Tank/Liberator Changes Update

Is the direct hit damage of the shredder increasing to compensate for losing blast damage? Because that's the difference between a fair change (losing its AI role, but keeping AA and AV) and a terrible change (where it becomes strictly worse at everything.)

Slight concern regarding infils and the dalton/zephyr blast damage changes. 450 damage drops the dalton and zephyr to a three shot kill against all infantry except for infiltrators which are still a 2 shot kill due to their health pool being 900 instead of 1000 like most calsses. As someone who plays infil a lot that seems rather unfortunate since it would mean almost no change for our class when it comes to libs. Would it be at all possible to make those damage values slightly lower? Say, 425 or 400? Just a minor change, so that infil's aren't dieing before all other classes.

Shredder is AA/AV IMO. Right now it can be used as AI in a pinch, but I'm okay with losing that capability as long as it stays as effective against vehicles.

Some of us in those 60 pages are perfectly happy to trade a little velocity for the massive benefit of reverse and stabilization, and would prefer you didn't deny our existence. Thanks.

thats EXACTLY that they should be doing!.

which if the basis for change is truely because of HE tank rounds..... then we must ask....... WHY HAVEN'T THEY REMOVED THEM YET????

really now....... The sales of HE tank rounds over the years is minimal compared to the opportunity cost of all those players that have left the game(that they could have spent alot of money on).

Meaning HE rounds have effectively been costing SOE players and alot of possible members/players & SC buyers in the thousands for this game.....

Let that sink it.

HE Tank rounds are making this game do less then it should be financially and popularity wise.

the longer they are still in the game, the longer the game will suffer.


thats a hard truth.

Flak 1 becomes a pretty good investment though, because it raises shots to kill by 1. Anyways, those hits have to be pretty much directly on, meaning they'd happen only when the liberators had no distractions and ample time to aim(e.i., meaning you'd be dead anyways.)

A perfect example of what I mean. When Phoenix launchers came out, they could one shot infantry, it was hilarious to fly a missile into someone head and kill them, and so everyone used them, and there were Phoenixs flying everywhere, and it was awesome.

Now of course that's rather OP but what they should have done was worked on the counter. Made them more audible, more visible, easier to shoot down, more reliably rendered etc. So that, for example, a Sunderer being attacked by a squad of Phoenixs could reliably defend itself with a Basilisk.

Of course instead of keeping the fun aspects of the weapon and adding more to increase the gameplays depth, they chose to "balance" it so that no one would bother using it anymore.

The Harasser was another one.

As I said, what the Lib needs isn't a nerf, it needs a way to be countered. Infantry deployable bombardment shields, some kind of Liberator specific heavy weapon or deployable turret, giving BR1 players ANYTHING that allows them not to be farmed by air units, make bolt action sniper rifle shots to the engines do damage, add a slow velocity heavy flak turret to bases that has a much wider blast and detonation radius that can only detonate after a fixed distance to stop libs hover farming.

...but no, instead of adding depth to the gameplay what we get is the ongoing campaign to get people to stop using powerful weapons by making them boring to use.

Point isn't that infils should have to have flak or that it's a "small" blast radius. It's that infils are infantry as well, and having a subset of infantry that are decisively more vulnerable to libs is kind of silly. If they want to reduce effectiveness against infantry, they should include all of them, not leave one class hanging due to an arbitrary health deduction.

The intention here is to encourage close-range combat, which actually is pretty fun. They way they plan to do it is misguided (nerfing tanks) but the underlying intention is honorable.

Bases, and spawnrooms especially, need improvements in cover from air threats. Though not a direct counter, it wouldn't go a long way in fixing the relation of air and infantry within bases. However, this issue is somewhat alleviated by the proposed belly-gun changed in regards to their AI capabilities.

You've got it all wrong. Shredder is the only fun AI weapon in the game that actually rewards accuracy. That is if you don't just get to hover above a spawn obviously. Reverting the dumbfire resist changes should help with that. Granted, it's broken against burster MAXes.

I'd love it if they made Shredder only tickle tanks at even up close and have it retain it's current AI and AA capabilities.

Dalton
Curious how its going to turn out with no more meaningful splash in favor of higher direct damage. Looking forward to see.

Zepher
Looks like a direct nerf. I never felt that zepher was too powerful against infantry and certainly not against vehicles. I thought it to be underpowered. When dalton still killed with splash I always had more success with it than zepher against infantry. Shooting in general is more difficult with zepher because of the lower velocity and much highet drop than dalton. I think zepher should get a direct buff no nerfing. Give it the same speed and drop as current dalton and have its direct damage raised to 1800 as it was on PTS when liberator update was first released there.

Shredder
Sad to see the blast damage go away because some people decided to complain all of a sudden. Please reduce the crazy 40% damage falloff. Set it to 15%.

Wat.
Buff the shredder at AV? You're crazy.

I've been playing since pre-beta and I still can't manage this. Not because of the lib, mind, but because I get jumped and WTFPWNED by ESF aces halfway there.

Thank you! I'm really concerned about how these changes will effect the prowler. The lockdown capabilities were already nerfed, and now the tank is getting nerfed as a whole again. Giving us increased backing mobility without providing close quarter protection, like turbo boosts and shields, doesn't do a whole lot for the prowler. We will need to be closer to MBTs to hit, and they will be more difficult to hit due to their new mobility. I'll adapt, but there is a reason you don't generally see prowlers dueling it out nose to nose with other MBTs. They can't take the hits.

Lib changes are spot on though. We'll have to see how it works, but you sound like your right on target with the plans.

You're not 100% sure about listening to 69 pages of feedback on the official thread and countless other tank related threads on the forums/Reddit which make great points on why the velocity reduction on all tank weapons is a horrible decision? How are you unsure, there have been many tankers with several hundred hours explaining in depth and in detail why the velocity changes are bad. Some of these people have made clear and concise reasons on why that is the case, while others explain in threads which are extensive and detailed. Kevmo just do the exact same thing you did with the Liberator feedback, make tweaks to the patch notes that directly reflect the community feedback.

"Understanding" our concerns shouldn't equate to basically "We hear everything you are saying and we see the points you're making, but we aren't going to make any tweaks to the tank related changes". Meanwhile the new Liberator changes largely reflect the feedback gathered from the exact same thread, you know the one with 69 pages of tank ignored feedback . The fact the update on the tank patch notes contained new further nerfs which no one asked for, such as the Halberd/Enforcer nerf, while not buffing the Vulcan which people have been saying and showing with video evidence as garbage is just ridiculous.

Kenvo, since I and other players really care about what happens to MBT's I'm going to link to you some threads you may have missed.

The "Real" Tank Patch Notes. This basically sums up by enlarge what the community would like to see happen. Thread / Thread

This thread has a title and content that asks for tank related feedback to be listened too Thread

This is just one thread which covers the velocity related changes and why they are bad. Thread

This thread visually sums up the feelings of the community right now, especially when talking about the tank changes. Thread

This was a thread recently made, basically showing that the tweaks to the planned changes to the Liberator are highly approved. While at the same time people are wondering why the heck the community's tank related feedback is being completely ignored.
Thread

Kevmo, please read the threads I posted and then make the necessary changes. You guys already did the right thing when it came to the Liberator changes when listening to the community, now just complete the process and do the exact same thing regarding the tank changes.

As infantry/max I always have lots of tools to deal with libs, im more concerned about their ability to act like flying monkeys and flip flop at will and shoot anything at any angle thats flying above them, the only time an ESF or another lib should be shot by a belly gun is when it doesnt have the altitude advantage. PS1 had the perfect balance for the belly gun angle restrictions.

I want it to remain the same as AV. Because direct hit damage is always Hit+blast, if they just remove the blast from shredder, it's a nerf. I want the blast damage removed, then added to the direct hit damage so its the same effectiveness against tanks and air, but it loses its AI role (that I really don't care about anyways).

But the SPM for infantry farming is poor, and every other lib weapon costs 1k certs...

They could just reduce the huge damage falloff instead of raising the damage. Most of the time shredder is only doing 60% of its damage.