SO many issues with the game if simplicity and dumbed down game play was what you were going for you nailed it.
I am going to start off by saying that i personally appreciate the dev’s willingness to listen to the community, as i am sure the community does as well and is no doubt a positive thing for the future of this game. Though what they may need to learn is that player feedback must be taken with a grain of salt what i mean by this is that negative player feedback (stuff that people want changed) will be in the majority coming from those that have issue with the game and not those enjoying it as they have nothing to complain about. In this case the changes that are being made to the games mechanics dumb the game down which tells me the dev’s are listening to the minority of players who find the game too difficult to play or comprehend. They also have the issue of a divided community by having separate forums the problem that arises is that you do not get a full community perspective on any issue because issues brought up by the Russian portion of the community can not be scrutinized or supported by the English speaking portion of the community. This is indeed the case from what i saw on the Russian forums with a lot of support being given for these ideas while on the English forums the consensus seems to be that a lot of these changes will have deep and negative impact on game play and almost no mention of any of these things as issues players had with the game. I can only conclude that the dev’s are giving more weight to the Russian player base in what changes will be made in the game and that they are in fact not listening to the games player base but the Russian player base, which seems to have a very different outlook on what they would like to see in this game.
The way weapons worked in this game i actually thought to be one of the best laid out systems I’ve seen in an mmorpg for a very long time and while it was not perfect and has its flaws these flaws could have been easily fixed with further balancing of ships resists and the weapons themselves. The fact that certain weapons types were more predominant that others simply shows that the player base doesn’t need the game dumbed down for them as they are achieving optimal setups for their ships with the current mechanics through a more in depth understanding of the game and the way forward would simply be to re-balance the unused weapon systems to be able to compete with those in current use.
By pigeon holing weapons to specific ship classes you in essence destroy any need for a deeper level of understanding of the mechanics and takes away player creativity and dynamic ship design no longer do you have the freedom to min max, optimize or create new ship setups because not only do the ship classes have specific class modals they now have specific class weapons so instead of a player created meta which is flowing and ever changing to try and counter the previous meta you now have a static boring game created meta which dictates a majority of your ships load out. For me personally i loved the fact that i was free to create and design a ship the way i wanted to try out new setups and do different things which is no longer possible.
There are a pile of other reasons why this has been a terrible patch and that’s not to say it has no Merritt but i think this is the worst and most game breaking for myself. Any other opinions and reasons that people want to make a case for in a respectful and constructive way.
Anyone who supports the request for rollback i ask that you simply put in a /signed post and state your reasons if you wish.
I will point out as well that weapons choices went from t1 having 4 to none t2 having 9 to 4 t3 from 12 to 4 (this is for interceptors) you either have to choose between picking your fighting style or your damage type and and damage type is just as important you need to have different versions of each weapon in different flavor damage without that you can simply tank the damage type of hardest hitting weapon that your ships countering ship can use. This is why the previous system was such a good basis to work with you have long mid short range weapons in each damage flavor creating a dynamic and ever changing meta as weapons were buffed or nerfed.
I added a poll to the thread so we can get some community feedback in a simple way i truly think a rollback is the way to save this game and keep it at the level of awesome that it was while i think this patch has its merits it would benefit the game tremendously to rollback and allow some discussion on what changes would be good and what would be bad and what the community really wants.
*This ended up in the wrong section if this could be moved to the appropriate location that would be appreciated*
I realize this is beta, so I knew big changes would be incoming. Perhaps just not quite as drastic as this as the game feels very different now. The changes to weapon types for ship classes does sort of hurt, having had such a great choice before the patch. The game will no doubt still be good fun, but as a player that has experienced the pre-patch setup - I will be missing the variety and choice we had before.
For the first part of your feedback - I agree. Separating the communities both through forums, support staff and in-game chat has lead to two extremely different mindsets. There are pretty much two different meta games within Star Conflict , with the Russian and English speaking communities having fairly different views on where this game should be headed.
Whereas the English speaking community generally advocate a deeper, tactical, team-based meta, the Russian community is more in favour of a FFA-style game which focuses on individual skill and allows individuals to shine rather than teams. Personally, I joined this game for the former experience - a game with major role and class differentiation simply doesn’t promote 1v1 gameplay and shouldn’t be balanced as such. I couldn’t care less if ship A can’t kill ship B, because that’s not what this game is about. You overcome challenges as a team.
As for the second part of your post, this I disagree with. By giving each class/role different weapons, it is far easier to make balance tweaks and provide classes with a way to differentiate themselves outside purely active and passive modules. This doesn’t have to limit depth or tactical choice but can increase it enormously. Other games with a much deeper complexity have provided different weapons across different type ships and this has worked brilliantly. Long term it will provide a huge array of weapons and counters to consider when setting up teams and squads, and I can only applaud that effort.
That said, we’ll all have to fly with the new weapons and modules, get used to them and provide feedback to allow further tweaks, additions and enhancements of the system so that we can see further depth and tactical choice down the line.
I have to disagree on the weapon front I’m afraid. Splitting weapons by class helps encourage proper play from those ships. Interceptors are all about short-ranged firepower; frigates are long or slow and powerful. Fighters are a solid mid-ground.
Whereas the English speaking community generally advocate a deeper, tactical, team-based meta, the Russian community is more in favour of a FFA-style game which focuses on individual skill and allows individuals to shine rather than teams.
no, that’s not it at all…
we actually want an environment where skill is rewarded. not where players are given a free license to spam doomsday devices. that requires no skill. or sitting at 15km with radar cloak and 2-shotting enemies while giggling about it… or being able to run circles around fighters without taking so much as a single hit… gimmicks…
that’s what you call easy button…
that is that main thing that deters people from playing a competitive game: if they see that all of their skill can be effectively cancelled/neutralized using a cheap gimmick.
balance, in all things.
we certainly don’t want an environment where only competitive teams and corps can shine… most of us are casual players but somewhat competitive.
some of the difference in ship performance has to be brought more into line to prevent unwinnable situations (or at least helpless situations where you cant even land a shot)… that frustrates the living daylights out of players. like i said. i’ll write up a list of things to do…
a simple example: as a fighter you should be able to get a covert ops down to half, so his shield at least, or start chipping into his hull before he kills you. if you can’t even land a shot due to the speed and agility difference then there is just something awfully wrong with the game. it’s rock-paper-scissors basically.
I think this is a great suggestion - well done that man!
the weapons need to be carefully balanced though. for example, i see T1 fighters only have rails now… for real… a close combat unit designed to do hit+run shield attack has kinetic, the worst type of damage for shields… how amusing…
long range guns like rails are more useful on frigates, because they’re slower. they also shred hulls after your fighters remove their shields… pretty simple…
I will point out that weapons choices went from t1 having 4 to none t2 having 9 to 4 t3 from 12 to 4 (this is for interceptors) you either have to choose between picking your fighting style or your damage type and and damage type is just as important you need to have different versions of each weapon in different flavor damage without that you can simply tank the damage type of hardest hitting weapon that your ships countering ship can use.
Sabre, I’m kind of surprised you feel that way. This patch has done a fair bit for Frigates - slap a Mortar on your Raptor Mk II, get those drones out and laugh at every Interceptor who comes close. You’ll smash them to scrap without even trying.
Sabre, I’m kind of surprised you feel that way. This patch has done a fair bit for Frigates - slap a Mortar on your Raptor Mk II, get those drones out and laugh at every Interceptor who comes close. You’ll smash them to scrap without even trying.
why is not having to try a good thing? why is simple dumbed down game play a good thing?
And here’s the thing: whilst I didn’t like being smashed in by interceptors I could still beat them if I saw them coming 5 times out of ten. I accepted this: it was perfectly balanced. Using a WTF OP gun on a Rank 4 ship with attack drones so I can laugh at interceptors has no appeal to me at all.
Latest patch added a second tactical layer to weapons. This in theory makes up for the lack of choices. But more weapons can always be added in later so I don’t see the need to argue the ‘we have less now’ angle.
And despite the ‘less to work with’ arguments, hard data shows that the old weapon system were largely linear. People used a small number of the available choices simply because they worked exactly almost the same to each other mechanically. They only differed in stats and because of that, the best stat weapon wins.
Now weapon stat isn’t the only determining factor but also how each weapon works mechanically. And that what makes this update worth exploring deeper. I largely skip over weapon comments in the patch discussion thread simply because few if any showed that they realised the real change. It isn’t the numbers or roles. It’s the fact that they now worked different.
For the better?
cant say - that still really depends on the working stats and how it integrates with the whole DPS:Hp issue that is still unresolved 4 patches ago. But fact is, the door to improvement is now wide open.
Why ‘rebalancing’ the old weapons won’t work
can’t be arsed to look up my posts on it written weeks ago - it came down to this:
imbalance was a tier and ship class issue
an open menu of weapons transcends across both tiers and ship class
adjusting for one class in one tier is simply impossible if the weapons were available openly across both categories
segregating them the way it is now in this patch allows you to ‘focus fire’ so to speak to individual roles in specific tiers.
see OP T2 interceptors vs OP T3 Engineer threads.
you couldn’t solve that if both T2 interceptors and T3 engineers had access to the same guns.
Fix the damn ships then!
The ships were fine. The DPS potential were the underlying factor.
Fixing the ship is akin to operating on the leg coz the arm is broken.
Overpowered healing is only one side of the coin. Ships don’t die either because they could heal faster than you can damage them or the weapons wasn’t doing enough damage. We went down the lets fix healing route simply because adjusting damage on an all access weapon menu couldn’t work. Now it can. And we’ve seen after 3 patches healing got nerfed down so bad it just doesn’t work right anymore although the situation has gotten better as in it’s harder to fly immortal ships. That is a lousy trade off to make simply because you had a linear weapon system limiting the options.
Can write more on this but I hate text walls:
TL;DR
Learn the new weapons. It’s better
No it’s not dumbed down.
If anything - clueless nubs have a higher chance of not picking the right weapons for the right playstyle is higher now since weapons are no longer linear. But that still largely depends on the effective stat numbers.
how is going from 4 choices in weapons to no choices in weapons at t1 not dumbing it down?
and you seem to ignore the fact that there are three damage types and three resistance types resistances which you can control easily by swapping passive mods damage types which you cannot unless you conform to the play style of the weapon. rather than the weapons conforming to your play style.