Why Balance Doesn't Matter

YES! You are completely correct. I've made this thread a couple times myself, and it keeps getting the same ****** reception. If SOE focused on figuring out how to encourage teamwork, then at least half of the balance issues would disappear. If this goddamn place would only understand that THEY are responsible for the nerfing. THEY are the reason that balance is the only thing that gets talked about, and thus THEY are the reason they game will never be balanced.

You guys, get your ******* heads out of your *****. The dude just mentions the PPA in passing and you guys HAVE to change the thread to being about that. Jesus Christ guys.

I didn't say the Magruder wasn't more limited I'm saying all tanks can be taken advantage of by the Liberator. He was acting like the Magrider is the only tank at a disadvantage due to limited turret elevation. I doubt old Aaron is coming back, I don't even know if the almost good 150 meter Vulcan will come back

Hey guys how about a totally AMAZING concept: instead of NERFING everything that's a good weapon, how about we BUFF equivalents from other factions?

You are all missing the point entirely.

balance is for girls

lack of balance is there for us to deal with as appropriate IN-GAME

No, that's not the point. Just because balance isn't the main problem doesn't mean the game doesn't have to be balanced too. The problem is that there is a major lack in tools for coordination and teamwork, nor anything guiding lone wolves to do things that are more useful to their team. If leaders and players had better means of working together, then a lot of the current balance problems would disappear. If there were in game message boards, or other convenient ways of getting in contact with the people who are too lazy to use the internet, with links to player made tutorials and videos, the PS2 team could save themselves TONS of time balancing the game. If people understood how easy it is to counter a lot of the things that get complained about, then they wouldn't be getting nerfed quite so badly all the time.

You didn't read any of the posts did you.
If you look under vehicles, I only have 75 kills on my magrider.
https://www.planetside2.com/players#!/5428196144902198993

Apparently no faction can have a good weapon.. All weapons must simply be clones of each other or mediocre at best. Asymmetrical balance please.

Checks and balances on weapons don't magically cause balance not to matter. (And in fact, they're a form of balance.)

If the less-skilled team wins because their AI weapon tore through infantry faster than their opponents' AI weapon, then poor balance will have made the game shallower. It won't matter that ESFs kill either AI weapon just as easily, because the imbalance will still always cause less-skilled players to do better than skilled players.

Basically balance is the only thing making a game worth playing at all. Without balance, games are shallow. They're about one skill (selecting the overpowered weapon) rather than being about many skills.

No amount of strategy or coordination can balance a serious imbalance.

- anyone that lived (or rather died, repeatedly) through the Lasher 2.0 in PS1 can tell you that!


Balance is balance is balance - you can't just make it go away, it is the crux of any MMO and/or PvP game in the end (that's not to say every weapon should be balanced against every other, but faction vs faction there has to be balance - direct or indirect - the latter is much more difficult to achieve successfully).

SOE can't do that even when the weapon in question is balanced. Look at liberator belly guns. They could not figure out how to make duster as good as the others so they gave duster some small buff and nerfed the others to bring them on the same level.

BS! once i saw Magrider stuck at the small rock.. but not, he was exploit dat rock to shoot my ESF

The problem is you can't just say make the TR brilliant at AA - they did that with the Striker IT WAS NOT BALANCED! (remotely)

You can make things different, but balanced (i.e. different mechanics,same over all power).

And you can (in theory) make different things balanced (i.e. a strenght in one area is counter by a weakness [relative or direct] in another) - although this is nightmarishly difficult in practice and it's hard to think of any exampled where it really worked 100%.

What do you mean? That 20 hardcore organized people on TS armed with knifes can beat 5 scattermaxes?
Coordination doesent make balance irrelevant when the imbalance gets large enough.

2 ppa's will still be able to lock down a small spawn room. 4 or 5 will be able to lock down pretty much any base. I don't really see the point of nerfing AMMO. Nerfing ammo on lib guns didn't do anything to make lib less op. But now that the nerf train has rolled on, people forget about crying for a lib nerf.

Why do you guys assume that when he is saying that balance doesn't matter, he doesn't want the ppa to be nerfed?

Why can't vanu have a better ai weapon than other factions? What's the damn point of different factions if every unique weapon is going to be nerfed to match the other faction's clones?
What we need is more diversity and tradeoffs. Drastic differences between factions. No clones will be op because the other factions will have another weapon that performs better in another situation.

I only agree with the OP in one thing, beeing it that most people complain about balance in a cause-effect way, and that is not the way this game is designed.

SOE is trying to do something that is really difficult as is achiving asymetric balance. When trying to do the factions different, one faction is supposed to be strong in QC while the other has a strong tank. In this environment, compleining about that tank beeing overpowered because it always defeat my faction tank makes not sense, because it is so by desing.

But people likes to play every faction their own style, and that is impossible in an asymetrically balanced game. "I want to Zerg with the human faction!" kind of thinking.

If SOE doesnt get to explain this to players they are better going the BF way: have different vehicles for every action but make them exactly the same.

All these NC/TR demanding a PPA nerf were the same ones who **** a brick when SOE decided to nerf AP rounds against libs a month ago, y'know, something Vanguards and Prowlers could do but Magriders couldn't.

Totally agree with King here. I am also sick of Nerfs. Every time SOE nerfs something, they create a dozen more problems that only make one faction...or all... less competitive.

I hate PPA, but why nerf it? Just give the NC and TR a MB secondary that is just as competitive. Give NC a mounted Pheonix secondary with the same range as any PPA user. Lower Fire Rate, but higher splash Dmg vs Inf>>>That's called Balance.

Give TR a Beefy mounted Pounder secondary on its MB with equal range to the PPA. Higher Rate of Fire to PPA, but less splash Dmg than the PPA or Mounted Phoenix>>>That's Asyemetrical Balance and no one is ******** about the real money they spent on something that is now completely useless. Come to think of it, ppl would actually be spending "real" money on new shiney toys.

It could be that easy. The codes are already there for those tweaks to weapons....wishful thinking I suppose.

I too enjoy a great straw man.

As a player in the most organised and respected outfit on my server, balance is a monstrous issue. Maxes are still overpowered, Bulldog gals are overpowered, and coordination really isn't going to change this. Even playing heavy or medic in a squad of good players, most of my deaths are to stupid **** like maxes. If we pull maxes to counter their maxes, they just pull more, then we pull more, then nobody has a good time because maxes are **** and ruin the fun for everyone on the ground, ie, 70% of the playerbase. But wait, you can just conc them! Nope, because as soon as you see them to actually throw the conc they mash both mouse buttons and you're dead instantly because too bad you have 1/10th of their effective health and half their firepower. I don't understand the logistic argument, it's so bad. Just because you can pull overpowered **** to counter their overpowered ****, it doesn't make for a good game play experience for the majority of the player base.