Pilots, what do you think of the recent balancing changes in updates 0.10.x?
I’m not a fan of all of the changes:
Heavy blaster change I personally found a shame but going by what I heard frigate pilots love it for PVP and as an interceptor pilot I love it, too, so I suppose on the psychological level it’s an all around success.
Kinetic damage was already marginal and after both shrapnel and uranium ammo nerfs it’s even less relevant. Buffing coil mortars and assault rails did not offset that although I’m good with those buffs. As an interceptor pilot I often receive <5% kinetic damage during a battle which gives hull tanks (empire) quite the edge.
On the other hand supernova plasma guns are the highest range, second highest dps weapon for interceptors now. Best of both worlds instead of a trade off? Not sure that’s how you should balance. After the booster circuit nerf supernova ammo remains the only interesting ammo available to EM weapons, the other two providing just minimal buffs.
Passive module changes went in the same direction, both the buffs and the drawbacks were reduced to overall bring everybody closer to the same level and remove the possibility for creative builds. To me it’s always a bit of a shame and/or inconsistent in a game which is centered around upgrading your ships + loadouts but development has been going into this direction for a while. During all of this the chance was missed to rebalance shield vs hull mods.
Active module buffs felt excessive for spy drones and LRF pulsar, the rest was good.
tl;dr: unlike previous major patches the changes in 0.10.x were no game changers but felt in line with the direction taken in 0.9.x. If given the choice I would adjust that direction somewhat but at least with a more stable development plan we know what to expect so it’s not bad.
Agree with Snib in that modifications start to even things out, and that is not a good direction, it reduces variability. Can’t say about kinetic, I don’t analyze my damage.
I like most of the changes, but i agree that removing weapon mechanics is not the right direction. They need to be different to be fun, but balanced. I think removing the barrel rotation from Heavy Blaster and lowering it’s damage could have been an ammo type property, if people really need it. Same for the Shrapnel mechanics. At this rate you might also think of removing the charge up on coils/plasmas. Please don’t. I also miss all the old weapons like the heavy barrel rails.
Heavy weapons should feel heavy, with a damage buff trade off. If they are too hard to use for some people, they should use other weapons. Or, could use some munitions to lower damage and remove the heavy barrels effect.
Frigate weapons
Heavy Blaster is still PVE weapon. In PVP you need a minimum amount of initial damage to be successful even as frigate. I doubt HBlasters will feature prominently in tournaments for eg.
Moil Cortar is perfect
Beam is almost perfect. Give it extra range OR extra damage OR buff hitscan bonus against non ship entities like Micro Locators, Drones, ability to destroy EM/Cruise/Guided torpedoes
Positron needs higher base projectile speed to shoot good interceptors and fast fed fighters. Otherwise the ‘extra range’ feature of this gun is just false advertising. Nerf damage to compensate.
Eclipse looks to be perfect. Others might have better input on this.
Fighter weapons
Ion beam is perfect
Gravi beam is perfect
Assault Rail is perfect * ammo could use with extra buff
Gauss … I play at 300ms average latency, this gun does not exist for me. BUT people do shoot at me with Gauss and in about 200-300 battles since coming back, I have yet to die by it.*
* died once but had ~5% hulls and a missile was already on the way to kill me. Gauss had faster speed so = killsteal. Does not count.
Singularity = overused
The problems you had with Gauss previously has now transferred to Singularity. High crit values and consistent enough to hit Interceptors even at point blank range.
Changes to Interceptor weapons forces inties to engage at point blank range. Singularity does too well at point blank range. Hence Singularity is FKYou Frigates, Fighters AND Inties.
There is no trade off with singularity when a pro pilot uses it.
Rebalance please.
My suggestion = Singularity Slowbarrel , Bigger projectile. Faster Overheating.
Singularity Cannon was supposed to be Anti Frigate Sphere. It is at the moment Anti Everything.
Interceptor Weapons
You were mistaken.
Shrapnel was not overused
ORION is overused
Covert Op IS overused
A pro CovOp pilot aligns himself on approach to match vector
Fires off 2 rockets
Switches on Orion
Spams Supernova RFB
Collides with hull
Activate Plasma Arc
Continues to spam RFB
It isn’t the weapon. It is the covops damage potential
They did it with Shrapnel. Nerf that and they switch to the next highest effective DPS weapon.
And it is not damage type either. Covert Ops deals OMNI damage when he goes in.
Typical values in T3 from combat log (thx snib)
12,500 EM damage
7,000 Kinetic damage
6,000 Thermal damage
in under 3 seconds.
Pro inty pilots kill me in less than 2 seconds upon contact because they do not deliver damage gradually. Everything hits upon initial impact because they can time the hits.
Recon used Shrapnel because they have no need for Other damage types.
Parasitic Remod can suck up so much shields they can drain a Jericho guard without even shooting main weapons.
Only thing left to shoot is hull so they needed Shrapnel.
It isnt imbalanced. But it is also how things worked.
About the only thing that doesnt need Shrapnel is ECM but certain models gave kinetic / spread bonuses so might as well.
Overall Interceptor weapons is a mess
Lazer with spread is funny.
It is ok but the average competitive players will make an effort to learn Supernova just so they can avoid lazer if they play a tournament.
Suggestion = increase range, zero spread, rebalance damage (but tbh it is already weak)
If you want to make it interesting - change the mechanic of pulse lazor. Give it a burst damage trait like anomaly generator. Maintain aim on target for a few seconds and get bonus explosion damage etc. Or even change it into a mini heavy blaster. Sprays all over the place but increasing damage over time or whatever. make it interesting.
Plasma Gun feels ok. Could be perfect but because all other weapons is not properly balanced, hard to make a judgement
RFB is ok. Current meta favors this weapon so hard to make judgement
Shrapnel = lol
Rescale Orion bonuses from Mk.I to Mk.IV
50% to 120% is too much a difference
Then tone down the burst damage ability of covert ops.
Look at activation energy cost of modules so they cannot easily power on everything at once.
Start balancing inty weapons again.
I feel like you, by which I mean the developer team, are too focused on “Dumbing down” the game or “Making it player friendly”. The intent is good, but you are basically making feel too easy to get kills with practically no emphasis on skill.
For example the shrapnel cannon was changed to make it more “User friendly”, fixed spread, less damage. That change alone saw nearly any player deemed “Above average”, switch to another weapon, that had the same difficulty and more damage.
I cant say this statement with more emphasis. You can’t nerf skill.
Don’t listen to players who are stuck in T1/2 and are complaining about OP weapons when they themselves cant even fly straight or are unclear of certain game mechanics. The patches of 10.X seem to cater to exactly that. Players like me, can literally take any ship and make seem OP when we amass a lot of kills, but that’s the pilot, not the ship that’s doing that. People seem to forget that little tidbit.
Please go back to the old style where flight skill, tactics, and team work are the main focus, I feel that your current direction is going away from that old mindset.
Got to agree with the above; too much dumbing down, too much listening to newbies and utterly ignoring people with real skill.
Stop trying to “help” bad players compete with skilled ones and force them to BECOME skilled instead.
There is also a bad case of ‘fixing’ very minor problems while utterly ignoring major flaws that are having massive impacts on game balance.
The biggest problem is that the higher you go through tiers and skill levels the less variation there is. The closer you get to T5, the more likely you are to see nothing but Bubbles on Fighters. RFB is now the only inty weapon, and the only reason there is any variation within the Frigates is that only Engineers can have Eclipse.
You need to make all weapons viable, but you don’t. In fact, since 0.8 you’ve done the opposite - not only are weapons divided by damage, but also by attack pattern. RFB and Shrapnel cannot be easily compared because they have totally different mechanics, so you have to try and balance two factors - their damage type and their methods of damage - without there being any common ground at all.
Frankly, I’m not convinced this can be fixed at this stage. To do so would require major overhauls and a thorough, in-depth study of how mechanics interact. It would require you to pretty much overhaul the entire weapon system layout again and use the “beta” community to test everything. You won’t do that, so we’re stuck with random nerfs whenever something becomes popular due to everything else being too weak to compete.
Rescale Orion bonuses from Mk.I to Mk.IV
50% to 120% is too much a difference
Then tone down the burst damage ability of covert ops.
Look at activation energy cost of modules so they cannot easily power on everything at once.
Start balancing inty weapons again.
Kine, I would Like to point out that your talking about the 1% here that can actually kill you in less then 3 seconds (which is exaggerated) But I would like to agree with you, but try not to make it seem that good players are a bad thing for being good.
T2 prevents that via energy problems, and in T3, its rare…
Also, your right on the interceptor weapons. I have yet to see pulse lazer actually kill me…
The game should not be about what weapon is fair and what is too powerful. It should be about DIVERSITY.
Listening to any kind of player - be that new or old, that is complaining that some weapon they do not like is “cheap” or “not fair” or “too powerful” or “hard to use”, and than changing the weapon by nerfing it or making it more simplified is the biggest mistake you can make. Each and every player has the same chances to use the same tactics and weapons, and it is their choice to use it or not. Complaining that something is too strong and is not fair is denying the truth; they are playing another game with rules they have burned in their own minds, refusing to accept the truth how the real game is played.
Balancing should have only one and one objective only: make all weapons suitable and viable to use, but with different attributes and niches. If one set of weapons is overpowered, it only makes the game boring because anything else is pointless to use, and not because some player complained because he’s being whacked by it. It is not the weapon that kills, but the one who wields it. And this is about making an interesting choice for us, players, making all the different weapons interesting and fun to wield.
There is and should not be any such things as “Ace weapon” or “noobtube”, that is cheap or too easy to use and strong at the same time. Players will always find some excuse and complain when they get killed, but never admitting their own mistake, and this is about weapon balancing - never bring player complaints into this. Weapon balancing should be about all weapons having same level of usefulness in different situations, making the game and playing field more interesting and diverse. Any developer or player that is thinking in direction “weapons should be balanced so new players don’t complain” is looking at the problem wrong. Using different kinds of mechanic in weapons (like difference between ion emitter and singularity) is a good addition, there are different way to use them and to avoid them. But the biggest problem right now are the interceptor weapons; they are all the same. As an example recent change to shrapnel cannon because “some” (Ace?) players found it hard to use is idiotic. You made a very interesting and unique weapon since the begining of SC boring. Now all interceptor weapons have linearized dps because of this change, making them all equally bland and not interesting. Having pinpoint burst damage weapons makes the meta more interesting, linearizing everything just changes the game into boring, no-skill shoot fest that gets boring FAST.
Make the game interesting again and make it more diverse. Listening to complaints of various players that something is too hard or too strong is the worst idea ever. Only those that do not know the game and grasp the reality of gaming rules will complain. Good players do not complain, they learn to abide by the game rules and win by mastering them. It is the last thing that remains interesting in the game. Make all weapons do the same thing with only different color/damage type is a good way of making the game even more boring and ruining it even more.
The point of my message is do not listen to complaints of players that are finding a certain weapon too strong against them, that is just a bad player excuse. Just make every weapon behave a little differently and do something else, and buff weapons that are not popular (probably because they are not efficient). Good example was buffing assault rails and rapid fire plasma, but assaults are still a weapon that are not considered seriously; with their spread and quick overheat you cannot compare pinpoint accuracy, range and reliablity and pure damage of ion emitter. That weapon is too good for assault rails to be even considered. And this is not saying ions are too strong, but assaults are still too weak, while gauss and singularity are at a good point.
Part of the problem, if not ALL of the problem lies with ships and survivability.
Frigates in particular can have monstrously huge survivability, which means anti-frigate weapons also need massive dps to counter them. The result? One-shotting Interceptors and Fighters who can’t dare come out from behind the rock.
Frigates should be tougher, but they’re also slower and harder to manoeuver so it balances out.
Overall damage could stand coming down, with higher Mk / higher Tier gear needing further reduction.
Put more emphasis on killing enemies through using multiple ships, not by alpha striking with a CovOps or BubbleGunship.
Actually, this game does not have enough alpha damage in my opinion. The last remaining alpha weapons are positrons and gauss (and you can guess once which 3 weapons I use and was using before the shrapnel change). The only alpha capabilities are provided by Overdrive and Orion, and that is not an alpha weapon. All weapons do linear damage or have a linear mechanic like the new shrapnel - boring.
Frigates are in a good spot - they can still create a problem, so it is an interesting counter. Having ridicolously fast federation frigates is a little too convenient tough, but these are just my complaints coming now; altough it doesn’t really make much sense that several fed frigates can be faster than some of the fighter ships… or does it? Just for the sense of logic, I think they are a little too fast and fix the only loophole in the frigball tactic; mobility, making them very effective. I’m not saying it’s game breaking, but still, it seems a little too convenient to have such a fast guard/engineer. But that is just a bad player complaining because I’m having slight trouble with them lol, but really, it’s mostly for a logical sense if nothing else.
Kine, I would Like to point out that your talking about the 1% here … try not to make it seem that good players are a bad thing for being good.
I am not
I am trying to point out to devs that they might have ignored the human element doing weapons balancing using aggregate data instead of thinking WHY something is the way it is.
Shrapnel nerf is good evidence that Dev team does not understand how their users play Star Conflict.
Nerf on Shrap was justified by “it was overused in server”
All that did was move players from Shrapnel to RFB … it still changes nothing.
What Dev team might have missed is how influential those 1% pro pilots are.
These guys account for 30% - 50% of the their team’s kills in your typical T3 match. People look up to them and copy what they do. Whether they understand the reasoning behind it or not.
They see pro inty pilot use Shrap, beginners learn to use Shrap
They see pro inty pilot switches to RFB, beginners change to RFB
Aggregate server data in this case is misleading.
I am confident in-fact that ‘overused’ problem is even worse now after the nerf.
But instead of heavy preference to sharpnel with some RFB it is now
ALL RFB and no shrapnel.
Gauss and Positrons are the only “alpha” weapons that work imo. The LRF disintegrator is, and has always been badly implemented and the CovOps overall is an insult to the idea of teamwork. Fun as it is to kill a frigate in three seconds flat, it shouldn’t be possible.
At the moment, the only ships that need focusing down are (some) Guards and (Empire) Engineers, plus the odd well-equipped Fighter. Everything else can be solo’d. I’d like it so all ships are hard to kill 1v1. Less emphasis one alpha strikes and one-shot-kills and more emphasis on getting 2-3 ships to beat down on a single target to make the kill.
Nerf on Shrap was justified by “it was overused in server”
Nope. They said the skill cap on it was too high, nothing about it being used too much (and it wasn’t).
The current direction development is taking is to flatten the learning curve into the ground by reducing alpha damage on everything (except disintegrator for some reason, some dev must be empire sniper) and by removing even the slightest impediments for someone new to the game like e.g. slow barrels. Would expect firing arcs to eventually get thrown out as well.
The sad thing is - and I see this reflected in everybody’s posts - that with the diversity they’re also throwing some of the appeal of this game away every patch. Flattening the learning curve is good to get new players into the game but removing diversity won’t help keep them in the game… We’re all still here but we’re not enough. We need more players badly.
I have to say I agree with you. But I just fear that this thread will cause some, unintended changes to the CO, ruining my fun on it.
@Jason, you have a good point.
@NeoCodex, I have to agree 100%
To the devs
TL:DR
Dont listen to the players that complain, but make the game YOU want to play, where skill, diversity, and fun are paramount
Funny to listen to all the “muh skillz” QQing in the thread :lol:
I would Like to point out that your talking about the 1% here that can actually kill you in less then 3 seconds (which is exaggerated) But I would like to agree with you, but try not to make it seem that good players are a bad thing for being good.
It’s not exaggerated at all. And it shouldn’t be possible, I mean, bad positioning should be punished, but CovOps have a too easy way in and out.
Good players are not a bad thing. When good players make the game not enjoyable for others, that’s a problem. Many games solve the issue somehow, I’m pretty sure here the devs could think of something too. Right now there are still annoying mechanics in the game, thankfully shrapnel is gone.
I have to say I agree with you. But I just fear that this thread will cause some, unintended changes to the CO, ruining my fun on it.
@Jason, you have a good point.
@NeoCodex, I have to agree 100%
To the devs
TL:DR
Dont listen to the players that complain, but make the game YOU want to play, where skill, diversity, and fun are paramount
That’s not the game they want to play… that’s what the game was back in 0.7, and they burned that idea…
Funny to listen to all the “muh skillz” QQing in the thread :lol:
Yeah I find also pretty dumb that skilled players want a game that reward skill. Crazy eh
I’m not a fan of all of the changes:
Heavy blaster change I personally found a shame but going by what I heard frigate pilots love it for PVP and as an interceptor pilot I love it, too, so I suppose on the psychological level it’s an all around success.
Kinetic damage was already marginal and after both shrapnel and uranium ammo nerfs it’s even less relevant. Buffing coil mortars and assault rails did not offset that although I’m good with those buffs. As an interceptor pilot I often receive <5% kinetic damage during a battle which gives hull tanks (empire) quite the edge.
On the other hand supernova plasma guns are the highest range, second highest dps weapon for interceptors now. Best of both worlds instead of a trade off? Not sure that’s how you should balance. After the booster circuit nerf supernova ammo remains the only interesting ammo available to EM weapons, the other two providing just minimal buffs.
Passive module changes went in the same direction, both the buffs and the drawbacks were reduced to overall bring everybody closer to the same level and remove the possibility for creative builds. To me it’s always a bit of a shame and/or inconsistent in a game which is centered around upgrading your ships + loadouts but development has been going into this direction for a while. During all of this the chance was missed to rebalance shield vs hull mods.
Active module buffs felt excessive for spy drones and LRF pulsar, the rest was good.
tl;dr: unlike previous major patches the changes in 0.10.x were no game changers but felt in line with the direction taken in 0.9.x. If given the choice I would adjust that direction somewhat but at least with a more stable development plan we know what to expect so it’s not bad.
This sum up what I think…
the coil mortars feel perfect to me.
positrons are still very effective with acceleration coils, but somehow acceleration coils are now a must. i get the damage they do in T5 on some ships, but effectively, in T3, it lost a lot.
eclipse has its drawbacks to the positrons in terms of damage. it is the best choice for speed frigs.
heavy blaster eludes me now. i found that weapon more interesting before the change.
beam cannons… the most deadly players with that weapon are clearly the bots.
supernova plasma is overrated, RFB can easily hold it’s own. It is easy to start with, hard to master, like it should be. I actually like the possibility between these choices.
inties were always able to kill in seconds, but its still risky and needs skill, i do not really get the problem there. it is clear, that skilled pilots will prefer faster ships on occasion. it is also clear, that a kill has to be in fast time. Really, no problem there at all. We admire good ceptor players, because we know flying a paper ship needs skill, but there are good fighter players, good frigate players, etc. The Covert Ops was a long time underused, it’s tactical weapon was nerfed to an achievement weapon. Most of the critiques about how deadly they are are very distorted and one sided in this thread, and I think, the CO itself isn’t the problem.
It is the guitar of any battle-band, gets big respect, becomes big primary, and is done in one torpedo.
It needs an alternative role back, however. The nuke just … sux…
They see pro inty pilot use Shrap, beginners learn to use Shrap
They see pro inty pilot switches to RFB, beginners change to RFB
exactly. same applies to the plasma nova rumor in the patch thread. now some ships become very nice with this, like the all ever underused hawk-eye, but usually, in T3 at least, plasma nova for close quarters is a stupid idea, even shrapnel is still more deadly! plasmas are still a very good all around weapon, but since their main use was on ECM, it now rivals with the packetgun.
RFB basicly is the same as it was, only that you can ommit the electronic guidance now, which is a good thing. I never stopped playing RFB, but i would hate it to now become the next weapon which is overused.
I saw some people using shrapnels very effectively still. i am not sure, if the effect kine described isn’t also responsible for it’s downfall a bit: after the nerf almost all “pro” inties started to “look at the other weapons like plasma or rfb”, and their corpmates copied the trend. shrapnel was almost gone right on patchday, and i bet most of the people didn’t even use it after the nerf.
While especially “young” players, who are just emerging, seem to have no problem making shrapnel kills, now, some weeks later.
pulse lasers…?
I am personally not a Shrapnel fan. It was a great killstealing weapon, and only deadly in the hand of a good pilot. charging spread reduction would be great for this gun to return. it should however reset to a double full spread attack at overheating or something. the charging mechanic of this gun could make it a hard to master weapon, and i am fine with this, was fine with this.
what i saw in shrapnel, was, that it was too easy to be good with it. but it didnt deserve to be unusuable.
the new assault rail comes en par with the gauss as a choice. the bubbles are still ever deadly. ion beam and slowing beam are nice, slowing beam can be devastating, ion beam might be generally underused since it needs you to understand the concept of resistances.
can’t agree to the missing fitting variability there, either; there is still much potential in unusual fits. While I prefer variability in the game, there are a lot of aspects beside weapons and ships, which are usually not discussed.
what i do not like in respawn games like domination/detonation, is the respawn timer and how that is solved - currently, a frigate ball / fighter ball making it to the spawnpoint will dominate. there should be less timeouts if the player decides to use a different ship, the greatest problem atm. are never ending returning snipers. mainly because players who are afraid to die, can make kills without losing credits, but they lose the games, and do not get it.
generally the importance of different roles on the battlefield has improved. returning number of ecms, more tacklers and commands, make CO heavy play way harder anyway. you have to learn other ships now, a nonplusultra CO player cannot simply carry a team anymore like in 0.6. I am myself a CO pilot, but I see this is as positive.
Since the Shrapnel was working better on Recons, Recons are often missing now completely, so I see them as the big losers of 0.10.