I guess we will get more accurate data once more people fly in T4/T5. A fair few people are flocking towards those upper tiers, so it’s just a matter of time Synergy
FTFY
Uh got a T4 but its naked. Will take a century or two till i’ve completed all the grind. :taunt:
AlexD, first time I flew my (T2) covops under the current patch I got something like 7 kills and 4 assists. Three of those were a Jericho LR who wouldn’t take a hint.
By using terrain and reading the flow of battle I was able to fly into the enemy spawn, frag the frigate and get out again.
They do not need to be more powerful. They need intelligent pilots who pick their fights. People have gotten too used to the idea of covops doing all the heavy lifting in this game, and I honestly don’t think it was ever meant to be that way.
I’m not playing t2 from moths so actually i don’t know how does it work there.
In t3 get in and out alive after a kill is hard… in t4/5 is 90% a suicide.
Than… kills are not hard to do actually…[i can show u a 11 kills match in t4/5 performed with eagle b (t3 ship).] if u just kill semi random. hard part is make usefull kills.
Atm cov ops or ecm gampleay is almost the same… just ecm do things better and is usefull for the team.
Worth quoting.
Worth quoting especially considering it’s coming from an Interceptor pilot.
But no, being able to ignore 6+ lockons and continue to kill multiple target does not need arguing. IT IS OP
Wrong.
Basically what we’re saying is that Intelligence, Timing and Teamwork is worth more now. Ofcourse you totally missed the point.
** There are certain Interceptor pilots still flying around like they used to and scoring multi-kills everywhere even after this patch ** but they’ve always been exceptionally good at what they do, so it’s not the case where skill has been taken out of interceptor play. It’s just the minimum level of skill required to do it has been raised ** If you don’t meet the new minimum, learn to teamwork.
Dude evading 6 guys shoting at u is not OP … is SKILL! Your own skill in dancing… or their bad skill in aiming. Or both.
Same reason couse u can exterminate a 4 guys team without dying in unreal tournament or quake… it’s called SKILL.
Teamwork is the way unskilled guys use to call zerg and skill lack. And when a game introduces rules reward zerg and penalize skill that’s always bad.
There was team work before patch too,real team work i mean… couse u can’t win a match by your own… u need coordination with ur team. But in the middle of teamwork individual skill was important… now ?
Basically what you are saying is : “Now is better becouse skill worth less”. Offcourse i totally disagree.
I wanted to come back to this and give a direct reply.
People have said many times that T1, T2 and T3+ have very different playstyles. T1/T2 in particular always seemed to be not “the best team wins”, but “the team with the best individuals wins”. T3+, on the other hand, always had more importance on the group.
It feels to me like the changes we’ve seen are pushing the game into a situation where individual piloting skill doesn’t matter. Instead, the focus is on how you work as part of the greater whole. Victory no longer goes to the team with the two CovOp pilots who’ve mastered the art of swirling around and being unhittable. You try to capture a beacon, plant a bomb or kill a captain whilst relying solely on your fancy control ability, and you’ll just get smashed to pieces by a storm of homing missiles.
Here’s why that’s a good thing:
-
It means less skilled pilots matter. They can put up a fight against these “elite” pilots and actually hurt them, whereas before they would either be saving their missiles and be unable to hit the Inty, or blow them all early on and be impotent in the late game.
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It punishes selfish play. I know that flying solo can be a valid part of a team effort, but with CovOps in particular the emphasis was not “what can I do for the team?” but “lol my sc0rez r0x0r!” You try and play a hero, and you die as a fool. This is a good thing.
-
It pushes for team efforts. If you don’t want to have five missile locks on you at once, you shouldn’t be flying alone. You should have allies - either other interceptors to share the load and spread the locks, or other classes - Guards to missile screen you, Engineers to heal your damage, Tacklers to shut down ships that attack you, Commands / Gunships to pile on the pain and clear the way for you. Fly alone and you die; fly together and you kill.
On that note, I think we need to stop with the “class x beats class y” thinking. I personally much prefer now to think in these terms:
Fighters are the core of the force. They fight head on in groups and should always be to the fore and always engaging.
Frigates are support ships. They follow the Fighters and engage from the second line. When engaged, they fall back and let the Fighters come forward again.
Interceptors are skirmishers. They fly ahead and to the flanks for the formation. When engaged, they fall back and let the Fighter-Frigate ball protect them.
The new game revolves heavily around the presence of Fighters. Interceptors just can’t stand up to the direct pummeling of the bigger ships, whilst Frigates are outmaneuvered and overwhelmed if left alone. Fighters are nimble enough, both in terms of themselves and their ordnance, to engage Interceptors. They also pack enough punch to hurt Frigates. Their downside is that Fighters lack the specialist elements of the game; a pure Fighter Ball can’t heal, can’t knock out missiles and can’t exploit the huge damage-spike tactics that CovOps / LR can bring.
The result is that the Fighter is a great place to start building a force, but a combined-arms taskforce is always stronger. The Fighters engage and draw the target in; the Frigates pile on supporting fire and bring their specialist skills to bear; the interceptor waits until the target has engaged before flying in and adding its own clout.
I’ve seen this happening in T2.5 matches. I’ve also seen how quickly these killer combos fall apart once you can start dismantling them. As a Hydra 2 pilot I was engaging a Guard who had Recon support. I was hurting really badly until an allied Command flew in and helped me finish the Guard. The Recon suddenly found himself without support and was blown out of the sky because he tried to stay in the fight and finish me.
This is teamwork at its most basic level. Rank 4 Guard + Rank 4 Recon vs a Rank 6 pure-blue Engineer… and they were winning. They were beating me down. It was solo play being punished - I was out of position because I wanted the kill. It was only when my allies got involved that the fight swung back to my favour.
I hope that, when people start viewing the game’s weapon / class shift in this manner, they’ll see why it’s a good thing.
Tieing up enemies alone to create a distraction has only one difference now, you get mostly killed for sure.
But it still works. Especially if you can be so annoying, that actually the better pilots of the enemy go after you. Sometimes 10 seconds is all the fleet needs to regroup and sometimes one lonely ceptor can achieve that, by pulling their forces.
However, since I saw people doing it even if their skill was way not enough for it, I think the first thing most pilots actually have to learn, is stop being smartypants. Learn watching the map, understand vision, understand respawn, try to help the team, dont go alone in every direction.
I do not think, anyone I ever saw in this game is completely unbeatable anyway. I can be incredibly dangerous or incredibly stupid, depends very much on the situation. I guess its like that with everyone.
@Oryngton; I disagree about percentage healing a bit. There is no problem with ceptors healing up, especially not in a siege situation, where ceptors go in, shoot five times and go out, like the Roman Legion, usually happening if the whole fight is divided by some big asteroid. At the moment, tactics involve removing the Frigs which cover, destroying heal sources, and ECM-ing the poor ceptors is anyway way too easy. It would also benefit Buffer-Tanking over Resistance-Tanking, and I find, since each has its ups and downs, external healing can stay absolute, while self healing devices should be somewhat percentage-based.
I have not encountered too many healing problems since the patch, except sometimes not having enough engineers. Sometimes I whish tho, there were additional boosters, e.g. for slow hull regen additionally to the resistance options in the second booster category.
Also, to anyone moaning about the Guard, it is still the tankiest of all Frigs, and I find it satisfies its role pretty well. The time of playing Deathstar is also over, it is after all still only frigates, and frigates are actually even not cruisers 
So, I find the Guard should only heal off the battle anyway.
@Kine: thx for the quotes, really good ones.
This is gonna be a long one, lads. Grab some popcorn or a 6-pack. If this isn’t feedback, I don’t know what is meant to be considered feedback by the admins. Because every piece of negative feedback (that was purposefully done to outline the flaws in this patch and to provide some solution for it) was woefully ignored and the censorship currently on the steam page is laughable. Also, I’d like to know when my ban on that is lifted for pointing out the flaws in this game, because whoever runs that place has a VERY itchy banhammer finger.
Ok, so where to start… We all know 9.0 was a pretty big patch. Almost as big as the Eiffel Tower, not quite as big as the Empire State Building. But this, and I hope the American pilots will forgive me for using this for comparison, was a Twin Tower clusterf***. Among the changes are an overall to weapons, missiles and the rage-inducing Synergy system. So, let’s begin.
1) ECONOMY
- “Ship prices reduced by 25%.”
This was a good change. An excellent change. Many people were complaining as to how expensive everything was in the game, so who wins with this change? Everyone, from the top dogs that rule the current T4/5 gameplay all the way down to the itty bitty yapping dogs, gnawing at their ankles. T4 ships at the cost of old T3 is the most underappreciated change in this patch and it shows; people are progressing at a much faster pace, now, like a cheetah chasing its prey across a highway. Whilst riding a racing car. But this brings up certain concerns as to exactly HOW fast are they progressing? A little too fast, if you ask me, because the cheetah doesn’t really need that racing car. However, the problem arises due to the fact that pilots aren’t given the chance to fit Mk3 modules, still being forced to pick between getting the gear or leveling up. A lot of people will, obviously, say “No, Credit income is fine.” Well… It is. IFF you have a license. If you plan on playing entirely for free, you’re going to be up for quite a lengthy grind on both Credits and Synergy, which will be viewed further ahead. I’d like to abstain myself from the “except for Premium modifications” bit, just so I can avoid pulling out my very worn out “It’s P2W” card.
- “Increased sticker/colour application periods.”
Last I recall, a single ship with 3 colours would cost 420 GS. For one week. I can imagine the amount of “feedback” you got from people using said colours. Exactly the same amount of dog turds you’d be willing to step on: Zero. Because someone thought the Eastern World comprises of people willing to waste any and all money they have, during an economic crisis, on paintwork. Colours were then viewed as a special treat for those that were willing to spend the money on it for one week, it made them feel special. Just as special as the “Special People” and require their own set of attention. “LOOK AT ME! I HAVE SHINY COLOURS THAT YOU DO NOT! MY SHINY SHIP WILL FIRE ITS SHINY WEAPONS AT YOUR NON-SHINY SHIP!” except you don’t have much say in the matter (yes, doodle, I’m looking at you, a white Deimos2 was very “special”). FEAR NOT, mercenaries, for not all is lost! The price was halved and the duration quadrupled! The amount of feedback remains the same, however: Zero. Because they still force people to use 240 GS to paint a single ship with 3 colours.
As far as economy changes go, there are some issues, but some solutions for this, as well. For the reduced ship cost, Credit income does need a small boost for unlicensed pilots. This makes both ships AND gear available to them without going apes*** on the game. For the stickers situation, there are many solutions for this: 1: Make the colours themselves purchasable for every ship for one month; 2: Use credits for 1 day/week usage per colour per ship and 1week/month GS payments per colour per ship. That’ll start giving you some feedback. This would apply similarly for Stickers, as well. I have no prices for any of this, but I wouldn’t mind seeing a slightly heftier GS price for permanent purchases. I know I’d buy a handful of those colours.
2) Ships
- “Ship nomenclature changes.”
Arigato to Nodachi… Ok. Saying “thank you” everytime you mentioned the name was rather annoying, so that was go-… EW? What th-… Type A?? White Eagle to Swift Ea-… I don’t… Prometheus X? Argonaut? Chiron? Yes, because Ginger Centaur was clearly offensive to gingers. I, huh… I’m gonna be honest, here, most of these names don’t even make any sense, at the moment. It’s like pointing at a dog and calling it a donkey. Who thought it was a good idea to give the White Eagle two Federate Interceptor names? I don’t… THIS IS CONFUSING! However… Some changes aren’t a total loss, namely White Hawk to Talon, Kastor to Castor (God knows that K was making my brain do some backflips in my brain), Short Sword to Orelus, Poni to Flamberge (who’s idea was this, anyway? Damned bronies in the development team, swear to God), Mouse to Panther follows the general Federate Fighter nomenclature, but diverges far from the Premium Fighter naming conventions. And despite the fact that I actually liked the “TOR R2 Mk.S”, Scimitar is a much more fitting name for it. In all, these name changes don’t make a lot of sense but, then again, the entire patch didn’t make any sense and this was a drop in the ocean.
- “New T5.”
I don’t even want to know, anymore. This was, quite possibly, the worst thing that could’ve been added. This is purely because Tier vs Tier still happens and, might I add, still with the massive disparity of 6 Ranks between lowest and highest ship in the same match. So we’re seeing R15 vs R10 ships. Matchmaking isn’t fixed but, as always, at the hands of terrible, terrible pilots, those advanced ships will still be utterly useless… So I don’t even know what to think, anymore. It’s clear the T5 implants are also overpowered when you do T4 vs T5, so… I just don’t… Broken. Optimizing the ship tree is something that should’ve been done when this new… “ship tree”, if it can be called that, was made. I do hope you’ll be copy/pasting the T5 tree throughout the rest of the Tiers and I’m also glad you learned something good out of the experience.
* Sword. Affiliation: Jericho. Rank: 13. Role: Covert ops.
I also demand to know how this is even possible. Because God knows I want to carry nukes on my Command again.
Engineer buffs/nerfs (no one seems to know due to the bad translations made) hurt mostly them in the sense that they now act as a resupply base. I’d suggest you keep that role on them and expand it further. Make engineer ships act as actual resupply bases.
The changes on Guards are relatively terrible, Guards are meant to defend an entire area, not be a solo tank. The point of the enemy being near them is to make sure they don’t leave the area alive or they die very fast. This is where the Guard’s mediocre tank (and I say mediocre lovingly, because you can get a much superior tank from Imperial Engineers) comes into play, defending itself to keep its area denial active. 1300m range is a very personal defence.
The CovOps changes, however are a mixture of right and wrong… They were needed in T2 but, as a consequence to that, T3 and above feel woefully underpowered to some pilots. Since I don’t personally fly CovOps that much, I’ll abstain from this.
The Recon Microwarp charge reduction was also a mix of good and bad. Reducing its charge time allows for a faster escape and, therefore, a lot less “Freeze” medal pickups but also provide a chance to not staying put like a punching bag. So, as a Recon pilot, I love it. As a pilot of anything else, it’s frustrating.
ECM are still slightly overpowered and not following their role of “Electronic Counter Measures” at all, I’m glad absolutely no changes were considered for this role, because everyone is loving the current meta of ECM swarms. If anything, ECM ships are now more overpowered due to their usage of the Shrapnel Cannon, a highly upgraded version of the old RFR.
Long-range Frigates got an undisclosed boost which will be discussed further below, but I believe everyone knows what it is, since day one and it gives them a rather nice advantage over the other Frigates, but I fear for the Frigball usage being enhanced by this change. So far, it hasn’t happened and I’d like for it to stay that way.
3) Weaponry
This patch also saw quite the weapons revamp. We no longer have nine weapons for all ships and now see 4 weapons per ship class (Ceptor/Fighter/Frigate), no longer giving you the option between being a medium ranged Ceptor or a brawling Frigate. In a way, it’s a positive thing. Interceptors are meant to be short ranged ships whilst Frigates are meant to be the long range vessels. But this, according to the new weapons, is only half right.
Currently, Interceptors have 3 short-ranged weapons with one medium ranged. No option on which weapon you want as medium range, it’s the Plasma Gun. Recent changes to these include some neat boosts, except for the Shrapnel Cannon, which was nerfed, quite considerably. However, this nerf wasn’t enough as the Cannon is still quite overpowered, especially at the hands of elite CovOps pilots.
Fighters, surprisingly, have medium to long range weaponry. And, might I add that, for some unknown reason, LONGER than Frigate weaponry. Think of it this way: You’re trying to hit a mountain with a drill. Works fine. Now try hitting a tree with a small rock from around 1-200 meters. Doesn’t quite work. And this is where Fighters prove their superiority towards Frigates. They not only move faster, they shoot from a longer distance, as well. The singularity Cannon was just one of those things that shouldn’t have left the paper and was poorly implemented (like most things in this game) but the necessary tweaks were made, just not fast enough.
Frigates! Long ranged support, right? Wrong. With the last changes, Frigates are required to sit closer than Fighters in combat. It’s not really “support” if you’re required to sit in the front lines to be of use. And the new weapons don’t help in this regard, as they have similar or lower range than the Fighter weapons. But they are more powerful than Fighter weapons, that’s for sure.
One interesting change is the projectile speed tuning per Tiers. This is mostly a good change as it introduces a change of pace in most battles you face. However… A 30% increase in T5 weapons… shocking. Well, not exactly shocking as it is more… well, let’s just say it’s extremely hard to get away from most projectiles. But I’m not one to talk about this, seeing as I haven’t reached T5, yet, so I’ll abstain too much from this.
4) Missiles
Missiles! Everyone loved them. They gave you a tactical advantage in matches over your enemy like nothing else in this game. The usage of missiles had to be well thought-out or you’d find yourself in sticky situations not being able to do much for yourself. Since this patch, however… Missiles have become rather spamable… And it’s troublesome that they are used to widely and so often that they have become a trivial thing to use in matches. In an attempt to make them “fun”, they have been dumbed down to the point where they no longer give you a tactical advantage, rather giving you an extra weapon to fire at your enemy. “Missiles weren’t fun enough, so we gave you the ability to spam them every 5 seconds!” To that I answer: “Your definition of fun is to turn this game into a Macross copy/paste?” I mean don’t get me wrong, I love having 10 missiles chasing me in an ordinary day; it makes me want to have Flares fitted all the time. However, once those 10 missiles are gone and your Flares on cooldown, you have another 6 missiles on your back which is extremely nerve-wracking. To the inexperienced rookie, you gave him another weapon to spam the buttons on; they are now mashing both mouse buttons to fire at you. To the seasoned pilot, they still give you a small tactical advantage over other pilots, but what’s the point? They’re not as fun as they used to be. And making use of just one missile slot makes your choices in this game very limited. Not to mention friendly fire still exists for Energy Neutralizing and the Slowing Field Missiles and that’s the most annoying thing ever, to watch your team get neutered that fast because someone was “smart” enough to fire those missiles around. Do they provide you a tactical advantage? Only if there aren’t any friendly Interceptors in the area, otherwise, congratulations, you F***ed them.
But it is better this way… The Missile spam prevents Ace Wing pilots from butchering everything and keeping half your team focused on them while they circle around a Beacon. So that’s a plus. The new Weapons + Missile combos also enforce teamplay tactics and less solo work. Me being a lone wolf felt that extremely hard to cope with… But it’s adapt or perish out there and so many pilots still do just that. Not enough, though.
Oh, not to mention you destroyed one of your own incomes by diminishing the amount of Premium Missiles. Where you could only take up to 6 Missiles, the Premium equivalents allowed you to take 12. Now that’s removed, Premium missiles are worthless. You want a piece of advice, bring back the 2x Premium missiles or make them have a reduced cooldown because, as it stands, there is absolutely no point in bringing them into battle nor spending any money on them. Adding to this, the fact that your reloading cooldown resets upon death is… incredibly dumb. This is mostly because Covert Ops are abusing this to all hell to spawn with nukes. It is MUCH faster to just drop a nuke, self-destruct and return 20 seconds later with another nuke in hands. It’s preposterous, overpowered and abusable.
Now, as far as missile allocation goes, it’s fairly good. I mean, I do hate not being able to carry EM and Ion-Warhead Missiles on my Tacklers, but making them a Command only missile? It’s rather odd, to be perfectly honest with you, as it really does not fit the role. And Minefields being only available to LRFs have actually given them an extra layer of defence compared to every other ship in the game that used to have Large Missile Slots. So much, in fact, that the smart LR pilot is now very overpowered if they are used as Gunships.
5) Modules
- “Weapon Modifiers.”
Watching this be reduced to one type was the worst. The ability we had to swap between damages is what made each weapon in each ship unique. You were also given the choice to not use those modifiers (Assault Rails & RFR) due to how powerful those weapons were on certain ships but making them per-battle use, like it’s ammo is the worst. And we seem to have unlimited ammo, so what’s the point of having them in the first place? “Oh, they give you a tactical advantage.” “I had a tactical advantage before this patch, it was called being able to fly properly. And not spaming missiles. And n-… oh, who cares, anyway, we got shiny new weapons!” This was basically what happened. Making these packs work like Missiles was a rather smart move, to be completely fair, as it eases the amount of work you need to do to implement things. Yes, I’m calling you lazy, because this is what it was. Lazy work because it was, as usual, sloppily implemented. You have a test server for what? 3 hours of testing per new shiny? You know that’s just sloppy work.
You could give them the same treatment you did with Missiles, make them have x amount of munitions before it’s magically reloaded on the field. “Oh, but that wouldn’t be fun!” “You say it’s fun or not one more time, I will grab my machete and give you a new breathing hole.”
6) Others
- “Boosters”
The Hacked firmware, considering the new leveling mechanics, is a very powerful tool. Me and, I’m sure, most of everyone else aren’t happy with their price of 500GS, but it’s a good option if you want to level up that much faster.
- “Hangars”
Oh, where to begin… They’re all magnificently done. Almost like pieces of artwork. Except… Vertically aligned ships (Like the Bear or the Raptor) don’t exactly fit onto this hangar. Or any other, for that matter, as their models are clipped through the dock. That needs fixing. Badly. And is yet another example of how poorly things were thought out before implementation.
Well, the Federation Hangar is magnificent. It’s sleek, shiny and ergonomic. I don’t know if it’s fitting because there is almost no lore about any of the factions but it is a well designed Hangar.
The Imperial Hangar is… well, if you wanted to turn the empire into a bunch of pompous xxxxxxxx, job well done. The extreme usage of flags everywhere is more than enough to make the self-aware pilot to think twice before picking that one.
Jericho… It’s just terrible. The amount of red in that place makes it look like some bad CCCP movie and it needs fixing. Dim the red glow or something because I’ve been hearing quite the immeasurable amount of complaints from that one. “What do you think of the new Jericho Hangar?” “Too red” or “ARGH, MY EYES!!” were the two most used answers.
- “Implants”
You want a “fun” game? Implants don’t give you that “fun”. They’re too tactical and specific for that. They require brainpower to properly function, something that lacks in heavy amounts in this game. And the new Implants show exactly that.
R13: They’re overpowered. Extremely. There’s just nothing else to it. I’d simply suggest entirely new Implants but I already know that’s impossible because “effort”.
R14: These are quirky little things and would be of much better use if they weren’t usable once per battle. I mean, don’t get me wrong, getting your shields discharged happens all the time, especially if you have an Empire ship or a Purge Gunship, so my suggestion for this is to simply decrease the buff time (say, to 5 seconds) and give it a long cooldown (like 90 seconds).
R15: This. This is where you ran out of ideas, correct? Once we reach the very last level of the game is when you give us the boosts we NEED since the start of the game? No. These should be in Rank 1. End of discussion.
7) Synergy
Synergy. It used to be fun. But, as always, the definition of “fun” in this game is incredibly twisted. Where before you could simply buy your ships up to the one you wanted to fly, you are now forced to fly terrible and underpowered ships before you’re able to fly the one you want. Not to mention you still have to buy ships you don’t want to get where you want. But that wasn’t enough! Apparently, it wasn’t “fun” enough to spend 40mill credits on ships you didn’t want, you now have to FLY the ships you didn’t even want to touch with a 10 foot pole up to a high level of Synergy, before you’re even able to purchase the next one in the line. “What if we don’t want to?” “Well, then you’re not experiencing a good game progression.”
Transferable Synergy, however, was an excellent way to counter this as it giv-… what’s that? Oh, you require GS to transfer Synergy on maxed level ships? Well f*** that noise. Not to mention it is now useless to purchase any Premium ships because they give you no progression unless you spend MORE Standards on them to transfer Synergy out of.
So… Are Premium ships really worth it, at this point? No.
It’s like a kite that you’re flying, happy as can be, until you run too close to that high voltage line, it intertwines itself with the lines high above and you want to touch the line and tug it to see if you can get it lose but you know that, if you do, you’ll get shocked so hard you’ll be knocked to f***ing yesteryear. “But I want my kite!” “Ok, so here’s what you’ll do. You’re going to tug that line because I say it’s ok to tug it. Ok. Are you tugging it? Good. Now keep tugging because you won’t get the kite back for a very long time.” “What if I don’t want to?” “It’s much more gratifying because you still get to see it flopping around and you see sparks everywhere!!” “… F***ING SOLD!!” This is the current train of thought with Premium ships. You spend the GS on the ship and you spend a LOT more to transfer the Synergy out of them. Is it worth it? No. Because Premium ships are no longer tied with the current “Synergy Leveling Conspiracy” there is no gratification in flying them except more GS expenditures. And no one likes to spend them on such frivolous things. We’d much rather be spending it on bright pink neon ships and flower cannons. … Well, I might want to, I don’t know about the rest of the weirdos that play the game.
(UPD) Re-adjusted synergy. (Slightly increased starting ships upgrade times)
> Slightly increased.
> Slightly.
Well, there’s your problem, wonderboy.
How to fix the Synergy mess: 50-60% Free Synergy gain on Premium Ships. Increase cost of transferable Synergy to 80-100 pts/GS. That’ll keep the free pilots happy for all eternity and those that wasted money on Premium ships happy until they find the next thing to b**** about. Not to mention you’ll still be getting money off it.
8) Gameplay
- “Pirate Base”
It’s easy. It really is. But that escort mission will chew through your sanity like a dog chews through your shoes.
- “No side of conflict start”
Technically, this is a good thing. You’re a mercenary, so picking a side was always an awkward thing to do but I guess it could relate to where you were born instead of which side you support. Now we have none of it.
- “Bug fixes”
The only good news about this patch is that you can now actually target the autonomous repair stations and shoot them down, rather than seeing them inside Beacons and space rocks. This should also be applied to Recon’s Micro-Locator. It’s annoying to not be able to shoot that thing down when it’s needed. And this could be applied to Proximity Mines and minefields, as well, simply shoot the mines away.
I wanted to come back to this and give a direct reply.
People have said many times that T1, T2 and T3+ have very different playstyles. T1/T2 in particular always seemed to be not “the best team wins”, but “the team with the best individuals wins”. T3+, on the other hand, always had more importance on the group.
It feels to me like the changes we’ve seen are pushing the game into a situation where individual piloting skill doesn’t matter. Instead, the focus is on how you work as part of the greater whole. Victory no longer goes to the team with the two CovOp pilots who’ve mastered the art of swirling around and being unhittable. You try to capture a beacon, plant a bomb or kill a captain whilst relying solely on your fancy control ability, and you’ll just get smashed to pieces by a storm of homing missiles.
Here’s why that’s a good thing:
It means less skilled pilots matter. They can put up a fight against these “elite” pilots and actually hurt them, whereas before they would either be saving their missiles and be unable to hit the Inty, or blow them all early on and be impotent in the late game.
It punishes selfish play. I know that flying solo can be a valid part of a team effort, but with CovOps in particular the emphasis was not “what can I do for the team?” but “lol my sc0rez r0x0r!” You try and play a hero, and you die as a fool. This is a good thing.
It pushes for team efforts. If you don’t want to have five missile locks on you at once, you shouldn’t be flying alone. You should have allies - either other interceptors to share the load and spread the locks, or other classes - Guards to missile screen you, Engineers to heal your damage, Tacklers to shut down ships that attack you, Commands / Gunships to pile on the pain and clear the way for you. Fly alone and you die; fly together and you kill.
On that note, I think we need to stop with the “class x beats class y” thinking. I personally much prefer now to think in these terms:
Fighters are the core of the force. They fight head on in groups and should always be to the fore and always engaging.
Frigates are support ships. They follow the Fighters and engage from the second line. When engaged, they fall back and let the Fighters come forward again.
Interceptors are skirmishers. They fly ahead and to the flanks for the formation. When engaged, they fall back and let the Fighter-Frigate ball protect them.
The new game revolves heavily around the presence of Fighters. Interceptors just can’t stand up to the direct pummeling of the bigger ships, whilst Frigates are outmaneuvered and overwhelmed if left alone. Fighters are nimble enough, both in terms of themselves and their ordnance, to engage Interceptors. They also pack enough punch to hurt Frigates. Their downside is that Fighters lack the specialist elements of the game; a pure Fighter Ball can’t heal, can’t knock out missiles and can’t exploit the huge damage-spike tactics that CovOps / LR can bring.
The result is that the Fighter is a great place to start building a force, but a combined-arms taskforce is always stronger. The Fighters engage and draw the target in; the Frigates pile on supporting fire and bring their specialist skills to bear; the interceptor waits until the target has engaged before flying in and adding its own clout.
I’ve seen this happening in T2.5 matches. I’ve also seen how quickly these killer combos fall apart once you can start dismantling them. As a Hydra 2 pilot I was engaging a Guard who had Recon support. I was hurting really badly until an allied Command flew in and helped me finish the Guard. The Recon suddenly found himself without support and was blown out of the sky because he tried to stay in the fight and finish me.
This is teamwork at its most basic level. Rank 4 Guard + Rank 4 Recon vs a Rank 6 pure-blue Engineer… and they were winning. They were beating me down. It was solo play being punished - I was out of position because I wanted the kill. It was only when my allies got involved that the fight swung back to my favour.
I hope that, when people start viewing the game’s weapon / class shift in this manner, they’ll see why it’s a good thing.
I have to say i totally agree with your analysis… it’s just my conclusion is different.
Call me old school, call me just old but the individual skill should ALWAYS be the most important thing in a game. All the rest (team work,equip,clasess…exetera exetera) can be important, very important too, but should be push into the background compared to skill.
That’s why i NEVER liked games as Battelfield , “New generation” FPS , anbd i’m stick to Quake, Unreal, Painkliller and other old school fps arena.
Now, when i started to play this game it was very close to those game … different machanics and ambientation for sure … but it was the forst ggame i can find in years where ur skill really matter. Where u can make the difference.
Now the game is running fast to the bloody “new generation” direction… and i just hate it.
It’s not couse of the money i spent, it’s not couse the time i lost… it’s just couse i thought i found a game i could play for years having fun… and now it is becoming just another disappointment.
Wow, Oryngton, a lot said, good summary. Is that the Word Document? 
As CO Pilot, who does not really use his CO’s so much anymore, I say, perfectly right how you shortly put it. The Arc nerf was needed in T2, the Orion nerf, well… I feel represented, thankyouverymuch.
Disagreements:
* the RFR was still stronger than the Shrapnel, you need quite a few modules now to make it dangerous with that spread, which goes on cost of other module possibilities. I still have a hard time adjusting and dont hit very much with that gun tho. But the RFR was way stronger. Since I already said, the RFP was en par with the RFR, it kinda is needless to comment on the Blaster.
* I actually kinda want the Ceptor Lasers back on Frigates. They are useless on Ceptors, but were very nice on Speed fitted Frigs. Its no shame to use Short Range Weapons on a support role anyway.
* Missile Spam being bad? While I agree on reload times at least partly should continue at respawn, it isnt that bad atm. Nukes are the only downside. In Realistic this means, go for beacon, linger around 180 secs defense, go for beacon… and even equipping a pylon does not really help to get the nuke back faster, so in non-realistic modes, it is true, that suicide becomes very much an easier option.
* Weapon mod changes: actually, without changing damage type, changing weapon mods is kinda useless, I have to admit.
Otherwise, well written, and good you put in some positive praise to it on certain points.
The big issue I have with the “personal skill trumps all” mentality is this: a genuine description of my attempt to get back into Space Marine on the PC.
*login*. “Okay, I’ll try and get to Point A and- damn it! That guy headshot me!”
*respawn*. “Alright, let’s try flanking this way…” *walk into huge firefight and die.*
*respawn* "I’m going Assault Marine. I should be able to use my jumppack to get across the open ground there.
*nope. respawn.* "Where is that lascannon guy anyway? I can’t see- *shot in head by sniper for a third time*
*respawn* “Have you seen how many kills he has? How can that guy land so many hits on mid-air targets?”
*get shot by the sniper a fourth time* “Screw this game, I’m not playing it again!”
See the issue? I play the PS3 version of Space Marine a lot, and this has never, ever happened. It can’t. Why? Well the glorious PC gaming master race will sit around and circle-jerk about how “innately inferior” the controller is and how the keyboard and mouse allow for 10,000% more accuracy… but that crudeness and lack of precision means that even the best console sniper can be worked around. Hitting a mid-air target on the PS3 Space Marine with a lascannon? It’s a nightmare to pull off. You just can’t adjust quickly enough!
The result is that on console the people who “no life” a game (and I am / was one of them) can be bested. When the input mechanism means that twitch-play and pin-point accuracy aren’t as important as weight of fire or map position, elite players can, do and will go down to rookies.
Your examples of Quake, Unreal and so on also show a fundamental lack of understanding as to what you are playing here. Quake and its ilk are pure action, pure skill games. Everyone spawns with the same weapon, the same health, the same resistances to damage, etc. Everyone begins equal - only personal skill distinguishes one player from another. Modern games don’t do that. Star Conflict sure as hell doesn’t. In modern games, you spawn with a role - the sniper has long range guns and is usually fragile; the assault class has grenades and assault rifles and lots of health. The Engineer might pack an LMG and have the means to deploy turrets. Each class brings something to the game the others cannot, and as time has gone on most games like this have realised that the more you make your role matter, the less the individual matters.
The beauty of this approach is that it is inclusive. If I’m flying in Tier 2 with my pure-blue Rank 6 ships, a Rank 4 pilot in Mk I is going to get obliterated in a straight up fight against me.
However… he doesn’t have to fight me straight up. He doesn’t have to fight me at all! A newbie Command can just hide next to a bigger ship and buff them, making sure their ally lives long enough to kill me or drive me back. A newbie Recon gets points for painting me as a target (if I die); a newbie Engineer can heal from a position of safety. Direct damage ships will have to risk my gunsights, but as long as they do so with support they can make themselves felt.
This is a good thing. In any game.
I understand why people might like the “old school” way, but you’ve got to make it clear that is what you are getting and aiming for from the get-go. You’ve also got to be the kind of person who wants that, and personally my love of games that require a hell of a lot of work has gone down and down and down over the years. I’m pushing 28, I’ll be working something like 50 hours a week come September, and I just can’t dedicate my life to mastering how to perform a jump-dive-headshot eighteen times in a row anymore. I just want to be able to sit down at my keyboard, or pick up my controller, and play. If I’m playing multiplayer, I want to be able to do something besides spawn and die.
The old school way doesn’t give me what I want, and I think a growing number of players don’t have time for it anymore.
Wow, Oryngton, a lot said, good summary. Is that the Word Document?
As CO Pilot, who does not really use his CO’s so much anymore, I say, perfectly right how you shortly put it. The Arc nerf was needed in T2, the Orion nerf, well… I feel represented, thankyouverymuch.
Disagreements:
* the RFR was still stronger than the Shrapnel, you need quite a few modules now to make it dangerous with that spread, which goes on cost of other module possibilities. I still have a hard time adjusting and dont hit very much with that gun tho. But the RFR was way stronger. Since I already said, the RFP was en par with the RFR, it kinda is needless to comment on the Blaster.
* I actually kinda want the Ceptor Lasers back on Frigates. They are useless on Ceptors, but were very nice on Speed fitted Frigs.
* Missile Spam being bad? While I agree on reload times at least partly should continue at respawn, it isnt that bad atm. Nukes are the only downside. In Realistic this means, go for beacon, linger around 180 secs defense, go for beacon… and even equipping a pylon does not really help to get the nuke back faster, so in non-realistic modes, it is true, that suicide becomes very much an easier option.
* Weapon mod changes: actually, without changing damage type, changing weapon mods is kinda useless, I have to admit.
Otherwise, well written, and good you put in some positive praise to it on certain points.
It is the Word doc, 6 pages long. I guess I should’ve uploaded that, instead, lol…
The CO nerfs were definitely needed in T2. But, thanks to that, they gimped every CO in the upper Tiers to ECM bubble killers (and I died a couple times to this, but they’re generally easy to avoid) and nuke deployment. That’s all they do, now.
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No. The RFR was strong but I had zero spread modules on it whilst flying my Recon and I killed so many people it wasn’t even even funny. I do the exact same with the Shrapnel Cannon. Stronger results as this actually flings MORE shells at your enemy. The spread nerf they made was either not enough or my ships are special (I fly them on the Kris-AE and Swarm, so…)
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I want short range weapons back on Frigates, too. But, at the same time, I don’t want them because, in the current grand scheme of things, they’re overpowered for Frigates.
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It’s bad in T1/2. Pilots then, miraculously, grow a brain and stop spaming both buttons on T3 and above. I forgot to add that in. And yes, outside of Realistic, CovOps pilots just suicide themselves to bring another nuke into play 2 mins sooner.
Well Jasan, as always, I enjoy your long texts, but sorry, playing Shooters with a controller is still dumbing down and your own fault. While I agree on the point you want to make, the glorious PC gaming master race is simply right on that part.
If you play teamgames, playing in front of a TV with a half breed joystick is not the way to go.
Also, most serial headshots are usually cheaters.
While teamplay is way more essential now, and especially, in the US, the skill to hold a mouse and fire at an enemy is still something everyone can acquire, and of course people get better at it. But, but, but. If the game only emphasizes on that, it usually has no tactical depth anyway. CS:S is a very good example, where even players with bad aim can learn certain weapons to be very effective. Same here in SC, where skill actually less means aim, like in Quake, but more the spatial orientation, like in Descent or 360^2 engine
At least thats what I think. So its sometimes also the fault of the game, but otherwise, I agree.
Thats precisely why I dont like SCon, and like Quake, Unreal.
But I also like flying whith space ships, and have none to play Quake/Unreal with anymore… Ahh… the good old univerity lan parties. :good:
Welp, better fire up Homeworld 2, with mods, in glorious 1080P…
Well personally, what keeps me away from PC gaming, and why I never call myself a PC gamer even though I sink an unhealthy number of hours into Total Wars, Minecraft, FTL, StarCraft II and, well, this… it’s because PC gamers are all a bunch of dicks.
Play Consoles? PC gamers call you a child, or that you’re a xxxx with some kind of mental problem (that was actually one person’s reply when I said I hated playing FPS on PC because “the controls give me headaches”). But then you also get xxxx for not buying a powerful PC. Apparently, if you don’t spend thousands on an Alienware rig then you’re a scrub who should stick to Farmville instead of trying to play “real” games. And Gods help you if you don’t buy a custom gamer-mouse and gamer-keyboard and play alone rather than buying a hundred-quid high-spec headset to teamspeak with your Clan.
The worst part though? The really grating, insulting and flat-out stupid part? The idea that it should be hard work. There is so much anger and resentment towards anything that lowers the bar of entry. The instant a game does something to make itself more approachable, it’s flamed to hell for dumbing down and trying to appeal to the CoD crowd. Those same people who scream themselves blue in the face about how the developers should kill themselves for “appealing to n00bs” are the same people who will xxxxx and moan three months later about how the servers are ghost towns and there’s nobody for them to play with.
PC gamers as a whole need to get a grip, and get a clue. You know Consoles are better than PC games? Why they always will be? Accessibility. Ease of use. Ease of play. That controller, for all it’s “flaws”, actually makes it easier for a total novice to threaten a veteran. That means the newbie feels like they’re doing better, and so they’re more likely to stick with it and get better. PC gamers need to accept this and embrace it - if you find a game you love and want it to stick around, you need to find a way to bring more players in. You don’t do that by making it as hard as possible for new players to compete.
What if i told you there will be no patch tomorrow?
They said they are collecting feedback (after 94 pages on the russians forum and 59 on the english)
@Jasan
You’r saying there are no insults and rage in microphone flying around in console games? I simply never had any console besides childhood SNES. Its a bit of bother to get Xbox or PS. You not only need to buy a console, but a TV as well. About BM stuff flying around games - many games have “ignore” function. When i play LoL Ignore everyone make even a single insult on someone. By the end of game most of players are on my ignore list, but at least the game is quite and enjoyable. :)wt
And tbh I would say pc games are more accesable, and there is no need for 1k$+ pc to play games. I’m quite sure that 800$ pc can handle any game out there. Few last year games maybe not on max, but on medium EVERY game should run on 60fps+.
EDIT: Just realised this is patch discussion topic.
Here comes the never-ending debate of skill-or-no-skill.
Skill is necessary is every game, that should be obvious, but there are more than that.
SCon is a MOBA game, and in a MOBA game, you don’t purely rely on individual skills, you also rely on advantage of scale and the ability to achieve objectives of the whole team, look at LOL as an example, the team with moderate individuals but have more team oriented champions have fair chance of winning against a team with more skilled individuals but have solo oriented champions who dominate at laning phase, but fail to achieve important objectives of the game later (team combat, tower, dragon, baron, etc…).
MOBA game is not suitable for those who only seek satisfaction of self in individual skills.
How to fix the Synergy mess: 50-60% Free Synergy gain on Premium Ships. Increase cost of transferable Synergy to 80-100 pts/GS. That’ll keep the free pilots happy for all eternity and those that wasted money on Premium ships happy until they find the next thing to b**** about. Not to mention you’ll still be getting money off it.
I have mixed feelings about your post, but it was such a big post I skimmed it more than reading.(Edit: I’ll start reading it more thoroughly now)
Right now premium ships are a cash grab, and anything below 100% free synergy will stay a cash grap for me.
In the “past” we paid for the premium and that was it, We got reputation while using them, no repairs, credits…We didn’t have to pay extra cash to actually use it. So why change it now? If we still must pay for both the premium ship AND synergy transfer, it is still not worth it to use premiums in my eyes.
Btw, I just did the in-game tutorial(It asked if I wanted to do it, so why not) and it’s not bad. But it could do with a slight tutorial on missiles as well and an actual fighter weapon instead of RFP.