Heavy Assault is detrimental to the new player experience

I wish this game had BF2's class system:



Spec Ops- Carbines, C4, and light armor. Mostly for ambushing of close-range AT work.
Sniper- Snipes. What did you expect?
Assault- Assault Rifle with UBGL that was actually useful. Also decently armored.
Support- LMG with good armor and more bullets for everyone. But no AT weapons.
Engineer- Shotguns and PDWs with AT mines. Worked well in vehicles.
Medic- Assault Rifle (no UBGL) and medical gear.
Anti-Tank- SMG, rockets, and armor. Vulnerable to infantry but decent against tanks.

This can be applied to PS2 fairly easily.
Infiltrators- Split into two classes, the "snipers" and the "SMG Infiltrators".
Light Assault- Essentially the same.
Combat Medic- Essentially the same.
Engineer- Essentially the same.
Heavy Assault- Split into two classes, the "LMG" users and the "rocket" infantry.

Then you have less of a "one class to rule them all" and much more variation!

Plus of course more classes mean more cert lines and "new" content. Also more helmet sales!

Imho fighting vehicles or Max units as infantry hurts new players experience much more than HA.

Wow why are people using support classes to fight the HAs head on? And then we have some joker who says that no class should have a HP advantage over others. Do you think that this is CoD or something? Tell that to the MAX please (no I'm not complaining about MAXes).

How about we nerf LAs as well? It's the only class that can go onto roofs and kill people from where they least expect it. OMG NERF PLS. \x.x/

If are encountering only HAs, don't be afraid, because they will have no medics and they will run out of ammo very very soon.

Yes, it is a teamgame.
About killing the other team.
And we have one class that is better at killing stuff (and surviving) in all circumstances but one - huge distances where the infiltrator with his sniper rifle is king. Well, mostly. Heavies have access to battle rifles after all.
Shotguns, LMGs, SMGs, BRs, Rocketlaunchers(that can be pulled like a pistol) and even C4. The heavy assault is equipped to kill/destroy anything that is not either a submarine or flying at the ceiling.
And HA got that overshield on top of it.

That he is designed that way doesn't mean the HA is ok, it only means the design is flawed.

On the simplest level I always imagine stuff as numbers, offense, defense, mobility and utility.Mobility and utility are secondary stats and only worth 0.5 points for over all score.
Utility (because I expect this value to be the one that most people are going to attack - provided anyone bothers to reply that is) consists roughly of importance of the support, how easy it for the enemy to render it ineffective and the demand.
Infiltrators for example do recon. It is moderately important, the enemy can't do **** about the darts, and a single infiltrator can meet the demand in a fight of any size.
Medics on the other hand are very important, but when doing their magic they are defenseless and the enemy can easily interrupt it by killing the medic. The demand for this is usually higher than a single medic can provide.

And it looks like this for me:
Inf: O: 6 D: 4 M: 6 U: 2 Total: 14
LA: O: 5 D: 5 M: 9 U: 0 Total: 14,5
Med O: 5 D: 5 M: 5 U: 4 Total: 14,5
Eng: O: 5/6 D: 5/4 M: 5 U: 3 Total: 14 ( /X is when using a MANA turret)
HA: O: 8 D: 8 M: 5 U: 0 Total: 18,5
MAX: O: 7 D: 14 M: 3 U: 0 Total: 22,5

Well I couldn't have said it better - the other classes are for support, there is no reason to use them when you intend to fight.
And I'm very afraid when I meet a bunch of HAs. They only need a single engineer and maybe two medics hiding behind them and they're golden.

Yeah, be very afraid, for that is teamwork, and teamwork equals OP. But in case you don't know, you can try and apply teamwork to your own team and become "golden" too.

I play each class according to what the nature of the battle says is most needed. When this need is not obvious I play HA....or when I just fancy some uncomplicated running around shooting at things. I see nothing wrong with the HA class as it is currently set up.

I have to say I have never, ever been able to turn around and kill someone who started shooting me in the back (unless he was a really, really bad shot). But I have killed quite a few non HA classes who commit suicide by running straight at me, blasting away. Even then, the ones with shotguns who are in close range will sometimes win or get a mutual kill.

I have benefited from the shield - no argument. But then I have found myself in situations where I wished I had chosen to be able to fly/disappear/re-ammo/have an assault rifle instead. For me, choice of HA is more about having a phat gun (the LMG) and a rocket launcher, rather than primarily the shield. Give me sornething else, like the medic healing aura or claymores (I'd sacrifice C4 for that) or maybe some extra levels of armour to cert into and we can talk about taking something like the shield away.

6 or 8 out of 10 soldiers being basic resilient, ground-taking and room-breaching troopers and 2-4 out of 10 being specialists seems a normal sort of proportion. Although I do agree that LA is pretty limited in scope compared to the other classes, having no unique tool to use. I'm never sure if LA is another support class or a truly different kind of assault class. If anything, they are the class thatcould do with some additional resilience as, when I play, at least, I am a long way from help or healing and I have to choose between taking identikit or C4.

I see a disproportionate number of Maxes popping up in more battles these days. I see complaints about Max crashes but not so much about the Max class being OP. Perhaps the issue is that assault classes get more protection ( as per now the answer is - Max health, HA shield....but what to LA get?) while support classes keep their wider range of functions.

Yeah it was such a great class system. That's why everyone ended up playing medic....

What games have you worked on?

TBH i think they should have done the following for infantry:

Infiltrator & LA > Fastest walk run and sprint speed (100% as it is now)
Engineer & Medic > Middle ground walk run and sprint (80-90% as it is now)
Heavy Assault > Slowest walk run and sprint speed (70-80% as it is now)

This would create a drawback for having more health(shield permitting) more weapons and more ammo.
Id also be up for:

Infil & LA > lowest amount of health (same as infils currently)
Engi & Medic > middle ground health (sam as current)
Heavy Assault > highest health pool (say 10% more then current values)
Of course the above would have to be experimented, would need to see whether these values actualy make a diff to the TTK and BTK values.


The changes above make it so:
Fast moving > low health
Slow moving > high health

It gives infils and LAs a chance to say 'no thanks, im not fighting that heavy' and simply run off but still retains the heavy as the primary assault class of the game.
The engi & medic are important parts of any attack so should be more vulnerable to HAs.


Vehicles are balanced this way (kind of) i think infantry should have been too.

HA lmgs are pretty much a piece of ****. I will take any other class over HA simply because i can actually hit what i aim at. (VS HA not included)

If they modify shield they would have to fix the lmg hipfire / rate of fire / cof etc to be more effective.

My preferred fix is to have the shield like max shield. front only but not drain as fast(unless hit).

If you can't kill the HA in the time it takes him to recognize he is being shot (server latency .3 + reaction time .1 -.2 + latency again .3) before your client recognizes it and he has to spin and start shooting (.5sec ttk) for effective ttk of 1.2sec well you should lose.

Now lets assume you make the shield 1 sec delay even. You can kill him in .5sec already < latency+reaction times(.7sec).

Problem here is even if you both come around a corner facing each other the HA will always lose with even skilled players due to having the weaker weapon. How is that fair, they will never get the shield up with 1 sec delay, rarely get the shield up currently with no delay due to latency? Thus the need to buff the HA weapon if nerf the shield. Big can of worms.

You are talking about BF2 and not BF3/4 (which collapsed the classes)?

Just looking at the top 10 BF2 players, we have:
2 Sniper
4 Medic
2 Support
2 Spec Op

Which seems reasonably balanced. Sure we're missing the Engineer, Assault, and AT Soldier, but it's probably better than PS2's distribution.

If you look at the top 7 BF3 players, it looks like this:
5 Assault/Medic
2 Support

And BF4's top 10 players are:
8 Assault/Medic
1 Recon
1 Support

So what you see is that when you collapse classes like the later BFs have done (and what PS2 has done) you get a greater concentration in one particular class that is too well-rounded. The later BF's did have a problem where the Assault/Medic class was too popular... but this wasn't as much a problem in BF2. And the reason for this is because they significantly dumbed down BF2 by reducing the number of classes and thus eliminating the positives and negatives of certain classes.

How does this matter? Decimator is life.

remove RLs from HA, give them to engies as a utility slot except for lockons, make lockons commonpool and unable to dumbfire

lower shield HP from 700 to 300-400

this way they cant reliably engage everything in the game, and still have a fairly dedicated AI/AA/AT roll without being godmode ez class

Design isn't flawed, your belief that "every individual should be equal to every other individual" is wrong.

The other classes are still necessary, but they should never be as common as heavy assault, the generic "Grunt" soldier.

It matters because if you catch a HA out of position, he can't use the RL against you.

ballto pls.

That would screw up the balance.

how so

engies can already engage many things and are supposed to be dedicated explosives experts

heavies still get viable AV and AA weapons

IWINshield gets less op

Dunno who you are fighting but my shield means a lot when people flank me. Almost as powerful as glorious medkits.

How? Explain.

Over the years: FPS,RTS,MMO,RPG.

People always ask me "what games have I worked on?"......

Well to be honest theres been many over the years, some got on stream,some got on indie games or arcade sites, its been a interesting journey.

Either I had to lead the projects for a time, or worked on the skeleton crew that ended up getting replaced or came intoa project to get stuff together.

Let me ask you something, Do you ever hear about a good game balancer? Or do you only hear about when the bad ones screw something up?

I'm not claiming to be the savior of this games balance or anything, but I am more then willing and wanting to help DBG out if they give me a chance(or get in contact with me, which shouldn't be to hard).

The shield is not the problem.

Also....... If your asking "how so?" then you clearly didn't read or think about what you wrote and how it would effect the game presently.