[Suggestion] The Ultimate Combined Arms Gameplay Thread

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I'm not sure it's a step in the right direction since we've had this back and forth Buff/Nerf for ESFs and we're still in a pretty unstatisfying situation of having the two sides "overpowered" (and honestly, Flak is more limited)

Tanks will be buffed by 20%, then nerfed by 10% a month later, then the core issues still won't be solved
It really makes it sound hard to change a value in their Balance software thingie

I see the 20% health buff more as a stop gab from SOE until they figure out how to really do this right.

Reading this thread should give more than enough ideas...

28 pages is a lot.

Don't forget the huge amount of information in the thread from my signature .... it's not that bad either

The fundamental problem with this game as it stands is SOE's design philosophy of letting everybody do everything. We can't have balanced vehicles as long as everybody is able to pull one. I hate to call on PS1, but in PlanetSide we actually had to invest some of our limited certifications into being able to pull a specific vehicle in the first place. And that was not where it ended. Tankers or pilots, and so on, had to truly invest into that role. They had to cert into repair kits, cert into the vehicle etc. And when it came time for these people to get out of the vehicle and fight, they just did not have weapons to compete. They were utterly useless in indoor infantry combat.

This is what allowed vehicles in PlanetSide to have such a powerful presence. Investment.

We cannot have this power in PlanetSide 2 without having equivalent investment, or else we go back to where this was TankSide. While SOE's game model is preventing us from actually forcing true and serious investment - such as paying 5,000 certs out of a maximum total of 50,000 certs for the ability to pull a Prowler - and the fact that people who use tanks are also equally capable of getting out and fighting infantry - we can still force people to invest in other means.

After this patch, I believe stock vehicles should be left utterly untouched. We need to take a serious look at the vehicle certifications and internally balance them so there is a possibility of actually complimenting eachother and massively enhancing the strength of vehicles - with investment. If people are unhappy that their vehicle is not dealing out the damage, or tanking enough enemy fire - there should be investments in the vehicle(In the form of certs) that can alleviate these grievances, with suitable trade off.

Lets take a Vanguard for example. One day, Vanguard Pilot is unhappy that his HEAT is not being scary enough against infantry. So, he goes into the certification lists and goes to "Utility". There he sees some sort of "Advanced Cooling System" or BS name for a certification, and that cert increases your firing rate. However, you now take way more damage in the Front and Side Armour, as this Advanced Cooling System trades armour for fire rate.

Vanguard Pilot laments. How can he handle all the infantry with his new fire power, if his tank is being flattened by 2 or 3 rockets? He goes into his certifications. There he sees "Defense". He sees this shiny "Vanguard Shield" ability that he can turn on and off in moments of duress. But that's not all, he can forego that for some passive front or side armour to compensate for his overall lower defense.

Now, many people are just gonna think "Woah wait wait wait here, this guy just got increased fire power and now he's back to the same armour he had to start with! Isn't that a little overpowered?". Well, no. It's not overpowered because to get that this guy had to invest about, let's say 10,000 certs. To get that maximum level of firepower and that maximum level of defense, he invested a hell load into his vehicle, and all at the same time he's unable to survive things like Anti-Tank Mines, he'll lack Counter-Measures and he'll be vulnerable to his intended counters(Liberators).

There are two points to that little story there. One, is that in order to give a vehicle great power, the player behind the wheel should have to invest. I see no problem with making certifications all very powerful as long as they have a sizable price tag attached to them. And with that kind of approach, you can make vehicles as powerful as players using them want them to be, while making said players work their ***** off to get it.
Two, is that if a player wants to be strong, he should have to specialize. We should not be able to be strong at everything, and I believe your post is fundamentally drawing attention to that issue.

I wont pass a single opinion on current vehicle balance, because unless the current model is scrapped and/or radically modified, this game will keep swinging from extreme to extreme of vehicles sucking or being overpowered.

The problem is ... what's done is done ...

We now have a limited less cert system, but this does not mean we can not use it. PlanetSide 1 in the end allowed everybody to have every cert. Yet it was more or less balanced because of all the things around the system.

MBTs needed Mandatory dedicated Driver/Gunners.

Only agile suits or lower could pilot a Mossy, Reaver, Wasp, Liberator, Vulture, Lightning, MBT, Galaxy/Galaxy Gunship, Loadstar, AMS, Phantasm, BFRs, Flail, Switchblade, Router.

The Agile suit strongly limited you in Inventory space, protection and you only had 1 Rifle slot. The repair gun needed ammo and only fitted into a Rifle slot. So "Pilots" were very limited in AI and had to fumble with the Inventory system to get a Rifle with very limited ammo out.

Re-Exo Suits had 2 Rifle slots and could gun for every Vehicle. Gunners often had a special loadout with a Rifle/HA weapon, a Gluegun and tons of glue to repair the Vehicle. But they themselves could never pilot anything outside the Harasser, ES Assault Buggies, Deliverer, ES Sundys and ATVs.

The Suit restrictions and Inventory system but also how the repair gun worked, the missing hotseating ... all this added up a lot.

What good are 10 solo MBT's if the driver can't fire anything? So those 10 Players could only effectively drive 5 MBT's ... and those 5 MBT's were stronger than 10 Lightnings. The teamplay orientated Players got way stronger Vehicles as a result(BFR's aside).

The Base Design, the "split" between Infantry and Vehicle combat added up a lot, Infantry had it's kingdom, Vehicles had their kingdom.

If you set it up the right way... having everybody access to everything will make the game unbalanced. Sure it assists in managing the number of Vehicles moving around ... but ultimately it actually played the smallest part to reduce the number of Vehicles within PS1 ....

This was very great and detailed response Hisenburg, thanks for putting so much effort into it.

The only thing about this idea that will make it not work is the massive level of cert investment. For instance 5K certs to be able to finally pull a real tank is just insane with the current cert system. For your idea to work the Dev's would have to completely overhaul the entire cert system, how much all weapons and upgrades cost ect ect. Don't get me wrong I think your idea could work well if it was implemented from the get go when the game was launched, but what you're asking is a ton of works from the developers with an end result that may be hard to obtain at this point.

If you have any ideas compatible with the current cert system I think they would be much more likely to be considered by the developers. Also the developers have told me they are running on a tight schedule and trying to make a lot of changes at once. We need to give them ideas that are somewhat easy to implement, yet cause big improvements.

Maybe the devs could add a 10,000 certs limit so people are forced to specialize. Once you reach that limit you continue to earn certs but can't have more than 10,000 active on the cert tree. You can recertify after a cooldown of 12 hours.

The huge cert number was just something random I pulled out. I wouldn't expect people to get 1.25 million XP to be able to pull a tank hahaha

It was just the concept I was discussing, not the actual specifics! I do agree however, for it to happen there would have to be some adjustments. I think a revamp of the vehicle cert system however, could indeed fix this issue. There's no easy ideas that can really be implemented to fix the vehicle issue.

The closest thing I could really offer is to focus on making certifications more vital to vehicle effectiveness and focus less on the stock product. For reasons outlined in my first post.

You should make a your own thread about it, I doubt the devs are still reading 28 pages deep in this one.

I wouldn't necessarily say that, they're really using this thread for good feedback so who knows how deep they'll read

There, I had to fix my own post by overlooking one mistake -.-

And this Thread this full of win in general, I think besides 2-3 trolls this Thread is mainly constructive ... probably a official PlanetSide Forums first.

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Great thread agree with most points.
Rocket pods should be nerfed, AA should be nerfed.
Fun all round.

This thread is pretty darn old and irrelevant in some ways now but thanks. Rocket pods were already nerfed, but AA still needs to be nerfed by decreasing the range on Burster MAxes, and tightening the COF and increasing the Projectile Velocity on the Skyguard.

well at least the devs are working on the cosmetics for our faction now. what with the new weapon skins on the PTS

This... this is beautifully written. Higby, memorize this stuff! We have lightnings as driver-gunner configs. Make MBT a 3 man vehicle, increasing it's effectiveness while also increasing the requirements to operate it effectively.

My interest in PS2 fades as I find myself without *options* for gameplay. This is a pure spamfest game these days. There are no spec-ops blowing generators to shut down tech plants. No amphibious assaults. I still have no clue what the infil is supposed to do other than snipe and annoy enemies (and earn a low k/d). What kept me going in PS1 was I could keep trying out new stuff. So many weapons with varied uses (ahhh... my rocklet rifle or pwnisher), vehicles out the wazoo, etc.

Here, we have BF3 as a MMOFPS with all the good and bad. Extra on the bad.

Well better late than never Cinders . Higby definitely could still take important things from this thread, and he did implement some things from this thread, but at least he is doing well by making tanks less spammy and rare. However now he needs to make them actual tanks that OHK if the shells land next to your feet and take some more damage to match. HA is still definitely a powerhouse that has all in one loudouts, and after GU11 tanks spam will be significantly reduced but infantry AV spam will still be at an all time high with ESRL's, AV turrets, and C4. Hopefully Higby will see this right away and buff MBT's so they can't be solo'd by any class. On the bright side rocket pods don't Instigib tanks anymore, meaning you really have to be asking for it to be killed by an ESF.