You guys know what I expect to happen next? Halberd and AP nerf, because everybody will use it ... Well, except Lightnings, those will probably run HE/HEAT/AP ... though primarily Skyguard
Biggest problem is map/base design. <.< nuff said. We get nerfs while they bunch infantry up more and more that's why they nerf the tanks. Cause big battlefields are apparently hard to make........
The saron nerf is very excessive compared to the rest of the balancing. Think about it, it is challenging enough to get a direct hit on an infantry unit , let alone a moving one (WHILE YOU ARE MOVING TOO) with a small clip. The splash damage is the reason for most of the infantry kills I'm speculating. Why not just nerf that alone? Three direct hits with a high powered armored piecing laser cannon shouldn't kill a soldier.... IT SHOULD EVISCERATE THE SOLDIER AND THE MOUNTAIN BEHIND HIM INTO NEXT YEAR!!!! Two direct hits is enough for an average player, or at least me, to react and find cover from a TANK. If a soldier is foolish enough to remain open in the direct presence of an MBT and die from the third direct hit on him, then that is completely his fault, not the gunner nor the gun he is using. That damage nerf isn't catering to average players or even new players, but to completely situationally unaware players who think they are invisible in the presence of a tank, which ultimately results in a regression of the learning curve for tactical gameplay against an armored target. That being said, a slight reduction in a splash damage/radius or an increase in the cone of fire or reduce the clip size would do more than suffice. The TR Vulcan buff is great, it should amount for better defense for the Prowler I think, I've always been a fan of chainguns. The Viper damage nerf is as random and out there to me as it is for OP. As it stands, all of this balancing seems to throw a bigger spotlight to the Halberd over empire specific weapons, in my opinion. I just hope that SOE developers are reading this discussion. Ultimately, nerfing the damage of a weapon should be at the very bottom of the list of ideas for balance, at least that's my two cents. Also, why not add a vehicle chat channel?
Reading between the lines a little.... One of the biggest issues for tanks is they are stuck with the loadout they're spawned with. This means everyone is looking for the most ideal tool that is going to perform well in the situation they're in, yet still provide sufficient usage once that situation ends. Guns like the Kobalt, Skyguard and suchlike are getting their buffs to areas outside their specialty to ensure they aren't boring once the infantry blob / air / whatever are gone. This is driving us to homogenisation of guns. Air has it a little easier, but not much. Air has much more option to relocate to somewhere where their chosen loadout is effective, while ground vehicles are harder to relocate; in fact the hardest to relocate - infantry relocate far faster than ground vehicles, and can swap loadouts as well. On the assumption that this isn't changing, vehicles need a chassis-based role and guns that support that. That means no choosing between a halberd or a kobalt; because the vehicle system doesn't conceptually support that kind of specialisation in a way that makes sense to the user. Instead it means that tanks should instead have a 'heavy gun' for dealing with hard targets, and a 'light gun' for dealing with soft targets, and no option to mix-and-match. Ironically the only way to do this now without totally annoying the entire playerbase is to introduce either a third gun seat, or have the gunner able to swap guns between 'primary' and 'secondary'. Almost makes you wonder why the driver is even operating the main gun....
/rant on It's not like some of us were not suggesting this during beta, we even had a player driven poll that pretty much said ~60% want a dedicated role system. But now I think most would want that the driver has something to do other than driving ... and in this case the light "self defense" gun could go into the drivers hand ... But sadly the only dedicated role Vehicle we will get is that stupid Colossus, if even that ... not that I actually want that Vehicle in the game, SOE better scraps what ever idea they have about that design unless they would shrink the thing down closer to an MBT. Let's face it, whoever is making the overall decisions regarding Vehicles and their role/purpose in the SOE team has no concept or even remotely an idea of what to do with MBTs. Not to insult who ever is doing this but seriously, MBTs feel like the most unfinished part of the game. Pre-Production design with different aesthetic idea reused on the Vanguard, forced to look NCish ... Prowler design inspired by a Sega Megadrive ... Magrider with "maingun" mounted so low that camera projectile origins were needed to fix this, while the design actually has a perfect turret in place. Don't get me even started on the Abilities, Secondary/Primary balance, the drive model, Debris, actual need of MBTs in the field ... the idea of shoving a Rocket Launcher, an LMG and the worst AA gun in the game in the same slot ... who in his right mind would not use the Rocket Launcher? There is so much ... laziness and none-creativity in everything that represents MBTs in PlanetSide 2 that I think they only implemented them in the game for nostalgic factor and through that would be ok ... /rant off
I agree. It is part of why I just posted a thread in the gameplay forums requesting some insight into the intended design direction. Not to be disparaging of the guys at SOE (heck, PS2 is still a good game!), but there's probably some room to broaden the discussion on things like the long-term goals for stuff like tank combat and other parts of the game that goes beyond 'what cool toys...?' I'm quite sure that there is a longer-term plan, but because we've got no idea what it is we're left either trying to second-guess it, or jumping to the conclusion that there isn't one. Games development has changed massively in the last few years. Putting some of the design questions to your player-base in the early stages of an idea's germination is now actually a thing. It's a powerful thing, too - once you adapt to properly leverage it. I used 'leverage' in a sentence. I feel dirty.
Some other thoughts: - I like the idea of adding cobalt as secondary gun for gunner, or just you gunners main infantry weapon for it(i.e. carabine or LMG). - make it possible for gunner and pilot to switch at controlling the main gun, but only of you are 2 in the crew. Will work very well for vanguards and prowlers, but makes no sense for mugrider. Except may be in case of mugrider the actual weapons change, nose gun becomes halberd or saron and secondary gun shoots with primary's ammo.
Neither do I and, I would assume, most people who currently use MBTs as a large part of how they play the game.
Look, I had this discussion so many times ... and I even made a long written concept about how to solve the issue that there is a portion of the community that want's to keep the solo MBT ... despite the fact that this actually holds MBTs back. A dedicated driver/gunner system were the driver has no or only a very weak weapon has advantages, you can make the gunner weapon more powerful and alter it to be a Vehicle made for mobile combat. To address the fact that some people want to drive and have the "maingun", we can keep MBTs ... but we can also unscrew the current turrets, throw new ones on top of the existing ones(Or activate them in case of the Magrider) and make a 3-seated Tank out of it. Wasn't Klyptok the one that said he would multibox solo drive a possible 3-seated dedicated driver/2gunner MBT? Anyway, by using the same hulls but mounting different turrets on them we save the need to make 3 new Tanks, if we keep health and resistances of them the same, but boost mobility a bit, stabilize the guns and upgrade the weapons in reload speed a bit to come closer to Lib belly guns(not the same) it wouldn't even be that hard to balance them ... stick a Kobalt into the hand of the driver and good ... Just add a -A to the name and call the class ABT, Assault Battle Tank. And everybody get's his own style of Tank ... (Though the ones that want solo MBTs probably also could be forced into using Lightnings ... just saying)
Yes. As much as I want to see driver / gunner separation, the time to do it was during beta. We're way past that now, so it's not something that can be changed without annoying a lot of people. To be honest, even changing the behaviour of the gun loadouts to reduce the impact of homogenisation isn't something that can be done on a whim. Moving to a system that makes tanks better is going to require gradual changes, and has to be done from where we are now, not where we were a year or two years ago. This doesn't change the fact that we're drifting towards weapon homogenisation because of the way tanks work logistically. I see this as a problem, because homogenisation is boring and removes interesting play and counter play options. But as long as we're normalising analytics data, that's what we're going to end up with.
I don't want to solo my tank. I don't want to have a 3 seat tank either. I like the way MBTs are currently. A 2/2 MBT is the most underrated thing in the entire game.
The thing that kills most of the specialized secondaries is that you can't change loadouts. AV guns can kill anything. ANYTHING. They may not be the best at it, but at least in a pinch you can manage it with enough skill. Take say, a Kobalt..and no. No matter what you do, no damage to tanks or a Lib. The best thing that your gunner can do is jump out and start repairing. So, it should be no wonder why AV guns are used as they are. We REALLY need the ability to re-arm vehicles. This feature is the reason why the MAX Bursters are a viable weapon, because your MAX doesn't become useless once your primary targets are gone...just swap out to what you need. I would suggest: -Vehicle needs to be within X meters of a friendly vehicle/air pad -Vehicle must be unoccupied -Vehicle must be at 100% health -Usual construct button is replaced with REARM if same vehicle is selected, ignores cooldown -Resource cost is 10-20% of base construct cost, to place some importance on still choosing the proper loadout I feel like this would do wonders for any of the special-purpose secondary guns. It'd be a major quality-of-life improvement for people that run ground or air vehicles.
Psh, think MBT secondaries will have it good if that change is made? Whatever advantage you think MBTs would see in that. Let me tell ya, us lightnings would notice it ten fold. "Oh no! air" <pulls a skyguard> "Oh crap sundys rolling in" <pulls AP> and when thats over I can just pull a viper/he and continue roflstomping infantry. Oh god yes! My outfit would probably have to give me an intervention to get me out of my lightning. Oh it would be Glorious!
The Cannister needs the range of motion tweak to include a better upward angle as well in order to enable it to be a valid point defense weapon against LA C4 fairies and ESF's. It needs to be the same as the Kobalt/Walker/Ranger (80 degrees up angle).
I was thinking of everything, really. Even air. The minor resource cost would stop people from re-tooling at the drop of a hat, but still allow you to change as needed. Having to be at a friendly pad at 100% health, unoccupied means you can't be under fire while changing. So if you want to change to a Skyguard, then over to AP, then back to HE that's fine. You can't do it mid-fight, might have to take trips back to a friendly base, and it'll take around 50% of the original pull cost to do that. Feels pretty fair to me. Though, an infil hacking a terminal to let you change at the enemy base would be interesting...could be risky to do, but very rewarding.
