So this was an idea I toyed with in Iridar's "My vision of Light Assault" thread. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/my-vision-of-light-assault.233365/ In it Iridar mentioned how the current meta of the game formed and how the LA was left without any real role in the game. So while thinking on it I mentioned that the soldiers in the game carry a **** TON of ammo on them, and developed the idea that if we reduced how much ammo LMG's carried with them, we could greatly reduce their ability to be anything other then a front line soldier. Directly to the Heavy Assult this will make SMGs and BRs more drawing, since they would carry more ammo making them more ideal to a heavy who doesn't want to be anchored to an engi's ammo box. For other classes, namely the Light Assault, this will make their weapons stronger because they would have more staying power in an assault, unlike the heavy who needs to have a pocket engineer to keep him from running out of ammo. LA would function as a vanguard/outrider class. Capable of acting away from the force, while the Heavy plays a more static game, only able to fight in places that are already secured.
LMGs are already terrible enough, and outclassed by every other weapon type in the game. it really boild down to people whining about how they are OP due to their shields when in actuality they are just as easy to kill as any other class. theres just more of them so people have greater opportunity to complain about them
Not at all. In fact LMGs are some of the better weapons in the game, and shields are op. I don't think that they should change numbers, but I do think they need to do something with them, because half the population having F to win buttons means that if you don't have one you're at a complete disadvantage with no counter play.
Make 'em slower.......they're heavy assault after all and those RLs as well as big LMGs with lots of ammo must weigh a ton.............Having an overshield can be offset by being exposed to fire for longer. Maybe not too much but HA already runs more slowly with the overshield up or when carrying an RL equipped. Make that their default speed at least and a bit slower still with shield or RL up.
The game was never intended to be balanced towards 1vs1 between the classes. If you want that, go play BF4 instead. This and every similar thread is people complaining about HA because they personally most likely dont play HA. So they want to have Jet pack C4, Eng abilities, Medic or other AND be on par with every other class. Which is BS in a PlanetSide context.
The Betelgeuse ruins this plan. Can't place a limitation like that when one faction can just bypass it. In any case, this wouldn't make it any less frustrating to get killed by a heavy, which is really the problem.
Honestly, after a lot of thinking I think the removal of flinch is what put the heavy on top. Before we could shoot a heavy first and they'd have a hard time retaliating. They'd have the lifespan, but they couldn't really retaliate. Today, without flinch, One shoots a heavy, and if it isn't all headshots right away, that heavy will inevitably pop their shields and slug it out with their assailant, and unless said assailant is also a heavy, chances are the heavy will win. Otherwise, if bringing back flinch isn't an option, the Heavy shield really is too durable, and this is exasperated by the fact that they only need to reload for every 50-100 rounds on average. In an FPS game, having extra health over your opponents is a huge, deciding factor in combat - especially when you can move just as fast and have guns just as effective as everyone else. Guns which don't punish missing nearly as hard because there's still 99 more rounds to spare. Jetpacks and cloaking are supposed to offset the heavy with tactical superiority and ambushes, but then, dudes with jetpacks are equipped with essentially LMGs gimped with tiny magazines for amazing hip fire (this can make a difference in an engi/LA vs heavy exchange in CQC, but it's still a huge gamble) and nothing else, and inevitably, they still have to play to the heavy's game - an exchange of fire. It would actually make more sense to scrap the medic and/or engi and mold them into the LA such that these roles could remain competitive in combat with the very straight forward and fairly care free heavy assault. But nah - anything that threatens the heavy's place in the status quo will be called on as being OP. And so we'll consider to see how "30%" of the player base rolling heavy still feels like 60% and pretend it isn't some game breaking problem. After all... so many other games aren't popular without a class/role that has extra HP and bloated magazines and self healing capability and... oh wait. The game may not be balanced around 1v1 fights, but the classes very much should be balanced with each other. The HA lacking a revive tool or infinite ammo doesn't justify their durability. Clearly we'd have more medics if the revive tool were anything for playing a medic for. Another (huge) nail in PS2's coffin. When developing PS2, DBG was so concerned with what sounded cool they never really bothered considering the balance of things. At all.
Because this is a competitive game, and people will naturally flock to the winning setups. And if you have a defacto winning setup, you're game is anything but balanced. And if it ain't balanced as a competitive first person shooter, it hemorrhages like a hemophiliac. Before tanks, before aircraft, before factional weaponry differences, if the very basics of your game are flawed, it collapses in on itself. The majority of us roll as Heavy Assaults because they can: Shoot at infantry -> With really big magazines, so no reloading for a large number of kills. -> The guns aren't as bad as people make them out to be. If they were, no HA would be making the number of kills they do. Have a rocket launcher, -> Which in a game with vehicles as readily available as they are, AV capability or complete avoidance is a MUST HAVE trait. Medics lack either, everyone else has sufficient capability. Have an overshield. -> Effectively ~50%+ more health. In any shooter, this is huge advantage. -> They can activate on a whim in exchange for speed. --> Said speed being the EXACT SAME as every other foot slogger. So super flexible. Have access to medkits ->Medics are needed just to spare these guys' K/D. -->It's a rare sight to see an HA with C4 because: rocket launchers. ->Coincidentally, Medics are also their ideal targets, because it's literally a **** "heavy assault" vs a real HA. They engage an engineer or infil and these targets flee, chances are they're leaving mines in their wake. They engage an LA, well, the LA will likely have the jump on them. Combat Medic? Stuck to playing by the exact same rules as the HA... only with lesser weaponry. So you have a class with extra long life spans, guns that are only ever so slightly less accurate than a rifle, with magazines that way outlast any carbine or rifle, a weapon to deal with vehicle spam, and in case they ever are injured, they can completely recover in time for the next fight. Basically, this class is completely, 100%, self-sufficient. Period. And in an FPS, shooting and killing IS THE POINT. You're either the class that excels at the point, or you're cannon fodder. The rocket launcher could have gone to the engineer or medic as a tool and the game would have been much better for it. In fact, the HA probably should have had the ammo box, since he's already loaded down with absurd quantities of ammo by default. Alternatively, the LMG could have gone to the medic and the HA gets the rifle, and he'd at least be limited in killing potential before being forced to reload mid-fight. It's mostly this ONE class that upsets everything in the infantry game because it commits the cardinal sin of balancing a "heavy unit" - all of the advantages, none of the drawbacks. This game is a mess, and this one point is only one of the nails in the coffin. There are many, and they're all because of terrible design decisions no other developer worth their salt makes. Then we have the other extreme - the medic, whose only purpose in life is to resurrect dead players and occasionally top off the wounded, except newbs are worthless as a medic because of a **** revive tool that takes forever AND punishes the formerly dead player with extreme vulnerability, while veterans understand the medic is just an XP pinata for everyone else. All he can do is shoot people, and revive dead people. That's it. One can find the former aspect in any other class and they all come with tactical quirks (or in the HA's case, brute force and durability.) The latter aspect of reviving? Ain't really all that appealing for the one playing the medic in fact. We all recognize that it's a potential tide changer - it just ain't worth sacrificing the capability to do anything just to occasionally pick up the few that do die outside of a killzone, and really, it shouldn't be the reason to **** the medic so hard as to be otherwise useless. Worse, if the medic finds themselves constantly picking up a pile of dead guys only to watch them die again over and over and over, they're merely delaying the inevitable. While the Heavy Assault needs to be toned back in some way, the Combat Medic class needs additional tools and capabilities to in some way to engage every possible target in game, and some way to support the living before they're dead or dying. They need to be commandos, not medics. Reviving is a side benefit. Veteran medics do so only when convenient and safe. But eventually, they trade in their rifle and healing mist for an LMG and shield. Like everyone else that actually wants to win in a fire fight. Oh, and to add before someone jumps my butt over infils having no AV capability - Vehicles had their color schemes adjusted some time ago because infiltrator vehicle hijacking WAS a planned mechanic... that obviously never came to light. Seriously guys, make some noise. It's totally something the infiltrator should be able to do.
I'm not really sure this is the way. I mean, take CARV. It has a 100 round drum magazine. Even if you nerf the reserve ammo to just one additional drum mag, it will still be 200 rounds total. Not too far off from carbines that carry 210-240 total ammo.
HAs are OP, simply because they are so strong yet do not need to rely on other classes on things outside of their specialty. They have plenty of ammo, and up to 4 medical kits. LMGs are good weapons, but don't do well outside of their effective range (bar some). The only reason HAs can actually win a CQC fight with a Carv is because of the overshield, and even then it gets close. Fighting with an LMG but not using the overshield can actually be incredibly difficult, as all other guns can easily kill you very quickly, removing the ammo advantage. But they do have the overshield, so they do win the 1v1s, which is their job. LMGs are fine, the HA self-sufficiency is a problem. I play HA almost exclusively (some medic thrown in there) and I know this is what makes me truly OP. In a 1v1, even if the enemy has a small advantage (not large) the HA should win. But he shouldn't be able to win fight after fight after fight after fight all on his own. He needs to have lost enough HP/ammo to not be able to keep going. The ammo part of LMGs is a problem, reducing the additional magazines to 1-3 (depending on LMG - 1 for Carv, 3 for MSW) would help. This would also give the Butcher some actualy appeal, as two magazines is 300 bullets. But I'm ranting on now. Nerf ammo and medical kits on HA, and Auraxis will be a better place.
What would it be like if an HA that was using nanite mesh generator or adrenaline shield had 100 less shields like the infiltrator because their energy goes into powering the shield or whatever. Just a thought, probably going to get rejected by many. Maybe resist shield would get used more often, who knows.
I think resist shield is more popular (I actually have no idea) among more skilled players because it can be used more than once every 30 seconds. Also, HAs need to have the slow on activating the shield lowered and then have their base speed lowered in compensation, after all, they're carrying an RL and LMG. That's a lot of weight.
I think the lmg should wait longer for cof reset, and also the need to crouch for ads effectively, you should have crappy accuracy when moving, forcing you to use hip fire in close quarter. Same for recoil, it should be even more noticeable on lmgs.
NMG is the only balanced shield in game simply because it doesn't recharge quickly. Theoretically, one guy might die plowing through that shield, but the next guy would have far less shielding to worry about, evening the odds considerably. Resist recharges very quickly and typically lasts longer than the HA has effective health anyway. Adrenaline recharges slowly on its own but also recharges around 20% on a kill (max rank,) which can effectively lengthen the shield's duration on a strong kill streak. Coincidentally, as a result it also replaces NMG if One wants a "hard" shield versus resist's softer shielding.
Currently, there are four mechanics attempting to make the LMG more of a "support" weapon rather than a run-'n'-gun weapon: Nerfing LMG hip-fire to the lowest of the main weapon classes. Reducing LMG ADS moving accuracy to the lowest average of the main weapon classes. Nerfing weapon equip/swap times to be proportional to magazine size. Restricting LMG access to low TTK RoF/damage model combinations. If we want to go further with this theme, you would need to use some combination of: Remove 0.75x ADS & 0.35 moving ADS accuracy from all LMGs Further restrict LMG RoF's to a maximum of 698x143, 577x167, and 469x200. Increase the time for LMGs to enter ADS. However, there are two problems with this. Firstly, it would greatly reduce the diversity of LMGs, especially for the TR and VS, and secondly, it does nothing to address SMG & Shotgun HAs, which would then turn into complaints about the NC (for having the best SMGs, and the Jackhammer). If we were to change anything about the HA (and I'm not convinced we need to), I would prefer it to be. Increase the rate of over-shield drainage when the player is not in ADS (double?), and decrease the recharge rate. This change would hit those HAs relying on the over-shield to recover from a positioning mistake, or to use SMGs and shotguns aggressively, but not affect those playing it "conventionally". The only downside I can see is that it might buff "defending" over "attacking", which may not be desirable.
I was just listing LMG changes that would make more sense for the OP's objectives. Before discounting LMG nerfs entirely. The only change I think would be interesting to try is my suggested nerf to overshield energy when used outside of ADS.
I mean, if you nerf heavy assault's too much, your going to find more than likely a couple of things happen. #1 there will probably be more tanks bombarding your base, as there are not as many people playing heavy to combat them, and all the other classes aside from the engineer have no real long range anti tank capability aside from some very obscure group necessary tactics. #2 you will probably see alot more medics and light assaults because they are honestly better than heavys in pretty much every way aside from the shield. I mean the assault rifle is the best gun in the game by far imo. And light assaults can do things that noone else can. As a side note, if you get a heavy 1v1 and he doesn't notice you by the time you have ads'd and started pulling the trigger, you need to work on your aim my friend because that's why your losing. It isn't the shield in that case, it is your accuracy. I don't think it's possible for you to see a heavy, ads, start shooting and hit all the bullets needed with some headshots, and have a heavy turn around and kill you before you can kill him. Every time i have played, and someone has got the drop on me, and i wound up killing them, it was more them missing too much than it was me having a super duper shield. The very accurate people that play on emerald, will **** all over you if they get the drop on you no matter what class your playing.
