[Suggestion] Too much vehicle kills the game!

What you fail to acknowledge is that there is usually more tanks / vehicles on the field than there are infantry. Sorry, but 10 tanks vs 10 infantry are going to absolutely destroy the infantry unless;

1. Tank drivers are born without eyes, arms or a brain.
2. It's in an infantry dominated area, such as inside the walls of an Amp station (which means 2% of the entire game, the other 98% the tanks dominate).
3. The infantry consists of 9 people and Chuck Norris.

What needs to happen is for there to consistantly be more infantry than vehicles on the field. That means higher resource costs (or reduction of resource accumulation / income) or longer respawn timers on the vehicles.

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Or 4. The terrain is rocket the infantry ahve rolled heavy, have coms and flank the tanks whilst not breaking cover unnecessarily dude.

It can be done, because it has been done, by my unit amongst many others. Its hard without coms though, I will say that.

but a lot of the issue is that people seem to just not realize that infantry are infact, stupidly strong but this strength comes from the versility in difficult terrain.

Also if your playing solo, a way I content not to properly enjoy the game... its harder to do this and so people presume its not possible and stay in their vehicles.

Yeah WONDERFUL idea make my veichle more expensive after i spent a few thousands CPs on it... way to encourage players to NOT upgrade their veichles.

Why? You might think its obvious but its really not...
A noob MUST be able to use a shotgun? No, you need to cert it.
A noob MUST be able to wear flak armor 5? No, you need to cert it.
But a noob MUST absolutely be able to drive a tank... as if driving a tank was easy as drinking a glass of water.

I absolutely agree that terrain is where infantry can excel by using cover and/or elevated positions.

However, where exactly do you find this again?

Indar, with the exception of the NC area, is wide open all over. There is no place for infantry to find much cover, especially not around the minor bases. Those minor bases are constantly roflstomped by vehicle zergs with zero chance for infantry to do anything. The NC are constantly stuck in their pit because the bottlenecks and terrain layout heavily favors VS and TR who can camp positions from above.

What about Esamir? Same thing as Indar, but arguably even worse. Esamir is flat, wide open and ruled by vehicles in general and air-cav in particular. Infantry can rarely find any place with cover. Have you run the distance between two minor bases/outposts on foot on Esamir? You are so exposed it's not even funny.

Amerish is a slightly different story. Amerish is my favourite continent due to the fact that it offers more variety in fighting since it has high peaks that are accessible for infantry but not so much for vehicles. It also has a nice mix of bottlenecks and open ground. This is where infantry can really mix it up with vehicles and it being fun rather than frustrating. However, most people are so indoctrinated by now with the mentality that "anywhere but biolabs and amp stations = use a vehicle" that you see the same amount of vehicle zerging on Amerish as well.

I totally agree with you that through coordination and communication you can stop vehicle zergs.. however, that requires quite a bit of dedication and effort... far more than you will experience through a casual play session.

Should it be an absolute requirement that if you want to play as an infantryman you must join the most organized and dedicated outfits?

Back in PS1 there was plenty of infantry all over, hiding in woods, behind walls, between rocky areas... and we had to play as a dedicated and organized outfit to use tanks without being obliterated by AV weapons used by infantry. Seems the tables have turned entirely in PS2.

Maybe that is the answer... PS2 simply needs more trees.... or rather... place more rocks, trees, shrubs and other types of small but important cover for infantry to use when moving between minor bases, or defending minor bases. What we have now is the wavy terrain (which is frustrating to drive on with a Sunderer or ATV) which I guess is SOE's idea of infantry cover, using high and low waves in the terrain.

It doesn't work.

Add more trees!

Here are a few ideas to play with about infantry vs. vehicles balance :

• Make the timer for an unmanned vehicle last longer. Or, maybe, indefinitly. Currently, 5min is way too short : you do not want to leave your vehicle around to help capping a base. So you stay in it, camping.
  
  
• I hate the ressource system : when you need vehicles because a continent is owned by one faction, you can't pull one out. When you own the map, you have way too much ressources. The ressource system needs to be revamped. I don't have a magic answer for this problem, though.
  
  
• Not enough hiding points for infantry in key areas on maps. Crossroads watchtower comes in mind : nearly-permanent tank zerg, and almost nowhere to hide for infantry. Esamir is painfully too exposed for infantry, too.
  
  
• HA Rockets are too slow. It's so easy dodging them that it's not even fun. HA need to stand near a vehicle to be efficient, yet they can't hide anywhere.
  
  
• AV ammo for infantry could be a nice feature to have. You'll have to chose between AI and AV ammo of course.
  
  
• IR/Thermal optics for vehicles are too powerful. I use IR all the time on my lightning, and infantry doesn't stand a chance against this. You can't hide or use terrain to your advantage when enemy vehicles can spot you so easily at medium-long range for IR, and short-medium range for thermal. I don't know if these optics must have their range nerfed, or if countermeasures should be proposed for infantry.
  
  
• Make AV turrets way more resistant. Or even indestructible by placing them inside bases. Hacking and C4 will become very important roles, since vehicles won''t be able to approach defended bases. AA turrets are trickier to balance in that aspect, because planes can't hide from these.

PS2 is about combined arms warfare - massive numbers of vehicles and aircraft etc. Without that it would be nothing. The large vehicle/battles are the main attraction.

The OP sounds like he should be playing a different game. BF3, perhaps?

Sorry, I missed when Planetside 2 became a tank/aicraft simulator.

agreed. This game needs infantry more than it needs vehicles, there are plenty of them already.

My vision of balance would be something along the lines of 'for each aircraft there are 3 tanks and for each tank there are 5 footies' (numbers subject to change)
That's not what i see in game. Also note that infantry power scales in a linear fashion while the mech power grows exponentially due to the abundance of high explosives in its arsenal. Critical mass of mech means annihilation of all unarmored life. No place for infantry = quality of the gameplay as a whole goes south.
Infantry at the moment desperately needs more utility, vehicles can do almost everything the infantry does, but better.


Few points about the influence of the map and the stationary defenses on infantry gameplay: in short, the map sucks and the defenses are bordeline r-tarded.
1. spawn rooms and lack of cover for peeps leaving them - enough was said
Bases themselves located in r-tarded places. Almost all bases, even air dedicated ones (at least those i was able to visit as an NC footie), lie in a shadow of some conveniently placed big hill. I get that these bases are supposed to control roads passing through them and what not, but leaving surrounding high ground unprotected so the enemy can simply take it and pwn yoass is r-tarded. The tanks can go there and blast the base with impunity, even the top floors of the air towers. The crown is pretty much the only proper base dominating its surroundings.
Also bases themselves should be more complex and have way more doodads, so the infantry can be more like 'needle in the haystack' than 'fish in the barrel' from the point of view of mech users.

2. base distribution is not sparse enough (hell, in some cases sniper from one base can shoot the guy in another base). There is not enough space between bases for infantry to avoid detection, especially from air, and not enough holes to hide. Handful of air units floating over the base can control at least 50% of territory with their wallhack vision and not one mouse will slip through. Infantry should be able to 'seep through the cracks', but that's not happening. Detectability of infantry further away from the base should drop to almost zero, but there is not enough terrain between the points of interest as all points on the map are in the immediate surroundings of one base or another and there *will* be an enemy vehicle nearby. Typical scenario: aircraft hover over the base being captured, you can't get close so you stay few hundred m away, they move to the next base and detect you when en route. What, there are like 5 rocks total on the distance between two adjacent bases you can crouch behind? vanu grassland on indar at least has some trees here and there, highland and desert in TR zone is pretty much off limits as you can be easily blasted by air and ground mech with no hope of finding decent cover.
Even NC canyons suck, because more often than not you are limited to the same route the vehicles are. That means you share that 50m wide corridor with enemy vehicles and you can't really hide nor flank. Try taking a shortcut through the mountains on foot - yeah right. Sliding galore is all you experience. Infantry should be able to scale the terrain that is off limits to ground vehicles.
I play exclusively as infiltrator (a class that is supposed to avoid frequently used routes) and traversing rough terrain by foot is outright painful. What's worse, flying cans are almost silent. Many many times i died to mossie hovering 30m above my head when i did a cross country run far from the roads on the NC-TR border and i didn't hear a thing. NC Infiltrator pretty much has no business going far beyond the biolab to, you know, infiltrate, as the number of aircraft in the airspace between the crown and biolab is insane and there are huge swaths of terrain with no cover at all.

3. stationary defenses are crucial to stave off mechanized force (at least they should be), but they are worthless. Besides rolling your own mech zerg or HA en masse and spamming rockets, infantry caught with the pants down should be able to man the defenses and put at least some resistance. Unfortunately the turrets are conveniently exposed from pretty much all angles, so the vehicles they are supposed to counter can easily pick them off, and to add insult to injury, the turrets are deliberately placed in a way to limit their usefulness. How many turrets point straight to the steep rock wall? NC territory on indar is notorious for that, almost every AV turret has a huge rock in front of it so it's perfectly possible to park a sunderer 30m away, just under the turret's nose (there are even AA turrets facing high cliffs too), or they cover completely useless angle - on the TR-NC border on Indar (the palisade?), there are AV turrets that cover like 20m of road because as soon as you leave the base, there is a huge drop and the next thing you see over that 'cliff' from the turret is the opposite side of the valley, 500m away. You could park 100 tanks in that blind spot ffs.
W.T.F. are these huge blind zones doing here? It looks like the turrets exist pretty much only to provide the engineers with the joys of repair, and maybe infiltrators with the joys of headshotting them.
AV turrets that can actually shoot at stuff at least dish some dmg and you can kill something from time to time if you try long and hard enough, AA turrets on the other hand are godawful. They are comically inaccurate and overheat before that gaddmn ESF goes to 50% hp. ESF approaching in a straight line, no manouvers at all, wins 1v1. WTactualF? Why are they so resilient in the first place? aircraft = mobility and hit&run, tanks don't fly so they don't have to skimp on mass and can afford to have a thick metal carapace, but air? dedicated AA turrets should shred small and agile aircraft to pieces if the pilot doesn't bail asap, end of story, and the libs shouldn't be able to ignore them entirely either.

no thats insane.

Just pointing out that more space between bases results in less infantry friendly areas not more.

Also, there's plenty of infantry combat and they may add more infantry friendly environments as we go. Nerfing vehicles just because you can't enjoy your open field manly brawl in your shorts is lame and will not help the game.

We dont need to nerf vehicle.

We need a huge amount of added cover for infantry.

Instead of one tree per 75-100m, add one tree every 20-25metres and create forest areas.

instead of one large rock every 100m give us areas with 100 smaller rocks to zigzag through.

SOE keeps adding more walls, shields, barriers around the immediate base areas... But where we need added cover is the areas between the bases!

That's your fault. This game is combined arms and everyone is meant to play all 3 aspects of the game. Plus there's 6 infantry classes and you seem to be stuck in 1/6 of 33% of the game.

Play an engie, get some AT mines. You will rethink about infantry is too weak vs vehicles really quick. Play an LA with C4 and be the flying infantry bomber!

because peeps rolling in tanks/libfarmators 24/7 combine arms so hard, yeah right.

that might work but... why should i be forced to change class every time i see the tank or libfarmator when the mech warrior driving it sits in it 99% of the time and doesn't have to roll anything other than an engineer for repairs? Yep, i bet he is sweating his flexibility muscle really really hard.
There are almost no drawbacks to vehicles, what needs to be sacrificed in order to drive one? Headshots from sniping infiltrators?

true that. There needs to be some terrain that is tough or even off limits to classes of vehicles. Fields of rocks or forests to kill manuverability of heavier ground mech, high stone pillars (like those crystal spikes on Esamir) or groups of towers to annoy airjocks a bit. Also infantry should not have so many problems climbing hills so strategic moves can be made by foot. Perfect example: Blackshard Platinum Mine -> Mesa Comm Station. These bases are within the spitting distance yet it's faster to go around than to climb (and i am not even convinced if classes other than LA can do it at all). That doesn't make any sense, currently roadmap for footies and ground mech is pretty much the same, which makes infantry largely obsolete.

lets just remove all the vehicles and make the bases closer

OP's got a point however you need to strike a balance (which is the hard part)

I agee that vehicles should be less available to spawnat will.

I agree that vehicle timers should be longer.

I agree that vehicles should cost more resources. (although the resource system could do with a revamp)

HOWEVER

Vehicles should be more powerful and more respected on the battlefield. Insted of the throw away trash we have now.

When infantry see an MBT (Vanguard/Prowler/Magrider) they should be concerned - At the moment the only time infantry are worried about tanks in this game is when the faction you are fighting spams the hell out of them and your fighting 5-20+

Its already too easy to destroy vehicles in this game with all the HA rockets, mines, c4 etc.

In short; Vehicles should be more lethal and in return rarer.

My outfit has owned Magriders in open terrain on esamir. There is always something to hide behind. massed rockets can take out anything.
5 libs above? me and my 70 friends will blow you away with annihilators
magriders shooting at you from a distance? see above
the come in closer? the basic unguided launcher will destroy them in seconds.
you know vehicles are comming? pick a choke point and mine it. flank it from both sides and make them watch in terror while you stop them in their tracks.
It's been done before. It will be done again.

If you are a tank driver: Choose your fights and terrain. You are strong but not invincible. Most make the mistake of staying in a column once the fight begins. This means you are using at the most 4 tanks at a time against 70 rockets. Tanks are not UP.

In the tech test, turrets were such a force to be feared there were actual nerf threads in the forums! Since then they've just suffered nerf after nerf, exacerbated by vehicles getting buff after buff.

Of course if you have 70 friends all on foot in the same area you will blow things up due to the sheer amount of outgoing firepower.

However, your case is the exception and not the rule. For the most part people play different classes, which means you have a combination of light assaults, medics, engineers, infiltrators, heavy assaults and some even run around in the open with MAX's. The problem is, only ONE of those classes can do ANY type of damage to vehicles in the distance... the Heavy Assault. The MAX has AV weapons but those suck for long range shooting and most MAX units in the open carry AA for obvious reasons.

Back in PS1 everyone could pack AV weapons as long as they had them unlocked. You could pack a repairgun to fix max units and at the same time have an assault rifle + AV weapon like Striker/Lancer/Phoenix... due to that ability for all infantry to carry AV, the infantry had much better stand-off capabilities to defend themselves against enemy vehicles and air units.

In PS2 you have extremely limited defense since ONLY the HA can defend your infantry squad from air or vehicles... so people naturally jump into vehicles as opposed to being free kills to enemy libs and tanks.

You don't know what combined arms is. BF3 does combined arms better than this game. Stop talking about things you don't understand. In combined arms, infantry VASTLY outnumbers tanks. Tanks VASTLY outnumber aircraft. For every 1 jet, you might have 10 tanks. For every 1 tank, you'd be looking at close to 150 grunts. Suddenly PS2 doesn't look so "combined arms", does it?