I think that currently, MAX and HA are problematic for the game balance and negatively impact the new player retention. MAX are really hard to kill for new player. But when a new player pull a MAX, veterans can kill it easily with C4 or concussion+rockets. That's not a good experience for new players. MAX are also able to stop the advance of ground vehicles too effectively, and when they see airplane, all they have to do is to walk 30m and switch loadout. They're too versatile. For HA, the problem is they're effective at both AI and AV / AA. A universal soldier would be awesome in real life, but it's a game and a game must be balanced to be fun. "But HA are supposed to be frontline soldier, it's normal they are infantry mower. So they can push to the point and defend it" Is the most commun answer. Then what's the role of MAX against infantry ? Exactly the same but with a nanite cost. So let's rework the role of these 2 classes into something more balanced and that will impact positively the new player retention. The HA should become a anti-vehicle / anti-air specialist and give its bullet-sponge role to the MAX and lose it's infantry-mower role (nothing with a 0 nanite cost should get that role). The MAX should lose its nanite cost and its AV/AA capability in order to be a bullet sponge for its team, specialized in pushing to the capture point while drawing fire. How to change the HA in a AV / AA specialist : Allow them to use Carbine and Assault Rifles Remove the "HA-only" property from LMG Remove the overshield and replace them by a built-in anti-vehicle armor, that work as if both kinetic armor (this one protect the head) and flak armor were equiped. HA's passive don't give them the 20% resistance to small weapon and the resistance to tank shell is increased so HA will be able to survive from any tank shell* Flak armor can't be equiped (obsolete) and Nanoweave armor can be equiped but will only grant the resistance to small weapons (other resistance won't stack with the passive). HA should be able to equip Tank mines * : IMO, as the anti-vehicle specialist, only HA should be able to survive a tank shell to the face while other infantry shouldn't, even with flak armor. How to change the MAX into a balanced bullet sponge Remove all its ranged weapons (AI, AA and AV) and replace them by melee weapons (~5m max range) Allow MAX to use different kind of shields to draw fire (MAX should get more xp from draw-fire than kills). MAX should be able to use their weapons and their shield at the same time. For example : a large shield able to protect the MAX and friendly behind him, a frontal shield that only protect the MAX but with more health, a dome shield that protect everyone within its radius. Allow them interact with terminals and enter/pilot vehicles like any other classes Keep their low mobility but add several option to reduce this con. For example, a suit that improve mobility or the come back of a charge ability. Remove their nanite cost and reduce their survivability without the shield to about the same as other infantry classes, except against small weapons and knife (50 to 100% more effective health). Since they are melee with low mobility and high resistance to small weapons, devs should keep an eye on MAX resistance to C4 to avoid the cheesekills without making them nigh invincible. Weapons that can be buy with BDC can't be removed from the game for obvious reasons, so here are some idea on what to do with this stuff without making it totally useless. LMG Improve their firing power, especially at long range so they'll be one of the best weapons while fighting in the open or to defend a position. Add huge drawback that will make them non-suitable in base or to assault a position. (such as the same mobility as MAXes and impossible to hipfire combined with long time to ADS) Should be available to engineer-only or any classes except MAX MAX weaponry Rework them into vehicle weapons OR add a Mech vehicle that will use the MAX weaponry Some of the AI weapons might change role to be more comparable to the Basilisk, Bulcan or Walker. So, what's your point of view on the HA and MAX problem and new player ? Do you think my suggestion will resolve that problem ? I hope I don't gave heart attack to the old PS1 veteran by talking about the walker/mecha.
Creative re-work of the Max platform from nanite-platform into standard infantry-play. Will Maxes retain their slow speed? If so, outside of absorbing all fire, wouldn't it be basically unarmed given Melee range at 5 meters usually needs speed in defense? And in offense, possibly if not killed before available, more efficient than any shotgun? (Bio-Lab Melee wall o maxes?) With the ability to use charge - that's the ability to reach melee range rapidly, and basically mowing down infantry hard. --- Which at 0 nanites, basically becomes the new nanite-free infantry mower indoors. What about the flak weapons on Maxes? (With the health, and firepower of a vehicle, able to use cover) Without that (as often impractical as it is), wouldn't Infantry be left with Rocket-launchers strictly for anything able to enter buildings, or fire from fortified positions - without complete open-angles to all aircraft fire?
I would be ok with swapping around the engies carbine and the heavys LMG. Then the obsolete mana AI turret can be remodeled into an AA one.
I think it will be a good thing if MAX keep their bad mobility. First, we all know how effective are carapace medic with a knife, now imagine the same with a 6000 EHP infantry : I don't want to replace HA era by "knife-to-your-gut-from-a-bulletproof-guy" era. Second, if MAX are slow then friendly infantry can follow them with more ease (and kill enemy for them). Third, I think the current speed difference is just right : non-MAX infantry can kite the MAX if they decide to retreat and MAX can catch standard infantry if the latter decide to fight. FYI, here are the infantry move speed in meter per sec (current MAX move speed in parenthesis) Sprint : 6,5 (6; after 4 or 5 sec acceleration) Forward : 4 (3) Backward : 3 (2,1) Strafe : 3 (2,1) Outside of absorbing small weapons fire MAX will be unarmed against ranged weapons, that the main idea of these changes. The ranged weapons of the MAX are the friendly infantry that follow him and that use the MAX as a meatshield. So if you're charged by a MAX alone into a room, all you have to do is to unload your magazine and the MAX will die (4000 to 6000 effective health), I'm fine with that. But usually, if you're charged by a MAX, you'll have other problems such as half a dozen of infantry packed behind him. IMO, that's why MAX can bring a knife into a gunfight and still be useful. About offense, it's not their main role due to their range. That said, they should be very capable once they reach melee range. I think the damage should depend of how easy it is to land a shot (max range and how wide the swing is) : from fast TTK to OHK on bodyshot. About charge, don't forget once the MAX have charged, it will be surrounded (without your frontal shield, you have about 1000-2000 health) in the middle of a hostile room, with a melee range weapon, slow mobility and no friendly supportfire. And it don't even mean you'll kill the guy you're charging. Charge will also be useful so hostile will still consider a MAX as a threat due to the potential charge. That said, yes, devs should keep an eye to that ability to not make it OP or a "get out of jail" card. For bio lab fight, it won't change a lot of things : MAX crash to win (even better with that kind of MAX), then opposite team use RL, C4 and explosive until all MAX are dead : melee MAX should die faster than current MAX to RL and frag grenades. Well I honestly, I didn't think about so thank you for the question. I'd initially thing about giving the burster to the Mech/Walker or to vehicles, but the loss of the "barrack-burster" will probably make infantry more vulnerable to airplanes and at the same time will certainly make the A2G gameplay healthier (it's not fun to being shot by AA max from the barrack since you can't retiliate). IMO that just mean the devs should start to improve both G2A and A2G gameplay once the MAX/HA problem is resolved. Ideally I would like to see a sort-of "NS striker" or all ES G2A reworked into proximity seeking RL. A quick bandage to the loss of the burster could be to add at least one AA phalanx turret on all facility, or to even make the burster available to the HA (here is your "NS striker"). Dev can also reduce ESF resistance to small weapon so all infantry can deter G2A ESF. In the meantime infantry isn't completely defenseless : you can equip flak armor, use archer, lock-on (no, these one are useless), Lancer or Striker. They can also bring ranger-harasser or skyguard, if the base isn't surrounded by enemy vehicles.
Something I also forgot: ES Max abilities - Gone with the Ranged, or adapted? The spawn-room Burster fire, was what most pilots complained about when it came to MAX bursters, Since if the Max was outside: one-pod-burst, and it died. Those AA turrets on facilities are incredibly horrid - most don't cover the bases, are incredibly exposed (let alone to aircraft), followed by their nature: Outside of the present range limit (shorter than ESF), they also are easily mulched by aircraft using their mobility for once to change attack angles. Flak Armor: Also isn't all that helpful due to the exposure time - and most G2A ESFs like to pack the AOE AI nose-guns in addition to the LOL-pods. Archer: As an Archer user, the ESF usually has to be an idiot, and you need cover - and pray they go Hover. Lancer & Striker: The one set of Options, with Striker wining, are ES. Harassers hopefully get fixed. But in an infantry situation, you aren't getting these - or having these. Same with the Skyguards - Most bases have the terminals & spawns exposed hard - with the path between also exposed. But you are actually considering most if not all angles, which is great.
Well for ES ability, they should be moved on the Mecha/Walker, and/or reworked entierly : no doubt the TR lockdown will be useless on a MELEE max. That said, NC and VS ability could be useful for melee MAX NC get a more resistant shield but that only protect himself (I plan default NS shield to be at least 2-3 wider than the MAX) VS lose 50-100% of their shield but get the same mobility as standard infantry. The current AA phalanx are nearly the same as spawnroom burster : you can only kill dumb pilot but it's really hard for airplane to kill you. (a engineer can repair half the turret's health while the ESF is away). That's why G2A and A2G should be improved : it's not fun to play, for both air and ground. For the skyguard / ranger-vehicle part, don't forget you can pull them from an other base. A solo Archer is only (too?) powerful against valkyrie, but once you stack Archer, it become far more than a little annoyance. At worst, it's better than small weapon against aircraft. Striker and Lancer are ES, that's why I think DBG should release a NS RL that look like the lancer or the striker. : because current lock-on suck.
What is your point of view about my heavy assault and LMG rework ? I don't think it would be a good idea to make the current AI mana turret a AA turret. Because it won't be effective enough at shoting air with it's limited gun arc. And if you change it to a 360 gun arc I think it will be too powerful against infantry. IMO, devs should just buff that turret in order to make it more effective against infantry it won't be obsolete anymore. (for example, improved ROF or more protection to the head against small weapons and sniper). I had the chance to test the engineer special implant (25% resistance) and the possibility to survive a sniper headshot is priceless).
The HA shouldn't be changed, the importance of the roles of each infantry unit should be changed instead. Nerfing the HA and MAX just to make other classes more viable is not going to be improving the game. A better alternative is to make the HA role less omniversally useful. Currently some main things infantry do is: Take a point, which the HA can do best, Hold a point, which the HA can do best, push through area/defend area which the HA can do best, protect themselves somewhat against hostile vehicles/aircraft, the HA can do that pretty well. If you start adding roles you can make the HA less omniversally useful and make other classes better. For example, you add a Forwards Station to the Medic that once deployed allows players who died within a 100m to spawn there. The Medics now have a role providing frontline support, creating new avenues for attack and keeping an attack going should the Sunderer be destroyed. The LA and Infiltrator will have new roles hunting down and destroying these spawnpoints, which they would be better at performing than a HA who would need to fight through morew waves of enemies spawning at that point to get there and take it out. Now add additional objectives before you can cap a base. For example, add shield generators that prevent access to the pointrooms. These shield generators aren't overloaded however, but need to be destroyed with brute force from small-arms and explosives. Now place these shield generators in buildings and area's that have multiple entrances, open-area one's that an Infil can more easily traverse and balconies that LA's can reach or thin open paths/stairs that take longer for non-LA to traverse. Perhaps also add objectives that the support classes will get better at. Such as allowing the Medic and Engineer to press and hold "E" at some places to place satchel charges and blow up stragetic objects. Add more things that can be hacked, like antennae that offer things like supply calldowns from orbit or the ability for friendly troops who died nearby to drop-pod in at that location.
{ LMG Improve their firing power, especially at long range so they'll be one of the best weapons while fighting in the open or to defend a position. Add huge drawback that will make them non-suitable in base or to assault a position. (such as the same mobility as MAXes and impossible to hipfire combined with long time to ADS) Should be available to engineer-only or any classes except MAX } - For simplicity of not-scrolling or multi-quoting madness for later. If I recall, you suggested to put it on Engineers, so that cuts the Ammo issue past reload. But due to their RPM, these weapons are usually great at closer-ranges by the decreasing inaccuracy. If created to be effective at long-range, their effectiveness up close still will be beastly - Which given the ammo capacity, mixed with the firing rates (not mentioning the CQC-designed LMGs, or the Gauss Saw), would likely end up as incredibly effective. Or it ends up as incredibly useless, compared to over weapons on the same Classes. With long ADS, no hip-fire, most of the LMGs become either situational gun-turrets on fragile frames, with no real position to which to use said weapon presently, that wouldn't be overshadowed by another weapon. Add in any mobility decreases, and the situational weapon, is either highly effective at mulching, or ineffective entirely - with barely any flexibility. Most weapons would out-class it, as they do at present - and if it does succeed, the likely-hood of non-Gauss-Saw LMGs with their RPM not deciding the fate of open fields without being out-classed or out-classing Sniper rifles becomes an interesting issue. As Gauss-Saws modified for this, would basically be Sniper Rifles, of a shorter-range, with less head-shot reliance. So it'd possibly compete with the shorter-range Focused Sniper-Rifles. Or it'd be highly ineffective or effective, that opponents faced with them are gunned down by superior or inferior Engineer-turrets, by situational reliance. IE, LMG's don't have much of a niche after the Heavy-Assault & Max changes. Most weapons achieve the wanted result better, in the wanted ranges. -- Demigan's changes to create different objectives to encourage & shift the focus from where the Heavy Assault shines brightest, also is an interesting indirect way of Handling HA's & Max Units.
You summ up the problem well : if HA are that popular it's because of the lack of objective other than "kill things", which is the main role of the HA. Adding new objective where HA won't be the best suited class is a good idea to make non-HA feel useful. IMO the 2 class that currently need the that the most are Engineer and LA. I'm still not sure if forward station will be a good thing to the game balance. I like your idea to improve LA and infiltrator gameplay (destructible objective that are more vulnerable when flanked), but I don't like your idea for the medic and the vehicle crew engineer : "press E" isn't an entertaining gameplay. About the non-crew engineer, they should have their turret gameplay improved and be able to build stuff on multiples "strategic build point" on all bases (both defender and attacker should be able to build on these points) For the improved turret part, for example they can have a somewhat safe gameplay by being able to place their turret from a 15-20m distance (change the animation to a throwable grenade that deploy into a turret) then being able to control it at distance. And if they choose to man their turret, the turret get extra ability (like a built-in minor cloak for the AV mana turret). For the strategic build point, I'm thinking about things like phalanx turrets, destroyable generators (basically your idea for the defender and a generator that help to capture faster for attacker), elevators / jump pad, teleporters, protections, shield gate on the sunderer garage, etc. The idea is to make people want to play the engineer because he's a builder and that can fight with what he is building, something else than the vehicle crew guy that the only goal in an infantry fight is to throw ammopack and then go back inside his vehicle.
Yeah, he completely broke the point of my whole thread here by bringing a better idea. (but I'm still convinced a rebalanced 0 nanite MAX will be a better thing for the balance than the current skillsuits).
I would say the Medic as well. So far, the Medic's roles are pacifying. The moment you need to heal or revive you need to throw away your weapon and pick up your medgun. There's no split-second support or anything, it's just "stand there, heal/revive the sucker, move on". You need to give the Medic similar roles to what others have, with options to defend yourself while you execute them. What would be bad about it? It offers a method to break out/prevent spawncamping. It offers a soft objective that varies with the amount of players. More players means more objectives (up to a point through the use of denial zone's). It allows Medics to help their team without being forced to constantly babysit their allies without a weapon out to shoot anyone who wants to see what the inside of their skull looks like. It allows attackers to keep a battle going even if the Sunderer is destroyed, but with a much more intricate system to keep the Forwards Stations alive and active (remember they have timers on them and will despawn after a minute or 2, at least they had just before the devs removed them from PTS). The fact that only players relatively nearby can spawn on it prevents easy travel or redeployside to have an easier time getting somewhere. I thought it was an easy solution. As an alternative you could give the Engineer and Medic access to demolition charges or something. Just think of it that they use their nanite-packs to create a large, timed explosive. When thrown it makes sounds and when shot it won't explode but will be destroyed. This allows them to break open extreme hitpointsinks (possibly construction items as well) and creates a more interesting dynamic between placement and defending it from enemy attack compared to the "press and hold E to overload/stabilize" generators we have now. So yeah, "press E" wasn't a good idea from me. For the Engineer you could also add micro-fortifications to most bases. These are tiny things which give a small advantage. For example, a console which protects nearby turrets from hacking until the console is destroyed. A shield generator which creates a 2-way shield on a door and prevents bullets from passing (but not players). You could power lightbridges, gravlifts, open/close doors, power turrets in advantageous positions, teleporters, jumppads, electrify a hallway (creates a painfield) etc. Again it would depend on the area and what kind of console/generator powers the hardware, but it would offer players a chance to fortify a position prior to attack and also for ways to divert enemies to other area's of a base to avoid something/hunt down a tiny objective. I should have read your post further before replying. I would like the ability that if you are manning the turret, you can deactivate your turret and move it around before deploying it again and firing. This way you aren't immediately stuck when you place one. It's probably too hard to code though. I don't like remote-controlling a turret though. How about this: When you move the turret, your character walks a bit so that it's always right behind the shield. This way your head also moves if you look left or right, and you can make it harder for snipers to hit you.
We discussed about medic a few month ago and I remember you didn't like my suggestions on how to extend medic's support role. What I suggested in summary : Improving friendly survivability while a medic take care of them (more satisfaction than "heal the sucker after the combat at the moment he use his medkit to show you how healing is useless") Add the option between improved medigun and helmet/weapon integrated medigun Heal and forget medigun Remove enemy corpse to ensure enemy won't be revived Improved Triage passive so medic don't have to switch weapon for scratch Maybe you've change your mind ? I didn't tested them on PTS and for what I could read on forum it cause a few problems : It replace Shield Regeneration Device but it can't / shouldn't be placed on frontline It make medic feel even more useless about their support role ("press E to complete your task" syndrome) What's the point to use medigun to revive ally when they can respawn litteraly 5m away, in a safe area and with full shield ? It's unknow if it can be palced within sunderer NDZ nor if it have exclusion zone with other Forward Stations. I see the independence from sunderer destruction as a bad thing : vehicles will be even more excluded from the meta. How Forward Station could be balanced with a full platoon on medic that use Forward Station ? The only good part I see on them are it might prevent spawncamping or increase the number of flanking road. That's why I think the concept of forward station could be dangerous for the game and as long as I don't have more info (not speculations) I won't like it. Something like this ? You idea on TCP / micro-fortification are more developed than mines, but we're basically for the same concept. I like the painfield idea (even if dev already did it on construction system). About your anti-sniper idea, you know it's already the case ? When you man a turret you're moving (and it don't help a lot against sniper. For the remote-controlled engineer turret, too bad you don't like it, because IMO if fighting enemy with indirect weapon is the main feature of the class, it will make at least some people interested in playing it instead of HA. That and changing the AV mana turret into a remote-controlled widow-mine (the dream) that cloak itself while outside of combat.
One thing I really hate about Heavy assaults is that they can survive 1 - 3 additional hits from regular infantry guns with their shield special ability, speciality if the Netcode in this game is bad and client based, you end up needing to shoot all of your magazine to kill heavy assault. I find it annoying because it makes them the ultimate class at engagements and other frontline classes such as medic, engineer and light assault helpless in engagement against heavy assault, even if they attempt to time their aiming. I have this many moments where I'm am - Engaging, flanking, meleing the heavy assault, and you're sure you're about to kill them, they all of sudden activate their shield ability and you either mess up and die or just die anyway. So yeah, please listen to OP, his suggestions are good.
OP here. Actually, since Demigan's post I changed my mind and I prefer his idea over mine : Let HA as they are (good at fighting in general with decent AV options) and make non-HA (feel) more useful or interesting to play by diversify the gameplay / meta to something else than farming kills. That said, I still think a total rework of the MAX into a 0 nanite melee-range unit with bullet sponge role will be better than the current "skillsuits" MAXes.
