Game Balance Misdirection: Open Discussion

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by teks, Dec 6, 2013.

  1. teks

    Hey guys, in light of the SOE staff trying to become more active on the forums combined with my own discontent in the games direction, I thought very hard on why player input vs balance updates have been so different in regards to vehicles.I put this in gameplay despite this being a discussion about tank balance because it effects everyone, or, at least it should, which is pretty much the point I'm ultimately going to make.

    I want to talk a bit about the general direction the staff has been moving with their balance updates vs what path the players want the staff to take, and when I'm done I'm going to step and and say that they are both wrong. Wonderful!

    Please, read this, and tell me what you think. I'd like to hear suggestions by other players, and, possibly even the staff if we get lucky here.


    There is a RIFT!
    There is a rift between SOE and its players in the definition of balance regarding vehicle combat.

    The average player rates the balance of vehicles in how well their vehicle performs against other vehicles, and how vulnerable their vehicle is to air and infantry (or tanks and infantry for you air jockeys). The slightest deviations in balance between their vehicle of choice, and the enemy's can invoke pages of posts demanding balance.

    SOE seems to view vehicle balance as the balance of power between vehicles and infantry as a whole with little attention payed to how well the vehicles perform in relation to each other. SOE doesn't seem to fret if one specific vehicle under-performs in a certain role, or even a range of roles as long as they all play nice with the infantry, and the air jockeys (and vice versa for the air)

    While both theories are wrong, the rift explained here has caused some immediate problems since vehicle balance as viewed by a player has been virtually ignored, and vehicle balance by the staff isn't our main concern.
    • Harassers were implemented with little attention payed as to how they would effect the vehicle 'ecosystem'.
    • Lightnings were ignored for several major changes and their role in vehicle combat has now become quite limited.
    • MBT balance between factions has remained untouched for a very long time despite an overwhelming amount of player input and concern. (and several great informative and detailed posts)
    • Aircraft have become extremely limited, and hard counted.
    SOE's balance focus
    What I've noticed is that most patches are only in relation to vehicles vs infantry. With minor tweaks to tank vs tank typically coming as an afterthought.

    • Game balance pass 1 introduces changes to vehicles that mostly revolve around tanks vs infantry. Prox radar move, AI weapon buffs, and harasser nerf against mines. All tank vs tank balance has been put in one line "We are doing a balance pass on all vehicle weapons" whatever that means, we will see.
    • To coincide with this, infantry AV weapons were added and SOE has announced future intentions to balance them, though has not gone into specifics yet.
    • There is major concern about a future a prowler velocity nerf which was likely to prevent infantry 'farming'
    • Last spring, HE was nerfed to a useless state because it promoted farming, and has been left broken for several months now.
    • Tank armor buffed, and consequently countered by AP to make tanks more resistant to infantry without effecting tank vs tank combat.
    • Walls added to separate vehicles from infantry.
    • Deployment nerfs were added to separate infantry from vehicles
    These changes are good for the most part, however, unintentional consequences to vehicle vs vehicle combat created by these changes were ignored as were any concerns that have come up in the meantime. This has left many 'tankers' to feel ignored, and rightfully so, since SOE is balancing tanks vs infantry while at the same time separating the two. At the same time they are also ignoring tank vs tank balance, and continuing to focus on infantry vs tanks. Today almost every experienced tank has an AV secondary and a AP turret. They all specialize for vehicle combat only in a system where vehicle only balance has been broken since GU02.

    Now this in itself is a huge problem, and I highly recommend SOE staff to read the player input regarding vehicles so that in the short term the vehicle vs vehicle aspect of the game can be improved and made more enjoyable. Compared to last year, vehicle combat is far less enjoyable. Aircraft, and tanks alike generally agree on this, and, despite popular opinion, fun is not defined by a vehicle's ability to farm.


    We are Focusing on the wrong problem
    However, Both the players and the staff are wrong about balance concerns as I mentioned before. No one is looking at balance the right way.

    It is not about how tanks and infantry fare against each other, but how they fare with each other. Balance needs to change gears into 'combined arms'. A shift in this direction is vital to the game's long-term success, and there is no doubt that we are not seeing it at all. Combined arms is at the lowest point its ever been in the game's history, and shows little hope of improving (but many reasons to assume it will get worse)

    • There is no synergy between vehicles and infantry outside of transport and deploying at all.
    • Infantry and vehicles have now been physically separated. Vehicles through walls, infantry through deploy nerfs.
    • Some infantry are granted ridiculously powerful AV options, while most infantry are completely helpless vs vehicles.
    • The Staff has taken a hostile stance against Tank AI with little attention payed to the, still useless, HE cannon.
    • Vehicles do not help nearby infantry in any way, and vice versa. Their co-existence ends in roadkill and weapons lock.
    • Infantry, once at a location, can function perfectly well without vehicle support via beacons.
    Players, Staff. Consider what you wanted this game to be, and what it is now. Are we really making positive balance changes to the game we wanted?
    The entire idea of planetside is to have vehicles, aircraft, and infnatry working together to achieve a goal, and we are walking away from this. If this continues planetside will never reach the potential it could have had, and, even if noone can put their finger on the problem, everyone will know that a problem exists. That the game will continue to feel empty, and bland. Little more then a series of skirmish matches.

    One more thing!
    I feel that our roadmap was a major step backwards. Its nice to see our future plans, and I agree with that, but its impossible to meet its time table, and its dividing updates into series of completely balance shattering events.
    These updates need to put more consideration into how they effect everything else in the game before they are added, and updates should be done to improve other things in the game alongside whatever is being added.
    Some examples
    • Harassers, secondaries, and the lightning- These game updates should have also improved the lightning since the lightning would have been negatively effected by the change. Instead we are now continuing to nerf the harasser because its so strong rather then simply compensating whatever vehicles without ES secondaries. The flash, and sundy suffered too.
    • ES rocket launchers and air- The launchers were cool stuff, but Air and vehicles weren't considered when they were added. The launchers were all within acceptable levels against what they were designed for, but it took several months before the striker's ridiculous AA power was put in check (by making the striker useless).
    • Es launchers and vehicles- additionally the ES launchers came, yet vehicles weren't buffed alongside them. This would have been the time to re-implement a useful HE option for tanks. Then both the tank and the infantry would be ready to take each other on rather then immediately creating months of poor gameplay and balance just to see what everyone would expect from the situation
    Those are just a couple examples. I'm trying to stress that, because the entire ecosystem of things in the game isn't put into full consideration when changes are made, everything suffers. The harasser keeps getting nerfed because everything without a secondary wasn't compensated appropriately. The ES launchers are practically useless because Vehicles are still waiting on a good AI option. Staff had to break strikers to fix their impact on the air game.

    What this has to do with the roadmap is how everything is modulated, and separate, thus everything they add will be imbalanced and nerfed. Infantry get a new AV weapon, and its nerfed because the new tank AI weapons arent coming till spring, and of course they will be nerfed as well since infantry don't have an answer to them now.

    Feedback Please!
    Now, I primarily wanted to just point out the problem to everyone so that there can be an open dialog on how to improve vehicles. I have my own set of ideas, but, in the interest of keeping this a single topic discussion I will post my suggestions on a separate thread later on, and I'll include whatever good advice I hear, or maybe I'll find I'm heading the wrong direction myself.

    How do you guys suggest we improve the relationship between aircraft, vehicles, and infantry?
    Do you feel that this is the problem?
    Are you happy with the way the game is being balanced? (Pls don't post how SOE sucks, be constructive)
    Do you agree with my assessment on balance priorities?
    • Up x 8
  2. Ronin Oni

    I think the Harasser nerf is perfect actually. Repairing from the back seat, and effective range of Harasser weapons were what, when combined with it's insane speed, handling, and durability of a lightning, made it extremely OP. A pack of 2-3 doing flank hit and runs is insanely hard to deal with. Even when me and my friend just roll by ourselves we can inflict heavy damages to the enemy by not over extending.

    Likewise, Sunderers with their next highest top speed, and even more durability and 2x gun placements would be an absolute nightmare, and as far as lightning's are concerned I think it would be even worse. Instead of a Vulcan harasser hitting you at high speed you'd have 2 of them on lightnings.

    Putting ES weapons on the Harasser in the first place was the mistake. But even with Fury or Halberd it's still already OP and the nerfs in line are well called for. They'll still be good, but crews will have to be more careful about over extending.

    The Flash just needs a handling buff... Give it characteristics more like the Harasser. Done. Oh, and non-wraith Flashes should cost 25 resource... hopefully resource overhaul will figure in vehicle modifications into vehicle cost where appropriate. Wraith module is one such. I love my wraith, never bother with scout anymore. If my scout cost 25 again, I'd pull it with a HA every time.
    Striker isn't entirely useless... but it's faaaar less universal. Only good with big clear LoS.... and it's better against Libs than ESF's. Grounder is better against ESF's than Striker... by a mile. So I pull either depending on what air threats there are, and swap back and forth a lot. What the Striker needs now is a reload speed buff. Holding on target until 5th missile impact has severely cut into it's DPS and reason for existence. Still use mine though in the right spots... though honestly if they made it fly by wire I'd be stoooooked. Please SOE, make Striker fly by wire ;)

    Phoenix needs an afterburner, which igniting should increase velocity significantly while limiting control severely. Probably once ignited stays on (can't turn off) until impact. Remove the ability to "back out" of the camera but give it a manual detonation ability instead if the user want's to cancel or try to use it for it's meager splash damage. Increase reload speed, it's the lowest of all launchers due to it's time spent guiding.... of course, with AB added, it wouldn't be as bad ;) AB would increase to Decimator or G2G velocities.

    Lancer is pretty good actually. I never use it in rapid fire mode though, which tells me it's not good enough. DPS increase doesn't feel significant enough compared to waste of ammo, and more time in the open exposed since I only pop out when charging at the 3rd level for minimum exposure time. Again I think the biggest issue is reload speed. If it reloaded a little faster, that would increase spamming DPS over multiple clips a lot more than charging. An increase in it's RoF would increase really close DPS while leaving it too inaccurate to increase damage output to MAXes where spamming shots even faster would mean only a couple hit. (That is to say, leave it's recoil amount the same, which would compound with higher RoF preventing faster spamming shots at range where any accuracy is needed)
    When they fix Flak armor, I think they should buff HE again and take a look at all AoE centric weapons and give them a balance pass. Flak should save your rear from explosions, Nano should save your bum from bullets. As per ES, what I just said fully applies.


    You're right though. By doing these updates in "THIS 1 CLASS UPDATE!" or "HERE'S A NEW VEHICLE!!!" they need to look at the whole picture and tweak the rest of the game to keep the overall balance. This probably means more time between larger additions, but that's fine if it means that when they do come they don't piss off a fifth of the entire population.

    It's all WIP though. But things like AV turret capability need to be addressed sooner rather than later. I remember when I got that thing a day or 2 after it was released. I figured it just had to be up for Nerf bat in the next couple patches.... here we are, months later..... They've fixed a couple issues with it, I can at least react to where they're coming from now.... But I still can't do much but just hide.

    It's a fun game, still love it though I do play less (I'm really really waiting on continental lattice, though Hossin will have me pumped to play as long as it's active :p Props to the dev team, but I think we really do need to slow down some things and check it out on Test more. But don't slow down the meta... we neeeeeed dat ♥♥♥♥
    • Up x 1
  3. teks

    Lol swing and a miss. I wasn't talking about giving them ES weapons at all ;). Clearly, that would be crazy. The point was compensating things what would be effected by a buff as well to maintain balance. To be more specific about what your talking about.
    • If a lightning had 25m/s more velocity and maybe a small buff to its DPS then the harasser wouldn't have needed a nerf to armor because it "Out tanks a tank"
    • If a sundy's armor values were changed to match the secondaries TTK, then we wouldn't have that anomaly where harassers can kill sundys faster then AP cannons can.
    • If flashes were reduced in cost, and given a positive handling buff, it wouldn't have been replaced by the harasser.
    All the ES weapons are extremely situational now. Situational enough where I don't feel overall that their implementation could be considered successful. Both the pheonix and lancer are only really useful if you have a squad using them. I don't use the striker but I feel it might have been made too situational. I doubt it'll be improved from this point on.
    Thanks for the response. Sorry you misunderstood what I was implying with the harassers. I see where its easy to get that mixed up, and hope noone else does because that's an outrageous request, and I'm trying to be objective and unbiased. Personally. I'd hate ES weapons for lightnings. I like that its just like every other lightning. Its the Coke classic of tanks.

    Personally I think the armor nerf to the harasser isn't so good for them. To me, it seems kind of obvious what we see.
    They buffed secondaries.
    They gave the harasser secondaries.
    The only vehicle that can really beat a harasser does so with secondaries.
    Might be a coincidence, but the problem might be that everything without a secondary received a indirect nerf.The sundy's default gun got a buff too actually, now that I recall, but the lightning...How can anyone be surprised that it gets owned considering this?

    and of course a lightning shouldn't be able to kill a 2 man vehicle without a skill gap, this is in response to SOE's statement that harassers are getting a further armor nerf so it can't out tank a tank...that's referring to the lightning vs the harasser.
  4. grazr

    If you go take a look at what's happened to Esimar you'd notice that many bases have massive thick walls around them now that prevent vehicles from itnefering with infantry battles. The trouble is it also means that bases have become really defensable to anything but mass light assault attacks as infantry can only enter through 1 or to entrances unless they can fly over. For even population battles it creates an interesting dynamic, but when you're out numbered in your hex it only makes the defence more futile as you can't escape/flank from the base and take out sunderers, etc.

    What SOE really need to do though, is stop releasing really strong weapons so that people buy them to cert grind until they get nerfed.

    I suppose they should also rework the utilities and defencive slots for vehicles so that people bother to choose more than that one obvious one like Flares for the ESF, or faction specific ability for MBT's. Granted i choose smoke when fighting TR because of the shere volume of lockon launchers.

    Lastly when they release weapons they need to make sure they actually perform their roles. An AV weapon that is also used in an AI role clearly needs reworking *cough* Vulcan *cough*. If a weapon is to perform against multiple threats they need to reduce the TTK/DPS and not leave it broken for months because they money it makes tastes good.
  5. Pixelshader

    op was too abstract, i didn't relate to anything

    edit: nvm it's probably just because 75% my playtime is inside an esf
    • Up x 2
  6. SanPelicano

    First of all, they should nerf AV mana Turrret. It is as you said "ridiculously powerful AV options". It can deny any tank combat, sunderer push from out of render distance, and their engies are godlike.




    I dont think it is balanced.
  7. teks

    Noone has anything to add about ways infantry and vehicles could work together?

    About the walls everywhere, I'd like to here some ideas on hw they could be torn down, and the game restored to a combined arms game rather then three seperate minigames.

    I have my own ideas, but I wanted to make an abstract post so people could think about it and offer ideas of their own. Vehicles shouldn't be a seperate part of the game whos only purpose for infantry is deployment and transport.
  8. Phazaar

    The relationship between infantry and vehicles (and air) needs to be of a common denominator/force multiplier type one. Infantry is the default that everyone plays. They're the only necessary thing in the game. They need a reason not to be infantry. That needs to be that specific vehicles are incredibly good at devastating infantry. Those same vehicles need to be particularly weak against other vehicles, such that there is a 'food chain' effect that forces constant homeostasis during fights.

    Adding air in, air needs to, once again, be dominant over ground, else it remains as irrelevant as it is now. Infantry does not need easymode counters to it, it needs to be incentivised to get in the air or play in an area where the faction already has air superiority. The reason not to put everyone in the air has to come from the fact that bases should be designed in such a way that air is less potent, and disincentivised from staying around too long (-not- shields). This will then mean that if you put all but one of your guys in the air, they only need two guys on the ground to ensure you can't cap the base. So you put 3 and they put 4 etc. Once again, we reach a homeostatic balance, that will then require oversight and logistics throughout a battle.

    Balance can then be used to create a kind of metagame/strategic approach the game desperately needs to order to remain interesting. If you're not keeping your oversight and logistics up as well as the other guys, or you fail to read a change of approach from the opposing platoon, you'll be done for.

    When you're talking about such difference in mechanics, the usual 'paper rock scissors' approach is -far- too primitive to create any sense of actual balance, unless we resort to a massive reduction in necessary thought, remove resources and cooldowns, and just let people do whatever they want to. Sadly, even that won't work as balance would have to be on average numbers of opponents etc which would leave each 'class' wanting.
    • Up x 2
  9. TheFamilyGhost

    There is nothing wrong with the combined arms play in the game. There is plenty of it, and it is quite good.

    No amount of balance tweaking will preclude people from playing so poorly so as to make it all appear unbalanced.

    Engineering the game to one's own liking doesn't do anything for other people, the game, or the requester. This is an online shooting game with a lot of possibilities, played against humans- humans that are guaranteed to do unconventional things, making the view of balance very illusory.

    Finally, balance is something that in every competitive game, the competitor's are seeking to weight to their side. Who is to say the perception of balance at any given time was made at a moment of perfect equilibrium?

    Who is to say that this never ending call for balance doesn't fall within a sort of Theory Of Entaglements...leading the developers and the players into and endless effort to make something that shouldn't be perfect...perfect. I believe we are already seeing entaglements in the balance efforts.

    tl/dr? Stop worrying about balance. What we have is fine. It is up to us to create or experiences, not exist in a series of engineered encounters.
  10. Santaris

    I don't come from some sort of background in game design, nor have I spent two months in-game doing absolutely everything everywhere, so what I have to say is simply one players thoughts based on his personal experiences.

    The walls around the smaller compounds and facilities are ********. They basically say "infantry fight only sry tank u can't help". Like most of the solutions SOE comes up with to our gripes, it's extremely elementary. My contention is that terrain as well as base structure is really what decide of Planetside battles are to be truly combined arms fights or not. Little weapons and vehicle tweaks may be in order, but I don't play all of the factions and vehicles enough to comment on that.

    Tech plants, amp stations, and places like the Crown are great examples of places where combined arms can take place in my opinion. Tanks raining down artillery on the compound, aircraft pinning infantry on walls and towers, and infantry rushing around attempting to get infrastructure up and running, fending off vehicles with heavy weaponry, supporting each other, all the while shooting enemy infantry that may all be trying to do the same thing. Organized chaos.

    Perhaps if the smaller facilities had their walls taken down, had modified terrain (for some of them, others are great in this respect already), and were spread out considerably, though still as dense in buildings as you'd expect an army base to be, we could see some excellent Planetside battles come back to auraxis. And as always, I recommend ANTs be brought back in some form so we can have those great field battles Planetside was once known for, where combined arms and effort really made the difference.

    Just my thoughts on the subject. It's refreshing to have an open ended thread pop up.
    • Up x 1
  11. teks

    In the past year do you feel that combined arms has improved? In my experience its been getting worse. I find it hard to say combined arms is fine when all tanks run ap, infantry battles are physically seperated from vehicles, and air has been hard counted by point and click weaponry preventing their involvement in any real battle.

    The rest of your post makes no sense, sorry. Player input on game balance and future design has always been extremely important to the game designers. Its exactly what the staff is trying to encourage. I dont really appretiate my post being accused of being selfish when its an open discussion. Perhaps you misunderstood what the threads about because no balance changes were suggested. This is just an open discussion about the direction balance passes are going where i question if they are going the right direction.
  12. MajiinBuu

    HE cannons are far from useless, I don't know what you're talking about. I never used them before they were nerfed so I don't know how they used to be, but they're still great. I'd prefer VPC over PC any day(for infantry of course), and I love my Python HE.
    The Flash's resource cost needs to go back to 25 resources, currently people prefer to run base to base than waste 100 resources on something that will flip 20 meters from the pad.
    And most bases don't have walls or barriers of any kind, quit saying infantry and vehicles are always separate!
    The engineer AV turret is very strong, but everyone has one, so it can't cause faction imbalance. Also, try to use one on a hill, it's nearly impossible to even deploy one on something that isn't a large completely 100% flat surface.
  13. Owleyes

    WOW !! Someone actually is talking about the Lightning !!! I'm a dedicated Lightning pilot with thousands of kills, I'm not the best but i know a little bit about the Lightning.

    That being said, At launch the Lightning felt very balanced against 1/2 MBTs, But ever since the 25% damage and velocity buffs, oh and the health buffs, It's almost impossible to take on a 1/2 MBT one on one, That totally ruined the fun of AV Lightning tanking for me. Then the Harasser... well we all know about the Harasser....

    About the walls on Esimir, Why is it ok for Infantry and Air to camp a spawn shack but it's not ok for armor? It seems all the same to me. Spawn point getting camped? you lost the fight already. But hey, instead of admitting this, Lets build walls and make everyone abandon their vehicles or just sit and wait in boredom till the Infantry cap the base. /endrant

    Good post teks.
  14. teks

    Statistically he is inferior to heat and its clear because noone uses it. Your gaining a moderate nonlethal splash for a velocity and rof nerf. Considering the best way to kill infantry is by direct hits, he is actually pretty weak ai and its made worse since he is also horrible against everything else as well. Its use is typically for farming infantry in areas where your faction has already won

    You got the av turret idea wrong. Its not available for everyone. Its available for engineers. Engineers and hea y have powerful av while most infantry are helpless. This thread is about infantry and vehicle balance and never mentioned faction specific balance.

    Most bases do have physical barriers to keep tanks out. If its not walls its the natural terrain. Few bases allow tanks to have an impact on the taking of a base.
  15. Tuco

    Infantry get their flexibility and strength from their spawn point, so as long as those big fat target Sunderers can so easily be Kamikazee mined, bombed by Liberators, and farmed by tanks so easily then infantry also get screwed. Infantry = Spawn Point

    "Gee wiz then shouldn't we buff the SUnderer and turn it into a gigantic monster machine that can kill everything and blah blah blah blah blah?"

    No. The solution is to adopt the PS1 AMS. NO weapons, low Hitpoints but it cloaks. There you go, problem solved.

    Infantry = Sunderer. So as long as the Sunderer is a big fat target that shoots tracers, so then infantry might as well also be big fat targets that shoot tracers, and have no armor and the LOWEST HITPOINTS EVER! Who designs these games anyways?
  16. Pikachu

    Sounds like you talk of Esamir only. On Indar tanks are still doing a good job of bomarding the cr*p out of bases.
  17. MajiinBuu


    I've seen a lot of people use it actually. And killing 1 person with HE will have made it useful, so really no weapon in the game is "useless." It works just fine and isn't broken. And if direct hits were all that mattered than nobody would use HE or HEAT, just AP, and that's not the case. Most people use teir 1 BASR even though teir 3 is pretty much a straight upgrade, that doesn't mean any of them are broken or useless.

    It's available for everyone because everyone has access to engineers. Why is that a bad thing? Good engineers are already rare, we could use more support players. Most infantry are helpless? Almost every class has access to C4 or other weapons. Even Infiltrators can hack Spears.

    Most bases don't. Like every amp station, every tower base, every small outpost, many large outposts, the outside of every biolab, most of Indar, and all of Amerish.
    There are a lot less that do, like that one tech plant on Esamir, and a lot bases on Esamir.
    Also vehicles affecting a base fight doesn't mean you actually have to have your tank inside the base. I've seen many tanks spamming HE into the Stronghold(a supposedly vehicle-free area) from the cliffs above.
  18. Kumaro

    (this is to op and the post above since he has a very good point to)

    I agree guys to both of you but you know there is always a but.
    There is a balance flaw in this game. Things are to easy and simple. And that is one of the major things that is causing a lot of the balance problems. Combined arms shouldn't be easy and simple it breaks the balance a lot. That is what creates the major spam of things. The simple quantity over quality thinking we have in game at the moment.

    Resources are to plentiful. Access is to abundant. Attacker vs defender symmetry is broken. Classes and vehicles are to few.
    Continents are to inefficient in utilizing the space provided on them.
    First person camera is placed in the chest.
    Tanks don't have turret stabilisation.
    And so on.......

    There is no proper system for large scale team play. Example nothing similar to a commander in BF.
    Communication is lacking. No chat for in vehicle. No ability to quickly display your intentions to friendlies or squad mates properly.
    Design around bases and transports doesn't allow squads to work together properly. (12 seats instead of 13. And there is only a single point instead of several steps and points.)

    The lacking game balance at the moment is the lack of tools and difficulties/challenges given to the players.
    Planetside 2 has yet to reach the point of a proper combined arms game.

    Im going back to an old overused comparison.
    Battlefield 1942+ expansions And Battlefield 2+ 2142 had good balance. For good fights to start they designed the game to work well and guide people into team play by creating natural front lines and catering to the teams. However BF series started to get bad as they made Bad company. Suddenly focus shifted a lot more towards the individual player and 1 vs 1 mentality similar to arena games.

    Planetside 2 is doing the same mistake. And it is a large scale MMO game so we see the effects a lot more than BF due to the difference in the size of maps the amount of players and the resources given to them to use. This makes the Devs job a lot harder in the long run and our gaming a lot more frustrating.....Like i have said many times before.

    I am here for the potential of the game not it's current state.
    • Up x 1
  19. Pikachu

    This is a point I wish more people would address. Could always be solved by adding more damage modifiers which everyone loves.
  20. Ronin Oni

    HAHA ok good. We agree then. Really wish they never put ES on Harasser... that was a terrible idea.

    1) Velocity and maybe RoF buff would be nice on Lightning's to be sure. Keeping Harasser incoming nerfs in mind Lightning shouldn't be overbuffed though.

    2) ES AV weapons are armor piercing aren't they? If you changed Sundy to tank armor resistance, the disparity would be the same but non-AP weapons would get nerfed instead. I agree with your sentiment, but I think we need to think more about what to do.

    3) Harasser still offers a much stronger weapon platform, and even transport MAXes... of course it has purpose. Flash would be a cheap, slightly slower, and far more vulnerable form of transport like it used to be. Flashes cost increase was only because of Wraith module.

    They should be situational. Otherwise what would be the point of the other launchers?

    In groups they're all amazing. Even small teams can make them to good effect and give you capabilities you would not have with the other launchers (well, Striker is pretty similar to other lockons, but it has a lot of DPS potential... though that's why I'd like it changed to wire-guided to make it unique while keeping flavor. No lock-on sound or flaring/smoking would give it more purpose)

    Yah, would be a lot easier if they never gave Harassers ES weapons. However I think the damage over range nerf to Harassers only is a good way to help rebalance this mistake. I think they were going to give MBT's a damage over range buff as well but I might be remembering wrong. Your aforementioned Lightning buffs would help for them.

    No, 1 v 2 should require a skill gap for sure... however due to the harassers speed over the lightning combined with it's durability and repair on the move capability makes it literally impossible. Even 2 lightnings can have have extreme difficulty if the Harasser pulls back soon enough. Even 3-4 Lightnings... The buffs you spoke of earlier could likely help this (increased Velocity making it easier to hit the super fast target) and the repair nerf is crucial, though the Harassers speed will still allow good crews to get away the majority of the time.
    • Up x 1