1661

The game is free, but the moment you want to advance your character, you will have to buy new weapons, and this need months of gametime or real money. If you don’t mind paying for videogames, its better if you buy the basic weapons with real money.

edit:
With basic weapons I mean stuff like lock-on rockets, breaker-rockets, and other stuff that make your character much better at single role. The default weapons for everything are good for all roles, withouth excelling at anything. The term “basic weapons” is confusing, I should have used a different term.

1662

Cool thing about the game, at least in my opinion, is that the basic weapons you start with are at least decent, and sometimes very good like the default sniper rifle for the NC.

1663

Is there any weapon that is class-breakingly bad other than the Vanu sniper rifle? I certainly didn’t suffer with the default LMG on the Heavy when I started.

1664

I can’t say i agree with this.

Most big engagements i am in tend to have a lot of meat grinder moments when two huge bodies of infantry fight in a near standstill over a piece of terrain. These are ideal for turrets, although you will die some.

Surprise attacks are non existent in these situations generally.

1665

Not in my experience, at least. Other than that pathetic sniper rifle the Vanu are stuck with to start, the other starting weapons are pretty good. I love the T9 CARV or whatever it is for the TR heavies, in particular, though the Gauss SAW for NC is also good. Most of the LA/Eng/Med weapons are ok too.

1666

Liberator nerf incoming tonight. I hope they make the Zephyr less effective against armor but I do worry about SOE overcompensating as they tend to do (I’m looking at you, Tech Plant defense).

1667

I spent 15 minutes having fun racking up free xp at The Crown last night. We (VS) owned the TI Alloys location across the gorge from The Crown. I repaired one of the Phalanx cannons and turned it on The Crown. I shelled 3 different Phalanx turrets on The Crown, nabbing 105xp each time I would destory one. Along come 2 engineers that start repairing them, so I obliginly destory them again. This cycle repeats over and over with me earning 105xp every 30 seconds or so for around 15 minutes. I could have kept right on going, but it was time to log and catch some TV with my wife. I have no idea why the NC engineers didn’t just turn 2 or 3 turrets on me and chase me off, but they seemed to be busy trying to use them to defend against VS tanks and ground forces pushing towards The Crown, so I took advantage.

1668

Just imagine what those NC engineers were thinking: “For about 15 minutes last night this one guy kept on blowing up the turrets and I went right on fixing them. A bunch of free XP every time! I don’t know why he didn’t turn that turret one some of the vehicles or infantry standing out in the open, but who cares? I got a ton of certs!”

I smell a conspiracy… -_-

1669

So here’s an interesting graph:

Red = deaths caused by infantry.
blue = deaths caused by vehicles.

1670

LOL! Point taken. Though in my defense those turrets were the only things I had to shoot at. All the vehicles out in the open were on my side, and I was too far away from The Crown for infantry to register on my display for targeting. Still, in essence we were giving each other free xp since those engys had plenty of time to vacate the turrets before they exploded each time.

1671

Statistics don’t work like that. Show me “deaths per minute” between the two and we can have a data discussion. The fact that there are twenty infantry active for every vehicle at any given time is why that chart isn’t really relevant.

1672

Well, “20 infantry active for every vehicle” completely flies in the face of all the “This is tankside2” or “welcome to airside2” whines. :) That being said, I wasn’t trying to prove anything or state an argument with the graph - notice I said it was “an interesting graph” not “a conclusive datapoint about something”. It was mhigby’s graph that I linked, I just thought it interesting. Given that Bio Labs are currently the only place where vehicles can’t dominate, I expected to see the numbers skewed a bit more towards vehicles than they are.

FWIW, personally I’d like to see base caps be left to infantry with vehicles controlling the battlefield in between, similar to how Bio Labs are now. Vehicles are a fun part of the game but they currently have too large of an impact and too much of a free reign for my tastes.

1673

I agree, and sorry if I sounded too snooty. It’s just that the different amounts of infantry vs. vehicles on at any time throws those sorts of numbers all out of whack. Anecdotally I get more kills as infantry than in tanks or fighters, but I get way more kills gunning in a Liberator with relative impunity.

1674

Hotfix notes have been posted.

General:

Enemy spotting is now only shared with allies within 150 meters.
Spot duration has been lowered to 10 seconds.
At long distances you have to be closer to the center of the target to successfully spot.
Jump Jets should no longer function intermittently.
MAXes will render at a longer distance for players in aircraft.

Liberator:

C150 Dalton:
Firing adjustments have been made to the Dalton. This change will mainly be noticeable when attempting to fire on infantry or other small targets at a distance.
Dalton projectiles now have more gravity when fired. This makes the Dalton more accurate when the Liberator is above targets. Shot accuracy becomes more difficult as the Liberator increases its horizontal distance to its target.
The outer damage blast radius, where minimum damage occurs, has been reduced from 12 meters to 10 meters.

L105 Zepher
Firing adjustments have been made to the Zepher. This should only be noticeable when trying to hit infantry or other very small targets at a far distance.
Zepher projectiles now have more gravity when fired. This makes the Zephyr more accurate when the Liberator is above targets. Shot accuracy becomes more difficult as the Liberator increases its horizontal distance to its target.
The inner damage blast radius, where maximum damage occurs, has been reduced from 4 meters to 1.5

Infrared & Thermal Optics have had their effective viewing ranges tuned for the following weapons:
Scythe: All Weapons
Reaver: All Weapons
Mosquito: All Weapons
Liberator: Secondary Weapons (Shredder, Dalton, Zepher)

Good change on the zephyr although I would have liked to have seen it less effective vs armor as well. I like the sound of the bombs being less accurate if you’re not directly overhead. I’m not sure what “Tuned” means regarding NV and Thermal. Was thermal increased and NV decreased? Both decreased? Or what?

1675

This is what makes me rage, even if I hate whatever is being nerfed. Who the fuck thinks an “adjustment” from 50 square meters to SEVEN is a great idea to get a reasonable reduction on something?

I almost never use a lib (and never gun in them), and I die to them more often than I would like, but an 80%+ nerf is just moronic. It seems like nobody at these companies has the slightest clue how to balance anything. All they do is grossly overcompensate for whatever they receive the most bitching about. Idiots.

1676

I’d like to object a bit to misleading wording re: percentages. If the maximum damage area had been reduced to a point would you say that the entire thing had been 99.9999999%+ reduced? Honestly, almost every game I’ve ever played with rockets has had a point based maximum damage area, with damage falloff occurring for all indirect hits.

Anyway, I have no idea if these are good or bad changes, just don’t like to read mathematical pre-judgments.

1677

That’s great if it’s free! And how long will i be able to play without extra weapons? I’m assuming that there is only a couple of weapons which are free and it’s starting getting bored very fast ;)

1678

I think the zephyr got off light. There’s been no damage reduction,you just have to be more precise to get FULL damage. A similar change was made to rocket pods and they’re still useful.

1679

The nerf is really a nerf to two things:

  • The survivability of the lib, combined with his potential to farm infantry made it a weapon much better than any other option to gain certs fast. The first person to level up his character to BR100, did it by being lib gunner for a week.
  • Weapons that farm infantry make a lot of player unhappy. Infantry players are bad at this game, and don’t take obvious measures, like spreading so are not a easy target for AoE attacks. Making bombs have a smaller area of damage don’t nerf the ability of these weapons to destroy vehicles, but reduce the number of unhappy infantrymen.

1 single ESF can kill a liberator, that is a 3 persons vehicle, so probably this nerf is too much. But you don’t want a single weapon to be better than everything else in a game, or else people will only use that weapon and will get bored because lack of variety.

Nerfs are one of the reasons mmo’s suck. Next month FOTW will be other weapon and people will find reasons to get farmed and be bad at videogames.

1680

Well, I’d definitely agree that people in general don’t use good tactics. Bunching up, running in front of each other, popping up and spraying fire like some Lebanese militia in 1976 is pretty much the norm. No wonder you get so many clumps wiped out by grenades and stuff.

As for vehicles, I’m not that surprised at the relatively low number of total kills. When used effectively, vehicles tend to excel at getting large numbers of kills in a short time, in a relatively small area. In more wide-open combat, over longer periods of time, they’re much less effective. Just like with infantry, a lot of the drivers are not terribly skilled, beyond spawn spamming.