GU011: Weapon and Vehicle Changes

Gosh...they're doubling the resource prices...man...if only there was some way...to get more resources in order to make up for the increased resource costs...*cough*

Apparently, the last six months of PS2 was the "trial membership." Now, they want us to fork over more cash.

The hole in your argument is that there is virtually no resource risk at all for the LA until 2 seconds before the tank explodes.

If you pull a tank worth 450 resources, those 450 resources are at risk for the entire life of the tank. Every move you make, every step you take, all the people are trying to kill you. Okay, those lyrics might not be worthy of a billboard ranking, but they are none-the-less true.

Light-Assault "Skill"-4 guy risks only his KDR and a 5-second respawn by flying at/into enemy armor. Any resource ordinance he bought and brought with him magically reappears on his fresh clone after a failed suicide attempt. The only time the LA has any risk is in the two-second interim it takes to throw two bricks and then push his detonator. That's the only point at which the LA player can die and lose resources. Even at that point, it takes ONE TWENTIETH of the total C4 stock to kill any non-sunderer vehicle, and with the new costs, all of those vehicles will be over ONE HALF of the available resource pool.

So, yes, while it takes an arguable amount of luck in order to get close enough to skillfully click your mousebutton three times and OHK a main battle tank, the fact that 99% of the time a failed kamikaze results in zero punishment for the Light Assault is the real culprit here.

If they're going to let players stockpile 40 of each explosive type and cost only ~100 resources per boom, then I propose this:

If you die with unused explosives on your person, those explosives are gone unless you can get back to your body.

That way, there's an actual risk to suicide bombing armor, and an actual risk to always carrying around a ludicrous amount of explosives in general. You have to actually look at the situation and decide if you want to close distance to go for a meaty kill, rather than just throwing your freshly respawned body at the situation over and over until you get lucky.

NO MORE NERFS
NONE

I am beyond fed up with this community. STOP CALLING FOR STUPID NERFS

Enough is enough. C4 is only broken because its bugged, not because it fulfills its INTENDED USE as a MAX and tank killer.

Edit: Why are you assuming everyone here is a noob who runs across open terrain to try and kill a lousy tank with the most situational weapon in the game? After the first try I would start using rockets.
On-topic:
I highly disagree with these changes to vehicles, because unless they are going to be made nigh on indestructible, then the resource cost should be kept as-is.

The resource cost changes will only DISCOURAGE vehicle use. Less vehicles = more CoD infantry sparring =total BS

If that were implemented it'd be frustrating and no-one would have any C4. If suicide attacks are bad, and I don't think they are, then an arming delay would be a more suitable counter. However, suicide attacks are fine in my opinion: they cost the attacker in re-spawn time; they're tricky to pull off; they fit with the game's story (rebirthing etc); resources are risked because you might not live to detonate spent explosives or you may not completely destroy your target.

The fact of the matter is that a stock MBT/Lightning/ESF is significantly different than one that is certed out. As a few other people have mentioned, resource cost really should vary depending on your setup. A lot of people use a Flash just as a cheap transport method and it makes little sense to have a stock Flash cost 150 resources. Yea, I understand this would require a lot of coding work, but I think SOE should move in this direction. So for example:

Stock Flash: 50 resources. Want to add a weapon? Depending on the weapon, that would add an additional 10 to 50 resources. Want to cert an upgraded chassis? There is another 25 resources. The point would be to charge a resource cost that would reflect the potential "power" of the vehicle. Thus, a heavily certed Flash might end up costing 150 resources or even more, but if you want a simple transport vehicle, it would be far cheaper.

Truth be told, with all the AV options each faction has right now, I am not sure why this resource cost increase has been given such priority. I don't see many huge vehicle zergs very often anymore. I guess what bothers me most about this change is it feels like the actual "purpose" might be to try and sell more resource boosts.

So what if you could toon your resource pool:
Say you're a dedicated tank driver, you don't fly much or fight as an infantryman. Then you could for example increase the maximum amount of your mechanized resources from 750 to maybe 1150 by reducing resource ceiling of each of the remaining resource collums by 200. To shift your maximal resources values to fit your playstyle.

And so you couldn't change it every 5 minutes, you can make it certable. So no one will waste certs into it unless he's a dedicated driver/pilot/footsoldier.

As a Terran Heavy... i always dreamed with the day that our MCG would be a competitive alternative.
I hope that GU11 give it to us...

I can't wait to make the T7 burn while shouting FOR THE REPUBLIC!

Yeah clearly SOE saw the lack of purchases for the MCG and since it takes money to "develop" a new weapon it would be easier to buff an existing one to get players to spend more money.

I don't understand why you don't sticky these posts.

Also increase the cost of ESF, please.

Most of this seems reasonable, except for the Flash cost. Now that you have the Harasser around, the Flash is only used as a cheap way for one person/two people to get to point A to B. 150 seems too steep for a weak, unarmored ATV. Perhaps 75 or 100 would be better.

The MAX cost also seems to steep. 100 was good and cheap. Maybe 150 would be better, but 350?! If you are going to do that, reduce the cost for stuff like grenades and C4, since this forces players to choose between one or the other. Make the new cost of these 10 or 20.

Also, adding scope sway to IRNV is bad. Only snipers should have any scope sway whatsoever. Having scope sway on a carbine, especially, will reduce a carbine's effectiveness at range with IRNV equipped. But it's not like IRNV was too useful anyway, so I guess my complaint here is trivial.

Otherwise I like these changes; it'll force players to be less careless with vehicles. And the Galaxy cost was reduced, and Sundy cost remains unchanged.

P.S. SOE, add a despawn function that when you are switching continents, the resources you payed for your vehicle/MAX are given back to you completely. That would make the increase in resources cost easier to deal with in case you want to switch continents on the fly. Keep this until you add vehicles being able to warp through warpgates into other continents.

Any faction w/ a pop imbalance is going to struggle more as they have less resources to get maxes/vehicles. VS on Waterson, NC/TR on Mattherson, etc., are going to do worse b/c they're gonna run out of resources b/c they're always boxed in a corner b/c of pop imbalance. This only exasperates the population imbalance problem.

GG's Devs. You guys are brilliant.

Sooo I pull armor and then I get told to switchooff indar to amerish.....

You better let my baby warp with me....

Irnv with sway..... how about instead you make it move when people jump with it. Sway wtf is that all about.

And those flash prices are outta control.

I don't use shotguns but it sounds like they are gunna suck. Will this affect my nc max's weapons? Cause that is crazy our maxes are pretty bad asis.

Leave the resource costs the same. Tanks don't zerg because they're cheap, tanks zerg because anything smaller than a zerg will die from lock-ons before it reaches the enemy!

If you're going to make my tank cost 450 resources, I want to see this in the Proposed Changes list:

Since we're doubling the cost of things.

As long as the methods for killing tanks are free, tanks cannot be increased in cost. Infantry are already entirely too powerful against armor, there are barely any tank-vs-tank fights anymore. Just tanks that get pecked to death by infantry weapons from outside render range.

Make the Heavy Assaults and Engineers that want to kill tanks put some skin in the game, too. I am now risking over half my resource bar just by driving around, and probably a third of my tank runs end in being killed by some Heavy Assault with a lock-on. Make them risk something other than a ten-second respawn timer.

I completely agree, being a VS on Waterson. Increasing the cost will decrease the frequency at which factions with less territory can field armor, air, and MAX units.

Shotgun nerfs hitting the scatter max is going to allow the other 2 empire maxes to just run up to you and kill you, possibly at point blank range. Frankly, at 0-5m, this shouldn't happen. Sadly the TR + VS whine the most so it's always our **** that gets nerfed.

Also, IR/NV changes. Scope sway? Really? Here's an idea, MAKE BETTER ALTERNATIVES. It's not overpowered, the reflex sights are just crap. The red dot is too big, and people don't want them to begin with. Give us an IR/NV-designed scope without the nightvision.

These changes just prove SOE have no ******* clue what they're doing, and it's a shame as it's going to drive people away. They must not like all that money they've scammed already.

As a NC player on Cobalt , i can say that NC and TR harassers are way way more uncommon than VS ones , which ALWAYS roll with the saron , while nc and tr usually go with halberd , and i personally use my Halberd harasser 80% of the time alone switching seats, even more rewarding when i kill those camping magriders or 3 crewed harassers. What pisses me off is that i get shred by 2 skyguards... Also nerfing things or adding more resource cost won't help reducing the spam , it'll just annoy experienced players and make the noobs waste vehicles just less often.

Told to switch to Amerish by whom?

I've read his comments two more times since you posted this, and I agree with everything you said plus more.

See, on the last pass, I noticed he was really hammering home the "force multiplier" label for vehicles and explosives (which apparently remain untouched...). Not once were dedicated pilots or tankers actually recognized as having a "force multiplier" as a "primary playstyle".

This leads me to believe that the dedicated _____ driver playstyle is not one the devs welcome in their game. Vehicles were meant to be a wedge to gain some mechanical advantage (pun intended) over a defended base.

This makes me unhappy. On second thought, even if the changes are easily reversible, it seems like they're balancing from pure mathematical models while dismissing contradictory models from the community. Maybe it's just his personality, but I'm getting a LALALALALALALA tone from many aspects of his larger post.

EDIT: I found a picture that I think explains this whole situation perfectly.



Thanks, Gandalf.

I played today and I must say - loads of vehicles everywhere, even on Indar. Price tuning is fine.