KidRiots Interview With Matt Higby

Personally I found that interview one of the best / fairest analyses of PS2's history and totally worth a watch.

On the topic of MAXes, this is the first time I've seen any developer flat out say they don't fit the gameplay - that admission in itself proves Higby was more aware of balance than some give him credit for.

And while the existence of MAXes is down to Higby, their messed up balance isn't his fault. The game was rushed and they didn't have time to experiment with MAX balance before release. While their coders are always working on maintaining the game so can't make new mechanics that might balance MAXes.

He agreed the game was released too early and said they've found a better middle-ground with "early access" for H1Z1. They make a bit of money but everyone accepts the game isn't finished so don't worry so much about maintenance over new features.

If Higby could have had his way, we'd have had the Mission System, Resource Revamp and Base Benefits in at release.

A tank does not exist in a vacuum. Each Abrams tank has 4 crewmen, so right off the bat it takes a minimum of $4.8 million/year just to get one Abrams moving and firing. And that doesn't include the $1.2 million per year per person for all the support personnel required to keep said tank operational (mechanics, fuel truck drivers, etc).

Also, should we include R&D costs for the ablative armour, armaments, optics, etc that were designed for the Abrams in its "sticker price?" How about salaries for every member of every engineering team that went into the M1's design? Or field testing costs? Or training costs for the tank crew and their k-12 education, medical bills, retirement?

Like I said, a tank is not just a tank. It's a tank + crew + support personnel. If you add in the cost to support, maintain, repair each tank for 20 years it will be well over $100 million.

Infantry bear no cost? Wha?

Medkits, C-4, Mines, grenades..... Infantry are not free. The base unit might be, but hardly anyone in their right mind uses just the base unit. I have an HA loadout for assaulting a point that includes 4 medkits and a grenade bandolier w/ 4 Conc grenades. That's 400 resources right there - almost as much as a MBT (assuming I use them of course).

That said I do agree with you that things are currently balanced too much on the side of infantry.

So long as every single player has the ability to pull a MBT almost any time they want and operate one solo the balance is going to be skewed heavily towards having very weak tanks, Do I think the Devs went too far? Yes. Currently tanks are too weak compared to infantry. At minimum I think they should reverse the tank cannon explosion nerfs from last summer and add in the 30-40% armour buffs they've been talking about. That would be a very good place to start.

I will concede that I don't know exactly what the right "balance" between tanks and infantry should be either.

I certainly am not asking for MBTs to be as powerful as they currently exist in the 21st century.

And I am equally certain that MBTs need to be much more powerful than they are now.

Where that line is... I do suppose to some extent it is subjective.

But going back to the video interview of the OP, it should take into account both infantry as well as vehicle operator input, not simply what infantry feel about it. That's the sort of fairness and balance that we need, which was demonstrably absent from Higby's interview.

I call BS on Tanks Vs infantry needing a buff

Im a casual player nowdays, with my K/D as infantry around 2 and rising.

When I feel lazy and don't want to move my wrist to much I jump in armour and my average K/D skyrockets from 6 to 10.

I come around a corner as infantry, see that im outgunned, try to return back to that corner anndddd .... DEAD

I come around a corner as armour, I take a hit or 3 realise I need to get back to cover, so I take a sip of my coffee, take a nibble of my cookie and then casually reverse my tank back into cover. Then I hop out and repair it back to full health from half health in the time it takes a Heavy assault to reload an empty LMG.

And its always been this way for me in EVERY FPS I have played when you have Infantry and Armour running around together.

And the off chance armour hoars get insta killed by a C4 ( like in all the other games like this ive played) compared to the amount of times you get insta killed as infantry (a lot)

They cry and cry and cry and cry and cry cry cry cry ccrrryyyyy.

Why oh why?

I thought it would be obvious.

When you turn the corner as infantry, you are equipped with some sort of personal body armor (and in the case of PS2, a shield). That body armor offers some minor protection from projectiles and explosions, but of course it can't be too heavy or thick or otherwise you would be unable to walk. So because your armor is weaker, you die much more rapidly and to weaker weapons.

When you turn the corner as a MBT, you are driving a massive war machine that is one of the most powerful weapon systems in existence. Because your power for movement comes not from two feet but from a large engine, this means that you can carry far more weight than a puny infantryman. Whereas an infantryman can carry about 115kg (including his own weight) and remain combat effective, a MBT can carry over 61,000kg... about what 530 riflemen could carry. This means that tanks are simply going to have much more armor and much heavier weapons than infantry... completely outclassing them in terms of defensive and offensive ability (while going faster than an infantryman can run to boot).

Things that will tear an armored human body in half would do little to the hull of a MBT. Take the 20mm autocannon for example. Against MBT armor they generally would fail to penetrate most armor arcs, resulting in no penetration. But 20mm can easily cut through any infantry armor in existence, and would probably instantly kill the wearer of such armor.

This is why infantry die faster than tanks. And they should. Because one is an infantryman... and one is a tank. There is nothing unfair or unexpected about that.

Whats your point?

i'm a bit mixed, i think the same as you, that people shouldn't bash him, but i also remember watching all of those episodes of command center back when things like vulcan* and striker** were ridiculously OP and he would just be laughing about it and shrugging it off while it was ruining our gameplay.

* (back when vulcan had bugged AA properties and could melt liberators in seconds)
** (back when striker was anti everything lock-on and the rockets would clip through everything until they hit their target and you didn't need to keep the lock after the rockets were fired.)

the completely unbiased opinion of the tank camper that bought you the "When are the infantry AV nerfs coming?" thread lol.

You realise the British Army used tank-destroying crossbows in the 2nd world war don't you? And quite a few tanks were destroyed too, the Paras used them when they dropped on Arnhem.

Of course it wasn't powered by a 'bow' it was powered by a spring like in the kids toy and the bolt has a shaped charge bomb on the end of it, but it was pretty rudimentary tech.

*it was called a PIAT.

The problem with MBT's, and other vehicles and Max's, is that there are too many of them for them to be allowed to be the killing machines they should be. PS2 is suffering from a really bad design decision made right at it's beginning; the, very bad, idea that everybody should have full access to all classes and vehicles at all times! Had they gone with the PS model of a restricted, total, number of certs available to a player at any one time it would have forced players to compromise on their character/vehicle builds and reducing the total numbers of vehicles and Max's that could be fielded at any one time. This would have meant that they could have been made more powerful, as they should be.

Thank you Higby for being the person who made it so I can't go participate in any fight without dealing with a MAX around every goddamn corner.

That's asking for unreasonably a lot, considering what is needed to take down one infantryman: 1-15 bullets.

Scale is the enemy of balance in PS2.

With rapid changes in pop and ridiculous resource costs, certain combat multipliers don't scale well.

In addition, you simply can't compare PS2 to anything we, in the 21st century, would consider to have a root in common sense.

Remember, the "lore", what there is of it, in PS2. Soldiers are made from Nanites so death is irrelevant. Unit costs are irrelevant. No one has died on Auraxis for a long time. That is, until the exploration of Hossin and certain technical failures which resulted in some actual deaths. This, apparently "shocked" many of those involved.

Considering the above, mass soldier conflict has zero moral considerations of any kind. So why not throw troops at a target and have that MBT kill 20-30 in a row without consequence?

Because it's a game... and a game needs balance even when that balance isn't rooted in reality.

This is why tanks shouldn't be able to kill 20-30 soldiers at one go, for instance.

Many of us, former military or history buffs and the like will always be disappointed by games like PS2 for obvious reasons.

We can only hope that at some point either this game or another in the future can find a blend that supports the suspension of disbelief enough that satisfies our sensibilities.

The core problem with this game is its business model. F2P blows!

This is true.

This is coming from an armchair general. Not calling you that, just thats where your idea and statement originate from. Simply because that's what it says on paper somewhere

But in reality, a platoon WILL be equipped for the mission at hand. If tanks are KNOWN to be involved.. there will be ALOT of rocket launchers (assuming Hellfires aren't viable for some reason or another.. or they'll give the hellfires to the platoon mounted on their vehicles.. yes they can be mounted on ground vehicles).

To give you an example. A typical squad.. according to manuals and doctrine.. a squad in the Army will have 2 machine gunners and 2 grenadiers. The rest carry normal rifles. My section had 6 grenadiers and 10 machine gunners and 3 rifleman. Why so much firepower? We're signal, we have something important to protect... $10-75 million worth of communications equipment.

This is one instance where Reality (actual reality, not textbook) follows game play. Everyone can pull what they need to. Because when it comes down to it, you probably will have what you need for the mission at hand.

I want to add to this. My training (for Satcom) cost more than an Abrams tank. Now normal infantry training cost way less than my training did (though with recent advances in technology, this gap is closing fast. But its safe to say that only 15% of the Army is infantry, the rest is support elements (that double as infantry when needed, or to give the 15% a break, we rotate them in and out). So its very really fair to compare RL costs with ingame costs.

The other thing I'd like to add is this is several hundred years into the future. In the very near future.. we're looking at replacing vehicle crews with drone like capabilities. Lessening the crew requirements. But like you said, gameplay comes first, sitting in the warpgate droning everything would be realistic, but not fun. Fun and gameplay has to come first.

Not really disagreeing with either of you. Just clarifying and building on it a bit. Just understand that reality hardly ever works like it says on a website, in a training manual, or even in general doctrine. Events shape the missions at hand. Unless politics muck it up.. but I'm not going there on that double edged sword.

I don't buy he left his job to sit around in the basement. How much was he getting paid?? You got to be making made coin to say I will just leave my job with no plan for my next one

Well... I definitely am biased, but I'm not a tank camper. I'm very clearly primarily an infantryman. I don't even have that much time in an MBT at all.

But whatever you think of my point of view, certainly you would agree that a MBT can carry much more arms and armor than a little infantryman?

But aren't infantry also spammable? Arguably more so even than MAXes or vehicles?

If we need to tone down MAXes and vehicles because they are so spammable, then by that logic shouldn't we tone down infantry even more because those are infinitely spammable?

I would argue that because it is a valid military tactic in PS2 to send 20-30 infantry against a tank, you need to make tanks more powerful than they are in real life.

IRL you don't get that many riflemen running at a tank with C4 in hand, because 1) C4 doesn't work against tanks and 2) people like not dying. This means that the threat that tanks face in PS2 will be much higher than IRL and therefore tank defensive and offensive power needs to be increased commensurately.

Sure there will be unit variations. I don't dispute that at all. But what you get comes down to what's available and who's in line to get stuff. Your experience might differ from the "official" charts, but it's the official charts that set the standard.

The opposite could equally be true, that there are rifle platoons out there without a single heavy AT launcher. But I wouldn't take that as a baseline and then conclude, "Oh, obviously no rifle platoon gets AT launchers".

And of course if there is a heavy enemy tank presence, the rifle platoon might not be the proper unit to even handle that. We have a bunch of more effective ways to deal with tanks than to throw soft infantry at it; including air, artillery, and our own ground vehicles. Arguably infantry might even be your last option to try and take out a known MBT platoon. But if you did have to use infantry, there are definitely better teams to use than a rifle platoon.

But whatever differences in detail there may be, I think we can agree that there are still far too many infantry AT individuals (not even teams) in PS2 compared to the real world, where that number is effectively less than 100%.

that makes no sense at all, infantry are the default, they're the thing that maxes and vehicles are measured against.

its like making a soup and not wanting to over-do it on the onion adding and then thinking "hey well if i'm not adding as much onion maybe i just won't use much water!"
the water is the base, you can tinker with the extras, but remove the water and you no longer have soup! XD

(i'm hungry, so thats the analogy that came to mind )

But isn't that precisely how you make less soup?

You don't look at your recipe and say, "okay it calls for one cup of water for one onion, so I can just cut that down to half an onion and that'd be fine"? Instead if you tone down the onion, you also have to reduce the water. That's how you use recipes.

In the same way if infantry are the water and tanks are the onion, what you have in PS2 is just onion-flavored water because tanks are toned down while infantry are plentiful. To prepare a proper soup/PS2 you need to tone down both proportionally.

Hence infantry should be nerfed even more than tanks to preserve that balanced... more so because infantry are infinite. In that way you get the best soup/PS2!

Right now vehicles are meant to be cheap and disposable and they are. Anyone can pull them, you can repair them from near dead to full in seconds and if you lose it: no worries you can pull another one almost instantly (an MBT every 9min without a membership and every 6min with combined with a 750 resource pool).

If they are going to be stronger one then the ability to repair them or how often you can pull them needs to be nerfed.

They could add a new armor slot that gives you 2x more health for your vehicle but it can't be repaired. Stronger but still disposable.

So you think that, because you spent a few minutes worth of resources, you should be able to solo an infantry platoon? Yeah, that's balanced...