Unique explanation for vehicleside

And i properly missed a few quotes...

In most, if not all the FPS's i have played the consensus was that the 2 premium skills was/is/and should be:
a) reaction time
b) situational awareness

Then you got a debate over teamplay/class selection and other crap at a distant 3. place.

PS2 is the very first FPS game where ppl actually argue against those 2 skills being a premium - instead talking about how their are "skilled" because they used a machine that very rarely can be one-shotted, can one shot infantry, doesnt requires fast reactions and only medium situational awareness with either great escape options or high survivability.

Does that mean that ppl that use vehicles aint skilled? Nope, there are some truely great FPS players using vehicles in PS2, but saying that vehicles has a higher skill ceiling then your common infantry guy is wrong.

You keep saying this, yet present no evidence. I understand that everyone likes different things. But when you say this in response to a guy sitting in a tank shelling a base getting massive amounts of kills, you think that is fun? Personally camping behind a tree, not using any skill to kill people with no real threat to yourself would be really boring. Is it because you feel more powerful than the people your killing? Flyboys in the first couple months of PS2 being out, used aircraft to feel powerful (because they were op) and knew they could easily farm certs. Same thing here when the prowlers were op. I stand by my original comment that people use vehicles to farm certs because they don't take as much skill as playing infantry and have evidence to back it up.

Show me evidence of infantry being really easy to play (excluding max's, think we both know that SoE has its head up its A$$ when it comes to faction MAX balance right now) and maybe you can sway me to believe that his entire thread wasn't just a ploy to complain about vehicle nerfs.

Not convincing me otherwise. I'd say very high situational awareness is required for tanks and aircraft. Knowing where the enemy is and might be is essential for prolonged survival. Whilst you are unable to be one-shot you can still die very quickly in the wrong place.

Reaction time isn't skill based it is a physical trait that can be improved by increased need to react to things quickly. Twitch gameplay rewards the quick and reactive player, there isn't much skill involved. Situational awareness is a lot harder to come by, experience and intelligence is required. It is not something that you are born with.

The very fast one hit style of infantry combat is more or less a lottery of who fires first. I've been beaten by noobs and have beaten high BR it is the most even of playing fields as you can get in a FPS. I've yet to meet anyone I would consider to a truly great FPS player on the other hand the difference in skill in vehicle play is always apparent.

Didnt read all the posts but i have to agree with drippyskippy. Sitting in a tank shooting people pre HE nerf could have been done well by a 3 year old, and now its gotten to the point where you would need at least a 5 year old to do it, but still not at all difficult.

Infiltrators own. Get an SMG, learn to flank and sneak behind the enemy and you can kill more people than you will ever kill with a heavy.

OP, what kind of BS are you on? I see plenty of Infiltrators and LA's kick serious a$$. There are plenty of situations which require infantry, especially when capping the larger bases. Though I did once see a dude squeeze a Mosquito inside the dome at a biolab. That was just awesome. Too bad he got shot down in like 3 seconds once he made it in.

I had not considered this as the reason of vehicleside and I tend to agree the choices infantry have to "enjoy" combat are becoming more and more limited as weapon TTKs continue to escalate.

+1 For making me think.

Infantry combat blows in PS2 for several reasons.

For one there's the stupid flinch, which would be ok in a game without iron sights, but when talking about a game that's primarily ADS combat, it's just means to downgrade skill (aim) so even a ******** ape can get the occasional kill or two.

Massive downtime. I'd love to see the stat for how many hours you have spent watching a counter on your screen tick down. In a game like this with massive amount of players, instagib low TTK is just bad design. Period. Combine this with the time infantry has to spend running back to battle after every death, it goes somewhere along the lines of 85% downtime - 15% actual combat. The reason ESF is so enjoyable to use, is because it's more like 70% combat, 30% downtime. This is further influenced by factors out of your control, such as sunderer positions (you can ofc pull your own sundy, but it's not gonna last unless you defend/repair it). The only way to avoid massive downtime playing infantry is to be a camper, so why not just pull out a tank/ESF which move faster, are more durable and don't suffer from stupid mechanics like flinch and the like.

Shields: directly related to massive downtime. After every 1on1 where you take damage, you have to find cover and wait ~13 seconds for your shields to recharge if you want to survive your next encounter. If your life dips below a certain point, you need to be carrying medpacks to basically survive the next 1on1. This further makes the game even more heavyside2, as taking medpacks with... say LA, means you lose your C4, and your only ability to do anything about vehicles. Great... isn't it?

Noob weapons. Worst of these are probably AP mines. Seriously... respawn, spend a minute to get in position with LA, get blown by an invisible mine. Respawn, run back to battle. There went 1.5 minutes of your life. Another skill denominator so ******** apes can get free kills with zero skill. There's a reason why you don't put instakill mines in FPS games.

Faction choice. Every time I switch to playing Vanu, I just lol-out-loud and wish I had rolled Vanu from the start, simply because it's like the ultimate easy mode when it comes to infantry combat. When you play NC, you have to constantly concentrate, fight against the recoil, watch where your crosshair moves, mind your reloads due to long reload time etc. When you play with Vanu and their zero recoil, high ROF, fast reload, no bullet drop full auto point and spray guns that are great for basically any range, infantry combat actually becomes bearable. All you have to do is point and hold down your mouse button to kill people in sniper rifle ranges with your default carbine.

NC weapons are highly situational, whereas every Vanu weapon feels great for any range (with few exceptions). Take something like the Gauss SAW, takes high user control (meaning you have to concentrate when using this gun), good only for long-medium range, but every time the fight goes to close quarters, you should find a terminal and switch guns. Highly cumbersome.

Or maybe something like GD-7F, good for close range spray, but even at medium range the high sideways recoil combined with twitch means you're going to lose regularly against the vast majority of Vanu arsenal. NC has only a few good all around guns that approach the ease-of-use Vanu weapons, such as GD-22s.

Removal of user controlled instant action. I fully understand why it was removed, however the execution is just downright batsht horrible. This was one of the few saving graces of infantry combat, being able to move from point A to point B in ~10 seconds. Instead of removing the ability to choose your own location, they simply should have made it so you don't drop on top of facilities, and land only at the outskirts. Finding a good infantry battle these days basically means taking an ESF, and if I pull out an ESF, tell me one good reason not to roll engy and just play with ESF instead? There's also the factor that not every likes to fight in all facilities, for one, I personally detest Bio Labs.

Another thing bringing down infantry combat is the zerg nature of it. Don't even need to go into this in detail because it's self-explanatory and directly related to low TTK, huge number of players and massive downtime.

I could go on for ages, but the jist of it is... infantry combat in PS2 feels like your own actual skill has very little to do with the outcome/duration of your life, and the vast majority of time is spent actually not fighting. The only way I could honestly truly ENJOY infantry combat in PS2 would be with a computer that runs the game at 60 FPS solid at ANY conditions, playing Vanu. Even then, I probably couldn't stomach infantry combat for more than 60 minutes straight at max, because of the massive downtime and random deaths you can do nothing about. It all comes down to the fact that infantry combat in PS2 is frustrating, more than anything else. It should be fun, enjoyable, relaxing... but it's not.

Compared to some arcade shooter like WarRock, the skill aspect of infantry player in PS2 is non-existent. Probably the reason such a shtty game lasted so long in the first place.

Another problem I didn't mention. In the beginning all the classes has unique weapons but no as time goes on were seeing more and more weapons that all classes can use. This too is making infantry combat boring. Every class gets the same weapons and they aren't unique enough to really make infantry fighting dynamic and interesting.

Compare infantry combat in planetside to any other FPS and it falls short. If infantry combat was my desire I probably wouldn't be here.

The grudge I have isn't about infantry vs vehicles. its about how heavy/engy is the go-to class. Developers aren't really giving infantry users a choice in diversity because these two classes have it all.

Also to counter the vehicle farming...
AV turret farming
quided rockets from the spawn point
AA max
Sitting next to a door with a shotgun.

I could take these generalizations and say infantry are all noobs but that wouldn't be true.

Taking one tactic used by the entire line of vehicles as proof they are easy is a fallacy just the same.

I imagine a world where infantry have cool unique class-specific weapons. Where infantry have unique abilities that set them apart from each other and add more to the gameplay rather then just adding new ways to kill vehicles and more CQC weapons. More useful utilitys.
Infantry shields which project out to protect the squad from grenades and rockets.
Railguns that fire through walls.
Sticky grenades which, unlike the current sticky grenades, explode gew over an area making it hard to pass through.
Fire
Tesla guns that jump to deal secondary damage to multiple enemies.
Adrenaline shots which give allied infantry more speed.
deployable barricades

these are jump random ideas not thought-out enough to handle fully scrutiny. they are just examples of things that could make infantry fighting more fun.

good post, though I argue that the grass is greener on the other side. in other words, Vanu weapons aren't very different from NC weapons. in fact they are all like 98% similiar across all alliances.