This sums up the entire vehicle gameplay in a nutshell. I see tanks run from infantry rather than infantry run from tanks. Only in this game have I've ever seen that. A tank is a tank. If a single infantry unit is foolish enough to stand in its path and expect to win, they deserve to be sent back to the spawn room they walked out of.
Wow wait, is the saron getting even more nerfed? When I am using it on my magrider right now it takes 4 hits to kill a infantry, I'm slightly confused... is it going to get even worse?
To my knoweldge, you need 2 hits on somebody with no FLAK armor and if somebody uses maxed FLAK armor they need 4. After this patch ... it will take 5-6? haven't done the math. But definitely 3 for someone without FLAK.
Tried in VR training, do all those have flak armor? They can take 4 shots with my saron at least(?) EDIT: So both on the test server and normal server the infantry can take 4 saron shots before dying in VR training. EDIT2: The enforcer requires 2 shots in total per infantry, why is the saron OP vs infantry when it requires the double amount of hits to kill already?
VR room does not have any flak damage in it.. So HE and other explosive gear does not do the damage it does in the normal continents.
Both the Enforcer and the Saron need the same amount of direct hits against none FLAK users on the live server, outside of VR. The way it exactly works is that if you directly hit Infantry, you deal both direct and indirect damage at the same time. However, Infantry in VR react differently to indirect damage compared to outside of VR. The Enforcer also fires one round every second, the Saron every 200ms. That's a huge difference in RPM there, 60 vs 300. Yes I know that there is a cone mechanic with a ~500ms recovery time in place of the Saron ... but this doesn't change the fact that you can just unload at close range. Still though, I think two rounds for a none FLAK user in both the case of the Enforcer and Saron is ok. If somebody is annoyed by this he can still grab FLAK armor and reduce both the direct hit and indirect hit damage by 50%.
I know ... that magic pixie dust in those FLAK vests is better than actual armor ... I say we should cover our Tanks in FLAK jackets, to increase armor by 50%! The only thing better would be covering them in AI MANA turret shields ... or Debris. Jokes aside, the counter for Infantry to splash spam and AV secondaries is FLAK armor, why further nerf this aspect of the Prowler or Saron or Viper. Not that it will make much difference for Prowlers, since most kills are not from splash, but direct hits and if someone is not already running AP ... well there is an encouragement to get it. Overall I think those changes will go live, there is nothing we can do about it. By now SOE should have done something. Yes they pushed back the patch, but chances are it will still hit late April. But nothing has been said or done in regards to the negative feedback on almost the entire balance pass regarding Tanks. So we better start to live with the fact that this will happen and I think that this will be my final straw to take SOE serious in any form, it's best to stop playing the game after trying and hoping for over one and a half year now ...
I was leading a platoon today on Indar for an alert. I decided to pull an armor column. After about 45 minutes I had half my platoon log off because the tank gameplay was more stressful than actually enjoyable. Infantry as it is already over powers armor substantially, you'll see flak armor wearing infantry survive 3 tank blasts and laugh. You'll see tanks run FROM infantry. I'm not advocating a Prowler buff. Not a Magrider buff. Not a Vanguard buff. Lightnings and MBTs should all be buffed, slower, stronger, tougher, meaner, and more unforgiving. Make a MBT to where it takes actual TEAMWORK to actually take it out. I'm not saying make them OP and such, all I am saying is that it should be where not some lucky c4 or couple rockets to destroy it. Also, Basilisk bullets destroying a MBT.... I cannot help but raise my eyebrow at that. Make the tanks to something what I saw earlier in this thread, "Metallic mean beasts" (paraphrasing of course) Thank you all, hopefully SOE will actually read this thread................
I constantly see infantry zergs right in the open field, from base to base... What should be a death sentence to them, results in the success, since sniper rifles are bad at killing evasive targets, tanks can't do much under HA's missile spam and even Libs have to be careful. Those just clearly shows that something is very broken here.
Sadly, that's what all those incremental "balancing" nerfs are slowly driving to, whether SOE is aware of it or not. At the moment Planetside is slowly creeping toward being separated into three parallel games only incidentally played on the same map, but never really touching or influencing each other - Infantryside, Tankside and Airside. That's what you get when you base your balancing decisions solely on k/d ratios rather than some kind of overarching designer's vision of what the game should feel like. While this may be passably tolerable within arms themselves as well as between factions, inter-arm balancing should never ever follow the goal of absolute parity otherwise tanks become just bigger infantry and air is just infantry that happens to fly. And that is not the way combined arms work - otherwise you'd have everybody flying fighters and driving tanks in RL and I don't see that happening, and no, resource cost is actually not an issue here. Different arms have different specific functions within a balanced fighting force, functions which cannot be performed by other arms. Instead of balancing air-armor-infantry game by emphasizing the importance of these specific functions, PS2 devs are following pretty much the dumbest and dullest possible approach - that of analyzing k/d ratios, like this is some kind of 16v16 deathmatch game. Absurd.
I'm sorry but what are you talking about? Anyone flying a lib knows it is completely OP at taking down ground targets, I played lib the first time in 12 months yesterday and got 36 kills in one go. The difference between a tank and a plane is that while you can easily avoid and/or blow up a tank instantly with C4s or mines you can't really do the same to a plane and they are FAST at getting away.
So, since Higby has said that they are finalizing this balance patch, well my guess is that nothing about the changes regarding Tanks will be different and they will most likely go live as how they are on PTS. Source Isn't that great how our feedback is flat out ignored?
Makes you wonder why they even bothered waiting and didn't release it already. I'm not sure if we should expect any surprises or unlisted things even. It seems like the balance patch as a whole is already known to us.
Well, the ability changes aren't even in the patchnotes ... those will probably fall as "under the radar" changes ... which actually was the main announcement one month ago ... that only the ES MBT abilities will get slightly changed ... Only in the Valkyrie reveal video did Higby hinted that this is actually going to be a giant balance pass ... the same day the Valkyrie video was released did I start preaching doom that they will probably nerf everything that is considered "Tank". I'm not surprised at all about this turn of events, however this doesn't change the fact of how pissed I'm about the changes ...
Even aside from those abilities which if they do the changes (don't think I've seen ability to run with an Aegis shield on PTS for e.g.), the overall changes are still far short of what I'd call a huge balance pass. Like seriously, Libs remain mostly untouched? Unless there's under the radar changes coming with the balance pass, it seems to be focused on some things with tanks pretty much getting the worse bits of it.
They will just keep nerfing tanks slowly but surely until they are nothing more then driving certpinatas for infantry to be blown up. Imo they are already... just had a big battle at Havar VS attacking NC and most of the tanks got killed by MANAs and rocketlaunchers instead of killing eachother. It is rather stupid is how they nerf AV gun damage on infantry more and more. Yes you should not outgun AI guns with them but being barely able to kill infantry with an full AV setup is just idiotic. To me it seems like they just want tankers to use more AI guns and what will happen if we do that...? InfantrySide2 players will just complain even more about tanks farming them while we actually just want to kill other tanks with an AV loadout but cant do so because every single infantry guy will chase us off with his remote control/rocket lauchner etc. because our AV guns hurt like a water pistol. After the nerf to the saron (which i refused to switch out till now because im still pissed about about the initial change they did to it) i will ultimately grab the halbert. And once we need 3 halbert rounds to kill 1 infantry guy i will just weld a decimator on my tank...
The real kicker is the magrider itself. Its hard to shoot infantry while your in a strafing tank. The old saron was more intuitive, even with the delay, because you could time it with the tanks movement. I also feel that the saron should be the best secondary as well as the PPA to make up for the poor fixed primary. As our only rotating turret the saron should have at least some ability to take on a single flanking infantry.
