To all the people who believe tanks aren't OP, please answer this one question...
Would you be getting the same amount of kills while being infantry? Answer truthfully.

No one is really answering why there are no AV mines in the game. They are a fundamental weapon verses armor in all battles and serve to destroy or slow vehicles down. At the moment its almost impossible for defensive forces to create chocke points due to the high speed of tanks and lavs.

Being on defence usually means using natural and unnatural terrain features to your advantage (defense should have the advantage even if a small one).

At the moment the maps seem to allow vehicles to really dictate insertion to battles at extreme speeds, Which is further compounded by the use of drop links and drop ships.

At least if you could slow down the armor then protecting mission objectives would be a little easier for the defenders.

Even if CCP don't want a front line type of game style. Not having AV Mines makes little sense to me as they are such a basic weapon that it doesn't make sense that they are not in the game.

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=30261&find=unread

Gentlemen,

It is clear that you have passion and commitment to seeing that dust reaches its full potential

I, like many here, have fallen into the short sighted perspective that what we see and have been playing has anything to do with what we will see and be playing next week.

Whatch that video, every minute of it. Listen to how they talk and visualize what they're referring to in game. Then realize that this was march.

The kind of systems we have been playing with and the kind of systems CCP plays with on "Mainside" (name of the internal test server?) are very different. Imagine tanks dependent on capacitors for power to fie, repair or accelerate.

Please, keep posting you thoughts and ideas but realize that the WHOLE time we have been playing the game we haven't even been playing the real game. Not even the real test build.

Peace be with you

there's 2 different kinds of balance in this thread. let me put it this way...

wanting to balance a prototype forge gun to make it useful against high end tanks, is perfectly valid. it's another piece of high end equipment. that is the sort of feedback we should be giving ccp.

wanting to balance a militia fit against a full prototype fit is not. otherwise why have varying "tiers" of equipment? if you're against grinding then fine, you are entitled to your opinion and to play at your own pace, but ccp can't just cut the progression system out of the game for you.


so when we debate balance, we need to consider the tech level of the equipment. of COURSE a creodron is better than a militia AR. and it should stay that way. if you can't accept that then why are you here? it's not like it was a big secret ccp sprung on you? progression was a SELLING POINT?!

but how about when compared to a duvolle?

or how about a properly fitted marauder being able to take so much damage, that a prototype swarm can literally never kill it? (as in it has more health than they can carry in ammo) THAT'S a balance issue.

or how about when a scout suit can dance around an equal tier heavy suit and never take damage? people have tried to compare this to eve: a battleship being unable to hit a speedy frigate, but what frigate can put out enough dps to solo a battleship?

or why can a 0 investment militia vehicle kill ANY dropsuit, by brushing lightly up against them? that's **** tier beating top end, THAT'S a balance issue.

or a piece of 10k SP and 2k ISK equipment being a guaranteed one shot kill to any infantry it touches? RE? working as intended?


there are plenty of legitimate balance issues in dust, but "more SP = better" isn't really one of them. you don't have to LIKE it, but you also don't have to play. there is literally every other shooter in the world for you where there is either 0 progression, or only token progression.

ladies and gentlemen, he has a point. We are not playing with half the stuff that supposed to be in game. I understand there are players coming from other games where they are not used to having vehicles in game. I know there are passionate gamers with strong opinions on both sides on how they feel things should be. I know everyone wants a balance. But the fact remains, EVE isn't even balanced. CCP has even stated this. They want players to think outside the box, while playing in CCP's sandbox. But there are counters to everything in EVE. I know, this is not EVE. But it is CCP's idea, who created EVE. This game is part of the same universe, therefore, the same imbalance will still exist. There was a link in another thread to a presentation that CCP was giving on DUST. Not sure who it was that posted it, but it gave some good insight on how CCP wants this game. They were even discussing that the tanks were OP. But they continued talking about the counters that exist to battle them. Then continued on about how teamwork plays. Thats what they want to happen in game. TEAMWORK. They want corp members to work together. If you don't have that, you're going to pretty much screwed. As for tanks being OP, there will be counters for them, even if you don't have a cohesive team. Tanks will be a part of the game. They are going to OHK any infantry they see. I don't drive tanks. Don't intend to. But I do have an AV fit, and plan to continue having one. I currently have a proto SL. I can do hefty damage to most tanks. Sagaris tanks on the other hand, I hate those things. I have died to them numerous times. But I have learned how to come at them. Even if I'm the only one that has an AV fit, I can at least make them hide under the buildings, preventing them from slaughtering more teammates, while they continue capturing points.

As it stands now, sagaris tanks do seem OP. They are some extremely difficult to tank down, especially when under the control of someone who knows how to drive and fit them properly. But lets see what kind of new toys await us in the next build. If this was a release builid, yeah, I might say some adjustments need to be made. But we have lots of things ahead of us. Once the next build is released, we will probably forget all about tanks and cry about something else being OP. Especially OB. I can see when one of those wipes an entire squad, if in the wrong place at the wrong time, there will be lots of posts about it being OP.

I'm not suggesting nerf or don't nerf. I am saying, "patience young padawans". Much more awaits us. Be watchful of your surroundings. keep your eye out for nooks to hide in to ambush tanks. Watch your back at all times. Listen to comms. Watch radar. Always be prepared for anything on the battlefield.

On that note, let's put tank topics away for now. CCP is hearing you. That is aware by whats in the patch notes. They see the talk on tanks. If they feel adjustments need to be made, they will. They are always making adjustments to ships in EVE. They will continue to make adjustments here if needed after release. Let's continue forward!

People didn't seem to see this.
But really, this is the best solution I can see.

i know, they were examples, not news.

my real point was people complaining about the very existence of progression, and trying to handwave away any discussion of balance because "more sp = better so why bother?"

there you go, that's why bother. because there are things that can be fixed in the current framework and ccp seems willing to listen.

there are 2 kinds of imbalance, one of them (SP) is intentional and it's not going away. that doesn't mean we should give up and ignore the other kind.

^ Grind to win doesn't work in fps.

Yeah but this is a very large scale. Overall, other hardcore fps players and I will be staying with this game. The newbies won't as said before. We need a player base.

This is the most important point in the discussion right now. As soon as we start talking technical details we're obsoleting our analyses.

What we can still discuss intelligently is our expectations and why we have those expectations.

Expectations

1. Game design philosopy. Stupid Drunk1 said it best. Literal-minded balancing makes no-holds barred interstellar war bland, bland, bland. CCP's style of balancing is much more interesting and leaves a lot of room for clever, clever bastards to do their thing. I'm already afraid, because there are some clever, clever bastards in both the EVE and FPS communities and you just know they're going to get together and cook up awesome hideousness. This is just not possible in a 'balanced' game.
2. Tank balancing. I expect tanks to be tough and deadly. Why? Because THAT'S WHAT TANKS ARE. Sheesh. I also expect a well-trained, well-equipped 3-Merc AV team to have a fairly high success rate against tough tanks. If it turns out that this is not the case, then I'll be the first to admit it's time to worry about it.
3. AR infantry balancing, or expectations inherited from mainstream FPS games. I expect a 12 man team of the very best FPS killers in the very best gear all set up as AR infantry to get their asses handed to them on a regular basis. A group invested too heavily into any too-narrow category of strategies and tactics will see any competent enemy commander immediately exploit the weaknesses of that over-specialization. The enemy commander will do this without thinking, because it requires very little thought to exploit such a fundamental failure of judgement in an opponent. And yes, the decision to exploit is always situational.

The endgame of DUST is going to be about waging a real, genuine war with the tools at hand, and a lot less like a traditional FPS match. CCP will protect the traditional FPS playstyle in hisec, but anywhere else all bets are off. All one can really say about that is....Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

P.S. If anybody wants to know what I and many other EVE vets think of as 'balanced' gameplay, I suggest fitting up a good pvp ship in EVE and heading out to Rancer - that's where a lot of us learned about balance. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually missing Ginger Magician at this very moment, guys =p

2. Tanks take no skill to use. Things shouldn't get kills if they take no skill. I think the concept is simple enough.