Star Conflict OBT v. 0.9.0 Discussion

Mercenary Center Patch Discussion
1881

you know where i am comming from?

this is interesting!

…

please do not confuse me with some high ranked players that try to stop everyone from progressing so i allways have an unfair advantage…

I think you misunderstood me. It’s a figure of speech, it means that I (think I) understand your position and can relate to it. I, too, prefer a level playing field and skill based competition, and I never thought you were saying anything else yourself.

I was just pointing out that SCon’s progression (and monetization) system is inherently based on imbalance.

PS: I do as well agree with you that low-skill mechanics such as nukes should be avoided in games, in particular in combination with the current death = free nuke perpetuum mobile, but here we get back to my initial comment about casual gamers being the target. Going nuke -> boom -> five kills gives them instant gratification at no effort, thus like the game and spend some GS to paint their ship. I’m simplifying but I think you know what I mean.

1882

I think you misunderstood me. It’s a figure of speech, it means that I (think I) understand your position and can relate to it. I, too, prefer a level playing field and skill based competition, and I never thought you were saying anything else yourself. I was just pointing out that SCon’s progression (and monetization) system is inherently based on imbalance.

 

argh i have been reading the forums for to long^^ my assumption was wrong then, it sounded like you were complaining about me as a high ranked player wanting to make progression even harder. i appologize.

1883

No worries, misunderstandings happen easily on forums (typed conversation/multiple participants/different language backgrounds), it’s all good.

1884

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.

 

Crus Type Q —> Hidden regen energy bonus. (And of course +1 passiv and better base stat)

The Alligator C have the same bonus as the Neuron Zealot.

 

The Crusader was a super good tanky Torp/Anomaly carrier before the reworks. (aka 7 heavy missiles + 20% reload missile bonus).

 

The Jericho LRF need one thing that Empire LRF do not need : A RECON ! (I’m sure you know why :D)

 

Federation Guard is only balanced because of the R9 Imperial Implant. —> No, that was broken before the 0.9.0 / Now it’s just a Super bonus due to the ninja Up of the mobility.

 

The federation’s engineer have to be good, it’s the engineer main faction.

It’s not hard to tank with it, Hull/Shield/Mobility.

 

The cerberus 2 / Crusader type S are harder to play correctly cause of their mobility. If you fail your positionning, you will fail at your job. Thing that not happen with the fed’s guard/Engine.

They can move, repositionne, engage, counter engage easier than Cerb2/CrusS.

 

The day we will see the true synergy between every ships will be the day when we will have a “Alterac Valley” gamemode in Scon with main objectivs, sub-objective, bonus objectives, allow the player to use a particular ship to etablish a front line, a supply line ect ect ect.

1885

The Crusader was a super good tanky Torp/Anomaly carrier before the reworks. (aka 7 heavy missiles + 20% reload missile bonus).

Welcome to the dumbed down SC. Where missiles are FUN!

 

The Jericho LRF need one thing that Empire LRF do not need : A RECON ! (I’m sure you know why :D)

PIXEL HUNTING! I don’t necessarily need anything in the forward field if I know more or less where the enemy ships are.

 

The day we will see the true synergy between every ships will be the day when we will have a “Alterac Valley” gamemode in Scon with main objectivs, sub-objective, bonus objectives, allow the player to use a particular ship to etablish a front line, a supply line ect ect ect.

I’d still love to see that for Beacon Hunt.

1886

PIXEL HUNTING! I don’t necessarily need anything in the forward field if I know more or less where the enemy ships are.

I mean you just spam your torpedoes expecting to not have a AMS guard on your Target. When i have a Recon, I know exactly where i will torp, when, and what will be my target.

1887

in Scon with main objectivs, sub-objective, bonus objectives, allow the player to use a particular ship to etablish a front line, a supply line ect ect ect.

 

already have that in the game. it’s called

 

‘Screw the game-mode, Do Contract and Ship Synergy’

1888

I think 90% of people are looking a this game the wrong way.

 

People look down on T1, players and staff alike. This is a very, very dangerous, and thus wrong outlook.

 

Tier 1 should be fun! It should be a tier people want to play. I admit that I’ve gone back to it a few times and, when you find a match that only has T1 ships, it feels really fun to play.

 

Pure T1 is unlike anything I’ve seen in other tiers. It’s all about personal power; your skill as a dogfighter, where hull can’t heal, where railspam is the norm and where modules are secondary to guns and missiles. It isn’t Star conflict as we vets know it. It’s not even comparable to T2, but it’s fun. If you keep T1 ships together, the resulting gameplay is fast, frantic and brilliant in its simplicity.

 

To turn around and dismiss that as a “baby tier” that people should rush out of as fast as possible does T1 a great disservice. If T1 isn’t fun an engaging, then why should players bother trying the rest of the game? T1 should hit them in the face with core mechanics that make them beg for more, and in my opinion the only times that doesn’t happen is when T1 are matched vs T2, whose superior weapon and module options overwhelm the purity and elegant minimalism of the tier.

 

T2, likewise, deserves equal respect. It is a tier where modules count, but solo action still matters. Teams will win more often than not, but T2 is a tier where it feels like you can do what you want. Act as a group, and you’ll go far. Fly solo and trust in your skills, and so long as your skills are there you will make yourself felt and help your team to victory.

T2, perhaps more than any other Tier, needs to be the selling point of the game. Why? Because this is the make-or-break tier. This is where players start to make big choices; do they want to keep playing? Do they want to put money into this game? Are they happy alone or do they need a Corp?

 

If players don’t feel they have the freedom to explore the game in T2, they won’t be able to answer these questions. If they can’t answer these questions, odds are they’ll become frustrated and walk away.

 

Talk down at the lower tiers, and before long the elitist upper tiers, and the Devs for that matter, will be sat around wondering why the hell nobody plays except a tiny core of die-hards that gets smaller with every passing week…

1889

I think 90% of people are looking a this game the wrong way.

 

People look down on T1, players and staff alike. This is a very, very dangerous, and thus wrong outlook.

 

Tier 1 should be fun! It should be a tier people want to play. I admit that I’ve gone back to it a few times and, when you find a match that only has T1 ships, it feels really fun to play.

 

Pure T1 is unlike anything I’ve seen in other tiers. It’s all about personal power; your skill as a dogfighter, where hull can’t heal, where railspam is the norm and where modules are secondary to guns and missiles. It isn’t Star conflict as we vets know it. It’s not even comparable to T2, but it’s fun. If you keep T1 ships together, the resulting gameplay is fast, frantic and brilliant in its simplicity.

 

To turn around and dismiss that as a “baby tier” that people should rush out of as fast as possible does T1 a great disservice. If T1 isn’t fun an engaging, then why should players bother trying the rest of the game? T1 should hit them in the face with core mechanics that make them beg for more, and in my opinion the only times that doesn’t happen is when T1 are matched vs T2, whose superior weapon and module options overwhelm the purity and elegant minimalism of the tier.

 

T2, likewise, deserves equal respect. It is a tier where modules count, but solo action still matters. Teams will win more often than not, but T2 is a tier where it feels like you can do what you want. Act as a group, and you’ll go far. Fly solo and trust in your skills, and so long as your skills are there you will make yourself felt and help your team to victory.

T2, perhaps more than any other Tier, needs to be the selling point of the game. Why? Because this is the make-or-break tier. This is where players start to make big choices; do they want to keep playing? Do they want to put money into this game? Are they happy alone or do they need a Corp?

 

If players don’t feel they have the freedom to explore the game in T2, they won’t be able to answer these questions. If they can’t answer these questions, odds are they’ll become frustrated and walk away.

 

Talk down at the lower tiers, and before long the elitist upper tiers, and the Devs for that matter, will be sat around wondering why the hell nobody plays except a tiny core of die-hards that gets smaller with every passing week…

A fixed tiers, or at best ±1 rank would fix it, or they could even make T1/T2/T5 limited to their own tier, and T3/T4 vs each other since they barely are different from eachother.

1890

A fixed tiers, or at best ±1 rank would fix it, or they could even make T1/T2/T5 limited to their own tier, and T3/T4 vs each other since they barely are different from eachother.

 

The Propulsion module improve a lot some ships. Same for the module buff with implant between t3/t4

1891

No offense, but calling tier one “fast” is like calling black white. It’s the exact opposite of fast with incredibly slow ships.

The only thing that makes games fast in it is utter lack of any kind of understanding of the game by most people playing it. Same goes for T2 for most part.

Call me elitist all you want, it won’t erase the sad fact that if I ever decided to drop down to T2, I’d be top score in almost all matches. Not because I’m special, but because it’s a beginner tier for beginners. And I’d be a damn smurf. Which I will never start doing, and why I also stay out of T2 as well - I’m no longer the beginner that those tiers are populated by and I should not be ruining their gameplay for my ego. Smurfing is a terrible thing to do because it disenfranchises the new people for whom those two tiers are meant. Smurfs are evil by their nature, as they enjoy picking on newbies who cannot defend themselves. That is universal to most games that allow for smurfing of any kind.

And from what I have seen of those T2 smurfs trying to go into T3 and T4, most of them are also utterly terrible at the game. Whether this is because they get used to steamrolling newbies and lose most of their skill, or because they were originally bad, I do not know.

Frankly, if you want to show off your “personal skill”, get a squad and fly bait role for it in T4/T5. Now THAT takes skill, surviving with 4-5 people constantly locked on you and your missile warning screaming your ears off the entire game. You need not only top notch flying skill, such as for example being able to dodge guided missiles without using flares while making sniper weaponry not hurt you enough to force you back, but also to recognize when enemy takes your bait and fall back before you melt to massive burst of damage, and also knowing how to stop falling back and counterstike fast enough before they fall back.

Killing people who just entered the game, mostly fly in straight lines and wonder “what does this pretty animation do” is not about skill. It’s about being an xxxx to new players. No amount of mental gymnastics will remove that sad fact.

1892
  1. You can. Warpgate works.

And then the interceptors follow and are soon back on you unless you actually gated to a group of teammates.  The main time I see warp gates being used well is five or ten seconds after spawn while the interceptors catch up before the enemy gets to the middle.

 

From what Luckyo is saying, it seems making frigates bots would solve the problem perfectly.

 

-bot that never engages.

-bot that will go behind everyone in your team, and your team’s job is to cover it.

-bot will turn its modules on ALL the time.

 

Frigates should never have been playable.

That does seem to be his view.  A guard should help be a holding line, not an oversized fighter.

 

  1. You’re accusing ESB of using gameplay features that do not exist for other players, i.e. cheating.

I didn’t see anyone here mention cheating.  ESB mentioned ESB cheating technically.  The main thing ESB gets accused of is being kill squads who are effective at it.

 

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.

Do you really think the top 100 rated players can support the game?  The devs must cater to the casual players.  Otherwise those top players would be stuck in 3v3 matches with bots all day long.  But you seem to infer that casual players are all bad players.  Maybe the casual players just don’t shell out over $2k for a gaming rig and play with enough focus to lose the fun.

 

I think 90% of people are looking a this game the wrong way.

 

People look down on T1, players and staff alike. This is a very, very dangerous, and thus wrong outlook.

 

Tier 1 should be fun! It should be a tier people want to play. I admit that I’ve gone back to it a few times and, when you find a match that only has T1 ships, it feels really fun to play.

 

Pure T1 is unlike anything I’ve seen in other tiers. It’s all about personal power; your skill as a dogfighter, where hull can’t heal, where railspam is the norm and where modules are secondary to guns and missiles. It isn’t Star conflict as we vets know it. It’s not even comparable to T2, but it’s fun. If you keep T1 ships together, the resulting gameplay is fast, frantic and brilliant in its simplicity.

 

To turn around and dismiss that as a “baby tier” that people should rush out of as fast as possible does T1 a great disservice. If T1 isn’t fun an engaging, then why should players bother trying the rest of the game? T1 should hit them in the face with core mechanics that make them beg for more, and in my opinion the only times that doesn’t happen is when T1 are matched vs T2, whose superior weapon and module options overwhelm the purity and elegant minimalism of the tier.

 

T2, likewise, deserves equal respect. It is a tier where modules count, but solo action still matters. Teams will win more often than not, but T2 is a tier where it feels like you can do what you want. Act as a group, and you’ll go far. Fly solo and trust in your skills, and so long as your skills are there you will make yourself felt and help your team to victory.

T2, perhaps more than any other Tier, needs to be the selling point of the game. Why? Because this is the make-or-break tier. This is where players start to make big choices; do they want to keep playing? Do they want to put money into this game? Are they happy alone or do they need a Corp?

 

If players don’t feel they have the freedom to explore the game in T2, they won’t be able to answer these questions. If they can’t answer these questions, odds are they’ll become frustrated and walk away.

 

Talk down at the lower tiers, and before long the elitist upper tiers, and the Devs for that matter, will be sat around wondering why the hell nobody plays except a tiny core of die-hards that gets smaller with every passing week…

T1 should be training.  It’s the players with a few battles under their belts.  It’s probably more fun because more experienced players are trying to level up their T1 ships in a different faction and it’s not getting dominated by squads.

 

T2 should be fun, you’re getting the hang of your modules and gameplay.

 

T3 should be fun as well.  The ships are more customizable.  As it’s currently the “top tier actually populated” it’s populated by some of the negative aspects of the game.

 

As for T4 and T5, other than player experience, what makes it so much different than T3?  One more passive module?

1893

A fixed tiers, or at best ±1 rank would fix it, or they could even make T1/T2/T5 limited to their own tier, and T3/T4 vs each other since they barely are different from eachother.

To be honest, they should just remove tiers entirely. Ships are already fully based on ranks, and premiums should just all be R3, R6, R9 and so on.

And I’m still of opinion that R10 and R15 can fight one another on fairly even ground. Yes, R13 and R14 imperial implants are very powerful, but they are not game breaking. I’ve flown gunships from R10 to R15, ECMs from R11 to currently R13 and so on after first leveling tacklers R12 to R15. As a result I met a lot of R13-R15 ships and squads while leveling gunships and I meet the same guys while leveling my ECM right now. Frankly, a far greater problem for me is flying the ship at very low synergy level (generally 1-3) where energy generation is so low that I tend to not be able to use active modules when situation requires me to. That gimps me far, FAR more than any rank difference ever would.

1894

Call me elitist all you want, it won’t erase the sad fact that if I ever decided to drop down to T2, I’d be top score in almost all matches. Not because I’m special, but because it’s a beginner tier for beginners.

Sorry, but step down from your easy progression of yore high ground a bit and look at today’s reality of the game instead. To fully unlock T2 content you need hundreds of hours invested into this game, even with a license. That’s no beginner tier, not by any stretch of the imagination. If you last that long in this game you’re a core player.

 

Frankly, if you want to show off your “personal skill”, get a squad and fly bait role for it in T4/T5.

It will take me months to get there. So I can only show personal skill once I invested thousands of hours into this game? Sounds like the air is getting thin up there where you are… take a deep breath. :wink:

1895

And then the interceptors follow and are soon back on you unless you actually gated to a group of teammates.  The main time I see warp gates being used well is five or ten seconds after spawn while the interceptors catch up before the enemy gets to the middle.

Great. Free kill interceptors. Take them if they insist on offering themselves to you. You will rarely if ever see ints dumb enough to actually chase engineer that escaped into his spawn in T4 though.

 

I didn’t see anyone here mention cheating.  ESB mentioned ESB cheating technically.  The main thing ESB gets accused of is being kill squads who are effective at it.

That is one of two possible criteria for your complain. If you weren’t complaining about them cheating, then you were using the “they are too good to count” card. In which case I’m using the “you suck too much to count” card as mentioned in the post you quoted and the argument enters the stalemate.

 

Do you really think the top 100 rated players can support the game?  The devs must cater to the casual players.  Otherwise those top players would be stuck in 3v3 matches with bots all day long.  But you seem to infer that casual players are all bad players.  Maybe the casual players just don’t shell out over $2k for a gaming rig and play with enough focus to lose the fun.

League of legends, you know the world’s currently biggest game, functions on that model just fine. Balance for top, have a long skill progression, and a good competitive nature of the game for all players levels and players will come and stay. That is why I’m annoyed by requests to dumb the game’s skill progression - it would kill any chance this game has of really growing.

 

T1 should be training.  It’s the players with a few battles under their belts.  It’s probably more fun because more experienced players are trying to level up their T1 ships in a different faction and it’s not getting dominated by squads.

 

T2 should be fun, you’re getting the hang of your modules and gameplay.

 

T3 should be fun as well.  The ships are more customizable.  As it’s currently the “top tier actually populated” it’s populated by some of the negative aspects of the game.

 

As for T4 and T5, other than player experience, what makes it so much different than T3?  One more passive module?

I agree with you here. T1 and T2 are basics, T3 is advanced solo and beginner team play, T4/T5 is advanced teamplay and top level solo play. Unfortunately both T1 and T2 have a serious smurf infestation problem, mainly stemming from rather steep skill bump going from T2 to T3 (which will hopefully get evened out now that T5 is out and T4 will become more accepting to top T3 players). T4 and T5 should be reasonably competitive on team level, and well populated by people who prefer team play focused game over single player’s skill - i.e. the old top T3 players.

1896

Sorry, but step down from your easy progression of yore high ground a bit and look at today’s reality of the game instead. To fully unlock T2 content you need hundreds of hours invested into this game, even with a license. That’s no beginner tier, not by any stretch of the imagination. If you last that long in this game you’re a core player.

Take a look at my profile. I’m at 11 days and 11 hours of time spent in battles. I’m R13 with armada, R12 with 3 factions, and R9 with other two. Most of this progress was made AFTER the huge (and mostly reverted) nerfs to loyalty gains. I’m already R15 with empire and federation and R13 with jericho.

At current speed, T2 full unlocks shouldn’t take nearly as long as you think. Synergy actually sped up progress for me when I don’t want all ships but just one from the tree + implants. That takes noticeably less time to progress with than the old massive point grind system. Of course, the old system is likely better for those that want all ships unlocked.

Notably, most of this was without a license. I have a total of 10 days of licensed time (started with 7, bought 3 for the extra synergy weekend after 0.9.0), during which I played maybe 30-40 hours total.

It will take me months to get there. So I can only show personal skill once I invested thousands of hours into this game? Sounds like the air is getting thin up there where you are… take a deep breath. :wink:

There are plenty of people who are far above me in game’s hierarchy, so there’s a lot of carbon dioxide where I’m breathing, thank you very much. Most of them just don’t bother trying to talk to people on the other end of the game like I do, especially on the english forums (there are some that do talk on russian ones)

And again, your assessment of time needed to progress in the game is massively off, probably close to an order of magnitude. The first place in game where you can start playing seriously is at R7, and that shouldn’t take more then a day worth of game time or less, especially now that you can just pick one ship type and stick with it to the end for faster progression, rather than have to grind out the massive amount of reputation points needed for next level. The grind doesn’t really even start until R11 or so, even R10 is just a few hours of grind at worst.

1897

The grind doesn’t really even start until R11 or so, even R10 is just a few hours of grind at worst.

Even just full R9 is nearly 2.4 million loyalty. If you have the magic formula for grinding that out in just a few hours please do tell.

1898

Even just full R9 is nearly 2.4 million loyalty. If you have the magic formula for grinding that out in just a few hours please do tell.

Do I need to link reading comprehension wikipedia entry again, or will you note that I did not in fact talk about loyalty beyond T2 but ship gaining when talking about progress?

And btw, flying in R13 ships with mk2 gear is perfectly fine. Flying in R10s with 1/3 mk2 is also perfectly fine. Loyalty appears to be the main “grind it out or pay” mechanic in the game, and currently the difference between mk2 and mk3 is low enough for me not to call it pay to win in most cases.

1899

Do I need to link reading comprehension wikipedia entry again, or will you note that I did not in fact talk about loyalty but ship gaining when talking about progress?

Well you responded to me, and I was talking about unlocking all T2 content, so …

Speed grinding a single ship to T4 is certainly going to be faster, but that’s neither fun nor terribly useful.

1900

Well you responded to me, and I was talking about unlocking all T2 content, so …

Speed grinding a single ship to T4 is certainly going to be faster, but that’s neither fun nor terribly useful.

I’m on T5s now. It’s very useful if you want to get into the “big leagues”, i.e. squad and teamplay centric top end gameplay that you won’t find in lower tiers. You will be competitive with mk2 gear - I know I am. The pay to win aspect of mk2 vs mk3 is really massively overrated in this regard.

As for unlocking all T2 - that will be fast simply due to very low numbers needed for the unlocks. For comparison, I’m currently half way to armada R13>R14. That one takes over 500.000 loyalty. Next step takes over 600.000. So compared to that, four and five digit numbers needed for T1 and T2 are a pittance, doable in a very short time just by grinding the basic low cooldown contracts.