Air vs. Ground Balance. You can't make it fair by making nobody happy.

[Sledgecrushr]

I figure that if all of the parties involved arent entirely happy then we must have achieved balance.

[Rolfski]

The air vs ground balance in team play is quite ok now: Outfits that forgot to bring their AA to the battle will still get owned with their pants down as it should be.

It's the air vs ground balance in casual and lone wolving play that's not quite there yet and it''s my believe that these players are most frustrated atm. Getting your tank killed out of nowhere with just one rocket volley of an ESF is just a frustrating experience as is the inability for a single player to have a fighting chance against a liberator with their stock weapons.

Solution: Give lone wolvers, casual players, new players something to fight back air with their standard arsenal as the single Burster on their Max just isn't going to cut it.
Ideas to improve AA capabilities of stock equipment could be: Better elevation of the Lightning turret, better defense rear tank armor against air, better AA capabilities secondary tank gun, pilot sniping, make the Annihilator the default launcher, bullets damage Liberators (only barely), anti thermal/NV ability in suit slot, etc.

[belch]

Terrible idea...lone ground troops with stock equipment should not be taking down Libs. Or even making them run. That kind of thing falls well into the "make every weapon/unit have the same damage potential". I think people are mistaking balance for generic "one size fits all" gameplay.

[Mietz]

AVG balance can not be achieved because every solution from the devs is just about more dakka and faster kills.

10 Ground Vehicle spam? More dakka on Liberators.
20 Liberator spam? More dakka on ESFs.
30 ESF spam? More dakka on AA.
40 AA spam? More dakka on Ground Vehicles.
50 Goto 10

They keep trying to balance this shit with DPS and armor values while the problem lies somewhere completely different (cert and resource system).

[maradine]

Homogenization is for milk.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by belch

Terrible idea...lone ground troops with stock equipment should not be taking down Libs. Or even making them run. That kind of thing falls well into the "make every weapon/unit have the same damage potential". I think people are mistaking balance for generic "one size fits all" gameplay.

You totally seem to forget that unlike PS1, lone wolvers and casual players are a big part of the current player base and the target audience for this game. And right now the game doesn't do enough for them to make it fun, A2G being part of the problem. At least the game should give them a feeling they can fight back against air. The Annihilator is a good example. It's nowhere near as effective using it alone but at least you can lock-on to a Liberator, making you feel less helpless.

[belch]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

You totally seem to forget that unlike PS1, lone wolvers and casual players are a big part of the current player base and the target audience for this game. And right now the game doesn't do enough for them to make it fun, A2G being part of the problem. At least the game should give them a feeling they can fight back against air. The Annihilator is a good example. It's nowhere near as effective using it alone but at least you can lock-on to a Liberator, making you feel less helpless.

Nope, not forgetting the lone wolves or casual players at all. But implying that a single ground troop or unit with stock weapons should be a formidable adversary against a Liberator is a terrible idea. There are things for lone wolves to do...employing a stock weapon, all on his lonesome, against a 3 man gunship should not be one of them. At least not without immediately suffering the consequences.

As far as feeling of helpless as a lone guy that is in the sights of a Liberator...why would anyone assume otherwise? It isn't about discouraging that guy from going it alone, but to play smartly, he should know that as an individual trooper he can't take on powerful enemy weapons platforms.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by belch

But implying that a single ground troop or unit with stock weapons should be a formidable adversary against a Liberator is a terrible idea. There are things for lone wolves to do...employing a stock weapon, all on his lonesome, against a 3 man gunship should not be one of them. At least not without immediately suffering the consequences.

I'm not implying that at all. A smart 3 man gunship should not let itself scare away from a single Annihilator lock-on, making it a great stock weapon for lone wolves/ casual players: It can make a difference using it solo but not against smart/experienced players.

The whole idea is that you make individual players feel empowered without throwing off the balance. Right now that's not the case. As a solo player, there is not that much you can do atm that makes you feel you contribute to the war effort and playing this game alone can be quite an exercise in frustration. Especially when you get shot all the times from (lib/tank) HE guns with thermal scopes that you can't hide from.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by belch

Yeah, I don't know about nobody being happy. I am generally satisfied with things, but then, I was ok with aircraft before all the hooplah...

Some folks aren't going to be happy unless every element in the game fits their specific interests and gameplay style. I have yet to encounter anything that I thought was game breaking. Are there things that could use tweaking...sure. But I don't know that using the complaints of "the community" as the barometer of ground truth is the right direction. The squeakiest wheel isn't always where the attention needs to be directed...considering how easy it is to be vocal about anything on the internet.

What he sad.... +1

[Rothnang]

Originally Posted by maradine

This is, in my opinion, precisely how it should be. It's nice to get external validation that it's happening.

This "everything interacts with each other in a homogenous fashion" world you're skirting around the description of is bland and repulsive to me. Air combat is high risk, high reward. It's a game changer, or a disaster. You have not presented any reason why this should not be so beyond "you don't like it". I respect your opinion, but am glad it's in the apparent minority.

In Infantry combat every class can kill every other class, does that mean it's boring and homogenized?

I don't think my opinion is in the minority, there wouldn't be so many people who love infantry fights if they didn't understand the value of having a good solid fight with people, not just a giant grief-off where one side always curbstomps the other.

[JesNC]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

It's the air vs ground balance in casual and lone wolving play that's not quite there yet and it''s my believe that these players are most frustrated atm. Getting your tank killed out of nowhere with just one rocket volley of an ESF is just a frustrating experience as is the inability for a single player to have a fighting chance against a liberator with their stock weapons.

I don't agree with either of your arguments. I feel they bring to much of a 1vs1 balance scenario into a team-based game.

1. Rolling a tank solo without paying attention to your surroundings should leave you disadvantaged vs air. Especially with MBTs it's you own fault if you don't have a gunner to watch out for ESF/Liberator threats.

2. The Liberator is a multi-crew vehicle, and only really dangerous with at least 2 players. After the recent AA changes it's flimsy enough tbh. Give solo players more tools to handle AA threats and Liberators will be gone entirely.

I know Liberator balance is a sensitive point with many players, but IMO it's at a good spot atm - it still feels dangerous on the 'recieving' end, but there are enough ways to counter a Liberator now.


The whole concept of lone-wolving revolves around keeping a low profile until you hit your intended target. There should never be a situation where one player is effective vs anything the other team throws at him - see the ESF debate for reference.

[typhaon]

I kind of thought air/ground balance was pretty good, right now.

[Rothnang]

I find that especially in organized play the air vs. ground balance favors ground by an insane amount. There are some bases that are close enough to mountains and deep gorges where air has somewhat of a chance to go up against organized AA, but in most of the places on the map you can just shut down air completely in the area and deny it any chance to participate in the fight, regardless of whether it is organized or just a bunch of lone pilots.

The whole notion that you have to send in other units to clear out the AA is also just absolute bullshit. By the time you have so many ground troops in the area that the enemy can't keep up AA fire anywhere the battle is won anyways. There is no gratification for pilots in being allowed to move in to mop up after the battle.

In every single huge scale battle we've seen air basically rendered useless. Even on the last day of Beta when they called for the ultimate Dogfight what really happened was the Ultimate AA clearing the skies, and that was when AA was at its absolute weakest.

[Snowfake]

I am not a great pilot and I have little trouble with AA. I also use AA and can easily tear up targets.

I think the way things are right now is fine for the most time. The only thing I would like to see change is if flak did more damage at closer range and have the rounds do less damage as they get further away. This way it will stop all of the spammer pilots from getting away with murder when they come is close knowing they can get away no problem.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

I find that especially in organized play the air vs. ground balance favors ground by an insane amount. There are some bases that are close enough to mountains and deep gorges where air has somewhat of a chance to go up against organized AA, but in most of the places on the map you can just shut down air completely in the area and deny it any chance to participate in the fight, regardless of whether it is organized or just a bunch of lone pilots.

The whole notion that you have to send in other units to clear out the AA is also just absolute bullshit. By the time you have so many ground troops in the area that the enemy can't keep up AA fire anywhere the battle is won anyways. There is no gratification for pilots in being allowed to move in to mop up after the battle.

In every single huge scale battle we've seen air basically rendered useless. Even on the last day of Beta when they called for the ultimate Dogfight what really happened was the Ultimate AA clearing the skies, and that was when AA was at its absolute weakest.

The other side of the coin is that if you make Air the only counter to Air it all ends always in an air-zerg which nothing can stop ever.