Why people hate tanks/combined arms? (or at least seem to)

Vehicles were too cheap resource wise at release to begin with. I also think timers should have been twice as long so that people had incentives to destroy a vehicle, since it couldn't be replaced as quickly. Either steeper resource costs or longer acquisition timers would have worked. We got into the habit of spamming vehicles because either a player enjoyed using them or saw them as a way to not die as frequently while getting kills, instead of using them for a real purpose in a battle.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to use a vehicle, but by having them so accessible to everyone, they were spammed to no end. I also think that having vehicles so easy to use helps create enough vehicle spam to where even a new player, where his force should be minimal on the battlefield, is substantially more effective with little to no experience or effort. As in anything multiplied by zero should be zero, but "force multiplier" X zero can still be > zero.

I was in the mind set of tactical gameplay when I first started PS2. I wanted to see a situation, analyze and figure out the best solution to the problem. Example: If you are attacking an amp station, you know there are turrets so you can pull tanks to destroy the turrets at range to allow your infantry and light armored vehicles to advance, then once the infantry have gained control of the walls and turrets, then you can call in aircraft to help eliminate the rest of the enemy troops and ground units to allow your infantry and tanks to further push on the point and then help control the flow of hostiles once the point is captured. Instead we just had random assortments of troops and vehicles assaulting every base, even if they knew in advance that they weren't going to be needed. With out limitations on upgrades then why would people not use an upgrade? Spam.

I basically think that there was a problem at release with ease of use and the ability to spam vehicles but SOE didn't address it. Instead of addressing the problem they tried to give infantry the tools to destroy the spam, cheap lock on weapons and mana A/V turrets, which only lead to those being spammed and the bane of vehicle users. At this point there isn't much you can do with out upsetting a huge portion of our remaining players, sort of like changing the mechanics of the liberator. Vehicles should have been really powerful because they're vehicles, but in order to balance SOE's decision to make them easy to use and accessible to everyone, they had to nerf them. Where I personally would have preferred vehicles that were extremely effective but less common and difficult to use.

Because I'm an MLG infantry-only pro who hates getting blown up by vehicles in the middle of my epic bunny-hop camping spree.

NERF!
NERF!
NERF!

That's tough to say. If your goal is to have Tanks fight Vehicles. Then they have the tools they need to do that. They don't need to change. I play a variety of roles and work with a small team to do minor objectives that help the faction on the continent to give them some breathing room. Out of the last 100 deaths, only 17 were from vehicles. And it was a good mix of vehicles which seems about right. Though I will iterate that these 17 deaths were largely apart from one another. In otherwords, I wasn't being farmed.

To put it shortly, no, farming isn't the primary use of vehicles. As you said. At least not in the experience of my playstyle. This varies from person to person of course.

But I want to add something to this. Its probably a wrench into the equation but just bear with me. What is the point of tanks? I mean really what is their point? Before we decide on that, lets look at their capability within the game. And I do mean the sum of all the parts. Not just things in a vacuum.

Speaking of MBTs for simplicity. Tanks have 4000hp. The normal soldier has 1000hp. MAXes have 2000 iirc. Takes 4x as much damage to kill a tank as it does infantry. Well more because of armor that reduces that damage and each non-flash ground vehicle has damage resistance depending on the weapon used. If you need more info on this, go here: http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicle_armor_and_damage_resistance

So we know how much punishment a tank can take. With Armor, Tank Resistance, and a larger pool of HP. Tanks can withstand alot of punishment. But lets look at their offensive ability. Tanks get access to 3 main guns which are AP, HEAT, and HE, and a variety of secondaries. For the sake of argument lets simplify the secondaries to AA, AI, and AV, with Basilisks being the middle of all three.

With that said you get a variety of different loadouts that you can take. You can focus or mix and match. And of course Empire Specific quirks make some loadouts better for them than others. I'm going to assume its a perfect world and everyone knows the best match ups and can use them effectively despite performance (we're not here to discuss balance between empires) issues if any.

With that said. What is the point of tanks? We're getting closer. We know that tanks must be taken on with heavy weapons. Small arms are ineffective. Also infantry have access to heavy weapons under some circumstances. So even if they do not have a tank, they can risk it and take them on without heavy armor.

Hmm.. why not just use tanks? All the time. Well we know they are resource and cooldown limited. We also know that tanks cannot take points. But but as our Hero in the Halfshell explained their purpose could be inbetween bases. Right now... that roughly works. You see a tank zerg hit another zerg and get a pretty glorious fight. There's a ton of issues there however.

Its a glorious fight until you become dispossessed. That's a mechwarrior term for.. you done lost your ride. Remember there is a cooldown associated with pulling tanks and a resource limit. This is normally where the heavy infantry players (as in play on foot, not specifically HAs) have their complaints. All the tankers are having fun farming the grunts. This is also where the tankers complain that their rides are being demolished by grunts with rockets, c4, mines, what have your.

Both sides are pretty ignorant. Why do you ask? Because the players that know the game are flying in a Galaxy at 1000m up and dropping on the point, totally ignoring the vehicle meta as if it didn't exist. The fortunate thing (for those on the groun) this only happens from well coordinated outfits. Its way more effective than people give it credit for.

The inherent problem with vehicles and tanks is that they are really worthless if you think about it. There's two things that will win fights. Numbers and Coordination. It takes at least a 2 to 1 advantage in numbers to beat out coordination with numbers. When you have a popular continent locked at 33-33-33 with queues to get in, you can't afford to use 2 to 1 odds. Coordination will beat you even on the strategic game in those cases.

But of course we're talking about prime time on populated servers. Well.. are we? With continent locking 1/2 the continents we're going to see larger concentrations to singular continents. Which means coordination will become more important. But lets get off of that for the time being so we don't go off topic.

The problem we have in the community is that we don't have a clear role for the tanks. We have to understand what we want the tanks to be. Do we want Tanks to support infantry? Or do we want infantry supporting the tank?

If we want Tanks to support infantry than their role is not so much to kill enemy infantry but to deny them an area they can go. How do you make this happen? Lower their damage and decrease their cooldowns. This allows them to saturate areas with fire, but getting little in the ways of kills.

If we want infantry to support tanks. This can be easily done by increasing the resistances to infantry equipped heavy weapons. this means you need a tank to take a tank out. Or 3-4 heavies or whatnot.

But we don't have a unified view on how to go about this. And to complicate matters. The availability of tanks causes another issue. All it takes to pull a tank is a dude with resources and a tank terminal. Because of that foot zergs of 100 people can turn into 100 tank vehicle zergs in an instant.

This is currently balanced by the fact that infantry have tools at their disposal to be able to counter them when they do become dispossessed. As well as the fact that you have methods to totally ignore the ground game and Gal drop onto a base you're attacking.

Where do we go from here? What is the point of Tanks? First we have to come to an agreement on what tanks add to the game. We can do this by asking ourselves a few questions.

1. Should Tanks support Infantry or should Infantry support Tanks?
2. Should Tanks play a role in the base capture beyond getting us to the base?*
3. Should Tanks be readily available?**
4. Should anyone be in a Tank at anytime?***

*Should the pound spawn rooms, destroy objectives that help the attackers take a base, or merely their presence helps tick down the timers faster?
**When I say readily available, I'm speaking of resource cost and cooldown. Should this be increased, reduced, or left alone.
***When I ask if anyone should be in a tank I'm talking about limits to how many tanks can be in a region, or should initial tank usage be certed into?

I caution anyone reading this against merely quoting my questions and answering them arbitrarily. They are not meant to be voted on. They are meant to be discussed and agreed to by the general community. There is no yes or no answer to them. Those questions require answers that are too complex for one person to answer and thus should be discussed until there is a general consensus.

If we can do that, we can define a role for tanks. And then actually have a point to using them in the general gameplay. As of now, they sort of blast away at random infantry and contribute very little to base captures or defense other than to provide roadblocks.

Typical response from a person that doesn't get combined arms. Units support each other but you can not expect the only unit capable of completing objectives to want to be farmed or punished for playing the game. You also have to take into consideration how many play selfishly and risk adverse. Infantry players are almost always playing an objective or fighting the enemy who is trying to complete theirs so they are actually playing the game, where the motives for others are less clear.

You want to cure these problems with vehicles?

Here are some ideas that will never see the light of day because it requires major game-play changes.

Allow every player to have basic access to all arms and all classes at a low level and basic weaponry. Let everyone get a taste of which arms they'd like and then let them specialize. Make it more interesting to unlock class specifics.

Require strict cert specialization along a flow chart where players can focus on which arm they'd like to follow. Let them unlock MBT's etc... make it expensive, involved and interesting. First step along the line would be scout vehicles, them light armor and finally, MBT's.

Give that armor specialized loadouts for their selected guns. Let the players make the choice of what kind of ammo they choose for a loadout (All HE, all HEAT, all AP or combos there of.) Include smoke rounds and specialized shells. Decrease ammo load out totals to decrease loiter times.

Make Sunderers subject to resources by allowing a certain number to spawn, repair or rearm before needing to travel back to a base to refill it's nanites.

Decrease the amount of bases by at least half and make them mean something to the occupying force. Give each base a finite resource supply per player. Base that statistic on how many times they can personally reload or establish a count down timer indicating when the base runs out of nanites and requires a "reload".

Make travel across the map mean something by giving resources a "physical" aspect and require them to be transported. Enabling convoys and ambushes of those convoys and corresponding armor battles in the space between bases. Give vehicles a purpose instead of just battle taxi's to go from siege to siege.

Eliminate instant redeployment.

Allow players to "drop" anywhere they wish, but base that drop on infantry resource expenditure. Make a specialization of "drop" infantry which allows this kind of thing.

Ah crap...

I could go on with this wish list, but what's the point.

That was probably faciteous.
Edit: and if you took it as such, then tanks are playing the objective game by farming infantry. A dead infantryman can't cap the point. Alternatively, if tanks aren't playing to the objective, then AVinfantry aren't playing to the objective, since if the actions of the tanks don't matter, killing them rather than getting on the point doesn't matter.

Good point. My only point was that infantry are more likely to play for objectives while other units have more questionable intentions. An example would be a tower fight. There isn't really a reason that towers are spammed, even at satellite bases, where the capture points are in the tower, they are spammed. There is also counter play but that is mostly used by large outfits, where they are usually playing the objectives as well.

Edit: I also knew that he wasn't being serious but wanted to post that because I left it out of my original post and to give a point of view against that same argument that many share from an almost entirely infantry only player(now a days).

I think there needs to be a healthy medium to how tanks participate in base fights. Esamir is annoying with the walls surrounding the bases. Once I get to the base my tank is useless, unless some enemy armor happens to show up. However places like Indar I can sit there and shell a spawn room if I want. It could be an option to have spawn rooms maybe underground, with multiple exit points. That way tanks can still help out in base fights but they won't be camping a spawn room.

Why do people hate to play against cheaters or pay2win players? Cause they feel like they either get farmed or have to join the pack.

When a tank or aircraft comes up to some infantry player then the infantry has 2 choices:
a)run
b)die
About the same choices you have when facing a cheater.

Doesn't sound like a fun choice, right? Now what can the infantry do(after dying)? Choose a different class with at least a very, very small chance to actually win such a battle(not possible against skilled/careful opponents tho)....or hop into a tank or aircraft himself(but even then he has only a 50% chance of winning a confrontation). If infantry would have something at hands that is as superior to air and tanks as tanks and air are to infantry, infantry wouldn't complain. It#s the feeling of facing enemies with an unfair advantage that sucks....and feeling the pressure to join the band waggon(and play something you do not really want to play) makes it even worse.

Currently the rock, paper, scissor system in PS2 is : "2 rocks(air/tanks), 1 scissor(infantry)...you just need to bring enough scissors and then you can even take a rock down.". That's not creating a good feeling...realistic or not.

On top of that the 2 rocks seem to be busy farming scissors(cause it's so easy) instead of dealing with each other or caring for game objectives(like jumping out of the tanks and actually attacking/defending capture points)...which doesn't exactly make the situation any better.

Pacster, you make a good point but I feel that the "joining the pack" part should be a reference to "join a good outfit."

If you're a casual player who never joins an outfit or you join open squads but don't contribute to that team(if you have been threatened with being kicked from a pub platoon for not following orders, you're one of those people), then you have no right to complain about being farmed. The free weapons available to all players can be very effective.

On its own, the G2A lock-on launchers aren't enough to destroy an ESF or liberator before it gets its shots off and flies away. It took me a lot of practice(and lots of deaths by rocketpods) to become reliably good at hitting ESF's with the stock dumbfire, killing them in 1 shot. It also took lots of practice to get other people in my outfit to do the same against enemy liberators and galaxies.

It also takes coordination and teamwork to distract enemy tank drivers so that heavy assaults can get behind them for rear armor shots.

People complained that SOE went too far by nerfing harrasser AV weapons and that they are now useless. Myself and others in my outfit took that as SOE indirectly telling us that if you're going to use a harrasser for AV, you better use its speed and maneuverability to get those rear armor shots. Guess what? Max vehicle stealth on AV harrassers is just as effective against armor columns as AP vanguards.

If you're new to the game, then spend your certs to specialize in something and join an outfit with other people with other specializations to support you. Don't dump all your certs into playing as infantry to fight other infantry then complain and blame SOE for you not being able to defend yourself against air and armor. Blame yourself for not wanting to play with others or practice with the weapons you have.

If the larger outfits don't want to put in that kind of effort to coordinate, then they deserve to be humiliated over and over again in videos recorded by outfits like mine.

Eventually players will start looking at the map, and that little population pie chart, and then finally get it.

Your rage would be stonger IF bunny-hop camping spree was a thing in PS2.

The problem is that organization doesnt solve the problem, it only mitigates it to a certain degree:

Lets say my small outfit is in an base defending, enemy air shows up, 3-4 guys pull dedicated AA (skyguards and Bursters) and maybe shoot down 1-2 ESF/libs. Now around ½ of my guys are preoccupied with doing nothing but making sure the rest of our guys can actually have a decent fight. The AA guys aint doing nothing, because the moment the leave the skyguard/burster MAX, a solo lib/ESF will show up and ruin the fight.

What is about team up and kill the tank(s)? I'm not a tanker, I mostly play infantry, but you are not useless as Infantry against tanks (lock-on luncher, AV turret, base turrets, C4, tank mines). If I compare PS2 with other games with combined arms like Battlefield you have a wide range to kill a tank with your infantry weapons. Maybe the new player have some problems, but an average player should not have a problem with that. He only needs to team up or play smart to ambush the tank or attack them from behind. The tanker also have to play smart, because otherwise he alos will be farmed by some smart player. The main problem I see are the rising amount of solo players who thinks they are rambos and need to kill everthing alone.

I think a real combined arms gameplay in PS2 needs some change in basedesign or in capture point design. Why there are no capture points in the open fields, where you need tanks to hold it? That will force some more player to pull tanks. At the moment many player dont even think about getting to the next base. Just push redeploy and wait until the next sundy is deployed. After spawning at the sundy the enemy tanks are more or less irrelevant, because if a whole platoon spawns there the tankers are gone very fast.

All I can say is I miss Planetside 1 game mechanics in Planetside 2.


Yes I am aware Planetside 1 is still running.


Problem comes down to the fact that a single infantry unit is too powerful for something that can be used infinitely, theres too many bases with different links that can be attacked, and theres not enough open fields for tanks to work in, and in big battles tanks are a much more obvious target because the distance that infantry are rendered is reduced, but not for vehicles. Furthermore, it doesnt help that any person at any time can pull a tank.

Whats to stop 100 players from amassing 100 tanks in about 5 minutes and instantly decimate any attacking force at a base within minutes? Nothing.

I have never been a fan of the idea to allow every player to have access to everything in the game at its base model.

Granted you can dedicate yourself to a tank or esf, galaxy, sunderer, infiltrator, medic, etc... But the core problem that anyone can do anything is still there, therefore in order to balance things out, they HAVE to nerf the overall effectiveness of each unit in order to keep some semblance of balance.

Good outfits don't pull things like skyguards and bursters that confine them into a specific role. Either one soldier uses his dumbfire rocket to take down ESF's in one hit or 3 pull anti-air lock-ons to take down aircraft in a single volley. They then just resupply back to their original loadouts and classes. It takes less than a minute to accomplish. I once accomplished destroying a battle galaxy in less than 5 seconds by having 8 guys jump out of the spawn room at the same time and fire their decimators straight up.

If anything, our AP vanguards are the most effective anti-air units we have. Our drivers have had a lot of practice hitting ESF's while waiting for enemy vehicles to show up.

You need to think outside of the box.

Because PS2 have one of the most user-hostile UI and vehicle control I ever experienced in the games.

It seems with these new PTS changes SOE have missed the point again

They do not seem to understand the combined arms aspect very well at all

My problem as an infantry player isn't tanks, but the lack of space I get as infantry. Most bases are largely open-air. Tanks and aircraft can usually directly intrude into fights. Currently combined arms play is completely backwards. Infantry are given wide, open areas, and tanks are given small, linear corridors.

This is true and is why tanks need more to do or at least less incentive to purposefully target infantry. XP reductions on infantry kills and XP increases on vehicle kills would be one potential part of a fix

Hossin has added a largely infantry focused map which is good compared to Indar where camping spawns is achievable at nearly every singe base. Tanks still have a role on that continent but it is lessened compared to the other 3

Reduce XP gain for killing infantry with a tank. (to New Spawn Kill level ?)