Why Asymetrical Balance doesnt work in Planetside 2

It helps to actually read the OP before posting in a thread. Allow me to summarize: the point here was that the asymetry is not significant enough, leading to "bland sameness" exactly.

P.S.: "It's absolutely fine the way it is" is a lazy and misguidedly content way of looking at anything. Good thing scientists never thought like that.

What about something constructive then? A series of guidelines to achieving good asymmetrical balance.

1) Every faction should be able to engage at every range that other factions cane engage at.

2) Common pool items exist for every infantry role and vehicle point.

3) No ES item should grant complete domination at a given engagement range in exchange for uselessness outside it.


Some changes from just those 3 rules.

MAXs need Burst LMGs and Semi Auto Shotguns. NC MAXs get auto shotties as a faction flavor close range advantage. TR Get Auto LMGs. VS need to decide what the faction advantage actually is.

Common pool heavy Tank needs to be added. And not that Alert winning thing that has been mooted. Based on winning an alert is god damn stupid. If you are already dominating you don't need help to dominate further.

Then play the game some, see how things work out. If a Common pool weapon is being used by a faction to a much higher degree than their ES alternatives, it indicates that their faction flavor in an area isn't competitive.

Ive only just stopped seeing lasher orbs when it all goes dark.

I wish I'd got video of that time, some of the ridculousness of the battles fought against it just doesn't seem comprehensible unless you were there and saw it (and died horribly to it)!

"Everything" is not a good answer, and cannot fly in any rational endeavor. There must be specific parameters that projects are managed by, or they will fail.

There must be something that you can think of. Or, you agree that as it stands right now, defending balance efforts as they are managed right now is a losing battle.

I agree with the general sentiment. IMO, I think the infantry game is one of the more imbalanced parts of the game mainly because the weapons are so out of funk. Someone put it correctly that high rates of fire and low recoil make for just awesome weapons... and to me that should only be an SMG with the downside being low damage and doing next to 0 damage beyond the 50m range (or the drop-off needs to be significantly steeper). Why an Orion has low recoil (even when hip-fired), yet also a faster rate of fire and damage per bullet than almost every SMG and Carbine out there is beyond me... I can't blame the VS for mostly rolling HA in light of this fact on top of also having the HA ability.

Uhm....what?

It is THE answer though. (whether you like or not)

It cannot be the answer, because it is too open-ended. What industry do you work in where you can answer a query regarding your decision criteria with "everything"?

I gotta say, your logic seems as if it hasn't been sharpened with real world experience.

I don't understand what you think the "real world" has to do with game balance.

If there's a Gibbon breaks wind in Sumatra does that therefore mean SOE has to nerf something?

Game balance takes into account everything that's just how it is.

Balancing is boring and leaves nothing exciting in the game.
I don't play VS much yet I still miss the old Zoey.. I loved those moments defending a base and the VS would Zoey rush the base, It was like OH S***T as you seen all these Zoey maxes coming at the base and when you held and pushed them back it was a great feeling and gave you a sense of faction pride.. Now you see VS maxes coming and its like whatever..

I miss the Harasser vrs Harasser fights and the days when a group of Harassers could create havoc to an armor zerg and die a glorious death. I am talking from a point of view from all sides on that one, as a harasser driver watching unskilled tankers panic or being a tank gunner watching those over confident harasser crews pay the price and blow up, and even killing the engineer in the back seat became a favorite past time of mine. I never thought it was OP, you just couldn't ignore them and since every faction can spawn one I never had a problem with them, In fact the dynamics they brought to the fights is felt and missed by me as I liked fighting them as much as I liked driving them.
This game is removing its OH S***T moments and replacing them with boring, sterile and predictable combat. Just some examples as there are many other things that have been nerfed to nothing for the sake of balance that I find making the game completely boring, I am really starting to dislike this community....

I'm turning to the real world for a benchmark with which to measure logic. Its the only reference I have.

You didn't answer my question. Where do people accept non-specific answers to specific questions?

The internet. The internet accepts any answer to specific questions, up to and including zealous xenophobic hate speech.

But it has absolutely nothing to do with game balance.

It has everything to do with balance; in the context that having a dialogue re: balance is how we got here.

You're dancing around the point, and cannot give any specific criteria upon which balancing could be achieved in a lasting manner. Why?

I think I know why. You know that what you want can't stand up to logical critique.

Real life doesn't have much if anything to do with game balance. Game balance has everything to do with game balance.

I've already given you the critera; everything.

NS stuff are suppose to be the common pool equalizer, then TR, VS, and NC are suppose to be unique functioning weapons that the other faction doesn't have access to without looting their bodies.

Basically NC would be the only faction with shotguns, coil/rail guns.

TR would be the guys with the chain guns, mini guns, rapid fire rocket launchers, duel wielding max weaponry.

and the VS would have beam weapons, plasma weaponry, stuff you'd see in unreal tournament kinda weapons, hovering vehicles, flying maxes due to lighter and strong material.


But as we got it now, everyone is the same thing, with just different colors.


It is a very wrong approach to this game, makes it very shallow.

It's odd to me for someone to say "Hey asymmetrical balance works, just look at Starcraft!"

Um, there's this game called PlanetSide 1. It was far more asymmetrical than PS2. And it was balanced.

Unfortunately, the problem with PS2 is short TTK. It forces all the weapons to be extremely similar. PS1 pulled it off because it had a slow TTK. This allowed, for example:

NC Jackhammer had the fastest TTK of 1 second, but extremely short range.

TR Minigun had a TTK of 1.38 sec, but it had much better range.

VS Lasher was somewhere in between for TTK, and somewhere between for effective range, but you also had to lead your target considerably even at short range.

The VS MAX weapon, the Quasar, had a TTK against infantry of 2 seconds! This meant that you wouldn't get slaughtered instantly if you rounded a corner against the MAX. But the MAX also was much tougher to kill than PS2's MAXes.

All these asymmetries possible because of long TTK. But we will never get long TTK in PS2, so this game will always feel homogenous.

Real life is the only thing I can refer to when it comes to the physics that should affect weapons and equipment.

Everything is not criteria. Its a cop out.

Everything does not lead to a successful conclusion.

C'mon...you're smarter than that. What do you think the current criteria is? What do you think about it as a long term strategy?

Again real life has as much to do with game balance as real life has to do with nanites currently, which is to say nothing.

Game balance is influenced by the game, not real life.