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Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
292
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Posted - 2013.06.11 16:48:00 -
[1] - Quote
The way CCP has chosen to make Vehicles, AV, Infantry rock paper scissors makes it very difficult to balance properly. Right now its all or nothing. Vehicles can murder infantry without risk, but as soon as two (solid)+ AV units are on the field, working together, suddenly vehicles are in big trouble and have to resort to redline sniping or just die constantly (LLAV aside, since their speed makes dedicated AV rather useless against them unless they happen to come near the AV).
Meanwhile infantry who arent AV are just sitting ducks against vehicles unless some solid AV come out.
All or nothing. EIther vehicles are untouchable gods if the AV threshold is too low, or they are usless death traps once enough AV is out there. Im not sure how to balance it any better. Ive suggested lowering the damage of AV weapons and then increasing the damage of standard weapons against vehicles but I get shot down of "LOL NOW HE WANTS HIS TAR TO KILL TANKS!"
But the reality is, something needs to change to break the all or nothing balance of vehicle/AV.
If I am the only AV on the field, I am useless against anything but militia. But as soon as 1 or 2 other dudes join me, and we work together, we drop tanks in a matter of seconds.
But theres very little feeling of "combat". Its pretty much
1: tank shoots at people who cant fight back, and at LAVs/installaitons who cant fight back.
2: AV units come out and murder tanks, tanks cant do much but try to run from them. If theres enough DPS on the AV side, tank will die before it escapes, otherwise it escapes. AV wait for tank to come back and try again.
Perhaps lowering AV damage, but giving tools to help (like being able to tag the tank so its always on radar, being able to webifier it so it cant just run, being able to drop smoke so you can get into better positions) would make the actual combat more fun. Right now its a DPS battle of AV versus tank health and thats it. Hell its not even like theres a lot of player skill involved on the AV side. Some map knowledge and awareness to get good firing spots, but the weapons themselves? Not really.
Which is ALSO a problem, because its part of the reason theres not a lot of AV. It is boring. Its "i hope i can do enough damage to this big slow target before it gets over that hill."
A situation where we shoot a webifier rocket to "tackle" the tank, then throw smoke gernades on it to obsucre its vision and flank it so we can get in position to hit a weak spot on its back, or plant some charges on it, while it struggles to pick off the players doing so would be fun for AV. From the tank side, youd take more damage, but youd have to be careful to try and take out the "tackler" or get infantry support to do so. |
Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
292
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Posted - 2013.06.11 17:15:00 -
[2] - Quote
Stefan Stahl wrote:Bones McGavins wrote:All or nothing. Good analysis of the problem. Right now all parts of the rock-paper-scissors-game are unhappy because neither losing nor winning is fun. Either you are losing without defense or winning without effort. One way to reduce this effect would be to implement more anti-vehicle/anti-infantry hybrid weapons I believe. The plasma cannon is a good, if ultimately useless, attempt at this. Improve the mass driver's anti-vehicle capability, let the forge trade some direct damage dps for lowered charge-time to hit infantry better and reintroduce a dumb-fire-mechanic on the swarm launcher that doesn't kill everything in turn for some lower damage output. Suddenly you will see a lot more AV hybrids on the field and as such a much slower progression from "I'm an unstoppable for of nature"" to "I had no chance of defending myself!" and vice-versa for everyone involved.
I felt this way a bit before, thast maybe "hyrbid" roles were more of a solution. Then I started using AV regardless of how vulnerable I felt to infantry. And let me say, my heavy with some kincat mods and a scrambler pistol does not lose too many fights. Every time I spawn my forge I usually only end up dying once I run out of pistol ammo and try to kill with the forge instead.
Me and my buddy run as two AV with pistols, and its honestly a slaughter when folks try to come at us. Yes, we will lose to a bunch of infantry, but usually tanks only have 1 or 2 players supporting them, who just get owned by focused pistol fire.
So im not so sure hybrid roles are needed. Maybe for Assault/Scouts but not the heavy. The heavy can tank enough damage to win most fights with his side arm (as long as they are in range). And if you give kincat (which you should for AV since you need to get in position) you can usually force the fight to be in your range. |
Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
292
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Posted - 2013.06.11 17:20:00 -
[3] - Quote
Spkr4theDead wrote:Bones McGavins wrote:The way CCP has chosen to make Vehicles, AV, Infantry rock paper scissors makes it very difficult to balance properly. Right now its all or nothing. Vehicles can murder infantry without risk, but as soon as two (solid)+ AV units are on the field, working together, That "solid AV" you're talking about is AV grenade spam. That's all it takes to put a good Madrugar at less than half armor.
Ill agree to a lot of HAV complaints, but not with AV nade spam. AV nade spam works against overly aggressive or bad tankers (not the same thing). But tankers with ANY infantry support or good map awareness, its useless. Me and my buddy used to try and run our AV through nades and we would just spend all match chasing tanks and dying to snipers and other infantry (or tanks if they tracked us well).
Then we switched to a forge / swarm combo and we destroy tanks left and right.
AV nades work as a good supplement to regular AV, and maybe to help finish off tanks who have fled from other AV. But as a primary AV, nah, its bad against decent tankers.
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Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
293
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Posted - 2013.06.11 17:30:00 -
[4] - Quote
A bit before the reset, but never dedicated. I am not very good at HAV since i didnt do it much so I dont know if my opinion matters much from that side. But the times I did use HAV I never got hit with nades.
But yeah I mean, if you get in close to structures and other infantry friendly, HAV risky environments, its going to be dangerous unless you have infantry support to keep them off you.
Most Null cannons have good line of sight to them from pretty far off, not sure why you'd have to be that close to properly cover them.
Im not against an AV nade nerf, tbh, because I find them useless in 90% of the AV situations im in. But I guess I could see how they simply act as a detterant for tanks to get into the action more. Maybe eliminate the packed variety, then lower the tracking and range of standard to packed, and sleek to standard. Should help reduce the situations in which AV nade spam is effective.
But i wouldnt want to do too much to reduce their effectiveness on stupid LAV frogger players, so a damage nerf would be a mistake. |
Bones McGavins
TacoCat Industries
293
|
Posted - 2013.06.11 18:50:00 -
[5] - Quote
Guys, you over-rate the jump from standard to adv or proto when it comes to weapons. Look, the damage isnt THAT much more. You get more of a boost from the skills than you do from the weapons themselves. It maybe cuts the shots to kill down by 1. Thats how it is for all weapons, AV shouldnt be any different. |
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