GU 11 notes

[Huller]

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/gu011-weapon-and-vehicle-changes.134128/


The below are the major weapon and vehicle changes planned for GU011.

Vehicle and MAX Resource Costs
The majority of vehicles and the MAX units will be getting a resource cost increase with this update. The new values are based on data that we have collected from the Live servers, and our goal is to even out the resource costs with their related income rates.
New Costs:
Flash: 150
Sunderer: 400
Lightning: 400
Magrider: 450
Vanguard: 450
Prowler: 450
Scythe: 250
Reaver: 250
Mosquito: 250
Liberator: 350
Galaxy: 350
Harasser: 400
MAX: 350
MAX Abilities
The Burster buffs when using the VS ZOE and TR Lockdown abilities will be reduced.
The damage received when the VS ZOE ability is active will be getting increased.
Note: The timer currently on the test server for the ZOE ability is not planned to go live.
Shotguns
All shotguns will be getting a small reduction in damage per pellet. The goal with this change is to reduce slop while keeping the effective kill ranges of the shotguns the same. So glancing hits and spamming without aiming will not be as rewarding, but well-aimed shots should just be as effective as before.
The default ammo count on the pump-action shotguns will be dropping from 5 to 4 rounds. This brings their potential kills per magazine and kills over time more in line with the other weapon classes.
Faction Heavy Weapons
All faction weapons will be getting a pass to make them more effective at their various roles.
Jackhammer: The ammunition capacity of this weapon is being increased to 9 rounds. Also, the burst mode will be gaining a rate of fire increase.
MCG: The fire delay is being removed. Instead, the weapon will fire immediately and the rate of fire will ramp up over time. The hip accuracy is being adjusted to better allow sustained fire.
Lasher: This weapon will receive a rate of fire increase and a slight damage buff, which should allow it to be viable in more situations. Also, ally players will no longer take the full AOE damage.
IRNV Scopes
We feel that the current downsides to this optic (less visibility at range) are negligible when compared to its benefits. We’re going to be adding a very small delay before the night vision is active and a small amount of scope sway to better balance the attachment out.
Flak
Bursters will be getting an accuracy penalty when moving and COF bloom is being added over sustained fire. The goal with this change is keep them just as effective at near range while dropping their effectiveness at extreme ranges (300+ meters).
Skyguards will be getting a projectile speed increase and other stat changes to make them better at range.
Vulcan
The Vulcan has been updated to be more effective at range and now has a larger clip size.
In addition, it has been given a spin up time. The Vulcan still fires during the spin up time, but at a reduced rate.
Sunderer Deployment
Facilities and Outposts on Indar and Amerish now have Sunderer No Deploy Zones. These function just the like No Deploy Radius around allied deployed Sunderers. These zones prevent you from parking your Sunderer right on top of the capture points. You’ll have to fight to the capture points on foot.
Edit: Forgot one. Edit 2: Spelling
Underbarrel Attachments
These have been removed from the weapon selection list and are now mapped to the primary weapon key. Press 1 to swap between the weapon and its attachment.


I'm not happy with the IR/NV nerf, and didn't they say they were going to change the MCG in the patch notes of another GU? Shame about the no deploy zones and the resource increases, Harassers and flashes should be cheaper. Also, is this a buff or a nerf to the Vulcan? I don't see anything about the medic rezzing reducing your death ratios. Shame.

 

[TobieBrave]

What a depressing Update I must say.

The small lights in this is the zoe nerf but down goes lockdown aswell. Hooray for Vulcan I guess.
IRNV? serious? :angry:

No deploy zones? yeah okay I can get it that SOE wants more foot zerg fights but just NO....meh

 

[Cheers]

Honestly, I can understand where they are going with this. For the most part.

The small lights in this is the zoe nerf but down goes lockdown aswell.

This is only for the burster, not the AI or AV weaponry. Together with the air-superiority kills they want to implement, the idea is to make ESF the primary counter for high-altitude bombing. Take som Air dominance away from the ground and back into the hands of the fighter pilots. I like this.

IRNV? serious? :angry:

This was to be expected in some form or another. There was almost no down-side to IRNV scopes.The range at which you lost sight was so far away that it didn't matter anyway, yet you still maintained all the advantages (nightvision, seeing through smoke, etc...) There had to be at least some reason to choose the reflex over the IRNV. I know you liked it, but it really wasn't a sidegrade.

No deploy zones? yeah okay I can get it that SOE wants more foot zerg fights but just NO....meh

You're missing the big picture here. How often have you seen the attackes have a massive advantage because there sunderer was closer to the cap point than the defenders spawn room (Think for example of a fight where the attackers could deploy mere feet away from the point, but the defenders have to run a hundred yards). In a perfect even battle, both side should be able to hold the same amount of distance (equal reinforcment time), but if the point is closer to one side than the other that side would usually win. By creating these no-deployment zones, they make sure attackers and defenders are an equal distance away from the point of contention creating more fair battles.


I'm not quite sure on the point of the increased vehicle cost. True, you could happily ignore resources most of the time, secure in the knowledge that you always had enough. They did recently buff the armour of tanks and perhaps felt that large tank groups were too strong now? Perhaps it is part of an overarching change in the role of vehicls and resources that is yet to be implemented. Or it could the beginning of a resource balancing run, that they could not test on the test-server because it requires a large population to get accurate data.
The impotant thing to note here is that it does not influence the maximum size or strength of a tank column (such as wielded by outfits), only the sustainability of such a tactic. I believe this is primarily aimed at the taxi-tank syndrome.

 

[Rolfsky]

No more Shotgunside 2, love that. Compared to other shooters, these where just too dominant.

I'm not too sold on the new resource costs on the argument that it will make life even more easy for us as TR on Miller. If you're out-popped and low on territory, you have a problem now.

Air balances look solid but I hate the stupid sway mechanic on the NV. None of the scopes is fun to use now as I considered reflex as too jumpy.

 

[Cheers]

Higby made a post on reddit regarding these resources after people started crying death and doom.

First of all, as usual we appreciate all the discussion on this, seeing a lot of valid concerns. I wanted to address a couple of them.

1 - We've run the numbers too, of course. We're looking at average resource income and spend rates across multiple roles, i.e. people who play tanks primarily, those who play air primarily, those who play lots of stuff, etc. We've found that in general the resource income is about 3-4x the resource spend rate for most players, with a few exceptions. Not only that, but most of the time most players are CAPPED on aerospace and mechanized resources, including those who play those roles primarily. This is leading to resources being largely irrelevant. The only one that this isn't the case with is infantry resources, where you can spend without using, so more people manage to use those resources effectively without "wasting" their by earning while capped.

2 - The purpose with resources is to be limit the flow of force-multipliers being used, vehicles, explosives, etc. If you're upset that you can't chain pull tanks over and over every 5 minutes, I don't know what to tell ya. That's kind of the entire purpose of the resource system to limit players from doing that. It's never been the intention that tanks and aircraft are always available and you never have to "do without", however, our current tuning basically allows for that - making resources, and therefore one of our strategic drivers largely irrelevant. Did you know you actively earn resources by fighting in certain areas, in addition to the passive gain? Most people don't since resources don't really matter. If you want to get tanks faster, you can do that by fighting more in mechanized resource hexes. Mechanized resources are usually more plentiful outside of warpgates too so sunderers and MBTs, the backbones of forming a push are earned earliest. None of this matters or is important in the current meta - hopefully this tuning starts to make that gameplay surface a bit more.

3 - I know you're not saying this Roy, but just so everyone else sees it - this isn't a "Resource System Revamp" it's just a tuning pass. We still have longer term plans for more systematic adjustments to the resource game, including changes to the way you acquire and utilize resources. This tuning is an attempt to see what we can do to make resources more relevant in the current system without waiting several weeks for the new game systems to be coded and tuned. We also want to see what a more restrictive resource model feels like so we can refine the design direction for that larger change. These type of resource adjustments are fast and tiny changes to game data and are easy for us to adjust and even remove if it proves to be as bad as the doomsayers think it might be.

4 - Currently resources and XP are boosted by being under-populated. Of course hardly anyone realizes that resources are boosted since they don't matter very much right now, but they are. We are considering greatly increasing the resource side of that bonus, meaning that under-populated empires will have a lot more availability to spawn vehicles. I'm sure the first thought is "if we're zerged back to the wg we're screwed anyways so this doesn't help", and that's true and is already the case. Yes, if they're pushed back all the way to WG, this won't be as huge of a benefit, but if you're under-pop while you're being pushed back it could matter a lot. Being able to out-pull vehicles, MAXes and consumables while you're fighting to hold territory as an under-popped empire could hopefully prove to be an alleviation of the population imbalance pain that some players are feeling on a couple servers. edit: since I know someone will show up to bring up that if you're evenly popped and pushed back to WG you'd be hurting - that's true, but that's kind of the point. This is the component I'm personally least comfortable with.

Once again, the goals with this tuning is to make resources more relevant, decrease the time that players spend 'capped' on vehicle resources, limit chain pulling powerful force-multiplier vehicles such as MBTs, and, ideally, to allow under-popped empires to leverage force multipliers at a higher rate than their over-populated rivals while actively contesting territory.

At any rate, I'll take the concerns to the team, and we'll continue to discuss. I agree there are some big issues to watch carefully with this type of change.

The good news is it's a very simple change to implement, iterate and even to revert if needed. Like so much in Planetside 2, "TheorySiding" and mathematical models only get us so far (both ours and yours), it's really impossible to accurately predict the actual results until we can see it played by real players in real situations.

He does mention the increased resource income from being underpopulated, so that should mostly balance out. And running out of resources was very rare indeed. Also important to note is that Air have only received a very small increase in cost (25% ESF, 17% liberators, 0% galaxies) due to them dying more often.

 

[Fest]

MCG FUCK YEH!

 

[YamiNoTenshi]

The changes to air won't be that noticeable, I can still pull 3 ESFs with full resources, only real difference is that I won't have as much resources left when I've pulled those 3.

 

[FishEy3]

[quote="Cheers" post=18635]

No deploy zones? yeah okay I can get it that SOE wants more foot zerg fights but just NO....meh

You're missing the big picture here. How often have you seen the attackes have a massive advantage because there sunderer was closer to the cap point than the defenders spawn room (Think for example of a fight where the attackers could deploy mere feet away from the point, but the defenders have to run a hundred yards). In a perfect even battle, both side should be able to hold the same amount of distance (equal reinforcment time), but if the point is closer to one side than the other that side would usually win. By creating these no-deployment zones, they make sure attackers and defenders are an equal distance away from the point of contention creating more fair battles.
[/quote]

That's not the case... the non deply zone is applaied only to the attackers, meaning the defending side can still deploy busses on the top of a capture point, making the offense way to difficult imho

 

[Bisher]

There are things that need attention far more than IRNV, but saying that, there is no real major downside to it. I would like to see it just nerfed to its useless at day.

 

[FishEy3]

you know, i'd love to see a patch where no balancing things are done, just optimization.... real optimization.... i think is what this game lacks more

 

[Bisher]

I would like to see small improvements, then one big giant nerf stick of a balancing patch. Not all this little by little. So ZOE gets a small nerf this time, remains OP for a month, gets the full nerf WHICH IT NEEDS, by that time they may well have buffed something to deal with ZOE, say as total theory, give the striker the ability to lock maxes, and then that in turn becomes OP.

Another example. Infantry struggles against armour, inf given annihilator, its nerfed within weeks, tanks become ranged farming machines. AV turret introduced and still remains a bit too high in damage for my liking, they become far stronger than Annihilator ever was.......Later tanks nerfed and they become useless for a while.

And now they will fix IRNV instead of a ZOE max with comets that can out DPS the repair rate of 4 engineers! So like I said, they should just roll out massive balance patches, get all the crying out there, instead of digging the balance hole deeper and deeper.

They should just do a simple poll on several outfits from each faction. What do you think is OP about this faction? What is UP? What do you feel is weak on your own faction and what is too strong?

 

[Bennybones]

What they should do is give us VS weapons!! Or restore the Carv 9 to its former OP glory. Then everything else would be perfectly balanced. PERFECTLY BALANCED!