Goric Rumis wrote:This is going to be my one and only post in response to the least productive but most vocal person in the vehicle/AV debate:
Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it's balanced.
1. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it's balanced. I know a dropship pilot who six months ago was able to stay in the air a whole game, move troops around, get kills, and never get shot out of the sky--and I saw him do it in Planetary Conquest, Factional Warfare, and pub matches. Does that mean dropships were balanced and pilots just needed to HTFU and adapt? I don't believe that, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone claim that.
2. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it's balanced. Balance in a role-based game is predicated on the idea that a role that is strong in one way is weak in another. Therefore the question is not whether AV are capable of destroying tanks, it's a question of what they have to give up to do it, and whether they're being proportionately compensated for their weaknesses in their area of strength. Right now, people are using militia tanks and suicide LAVs because they're able to accomplish the job better without making sacrifices. Just because they could do the job with forge guns and swarm launchers doesn't mean it's the best way to get it done--and if you can get better results without sacrificing flexibility, why wouldn't you?
3. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean it's balanced. I want to emphasize this point because you seem to be under the delusion that what is possible must be balanced. Tankers didn't believe this in 1.6, despite many of them going multiple matches without being destroyed. There are scouts who run around in ninja fits with nova knives--they get kills, therefore they are balanced? I regularly go positive on my skill-less alt with starter fits, so obviously a starter fit is just as good as a proto. There's not a problem with the matchmaking system, people just need to learn to adapt.
4. And finally: Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. You talk about teamwork, but what you really mean is buddy-work. If I'm working on a team, and not just out to kill vehicles, I likely have a more important responsibility than chasing down tanks the whole game. Because while I'm off chasing one tank, me and my buddy are leaving the rest of the team defenseless against any other vehicle that decides to sidle up and give them hell. That's not teamwork, that's selfishness.
These are the reasons why your anecdotes and continuing posts are irrelevant. You're setting out to prove a limited point, with limited applicability, and pretending as though the results prove some universal truth.
But of course I'm doing this for the benefit of the people reading your threads, not for you yourself. You've already made up your mind, and wouldn't change it if I presented you with a thousand pages of hard, incontrovertible evidence. So to all of you who have any sense, I leave you this TL;DR:
Don't feed the troll. If you don't respond to his posts, they will just disappear into the archive. Let them.