Game Update 04: Coming soon!

YES. ALL OF MY YES. Territory gains can no longer be solely on the backs of MBTs. Rumble seats for grenade launcher, rocket launcher drive-by's (or the lasher for you non-VS folks).

Some of you on Waterson may have heard my predictions of a prowler nerf and well... Vanu welcomes you errant children home. Because its not as if you'd go to the NC if you're a tank jockey.

And for those who think this is an infantry game: well, until you can cap territory without leaving a vehicle it will be an infantry-centric game. World of Tanks is still an operational thing for you.

Happy with most of the update but not a reduced explosive radius. I found early on a got good kills with splash damage from tank shells. Find a sundy with a few soldiers around it & splash damage took care of them. I liked it so much I've spent many certs on the HE cannons for the magrider & lightning. But the point of a high explosive shell is to kill with the blast radious not a direct hit, so reducing said blast radious again is plain stupid.

I hated playing battle field 2142 because you had to use a vehicle, infantry were just cannon fodder & I would hate to see ps2 go the same way. But this isn't the way to go about balancing the game for infantry. Not when a soldier with a rocket launcher, c4 or a tank mine can easily get the drop on me in my mag.

Why are you alone in a Prowler? You deserve to get blown up.

Yes, lets work that through.

I won't spawn at the base being shelled, I'll spawn elsewhere and run my *** over there.

• Considering the fact that there is virtually no open field cover, you will not make the run 9 times out of 10.
• If you do make it, by the time you arrive the battle is almost definitely going to be over considering each base is 3-5mins away from the next. GG
• If you make it and the tanks are still there, you're going to get one, maybe two rockets into a MBT before they blow you to smitharines because you're out in the open.
• You could take a flash but you will then be a big, glowing FRAG ME symbol
• So you could grab a tank or aircraft yourself which you are almost surely not certed for AT ALL because you're an infantry player!

OR
We could stay true to Planetside's heritage where vehicles are used to dominate open fields and secure the perimeter of a base, but you need Infantry to get inside and do the wet work. And do you know what happens then? Vehicles primarily fight other vehicles and infantry primarily fight other infantry - what a concept!

So does this mean if I were to purchase something like a helm or composite armour for one of my TR characters will my NC and VS characters get thier faction equivalent?

so when is patch wanna buy my dalton's now

We did! Explosive rounds and missiles don't pass through the shields from the spawn room, so they'll have to expose themselves to fire. Then you can shoot them while they stand around motionless, guiding the missile.

am i the only one that finds the needler, the machine gun for the mosquito, a good anti infantry long range weapon that actually requires more skill than spamming rocket pods and could be more effective as it is a 4 shot kill? That's the only reason i hate rocket pods, no skill, lots of spam, lots of kills= superior anti infantry weapon. Do not forget that they will only change splash damage, not direct hits, so if you can actually aim, you can take them out just as easy...

In all honestly as well: Engineer have tank mines.
(; As you said... Infantry isn't UP, as my buddy and I took out a platoon out armor. 2 guys with tank mines, jumping off howling pass and blowing up some 40 odd vehicals. THAT was a day to remember.

As you said: If you get overrun, flank an enemy... dont keep running out of a camped building. Park a sunder by a hill behind the zerg. 2 rockets = death of one tank.

Optimized please Amerish, On the server Cobolt nobody fights there because it is too difficult for tanks and stuff supposedly ..

"Explosive radius from ALL vehicle based damage sources have been reduced"

Are you kidding? Currently if you're within 4 meters of a frag grenade, you die. If a high-explosive 120mm tank round explodes 2 meters from you, you survive - and you want to make this even more stupid? A 120mm high-explosive tank round should rip your arms and legs clean off if it hits within 5 meters from you. WHY WHY WHY is a soda can sized grenade more powerful?

FFS SoE..........................................

Atleast don't nerf HE equivalent ammo for magrider/vanguard. I love being able to go play with my mates with each of us specialized in either antiarmor, anti-infantry or antiair. After this it will be much harder to kill heavyassaults sidestepping from behind obstacles to shoot you with rocketlauncher. It already requires 2 HE rounds pretty close to the guy to kill them giving them enough time to get cover or to aim and land that last critical rocket.

Infantry grenades instakill on range that would require 2x heavy explosive rounds to kill someone. I agree oneshot was too much (as with prowler) but please dont do this.

And on other matter.
I was expecting you to use the account wide unlocks to the full potential. You already had mirror weapon system implemented (For example; you got some medic gun on discount = the other two empires would have had their own mirror equivalent weapon for sale)
but you decided to go the cheap way by only unlocking nanite systems arms. You probably wont even include camos to that.
Cheap move SoE... I expected much more...

No-one fights on Amerish because a 10% reduction on air unit cost is nothing worth fighting for and it's just poorly structured for playing on, it looks nice, but it's terrible to play on. I'm thinking it was designed purely with ghost cap squads in mind.
There's always endless battles on Indar because a 10% reduction on infantry costs is a massive boon, it has little to do with the map design, although IMO with the exception of the crown it's pretty well balanced.
Esamir gets a fair amount of action because 10% less tank cost is ... pretty irrelevant but the continent is easy to get around,, and everyone likes snow, right?

I guess there is just a lot about this I don't understand. If you wish to force a reload between single infantry kills simply remove the prowlers second barrel. At this point the disadvantage is on the prowler that now must aim twice, fire twice and wait for projectile travel times twice where the other empires need not do this to hit a single target. The double barrel system was the point of the prowler following the Terran's philosophy and I fear that unintended consequences of this update might adversely affect overall balance.

Secondly this is the Now...third? major reduction to aircraft. The second I am aware of specifically to rockets. We saw this with the Reaver in PS1 I remember it doing half damage to infantry and a little more to armor, I remember the patch notes saying something along the lines of "to better identify this weapon as anti armor" here instead we see continued reductions to area of effect which is arguably the point of rocket weapons. I understand the discontent this causes with players who see firing large volleys as unskilled but the weapon exists for that purpose.

Perhaps instead the consideration should be to remove rockets from the game and either refund the money spent for these weapons or perhaps change the nature of the weapons to "dual gun pods" as was seen on the Reaver in PS1. My suggestions might sound extreme but please before posting emotionally, anyone, please hear me out. In PlanetSide 1 the community often saw reductions in power to the point of obsolescence. Where a weapon could no longer perform a function either because it was "unintended" to do so or the effectiveness was reduced so low it was no longer viable.

Skipping over the argument that player creativity should be fostered and not impeded by unintended applications resulting in system wide reductions, taking a weapon system - especially one that costs money - and fundamentally shifting it away from its intended function is a change in gameplay away from initial intents. So-called "splash damage" seems to be the culprit of these reductions so replacing with double-chain guns on ESF wings would be very destructive and disallow for the apparently hated practice of rapidly firing area-of-effect weapons in a single area.

If this does not seem satisfactory than the decision must be considered to remove aircraft from a game who's mechanics do not fundamentally allow for such systems to be implemented well and in a game more-and-more apparently bias against vehicular combat in favor of more traditional shooter experiences. Such decisions might prove to be essential for maintaining the product's intent. The goal of any game is to procure funding by creating a great product and if the mission cannot be completed in the system currently live then a reevaluation of said system becomes requisite.

Again be I ask the community to be open minded to my response and recognize these as only my contributions.

TLDR:: instead of reducing in-game systems over-and-over to near-uselessness; instead consider replacing the systems to something more in keeping with the vision - and if that fails then reworking the system entirely to support the vision.

am i the only one that is fine with HE's damage against infantry? the only problem with HE is it should do literally zero damage to enemy tanks.

the problem is there isn't enough trade off. if you toss HE on your MBT or lightning you should be excellent at killing infantry but completely useless against opposing tanks.

imo at least.

I don't know what you infantry players are talking about with the prowlers. It is extremely EASY to take amour as infantry all you have to be is a HA with a lock-on rocket launcher, a LA with c4 (like me), or a engie with tank mines. I have video evidence to prove reinforce this. Usually when I operate a prowler I only get kills when people are utterly stupid and walk out in the open. I have been in prowler zergs before and we get cut in half by annihilator squads. If your faction is having trouble with prowlers there is something wrong. Before you ridicule my post and try to bash me try these steps to counter prowlers: Do NOT be ******** and run directly towards them. Instead flank from behind. If your light assault take your c4 (you only need one) and sneak up behind the tank and place it on the back next to the blue cylinder. Then all you do is run away and laugh your @ss off when it explodes. That's what I do when I blow up a vanguard at least. When you're heavy assault what you do is gather a group of people with lock-on rocket launchers and target each prowler one by one. Finely when you are a engineer place tank mines on top or next to the prowler then run! Guess what! This works on all amour! I hope you guys understand that the prowler isn't OP you just do not know how to deal with it correctly.

Have a good day bye,
Death

Yea.. Higs

Thinkin your R&D kids are lettin' you down on this patch, Brahski

2 Weeks? Thats awesome, i hope you can hold that

Idiocy... If anyone is an idiot it would be you sir, along with all of the crying noob infantry about tanks.. Clearly you have no clue what a siege is.... nor do you understand that if a base is over run with tanks.. you should not have the ability to push out with only infantry.. you should (regardless of faction) be forced to either abandon the base altogether, run out and attempt a suicide attack against a armor column, or... here is a novel idea.... RETREAT to a better defensible position and create an armor column yourself, or spawn air or what have you.

Aside from this what are you talking about when you say tank drivers feel invincible? I drive around paranoid as hell.. god forbid some ******* noob has a no skill lock on rocket.. it only takes a few of these to destroy my tank... and They can do it outside of render distance... or i get ambushed by a L.A. with c4... and god forbid that I don't see the engineer who runs up with 1.... ONE!!! tank mine and makes my tank go boom!

So, for all those of you asking that tanks get a nerf... then you should also be asking that Tank mines, lock on rockets, and every other means to kill tanks should be nerfed as well... you know.. for balance and such, seeing as this is what you are all claiming.

Also, consider this if you will. Why was the tank invented? Tanks were invented to to force progression on a battlefield because by their design they were meant to be feared monstrosities meandering across the battlefield causing a wake of destruction and death that caused fear and dread to swell up in the infantry who chose to fight .

Tanks were intended to cause anyone in a squad of riflemen to second guess if the objective was worth taking because they knew that the man who stood up and shook his fist and fired at the damn thing was assured a swift and violent death...

Tanks were never intended to be some cute little taxi across the battlefield but damn near invincible harbingers of death.. Although im sure this bit of information is lost on all of you who want to be god-mode super soldiers and run around like infantry have nothing to be afraid of in a WAR.

Doesn't the prowler reload take longer though? If the HE damage/range is decreased, I'd like to see the HE prowler reload speed slightly increased to make up for it. Because you have to land both rounds, the prowler can even be a disadvantage as it is easier to land 1 than 2.

Honestly if people are dumb enough to run right into the spot I'm shelling like mad, they deserve to die and I the kill. It's not hard to avoid the tanks and even easier to put down a beacon, drop pod in behind the tanks, toss some C4 or tank mines and voila! Tank down and it has to drive back up to the battlefield, maybe at least a minute, most likely 2.

I'd rather see the prowler's HE slightly decreased damage first, instead of specific damage reduction to make it specifically take 2 rounds to kill.

And finally don't make explosives some weak thing. Players should fear explosions and treat explosives with respect, not some ******** this might kill you if you are on top of it. IMO this flak armor stuff has made grenades pointless, proximity mines just a detection tool, and ESF more into killing tanks than infantry. I don't run with flak armor much, but it seems nearly everyone else does.

Infantry survival should be rewarded to those with brains, not guts.