Infantry weapon changes - 12/12/2013

The lasher is the only weapon for HA currently in the game that fits the profile of the "support heavy", only problem is that it takes you from being a killing machine to an assist machine.

I don't have a problem with the infiltrator buffs at all, the only problem I have is I fear this will lead to an increase in infiltrators camping on hill from across the map taking pot shots and not helping their team. Infiltrators are just that Infiltrators not "snipe from across the map and not help my team with recon darts".

So since LMG hipfire is being nerfed...

I can haz LMG bipod plz?

The HA is the only class with dedicated weaponry to deal with both tanks and aircraft plus it is the only one who can deal with those threats while on the move and from a distance. Plus the HA shield gives him enough durability to go toe to toe with a vehicle long enough to deal some damage. On top of that you have AV grenades exclusive to that class.

The HA IS supposed to be for dealing with big targets and large amounts of infantry but not in a run and gun mobile fashion. The HA is more about moving in after the LA's have cleared the Immediate threats like run round a corner see a enemy combat while HA move in to secure and hold ground. The leaning to ADS means that your more expected to already be in ADS waiting for badguys to engage rather than going out and finding them.

Changes sound great!

Yes they do. Every thing about this update is sounding awesome.

So in short, CQB combat with weapons like carbines, assault rifles and light machine guns is now harder thanks to a general reduction in hip-fire accuracy, meaning it's harder to just spray someone down and more rewarding to aim down your sights for better accuracy.

Not sure what I think about that. I will have to compensate my CQB skills for this though. Adapting should not take long.

On the flip side, sniper rifles has just been granted a doubling, DOUBLING of their lethal abilities, pushing their OHK's abilities further out and making head-shots insta-lethal to anything from 200 to 300 meters depending on what weapon people use.

Not sure what to think of this. On one hand, when I'm sniping with my RAMS.50 - AWESOME, I CAN NOT OHK PEOPLE OUT TO THREE HUNDRED METERS!!!!! OMG!!!

But when I consider the absurd number of snipers we are likely to see in response to this and how idiotic it will be to move anywhere outside of cover as a non-sniper, I groan and wonder WTF you people were thinking. I cabn only hope you will monitor the situation and make changes as needed, because right now, the only people I hear celebrating are the all-time snipers.

And I swear, if I hear ONE MORE of those entitles little tools complain about this, the verbal smacking over the face will be obscene in how hard it will be.

*EDIT* Let me put this into perspective: With the top-tier bolt-action rifles an infiltrator can drop a head-shot out to 300 meters, and inside that range ANYONE except a MAX-suit will die to a head-shot.

300 meters is the actual render-range of infantry in Planetside 2. If the sniper can see you, the sniper can kill you.

Long ranged sniping has a role, that was my point...the eradication of high priority targets like the Engineers repairing the defense turrets or the HA about to rocket your tank. These individuals make themselves extremely lucrative targets at points where they are becoming high priority because they often stop moving...we take them out...your job at getting in becomes a bit easier.

With that said...

I don't think this will decrease the amount of SMG Infiltrators running in the fray and popping off those recon darts, and it'll be your long ranged snipers who use the Recon Drone we're getting. No real clue on what that does just yet, but the long ranged snipers are going to be the only Infiltrator aspect who can use this without essentially making themselves some ****** in the middle of a base flying a kite while the enemy tramples around.

So it appears that we'll be getting at least one more thing to do while we're out in the mountain taking out those targets I spoke of, which should contribute further to the role. When the sniper rifle cap was proposed, I lost all interest in the Recon Drone...but now that interest is renewed. We'll see what becomes of it as time progresses.

Unless you are lucky, you need to have lock ons (horrible idea) to deal with aircraft and the normal rocket is a mid range weapon at best. AV grenades are pretty weak, I run them more for the anti max ability rather than the anti vehicle aspect (I might have 5 kills with them, all enemies were on fire). Again, I don't see LA as the main front line force.

Could they fix the bullet drop on the BA VS sniper rifles.... I dont mind drop, its just in between the "just enough for you to notice and just enough for you to miss" after all our faction trait is "no bullet drop". If not make it at least manageable and let us use the mil dots.

Snipers just don't get it. All I have to say is if lock-ons are an "unfun" mechanic, then OHKs are right up there with it; no matter how you try (and fail because the positive will always outweigh the negatives) to "balance" it.

The only benefit left to HA's right now is their ability to be a CHEAP counter to air.

HA's get GTA launchers. That's it. The only unique thing. Even that can be ditched if you have the resources - just have a couple guys pull dual-burster MAX'es and you are set to do, you even get something more worthwhile for Engineers to do than provide ammo and man their AV turrets - repair the MAX'es on occasion. At this rate, all we will ever need in a core assault force is a bunch of MAX suits in front, guarded by Engineers behind to keep them fixed, supported by a handful of Medics in the back to watch the flanks and pick up and heal the dead. Unless the enemy shows up with loads of air, you need not worry about HA's - Engies will deal with those pesky tanks. And while we are on it, if only you pick up the MAX'es where they fall and get them to a terminal, you can even have them deal with the air for you.

At the end of the day, if HA's get nerfed to the point where MEDICS and ENGINEERS outgun a HEAVY ASSAULT, then they really have so little ingrained value you may as well ditch them and have your heavies go MAX units instead. SOE will want to be really damned careful about that.

I don't really like this change. LMGs aren't too good at hipfire, and nerfing it makes these guns less viable at close range. I'm especially talking about the 50 round magazine LMGs, they already don't have many bullets and nerfing their hipfire makes them even worse at CQC against SMGs,, shotguns and other close quarters weapons.

Well,

There's also the fact that were long ranged sniping removed...you cut out an entire demographic of players and hope that they choose a completely different playing style that differs from the one they want. Run and gun oriented gameplay and long ranged sniping are two completely different playing styles, both balanced and challenging in their own way. It's not like removing a weapon from the game or reducing the efficiency...it's removing an entire unique playing style. Grab a bolt-action sniper rifle and run out to the 300m mark...then start sniping. Pay attention to your SPM and compare it to your run and gun oriented class, and you'll start to get a feel for the process.

With that said, I don't pilot an aircraft nor do I often run a tank...so I couldn't comment on the lock on capabilities either way. You'll have to argue that one with someone else, I just don't have the information needed.

Currently a heavy assault should never lose a fire fight to any other class. If they do then they got out shot. The changes will not change that at all, just decreases the advantage a bit at close ranges and give LMGs more down side for how much killing power they have in one magazine.

I never said they never should lose, but should have an advantage over other infantry classes. Also in spite of the vast size of PS2, the majority of combat happens within mid-close range, at least if you are PTFO.

Abstract: I like the way the sniper rifle changes are going! I'd like to see the developers introduce faction diversity to the weapon class.

The sniper rifle changes really seem like a step in the right direction. I absolutely wanted the super sniper rifles (NC EM4 Longshot, TR RAMS .50M, VS Parallax VX3) to be able to one-shot kill foes with headshots at render distance; it made sense from a lore perspective and I don't think they'll be overpowered because of their obvious ease-of-use related drawbacks.

I am curious, though: do the developers ever intend to faction-diversify the sniper rifles (or the shotguns, scout rifles or battle rifles, for that matter)? They wouldn't have to make big changes, but the palette-swap nature of these classes of weapons really bothers me from a lore perspective.

Here are some ideas I've mentioned in the past for diversifying the sniper rifles:

• NC sniper rifles should have the longest maximum and minimum damage distances (this means that the Longshot should be the only one with a 300m one-shot kill) and the longest reload times, since they're firing huge, heavy rounds
• TR sniper rifles should have the shortest maximum and minimum damage distances and 10 or 20 percent more shots per magazine (because they have the opposite manufacturing philosophy)
• VS sniper rifles should have 5 or 10 percent less bullet drop (would this mean 5 or 10 percent faster projectile velocity?) and lower minimum damage than the others (because the VS use sniper projectiles composed of exotic semisolids that that de-colligate after sufficient exposure to atmosphere)

I want to stress that the stat spreads between sniper rifles should create differences of no greater than 20 percent from the maximum to the minimum, and no greater than 10 percent in some cases. Thus, the Longshot would have 5 rounds in the magazine and the RAMS would have 6 (a difference of 20 percent); the one-shot kill range for the Longshot would be 300m and the range for the RAMS would be no lower than 270m (a difference of 10 percent). The Parallax should come somewhere in between these values, like 285—a difference of 5 percent from the maximum. For another example, the Parallax could have a bullet velocity of 685 m/s and the Longshot or RAMS a velocity of 650 (a spread of 5 percent), but the Parallax would suffer a minimum damage equal to 90 percent of the others' at the longest range.

If it was one shot to the body then I'd agree with you but head shots on moving targets are challenging shots to make. If the player isn't moving making themselves an easy target, well that's on them. I am almost never head shot by a sniper. That's largely in part to situational awareness, making myself a hard target to hit when I'm in an area where I'm at risk of taking sniper fire.

I spend the majority of my time on medic, but when I do snipe, I'm going for head shots. If head shots were not OHK then there would be no point in even trying to make one. There would be no reward for skilled snipers, no fun in playing sniper in general, and thus no point in even playing one from my perspective.

The ranges look good to me and make sense for the role of each rifle, distinguishing them well. If people are worried about the effectiveness of snipers then the change to make would be to increase bullet drop, making shots more challenging. Removing OHK from snipers is an all around bad idea, especially when most snipers are not a OHK threat to players who are on their toes. The only exception is their threat to players on turrets, however they are the only reliable counter players on well placed turrets (outdoors).

I don't think lock-ons which are effortless can be held in comparison to OHK head shots which the player has to make a shot that can often be very challenging.

The bigger issue here is the nerf to the 0.75 ADS weapons. TR already complain about their Lynx and Jag not being good enough, nerfing the Orion, a starter weapon, should only be done under extreme circumstances and the Jackhammer, still not wholly trusted by its faction, may be covered by this as well.

And quite frankly, the SVA-88 (which i suspect is the root cause of this change) is an entirely average weapon outside of its ADS multiplier.

Anyway, sniper changes, you go ahead and do that. Im going to learn to fly an ESF and gun a Liberator again. **** infantry combat if i cant round a corner without being skull****ed by some kid with a sniper sitting at render distance.

Also, this was a chance to change the completely redundant Alpha Squad sniper rifles and after this theyre still barely better than the "starter" BASRs while being 10 times the price (for TR/VS).

To be honest, I don't care how challenging it is because all I see is an instant death screen. If it was absolutely anything else, I would say, "Oh I can do better next time." Not with sniper rifles. What snipers "suggest" to other players as "balance" is to either 1. change your playstyle, 2. get someone else to do it, or 3. run away. I don't want to be a lemming, or have to change my playstyle drastically, I want to be able to engage them at a reasonable range where we both have an equal chance of killing one another. Tell me, how do I have an equal chance at killing them without flanking or using the same weapon?

Edit: Lock-ons can be compared to OHKs because it's not fun for the person on the receiving end.