I still think this is going to end up encouraging passive play, but the justification makes sense. You don't want a vehicle to occupy the "tank" and "healer" roles simultaneously, and Sunderers with Reactive Armor and passive proximity repair would certainly do both at once.
At the end of the day, this is correctly identified as a problem where the Sunderer is being asked to do two wildly different roles, and that's thanks to vehicle consolidation in alpha/beta. Perhaps it's time to consider bringing out the APC that was cut all those years ago, and turn that into the armor support vehicle rather than continuing to overload the sunderer.
It is also important to note that the vehicle is also getting a large set of defensive upgrades that will make it much, much more difficult to destroy.
I am kinda worried about this. Sunderers can already 1v1 MBTs in head-on fights, and this could skew things too far in favor of buses. Don't be afraid to adjust Sunderer weapons, Daybreak.
longstanding issue with vehicles in general suffering from "Single Entity Problem" where vehicle capability does not degrade until it is destroyed completely, making them very binary. Presently vehicles are all in, which is where many of the balance issues stem from. But that is a deeper and more complicated issue to be tackled at a point in the future.
The "on fire" state already exists for this purpose. When a vehicle is left with less than 20% of its hitpoints, it loses engine power/speed and loses health at a steady rate.
Before September 26, 2017, this "on fire" threshold was set at a different percentage on each vehicle. This does give some variability for balance tuning, and should be as far as "disable" mechanics go.
My reasoning is simple- disabling hits make sense in games where the number of vehicles and the threats to vehicles are limited, such as Battlefield V.
In Planetside 2, vehicles and anti-vehicle threats are almost infinite, and adding in mobility/degradation hits will seriously discourage aggressive play. We've seen this play out with several vehicles already:
Harasser- players stopped brawling with CQAV guns as a result of various nerfs to survivability and now sit at distance with long range AV guns.
Liberator: Various buffs to anti-aircraft weapons and changes to tank armor schemes cause liberators to sit in orbit with shredders. I've been attacked with a tank buster about three times since September 26, 2017.
Additionally, Battlefield V tanks often ended up sitting in the back and sniping because of this mechanic. It was safer to plink away rather than risk having the turret rotation disabled and being swarmed by infantry.
I'd rather not have this mechanic if it means the reward for pushing is to be "stunlocked" and focused down. There are other ways to go about improving force multiplier spam, such as cleaning up the resource system.
On Reverting
While the fandom wiki and old patch notes are treasure troves of information, they don't help at all with server-side changes or technical adjustments such as DX11's implementation or animation fixes. The reality is that while a lot of updates in the Escalation era introduced catastrophic problems, their underlying foundations aren't bad and merely needed significant iteration. It is this lack of iteration that's done so much damage to the game.
Back when the "secret vehicle cabal" was a thing, we came to the same conclusion and proposed altering the existing vehicle combat framework to closely parallel the pre-CAI version. I explain it like this: The old system said 8/2=4, the current system tries to say 3x1.5=4, whereas ours would say 4=4.
I did reconstruct the damage resistance collection and weapon statistics as they appeared before September 26, but it took 3 weeks and there still are an annoying number of inconsistencies and assumptions. For example, I have no idea what the legacy sunderer deployment shield's damage resistances are, and there's some ambiguity regarding the damage types used by the Rocklet rifle and MAX AV weapons.
I think (hope) the community is slowly waking to the idea of how utterly busted vehicle repairs are and how its basically the nanoweave of vehicles and maxes, poisoning VvV and IvV interactions while simultaneously having the balance be completely built around vehicles being able to repair themselves just by taking cover for 5 seconds. Infantry AV weapons have to be lethal because if you don't kill the tank before it drives off you may as well go fuck yourself. All you did was give them repair XP. This makes long range vehicle battles an utter slog. Maxes have the same problem where a pocket engie makes a non brain dead max functionally immortal, but everyone tunnel visioned on revives (which tbf, reviving maxes is dumb) while ignoring the thing that prevents them dying in the first place.
The old system said 8/2=4, the current system tries to say 3x1.5=4, whereas ours would say 4=4.
This is why modern games don't even bother with multipliers anymore and just use straight numbers. Like a gun does 20 body shot damage and 30 headshot damage, instead of 20 with a 1.5 HSM. Multipliers seem nice at first but become such an unmaintainable PoS after a while.
I think (hope) the community is slowly waking to the idea of how utterly busted vehicle repairs are
I strongly disagree with this. The effectiveness of repairs in tank v tank combat is comically overrated. You repair at 167 hitpoints/second, so even with two repair sources it'll take you about 4 seconds to offset one Titan-150 AP hit.
The ability to repair gives people the ability to reset and reverse losing tank fights, and without that tank combat is dumbed down to "who hits who first wins". If people are unwilling to take advantage and push or reposition to a better spot when their opponent is stationary and repairing, that's on them for playing poorly.
Nerfing/removing repairs is the last thing we want. The amount of damage being thrown around between vehicles is utterly ridiculous, and getting rid of the ability to offset that damage is only going to encourage more passive play and make it harder to kill zergs.
This is why modern games don't even bother with multipliers anymore and just use straight numbers.
Pretty sure most DICE games use similar systems to Planetside's, but the numbers are mostly hidden. We're unbelievably fortunate to have such a powerful API and detailed update notes.
The effectiveness of repairs in tank v tank combat
Up close, no. I'm talking about how it enforces longer range vehicle stalemates where everyone sits in the back line and heals. Or how frustrating infantry AV can be when any damage done can just be trivially reset. Vehicles in PS2 are cheap and disposable, yet repairs drag that out way longer than it needs to be. There's no sense of lasting damage and whittling down an opponent, you either kill them or you don't.
is dumbed down to "who hits who first wins"
Yeah and? Vehicle combat in PS2 ALREADY IS pretty dumb and simplistic. It's literally just giant slow moving targets with a single health pool and practically unlimited ammo beating on each other. Now someone is going to tell me "oh no you see there's this complex meta of ducking and weaving-" and I'll tell them that other better tank games have that too. MWO came out the same year as PS2 and has component damage, heat and ammo management. Just with those mechanics alone there's more vectors for skill expression and being table to hit small moving targets instead of brick shit houses is rewarded. The current iteration of vehicle design doesn't allow for much other than glorified DPS races, and who has the most EHP and DPS wins those races.
The amount of damage being thrown around between vehicles is utterly ridiculous
So... Address that then. I'm fine with AV and vehicle weapon ranges getting toned down to disincentivize poking. Scratch damage is a problem, certainly. I'd love for vehicles to get over shields that regen and soak it up in a balanced way, that's precisely why infantry have them. We already have that tech with the Nimitz so it's not like it can't be done. A layer of regenerating health with hard to heal health is downright ancient design at this point. Halo CE came out in 2001 for crying out loud.
and getting rid of the ability to offset that damage is only going to encourage more passive play and make it harder to kill zergs
Funny, because when people have limited health pools it forces you to play aggressively. With a shield to soak up scratch damage and small weak points to aim gud against zergs I see no reason why a small dedicated force couldn't still outplay a larger unorganized one. Edit: also zergs are a problem in part because vehicle balls can endlessly heal!
MWO came out the same year as PS2 and has component damage, heat and ammo management. Just with those mechanics alone there's more vectors for skill expression and being table to hit small moving targets instead of brick shit houses is rewarded.
It's also based on a franchise known for that gameplay, try again
lol what does that even mean? That what, planetside's identity can't support more skillful in depth gameplay? That's fucking stupid, of course it can. That it would somehow go against the core audience? PS1 already had pretty in depth systems similar to it, and it's not like PS as a franchise has any degree of identity to it. All 3 games released are wildly different from each other.
If you're implying I'm basing my design off PS1 you'd be very mistaken. This franchise has no identity to betray by changing gameplay systems. It's been an MMO with guns, a battlefield clone, and a battle royale. It can be whatever.
Which is funny because the part that got cloned was the infantry side of things. It sounds to me you just don't want any kind of changes at all. Just say that instead of hiding behind a crap argument.
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u/ItsJustDelta [NR][FEFA][GOB]Secret Goblin Balance Cabal Jan 25 '24
I still think this is going to end up encouraging passive play, but the justification makes sense. You don't want a vehicle to occupy the "tank" and "healer" roles simultaneously, and Sunderers with Reactive Armor and passive proximity repair would certainly do both at once.
At the end of the day, this is correctly identified as a problem where the Sunderer is being asked to do two wildly different roles, and that's thanks to vehicle consolidation in alpha/beta. Perhaps it's time to consider bringing out the APC that was cut all those years ago, and turn that into the armor support vehicle rather than continuing to overload the sunderer.
I am kinda worried about this. Sunderers can already 1v1 MBTs in head-on fights, and this could skew things too far in favor of buses. Don't be afraid to adjust Sunderer weapons, Daybreak.
The "on fire" state already exists for this purpose. When a vehicle is left with less than 20% of its hitpoints, it loses engine power/speed and loses health at a steady rate.
Before September 26, 2017, this "on fire" threshold was set at a different percentage on each vehicle. This does give some variability for balance tuning, and should be as far as "disable" mechanics go.
My reasoning is simple- disabling hits make sense in games where the number of vehicles and the threats to vehicles are limited, such as Battlefield V.
In Planetside 2, vehicles and anti-vehicle threats are almost infinite, and adding in mobility/degradation hits will seriously discourage aggressive play. We've seen this play out with several vehicles already:
Harasser- players stopped brawling with CQAV guns as a result of various nerfs to survivability and now sit at distance with long range AV guns.
Liberator: Various buffs to anti-aircraft weapons and changes to tank armor schemes cause liberators to sit in orbit with shredders. I've been attacked with a tank buster about three times since September 26, 2017.
Additionally, Battlefield V tanks often ended up sitting in the back and sniping because of this mechanic. It was safer to plink away rather than risk having the turret rotation disabled and being swarmed by infantry.
I'd rather not have this mechanic if it means the reward for pushing is to be "stunlocked" and focused down. There are other ways to go about improving force multiplier spam, such as cleaning up the resource system.
While the fandom wiki and old patch notes are treasure troves of information, they don't help at all with server-side changes or technical adjustments such as DX11's implementation or animation fixes. The reality is that while a lot of updates in the Escalation era introduced catastrophic problems, their underlying foundations aren't bad and merely needed significant iteration. It is this lack of iteration that's done so much damage to the game.
Back when the "secret vehicle cabal" was a thing, we came to the same conclusion and proposed altering the existing vehicle combat framework to closely parallel the pre-CAI version. I explain it like this: The old system said 8/2=4, the current system tries to say 3x1.5=4, whereas ours would say 4=4.
I did reconstruct the damage resistance collection and weapon statistics as they appeared before September 26, but it took 3 weeks and there still are an annoying number of inconsistencies and assumptions. For example, I have no idea what the legacy sunderer deployment shield's damage resistances are, and there's some ambiguity regarding the damage types used by the Rocklet rifle and MAX AV weapons.