Muddeh
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There was a point in time a few months after the game released where I felt the same way you do, that there was a threshold where skill no longer mattered, and as long as you dealt more damage than the amount you receive, you could be successful. As I kept playing, I found myself having less and less success until I finally got involved with the clan scene, and when you play against veteran players in a team setting, your enemies will obliterate you far faster than you can damage them if you solely rely on spam. I'm not considering the numbers by themselves, and I believe that stats do not accurately reflect a person's performance in a match, nor a vehicle or weapon's capabilities. Rather, just like it's earlier counterparts, TM 2012 has way more depth than there appears to be on the surface.
I'll address your points individually. First, you state that the difficulty present in dodging weapons with homing capabilities makes the game a war of attrition. I hardly see how you can give TM 2012 this label without applying it to the entire series. In every TM you're using vehicles with a specific number of hit points using weapons which deal a specific amount of damage, but most importantly, each vehicle possesses varying capabilities to deal and negate damage. Even though the damage of certain weapons are difficult, perhaps impossible to negate under many circumstances, the fact remains that over-reliance of these weapons close quarters combat is a trait of a mediocre player. Consider it this way. If you're playing Darkside in Black, is it worth the effort to go to the effort of dodging a homing missile that takes away less than 4% of your health? While your enemy is spamming you slowly over a long period of time, you should take the opportunity to set up an attack of your own that is more powerful, deals more damage with a shorter amount of time required, has knock-back attributes that allow you to set up combos, etc.. The same logic applies to TM 2012, as players in current day can consistently nail strong, single-hit damage like power missiles, turbo rams, napalm bullseyes, even ricos, as well as multitudes of vehicle specials.
The parallel you draw to fighting games isn't relevant because character's attributes don't vary to the extent that the attributes of vehicles in TM do. A fighting game wouldn't have a character that is as agile as a lightweight vehicle in TM to the point it can rarely be hit manually, neither would you have a character with such limited mobility that homing attacks would be necessary. Considering TM is a 3D game with an extra dimension to aim, large battlegrounds, and targets that move far faster than enemies in comparable genres, it only only makes sense for homing weapons exist in conjunction with weapons and specials that have the ability to immobilize or knock-back an enemy to make it easier to set up hits with manually-aimed weapons. As for your Reaper scenario, a skilled Reaper should be able to avoid finding themselves in a 1v2 situation in the first place by being conscious of their radar, and keeping close proximity to teammates. If you find yourself swarmed by enemies in a lightweight vehicle, it's generally your own fault for putting yourself in a situation where you're forced to take a death by not having the ability to break through the enemy's defences.
Yes, killstreaks are overpowered in ranked matches where you can target newbs, and then go to town on experienced players once you have your perks. In a high-skill TDM scenario, though, killstreaks are actually pretty balanced, and add a lot of depth. As a team is capable of getting a teammate on a killstreak, it greatly improves their capability to both deal damage and survive before taking a death, and is far more effective for kills to be clinched by streaking players than for a teammate to get one kill and then die shortly after, letting the potential go to waste. A good player keeps tabs on who is developing a killstreak on both their own and the opposing team, and stat checks when they have the opportunity. If a person does develop a massive killstreak, it's generally the fault of the opposing team for not applying enough pressure on that player. Furthermore, streaking with lightweights is fairly simply since they can chase targets that attempt to flee, but if a team can feed kills to their heavies, it's massively more effective since heavies take tons of damage, but are capable of dealing tons of damage in the heat of battle. In essence, the advantages of a streak are multiplied by keeping those vehicles in the battle and dealing damage without taking as many deaths as they would otherwise, and can be a winning formula if a team is in sync.
Regarding your example of Junkyard Dog being stronger in Black than its stats suggest, you can look at a vehicle like Death Warrant and question it's purpose in the game. On paper, its stats are godawful too. It has mediocre armour, is slower than Outlaw (an SUV), and has the worst combination of specials in the game, yet it is personally my most-used vehicle after investing thousands of hours into the game. Why? Because what stats don't show is that it has a very precise turning radius that allows you to be accurate with manual weapons like power missiles, and is also a very stable vehicle that is impacted less by knock-back weapons, making it difficult to be disrupted and juggled. It also fires most weapons directly from the centre of the vehicle which allows for better accuracy, and is one of the most capable vehicles at reaching hidden areas on maps with strong weapons that require technical driving since DW handles fantastic. The fact that it's so precise and responsive also helps minimize taking braindead damage from rams and environment damage. Roadkill doesn't possess a lot of these attributes, and even though it may appear that Roadkill is a better vehicle due it's more powerful special while possessing relatively similar stats in other categories, these combined elements make me feel more comfortable playing DW in most scenarios.
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