Yeah, it needs better onboarding
Make CQC great Again.
- Thread starter GraXXoR
- Start date
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The solution to CQC is simply to put CQC missions in the main game. You land at a station, you see on the mission bbs "CQC- 10 rounds" "CQC- place in top 3" these missions could have payouts that scale based on server population. people might not want to waste their time with CQC right now no matter how fun it is, because in the long run it gives them nothing. But if you offer them 100 million for 10 rounds?? Healthy lobby population immediately. But you don't want people jumping back and forth just to collect more missions, right? So for players who play without cash missions: Rare materials. that makes return customers.
CQC is so easily fixable I'm ripping my hair out wondering why frontier hates it so much.
Other things they should do: let us use the SLFs and CQC weapons we unlock in matches in the main elite dangerous game. People will play just for the unlockables. Make an engineer that requires a high CQC rank, let that engineer upgrade fighters. Let that engineer offer a maneuverability recipe at the COST of pure speed. Let him offer synthesis recipes for the CQC power ups to shields, engines, and weapons.
People will be all over CQC. Once the mode is popular again, re-release elite dangerous arena as a free to play VR compatible game, and this time it will succeed. Free players will want to use their rewards and will convert into paying players. Elite dangerous is saved.
Then they just need to give us access to the checkpoint gates from the elite dangerous flight tutorial so we can finally build racetracks ourselves. Maybe it would encourage them to know that star citizen has racetracks.
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There isn't really anything "wrong" with CQC at all. It's a fun game as it is. All the suggestions for change are usually wanting it to be something completely different.
The issue is the player numbers are too low to sustain regular matchmaking, which in turn means people don't take time to matchmake as they get bored of waiting without success.
I've said it before, I think the most successful and lowest effort thing FDev could do to boost CQC is to make it count towards the Weekly 400 Arx, which it doesn't currently.
If they really wanted to make it popular, they could give it it's own separate Arx Rewards for playtime. Maybe another 400, maybe just 200, whatever.
Putting those Free Arx towards CQC I think might be enough to tip the matchmaking balance into being able to regularly get a half-full game, and that in turn means people will be more likely to try it again.
The other solution to this, which of course should be done as well if we're actually 'fixing' CQC, is to make sure every match is filled with NPC pilots, so that when you hit the button to play CQC you know you're going to get a full and exciting game regardless.
The issue is the player numbers are too low to sustain regular matchmaking, which in turn means people don't take time to matchmake as they get bored of waiting without success.
I've said it before, I think the most successful and lowest effort thing FDev could do to boost CQC is to make it count towards the Weekly 400 Arx, which it doesn't currently.
If they really wanted to make it popular, they could give it it's own separate Arx Rewards for playtime. Maybe another 400, maybe just 200, whatever.
Putting those Free Arx towards CQC I think might be enough to tip the matchmaking balance into being able to regularly get a half-full game, and that in turn means people will be more likely to try it again.
The other solution to this, which of course should be done as well if we're actually 'fixing' CQC, is to make sure every match is filled with NPC pilots, so that when you hit the button to play CQC you know you're going to get a full and exciting game regardless.
Most people play PVP in Star Citizen base game because there is ONLY pvp in the base game. there is nothing else. There is almost no PVE. What little PVE there is is usually overcrowded with players that crash the servers.
Any events they run get bogged down within hours and the servers go titsup multiple times a day... star citizen is a 100% PVP only game which is why it still has so many people people buying overpowered ships to seal club the paupers...
what is MMR I see people mentioning?
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I'm not a PVPer but CQC was fantastic. At first I did get hammered but still got points towards my ranking (this is Elite, all rankings are just cumulative counters rather than a zero sum league) and so I soldiered on until the point I could hold my own against most pilots out there.
Alas waiting times became unbearable and Elite itself got bogged down with crap so I quit for a total of about 5 years... I really miss CQC, it was one of my favourite aspects of Elite...
Now if they just replaced the winners "prize" of 1000 Cr with an actual prize....
Matchmaking Rating. Think of it like a mastery. Matchmaking based around MMR and similar principles attempts to match people of a similar competency.
This would mean people who have never played cQc would be very unlikely to be paired with people who have extensive time and experience, but very likely to be paired with other players with a similar amount of time and experience.
This means as one improves, one would be expected to tussle against other cmdrs of a similar skill. It's not always popular (because punching down tends to be more popular than most might like to admit), but it's something that is a pretty high requirement for a reasonably competitive space to remain so.
Whilst a challenge can be a great teacher, it's not fun to be repeatedly beaten, and so the obvious outcome is people will disengage with it. Unfortunately.
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rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
There are LOTS of things wrong with CQC. Let's have a look:
- bad matchmaking, low levels being ruthlessly matched with high levels
- no bots to fill the gaps
- no unranked/ranked matches division (there are only ranked matches)
- the payouts into the main game are absolutely ridiculous / no real rewards
- no private matches
- no lobby chat
- unsorted and absolutely random friends list means it takes ages to add anyone to a team
- bugs on maps
- no "training mode" to learn the maps
These come to mind without even thinking about it. I could probably list a few more if I sat down and played a few matches.
The ones I listed wouldn't absolutely made CQC into something different than it is now, but they would substantially improved the current experience if they were addressed.
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They tried that, didn't work.
Excellent suggestions. Also in the past i suggested SLF unlocks in CQC should be applicable to our SLFs in game (and hell, why not allow the sidewinder and Eagle as well?).
Unfortunately CQC has fallen by the wayside it could be amazing if it was touted as a game show in the game which is televised across the galaxy.
Imagine if you will a system with several dockable arenas for different sized ships also another for engineered ships. Each one has its own league and you pit your ships specs and your flying skill against other bots OR players. For the arena the ships are copies of your ship so you don't lose rebuys or credits. This would make a HUGE gameshow for ED and there could also be a wager system for some ports where you could put credits down to win credits if the pilot wins the match or league etc (not gambling per say as it's credits to get credits).
Players who win a league get a trophy for their cockpit and a credit bonus maybe some other things like being able to defend the titles etc
This would be much more interesting than CQC as it would be in game and everyone could participate all they had to do was hyperspace and dock.
Fdev could then take some shots of the action and have screens in the stations etc or televised it on the internet ship dock screen to see it as it unfolds.
Imagine if you will a system with several dockable arenas for different sized ships also another for engineered ships. Each one has its own league and you pit your ships specs and your flying skill against other bots OR players. For the arena the ships are copies of your ship so you don't lose rebuys or credits. This would make a HUGE gameshow for ED and there could also be a wager system for some ports where you could put credits down to win credits if the pilot wins the match or league etc (not gambling per say as it's credits to get credits).
Players who win a league get a trophy for their cockpit and a credit bonus maybe some other things like being able to defend the titles etc
This would be much more interesting than CQC as it would be in game and everyone could participate all they had to do was hyperspace and dock.
Fdev could then take some shots of the action and have screens in the stations etc or televised it on the internet ship dock screen to see it as it unfolds.
That’s a really concise and well put together list. I’m gonna be honest and admit I didn’t recognize many of these obvious problems in my own praise of CQC.
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I would love to see the league winners’ giant avatar holograms on display in stations.
Players could receive flashy CQC flight suits as rewards, much like Exo and merc do.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
I've played quite a lot of CQC with my community in the past. We've gradually stopped and the one MAIN reason was the lack of private matches.
It's not fun when you try to have some fun with friends and then a few try hards get on and repeatedly steam roll over you.
Fair play to those skilled players, I can only praise their skills and knowledge of the maps, but if 1 or 2 people repeatedly spoil the fun for 10, 15 of us with no mercy then there is no point playing CQC whatsoever.
Massive shame, because I absolutely love this mode, especially Capture the Flag!
My post addressed matchmaking, bots, and payouts. (Skill-based matchmaking would be counter-productive with such low-population servers, I mentioned NPCs, and Arx.)
Apart from bugs, (which I'm not especially aware of in my limited time playing but fair enough,) the rest are more about wanting it to be something a bit different, or nice-to-haves rather than anything important to making CQC function. Indeed adding Unranked/Private/Training matches would only serve to further dilute the player pool and would be an actively bad idea. If they were to do other things they should be reducing options, not adding them, by stripping out the Flag mode too, and leave it just as Solo/Team Deathmatch.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
That's the most daft CQC related idea I've ever seen on these forums I must say.
Luckily fdev never really take the features away from Elite.
You want to see Musketeer's avatar plastered everywhere around the galaxy?
Yup, definitely needs to be the ability to have (unranked) private matches... and bots of course.
Not everywhere but I think it would be a nice nod in CD-43 11917. (And yes, I had to look up that system name
)
If you're calling my idea "daft" you have no idea of the problem we're discussing.
The chief problem with CQC is matchmaking due to low population. Very simply, the more options you have the further you divide that population into smaller groups that make it increasingly harder to matchmake in a timely fashion. I don't want to see it cut, and I assume that currently the number of people queueing for Flag is so low as to be irrelevant, but if it wasn't then it should be cut.
An alternative solution would be to remove choice altogether and simply have a 'Quick Play' option that would match people and put them in a constant rotation of Solo/Team/Flag/Repeat. However, I'm trying to keep my suggestions "realistic". I guess it would be fairly straight-forward to add NPCs to Solo/Team and that would be a massive boost to CQC, but it would take additional work to get useful NPCs for Flag so putting it in rotation with the others probably wouldn't work.