BFRs Revisited

Sifer2 · 2011-01-25, 03:18 PM

BFR's would be ok if they were very rare. Like requiring massive resource investment or something. Maybe not being able to be repaired in field. But yeah game should be about teamwork not one vehicle dominating.

It's cool that they will browsing for feedback on the thread but really what feedback is there to give except whether or not the tank looks cool? My feedback is yes it does lol.

Chaotic Cow · 2011-01-25, 11:09 PM

Originally Posted by Sifer2

BFR's would be ok if they were very rare. Like requiring massive resource investment or something. Maybe not being able to be repaired in field. But yeah game should be about teamwork not one vehicle dominating.

It's cool that they will browsing for feedback on the thread but really what feedback is there to give except whether or not the tank looks cool? My feedback is yes it does lol.

Limited per continent or really long cool downs.

Like it takes 5 hours to build / set up a new BFR.

Tikuto · 2011-01-26, 02:31 PM

BFRs creeping into this topic.

Yes BFRs are a reassuring sight fo PlanetSide's sci-fi warfare and I would love them to be in. However there would have to be zone-wide control on these for fairness. BFRs in PS1 has small and ineffective control systems applied to them because they too accessible and excessive against zone-wide Empire balance.

Accumlated zone-wide trigger-points for BFR accessbility. All Empires would simualtaneously have access when triggered.
Amounts of BFRs (very limited, hopefully).
ZERO aerial BFRs.
One-time useage until next trigger.
Maybe the "pivotal role" of our new Galaxy to bring them in.
Increased size?
Three-legged BFR for the Technophiles? (PS1 Aphelion is super-lame)

2coolforu · 2011-01-26, 02:57 PM

They don't fit in whatsoever, it doesn't matter if they have extreme requirements to be brought in they were just not necessary, there wasn't a niche for the BFR which is why they were implemented with the ability to shoot anything because there just wasn't a space for them.

We had a nice circle for outdoors vehicular combat

MBT -> Light vehicles -> Aircraft -> MBT

We had nice balance in aerial combat

Reaver -> Ground -> Mossie -> Reaver

And in general combat it all kind of combined. Massed infantry could fend off tanks but it was far more effective to bring in the right mix, entrenched infantry kept enemy armor too harrassed so friendly armor could dispatch it. Friendly infantry pushed forward and took ground or alternatively held ground and prevented their armor getting harassed. Liberators were the counter to well dug in infantry and defensive positions, Light vehicles were the counter to less well dug in infantry as they could *** in and ambush the stragglers without getting too involved in combat. Combat engineers are the counter to flanking by tanks and infiltration, Reavers the counter to MBT's, light vehicles are the counter to reavers and mossies are a strange one that can go after liberators, reavers or straggling infantry.

Everything fit together, certain vehicles were extremely effective against one thing. AA MAXes dominated the air yet were pretty poor against anything else, so only a few were required to balance the battlefield giving someone a very specific squad role. Heavy tanks were all-rounders of ground combat but could be easily dispatched by a skilled lone reaver pilot. Skyguards a brilliant support for armor since they annhilate low flying reavers yet need that armored support to defend them against assault buggies. Assault buggies are brilliant vehicles for open plains and infantry courtyard battles, being easily able to decimate infantry but not tough enough for big slugfests.

Summation - Everything had its place, its use, its area of expertise and its weakness. BFR's before the balance could tank the damage from a vanguard in crouched mode easily, could dominate any infantry, armored vehicle or aircraft. They have a version that can fly onto a giant mountain with ease and there you have a super AA unit that can tank the damage from any MBT, can't be killed in one reaver clip like an AA max and has a giant jump height to fire over obstacles. You have an AntiInfantry mortar than leaves plasma over the battlefield to do burn damage and a sniper AT weapon that does more damage than a vanguard 150mm cannon without any arc (NC Peregrine Gunner AT Weapon).

They can also camp roofs/doors, run underwater for instant immunity from anything that poses any real threat, swap loadouts instantly. Even when nerfed they dominate the battlefield and the combined arms just isn't there any more. You see perhaps a handful of MBT's and then Biffers. Even then an MBT will lose a 1 on 1 fight with a gunner variant AV BFR with ease yet they both require basically the same manpower and infrastructure to get into the battle.

Apart from the balance issues Gundam mechs just aren't a feasible weapon IRL, its power to surface area/volume ratios, simply put they just wouldn't work. I always liked Planetside because everything *seemed* feasible, but big stompy mechs just pushed it too far. They don't go with the general look of the game.

Also bear in mind that a large proportion of the playerbase left because of the BFR's and what they did, if SOE puts them it could send a message to those players that might make them forget about buying it. Don't take any risks, just leave them out for this one.

Tikuto · 2011-01-26, 04:04 PM

Entirely which is why I said there wasn't any control system over them. Easily accessible, excessive and continuosly appearing - no control. The actual BFRs (ground only) were a great concept and THEY DO go with the general look of the game, being a sci-fi game with cloaking abilities, orbital strikes and MAXs. Though, still, the BFR load-out customization could have been without or at least something felt wrong about that.

2coolforu · 2011-01-26, 04:24 PM

Why should certain players have access to this doom machine? It doesn't matter how few of them you can have, first since there's no valid way to determine which BFR pilot is more worthy than another. Second the entire reason BFR's are annoying and overpowered is because they don't die, balance doesn't come from limiting their number it comes from limiting their power.

However in my post I listed why they are a bad idea, they don't fulfill a needed role, they just exist and overwrite other roles with fewer disadvantages and require less teamwork. They can be Anti-air, anti-tank or anti-infantry. They can sit miles away and snipe and have regenerating health, they have no real counters and they don't fit into any niche.

And think about the other side of the guns, sure you make them these doom machines that you barely ever get and look freaking awesome. This might work in say World of Warcraft where 20 players team up to take down an UberAI however in Planetside there's a guy in that uber world destroying walker basically getting free kills for little teamwork. It would take huge amounts of teamwork to take one down yet very little to use one, this is what killed Planetside in the first place. It took epic amounts of teamwork and coordination to kill BFR's en masse yet the BFR's just zerged and won, it basically gave footzerging an all powerful stompy unit of death.

Also I'm not arguing that the look of the game is 'futuristic warfare' yet everything is merely real-life technology with a sci-fi paintjob. The aircraft are merely helicopters and everything else has a matching counterpart in real life too, orbital strikes aren't too far off and neither are exoskeletal suits for humans and invisiblity cloaks are hardly far off. In fact BAE systems just perfected an 'active camoflague' of sorts.

But in any situation, simply using surface area to volume ratios, a tracked low profile tank will always be superior to a walker of equal weight. But that's not really relevant, what is relevant is that the ground combat was fine as it was - in fact it was better, BFR's were just tacked on and poorly thought out that inserted into no place of the combat cycle.

Hamma · 2011-01-26, 08:33 PM

As always well thought out and very true.

BFR's were indeed a huge reason quite a few people quit playing. It was just an aspect of the game that was forced in and not really needed. The combined arms of infantry and armor has been around for quite some time. It's a proven method and it makes gameplay a total blast.

BFR's started as solo pwn machines, they killed infantry combat an were entirely too easy to obtain. As mentioned they slowly nerfed them but the damage had already been done and the balance of the game thrown off forever.

It is a good thing Smedley has listened to the community in this regard and PS:N Won't have BFRs and hopefully they will never be introduced. Add some more variants of the existing tanks and vehicles sure but beyond that - keep it simple.

Tikuto · 2011-01-27, 07:55 AM

Originally Posted by 2coolforu

BFR's were just tacked on and poorly thought out that inserted into no place of the combat cycle.

True. Still, SOE could propose a much much greater idea of BFRs in PS:2, which is probably the one only way they could do now - a proposal.

What I see is: SOE put BFRs in PS:1 in many wrong ways which affected the community and now BFRs have become an abomination to PlanetSide and its players forever. Now, Smedley is responding to veterans by saying "No BFRs in PS:2" as if expressing with complacence and incompetence, and ignoring why their players are saying no to BFRs.

Have an open mind about it (control methods):

BFRs could be all-powerful again but clearly visible to all on Map (M),
slowest-moving vehicle
with probably only two per Empire per continent,
only available when your Empire allows it (triggered by some things including population)
long-term (near 1Hr of same Hotspot) deadlock concentrations,
and 3-Empire-wide recharge 3Hr timer (so they don't appear all the time).

Grimster · 2011-01-27, 08:05 AM

Yeah can't really say that I hated the BFR's that much in PS(No I was not a frequent BFR user). But with that said I can't say I will miss them very much in PSN either.

BlazingSun · 2011-01-27, 08:30 AM

The only way BFRs would work is as a "normal tank on legs" which means:

should not be too big.

should not be too powerfull - requires a Gunner to be usefull.

No Single man BFRs - No flying BFRs.

must not have a regenerative shield.

Should not have more armour than a MBT.

Moves as fast as a MBT and has the same terrain limitations (no climbing on mountains etc.)

additionally:

must not look awfull (example: NC Peregrine chickenwalker)

Personally I can live without BFRs. I'd rather have more different Tanks to choose from (easier to balance).

Firefly · 2011-01-27, 09:29 AM

BFRs on Day One were easy to kill - unless you were a solo zergling retard. Sorry if that offends you killwhore one-man-armies, but it's simple truth. I was watching some of my old videos, and shortly after Corpse Combat came out, my outfit put a ten-man squad of Agiles (well, nine... plus one infiltrator) on Cyssor to see what could be done about them. The infiltrator ran around with Jammers and as backup a CUD (EMP function). The Agiles were carrying Decimators and Strykers. The concept was simple - Infiltrator would Jammer the thing, the rest of us would foot-zerg it and take it out. Remember, Planetside might've catered to one-man wolfpacks, but it also catered to people who work together. In this video I watched, we knocked out two BFRs in short order. Now, if I happened to log in and I was either by myself or we had a smallish amount of people on, BFRs could ruin my game. Alone, I suck. With my outfit mates, I could do stuff. Killwhores can eat it - not all of us had twitch skills back then.

But I digress. BFRs do not have a place in Planetside:Next for one simple reason - they had a HUGE hand in driving off players. This is simple fact - go read a lot of forums where they discuss Planetside, and you'll see a lot of people say something to the effect of "BFRs killed it for me". Whether or not it's because they sucked or their elitist sense of dominance was quickly toppled by being base-camped by a rogue BFR is irrelevant. A lot of people left because of BFRs. I think most of them left because you could take this massive thing into a courtyard and stand in front of a door and just lay down on the trigger. Anyway, John Smedley went out of his way to make it clear that BFRs would not be in PS:Next, and that's the way (uh-huh, uh-huh) I like it. I daresay I'm not the only one.

You can put all the controls you want in-game to make them hard to access - as I recall, this was done with BFRs in the first game. It took what, twelve or fourteen certs just to pilot one? Plus a hundred kills in the Crap Caverns first? And if you died in a BFR, you couldn't get one for what, an hour or four? Hell, I relished taking out a newly-spawned BFR just to piss off the pilot. Once I camped a BFR terminal for half an hour just to CR5-OS the shit out of one. The bottom line is, people hated them and I doubt things will have changed. Unfortunately, they are there to stay for Planetside One, because they were on the box art and because they marketed them with BFRs, it becomes false advertising to remove them (that's a direct quote from a former PS dev, who acknowledged on the forums that his predecessor screwed the pooch in putting them in-game).

Personally I liked the BFR. I'm a huge BattleTech fan, and by extension therefore a fan of Mechwarrior. I salivated over getting a 'Mech-like vehicle. I focussed a great deal of time on getting everything I needed to pilot one. And when they came out, I quickly put together a lance of BFRs to go run down some NC and VS. The lustre faded quickly for me, unfortunately. And getting my ass camped by some BFR pilot who had nothing better to do than stand outside a base just made me recall to Sanc and log off.

2coolforu · 2011-01-27, 11:21 AM

10 agiles to kill one solo man BFR, requiring complex tactics and a lot more skill than that BFR pilot did.

In Planetside an MBT can be taken about by a one man reaver, a one man reaver can be taken out by single man AA. Everything has a playerbalance, the amount of teamwork and players something requires is balanced by what it can add to the combat cycle. Sure you could take down a BFR in no time with 10 agiles with decis, however if the pilot jumped out or if the other BFR's nearby joined in you were screwed.

If you played in the days of the inbalanced release you would know that all you saw were BFR's, I went out of a door and saw an army of 15 BFR's just sat there camping the base. They required one man to use and fit every role, there was no need to bring in a skyguard for AA, a sunderer for troop transport to bring infantry to take ground, a reaver for antitank, all you needed was Biffers. As a result without any organisation for a BFR raid everything just turned to BFR's. For no teamwork you got a one man army machine, they were the definition of 'solo zergling retard' - they just gave that solo zergling killwhore-one-man-army a true 'one man army'. He was pretty much immune to all damage if he was even marginally intelligent and you had no chance of killing an amassed 'zergling' army of BFR's. The point is those BFR's had no organisation, people just pulled them and zerged them and since they were anti-everything there was just no better counter or solution so that's all the game devolved to. Sure you could spam 40 reavers like many outfits did but are you seriously going to have that 24/7? Is that efficient at all? Once you start doing that after the first BFR sees you everyone will just switch to AA and you are massacred, simply by an reaction of instinct your days of organisation and teamwork are trumped by a zerg hivemind. This is the very reason the game died, people got sick of having to destroy the BFR Zerg by doing these mass organised raids, it just tired people out and playing normally wasn't possible since the BFR zerg ruled absolute. When people got fed up of doing 20 Reaver zerg -> kill BFR -> Pwned by AA spam -> Infantry Bailure horde -> Jammer BFR -> Kill 1 -> AI Spam -> Die they just got fed up and unsubbed.

I know how to kill BFR's, I was there for the BFR testing, I was there when Planetside launched and I was there when Planetside died. I even did my best to kill BFR's when they were released but after every battle just resulting to watching 30 BFR's march around your base stomping on things I got fed up. It's not a matter of skill, noone is terrible at the game nor skilled if you take a BFR down with 10 guys and a jammer nade hell thats what I did along with reaver hordes. It isn't a fair Effort/Reward balance though, that guy in that BFR put in barely any effort and if he's half decent he'll probably get a few kills at least - especially if he is a gunner. Or if he isn't a total muppet he won't be in a situation where 10 guys can easily get to him, even then you couldn't do anything against the massive zergs of biffers that plagued Planetside before they were nerfed - even then the overpoweredness isn't the only problem, sure it made them worse but they are still a problem now because as I said, they are far too multirole and just overwrite a load of roles that exist already in the game and do them better and with more versatility, it's just when they were insanely OP'd before the patch they merely did those roles even better than they do now.

Sure you could go 10 agiles but are you telling me that would work against the huge amassed armies of 20-30 BFR's that would just camp the hills near the base? You wouldn't get within 10 feet of the nearest one. The BFR's all got 3 variants each (solo,flying,gunner) so unless they were an absolute retard they should never be without a BFR. If you want awesome mechs then go play mechwarrior were they can be badass. They are pretty awesome machines its just planetside is a game of balance, teamwork and mutual fun, seeing people stomp around in their 1-man-pwnwagons isn't mutual fun or teamwork.

As for the BFR limit idea, I've countered that before. Why does a certain 2 people have access to this one man pwn machine that requires a huge combined effort to take down yet no serious effort to run/set up? It's not fair on the other players just so one guy can feel like the god of planetside for an hour. Also what happens if some complete muppet pulls one, then a decent player can't use it and you get some moron who just marches it into nowhere and wastes it putting your Empire at a huge loss because the other team has this giant instapwn mech and you lost yours due to one Troll/Griefer/Moronic Player.

Chaotic Cow · 2011-01-27, 09:14 AM

I think BFRs could work...they would just have to be done right.

Though since they won't be in PS Next (at least not in the beginning) it won't be a big deal.

Grimster · 2011-01-27, 09:16 AM

Since when did cows become chaotic?

Nevermind I am just letting information leak out from my twisted brain.

Tikuto · 2011-01-27, 12:03 PM

"BFR Zerg"

Ok. SOE can prevent that. Each continent, simualtaneously accessible to all Empires as an Empire announcement says:

"The enemy has acquired a BFR. We will react accordingly by authorizing our own BFR (1)"

or

"Our <empire> has developed and authorized a BFR (1). The enemy is likely to respond."

Fixed. Controlled. No BFR zerg. 3 super-powers in the field (1 each Empire) & when detected becomes permenently visible on Map (M).
Continent-wide all-Empire recharge timer of #hrs.

Whilst PlanetSide:1 can be a repetative sequence of events, smudging that sequence by placing a Empire-wide challenge can stimulate alot of fun. When you don't always see a Dragon in the sky, some days later you see it swoop and set you aflame.