Vehicles just aren't fun
I'd like to have a serious discussion about vehicle balance. This isn't a rage thread. I'd like to come up with some solutions in the off chance the devs actually look as these forums.
I can only speak to armor, as i haven't flown since BF3 or 4, but from what i hear the aircraft aren't fairing much better.
The problem isn't so much that armor is under powered, though we could talk about why a HE tank round exploding 4 feet from you doesn't kill you, but that's a different topic. It's more about the amount of threats that armor faces simultaneously.
At any given time, armor has to contend with, other armor, planes, helis, stationary guns/launchers, C4, mines, and about 16+ engineers all with rockets. We just don't have the survivability to deal with all of that.
Our counter measures do almost nothing. I'm pretty sure they don't even work on the dumbfire RPGs most people use. Even if they did, the CD would still make it useless against the multiple engineers that all have 3 rockets apiece.
Armor also handles like a shopping cart full of bricks. If you take the handling perk, it's almost passable, but then you also lose an equipment slot. They turn slow, drive slow, get hung up on the slightest obstacle, and forget about going over uneven terrain. You and your camera bounce around crazily and half the time you just get stuck at a weird angle on something you can't even see because of the bouncing. Not to mention that as soon as your damaged you slow down.
What all this adds up to is very low escapability. We're forced to attempt to run away across open, mostly flat ground or try to lumber our way around an obstacle to try to break line of sight. The issue is that the rockets have such a long range that they make getting away almost impossible. And infantry can scramble around, over or through terrain faster than we can go around things, which means that they can easily keep up and continue to shoot us, while our sights are bouncing all over the place making it almost impossible to return accurate fire.
I should also mention that because any infantry can play engineer, there's rarely ever just one person shooting at you. Even a medium sized rock or tree can completely hide infantry from return fire. Let alone buildings with half a dozen doors and windows to peek out of. Most of the time you get hit by a constant barrage of rockets coming from three different directions. Even if you manage to not die instantly and drive away, odds are your "escape route" will just drive you past another 4 engineers.
Lets not forget the constant painting from three quarters of the way across the map making a non-stop screaming in your ears that would quickly give you a headache if you didn't die so fast.
In short, armor just isn't fun to be in.
Instead of rolling around in a powerful, fearsome machine of war, you spend the entire time trying to figure out where those last two rockets came from, where you're getting painted from, and in general just running away trying to survive.
To be clear, i'm not saying you can't get kills, or be effective in armor. I'm saying that even if you are... it's not fun.
So that sums up the problem, now the question is, what to do about it?
What can be done to buff armor, that doesn't neuter engineers to the point of there being no reason to play them? How can they maintain their ability to kill armor, without it being like shooting fish in a barrel?
My first thought is to dramatically reduce the range of AT rockets, especially the dumb fire ones. Then increase the projectile drop on anything that isn't guided.
You can still kill armor in the same amount of hits, you just have to be closer and have to either expose yourself long enough to get a lock or be really good at aiming to compensate for the drop. The fact that i can be completely safe behind cover, pop out for one second and accurately do massive damage to a tank 250 yards away and be safe back behind my cover before he even knows i shot at him is ridiculous.
The second thing would be to increase the speed and handling of armor. That perk should be removed and it's bonuses added as default stats, at minimum. Not only would that make it easier to extract from a bad spot, but would allow us to use a defensive perk, hopefully one that's actually useful.
Add new defensive equipment that's worth using. Maybe like reactive armor that can absorb one rocket per side of the vehicle. Have it regenerate but on a decent sized cool down. Something like that would give us a chance to escape by allowing us to eat more rockets, but not keep us alive against a coordinated attack, or if we're stupid and hang around to long.
These are just a few ideas, and i'm sure we could come up with something that most players would be able to live with if we hammered it out.
I love vehicles. It's one of the main things that makes Battlefield Battlefield. It's one of the main reasons we play this over other shooters.
But right now, vehicles just aren't fun, and not worth using. I can get more kills and contribute more on foot. And that's just a shame.
What are your ideas?
