The Perception of Power

There are no game balance problems because the 45 year old redneck who thinks hes a military commander said so. Hooray.

Actually we are winning since currently we play by the games idiotic and horrible rules of "have a problem throw ESF's at it". Literally we want to run armor columns, do gal drops, and other great things from PS1 besides just aircav ***** but frankly YOU HAVE TO AIRCAV *****. Aircav is no longer optional its the backbone of everything, are you defending? bring more ESF's, are you attacking? Bring more ESF's. Are you sitting in a warpgate Alt-Tabbed and watching scat ****? Bring more ESF's so when you do finally do something it will be quick and easy.

Its a simple matter of ESF's being "the best", and whoever can bring enough of "the best" they get to win. Often enough times its us, and I've also been victim too it when out lonewolfing. But the ESF zerg is the best course of action and answers ANY and ALL problems.

There is no balance, no rock/paper/scissors.

For comparison here is how PS1 worked out.
The primary attack force was one of two options. Gal Drops or Armor Columns.
Gal drops were great because they let you bypass "the zerg" and go straight to the objective. This also allowed for smaller organized groups to effectively combat super sized zergs with strong tactical team oriented gameplay.
Armor Columns let you use raw numbers and power effectively to push through weaker opposition.
You also had more fringe strategies/play styles like MAX Crashes which were great for pushing through heavily defended indoor areas with lots of opposing infantry.

All of these things were there to counter one enemy or another, it was not just "oh they have X, well we have more X so we win!" it was exploiting there weaknesses and using tactics. But with PS2 currently with the ESF's its "oh they have ESF's, you just need more ESF's". You cannot just stick acouple skyguards with your armor column, you cannot bring out afew dedicated AA units, you just have to counter zerg the zerg. You can't just bypass the enemies forces and push inside fast with a Gal Drop style thing.

Reavers in PS1 were a support unit, you COULD NOT win a war with nothing but reavers. Thats not to say they were bad or not used but at the end of the day Reavers alone COULD NOT clear a battlefield on there own and carry the win. Instead reavers would support others, they would be used to try to help stop the Armor Column vs Armor Column situations. They would harass and softies trying to guard "hard to get to" places. They would clear the way for Gal drops. They would escort friendly troops notably libs, gals, and armor columns.
They also worked rather well at door camping once outdoor dominance was acquired.

There were AirCav outfits back in PS1, there were dedicated AirCav pilots back in PS1. All they did was fly Reavers, they were effective and they got the job done.

No one unit was onmipotent in PS1 until BFR's and there stupidity came out. But even they had counters namely liberators and there bombing wrecked BFR's.

Good games that stand the test of time DO NOT have a clear "this is best thing ever, use this" type setup. From things like card games like MTG, to video games like Starcraft or CounterStrike. These games have stood the test of time, have become iconic games for there genre's because they are not a giant circle jerk of the samething. MTG does not have one single deck that always wins thats the clear "the best ever". Starcraft does not have "one race to rule them all" instead the three races play off eachothers strengths and weaknesses. CS does not have one super gun thats the best, sure some say Zomg AWP duh best! but in reality most people go with M4's or AK's.

The issue is that now instead of outplaying the enemy, all you have is outgunning the enemy.

But that's the thing, it doesn't reward that play. Those lone wolf players are getting eaten by organized groups and calling whatever killed them OP.

A tank gets killed by rocket pods and calls it OP. Why did he not call in his friend in an A2A fighter to kill the harasser?

If that tank pilot is working with a group, the rocketpod ESF will be dead in moments.

People get too caught up in their own performance and KDR and not enough in the purpose of the fighting.

I didn't say there were no balance issues, I said that players are looking at balance the wrong way.

Things still have to be tweaked, no game is ever fully balanced and its definitely not balanced out of the box, but people are expecting a level of balance where any one player in any role is equal to any other one player in any role and that is not how a mixed-unit shooter works.

Uh, no.

A base with a spam of AA maxes/G2A and 10% of the aircraft that attack you as ESF (only to shoot down libs faster) can completely block off any form of air zerg.

You could not be any more wrong.

I think I'm in love with the OP. <3

Most clever thread I've seen in a long time.

Of course it does, the cert/XP gain from lone-wolf activities is phenomenal.

PS2 is about killing things, and killing things gets you the most XP/hour. The best method to kill more things than the next guy is the optimal way to play this game.

The game mechanics do not reward objective centered play.
Taking an empty facility takes ~5-20 minutes for 250-1000XP (0.2-2 cert points)

Spawn-camping with your MBT is a far more lucrative cert/hour affair. Shredding sunderers with an ESF is more lucrative even if you die 3 out of 10 times doing it, not to mention hunting full Galaxies 12 kills = 1200 XP = 2 certs for 30 seconds of play with rocketpods.

This is how I see the game.
There isn't a single incentive to play except for kills, XP or certs.

Organizing strategy might be exciting at the OL/PL level, but its ultimately boring and uninteresting at the player level that executes it.

The game runs on big clashing zerg meatgrinders where both sides can prop up their XP gain for a while because anything else doesn't provide any tangible reward.
There isn't even an emotional reward for taking a base or a point because its going to be taken back in the next 20-30 minutes anyways when the opposing faction pulls all their players from the other 2 continents to zerg the **** out of this one.

OOokeee.

A squad of rocketpods vs a squad of anything but AA: Rocketpods win

A squad of rocketpods vs a squad of AA maxes: AA wins

A squad of rocketpods vs a squad of skyguards: Tie

In a crazy parallel universe:

A squad of engineers vs a squad of anything but snipers: Engineers win

A squad of engineers vs a squad of snipers: Snipers win

I think the point is that the majority of us (you can say otherwise, it's my opinion based on how many players I see playing infantry and tanks) don't want their battles decided by air. We're looking for the best, most fun type of gameplay, whether or not it is realistic (there's a lot of things that aren't realistic, many that would hurt aircraft). Several people with rocket pods can ruin the gameplay of 20 or 30 or a greater number of players at times. It's just not fun, except for those several people.

"If you have all those people together they should be able to handle several ESFs." Yeah, maybe they can, but it's still not fun. Tons will die before we shoot it down, and shooting into the air just isn't enjoyable for some reason, not half as much as ground vs ground.

Maybe I'm wrong, but there are many more infantry players than any other type - though now they are moving into tanks, so that they can be 2 shotted instead of 1 shotted by air... if they are lucky. <-- Bad gameplay in my opinion.

I wish there was a way to pull up a players death stats so we could see if this was actually the case, but the following sums up my experience:

I play HA 90% of the time - if I had to guess I would say that a solid 70% of my deaths was from small arms fire. Probably 15 - 20% from ground vehicle weapons. Maybe 9 - 14 % split between liberators and fighters. The final one percent from me misjuding how far I can fall with my nanomesh shield on and live.

9 - 14% of my deaths from aircraft has not ruined my play experience. It has taught me to occasionaly look up. Between aircraft and ground vehicles, it has taught me to take a look around before crossing open ground - which would be a good idea even in the complete absence of vehicles of any kind.