Heavy Shield- Rocket Primary 2.0

hopefully both

but I hate anyone and everyone who plays heavy assault so my opinion means nothing

The problem with this argument is that every class can use it. Every class pays the opportunity cost of using that class, LA's don't get heal, Engies don't get cloak, etc. So because every class suffers from the same opportunity cost it's not a viable balance point to bring up. However, the reason the HA is singled out as being OP is because it doesn't trade anything for it's very potent ability.

Just for example, all other classes trade something aside from the opportunity cost. Light Assaults trade combat adaptability, with relatively weak carbines and the lack of a tool. Engineers trade mobility to use their turrets and combat ability with their carbines for the power to repair and dispense ammo. Infiltrators trade health for cloaking. Medics trade combat time for revive time (Medic discussion being a more complicated one).

Point is that, if the HA is going to have an ability that makes it king of combat, it needs a heavy drawback for it. Either that or the shield can be changed so that it's the king of say, breaching and room clearing (or a similar something), instead of just any kind of situation that involves taking damage.

You know.. The funny thing is how people complain on the heavy assault having a shield (A system EVERY faction can access and use), But noone says a thing about the Vanguard shield. Tread carefully NC, For if the heavy shield goes, Who knows what will happen with your tanks exclusive panic button.

Do you really want to turn this into HA shield is OP thread? Fine. I'm prepared.

I've compiled a list of arguments (A) and counter-arguments that often get brought up in a threads like this one.

I mentioned this in the summary at the end, but let me just reiterate it: I don't ask for HA shield nerfs. It doesn't need to be nerfed, it needs to be reworked. A simple delay, unless it's a full second, wouldn't be enough anyway.

A: HA is needed as a crutch so bad players have a chance against "MLG PRO" guys.

All kinds of players use HA. Bad non-HA will have harder time against bad HA, just as "MLG" non-HA will have harder time against "MLG" HA.

Even if Heavy Assault class was only available to bad players, and only when they go against good players, so they're on level ground, how exactly is this a good mechanic? Good players work their *** off to be good, they deserve a higher score.

I'm not perfect. But I'm better than I was two years ago. I work hard on it. I sincerely strive to improve myself, every day I learn something new that makes me a better player.

If people want to succeed against skilled players, they should strive to achieve that skill themselves, not get a free win just by playing an OP class.

A: Most people have no problem with HA shield.

Baseless statement. Are you global consciousness? Or have you done polls? Then you don't know what "most other players" are doing. What you get is a perception, a biased opinion. Without hard numbers you see what you want to see.

My statement: Heavy Assault shield is a crutch for bad players, and it is harmful for their improvement in the game.

HA shield gives an advantage. It will lift a bad player to a level of a good player, and will lift a good player above other good players.

In a competitive game a higher skill player should always win. That's what makes competitive games interesting, that's why a game like StarCraft enjoys such huge popularity.

When you encounter a higher skill player and lose, your first reaction should be to try to improve yourself, so you can go against that player and win. Raise your skill level to answer the challenge.

But why bother when you have access to a crutch? You can just equip it and win that way.

A: What if I need to use HA to get better at the game?

Improving as HA is going in a wrong direction. Instead of teaching to not to blunder in unfavorable situations it teaches to flick on the shield and kill the threat.
Instead of teaching how to shoot in the head to win 1 v 1 engagements, it teaches to flick on the shield and kill the threat.

It's a dead end. Of course, at the same time HA will learn not to blunder in unfavorable situations. He might think like "phew this time my shield saved me, but I better not let it happen next time". But I doubt this actually happens a lot. Kill is a win. Death is a loss. Losses teach much better than wins.

Korean StarCraft players - often the best in competitive starcraft scene, people go to Korea from all over the world to L2P StarCraft - have this mindset: "I'm actually grateful to people who defeat me. If I win - I've learned nothing. If I lose, it shows I still have ways to improve".

A: There is nothing wrong with shield, you're just mad because you lost to a HA!

If everyone would blame everything on himself all the time, there would be no improvement in this world. Critique is an important part of getting rid of imperfections.

When Michelangelo was asked: "How do you create these amazing sculptures?", he replied: "I simply take a marble block and remove everything that's not a perfect sculpture".

When I round the corner and come face to face with an HA and die, knowing that I would have killed him if not for the shield, I know I made a mistake. Within current game boundaries I must try my best not to let such engagements happen.

But I also know it's a bad game mechanic that shouldn't exist in a competitive game.

A: Heavy Assault is the backbone of the army, the frontline soldier, it's supposed to be strong, it's supposed to win all 1 v 1 fights!

There's no "the frontline soldier" in an FPS game. We're all frontline soldiers here, fighting and killing each other. The fact that one of the classes has easier time doing that is bad game design.

Everyone being forced to play one class, or accept the fact they will lose most of their engagements to those who do use it, is not a good game mechanic. PS2 should not be a Korean MMORPG where there are classes for PvE damage, PvP damage, crafting and supporting, and each class can do only one thing and sucks at other things.

It's a bad game design for an FPS game. In MMORPG there's lots of stuff people can do. PvE, PvP of various levels, social and economical aspects. In PS2 all we have is PvP in one form. In that setting it's bad to have classes that have clearly more power than others.

A: But other classes have Jet Pack / can heal and revive / give out infinite ammo!

I don't deny the fact that other classes have more/different utility than a heavy. The problem is that utility doesn't matter in the part of the game which is FPS: guys shooting at each other.

As long your goal is to kill other players - which is usually the main activity in FPS - you're forced to play HA or MAX, or acknowledge the fact you will lose a lot of fights regardless of your gunplay skill.

Summary (TL; DR)

HA shield ability is a crutch for bad players, helping them to win when they should not have been able to. It makes going against good players insufferable. It invalidates competitive spirit of the game, and pigeionholes everyone to playing this one class or accept the fact they will lose more often than they should. There is nothing good or healthy about the IWIN nature of this ability.

That's why it should be redesigned into something other than an IWIN button. Heavy Assault is the premiere assault class, we get it. It doesn't mean it should be able to automatically win every single 1 v 1 engagement. There's lots of ways HA's ability can be changed to make it important and useful in both assault and defense, without making it completely overpowered.

An example of not-overpowered defensive ability:
HA summons a frontal wall-like shield that covers most of the Heavy Assault's body, but leaves head, upper chest and back exposed. It completely absorbs all damage, and HA can crouch to be fully covered by it from the front. HA can move at the reduced speed, and the wall will move with him.

OP doesn't even know what the change would be, but he knows it would ruin the shield.

Why are you wasting your time playing this game? You should be buying lottery tickets!

I know this because SOE cannot balance. Judging by the other changes to things whiners cried about, it will be nerfed in every way possible and made completely useless. Let's look at some other things SOE nerfed.

PPA- 'AHHHH! IT KILLS ME FROM FR AWAY NERF!'
Nerfed in-
Damage
Range
Splash
Ammo Capacity

ZOE'WAHH IT MAKES IT HARD TO HIT! NERF!'
Nerfed in-
Damage Increase
Speed increase
Strafe speed increase
Damage taken

Rockets 'This makes people whine. Send in the mods and devs! Also, get Mustarde on the line! Give him some bots and PTS, stat!'
Nerfed in-
Damage
Splash

Vehicles 'AHHH! I ONLY WANT TO PLAY INFANTRY IN COMBINED ARMS! A TNK KILLD ME!'
Nerfed in
Hover height
Climbing capability
HE and HEAT damage
HE and HEAT splash
Bullet speed
Bullet drop
Vanguard shield nerfed

As you can see, all of this, instead of being nerfed sensibly, were made utterly useless. This WILL happen to HA shield if SOE allows the forumside whiners to complain.

Well, at this point it's personal opinion but I would rather have a bunch of UP stuff than OP stuff. OP stuff is frustrating and gamebreaking and makes everyone on the receiving end of the OP weapon tear their hair out. UP stuff makes the people using the now UP gear frustrated. And considering how the game works, there will always be more people in the first group than the second.

That said I disagree. I do think SOE can balance. It just takes time and won't usually be done in a single patch.

EDIT: Also, just to clarify, many of the things you listed were justifiably OP. Call anyone who complained about them whiners if you want, and get mad at SOE for "overbalancing" (and I don't agree with all the changes they made either) but the point remains that they were either very frustrating to fight against or very much performing outside of how the devs wanted them.

If you don't play any more, why the higby are you here?

And if the heavy aims for the head...?

The problem with the shield is that it acts as an equalizer for bad players to either take less damage (reasonably smart play if it had a bigger downtime) or have a plain old health increase (reactionary, not exactly skill based). Its not very good design and that kind of shows since most players you encounter are heavy assaults.

It is of my opinion that the shield should instead be exchanged for DPS enhancer (make the class the DPS class, MAXes are the tanks) that offers various weapons boosts instead of straight up health boosts. This makes the MAX the room holder class and the HA the room taker class. The reason this isn't as bad as the shield is that the boosts wouldn't be as severe (not a 60% increase in DPS, more like 5-10% increases). This also prevents the ability from being reactionary as well, forcing preplanning regardless of the encounter.

Would obviously not work on things like shotguns (lol an autoshotty with even more DPS) and rocket launchers for balance reasons.

I'm not concerned in the least that the HA shield will change, the backlash from the number of people that will stop playing
isn't worth the small number of people that it will make happy AND the change won't bring any more new players into the game.

2 years into a game you don't have the option to change a classes base ability, people have invested time, certs and real $$$.

IF they do change the Shield I want a full refund for every cert/weapon/cosmetic i bought for my 4 characters.

Let me elaborate. As LA or Infil, you can use your own abilities to easily overcome that TTK disadvantage by jumping the heavy. As Medic or Engineer, I don't have any idea why a support class would whine about not being able to take down HA. It would be really OP if you could go toe to toe with a heavy AND res or repair. Also, you can jump the HA as well, though it will be a little harder.

You're welcome

Shield is fine and is what makes the heavy the heavy and should not be touched. Rocket primary was never an issue, if it was people would have just ran flak armor if it was that big of an issue, but it is easier to type on a keyboard than try to figure out a way to counter your opponent. Rockets should be rebuffed.

As we all can see by this video. Rocket primaries, Heavy overshields, and the song "Rocket Man" by Sir Elton John are all clearly overpowered and need nerfing. Now that the rocket primary has been dealt with I think that Rocket Man should be next on the list. The first thing SOE should do is ban those fabulous jackets that Sir Elton wore, along with the oversized glasses. These two things lead directly to the fabulous VS fashion and has done irreparable harm PlanetSide, as has been shown in the multiple "Why do the VS win all the alerts?" threads. Once that is done we can move onto the Heavy Shield, which is also causing irreparable harm to many a sensitive rear ends.

On a side note, thank you Mustarde, I got a kick out of your reply.

Aha. It's the over shield and it is OP. The only thing that is required now is certain infiltrator to create a thread about over shield with a clever video and HA will get nerfd, just like infamous rocket primary and nano weave. While some of it is justified a lot of it came out wrong like one shot kill straight pull bolt action sniper rifles which are incredibly cheap.
There is absolutely no protection from it thanks to nano weave nerf, especially VS sniper rifle (Ghost) if I'm not mistaken with it's no drop bullets. Slap on no sway scope and viola. Insta invisible, insta kill, insta invisible, insta kill, insta invisible, insta kill, Insta invisible, insta kill, insta invisible, insta kill, insta invisible, insta kill. Their number one argument was if you stand still you should be killed with a head shot. We all know if you want to be accurate you need to stand still or minimize your movement.
While being hypocritical they them selves stand still while INVISIBLE to line up a head shot.

What about LA and those roof tops? What about those trees and hill tops where only counter is another LA. What? You can't counter HA with HA? Those of you asking for a change are incredibly bias most likely HA stops your kill streak because you failed to use your class to your advantage and ended up facing HA one on one and face to face and then you point at the over shield.
You faced a front line heavy assault class one on one and you lost wondering why? Can HA fly, go invisible, infinite ammo, mana turrets?, repair, heal, heal others, accurate weapons.........

It said that infantryside was Fked Up

I like you, Mustarde, but I've always had an issue with what you did here. On Connery at least, the so-called "rocket primary" did not exist until you made this video. After this was published, people started doing it more. You popularized it to a large extent. You made it an issue.

Now the nerfs that came as a result didn't actually change much, but that's hardly the point here. The point is that you created (or helped propagate) an issue, swayed a good portion of public opinion to be in line with yours, and got SOE to make changes because of it. I have to ask - given SOE's reputation, what did you want (or expect) to happen?

Your time here has shown that you are a very reasonable and cogent person. But your actions in this case set a dangerous precedent. Any person (especially well known people) can make an edited, patched-together Youtube video portraying anything they want, and if they get enough people behind them (you know how group-think works), SOE will be swayed to change things. They talk about collecting data before making decisions, but they have bowed to public opinion many times in the past, and often they don't even start looking into an issue until there are enough cries against it.

If there isn't enough statistical data to make a nerf call, all you have to do is get enough people using the item in question to make up for it in volume. That's scary, and that's an abuse of power.

Good, **** heavies, they can learn to play the game like the rest of us.

I just want to point out that they are playing the game, just maybe not your game. By the rules that SOE has set out, they have done nothing wrong.

I honestly don't understand the hate towards the HA. I main Infiltrator and LA, and am now branching out into the Medic, and I never have problems taking down heavies. I'm selective about my targets though, which I suspect is something that a lot of HA haters don't do.

I've never touched a Heavy, yet I disagree.

I imagine it's equally annoying to them when they die instantly from 200m away (if they're moving, I can still close to 50m or so and get them before they notice me) or get gunned down by some guy on a rooftop.

He who chooses the battlefield wins the battle.