyone else has better things to spend their resources on.

For my part, Outside of outfit operations, I generally won't bother to pull a Sundy. Why should I? They die too easily, handle like bricks, have a poor selection of weapons and I as driver don't get to shoot any. And then there's the twin problem of deploy radius and no deploy zones making it an absolute headache to find a good spot to park the AMS especially if there's even as few as one other friendly Sundy in the battle.

The net effect then is that outside of massive zergs, or larger outfit ops, there's usually only one Sunderer at a battle. When it dies, the entire attack ends with it. I've seen too many promising fights end abruptly because someone podded onto the AMS and C4'd it. Hell I've done it, proof if anything that even the utterly talentless can pull off this "strategy". It shouldn't be as easy as it currently is.