Announcement of patch 0.9.0!

Mercenary Center Developer Blog
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I guess we’ll have to see what kind of cooldown they’re going to be on.  

 

regardless, it takes away most of the strategy when everyone has a constant supply of rockets. nobody is punished for using them ineffectively at the wrong times… no skill involved basically. just spam away since you know you can just buy more. sure, theyll cost you an extra few bucks, but that’s nothing if they mean the difference between losing/winning a battle (maybe an extra 10-15% of your earnings, which also doesnt matter for people who already own most items in the game and have nothing to spend it on).

 

however, from what i understand is that missile quantities on ships will be reduced, quote - “we decided to give up several slots for missiles”. so either a reduction in the number of slots, or a reduction in the number of missiles per slot.

 

this is a bad decision, it will only annoy more experienced players. or at least in T1/T2. not sure about T3/4 since i haven’t played them yet, and there may in fact be too many missiles per ship, not certain. but what it simply means, is that you cannot survive for as long a  single ship, since you will sooner run out of missiles. you must die in order to purchase new missiles.

 

and NO, the solution is not to raise ammo costs like in WoT. although i have a feeling that’s where this is heading. the old bait and switch.

 

they also hinted at this in the fact that modifiers will now be sold as boosters, meaning they will last a certain amount of battles…

 

this also makes no sense to me… it will reduce the amount of customization on your ship, instead to be replaced by some ‘consumable’ item you purchase every few missions… like a microtransactions system, what WoT is built of… oh god… i just facepalmed hard…

 

in effect these consumables will be readily available to people who P2W or players who already have most of the items, and just buy boosters. this will put newer players at a disadvantage. since they are less likely to spend their credits on boosters. not the greatest way to lure new customers i assume.

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The current weapon system basically gives you 4 different weapon archetypes.

 

Close - High DPS / Short Range 

Assault - Medium Damage / Medium Range

Sniper - Low DPS / Long Range

Heavy  - High DPS / Medium Range / Slow Tracking

 

Sure, each weapon has its twist. The current meta favors landing hits alpha strike over DPS - its much usually more effective to do 2000 Damage over 10s in the one hit that you land than trying to do 2500 Damage in 10s having to land all 10 shots on a moving target. That has lead to Rapid Rails and Stabilized Rails becoming the weapons of choice. Hail plasmas are also frequently used, as are heavy rails. The other weapon systems have their uses, but they tend to be most successfully employed on niche builds.

 

Fast forward to 0.9.0

 

Some of the weapons will maintain the former archetypes, however new mechanics such as increasing particle amount or increasing damage over time will allow for more role specific customization. For example, if you want to build a ship for assaulting beacons and frigate balls it seems weapons such as the singularity cannon or the ion emitter would be your choice. The same weapon however, is not going to be very useful for dog fighting with interceptors. Additionally, with the adjustments to weapon modifiers, team work and coordination may be more important than just using the FOTM guns, and any game state that emphasizes player skill and teamwork over dependence on initial conditions is going to get points in my book.

 

The bulk of players are not corp or squad members.  Will the weapon changes make this a corp/squad only game or still allow room for solo players?  Will the corps be in T1 looking for recruits?  Maybe this is gaijin’s fix for their matchmaking system.  Either you play by their corp encouraged rules, which encourages people paying and playing, or you get out.

 

I guess we’ll have to see what kind of cooldown they’re going to be on.  

 

I like missiles for finishing kills.  I think it’s almost 10% of my kills, even though for a long time I was playing ECM with RFP which doesn’t seem to get a killshot in doubleteams.  I’m convinced that having a higher damage per shot gets you more kills than assists.  Switching to RFR made a large difference in kills for me.  I do get far fewer assists.  Unlimited missiles mainly depends on areas.  I like ice reef because it’s bright, and has lots of maneuvering areas.  Abandoned outpost I’ve come to not like because if you’re taken out of action it can just take too much time to find out where to go to be effective in action without getting wiped out by being late.  Abandoned outpost’s openness does encourage missiles more than ice reef.  We need more missiles around asteroids, not open space.

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I have never seen anyone asking for these changes .

Which community are you listening to ?

 

Missile changes :

We will have mindless nuke spams. I will suicide just to replenish my nuke supplies. No more plannng  to use them at the right time.

The survival of a ship should be rewarded not the other way around. I will run out of missiles and put to penalty but a clueles pilot will get new supplies and will have upper hand against me ? Great design indeed. <sarcasm>

 

Weapon changes :

It already took quite a time to balance the weapons now you bring on new weapons and it will take months to actually balance them.

 

And the addition of T5 seriously ? 

With 1000 pilots online and half of them havent even achieved t4. 

Even pilots with access to t4 dont join t4 who cares about t5.

 

They shouldnt let russians make online games seriously.

Every single russian developed game suffers the same problem and goes to hell.

 

No wonder only a couple thousand players play this game that should appeal to lots more and should have 10k pilots online at least.

More players play browser java games then this game. Tell a f2p game developer that they will have 1k players average online they would cancel that game immediately.

The only reason for such low playerbase is the developers that makes changes that are either too greedy or unasked for. I seriously wonder how they still keep this game alive with such a low player base. Just adding a deathmatch mode would increase the playerbase by large margin but no they had to add hangars . yeah that really would increase player numbers. Sell this game to a decent developer they will triple the playerbase and the income within a month.

 

The only assumption i come up with that they try to make the game more newbie friendly that any 5 year old would play by spamming nukes and having fun over it thinking he accomplished something. Yet achieving a bigger playerbase. 

 

The day this patch goes online i quit for couple of months till they see the obvious mistake and revert it somehow.

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Weapon changes :

It already took quite a time to balance the weapons now you bring on new weapons and it will take months to actually balance them.

 

i think theyre mainly planning on adding new weapons, which will require some rebalancing. but rebalancing has to be redone anyways, as the current system majorly favors LRFs and intys at low tiers and from what i hear, but have not had to opportunity to try, by frig balls in higher tiers (probably something having to do with nukes and engineers, and to some degree guards).

 

i agree with you in that the current system of 3 damage types is sufficient (and i like the fact they are removing the ability to change the damage type on your weapon, but not the fact that mods will now be boosters), but i think they want to add different damage ‘models’, like different effects on your guns based on range or some other parameters, or AOE, etc. just to provide additional customization to your ships.

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(finally got to the end…)

All in all I can accept this patch (despite not liking it so much).

  1. the announcer comment said " each weapon is unique and fun to use, which means there is no “best recipe” " - okay, I see you added diversity to the weapons but making them class specific will inevitably make “best recipes” either way.  Also, with this you are denying a lot a of metas, wich is not really “unique and fun”.  Just sayin’

  2. I don’t think all the remaining old weps need rename. Let’s be honest, Gauss cannon is Stab Rail, Beam cannon is Assault Laser and positron cannon is Hailstorm Plasma…

  3. I have to join to the side of those who disagree with the unlimited missile change.  If it’s going to effect nukes and minefields it will ruin the game - REGARDLESS of their cooldown (okay unless a clip is made of one mine each, and reloads over a minute…)  However I do see the point behind the change.  I think a great majority of players tends to hold off missiles even if they’d benefit from firing them because they are so scarce.

I agree that the cooldown should be stopped while you’re dead to avoid spamming.

  1. as for the weapon mod “revamp”.  I don’t really understand it  I’m totally clueless.  There is absolutely no need for it.  Really.  If you want to make different mods (like no damage type alter, but something else) - fine!  Do it!  But mod/battle system…?  Just wtf.  “mods need to be changed with the weapon system” ← That DOES NOT answers anything.  It is like Q: why do you jumping off that cliff? A: because the sheep are deaf

I hope people will read this far, for I DO NOT intend to b*tch this patch.  Okay, new things are new things - not sayin’ I’m not concerned but I guess I can give it a shot.

I just commented in that VAIN hope that “the voice of the community will be heard”.  But alas those above, often tend to be selectively deaf.

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  1. the announcer comment said " each weapon is unique and fun to use, which means there is no “best recipe” " - okay, I see you added diversity to the weapons but making them class specific will inevitably make “best recipes” either way.  Also, with this you are denying a lot a of metas, wich is not really “unique and fun”.  Just sayin’

 

but we already have ‘class-specific’ modules which act as weapons pretty much, and special abilities which do the same…

 

  1. I don’t think all the remaining old weps need rename. Let’s be honest, Gauss cannon is Stab Rail, Beam cannon is Assault Laser and positron cannon is Hailstorm Plasma…

 

haha pretty much thats what’ll happen ;p

 

  1. I have to join to the side of those who disagree with the unlimited missile change.  If it’s going to effect nukes and minefields it will ruin the game - REGARDLESS of their cooldown (okay unless a clip is made of one mine each, and reloads over a minute…)  However I do see the point behind the change.  I think a great majority of players tends to hold off missiles even if they’d benefit from firing them because they are so scarce.

 

and they should be scarce, otherwise it removes a lot of the tactical planning during the battle, leading to a poorer game experience. however, it all depends on the limit they set. maybe some T3/T4 do in fact need less missiles, some of them seem like they can carry 20+ missiles ;o… but the lower tiers don’t need less. lower tiers are fine, but if you allow resupply it will be OP… and if you lower the missile count, then you must die to resupply meaning its harder to survive on one ship without dying. just saying…

 

  1. as for the weapon mod “revamp”.  I don’t really understand it  I’m totally clueless.  There is absolutely no need for it.  Really.  If you want to make different mods (like no damage type alter, but something else) - fine!  Do it!  But mod/battle system…?  Just wtf.  “mods need to be changed with the weapon system” ← That DOES NOT answers anything.  It is like Q: why do you jumping off that cliff? A: because the sheep are deaf

 

yup this seems pretty ridiculous. it’s fine the way it is now, just remove damage type modification, and balance them better if you need to :\

 

I just commented in that VAIN hope that “the voice of the community will be heard”.  But alas those above, often tend to be selectively deaf.

 

meh, my experience with F2P games is that the only voice that is heard is the publisher’s and shareholders. they don’t want to take a risk to make a really outstanding game, so they just do whatever will keep their bota afloat, making marginal profits.

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Yes I know mods and abilities are class specific. So why take away the last bit of the gameplay you can fully customize to your style?

Yes I can agree that unlimited missile will take away a lot of tactical gameplay. And no cooldown or death penalty will quite balance this.

So how about an option if reloading ingame? Like a supply station where you can dock a buy a new set of rockets but of course this would make you an easy target time being. The risk-reward might not scr*w up the tacticslity so much.

148

One more thing: some gm/admin/whatever mentioned there will be more missile shield in order to balance unlimited missiles.

That wont really solve anything because it will take away place from other mods and more importantly castrate jericho snipers.

149

So how about an option if reloading ingame? Like a supply station where you can dock a buy a new set of rockets but of course this would make you an easy target time being. The risk-reward might not scr*w up the tacticslity so much.

 

time taken to reach the station wouldnt be worth it. and to allow a unit like engineers to resupply ammo would require very careful tweaking, not to mention how to ‘weigh’ the worth of each missile type, or which ship receives how much ammo? i don’t think it’s worth the time involved to develop such mechanism.

 

i think the current missile system works fine, but possibly higher tiers need to have their number of missiles or missile slots reduced to counter missile spam.

 

but honestly? mixed messages, since the OP stated that - “In addition, pilots noted that a limited number of missiles in combat lowers the degree of intensity.”

 

which means that people are asking for more missiles. i’m asking for less, or for them to remain roughly the same in lower tiers at least, maybe less in higher tiers.

 

so they are in fact doing the opposite of what i am asking here :\ if that makes any sense? lol

 

as to your edited post: maybe they will implement more missile defences. personally, i think the flares reload is too high compared to missile reload times. especially considering that several people may be firing missiles at you at once… after all, you are wasting an entire slot just for that defense, and if it doesn’t even work properly, what is the point?

150

i think theyre mainly planning on adding new weapons, which will require some rebalancing. but rebalancing has to be redone anyways, as the current system majorly favors LRFs and intys at low tiers and from what i hear, but have not had to opportunity to try, by frig balls in higher tiers (probably something having to do with nukes and engineers, and to some degree guards).

No kidding, if I run into anyone else from a top corp and see them flying around with any form of laser or plasmas not being hails I find it very odd. 

151

As for the supply station: it would reload you with the type of ammo you installed pre battle and the cost would be charged after battle just like the repairs.

Some others mentioned that the posts asking for all these chnges are from the russian side of the moon. Another option is that this system is aimed to reduce reloading costs because they are too high - altho I hardly think so and havent seen a post referring to it either. Maybe paying kess is to eaen more so more ppl can afford hiegher tiers. But honestly a way easier solution woyld be to simply cut repair and reload costs plus boost battle income…

152

As in my case, I usually use short range weapon (pulse lasers, rapid-fire plasma) to defend myself against butt rapists while taking cover (I play mostly frigates); with this new weapon system, frigates will seem to have trouble defending themselves in close combat, has this been thought through?

 

I can see a way to boost the survivability of frigates with infinite amount of mines, while reducing the duration of mines to 15~20 seconds, it would solve both problems.

153

As in my case, I usually use short range weapon (pulse lasers, rapid-fire plasma) to defend myself against butt rapists while taking cover (I play mostly frigates); with this new weapon system, frigates will seem to have trouble defending themselves in close combat, has this been thought through?

 

I can see a way to boost the survivability of frigates with infinite amount of mines, while reducing the duration of mines to 15~20 seconds, it would solve both problems.

  1. I find it hard to believe too much thought has been put into the class specification of the weapons as such…

  2. I always had a problem with minefields - that they are OP and such - never considered what would a duration debuff do but now that you mention it, it certainly seems like a very valid solution.

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I don’t like the missile idea either, however, whatever.

 

What I really absolutely don’t like is the change of weapons into dealing only one damage type. And only because that will kinda break plasma guns, the only weapon which needed that anyway.

 

I don’t feel, “making everything easier” is good for players. There should be room for experimentation, areas to learn, to discover and combine, even things not really considered at the drawing board. It kinda does lose a lot of appeal to me.

 

However, we will see, I don’t mind, if it’s working? :slight_smile:

155

I took the hint from patch 8.0.0.

 

This is a beta/alpha merge and anything you hold dear is going to be slaughtered next patch. I checked the patch notes, looks like they’re just screwing up the game further. The camera still hasn’t been rolled back, healing is still overpowered(even if nerfed), and T5 looks pretty but is unobtainable because there’s no reason for me to play the game.

 

If I had the power, I would still roll back the game to patch 7.10, without a second thought.

 

Improvements? More like a new dev team got a hold of another game, copied it, and then slowly decided to force it towards a completely different vision. They should have just started a new game with the same engine.

 

The most insulting thing is these changes are made with microtransactions in full effect, and no refunds of that paid for gold every major patch.

156

Ok, so, as I promised:

  1. Ship tree: Changed. Now it is almost a straight avenue for roles. Want to be engie exclusively - no problem.

  2. Mods buyout - whites and blues for creds. Gold (shop price), greens, purples (scaling price) - GS.

  3. Weapons buyout - golds will be bought out by the shop price, greenes and purples (as well as whites and blues) will stay with you, but change their mechanics.

  4. Prices on ships - lowered. T5 would cost approximately like T4 now.

  5. Repair prices - lowered.

  6. Loyalty - remained almost the same.

  7. Nukes - related to the team as I promised and is under consideration. More on that: there won’t be 6 nukes in a magazine.

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Thank you!  Antibus

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0.9.0 Is being installed. Now.

159

What? do you mean we will have to patch today?  :what:

160

Yup.