If you're just flying around and shooting planetmen for giggles, more power to you. But as far as assaulting or defending bases go, light assault really has no function outside of killing lone sundies. Heavy is better at taking objectives and pushing the frontlines. Engineer provides sustain with ammo / max repairs. Medic provides sustain with revives / heals. Infiltrator can use enemy terminals to pop extra sundies, and is an easier and more effective flanker than LA could ever hope to be. The only thing LA does better than other classes is bombing sundies. This is a problem in and of itself - in bigger fights, taking out a defended sundie won't happen without your team pushing in on it (in which case it's dead anyway). So LA's one saving grace is being able to kill undefended sundies, aka killing small fights and making sure the game remains unplayable at low pop hours. Am I missing something? You don't ever seem to see LA's in competitive or organized play.
They have more clear function then the other 'just kill with different flavor' classes, with more effective anti-tank and the ability to surprise people out of spawn instantly.... They are strong but competitive wise where all bases are covered and checked just yoloing on a roof seems like suicide so half their gameplan is dead, the other half i hate more then infils just abusing that hipfire buff to ttk race you but your ttk is way more inconsistent. Mobility is a strange thing to balance, but i'd say they are the worst class to fight simply because the second they spawn they are a threat, infils atleast have to sneak back around or hit insane shots that granted can be learnable and near automatic, but it still takes longer then just boosting over the nearest wall.
Disagree, a skilled infil can just phase into existence in front of you and instakill you at any range with literally 0 counterplay. Super cheesy class that ends up doing LA's job better than LA does. Being able to get into the fight faster doesn't do you much good when you could have picked heavy, medic, or infil and perform better in said fight.
LA could hide better in trees if we didn't have the infravision. Ask yourself, would the game be better if LA were less C4 fairy and more tree monkey, or narrow LA down to one function which is C4 fairy plus ugly black and white infravision? 1) C4 fairies plus black and white 2) More varied tactics, tree monkeys
I disagree, LA is great for flanking, going rambo and turning the tide of battle if you know how to play it, got situational awareness and know the map. You just have to keep playing it, it does take alot of sacrifice though, I will repeatedly throw myself into suicide missions just for the chance to find that 1 opening where I will cause absolute havoc.
Well in Planetside 1 there were no Light Assaults as we didn't have jump jets. If memory serves, the only ones were like the VS MAX and VS BFR. I do agree they have lost what purpose they did serve. They were meant to flank enemies from above areas such as canyons or jumping into the second floor of a base. They added more to them such as Rocket Rifles and that kind of made it be used over Heavy Assaults. Along side how easy it was to C4 stuff but originally it took like 3-4 bars to C4 a Tank. Which made them much less likely to kill a tank or sundy. Hence why you had the HA Rocket Launchers. They were suppose to be your vehicle killers and front line combatants. Their shield was suppose to give them longer survive ability in combat to keep the pressure on the enemy front lines.
Light assault I would say is your primary counter to Heavy assault. Its able to flank, Reach elevated positions, Counter sunderer spawn points and be a quick moving assaulter at the cost of less armor and shields. While I do feel that sometimes it can be a little too strong and some of the weapons they have were more of a weak patch to an isolated problem later solved by new base designs ( I.E. the rocket rifle to counter vehicle spam which also should be available to all classes like the thumper). The only class that doesn't really have a good purpose right now is the Infil class. Your two assaulters provide both anti vehicle and anti infantry support to assault a point, The medic heals everything, the engineer repairs and builds but the infil doesnt really infil. its just an odd counter to everything but nothing at the same time with no real purpose.
Infil are your snipers/scouts. Its why they usually go cloak and use an SMG for close range actually. Light Assaults were to quickly get to a location or flank the enemy. Its why they have jump jets it isn't necessarily a thing to fight heavies with. Originally in PS2 they were easy to kill because the heavies were designed to fight off enemies in numbers against them. Its why they have a shield and LAs don't. In an honest opinion. I wish they would remove the whole class system all together and go back to the PS1 inventory system.
Same here, way. sounds easier to balance and allow all the customization and flexibility that players want.
It's a lot harder to balance an inventory system than a class system. If you give people freedom – they will abuse it. It's the same principle in any game that has customization. Like APB. In that game, you could create freely change your character's appearance, add decals and textures. Didn't take long for Hitlers and white-splattered strippers to be seen.
Well you didn't have "full" character customization. What you had was specific things you could select based on what you certed into. The inventory system was very limited, especially based on what exo-suit you wore. The Reinforced exo-suit aka Rexo had 4 actual slots but only 2 could fit rifles and the other 2 could only fit either a pistol, hack tool, BANK (Repair tool) or medic gun. Which you can see the Agile exo-suit aka agile and an image below of the suits slots/inventory. Agile: I have a limited video of how it worked ingame below (Rexo Suit):
You see in that bottom left, a blue bar? Well that is your armor. To repair said armor you have to use the BANK tool aka Repair tool. Also there were no classes so there is no "Heavy Assault." You have a specific armor type and inventory based on the armor you wear. You didn't have to carry the BANK tool, if you didn't want to. But it was handy so you could self repair your armor.
Are you saying that current class abilities, like the Heavy's Overshield should be discarded entirely in favor of a dated system? I was under the impression you wanted to meld the current one and the old one.
The class system is just as dated as the inventory system. One forces you to stay within a class of selected weapons and abilities and the other allows you to select weapons ammo grenades and health all based around the inventory of the armor and what the player chooses to be important. All players used to carry armor and health repair kits, that cost inventory space and used up "ammo" to regenerate health meaning each player was their own medic and it wasn't a fast heal either, you had to have it equipped and couldn't fire any weapons while healing. Some player ran with extra health and armor to play as a "Medic" so other players could carry more ammo. It would be nice to meld the two together, having an armor be specialized as a medic for revives and health kits while keeping the health stims for individual solders. Having individual armor classes like light, medium and heavy would allow for inventory limitations on what you can carry. This would help to alleviate some issues like for example grenade spam while still allowing flexibility based upon what they player set up as a load out and what they armor could hold. People would have to sacrifice Inventory for Ammo and health stims for space for grenades limiting what you can carry, which of course they could do if they wanted to but it made them useless aside from those few grenades they carried, each rearm or reequip of a new loadout requires you to go to a terminal or a sunderer. Now Also keep in mind in prior "dated" game you couldn't rearm ammo from packs it was always from a terminal, Now everyone can rearm from packs and rearm from implants. This forced people to retreat to rearm or bring enough ammo for a fight Instead of rearming every 5 seconds from a pack like the current system does. There are a lot of good features in this current game that are nice and that they brough in because it would appeal to players that enjoy games like battlefield. Unfortunately with the current class system I feel as though the Devs are spreading too much of the same type of weapons to combat vehicles and infantry across all the classes bringing the advantages and disadvantages of each class closer and closer making them kind of meh in some cases. Hopefully the more the community talks about these issues and ideas the more this game can grow in a direction we all can enjoy.
Its really not any different than it is currently in PS2. Heavy Assaults can heal themselves with Health stims and their shields regenerate. The health stims run out just as you would run out of "Ammo" for you Health gun in PS1. The only difference is you can choose to carry more or less health stims in PS1 at the cost of inventory space and items carried.
First off actually the shield was originally called a "Personal Shield" any armor set could use it and it was an implant in Planetside 1. I am saying its less of an annoyance, giving the players better control over their decided kits, we didn't have or need LAs, honestly it was less bothersome in PS1 vs the way it is played in the current PS2 variation and btw yes a class system is outdated its been around since the first games such as D&D. The inventory system was a new fresh spin away from a generic and boring class system.
Inventory systems for shoothers were tried but did not really hold on. In my eyes, the inventory system is way more dated than a class system. Inventory systems sound nice at first because they give players all those options, but they have several problems. Either they are extremly unbalanced, promoting extreme min-maxing with only a handful viable loadouts, less than the class system would offer. Or they are pseudo-class systems anyway, forcing specific loadouts with only a small amount of actual meaningfull choices to be made by the player. Often they are actually both. TLDR: I am no fan of inventory systems in FPS games.
I mean the first Class system was in 1971 from a table top game called Chainmail which used what they called "units" but this is where D&D in 1974 got its official design for the class system. Class systems have always been proven to be the most unbalanced. A healer in WoW, originally could outlast a tank. Blade and Soul, the paralyzing abilities of the Assassin could overpower most of the other classes by itself as a single target DPS, could take down 2-3 people at one time. Just as in PS2 the LA is more useful than the HA now. Some weapons such as the Archer which can kill infantry pretty easily and do some decent damage to an armored tank. That weapon vs the other weapons makes it unbalanced. The first classless system really didn't come out till around the 2000's. Inventory systems balanced the weapons such as PS1, as this weapon is only good for certain situations. We didn't have a crap ton of rifles, they were pretty generic as we had access to the Gauss, Punisher and so forth. Which every faction had access to those NS weapons and then like 2-3 of their own actual faction weapons, which changed based on your faction. The punisher came with a rocket attachment. We did not have Jump Jets in PS1. The point of the inventory system is to make you design your own loadout based around your armor as you would consider this a form of "weight." Because you could only fit so much. Which created a balance. There was no real "meta" in PS1. What other players considered to be "meta" I easily would have no problem dominating them because I knew what they were using and it was easy to destroy them with a non meta build. It was what you, the player felt was the best build for yourself. Some people would use the Agile armor and a shield implant where others would use the Rexo with a sprint implant. Some agile would use the gauss and some would use the punisher. The only different weapons were actually the faction specific weapons i.e. the Jackhammer (NC) or the Minigun (TR) and etc. One was good close range, another good at medium and so forth. VS couldn't shoot into water was actually to balance the game, their accuracy was crazy good and as they only had a jumpjet which again if memory serves correctly was their MAX and their BFR. I have given you plenty of references of the outdated class system which has always had some balancing issues from plenty of player perspectives from a few other titles. Now show me the evidence that supports your case of the supposed "dated" inventory system. Because most games didn't use an inventory system actually. It is a rare occurrence. There are offhand only really 7 games I could list that used an inventory system. Face of Mankind, Planetside 1, New World, Star Citizen, The Cycle Frontier, Archeage and Infestation Survivor Stories (War Z). Now lets see how many class system using games I can list, WoW, Terra, Planetside 2, Age of Wushu, D&D Neverwinter, Elder Scrolls Online, Path of Exile, Genshin Impact, Diablo, Everquest, Final Fantasy XIV, Vampire The Masquerade, Star Wars The old Republic, Warframe, Hell Let Loose, Holdfast: Nations at War, Cyberpunk 2077 and Grim Dawn. That is 20 titles I could list that use a class system. You don't like inventory systems and I am not a fan of the unbalanced and outdated class systems. That is an opinion and doesn't matter in the grand perspective of legitimate issues with an actual system. Planetside 1 lasted from 2003 to around 2011/2012. That is a pretty decent time for an MMO to last. Reddit Quotes: "Blue_Moon_Lake And classes are pre-solved meta You can't prevent a meta from forming." "Muspel If you have "intended builds", then you've basically just made a class-based system that is harder to balance, and probably with less differentiation between the classes since it's harder to do things like give different builds fundamentally different resources." References: Wikimedia Foundation. (2023a, June 25). Character class. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_class Canutis. (n.d.). Dive into anything. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGdesign/comments/xkohd7/pros_and_cons_of_class_vs_classless_system/ Dive into anything. Reddit. (n.d.). https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/10ahl0i/class_vs_classless/ Game Developer. (2009, December 23). Analysis: The evolution of the class system in games. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/pc/analysis-the-evolution-of-the-class-system-in-games#close-modal Somnix-emerald-dream, Taree-illidan, Ragarèn-emerald-dream (Ragarèn), Burninator-kiljaeden, Ruthlessbro-sargeras, Soulpriest-gurubashi, Stigmata-queldorei, Akatsüki-stormrage, Wheremypanda-kelthuzad, Cahuuggoruon-aegwynn, Raistmajere-dawnbringer (Raistmajere), Homura-sargeras, Kaedreyn-illidan, & Prescious-sargeras. (2023, March 24). Intentional imbalance. World of Warcraft Forums. https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/intentional-imbalance/1552491 Thread: Is pvp intentionally unbalanced?. FINAL FANTASY XIV Forum RSS. (n.d.). https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/478332-Is-PvP-intentionally-unbalanced Why are classes so unbalanced?. Elder Scrolls Online. (n.d.). https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/625622/why-are-classes-so-unbalanced Keith BurgunBloggerJune 08, 2011. (2011, June 8). Understanding balance in video games. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/understanding-balance-in-video-games Burgar, C. (2022, October 14). Warframe: A complete beginner’s guide. TheGamer. https://www.thegamer.com/warframe-beginner-mods-weapons-upgrades/ LoisGordils, Satan, C., SebWanderer, Flammouricious, & Magevsgames. (n.d.). Warframe classes: Fandom. WARFRAME Wiki. https://warframe.fandom.com/f/p/3029177597817783951 Quinesis. (2020, August 2). Class system for warframes + parkour/stealth. Warframe Forums. https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1210478-class-system-for-warframes-parkourstealth/?ct=1689738812
Are you playing a different game than me? Because the game I play has the Archer as an engineer exclusive weapon, designed in an atempt to get more people to play engineer outside of tanks. Since you are counting PnP you have to go back to the 80s or even 70s. So you don't want a inventory system, you jus dislike LAs? Case closed. Press 'X' to doubt. Doesn't sound balanced to me. It seems, that PS1 had the same problem as PS2 has. An overall symmetrically balanced game has some points where the devs try to force their asymetric balancing. What kind of argument is this? Because normally a larger amount of examples means it is the way to be more successfull. This of course doesn't mean it is the better system (for some reasons DnD is still the most played TTRPG...) You know my time is limited xD. I have to C4 sunderers after all. In my eyes the main problem of PS2's balancing regarding the classes has two problems: Many outdated mechanics at the core, that were never updated. Updates that then were cobbled over those, but without really touching them. A good examples are all the goodies thrown at the class in attempts to get tankers Engineers out of their tanks.
