Some AP-Canguard footage.

Because it's not balanced. And if it's not balanced, it's not fun. By your logic why don't we remove all vehicles, remove all weapons, remove all classes, just give everyone a single pistol that can one-hit anything and be done with it. Would you consider that fun? If not, why? That's exactly what you advocate, the ability to defeat any foe no matter the equipment, no matter the circumstance.

The whole point of balance is some things are better against others, while other things are vulnerable to some things. One lone infantry is weak to a tank, why? Because being a footsoldier is free, you have a mere 7 second respawn time, you can spawn anywhere on the map, you have zero penalty for dying. A tank, on the other hand, costs resources, it can only be spawned from certain bases, it has a timer (don't say something stupid to this one, there's still a minimum time to pull a new tank due to collecting resources) and as such death carries the penalty of being unable to continue operating a tank. This was far more prevalent before the resource change but it's still there regardless.

Now how is it fair that you, as an infantry, being completely free with no penalties, have the ability to 1v1 a bloody tank that has those restrictions? At that point why should anyone pull a tank? It costs them stuff yet gives no advantages. That's not balanced in the slightest.

Everything has pros and cons, you get the mobility and the versatility of being infantry, but because of that you're vulnerable to everything. Things like tanks are more restricted and forced to specialize, as such they are good against some things and weak against others. That is balance.

If you hate vehicles so much why are you playing planetside 2 instead of cod or infantry-only maps on Battlefield?

I tried the Canister this evening and it can actually kill Infantry. Up to 20-30 meters maybe. Although the NC is the Shotgun faction, TR is in dire need of this kind of Anti-"C4 Monkey" weapon because of Anchor Mode. I really wish I had something like this on my Prowler.

I think you're mistaking actual me with some obscure image in your head. You seem to be quite content with arguing with that image, so I will leave you to it.

No, as someone who's worked on gameplay balance I just get tired of idiotic comments like yours. Seriously, why the hell are you playing a game that sells itself on combined arms gameplay if you hate combined arms gameplay? An infantry only battlefield server would give you EXACTLY what you want, why do you have to go around trying to ruin other people's fun because you think you should be able to kill anything that looks at you funny?

No, you don't get it. This image of me in your head has nothing to do with me, so please continue arguing with it without quoting me. Thanks.

I'm solely responding to your posts and your views. You're the one who said that a lone infantry should be able to 1v1 a tank. So I don't get why you insist I "have this image of you' when you're the one who said it rofl. Own up to your views and defend them, don't just cower away when confronted. If you think a lone infantry should be able to solo a tank then explain why it should be that way, how it's fair to the tank driver for it to be that way, why you even play PS2 if all you want is infantry, explain your views or don't bother making them public.

Humor me, please. Could you find for me that exact quote where I said it?

I say one infantry shouldn't be able to solo a tank and you argue with me over it. If you agreed that one infantry shouldn't solo a tank you wouldn't be arguing with me over it. Thus you advocate that one infantry should solo a tank. I mean there is no in between here, either an infantry can solo a tank or it can't, there's no middle ground rofl.

Okay, here:

You win. Congrats.

How is 25 tanks camping 50 guys in a base - none of whom can now do anything to stop it - "balanced"?

C'mon, you should know - you've WORKED on gameplay balance after all

Personally I think Iridar is right - tanks are in a really decent place right now...but they're only being used to farm. How is farming balanced? How is farming fun? How is being farmed fun?

EXPLAIN YOURSELF ANONYMOUS DUDE ON A FORUM!

If you actually read my posts you'd know that example ISN'T balanced. I've explicitly said that the best way to balance tanks is to make them rarer and stronger. There shouldn't be 25 tanks camping a spawn room, there should be 5 tanks intercepting reinforcements as the spawn room is protected inside the base away from their fire.

From start to finish, ever since beta, I have said tanks are broken and bad, I've continued to say as such in this thread, I don't get how you can even, for one moment, assume I think tanks are balanced in any way shape or form. Before you make posts you might want to read other people's posts.

I don't assume a single god-damned thing about you dude - I don't know you from Adam - I said, if you'd read MY post - that I THINK tanks are in a good place right now. They're not too lethal and anyone can pull them.

BUT - as I went on to say (again, if you'd actually read my post you'd have seen) that ALL THEY ARE USED FOR IS FARMING.

They might as well be tractors. Tank vs tank fights are GREAT fights to be part of and to be around - but 9/10 in my experience tankers would rather avoid enemy armour to farm infantry than get a death EVEN with the new resource stuff. So they gang up in their 10s, 20s, and just shell infantry.

But hey, feel free to just skim through these personal thoughts and opinions and just keep blurting out the exact same bollocks you have been in a vain attempt to "win" an argument Iridar already won 2/3 pages ago (and by the way, your solution to the problem IS ********)

When you make idiotic posts like this all you're doing is painting yourself in a bad light. You mockingly asked me how 25 tanks farming 50 infantry is balanced, I replied that it isn't and that I never even hinted that it was, thus subtly asking why you even bothered to ask such an inane question.

I also read that you think tanks are fine, but then you complained about farming. That's contradictory at best, and in your hasty attempt to act all smug and superior to me you didn't even bother to think out your post. If you think tanks are fine you wouldn't turn right around in the same sentence and complain about them. Either they're fine or they're not.

Your posts really don't even have a point to them. Literally the only reason you're making them is to try and make me look bad. That is, quite literally, the only purpose they serve. Just look at your last paragraph as further proof of this. Iridar said that tanks aren't busted, that one infantry should be allowed to solo them. I contested this as that is the very definition of unbalanced. Then a dozen posts later you show up and start flinging **** with your smug attitude.

If you want to actually discuss things like an adult, feel free, I'm all ears. If you want to act like a petulant child then it's not exactly any problem of mine when a mod inevitably locks this topic.

I don't agree that making tanks rarer and stronger is necessarily the only or even the best way to balance them. You actually addressed this a little further above.

Part in bold I agree with 100%.

BUT...

There just isn't enough fully realized urban terrain. Most bases in the game are just collections of spaced out shacks that can be shelled with impunity from a distance with little consequence for the tanker, AND there is little incentive for the tanker to risk getting closer to the buildings. Why would they? To capture the objective in the middle of the... oh wait, that's right, tanks currently have no objectives beyond team death-match.

A good way to balance tanks? Redesign bases to present tanks with natural bottlenecks that can't just be lol-spammed for massive certs. Make them truly urban. Then give VEHICLES objectives to goad them into areas where they are vulnerable, and have to rely on infantry to cover them to reach their objectives safely.

Now, you've balanced tanks AND promoted combined-arms play.

EDIT:

Incidentally, you'd also give the Canister exactly the sort of environment where it wouldn't feel like a lol-ful gimmick.

Ok, you wanna believe it's a personal attack, fine, you do that.

You're wrong. One single trooper SHOULD be able to kill a tank. Tanks should be glass cannons - especially given EVERYONE can pull them.

So unless you want to MASSIVELY restrict the "combined arms" aspect of the game and make tanks some kind of pay-to-win exclusive for members for example, or make them 750 nanites in cost - there's literally no other option. Anything other than them being glass cannons makes them OP to the point that infantry, and even aircraft to some extent, are just distant seconds.

This isn't a war-sim. It's an FPS. What used to be called a "blast-em-up" when I was younger (or Doom-clone, whichever) - and a game that's SO realistic I blew up an ESF with my ******* Commissioner pistol the other day.

Oh, and even in war - a real war? A SINGLE INFANTRYMAN CAN KILL AN UNALERT TANK.

Ask my Grandad.

(one addendum - if you really think I care what I come across as on an internet forum for a computer game - you really don't know me lol)
(2nd addendum - reason I "went after you" ? You're basically saying Iridar - an ACTUALLY RESPECTED member of this community - is an idiot. I dispute that claim)

Well I never said my ideas were the only way to balance them, they're just what I want. You can balance tanks around spam, but that would require each individual tank to be weak. Really when balancing things like this it works much the same way as an RTS. I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with starcraft and starcraft 2, imagine the battlecruiser is a tank and a marine is infantry. Well a battlecruiser requires a lot of various buildings to unlock and is very expensive compared to a generic marine. However a battlecruiser can also take on many marines without dying. It's rare, but it's powerful. Thus the entire balance is based around it's availalibility. If that strong BC had the same cost and requirements of a marine, then every other unit would be obsolete and pointless and nobody would build anything but BCs.

Basically, in simple terms, the more there is of something, the weaker it has to be. Since tanks can be spammed to such a degree you can't balance the game around one tank, or five tanks, or even ten tanks. You HAVE to balance them around 20, 30, or more tanks as that is what you will see in game. The only way to make sure they don't dominate the battlefield is to make them weak. Back in beta there were periods when MBTs were exceptionally powerful and you would see MASSIVE zergs of 50 MBTs per sides slugging it out because there just wasn't any reason to pull anything but tanks. You saw the same thing when rocketpods came out for ESFs.

So as long as MBTs can be spammed, they can never be strong. If they can never be strong, you will never see them be on the front lines. No matter what kind of objectives you put in say, an amp station, tanks will never go there. They're too weak. Two mines from any engineer insta-kills them. Two C4s from some fairy flying around can insta-kill them. A couple rockets to the *** kills them. As long as tanks are weak they will always stay on the fringes and play an artillery role, as anything else is basically guaranteed death. But you can't make them strong enough for them to want to go in closer because then you'd have an endless sea of unstoppable death machines.

So there's really only two options for balancing MBTs.

1: Make them spammable and weak

2: Make them rare and strong

As much as we may want to find a third option it simply does not exist. Sure you can do things to mitigate the damage, but the core problem will always remain. So given those choices, I'd rather have MBTs be cumbersome, restricted, and very powerful. I'd rather see a single Vanguard surrounded by infantry and know that that thing wont just blow up because 5 HA's with free, default rocket launchers shot at it. I'd rather see a single Prowler and know that he'll advance with us, he'll get right into the thick of things because he's not just going to randomly go up in flames because a C4 fairy took a dump on the top of him.

So it ultimately boils down to what you want to see out of tanks. Do you want to see massive herds of tanks that evaporate the moment there's any sort of combat because it turns out they're all constructed out of paper mache? Or would you rather see a handful of tanks, but know that each individual tank is a powerful asset?

Not really gonna bother with lengthy replies to you anymore, however a few things.

1: Combined arms doesn't mean you have a million tanks. Take a look at any war footage, when there's infantry working in conjunction with vehicles there's only ever a couple tanks, helicopters, or planes. You don't get massive vehicle zergs in real life combined arms, so don't act like just because it's combined arms we're obligated to have as many tanks as there are infantry.

2: A single soldier can, technically, destroy a tank. But only if they were sent out with the express purpose of killing a tank and thus given the most powerful AT devices ever invented. Your average infantry squad doesn't carry the ordinance required to reliably kill a tank and so engaging one is basically suicide. The absolute most they could hope for is, maybe, a mobility kill. I wouldn't be oppossed to a similar set up in PS2. The default launcher everyone gets does basically nothing to a tank but when spammed it's decent. However certed launches can do loads of damage but every rocket costs nanites and have to be rearmed like grenades.

3: Just because he's a "respected member" doesn't make him immune to being called out for stupid comments. Even "respected" people can say dumb things, and whether you're a fanboy or not the notion that tanks should be equal to infantry is asinine and horrible, you mention combined arms but there's nothing combined arms about tanks being bulky max suits.

You don't get massive armour zergs in real life? So Operation Desert Storm never happened? The Battle of Kursk never happened? General Patton never existed?

Tanks were designed to support infantry, other tanks were designed to kill those tanks to protect their own infantry. Infantry supports the tanks, but infantry is also tasked with destroying armour. All you need in real life is a grenade or a block of plastic explosive....like say...C4. Put it in the right place, even an M1 Abrams or a Merkava - best tanks in the world in survivability stakes - cease to function. Granted they don't explode into wreckage like they do on Planetside, but hey, this is a game about imortals fighting in a never ending space war - so let's leave reality there.

In game stakes - the very reason a single infantryman CAN AND SHOULD be able to kill a tank is to ensure friendly infantry MUST stick to friendly tanks to keep them safe while friendly air keeps them all covered from hostile air. THAT is combined arms. Numbers are irrelevant.

But the situation we have NOW on Planetside is that armour doesn't support the infantry, as the infantry rarely support the armour save the odd engineer with an FPS too low to do much else. As a result we have what we have - armour that should be covered getting picked off by C4 troops and blaming the C4 troops being "OP" rather than their own infantry or lack of situational awareness.

This is an infinite war fought between people who CANNOT DIE. What relevance does it being "basically suicide" have to taking a tank out? I can't die. I respawn. 9/10 of the times I run at one with C4 I get my **** blown off - and so does everyone else.

Depends on whether you think his comments were "stupid" - personally I think you're the one who's talking out of his rear-hole. Iridar is the one speaking sense. And no, I'm not his fan-boy, I just have a small modest shrine to him like all other Light Assaults.

Predictable to a fault. I was actually tempted to edit my post but I decided not to. You will note I said "combined arms". The only time you ever see massive tank zergs is when it's not combined arms, it's just tanks. By it's very definition combined arms means armor, air, and infantry all working together to accomplish a goal. An armored battalion with neither infantry nor air support roaming through the desert isn't combined arms. So when you have actual combined arms situations you NEVER see massive tank zergs or air zergs, it's always a handful of vehicle assets supporting infantry.

Also, a single grenade will never even damage a tank in real life, and a block of C4 likely wont either unless you manage to slap it on the treads. The only things that can reliably kill a modern MBT are very expensive, very rare, and very modern AT weapons. If you want proper combined arms you first need to make tanks as rare and as durable as they are in real life.

Because basically suicide means you die without accomplishing your goal. If we ported real life to this then what you'd have is some C4 fairy floating overhead, dropping C4, doing really nothing beyond scratching the paint, and then dying for his efforts because he came to a gun fight with a butter knife. The whole point of that message was to say that your average soldiers aren't equipped to take out tanks, which is why they call in support to deal with enemy armor.

You really don't know much about warfare do you?

Operation Overlord
Operation Supercharge
Operation Cobra
Operation Goodwood
Operation Barberossa

Just a few examples of huge armour, infantry, and air combined "zergs"

But hey, thanks for showing you have the military history skills of a 12 year old. Think I'm gonna just gonna leave you to your ranting