PS2 fundamental design causes balance issues

For the people complaining about references to Battlefield - relax. Take a deep breath. I'm not trying to make Planetside 2 like Battlefield.

*HOWEVER*...Battlefield is really the closest contemporary I can find for the gameplay in Planetside 2 (having played planetside 1 for about 30 mins many years ago). Within any single territory, Planetside 2 plays out A LOT like Battlefield (specifically, I think BF2142 comes closest to the PS2 experience - with the addition of destructible terrain, bad company 2 and BF3 change a bit)

and Battlefield is an extraordinarily well balanced game. It's true, the BF series has had some *issues* with balancing out it's air power, but the series overall still comes closer to offering a wide range of ground, air and infantry experience with surprisingly consistent and reliable balance than any other franchise I've played (although I'll admit, Battlefront was pretty cool too)

But, Planetside 2's much larger populations, and relatively unrestricted travel of those populations, combined with the current system for spawning vehicles, creates a very different dynamic in moment-to-moment game balance in any one territory, which is what I was trying to point out.

Again, as many have pointed out, the only *real* balance factor currently available to players, is *player-based* population control. I don't fly enough to have a strong perspective on whether air vehicles are UP or not, but I know that two competent flyers can turn the tide in a roughly even infantry battle over a territory, and that seems reasonable to me. I also know that when the enemy air power gets thick overhead, the infantry appreciate the ability to switch out kits, and fight off that air with a relative degree of competency, without the whole bunch of them having to effectively die, redeploy, pick up air at the warpgate, and fly all the way back to their original battlefield.

Some people don't want to have to fly to fight air, and I can appreciate that - I'm a barely competent flyer myself, and the cert cost necessary to get the gear to make me a more competent flyer is higher than I'd like to pay at the moment (I'm still building my infantry kits), and PS2 rather considerately provides semi-competent infantry resources to deal with air, and ground, and so on. And this is fantastic - flyers can take infantry, can take tanks, but infantry can *also* fight off air with at least a semi-reasonable expectation of success, especially if they double or triple up - the balance isn't *perfect* (one guy in an aircraft is usually still more likely to win than one guy on foot, regardless of gear, and I'm okay with that) but it means that the infantry can at least *reasonably* compete against the air force, or the vehicle force

and, as some have pointed out, this is a key feature of Planetside 2 - that everyone can pretty much pick *any* role in the game, and have at least *some* degree of capacity to deal with every *other* player in the game, regardless of role, as long as they play with a modicum of skill and smarts.

The problems that *seem* to arise, as far as arguments of whether something is OP or UP or hax or whatever, is when any one set of people following one role run into a group of people that have, either by coincidence or design, deliberately filled up on whatever *counter* role exists - then, the air-cav suddenly runs into a gaggle of burster maxes, get torn to pieces, and rage that AA is OP. It's not, really - it's just that at that given moment, you ran into an overbalanced number of enemies that were, for whatever reason, specifically arrayed to deal with you, and *didn't* have THEIR counter in play at the same time (i.e. didn't have infantry/snipers/HE tanks bombarding the flak)

anyway, I'm starting to rehash my OP - point is, Battlefield games were awesome, PS2 is a LOT like battlefield in some ways, but some of the key features of PS2 that are *different* from BF create many of the *perceived* imbalances that are, I feel, not *quite* as unbalanced as people think, but are simply a feature of unrestricted populations, gear, roles, and location.