Personally, I think the reason frigates seem OP to some players is a lack of co-ordination, and whilst I appreciate how hard it is to form a cohesive attack without a good squad, it could be argued that this is the incentive to join a corp and start playing with a team.
I agree with this.
In almost any game, there is always a favored class. In this case, it’s the frigate.
It’s fun to play. you can do a lot of damage. take a lot of damage. I feel they are really quite balanced. They have obvious weaknesses, and really can’t do much when a fast ship gets up close. The problem is, it’s not always possible to get up close (kill zones and proper defensive formations) and the skill cap for playing the frigate is too low for how good it is.
Currently i’m not seeing a lot of incentive for organized play. arcade matches go so fast, it doesn’t matter much. I’d rather see improvements to matchmaking, and possibly individual rankings and/or tiers to show progression of skill, and give an idea of how you rank against other players.
The leaderboards are ok, but a tiered system is better. if there are a large number of players, someone ranked 4000 might be roughly equivalent to someone ranked 4500. you can’t really see this with a straight leaderboard. not to mention you might be below the top X% to even show up on the leaderboard.
The game types are very straight forward, and anyone who’s played PvP in almost any other RPG will be familiar with these types of PvP modes.
- The game isn’t ‘true’ competitive. (You can buy power) so balance isn’t as important. Simply put, you can’t find a good place to put the balance line because the premium options will either be too OP, or not worth the cash because the cost isn’t worth the increase in stats. In a game like League of Legends, it’s much easier to balance. because you can calculate a given champions DPS over a time frame. Everyone has access to the same things, and player skill determines how you get those things. Here, we can buy power. therefore it’s impossible to balance at a competitive level.
- While there is a pre-match lobby, you can’t have a squad with more than 2 people without paying. Obviously, the more people you play with in a squad, the better experience you’ll have. you’ll learn each others weaknesses, you can look out for eachother, etc. there’s more incentive for team play when you’re playing with people you know and trust. There’s less incentive for organized play because you can’t access it for free. even guilds require someone to pay. Not everyone wants to join a clan/guild. but most people would like to be able to play with their friends. There’s a whole other thread about this, but this is the #1 thing that should change about the game. we need to be able to play with a full squad for free, or via a permanent unlock. not this BS where we have to pay ~10 USD/month. especially because of point 1.
- ‘Risk/Reward’ could be adjusted for the lighter, faster ships. Frigates are generally safe. and on certain maps, the reward for playing (lots of kills, gratification because of kills/assists or winning) these ships in w/e style is much larger than the risk involved. Compared to an interceptor, the risk is much higher. you’re easier to kill. you do less damage, and the skill cap for playing this ship is higher. Therefore it’s higher risk with a lesser reward. this isn’t appealing to some people. so shifting the risk/reward for the lighter ships is what needs to happen. It’s also not clear for newer players on how to deal with frigates. not to mention that the pay ship for each faction is a frigate at tier 1, your first experience against pay vs. free can be very negative.
Really, all ships/weapons should have both a pay and credit option (excpetion being exclusive DLC options, Founders options, or seasonal options). Wait times should be added after the purchase of a ship. So we’re not buying it off the shelf, we’re commissioning it to be built. You can help fill the balance gap via the wait as well. smaller, lighter ships take less materials, so they can be built faster. Big ships like frigates require more materials and take longer, but are more powerful. loot at the end of the stage can also be turned into crafting materials to add additional time sinks to incentivize the convenience of the pay purchases vs. working on getting it for free.
TL;DR:
- Risk/Reward for frigates is too low compared to say, the interceptor. That is, the reward for playing a frigate is too high vs the risk of playing it at the skill cap of playing the frigate. Especially compared to an interceptor.
- Pay only options for the most powerful ships/weapons of any given tier destroy any ability to truly balance ships. Either the pay options will be OP, thus incentivizing their purchase and making money for the company and alienating part of the playerbase, or they will not be worth the purchase because they are too close in power to free options and we actually have good balance, but there’s no incentive to spend money on a good game.
All ships and weapons need to be purchasable with credits, and all ships/weapons need to have a pay option. To incentivize pay purchases, wait times should be implemented after a purchase before you can use the item. (IE: you comission the ship to be built, vs buying it off the shelf)
