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

Rothnang · 2013-01-30, 12:38 PM

The debate on air vs. ground as it is being held right now is really annoying to me, because it seems like a lot of people just want pilots to have as hard and unenjoyable of a time as possible. The hate against the Liberator is downright irrational at this point, with every single suggestion aimed at "balancing" it really just being aimed at making it die so much that people will give up on using it.

I think we need to have a real dialogue about what needs to change for air vs. ground gameplay to actually be fun for both sides instead of just this stupid tit for tat we've had going since beta, where the devs are just moving the damage numbers on AA and Air weapons around to try and keep a balance of discontent where both sides are equally annoyed at the result.

I would like to see changes that actually fix what's broken with air vs. ground in the first place, and try to actually get rid of the reasons why people hate fighting against aircraft so much. Particularly the Liberator is a big offender for reasons I will explain in a bit, and I think needs the most fixing on its actual functionality, rather than just trying to balance one fun-ruining unit by giving it an equally obnoxious counter. If there is a turd on your scale don't shit in the other pan, get the freaking turd off your scale!!!

The thing that is really causing so much trouble with air vs. ground gameplay as far as I'm concerned is simply the fact that people hate being powerless against an attacker, and air is currently in a unique position of being able to absolutely curbstomp any enemy force that doesn't have adequate air cover, while at the same time getting completely locked out of fights where the enemy does have good air defense or air superiority. Ultimately it's frustrating to both sides, neither side gets what they want out of the game, which is a good action packed fight.

The Liberator is currently the one aircraft that's causing the most hate, and understandably so, because honestly, it's just a misguided unit design. When you really think about it, what the Liberator really is is a Killstreak Reward from Call of Duty, but turned into a standard deployable unit. The bombadier in the Liberator is basically playing as the Chopper Gunner, Gunship, AC130 equivalent of Planetside 2.

The problem is that those killstreak rewards are designed to be unfair in Call of Duty, because they are supposed to be hard to get, and give you a huge advantage when you do get them. They are completely designed around the idea of just mercilessly dominating people for a minute or so. The problem is that the concept still is impossibly powerful in PS2, but Liberators don't just operate for one minute over the target, but can do their thing non-stop.
The problem you run into when you try to balance a Liberator by saying "Well, obviously Liberators do what they do too much, so we need a system that makes them do it less" is that that's also not an acceptable solution to the people who are flying around in the Liberators. Anything designed to kill them easily, limit their ability to pull the unit, make them spend more time on logistics than fighting etc. just takes away their ability to have any fun with the unit as well.

In the end nobody is happy with the result, and that's why we need to think about changes that actually alter the gameplay of those units to give us a fight that everyone can enjoy. I personally think the Liberator should be redesigned so that the big gun that the second gunner controls is forward facing, but can only shoot down maybe 15°, so that the Liberator has to fly low or really far away in order to actually use its firepower.

I recently made a video of me flying a Liberator with just the tankbuster, and I had a feeling the whole time that the people I was fighting were having a considerably better time dealing with an enemy they could shoot at without dedicating themselves to air defense than they have fighting a Liberator that just hovers overhead and really does nothing but sticking you with a stupid choice: Have half a dozen guys sacrifice their enjoyment of the game to stand watch or have bombs drop on your head all day.

It's a change like that that would make a real difference in getting everyone to being happy with the result. What we all ultimately want out of the game is a good fight. We don't want to get killed by things we couldn't defend ourselves against, and we don't want to have our gameplay limited in ridiculous ways by how deadly certain units are. Telling a Liberator Pilot that he simply shouldn't fly near a base that has 10 bursters in it is just as stupid as telling Infantry players that they simply shouldn't go outside if three Liberators are overhead. Sure, doing those things will ensure your survival, but they aren't any fun.

maradine · 2013-01-30, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Rothnang

In the end nobody is happy with the result.

Speak for yourself, mate.

moosepoop · 2013-01-30, 12:47 PM

the lib isnt fun without survivability. but devs decided to let it keep its damage in return for decreased survivability.

the lib should have decreased its damage and kept its survivability.

Dreadnaut · 2013-01-30, 12:57 PM

In its current state, the Liberator is incredibly easy to kill and is now not much fun to fly anymore. With the decrease in time on missile locks, the stunning power of A2G rockets against aircraft, and guns like the Air Hammer on the Reaver, Liberators do not stand a chance.

That's more than 10,000 wasted certs if I stop flying the Lib. =\

belch · 2013-01-30, 12:59 PM

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.

OldAeon · 2013-01-30, 01:17 PM

So let me see: transferring a concept from CoD ([simplified] FPS game) into PS2 ([simplified] MMOFPS) didn't work out as planned... big surprise there.

Rothnang · 2013-01-30, 01:25 PM

Well, I still enjoy the game despite all the stuff I'm talking about as well, and I have enjoyed the game in all the various permutations of AA vs. Air damage there have been since beta.

It just seems that Liberators are still by far the most hated unit in the game, and I'm not happy with the way that that sentiment is continuously being addressed with making them easier to kill, which makes them less fun for the people using them.

Tweaking damage numbers seem like an easy solution, but when the whole core concept behind a unit is infuriating to people and the only way they want it balanced is by just encountering it as little as possible there is a bigger issue at work. At that point you just CAN'T balance that unit in any way that doesn't involve ruining the fun for everyone who enjoys using it.

moosepoop · 2013-01-30, 01:49 PM

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Well, I still enjoy the game despite all the stuff I'm talking about as well, and I have enjoyed the game in all the various permutations of AA vs. Air damage there have been since beta.

It just seems that Liberators are still by far the most hated unit in the game, and I'm not happy with the way that that sentiment is continuously being addressed with making them easier to kill, which makes them less fun for the people using them.

Tweaking damage numbers seem like an easy solution, but when the whole core concept behind a unit is infuriating to people and the only way they want it balanced is by just encountering it as little as possible there is a bigger issue at work. At that point you just CAN'T balance that unit in any way that doesn't involve ruining the fun for everyone who enjoys using it.

if the liberator didnt kill things so fast, none of this is s problem. it would lay support fire for your allies and force the enemy to move.

making vehicles easier to die is not a good thing in this game, because they have 10 min long respawn time, ffs.

people hate the lib because they kill tanks under 5 seconds with no time to react. the answer is not to make the lib also die in 5 seconds with no time to react.

this game's biggest designing flaw is tons of ways to die with no way to react and defend yourself. the worst thing to do in a game is to make the player feel powerless. dont get me started on the c4 and mines.

KodanBlack · 2013-01-30, 01:54 PM

Admittedly, I mainly play infantry and there are times when my squad will begin to get beaten up on by a small group of Liberators or ESF's with rocket pods. We all initially make comments like, "I HATE those flipping things!" And, "I'm getting f***ing tired of this!"

Then we pull a couple of AA MAXes. Problem solved in under five minutes.

The usual response is that the Libs and ESF's begin to target them before being finally driven away from our area.

I thought that the flak damage was fine before the "fix", and I never thought that air power was OP. Unchecked air should rule a battlefield, just as it does in real life. Countering it by using teamwork and your resources is the balancing factor. Once the air has been dealt with, you can resume with your mission objectives. Should the air come back, you have to deal with it.

Personally, the Liberators were fine the way they were. AA MAXes were fine the way they were. Knee jerk quick fixes only lead to more of the same. In the end, we have nothing more than lousy players with big guns.

I don't enjoy playing a game where my equipment wins the day. I'm no longer challenged and I don't build any real skill in the game. I like a game where the problem before me has to be dealt with and finding, then utilizing the solution is the goal.

I want to get better at the game, not simply pick up some bad-ass weapon and farm kills with no opposition.

Timealude · 2013-01-30, 01:57 PM

the whole thing with the liberator is its just a beast of a killing machine, when it was a bomber in PS1 is still kept its style balanced since it had less accuracy then the current incarnation. Now that isnt possible right now since they cant just remove the guns that people paid for. But I think the nerf to the composite armor was a bit much. I actually agreed with higby's statement while back that the counter to a lib should be air support and not on the ground AA. But I also think that they shouldnt make flying extremely easy and people who are bad at it should be punished by being shot down alot, be that by AA or enemy aircraft.

Rothnang · 2013-01-30, 02:17 PM

Good piloting doesn't really let you survive AA easier if you're not flying really low currently. For one, you can't see the AA fire anyways while piloting, since looking down is kind of difficult, so any kind of system for active dodging would be bunk, and there is nothing in the sky to hide behind, so there aren't many situations where a dangerous maneuver gets you out of trouble either. I mean, I absolutely love it if you shake a missile by doing a looping around a bridge in a fighter or some crazy move like that, but that's just not what you get with Liberators.

As far as the AA vs. Air balance before and now is concerned, I actually agree that it wasn't significantly worse before, but that's just because the same dynamics applied: Air owns everything, pull a bunch of AA, air can't do jack anymore. That's exactly what I hate. No other unit in the game produces that kind of effect where you get these wild absolutes where you are either smashing an entire army by yourself, or you're basically not even able to participate in the fight.

Air units even do that to each other, once one side has reached a definitive air superiority you pretty much cannot use air units to break it unless you can somehow organize an air armada that matches theirs to attack all at the same time. It takes a massive amount of coordination to break an air zerg though, simply because you can't expect to clear the sky sector by sector, if you start a fight in the air every aircraft in a kilometer around is going to see it, and if your target starts running he'll have cleared half the map and gotten every enemy he flew past involved as well before you can down him. Aircraft go too fast for their own good I think sometimes.

RykerStruvian · 2013-01-30, 03:59 PM

Honestly, I've been having a blast since the changes and so have my outfit members. We don't have problems with our liberators going down because we tend to fly in wings...Our survivability goes very high when we have three libs in formation flying in formation, in and out.

Going to have to say the problem isn't the game on this one.

Ghoest9 · 2013-01-30, 04:08 PM

I almost only play infantry - since the changes I am having much more fun.

Rothnang · 2013-01-30, 04:52 PM

Originally Posted by RykerStruvian

Honestly, I've been having a blast since the changes and so have my outfit members. We don't have problems with our liberators going down because we tend to fly in wings...Our survivability goes very high when we have three libs in formation flying in formation, in and out.

Going to have to say the problem isn't the game on this one.

Organized outfits can make Liberators work now that they are weaker than ever, and organized outfits could make AA guns work when they were shooting spitwads. The problem isn't that one side is inherently stronger than the other, the problem is that it's very easy for one side to gain dominance over the other and push them completely out of the fight.

You rarely ever have a real running battle between ground and air that keeps going and yields both sides hours of intense fun like a ground battle can. It tends to be either "Flak wins, air has to leave or die" or "Air wins, everything on the ground prepare for pain". Your outfit manages to tip the scales toward the latter usually, but that doesn't mean that having those three Liberators overhead isn't ruining peoples fun on the ground.

Right now air wins more often than flak, because it doesn't take a lot of organization to get aircraft to be a dominant force, but it takes some organization to get effective flak up. Well organized AA is more powerful than even well organized air though, so for a huge chunk of the low end of organization air walks away with a victory easily, but toward the high end of organized combat AA tends to pull way ahead.

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

I almost only play infantry - since the changes I am having much more fun.

Ask yourself if the changes actually improved your ability to deal with Liberators while playing Infantry though, or if it's more fun just because there are fewer Liberators.

maradine · 2013-01-30, 05:13 PM

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Right now air wins more often than flak, because it doesn't take a lot of organization to get aircraft to be a dominant force, but it takes some organization to get effective flak up. Well organized AA is more powerful than even well organized air though, so for a huge chunk of the low end of organization air walks away with a victory easily, but toward the high end of organized combat AA tends to pull way ahead.

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.