There is a link between the rise of "infantryside" and the downfall of the games popularity

This generation of entitled brats is what's killing the game!

You didn't earn any f***ing nanites! You just sat there f***ing mouth-breathing!

Air can keep infantry indoors, that's for sure, but tanks are supposed to be able to suppress them indoors since they are on the ground and level with the enemy.

And? Why should it?
After all, the heavy is free, the ESF cost nanites, the heavy is able to move into small spaces, the esf is able to fly, the heavy is able to shoot locks at vehicles out of infantry render distance, the esf is able to kill the heavy at closer ranges.

What is wrong with a vehicle killing infantry effectively?

I´m missing in this thread a years old videoclip where a HE Tank is farming hard, as an evidence
that a vehicle nerf is strongly needed.

I'll just put in a montage of a guy with a magscatter killing 50 people relentlessly. Clearly using a weapon to it's fullest means its OP if it get's kills.

Scr1nRusher, I think your insane number of lobby posts is helping develop your delivery. But then again, what you are actually lobbying for at its core is consistently completely toxic and crazy... and about benefiting the handful of % of "vehicle users" (usually you're lobbying for MBT Tankers) who want to have an OP farm tool.

Yes, the Prowler Splash Farming of 2014. One of many Seasons Of Terrible Gameplay left in the game for months and making the game a nightmare to play. I know it was your favorite OP Weapon, you call for its return often enough. Maybe you'd like to pull a few more of those nostalgic Nightmare Seasons to remember fondly the unplayability and hemorrhaging of farmed/griefed players from the game:
Zoe
PPA
Rocket Pods
Striker
Banshee
Harasser
AV Mana Turret
Gatekeeper

1) because the people who were using the OP item are upset at having lost their farm/grief/win toy.
2) because the player that *left* the game because that toy was OP have long since stopped following the game, have no idea it's been nerfed, and have long since found other things to spend their time on.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm


Are you for or against Balance between Infantry,Vehicles & Aircraft?

I think this thread has already exhausted it's constructivity. Give this forum a balance discussion between a spoon, fork, knife and you'll soon have only wounded people and bent bloodstained utensils.

I know I'm a dick most of the time, but I can't understand how people here can't heed to even simplest of balance concepts. However, I think you should write threads in a more neutral tone to avoid them becoming a huge fuss like this. It might be unintentional, but you're just pitting "infantryside" and "vehicleside" players against each other and it's nothing but a pit of angry snakes at this point

Edit: Also, like I said before I really think you should've left the population decline out. It's a joker card of arguments that could be used to argue for any problem in PS2

I am not for a "Scr1nRusher Balance". You're just too one sided and too demagogue. I enjoy many of your posts, I appreciate and value your opinion, and I even support some of the things you say, but I don't support the radical (catering to a small % of playerbase, at the detriment of a large % of the playerbase) big picture changes you push for.

I *am* for Combined Arms and Balance between Factions and a balanced system of Inter-Unit play. But I have no desire to support changes to boost farming/griefing of players and disruptive play.

Thats the dumbest comparison I've ever heard. Infantry fighting infantry. Hey, if someone can figure out how to farm 50 people with a mag scatter, so be it, they earned it. Forgot the fact that he would need 25 or more clips. They aren't farming something that can't shoot back with weapons of equal lethality.

Put back HE mechanics and see how this game turns out. I honestly believe that mechanic turned away a lot of prospective players early on and had it been done right to begin with, there might be more players now.

I think his point is that anything can and will be called OP in this game. I doubt anyone wants HE back in the same exact state it was in before, but determining where it should be is turning out to be impossible.

While the comparison might sound silly, mag-scatter operates under the same scrutiny vehicles do(as in not being in the pool of commonly approved weapons and tactics). People tend to sympathize with mag-scatter here, but in-game it's the most rage inducing gun I've ever used and people often tell me that it needs to be nerfed. This is just something that happens when people die in PS2

That's not how it works at all. In fact, I'm fairly sure you've inverted major doctrinal points.

Take recon, for example.

Infantry can be really exceptional at long duration recon - you can embed and conceal recon elements in terrain that would be otherwise inaccessible or is deeper in enemy territory. But the trade-off is that they take time to move, and can be over-whelmed. It can also give you details that aerial and satellite recon can't (Even with modern satellites). It can also get you those details faster than a satellite might.

Ground based vehicles, by contrast, are much more visible, but are fairly good for probing attacks, and can be used in some cases as effective light attack assets.



Air recon is the fastest and can cover the most territory, but its often the most visible, and is the most fragile.


Infantry are generally seen as the most cost-effective means of capturing dense and strategic terrain. Vehicles are good for controlling open spaces and providing fire support.

Combined arms means that each element has its role, and mutually supports and augments the capabilities of other units.

That said, in this game, the splash damage is exceptionally nerfed. This is why a majority of my ground attack Valkyrie proposals revolve now around cluster dispensing grenades, because if bombs were introduced in such a manner, they would be extremely hard to nerf and still have an element of randomness that would be hit or miss (Because the grenades would bounce around slightly), and in order to nerf them, you'd have to nerf the grenades themselves. Because Sneaky.

I make those suggestions not because I want an OP Farm tool, but I've noticed that people in PS2 are exceptionally prone to get into NERF/BUFF SkubWars with little to no objective reasoning or evaluation, merely "I DIED 4 TIMES DOING TE SAME THING, ERGO NERF NAO OR I QUIT"


To be clear, I see videos from when the game launched, and it looks ridiculous. But what we have now seems to be an extreme balance in the opposite direction.

Note: I'm also not commenting on the thread title as to whether or not there is a relationship between vehicle nerfs and population declines - I do not view that as a statistically testable concept, mostly due to the definition of "Nerf" being hard to quantify across so many vehicle types. There are simply too many opportunities for statistical noise, and the task of ticking things into the "Nerf" category would introduce allegations of subjective biases into it, and would require an exhaustive amount of detailed justifications for inclusion.

That said, if you are familiar with R (Or SPSS/STATA) and want to build a dataset off of a mass-pull from a stat tracker that tries to link population numbers to fluctuations in vehicle/aircraft KDRs, adjusted for baseline population decay, go right ahead.

I'd suggest attacking the concept by picking or two vehicles, and analyzing if there is a the reduction in hours spent in the vehicle that results in a loss of KDR that deviates from the norm in a statistically significant way in the aftermath of identifiable major "nerfs", or simply over time.That would give you a nice test case before inveighing into the major "All vehicle" study.

Vehicles are totally useless and absolute ****, I mean, it's impossible to farm infantry with them these days. Like, seriously. Not even a single infantry kill is easy.

No one even said lighting viper was bad, the entire thread was based on HE tanks.
Also I did say I was gonna post this so whateves

This made me laugh a lot.

Think about this.

If you look through out PS2's history, each aspect of Combined Arms has had points where it was stronger then the rest.

Aircraft had there moments with A2G, Vehicles have had problems due to base design(or lack of base design......) & now due to Vehicle AI nerfs which kept Infantry in check being nerfed overtime you are seeing a progression of Infantry getting stronger and stronger.

Balance is fascinating, and so is peoples bias involving it.

TLDR: in the Hardcore Organized Meta, Infantry is king and Ground Vehicles need massive buffs (or Infantry needs massive nerfs); in the Standard Meta, Infantry/Ground Vehicles/Air Vehicles each do well in their own space, but actual Combined Arms suffers.

Right now PS2 has 2 metas:
1) Hardcore Organized Game (including Server Smash)
2) Standard game

1 - Hardcore Organized Game
In the Hardcore Organized Game meta, Infantry is king. The meta supports PRIM (Pinpoint Rapid Infantry Movement) which means Infantry Groups can do fast movement directly onto their Objectives. Because Infantry can bypass the travel between locations, the Objectives themselves become solely Infantry based. Infantry Groups have the tools to dominate with very limited combined arms support, including the ability to knock out or bypass Air Vehicles and Ground Vehicles. Air Vehicles have Infantry movement support and disruption roles in this meta. Ground Vehicles (outside of Sunderers for spawn points) have arguably no role in this meta.

2 - Standard Game
In the Standard Game, Infantry is not king. The meta does not support PRIM (Pinpoint Rapid Infantry Movement) which means Infantry Groups cannot do fast movement directly onto their Objectives. Because Infantry cannot reliably bypass the travel between locations, the Objectives themselves are not solely Infantry based. Infantry Groups lack the tools to dominate with very limited combined arms support, including lacking the ability to knock out or bypass Air Vehicles and Ground Vehicles. Air Vehicles have much less of a role as Infantry movement support, but have larger and more diverse roles overall (especially in smaller fights or fights without significant enemy AA; Air struggles to find a role vs. large numbers of enemies or vs. significant enemy AA). Ground Vehicles have larger and more diverse roles overall (especially in smaller fights without enemy Air Vehicles), and many of the large Faction pushes are anchored in Ground Vehicle Zergs. Also, some areas (like Bio Labs, or bases with terrible Ground Vehicle Access, or very poor line-of-sight) are very restrictive with regards to Ground Vehicles being able to contribute well or at all.

In the Hardcore Organized Meta, Ground Vehicles are in severely underpowered. And I strongly advocate either (1) buffing Ground Vehicles, or (2) nerfing Infnatry... specifically in the areas of the imbalance: Mobility, Lack of use of space outside of bases, and Infantry-centric nature of Base Capping Objectives.

In the Standard Game, combined arms suffers because different elements (Air Vehicles, Ground Vehicles, Infantry) are each too effective in separate types of areas or engagements; but each does not actually work together often. A large part of this problem is the real Coordination and Communication tools being only available to Hardcore Organized Players, which leaves the Standard Game as an army of mimes who just play alongside each other without more than crude coordination. In addition, some areas (like Bio Labs, or bases with terrible Ground Vehicle Access, or very poor line-of-sight) are very restrictive with regards to Ground Vehicles being able to contribute well or at all; and some areas (like Bio Labs, or areas with extreme long line-of-sight and lack of breaks in line-of-sight, or bunches of AA turrets, etc.) are very restrictive with regards to Air Vehicles being able to contribute well or at all.

Is "combined arms" some kind of all encompassing requirement for the game? No. First and foremost, fun has to be top of the list, FOR EVERYONE. Not everyone can have fun all the time, but a balance has to be struck.

Anyway, you write a lot of words about what you see as problems, but virtually nothing about what you see as solutions. I'm particularly interested in what you see as the roles for the different arms and what kind of interesting gameplay you think that will encourage. BTW, base defenders don't have vehicles. That's why they're defending and not counter-attacking.

I agree.

I agree with you that fun should be at the top of the list. I was simply noting the state of Combined Arms for reference. I have no (major) problem with the make-up of the current Standard Meta. I have no desire to force Combined Arms into the game. Though I am positive on growing Combined Arms *if* it adds to the fun of the game.

I *used* to write much more about the solutions. Actual specific changes. They sometimes take work, but I can provide them. But the community (other than a very few kindred spirits) rarely engaged at that level. It made much more sense to focus instead at the problem level, where the community does engage and I can have better conversations.

I have even responded to posts like yours and said "if I give a solution, and it is good, do you even care? Will you support it?", and the people didn't care or didn't even respond.

If I give a solution, and it is good, do you even care? Will you support it? Which of the problems I have ID'd do you want me to provide a solution for?