Hey guys, this is a video going over some of the problems that I currently thing the max has, as well as a few proposed solutions. Some of them maybe a little off the wall, but the idea is to get people thinking about possible changes. Thanks!
I agree with the general theme. I have a slightly different take on what the problems to do with MAX units are, as well as general solutions: My take on the problems: MAXes don't require enough team work in large scale engagements to justify their current level of power as an "elite unit". You can see this in action in, for example, a Bio Lab. There could be dozens of MAX units around with little/no support. MAXes ruin small scale combat. You can easily pull a MAX and solo a lone player (that is much better than you) or a small squad. Because MAXes are such a threat solo, this also has a negative impact on loadouts that an enemy can pull. You might have to forgo Med kits to take C4, for example. MAXes need a little something more for outdoor work. You don't often see AI MAXes outdoors because they're generally too squishy given wide open spaces. Although the initial cost is reasonable, MAXes don't have any on-going cost unless you happen to kill them and stop their revive, hence, resources are devalued as a meaningful limiter. My take on solutions: Dramatically nerf the offensive potential of MAXes by default. The Engineer tool gets a secondary fire mode that applies a buff to MAX units, returning offensive potential to current levels. MAX units have control of the buffs applied to them. As long as the MAX remains within X metres of the Engineer, and the Engineer stays alive, the buff persists. An alternative type of Engineer repair tool buffs the MAXes defensive potential for X seconds with the secondary fire mode. (Y seconds cooldown). Buff the MAXes resistance versus small arms, as you stated in the video. Given the changes I have proposed above, 16 - 20k would be reasonable numbers. Rather than increase the cost to pull a MAX, give using the MAX an on-going cost. Re-supplying ammunition (whether via Engineer or a terminal), should cost a small amount of resources. Reviving should cost a small amount of resources. I have to say I don't really agree that a player shouldn't be able to pull a MAX and stay as a MAX as long as they want to, given appropriate support. That is not to say I think given extremely silly use of the MAX, they shouldn't eventually be punished with some form of cooldown, given that the MAX is a powerful unit. However, I do think the problem with vehicles and MAX units resource costs at the moment is more that they don't have an appropriate opportunity cost, rather than an appropriate cost.
I agree on the revive mechanism that is not right for the MAX actually. I like bot solution: Revive with 1 medic and engie simultaneously. It requires teamplay. But I'm afraid it also encourage zerg... The player has to pay a revive cost in ressource (350 ? 175 ?). Maybe this cost must be shared between the player being revive AND the medic. If ressource is not availaible, player is being revive as a LA (or in a special state, with only a pistol, but this is a toll on its following experience), or not revived at all. PS2 introduced (over PS1) the idea of 1 weapons per arm, giving them a lot of firepower. I also agree they should have more survivability and less firepower. As for NC MAX and NS weapons, I'm OK with NS weapons but NC MAX just needs to have a raisonnable CoF bloom per shot (we have a CoF bloom per shot of 1, compared to 0.05~0.06 for TR and VS weapons) to use slugs efficiently.
50% AI damage reduction, 200% health increase along with some resist. value tweaks. <------ More tanky, less killy. Despite being a frequent MAX operator with a very aggressive playstyle I would most likely be able to adapt and enjoy this more defined MAX type. Didn't watch the entire video, way too long to keep my attention, but you spoke as if the MAX was too powerful... which is something I can only laugh at. If you want to survive for longer periods of time, you will have to rely on team mates, both engineers and medics specifically. You cannot solo with this class, at least not for very long, and not very effectively. And that's a good thing. Playstyles, classes, anything that relies on team work should get rewarded accordingly. As for the MAX being to resource friendly,you're very wrong. Unless you're getting a ton of resources on the continent you're on, the average player is not going to be able to respawn his MAX when he dies. UNLESS he had been relying on his friendly engineers & medics to keep him alive long enough that the +50 resources added up to an even 350 over those 35 minutes he managed to stay alive. Again, he accomplished this by team work and personal skill, this is not something that should be nerfed. Tl;Dr: The MAX is a class that costs a lot of resources, quite a bit of cert points & relies on team mates as its lifeline. TEAM WORK should not be nerfed in any way, from or shape. If anything, it should encouraged. The MAX could however find a much more defined role if it had a substantial increase in health and resist. values, while at the same time had its damage output cut in half.
I don't really agree or disagree with your opinions. Your entire premise is that maxes are an "elite" (and I have seen other people throwing around this word too) unit that are supposed to be rare on the battlefield. I have never seen soe say this nor have they been implemented in the game in such a way. This is just your opinion on what you think max units should be. Do you also think that aircraft/tanks/everything else are elite units you should rarely see? It seems like you think that PS2 should be a game that is all about infantry with maxes etc. thrown in for the occasional change in scenery. I have always seen infantry as the bottom tier of this game, which they should be, they are free. There is no reason that a free unit should not have to use teamwork to take down a unit that costs resources and is designed specifically to kill that free unit. I would argue that the reason you do not run out of resources when you are playing max is because you are a good player. There are many lesser players who play maxes that lose them almost as fast as they can pull them and do run out of resources, and are then forced to play just infantry. You have said that Max units "ruin" infantry game play. Infantry game play would be ruined if there was no maxes. Just walls of stalemated infantry in biolabs if you could not max crash several times in a row. Once you reach a critical mass of infantry you must have something more powerful than the infantry available to mop them up, otherwise you just get stalemated. I think your suggestions are reaching too far too fast. If you want to make a suggestion I think you should start 1 small change at a time that people can agree on instead of sweeping game changing alterations that many will not agree on. For example I might be willing to agree to EITHER another resource change OR a change to how the ressing works.
The term elite unit is something I came up with as an idea to alter the MAX, not what I think they are right now. I don't think vehicles/aircraft would fall into this idea because they are a completely different part of the game. MAXs fall into the infantry category and as it stands can be spawned almost infinitely by good players. IMO an infantry unit that can be used in all infantry based areas(bio labs etc) and essentially has 10x the health of every other class in the game shouldn't be able to be used as often. You say that MAX crashes are used to break stalemates, and this I agree with. However with the ideas that I had, organized groups would still be able to Max crash fine, it would just cut down on some of the max spam. A large majority of maxs in biolabs and other infantry based fights aren't concerned at all with pushing out or accomplishing anything. Instead they know they have revivable beast machine that they can farm with. I'm not trying to make the max extinct or change it's current role, just trying to thin them out a little and make them used with more caution instead of everyone knowing it's not a big deal to lose one. Aside from that my main thing in the video is that I'd like to see more max diversity and options so that the max will play a larger part in teamwork.
I wouldn't blame MAXs' for the spam. The "spam" nature of the game comes the fact there are barely no restrictions on what is required to "pull" something. Currently, the only speed bumps stopping the player from pulling a MAX consistently is the resources and location of where you're pulling a MAX from (which there are many). Honestly, I feel like MAXs are in a good space right now. They're big and they're slow. They take damage and deal damage. + the resource cost has the added benefit of reducing MAXs presence as people are more cautious with them (generally).
You say the spam comes from the fact that their are no restrictions. That's why half the video is about adding some harsher restrictions lol.
I've already replied to this in a different thread ( although its abit different, still focuses on nerfing DPS , but making other weapons viable in a mixed setup versus having to dual wield the same weapon type all the time ) : First post : https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...ble-to-run-a-split-setup.159025/#post-2275540 Second post https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...ble-to-run-a-split-setup.159025/#post-2284907 TLDR version of this : I'd agree with what you've said ( cut DPS, but up the HP ) but this wouldn't come to fruition because of what I've listed in that thread. Also , this was posted before the AV changes ( convergence, etc) .... so.. have to take that into account ...... And that'll mean design changes to the NC max ( cutting the DPS would hurt the other 2 maxes in TTK , but they have vastly more ammo reserves to absorb the changes that aren't as big of a negative to them as versus say a NC max ) .
Some interesting ideas, although: - 'crossing beams' ain't gonna work outside of voice-coordinated squads much, if at all; something like that goes through - you ain't gonna be revived in your MAX ever; - big '**** no' to NS weaponry, more faction flavour, not less; the problem with MAX shotguns is that someone infinitely wise decided NC = shotguns and ran with it far longer than they should've been allowed to; just change two of the four existing shotguns into non-shotgun weapons and you'll be set (or better yet, screw shotguns); - availability of things like MAX, aircraft and tanks gets wonky the moment a fight escalates past a certain threshold, yes, but we are looking at a complete resource / cooldown / base ownership benefits rehaul here; things like a faction getting ~0 resource income when they are warpgated and infantry resource having way too many things that depend on it will need to be solved first, methinks; - MAXes get roadkilled as easily as the rest of the squishies do, enemies abusing no collision against MAXes without high alphastrike (i.e. the episodes like the one at the start of the video), engineers can't repair their armor before the medic revives a MAX, no optics, no travel mode, no inventory and other such limitations make me think that limiting them further is not needed as things stand currently. Dual-wield is the evil in all things related to MAX weaponry, if you ask me. And some very questionable decisions on ES abilities.
I'm not sure why you'd need to make them 'less killy'. Their damage is already roughly on par with most infantry weapons. Maybe I'm missing something, but the only advantages the MAX comes with is 10x normal HP, and the AV loadout with the most longevity when not near an Engineer. I think it's an interesting thought to consider your average MAX killstreak (especially if you discount the "Organized outfit MAX killsquad vs. 'I'm picking up the game because Mr. YouTuber told me to' zerg" fights), vs. what you'd get for the same resources if grenades weren't made of Flubber.
well if you are up for a radical change change you could force each arm to be unique, by which i mean the AI options would ONLY exist on the left arm, and the right arm would have AV, AA, or utility options, the weapons themselves would be buffed acordingly, likely by close to 50% (so the new max would only have 75% of the AI capacity of the current). Though it would involve a lot of cert refunds or weapon conversions.
I've been saying these two things since the first week of beta. If you guys played Planetside 1 you must be aware Max Units are different in PS2. In PS1 they were first of all made to tank bullets: if you fired a Max with firearms you were doing it wrong and you would receive a lot whispers asking you if you're stupid or crazy. Because firearms did almost nothing to Max Units: you had to fight them with mini-missiles, rockets, grenades. On the other hand the offesive potential was ok but not so brutal as it is today in Planetside 2. Max Units were dangerous only when the special skills were active. Why shouldn't we use them? We can cause more damage than anything else in the game, and at the same time resist more than anything else. Equip Auto Repair and Charge and you're likely to farm K/D all day long. In Planetside 2 Max Units are so popular because despite the cost they cover two main roles at the same time: they are tanks and damage dealers. This made the game Max-centric. So I agree with the boy above: less offensive potential (against Infantry) and buff the armor to sky. A Max Unit should be a terrible enemy not because it can blast you away in half a second, but because it can literally stand in the middle of a storm of bullets smoking a cigar and laughing like Santa Claus. It should almost be able to chase down infantry and smash them away using melee attacks like Sauron in the LoTR movie. I've posted this a lot of times: A Max Units should be like this: In case you didn't notice, Max have 2 weapons
The biggest issue I have with this game is that once a battle gets big enough there are only three classes worth using. Max, Medic, or Engineer. Everything else is fairly worthless to the actual outcome of the fight. And this whole problem stems from the MAX's existence. The medics and engineers are just there to keep maxes up and going, and pretty much nothing else matters. I'd be down for a complete MAX redesign that doesn't make them unstoppable noob friendly killing machines.
In case you didn't notice, those 2 weapons on a MAX a ****tier than your run-of-the-mill carbine even when combined.
I don't think make MAX+engineer synergy even more powerful is a good idea. If MAX need dependance, let make it infantery dependance, since they are already engineer dependant. (for that, just give MAX less ammo clip) Cut the MAXes AI weapon damage by half and increase MAXes resistance to small weapon by giving them a strong front armor value that work only against small weapon. This front armor will grant against small weapon something like 15 - 20k effective HP from front, but MAX side/top/rear effective HP stay at 10k. This front armor stack with kinetic armor. With this change, it will make facing a MAXes less frustrating (less instant kills) and will make them more vulnerable when surprised or flanked. That means MAX will need infantery to cover them but not necessarly engineer. I really like this idea with cost-on-revive for MAX. Before I was in then no-revive clan, now I'm convert. With a 5-6 sec revive, it prevent medic from revive a MAX under the ennemy fire, and with revive-cost, it will make killing MAXes usefull. Why not allow revived dead MAX 3 choices ? Refuse the revive, Accept to be revive as MAX (cost ressources), Accept to be revive as [nude MAX / LA / pistol-man] with 0 ressource cost. This ressource cost should be pay only by the MAX user : when a medic revive someone, he should be rewarded, not punished. About NC MAX, I don't like play them because they don't have choice and their only medium range AI weapon is called "NS-10 Burster". Why not simply make all shotgun NS weapon and give to NC weapon like TR machinegun or VS's pewpew ? @AccelPrime : I think you miss something : you gain ressource when you fight in area. For exemple, indar bio labs (controled or not by your nation) give +X (+3 or +30 I don't know) infantery ressource every 100/250xp. I think the only way to stop MAX spam (and vehicules/airplane) is to allow only infnatery to get these stations ressources. When you are in a MAX/vehicule/airplane, you still get ressource every 5minbut no ressource from xp. PS : How to quote someone without to do that with (quote) text (/quote) ?
except for the NC max's shotguns, those two weapons combined are roughly the equivlent of a normal infantry gun, except without ADS capability, and more much ammo. The NC max has full fledged shotguns on each arm, so it does have ~ 2x firepower, however shotguns, being shotguns, have MASSIVE damage fall off, huge spread, and longish reloads, on a slower frame, without having a pistol to fall back on if you need to hurt something outside of spitting distance.
