Low risk high reward tactics are still dominant and overused making gameplay worse for anyone not using them. When I last played this game I'd mostly gone the direction of "farm, don't get farmed". KD of ~14 just vehicle/MAX cheesing or spawn room heroing it up when there're no good fights. Every time I come back to test changes, I give breaking my habits a shot. And I always end up regretting it, more frustration than fun. I know how/why my enemies are killing me most of the time, this isn't new player confusion or lack of map knowledge. Often I'm killed by people doing pretty much what I usually do and I know just how stupidly easy and dull it is to play that way. ESF at least has a high skill cap somewhat limiting it - though letting the best pilots stomp everything I'm not sure is entirely a great idea but...at least it makes this uncommon. There's little excuse for MAXes, and...tanks are ... well they're in a weird place. HEAT and Viper are now pathetic, bad news for new players. HE is still a solid infantry farmer, and of course if you can precisely aim with AP you're basically an armored sniper. And vehicles often have nothing better to shoot at than infantry. Thermal lets them do it with very little effort as well. Certainly, infantry can ruin vehicle combat as well - I won't deny this, it's terrain/numbers dependent. Most fights though it's too much toward one extreme or the other. When infantry have the advantage it's a boring repair slog for tanks while they deal with spam from AV MAXes and AV turrets along with a healthy dose of bullsh.. phoenix spam even when you're behind cover vs. NC. When vehicles have the advantage, infantry are stuck indoors/in a spawn room. Neither situation is fun. Then you move indoors and there are MAXes. You stand a small chance as HA if you play your cards right/get the jump, maybe you get lucky with C4 as LA or if you carry it on medic or whatever. But usually you're just screwed when you run into one. MAXes don't improve infantry gameplay in any meaningful way right now. The situations is that MAXes are just something to spend your meaningless resources on to farm KD with a superior infantry unit. I think the only reasons we don't see more MAX spam than we do, are players not simply enjoying playing MAX and/or the cert cost of good AI weapons it takes. 3000 certs for ext. mag Mercies/Blueshifts/Mattocks is a bit steep and these are almost inarguably the best weapons. Overall, the infantry experience in this game is just awful. Salt the wound of poor balance with bad hitreg and even infantry vs. infantry feels random now. I honestly think the game has gotten less fun overall since the big performance patch. They breathed new life into the game and then they completely ruined that since then. Some random death is understandable in a game like this, but when that's starting to be the rule not the exception, it gets tiresome. And it affects player mentality. Eventually players don't bother taking certain risks, they've been burned by nonsensical or unfair death too many times. You spend too long trying to flank or get into a certain position, then some vehicle with thermal just lobs a shot at you making it all a waste of time. Or maybe you're getting a great kill streak in an indoor fight, only to round a corner into a shotgun MAX and instantly die. Keep in mind I am not saying "nerf vehicle damage" - it's not as simple as that and honestly I feel vehicle damage is on the low side if anything - with a few exceptions. Terrain and base designs are a major factor in this problem, as is thermal which simply makes it too easy for vehicles to find and farm infantry.
Nothing new: roll a mbt, camp the spawn room, tons of xp and battle won. This is an old topic. The problem is bases rarely allow a decent defense. If defenders want to avoid to get farmed they must react before being pushed to yhe spawn room. At that time the battle is likely to be already over. Unfortunately establishing a defensive perimeter (turrets, landmines etc) requires much more coordination than shelling a spawn room with a tank. Hopefully the mission system will help (fingers crossed).
INB4: People complain about vehicles camping spawn rooms when they've already lost the fight or are vastly outnumbered. No matter what you change in this game you will always have spawn camping at some point. Taking your frustration out on vehicles is pointless; there is no fundamental difference between being camped by 100 infantry or being camped by 80 infantry and 20 vehicles.
OMG, OP is so accurate it's hurting my "Fun glands" just reading it. No a higher KDR isn't "fun" .... it's just so much easier to gravitate towards b/c it feels so much less PUNITIVE in this game. Half the time, it feels like just walking out of spawn is asking to be punished repeatedly by C4 spam. I never had that feeling in TF2 or Tribes or Unreal or any other shooters (and I always had a low KDR in those games). Only in this one does it feel really really punitive. Especially the Latency mechanics. WHY is that way still?? Back when I played this game waaaay too much, it literally gave me an Ulcer. Not self-diagnosed BTW. Both a psychiatrist and local clinician (there, a 2nd opinion) said it was all the symptoms of a stress induced Ulcer which apparently ran in my family. I stopped playing for atleast 6 months and it went away. Case closed. Now I greatly limit my exposure and it hasn't come back in full force.
The problem is more of a poor base design from the start than other things. You say that when tanks have the advantage Infantry is locked indoor or in spawnrooms, I have no problem with that as long as "indoor" is defined by a full base with no access whatsoever from tanks or air to shoot or see. What this game lacks is separate spaces for every aspect of it. Imagine putting the sky ceiling one kilometer upper, and providing clouds to cover air from ground, both air an ground are happy not to be farmed/annoyed by the other. At least air doesn't have the excuse to say that there is always a Max with bursters to f**k them up. And with altitude, infantry is not rendering, clouds block view so the only thing that can be annoying is gal drop from the new sky ceiling. I think it would provide things more interesting. About tanks and infantry, infantry needs bigger bases with more tunnels/ buildings that can provide cover from vehicles, and vehicle need more space to fight. Like, bigger space between bases. With little to no spawning ability on its own, infantry needs vehicles to push the advance, providing tanks battles between bases. And since tanks can not influence the outcome of a base capture once infantry is inside, all they can do is protect sundies and repel counterattackers. Everybody is happy. No more idiotic farming.
It's mainly the psychological aspect of it that gets people. You can kill the infantrymen camping your spawnroom, even if it makes no difference in the end. If you've got the right weapons, you can occasionally kill an oblivious tanker from inside the spawnroom, and then you feel better. But people who have those weapons and have figured that out aren't the ones complaining.
The issue is that the people who play the game dont understand when a fight is a lost cause and they should move on. Instead they stand in a camped spawn room padding their KD. Now thats fine if thats what they want to do, but then the same people come and complain about spawn camping.... its laughable. Also, ESF? High skill? LOOOOOL! Its as bigger farm tool as any tank. Banshee anyone? Point and click to win infantary farming at its finest.... its almost as bad as the PPA.
Becasue looking at the minimap, main map, seeing percentage chart saying it's 20% to 80%, seeing enemy spots all around spawnpoint isn't enough to spark an idea of redeploying and preparind defense/counter offensive. No. Let's go out, get killed in a lost battle and complain game is punishing you. Yes, it is, it's punishing you for your own shortcomming in understanding the situation, reaching proper conclusions and taking actions accordingly. You shouldn't be able to shoot through spawnroom shields, but the spawnroom damage zone should extend further. There, no spawn camping anymore. It is a farm tool, and banshee is worse than both PPA combined if done right - but this "lol no skill" argument is just bloody stupid. EVERYTHING in EVERYTHING is "skill" (as long as it takes conscious action). You want to make a sandwich? You use your skill to make a sandwitch. One will be nice and stylish, other will be terrible and will fall apart. You writing a letter? You use your letter writing skill. Letter might be stupid and badly worded or might be a piece of art. Shooting a gun in a game? Just point and left click, what can be hard in that, surely everyone performs the same, right? Everything, including games, sports and basically everything else that causes one person to perform an action has as highskil lceiling as you are willing to take it to. Unless you want to say, all Banshee farmers fly the same, and are performing with the same effectivity. I'm not defending banshee in any way now, it's a stupid OP weapon in the right hands - but your argument is just silly. On the other hand what would you say about skill level of lockons, - so if a banshee kills 30 people and 3 of them are not smart enought to gather up in spawnroom and kill that mossie in ONE SALVO, it would seem that HA lockon has a high skill ceiling, eh? No, problem is, people are stupid.
