[Happy lil Elf]

The main point is you sacfrifice a lot for using a MAX. With how common AV weaponry has become, does the sacrifice make taking a MAX over a lighter suit of armor with it's increased arsenal, mobility and effectivness a viable option? The answer, at least in my opinion, is no it does not.

And the real bitch? Adjusting anything to create the appropriatre balance is damn near impossible. Why? You can't take into consideration the human factor. People tend to dump anything that gets nerfed and pick up anything that gets buffed damn near immediately. If everyone and their mother wasn't carrying Decis there wouldn't be a problem. However if you up the MAX armor and people get frustrated and drop the Deci you now have an overpowered MAX suit.

Take the Jackhammer for instance. Back when the Jackhammer was a joke (and in it's early days it was) no one used it because it was like pissing four certs away for what was essentially a pretty looking Sweeper. So it gets buffed and, as is usual, people flocked to it which then reated an imbalance not due to it's power, but due to the fact that everyone had it. The same happened with the TR MAXs when they got nerfed. Everyone dropped the cert and since NC/VS was no longer facing 3 or 4 locked down AI MAX suits everytime they tried to enter a base, the maybe 1 or 2 that kept the cert no longer had the power to stand up to the opposition they were facing. It's been seen time and time again. Because of how the average player reacts to nerfs/buffs, it's very difficult to get things working as intended.

Making any change to this game is vey very difficult, because depending on the perception of the change and can not only eliminate any balance issues that are out of whack, but create another imbalance in the exact opposite of what it was before.

To top it all off? We have little to no idea how the Devs really want this game to work. Do they want MAX suits to be the main spearhead of any assault? Do they want it to focus more on mobility? Do they want tanks to be the end all to outdoor battles? Do they like that infantry have very little in their arsenal to fight back against tanks or do they want infantry to be able to deal with heavy tanks effectivly as well? Do they want someone ina MAX suit to be largely defensless to any infantry who knows how to circle and pull out a deci at the same time? We simply don't know. Good questions for an ask the devs I suppose but I have a feeling any direct and to the point questions about "How do you want <topic> to work? Is it working and being used as intended?" will get sidestepped faster than you can blink.