Hackmax has broken the game

Lashers are pretty handy also along with concussion grenades, but that memo hasn't reached the rest of the playerbase yet since they seem to believe they are OP when their not...

I would never, ever call Lashers OP. They're tactical weapons with low damage and specialized usage. After all the magrider zergs of the times past I'd be hesitant to suggest buffing anything Vanu, but if I had to, the Lasher would be the thing I'd suggest to buff.

Your using LOGIC something that the people who come and whine on these forums don't have.

I was talking about the NC Scatmaxes that everyone whining about them being OP, not the Lasher.

lol yes there is an issue to be nerfed lol

1) NC has the highest MAX usage among all factions

2) NC maxes are the most specialized and narrow-purpose

3) I rarely see NC maxes outside of biolabs, I rarely see VS maxes inside of those

Assymetric balance is fine, but the current design isn't versatile enough to accomodate different styles of play. Hackmaxes spam biolabs while other faction's MAXes see little use. In addition the MAX is a close-range weapon in general - since MAXes are bullet magnets as it is they ever get rolled out in CQB, where the NC MAX dominates by default.

MAXes rarely get used in an AV role or suppression, 90% of the time they're either doing AA duty or CQB, a role the NC MAX is uniquely suited to.

It's not an issue of NC MAXes being OP though - it's a design flaw with MAXes in general. Higby stated he wants MAXes to be versatile and have a varying loadout. What we are seeing right now is that any veteran player equips the same weapon on both arms dualfiring both weapons. Again this is the optimal strategy, but one that reduces game complexity and depth. Although a player has two weapon slots, it almost invariably always ends up in a mirrored layout. The only benefit is that the player purchases the same weapon twice - making the whole mechanic of two separate arms, for 90% of all cases, moot.

As I said previously, I believe it's a problem of MAXes being poorly designed, not a matter of the NC max having wrong numbers. A reevaluation of the whole MAX mechanic in context of the game is needed to address this issue, and we're getting that next GU.

NC maxes are just insane right now. Not even a "wow these have a lot of potential in the hands of a good player" insane, but just straight up OP in anyone including my 6 yr old and/or wife's hands...

Na, if anything is breaking the game right now it's Prowler spam. Going to be a lot of fun to come in here and listen to the TR tears when the nerf comes to HE and HEAT and it's a tiny bit more work to farm infantry.

You obivously don't remember the Lasher 2.0 in Planetside 1.

My God I never expect to see anything in gaming like that again if I live for 1000 years. The Lasher was a fine weapon, if one that needed a bit of skill to use well, but the whining...... people whined about all aspects of it constantly (being too weak that is).

So SoE buffed it...... they buffed every aspect of it AV damage, Lash damage, damage drop off.

They turned it into a one weapon super-gun and ever continent turned purple for a couple of weeks (until it was nerfed).



My overiding memory of the Lasher 2.0 was defending the end of the longest bridge in the game (it was in Hossin or Amerish over water so only mag and such could cross withoout using it).

At our end we had a massive force of infantry (AV, AI, engis and snipers), MBT, LBT & Air. We should have been an unbreakable defensive force.

At the other end the VS had 1 AMS and a Lasher infantry zerg......... they simply charged across the bridge Lasher spamming and over the course of 5 mins utterly wiped out our defensive force.








As for MAXs:

A shotgun is a shotgun, a LMG is a LMG.

A LMG cannot have LMG range damage AND shotgun CQC damage - and of course a shotgun doesn't have LMG range damage, as the video shows, the ScatMAX is out-DPS from 9m+.

Don't walk in front of my HackMAX. Simple as that.

Oh, let me guess. A hackmax killed you?

It's not just biolabs.

Once there's a hackmax near your spawn room, you're done. Defense over. There's no way out of it. Unless you someone how get 20 of your own MAXes to rush out at once and pray that you kill the hackmax while it's reloading. And even then, you'd have to worry about medics reviving it.

And that's only if it doesn't instagib all 20 of your MAXes.

what are you talking about, it only need 2 TR max to take out 1 NC MAX in CQC. unless those player decide to face tank the scatterMAX 1 by 1

You only need one TR AI MAX to take out an NC AI MAX, you just need to be 9m away (actually probably 7 or 8m would do it).


Also if they made AV MAXs fit for purpose it would help.

i was taking about CQC. Anyway a well certed TR max with twin mercy could beat ANY uncerted MAX at any range, just that alot of players dont really play well with TR/VS max

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/intel-brief-anti-infantry-max-02-14-2013.94185/

We have the same problem with Hacksaws as we did with mags and now prowlers, no i dont think any were (are) OP people refuse to change their 'run and gun' style gameplay in order to successfully engage these enemys, id love to see some of these whiners try to get inside an old PS1 tower with lockdown TR dual cyclers guarding the door, or even get close to the door with the VS spamming all sorts of aoe weapons at it. Funnily enough we did learn how to counteract these tactics.

Same as with magriders.

Scatter/hackMAXes are not OP. They're just overhyped as being OP, and everyone and their dog uses one. Magriders had similar thing. Prowlers now have similar thing. While not being OP itself, they're very often used in really large numbers, becoming dreadful.

The day when people will stop overhyping everything that causes their virtual death will be the day everything's perfectly balanced. Everything will have it's niche.

That said, TR and VS MAX can surely have some love. Give VS some decent weaponry and TR some more damage, or more armor. Armor is preferable, as we're going to get that one "special ability".


The most obvious problem here is that SOE doesn't seem to understand it. Their "balancing" strategy is awful, they nerf one thing and buff it's counters at the same time, leaving poor victim dreadfully underperforming. You don't do that SOE, you hear me? That's not how it's done.

The problem is basically the biolab situation. Take a scat max anywhere else where he can't quickly retreat to repair and its about as good as an armored shotgun user flailing his way unto death. Trust me I use the outside of the biolabs and rarely step foot using it inside the "biofarms"

Its not ruining the game, but the stalemate of cut off biolabs are.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AmUavphHXmIxdFhHUzJfN1VYalRnWS0xMnBUdTJpM1E&gid=21

The Hackmax is better than the average by the same amount that the Vanguard is worse than the average, both at low BR and at high BR.

I conclude from this that :

a) If the Vanguard's current state hasn't "broken the game" neither has the hacsaw's.
b) The hacksaw could be slightly nerfed and the Vanguard slightly buffed to even out the scores.

from the stats, not only the vanguard is broken, reavers too are broken by a large margin. More so than ScatterMAX