They said they were rebalancing vehicles to make gameplay more fun. Vehicle drivers first and then AV specialists after complained vehicle battles were too short. There wasn't enough time for variety in engagements, dynamics to shift, skill to present itself. Then nerf after nerf arrived and the vehicles kept losing their hp and it got worse. Madruger tanks had a brief heyday with some strong armor specific modules arrived but were quickly nerfed again with a further vulnerability to explosive damage.
For over half a year, we were told vehicles were going to get rebuilt from the ground up and just wait and be amazed. It's safe to say that was wasted time. Not only is the proposed refresh
horribly unbalanced, the skill tree
shallow yet expensive, and devoid of
innovation - it also doesn't fix the original problems.
Vehicles are losing a lot of health and flexibility. Ammo is being added on top of heat for more worries but at no benefit such as ammo selection. Shields, traditionally the anti infantry option, is now completely losing the one unique holdover from EVE - passive shield regen. Fights are getting less interesting and faster. The only successful module is the new shield injector (not really a booster with only one pulse): it is a single use situationally powerful tool that can be used once per fight. The rest are long timers on long cooldowns. While they are laudable for rewarding proactive use, they are cancerous because they are effectively forced retreats. The gameplay is to sit in timeout as your reward for winning. Win enough and you have to retreat all the way to the MCC (the only place to find a live supply depot). Is the recall mechanic going away? Because otherwise the ammo and cooldowns are pointless.
Everyone would have been happy with double the health and half or even less the damage vs infantry. Instead vehicles are now disposable equipment. Hopefully the ISK price will at least match this new status. I will say, personally, while eve-lite has gone disastrously for infantry combat it would have been excitingly unique for mechanized warfare. Only in the community created masterpiece of Living Legends have I seen vehicle combat so interesting and deep as the potential DUST presented with heat and energy management. But like MWO, it is getting dumber and dumber with each iteration (need I say coolant flush?) instead of playing up it's strengths.
I notoriously have an axe to grind over the misdevelopment of this game, especially with the shady marketing BS, but for old times sake I will offer feedback on vehicle changes. Big suits with wheels isn't interesting. Long cooldowns on necessary to be competitive modules isn't fun. Deep SP sinks with low variety isn't hardcore. The maps and gamemodes don't even support mixed arms combat and nothing has been addressed on that front.
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