You were the one that brought up the religious debate point earlier in the topic ... I reiterated it as its still valid a good 20 plus pages later that you are the ignorant one simply repeating "YOUZ NOT LISTING THE STATS I LIKE IN DA FURMAT I AGREEZ WITH!!!" ... and have done since EVERYONE first pointed out you're not listening. This was really just laughing at the fact you're still harping on the same crap ignoring the numerous other people who have supplied relevant data, thoughts and points of views ... most of (if not all of) have since bowed out of this "argument"(at this point its not even that ... its just you yelling at the darkness in a sub forum no one cares about ... yep you're that terrible a poster the whole topic was relegated to MAX). Which is because you are intellectually dishonest or utilize straw-man arguments to prove your non-existent point, give it up chief ... it ain't happening. You have however firmly burried this topic and made a solid case for in game therapy.
I think you should burn the "game developers manual" that you were given by your "employer" which teaches you this.
It IS balancing them in the way the devs want which many have no problem with and actually agree. Without the CD/Cost they would be OP... with it, they are bearable... THAT is called balance. How and why this goes completely over your head is ridiculous. "Hey guys, let's do a huge "balance" pass and make everything die within 2 seconds if they are attacked by something that is designed to kill them... Oh, what fun that would be." - Don't make me laugh. If you want a boring game that has no difficulty then I suggest you look elsewhere.
You seem highly unimaginative. A set of capabilities exist for MAXes where they are balanced in value with the other classes. When that happens, they'll be underpowered. Then after the cost/cooldown is removed, they'll be balanced in value with the other classes. After that happens, combat will be deeper since there will no longer be an auto-win button, you'll actually be rewarded for putting some thought into each deployment. (Which will be a significant improvement from right now, where MAXes are simply the automatic (and therefore shallow) choice in many/most indoor combat situations.) "A boring game with no difficulty" is how I'd describe the current auto-win situation with MAXes. When I get in a MAX I stomp over people. This makes both my loadout selection ("well obviously I'm going with MAX") and gameplay ("I don't even have to put effort into this; their TTK against me is so long that this is easy") shallower and easier than if things were better balanced.
Look this isn't complicated: if the enemy expends more players to kill me than I've used to kill them, I'm the one countering them. Not the other way around. If the only way you discuss things in this thread is to criticize plainly-evident logic and evidence, without bringing any logic or evidence of your own into the discussion, I think that's going to signal that you're no longer trying to rationally discuss things and end our conversations. I'm really only interested in discussing the truth of balance, not in your automatic baseless nay-saying. Maybe if you used some logic in disagreeing with what I said, there'd be a discussion, but you're just like "Nope, you're wrong" essentially after each well-made series of points, and it just makes you seem very obviously wrong.
Yeah I brought up the religious debate because I was the only one citing evidence and logic, while everyone else just disagreed purely out of belief. And while I freely asked them to provide evidence many times, nobody did -- or if they did they provided flawed evidence and I spelled out exactly why their stats logically were measuring something other than weapon balance. Where are the people who've provided relevant data? I definitely did miss them and if they exist then theoretically you should be able to link to their post and convince me otherwise (because as the "science" end of this conversation, I can be convinced by evidence, if powerful enough evidence exists to counter the weighty evidence already showing my points to be true.) Calling me a "terrible poster" is exactly the sort of baseless mud-flinging I expect from the "religion" side of this argument. When you lack evidence or logic for your side of an argument, the most common tactic is to insult the poster directly (ad hominem) or to make baseless claims that the other side's evidence doesn't matter (which fall flat because (a) they're baseless and (b) the "religion" side has no supporting evidence of its own position.) So you can keep trying to convince yourself that I don't have solid, logical-backed points (and probably be successful at it, given that MAX is overwhelmingly your primary playstyle) but the fact is that the evidence shows MAXes to be overpowered, logic suggests they shouldn't be overpowered, and the potential path forward I've described is a place where players choose their class based on their preferred playstyle (not because one thing is overpowered) and then choose a loadout of that class relevant to the current battle conditions, which creates deeper overall gameplay (since it will have fixed the automatic-win class to be balanced instead.)
Well because it pretty much is that easy to counter you by now. You've created your own definitions for everything that you are arguing for. And no one else agrees with those definitions. It's impossible to debate anything if the two opposing sides cannot agree on definitions. Basically..... This was never a debate with you. Just you spewing out the same weird logic over and over again. ... Watch this: Nope, you're wrong. Attacking a defensible base SHOULD require more people than it takes to defend it. If the attackers successfully take the base while using more people than the other side, the other side WAS NOT countering them. Because the game isn't about getting more kills. It's about capturing more bases. A key difference that you fail to grasp. Winning fights is not about having a higher net KDR than the other team.
You call our evidence flawed. We call your evidence flawed. Or more precisely. The conclusions you are drawing from your evidence is not the same as the conclusions we are drawing. You are only looking at weapon balance. Everyone else is looking at game balance. Game balance is all that matters in the end.
You're trying to put MAXs in a position that doesn't need filled... It is already taken by other infantry. By making them weaker (doesn't matter if it's defensive or offensive) you are creating a gap between something that is crucial to the game. All weapons and vehicles have their place in the game, but when it comes down to it, it's the territory that is the deciding factor in who wins or loses. A MAX's place in the game is to bridge the gap between successfully defending/taking a piece of territory and stalemates. Vehicles help get you to the heart of the base/outpost, but it's the MAX's job to keep that momentum up. They are there to push in or push out enemies to gain the upper hand. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE JUST ANOTHER TYPE OF INFANTRY. By changing them to be on par with standard infantry, you are literally breaking the game's balance by making stalemates much more common. This whole "combat will be deeper nonsense" is just pathetic... You'd be making the game more shallow, not deeper. It's almost as though you think only one side gets to pull MAXs. If that were really true then they would be that "auto-win button" that you speak of. Just wrap your head around this really quick. Let's say you're defending a base and you've been successful. All of a sudden the enemy begins a push with MAXs and everyone notices. You, and many others, immediately switch your loadout to fight them off... This is the normal response. If MAXs were changed to the way you want them to be, the switch in the situation would be less dramatic or in other words, boring. Sure, people would still switch, but it would be a lot less important and it would be less chaotic. HOW is that better gameplay? Stop thinking the game is all about kills and your personal scores or K/D... It's MUCH more "deeper" than that. It's about your squad/platoon/faction and territorial domination. Everyone could care less how you perform at the individual level cause that's not what matters. What matters is winning and the COMBINED efforts to do such. What matters is knowing that whatever you did helped achieve victory, be it repaired a vehicle/MAX, mass rezzed a group of falling allies, or simply strategically commanded your squad/platoon/outfit.
Of course you feel the current MAXes are crucial! They're overpowered! The entire battle revolves around them! The idea here is to fix that problem, because one class shouldn't be that dominant indoors. If this was fixed, all classes would be important indoors, and the result will be deeper gameplay. MAXes don't really solve the stalemate problem because often it's defenders who are best able to accumulate and sustain MAXes. Whereas if MAXes became balanced the defenders could be pushed back more easily because there's no "automatic win" accumulation of MAXes, and it becomes much more about which side is more skilled. Level design is, of course, the primary cause of stalemated bases (apart from bringing insufficient players to attack), and obviously that problem should be solved directly (with level design changes) rather than using it to rationalize the status quo of overpowered MAXes. If things changed to be the way I'm suggesting, a MAX crash should still force some adaption of loadouts, but would no longer be such a massive advantage (since MAXes would be balanced instead of overpowered.) I mean you've just arbitrarily latched onto the current balance as good. What if MAXes had 5 times the HP as they have now? All of your arguments in favor of them would still hold true, but surely you don't think that a 5x-stronger MAX would be balanced. And if not, where are you drawing the line and why? Of course the game is more than personal K/D. But the game is about territory control, and the core performance stats (K/D, KPH, and SPM) end up showing which classes are too good at their job.
Your evidence was shown to be flawed for very logical, well-explained reasons. (Because it was showing other factors, like skill imbalance, rather than the true balance of things.) My evidence clearly shows MAXes as being overpowered (and really citing the evidence feels a bit overkill, given that you only have to spend a couple hours playing to realize that MAXes stomp right over infantry in this game.) It's backed by the logical reason why they shouldn't be overpowered (since balanced classes creates more interesting decisions, and a more skill-centric game where it's the skilled team that wins, not simply the side that pulls the most MAXes.) In this case it's all just game balance. Weapon balance would be if individual MAX weapons had balance issues (and some do, but that's not the point of this thread.) Game balance is the fact that in the indoor combat ecosystem, MAXes are blatantly overpowered which causes things to be a lot shallower than they otherwise might be.
If it takes 3 players to bring down 1 player, the 1 is doing the countering because they're being dramatically more manpower efficient than their opponents. Since you're unwilling to concede even this basic, obvious fact of game balance I guess we really are done. Logic and evidence are the only reasonable things we can talk about in a discussion on game balance, and if someone is unwilling to be logical or accept evidence, the discussion is over because that person has proven unreasonable and illogical.
You mean like you. If those 3 players captured a base that used to be in ownership of the 1 player's faction, then the single player lost. It doesn't matter if the single player killed 2 of them and the 3 of them only killed him. They still won. Yet the single player has the better KDR. But the single player lost.
MAXs are like Periods... They can be problematic and painful to deal with, but thankfully their frequency is limited. If you had the comprehension of at least a 3 year old, you'd understand everything I'm saying. Instead you're so stubborn that you completely disregard everyone's talking points but your own. MAXs are crucial for the very reason I said they are... NOT because they're overpowered. You're the only one here who seems to think they are. The entire battle does NOT evolve around them and you're extremely foolish if you think that no other class is important when they all are. You refuse to understand the purpose of a MAX and that it is SUPPOSED to be an aggressive force on the battlefield. It is NOT supposed to be equal to infantry... Never has and never will. So you can give up this pointless discussion because it will never happen. If MAXs had more health of course it would cause a balancing issue, the fact you even bring this up and ASSume that I'd still be okay with this is just immature and clearly shows that you're not listening. The line is drawn the moment MAXs become equal to a single infantry or become so strong that 3 people can't tactically take them out. None of those have been crossed. Every class' performance will differ... You simply can't compare any one class to another when each one performs a different role and has different gameplay. This is something you brought up earlier, but (again) you're contradicting yourself.
Ooooooh, good one! (That type of illogical 12-year-old response is why this is the last time I'm replying to you in this thread.)
I comprehend what you think happens, and that's why I pointed out the reality of what actually happens regarding MAXes and stalemates. And since that was really the only semi-valid rationale you provided for the status quo, that leaves us back where we were: with very strong, clear reasons to balance MAXes, and very little reason to maintain the shallow status quo. Again, a lot of it has to do with you being unable or unwilling to imagine the better game that would result when MAXes are balanced. In Planetside 1's outdoor combat ecosystem, BFRs were a powerful super-vehicle, able to kill multiple other vehicles each life. Basically they're exactly like MAXes except outdoors (very long cooldown; very high cert cost; slow, but very powerful.) If you're not familiar with PS1, BFRs were basically the single most-hated element ever added to the game (and probably rank pretty high on the list of all-time most-hated things in any game. Though naturally there are bigger flubs like SWG's CU.) The lack of a single better-than-all-others vehicle in Planetside 2 is part of the reason PS2's vehicle combat is deeper and more varied than PS1. So while PS2 learned its lesson from BFRs and probably won't implement a similar solo super-vehicle, they didn't follow through and do the same thing with MAX design. Which is a shame, because it behaves in exactly the same way, depriving the game of depth and variety. It doesn't completely ruin the game obviously, but it's this big missed opportunity where the game could've been that much deeper.
Can we please just close this thread of circular yelling at the deaf axehilt wall? Its done its dash and this guy cannot accept any view outside of his own, making discussion pointless.
Because claiming that you are the only one with evidence, and calling other people illogical because they don't think the MAX is too powerful is clearly a step above a 12-year-old.....
