i believe in both, this game originally was designed on tier system, to make it tireless you have basically develop whole new game here.
Maybe that would be the best idea?
@OldSpice well… that video is really strange; if i play an competetive multiplayer game i am looking for a challenge.
let me give you an example:
i hate what cod became throughout the years, the way the have taken the skill out of the equalation and many “real” gamers (including myself) have quit because there were lots of “random death” moments in this game to give all those kiddies a way to kill pro players by pure luck. this is not only the tube, it is also the the predator, the grenade on death the helicopters and many many other things. yet cod is is popular, but if you take a closer look at the community you get an idea why this is the case…
the main player base consits of kiddies with no skill who are not good enough to be successfull in any other game than cod.
should you really be allowed to have a chance to win if you play outright horrible? isn’t the point of a game playing competetively? what is a point of a game that punishes you with random deaths?
if i play a game i want to win because i am skilled and i WANT to lose if my oponent is better than i am. ofc there is allways luck in a game… but the “better” the game the less luck plays a role. if you start playing a game and do NOT get roflstomped then something is really wrong. you deserve to lose if you haven’t played the game long enough to understand it.
the video suggests that new players will leave then? SO BE IT! if you do not have the willpower to play a game long enough to fully understand the mechanics and have at least a chance of winning then, why did you even start playing it?
do you want some easy wins and chaotic matches? play some call of duty then, and buy a reskin of the game year after year…
your video shows how to make a game successfull, but not to make a game good. there is a huge difference…
true gamers WANT hard games because they are MUCH more rewarding to play, do have an a lot deeper gameplay.
star conflict once was such a skill based game, with lots of tactics that involved skills and that’s why i started playing it. now i rarely play sc anymore and this is really sad.
what made it that way? let me give you some points which are likely fammilar to all of you:
-matchmaking: beeing matches vs. much higher tiered enemys sucks, beeing punished by a low ranked team because you are high ranked sucks. if i am good i want to face good enemys and not lose to medicore enemys because the matchmaking filled my team with low rankes to make the match more fair.
-frigballs: a typical no skill Ace tactic that is to strong compared to the amount of skill it takes to play it. beatable by a good team but well… a good team is rare these days and as a good solo player there is not much you can do vs. frigballs.
-nukes: a cod like random death in many caces, sometimes you take a warpgate right into a nuke our simply don’t see it etc. yeah there is a sound but still deaths to nukes feel random.
-weapons: after this whole weapon change, some weapons are terribly strong without the need of any skill. another watering down the whole competetive aspect of the game.
-weapon mods: well tons of Aces were to stupid to use them correctly. looks like the game was to hard then…
and now… the most gamebreaking change so far: missiles!
this change outright AWARDS you for dying! players which survive long get punished by a cooldown, the noobnukers get a fresh nuke every spawn. this is a total no-go in my opinion and in terms of skill balanced gameplay just unforgivable. this is just as bad as the granade on death in cod, if not even worse. why would i even continue playing a game that rewards dying? there is really just no point.
my point isn’t saying: xyz tactic is op, i say it rewards playing bad! playing a healer, an ecm and gunship for example is terribly strong (borderline op if done right) but this is fine because you have to play hit and run tactics which are hard to coordinate. but: you could be equally effective with tactics that need a lot less skill and that makes competetive play pointless.
You won’t get around that anymore. As gaming went mainstream the casuals became the target audience. They are the market, they bring the money. And they don’t have the skills (or the time to aquire them) so they want an easy time.
-matchmaking: beeing matches vs. much higher tiered enemys sucks, beeing punished by a low ranked team because you are high ranked sucks. if i am good i want to face good enemys and not lose to medicore enemys because the matchmaking filled my team with low rankes to make the match more fair. Until there is a sizable player base, there is no point in arguing about it (see post release)
-frigballs: a typical no skill Ace tactic that is to strong compared to the amount of skill it takes to play it. beatable by a good team but well… a good team is rare these days and as a good solo player there is not much you can do vs. frigballs. There is no OP in frigball anymore
-nukes: a cod like random death in many caces, sometimes you take a warpgate right into a nuke our simply don’t see it etc. yeah there is a sound but still deaths to nukes feel random. t3+ issue almost non existant
-weapons: after this whole weapon change, some weapons are terribly strong without the need of any skill. another watering down the whole competetive aspect of the game. on other side faster pace raised a requirement for game awareness, when to engage and when not to and such.
-weapon mods: well tons of Aces were to stupid to use them correctly. looks like the game was to hard then… this point was argued to the death now, and no0b were not the root cause of the change
and now… the most gamebreaking change so far: missiles!
this change outright AWARDS you for dying! players which survive long get punished by a cooldown, the noobnukers get a fresh nuke every spawn. this is a total no-go in my opinion and in terms of skill balanced gameplay just unforgivable. this is just as bad as the granade on death in cod, if not even worse. why would i even continue playing a game that rewards dying? there is really just no point. again in t3+ same as new weapons
i believe in both, this game originally was designed on tier system, to make it tireless you have to basically develop whole new game here.
redesign not required, only time redoing their spreadsheets
you have 15 ships per path broken into 5 power bands
in tierless all 15 ships reside in the same power band but differentiated by role effectiveness ie. specialization bonuses compensated by penalties
these only require changing numbers around.
players on the other hand are the ones who need to ‘redesign’ how they play
You won’t get around that anymore. As gaming went mainstream the casuals became the target audience. They are the market, they bring the money.
making games easy is not the only way to milk mainstream. there are other ways. take sudoku or chess or risk. same difficulty for all players yet they have high replayability and arguably longevity. it’s in design and appeasing to majority demands is the easy way out albeit not the best.
@OldSpice well… that video is really strange; if i play an competetive multiplayer game i am looking for a challenge.
let me give you an example:
i hate what cod became throughout the years, the way the have taken the skill out of the equalation and many “real” gamers (including myself) have quit because there were lots of “random death” moments in this game to give all those kiddies a way to kill pro players by pure luck.
Not saying this should apply kill-wise. Merely that playing the engineer should be easy on the new players.
should you really be allowed to have a chance to win if you play outright horrible? isn’t the point of a game playing competetively? what is a point of a game that punishes you with random deaths?
Yes, you should. The whole point of this system is to gradually increase a player’s skill by introducing them to more and more and more powerful tactics, and allow even a casual gamer to become a pro player given a time span. This is fair, and helps people adapt.
the video suggests that new players will leave then? SO BE IT!
This train of thought is a bad one. What would you prefer: a game that will bring more and more players in that will eventually become as skilled as us - worthy adversaries and great people to play with - or the 5 minute wait times?
true gamers WANT hard games because they are MUCH more rewarding to play, do have an a lot deeper gameplay.
star conflict once was such a skill based game, with lots of tactics that involved skills and that’s why i started playing it. now i rarely play sc anymore and this is really sad.
what made it that way? let me give you some points which are likely fammilar to all of you:
Star Conflict is no longer difficult. It’s punishing. We shouldn’t be hurling players straight at a difficulty wall and yelling: ‘THINK FAST!’. You have to remember that casual gamers will be playing this too and we should introduce them nicely to the world of pro gaming, otherwise they will never advance into our ranks. These are potential recruits lost. Potential players lost. Again, 5 minute queue times.
my point isn’t saying: xyz tactic is op, i say it rewards playing bad! playing a healer, an ecm and gunship for example is terribly strong (borderline op if done right) but this is fine because you have to play hit and run tactics which are hard to coordinate. but: you could be equally effective with tactics that need a lot less skill and that makes competetive play pointless.
That’s not the point. There should be tactics that require little skill but produce fair amounts of power, but then there should be counter-plays to said tactic, and counter-plays to that as well. Whilst a new team might be using this low-skill-high-power tactic, they will very soon realise there are a lot more plays available to them and that their current one is just not going to cut it, hence urging them to try out new and inventive ways of playing.
players on the other hand are the ones who need to ‘redesign’ how they play
Finally, someone who speaks English. /quote
The thing I’ve come to realise is that people do not seem to be attempting to create counter-plays. Yes, yes, hypocrite etc but this is true and we all know it.
What happened exactly before the 0.9.0?
Mass Nerffect 1 :
A strange mixed fleet with “Cerberus 2” and “Crusader type S” (and little bit later “Anaconda M”) called : Frigballz.
This kind of fleet was overpowered and facestomped everything. Super tanky, super heal, super dammage, Mobility with Warpgate…
Devs wanted to fix this abuse by nerfing the engineer’s healing systems. Some Nerfhammer have fallen, a rework has been done.
Still not working, the frigballz was too strong.
Mass Nerffect 2 :
During this era, the Galaxy was Dominated by the Frigballz.
Devs nerfed the Guard’s Self Healing, and… that not worked as planned.
Second try, the “Great Galactic Nuclear Winter”, not worked too, the frigates were still too “strong” ! (Dat joke with the ultimate tactical nuclear bomber)
And “BOOM” ! The great NERFHAMMER FALL ON THE NUKE !
But nothing could stop the Frigates !
Mass Nerffect 3 :
And a tragedy happened ! A Dark Nightmare, the Ultimate Weapons against Frigates emerged from a Forbidden side of the galaxy !
Teh terrible “PATCH 0.9.0” (TA TA TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA).
We all know why it came… It mission was to eradicate all the frigates !
But it was too smart to just nerfhammer all the frigates, especially just after the federation’s up !
So, it decide to rework all the weapons system ! In ONE SINGLE NIGHT !
(It also ninja nerfed some frigates, it removed the passiv bonus on the Anaconda M and the Crusader type S)
All the Heavy weapons dissappeard ! A lot of weapons were changed ! Everybody lost their mind !
But the Fall of the Frigate began…
It do not only changed the dammages mechanics of the entiere galaxy.
It also changed all the tanking mechanics !
It wrote, with the blood of all the dead frigates:
“Resistance is futile, and regen , and shield/hull quantity too ! Because I created the Singularity Cannon !”
Now the mobility rulez teh Galaxy.
All this just to say they didn’t nerfed ships, they nerfed the resistance/regen mechanics and upped the mobility mechanics with the new weapons systems !
The range of the guard’s modules has been nerf to let Ceptors use the new weapons.
And they didn’t change a single direct value on guard because Jericho has been perma nerfed in a lot of patches, and Fed has been up.
PS : I should stop coffe.
T2 Jericho Guards aren’t underpowered. The Neuron Zealot has the extra range on those modules that is an absolute pain to deal with. And the Crus-Q, despite lacking any bonuses, is excellent. Take it from someone that flew both for a very long time. In T3, the Templar-S does feel underpowered, but that goes along the line of terribleness that R7 is. The Crusader is fairly balanced, it’s sturdy and quite effective at holding its ground. The Crus-S is just powerful as everything IFF handled correctly.
Jericho LRF are NOT fine at all. The Torpedoes still get shot down by a Guard’s Missile defence, rendering them utterly useless at the job they were meant to do- sniping, being mostly forced to act like a Gunship. Effectively, I might add.
Federation Guard is only balanced because of the R9 Imperial Implant. As soon as those shields die, you truly are a tank at the start of matches where EVERYTHING decides to target you at the same time.
Federate Engineers are excellent healers. The speed boost they have compared to their Imperial counterparts more than makes up for the lack of a pure shield/armour tank. Not to mention it’s relatively hard to figure out what their tank is.
T4/5 is exactly what the entire tree should look like. However, that means Imperial Engineers, Federate Guards and Jericho LRFs, among many other ships would now be balanced the way they should be. This will make a lot of people throw hissy fits and nobody wants that.
The thing that irks me the most on weapons is that Fighter weapons hit FURTHER than Frigate ones.
You won’t get around that anymore. As gaming went mainstream the casuals became the target audience. They are the market, they bring the money.
you are right but the video made it sound like it is a good thing.
from now on there will allways be mainstream games and i am fine as long there are still skill based games around such as trackmania, bzflag (yes really!) or battleforge (no one knows that one right? a real shame, best rts i ever played).
but what i really HATE seeing is a skillbased game as sc i used to love turning into a non skill based game in a desperate act to atract new players but lose the hardcore players instead. judjing by the number of active players you could say it didn’t turn out well and in the end hardcore players can keep a game alive. they won’t be there when the new players get bored…
you are right but the video made it sound like it is a good thing.
from now on there will allways be mainstream games and i am fine as long there are still skill based games around such as trackmania, bzflag (yes really!) or battleforge (no one knows that one right? a real shame, best rts i ever played).
but what i really HATE seeing is a skillbased game as sc i used to love turning into a non skill based game in a desperate act to atract new players but lose the hardcore players instead. judjing by the number of active players you could say it didn’t turn out well and in the end hardcore players can keep a game alive. they won’t be there when the new players get bored…
You need to strike a balance, though. You know this as well as I do. We need to make it so that casuals get a nice introduction and can - with time - become like us. (I sound like a bloody conspirator here, Jesus…). If we give them a way to get into it that won’t be sufficient and gets them to progress up the skill tree then the developers have just gone and made a great gateway game, and that is something they should pride themselves on.
Skill should exist - in Tiers 2.5 and up. You get your skill, new players get their introduction into the world of proper gaming. Everyone wins.
@OldSpice:
i am not saying that you should not be able to win at all. i am saying that you should not win more experienced players.
if you are rather new and play vs. a good player you should lose, the game should make you instead play vs. players at your level of skill. if you get matched into a fair fight you can win, if you do get matched in an unfair fight you can’t. ofc no matchmaking is perfect so in the beginning you will lose the majority of matches played.
if that wasn’t the case and you win let’s say close to 50% of the matches right of the bat this would make you think wouldn’t it?
if you could win a fair amout of better players wouldn’t this mean that the skill of the better player is pointless?
why would i even improve my skills when i can win by easy tactics?
why would i waste my time with a non skill based game?
ofc the cassual gamers would appreciate not getting beaten up by pros all the time but the medicore to pro players get frustrated because they still lose to the same old noobactics again and again. it doesn’t feel fair and makes you feel that the time you invested into learning the game was sort of wasted.
@xKostyan: this may be true, i have stopped playing so i can’t tell if frigballs still work or not etc. they were are problem once and some other things became a problem now…
@LagOps I’m a little tired so my thoughrs are nowhere near as coherent as they could be. I’m sure someone could fill in for me until tomorrow morning 
but I’ll show you the problems you have with these thoughts and try to explain what is wrong with them, okay?
you are right but the video made it sound like it is a good thing.
from now on there will allways be mainstream games and i am fine as long there are still skill based games around such as trackmania, bzflag (yes really!) or battleforge (no one knows that one right? a real shame, best rts i ever played).
but what i really HATE seeing is a skillbased game as sc i used to love turning into a non skill based game in a desperate act to atract new players but lose the hardcore players instead. judjing by the number of active players you could say it didn’t turn out well and in the end hardcore players can keep a game alive. they won’t be there when the new players get bored…
I didn’t watch the video but I know where you are coming from. Personally I’d still rather pay for a full price title rather than get all these f2p grind games.
But the thing is, SCon always was such a grind game from the start. It never was a level playing field and as such never was a purely skill based game. In pub games, a large part of the players will not even care about winning but about progressing instead. And pub games are entirely unbalanced by design anyway, and I don’t mean the tier mix although that is one reason, but mainly a single squad making up at least one-third of a team.
tl;dr: If you want a pure skill-based competition, this always was and always will be the wrong game for it. You need a game without progression for that.
I didn’t watch the video but I know where you are coming from. Personally I’d still rather pay for a full price title rather than get all these f2p grind games.But the thing is, SCon always was such a grind game from the start. It never was a level playing field and as such never was a purely skill based game. In pub games, a large part of the players will not even care about winning but about progressing instead. And pub games are entirely unbalanced by design anyway, and I don’t mean the tier mix although that is one but, but mainly a single squad making up at least one-third of a team.tl;dr: If you want a pure skill-based competition, this always was and always will be the wrong game for it. You need a game without progression for that.
Thanks.
@OldSpice:
i am not saying that you should not be able to win at all. i am saying that you should not win more experienced players.
if you are rather new and play vs. a good player you should lose, the game should make you instead play vs. players at your level of skill. if you get matched into a fair fight you can win, if you do get matched in an unfair fight you can’t. ofc no matchmaking is perfect so in the beginning you will lose the majority of matches played.
if that wasn’t the case and you win let’s say close to 50% of the matches right of the bat this would make you think wouldn’t it?
if you could win a fair amout of better players wouldn’t this mean that the skill of the better player is pointless?
why would i even improve my skills when i can win by easy tactics?
why would i waste my time with a non skill based game?
ofc the cassual gamers would appreciate not getting beaten up by pros all the time but the medicore to pro players get frustrated because they still lose to the same old noobactics again and again. it doesn’t feel fair and makes you feel that the time you invested into learning the game was sort of wasted.
@xKostyan: this may be true, i have stopped playing so i can’t tell if frigballs still work or not etc. they were are problem once and some other things became a problem now…
No skill tactics? Like the singularity cannon?
Anyway, I am looking forward to the next patch and really hope there is one this thursday…
Not saying this should apply kill-wise. Merely that playing the engineer should be easy on the new players.
- There is T1 and then T2, you can’t get any easier on new players than that
Yes, you should. The whole point of this system is to gradually increase a player’s skill by introducing them to more and more and more powerful
tactics, and allow even a casual gamer to become a pro player given a time span. This is fair, and helps people adapt.
- Again Tiers
Star Conflict is no longer difficult. It’s punishing. We shouldn’t be hurling players straight at a difficulty wall and yelling: ‘THINK FAST!’. You have to remember that casual gamers will be playing this too and we should introduce them nicely to the world of pro gaming, otherwise they will never advance into our ranks. These are potential recruits lost. Potential players lost. Again, 5 minute queue times.
- T1 and T2 are not difficult
That’s not the point. There should be tactics that require little skill but produce fair amounts of power
- Why exactly? Low skill/effort = low power but you need working matchmaking
Not saying this should apply kill-wise. Merely that playing the engineer should be easy on the new players.
- There is T1 and then T2, you can’t get any easier on new players than that
Yes, you should. The whole point of this system is to gradually increase a player’s skill by introducing them to more and more and more powerful
tactics, and allow even a casual gamer to become a pro player given a time span. This is fair, and helps people adapt.
- Again Tiers
Star Conflict is no longer difficult. It’s punishing. We shouldn’t be hurling players straight at a difficulty wall and yelling: ‘THINK FAST!’. You have to remember that casual gamers will be playing this too and we should introduce them nicely to the world of pro gaming, otherwise they will never advance into our ranks. These are potential recruits lost. Potential players lost. Again, 5 minute queue times.
- T1 and T2 are not difficult
That’s not the point. There should be tactics that require little skill but produce fair amounts of power
- Why exactly? Low skill/effort = low power but you need working matchmaking
T1 is introduction. T2 is fun. Unfortunately, there are a lot of experienced players who are in T2 with rank 6 full blue/purples because they are dissatisfied with the current state of Tier 3.
Tiers are not a valid answer for this case.
T2 is difficult with the aforementioned veteran players, and I was mainly referring to T3. Should have classified that, sorry.
I kindly ask you to look through that video again and look at the examples Daniel gives on skill balancing.
You need to strike a balance, though. You know this as well as I do. We need to make it so that casuals get a nice introduction and can - with time - become like us. (I sound like a bloody conspirator here, Jesus…). If we give them a way to get into it that won’t be sufficient and gets them to progress up the skill tree then the developers have just gone and made a great gateway game, and that is something they should pride themselves on.
Skill should exist - in Tiers 2.5 and up. You get your skill, new players get their introduction into the world of proper gaming. Everyone wins.
i agree: we should get the players into that game that are willing to learn it. of corse you shouldn’t get frustrated, but you should also see that skill matters and that there are better players out there. when i started playing (this was .7.x irc) i was introduced nicely and played in t1 vs. other starters and later on in t2 things became much more complicated and skillbased but i never felt like the game was unfair in any way. sure there were some matches where you got stomped by that zero squad etc. but it was okay because these players were better than i was when i started. the way it was was absolutely fine.
then: the heals got buffed to absurd levels. suddenly friggates became to easy to play and you often just lost a fight because the enemy was outhealing you, you even doged most of the shots while hitting the enemy hard yourself. then later on t2 got crawled by interceptors and even low skill pilots were able to beat good frigate players with orion mod and plasma arc. there was also a silly nukespamm that wasn’t anywhere skillbased.
now instead of just adding more unbalance to the game we get an oversimplification as well regarding weapon mods and missiles. this is simplifying the game not only for beginners, but also for the pro players who now have a less deep and less tactical experience by playing the game.
all these changes made the game less skill based and also more frustrating to new players because you now even get matched worse than before.
before the changes you got introduced well and could be successfull if you were willing to learn the game. now you can be fairly successfull by coppying things like the usual covert ops build or the bublegun fighter without having to learn the game like i did. it also made the high skill game worse and more broken because the game tryed to appeal to Aces which is really a bad change imo.
so in the end things got worse for beginners (who want to learn how to play) and pros right? you even stated yourself that getting started is harder than before (at least if you don’t copy popular laming tactics, i think it is quite doable if you lame around ;)).
Yes, I did state that, as after a while a new player will begin to realisd how absurdly long the game will take to grind through without using your money.
I didn’t watch the video but I know where you are coming from. Personally I’d still rather pay for a full price title rather than get all these f2p grind games.
But the thing is, SCon always was such a grind game from the start. It never was a level playing field and as such never was a purely skill based game. In pub games, a large part of the players will not even care about winning but about progressing instead. And pub games are entirely unbalanced by design anyway, and I don’t mean the tier mix although that is one reason, but mainly a single squad making up at least one-third of a team.
tl;dr: If you want a pure skill-based competition, this always was and always will be the wrong game for it. You need a game without progression for that.
(edited because i missunderstood Snib)
i think the grind in 0.7.x was fair and doable, i agree that progression is ways to slow now.
i also agree that progression kinda destroys pub games, i personally prefer games without progression because it is more fair and makes players playing the objective. i also dislike the destroyed ship rating.
i listed trackmania as a positive example (most fair game i ever played) and complained about getting matches with/vs. players of lower skill.
please do not confuse me with some high ranked players that try to stop everyone from progressing so i allways have an unfair advantage…
@OldSpice: ah so you were refering to the grind? i got you wrong there i guess. yes the grind is really silly in this game and i hate that the devs try to force us to spend rl money on the game (looting, synergy etc.)