Homing launcher vs jet?

[Nutduster]

The reason to care about k/d in the context of this discussion is because it's the quickest way to illustrate the balance problem to people who otherwise don't seem to get it. If a quality jet griefer can have a 10+ k/d with or without exploiting passive mode (and I know from personal experience that this is not only possible, but startlingly common), then his toy of choice isn't balanced. Nobody who exclusively drove a Kuruma and tried to shoot or run people over would have a k/d that high. Nor someone in just an Insurgent, or even a tank. No rooftop sniper would do that well either - somebody always snipes them back or goes after them with a flying vehicle. It's only the jet that makes such a statistic not only plausible, but relatively common.

 

I say "relatively" because I do agree that most jet pilots aren't very good. Lots of players own jets now and most players suck in them. But for the purposes of determining ideal game balance, you don't just look at how good the average player is. You also have to look at how unbalanced it is when the BEST players use it, and - this is the most critical part to me - how well the AVERAGE player can defend himself against one of the BEST players. The skill gap of the game as a whole is plenty large enough, and the rank gap (which adds in health and armor disparities, as well as access to certain weapons) only exacerbates it. I can easily go 5:1 against a mediocre level 50 player in a ground war without trying very hard. With a jet, though... that guy better quit the session. 15:1 or 20:1 or even worse is not implausible at all. And I'm not one of the best jet pilots either, just a pretty good one who knows how to aim the cannons and how not to crash.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Nutduster

[ViolatingBox]

I kill myself in my jet more than ground dwellers kill me I'm terrible

[MikeyDLuffy]

 

 

Why is it always assumed pilots can't fight on the ground?

 

Because you do pussy sh*t like this.

 

 

Wash your mouth with soap young lady and put on a nice dress.

Edited June 24, 2016 by MikeyDLuffy

[l Marksman God l]

 

...And why do you even care about K/D?

Generally speaking, I don't. My point, however, was that a player in a jet has ridiculously high K/D in a jet. Not his overall K/D. I'm not the one the your in-game profile shows. I mean, if you had to make an honest approximation, how many on-ground players have you killed while you were in a jet? And, how many times have you actually been killed by on-ground players while you were in a jet? Compare those two approximate numbers. One is easily a twenty times higher than the other. The amount of kills you can rack up with a jet compared to the number of times that on-ground players are actually able to kill you while you're in a jet is extremely lopsided. If a game component allows for a statistical discrepancy THAT massive, then the game has serious balance issues.

 

Yeah gotta agree on that, I got like 36k kills with my jet, but something around 50k kills on ground fights, so I'm not a jet only guy. I'm just saying that if you know what you're doing, most pilots would just be lost and crash on buildings without getting a ton of kills, but a decent pilot is a whole different story, it is OP against ground targets but hardly ever you'll see really good pilots on freemode griefing, but I get your point.

[We Are Ninja]

Wash your mouth with soap young lady and put on a nice dress.

Classy.

Edited June 24, 2016 by We Are Ninja

[Aether]

The reason to care about k/d in the context of this discussion is because it's the quickest way to illustrate the balance problem to people who otherwise don't seem to get it. If a quality jet griefer can have a 10+ k/d with or without exploiting passive mode (and I know from personal experience that this is not only possible, but startlingly common), then his toy of choice isn't balanced. Nobody who exclusively drove a Kuruma and tried to shoot or run people over would have a k/d that high. Nor someone in just an Insurgent, or even a tank. No rooftop sniper would do that well either - somebody always snipes them back or goes after them with a flying vehicle. It's only the jet that makes such a statistic not only plausible, but relatively common.

 

I say "relatively" because I do agree that most jet pilots aren't very good. Lots of players own jets now and most players suck in them. But for the purposes of determining ideal game balance, you don't just look at how good the average player is. You also have to look at how unbalanced it is when the BEST players use it, and - this is the most critical part to me - how well the AVERAGE player can defend himself against one of the BEST players. The skill gap of the game as a whole is plenty large enough, and the rank gap (which adds in health and armor disparities, as well as access to certain weapons) only exacerbates it. I can easily go 5:1 against a mediocre level 50 player in a ground war without trying very hard. With a jet, though... that guy better quit the session. 15:1 or 20:1 or even worse is not implausible at all. And I'm not one of the best jet pilots either, just a pretty good one who knows how to aim the cannons and how not to crash.

 

I understand where you are coming from. The only issue I see is that you won't see the best pilots/players attacking ground targets. They hardly ever enter free-roam to begin with lol.

[elfoam]

Just curious. Has the homing launcher been sped up or the jets been slowed down? Jets used to be able to get away from the hominbg launcher no problem. Now I can shoot them down every time.

Depends how high they are flying, the hydra only reaches fast speeds at above 1000 feet.