Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25370154-20141015222654/@comment-25467429-20141016152145

TheTLMguy wrote: SlyCooperFan1 wrote: @TheTLMguy The problem with putting more emphasis on shooting down other pilots is that you'd get rewarded too much for just flying around and shooting down other pilots. The point of the mode is objective-based, to destroy the fleet and protect yours. As long as you do that, as long as your team wins and your fleet is kept safe, you'll be golden. Sure, I can't contest what you're saying.

But please try to understand my point of view: if I destroy enemy fighters, I:

• allow my teamates to focus on enemy vessels

• prevent enemies from using special attacks

• protect my fleet avoiding the "mission fail" message

All things that I consider important... I think the issue isn't taht the sea targets give that much more points individually, becasue I don't think that's the case beyond the point sponge that is the carrier, but that there are a lot of sea targets. The only air targets are other players, and unless you're just that good you're only going to shoot down around 6 -10 planes in a mission. There may only be 10 vessels in the water, but each has several additional targets loaded on them in terms of the SAM, AA guns, and CIWS. Theoretically they could add some NPC planes, but at that point this starts becoming more like a Co-op mission than a TDM. They could decrease ancillary targets on the ships, but then that is likely not going to be particularly satisfying either. Furthermore as it takes so much damage to take out enemy ships, shifting any additional points load to enemy planes would put too much emphasis on just the special bonus attacks that you get from shooting down enough planes, and you likely end up having the ship destruction element ignored entirely.

This version of the TDM is perhaps the ultimate expression of team-based air combat. It is very easy to see how a team either in active communication or of deftly aware players could dominate match after match. But it requires at least one very skilled pilot to sacrifice their shot at MVP and pulling in a lot of cash to stick to more traditional TDM tactics and only target enemy aircraft. Let's face it, in every other mode in this game to date teh use of strategy is relativley limited as a bunch of players just hunting targets is no less effective than a cohesive unit. To offset this, they really changed up the tournament points this time around. I've done the air-defense option in one of these missions already, came in dead last place in terms of points but my team won. Went the sea combat route and had the top score on a losing team. I got nearly three times as many tournament points being last and on the winning team than being first on the losing team. It was not that steep a curve in past tournaments. Tops on the winning team are pulling in north of 2200 points easy.

Long story short, I see what you're saying, it's just that I don't think there's much they can do to tweak this mode without ruining the balance.