The "average players" piloting skills = ROTFL!

[smiths121]

I like the Adder as well - just got out of mine!

Nothing wrong with avoiding combat, do not feel pressured into it. Avoiding combat you do not want requires skills. Situational Awareness in SC, winning the interdiction mini-game, running when interdicted (quite tuff in an Adder now - I had to high wake a lot, or wait for the police).

If your surviving by avoiding combat in an Adder - then sounds like your doing the right thing. When your a rich millionaire, that is the time to pick up a smaller cheap ship and explore the combat options.

Simon

Ha, I love the conversation about pool in the thread.

As a new-coming player/casual player I am probably one of the "average players" that OP is describing. And yes, I get smoked by the NPCs regularly, but ,y personal frustration isn't really how hard they are, rather that it is very punishing to lose and try again- and I don't want to lose my pretty adder and go back to a sidewinder! please! (ahw. that was pathetic.) Really, though, I'm afraid to try (and get better at!) combat because I can't afford insurance over and over again. CQC is really the only place I've done combat but it has a tendency to not have anyone in matchmaking, although I must say it is thoroughly enjoyable when I do get into a match.

Anyways I hope that the AI stays the same. It's fine where it is, as far as I'm concerned, even though it hands my rear bits to me on a platter. I'm no game developer, either, so let FDev come up with some sort of clever new player experience mechanic that can soften the blow of insurance premiums so that us noobs can find our fighting feet.

 

[Darrett]

Please, one google search will tell you that's utterly wrong. There are dozens of vids demonstrating, explaining and displaying advanced combat mechanics, maneuvers and technique's.

Just did it. Next time, try your own advice before you put it out there.

A Google search (first 5 pages at least) turns up FA off turns, blue zone throttling, pip management, and reverse flying, mainly from 2014 and early 2015. Those are basic techniques. There aren't any discussions regarding the advanced techniques that people keep bringing up.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Not everyone is capable of performing these "advanced" maneuver tricks for one reason or another. Not everyone has fancy HOTAS peddle setups due to lack of money or desk space. Or some people might just not be as coordinated or "skilled". Forcing people really just won't work.

I got the cheapest and smallest hotas I could find. 25 € blackwidow (the recommended price is 45 but that's way too much, since it will get you a tflight, which is clearly better).
I got a 10 € Xbox controller clone for my gf, since I didn't know if she'd keep playing at it works nearly as well as the hotas.
I was struggling with keyboard and mouse and it was not actually fun. Those 25 bucks brought the game to a whole new level.

So one spends hundreds on a rig that can run ED, and then 10 or 20 bucks more is breaking the budget so badly?

Regarding coordination and skill.. well,let's go a bit into combat theory.

The four poisons of fighting: fear, doubt, surprise and confusion. Protect yourself against them

I've seen a lot of that in the post 2.1 videos.
You're scared to lose your ship.. your first thoughts on interdiction "ohgodohgodohgod what now?"
I'm holding myself "hostage" there and should I ever find myself clinging to my assets or progress or whatever, I will clear my save. I have nothing to lose. First thought "run or fight?"
I expect to be interdicted on every jump and fly accordingly (the only surprise is that I found 1 interdiction since 2.1 went live.. including traveling to the danger games in open).
After the interdiction I often saw "deploy hardpoints and start circling to look for enemy" followed by being circled and shot by a much more agile ship, panicked mashing of the jump button (with deployed hardpoints ) and the boom. "It all was so fast" ... well that's how things feel when one is panickstricken.

A lot of bad decisionmaking before any skillcap has ever been reached.

(Does this qualify as "advanced techniques"? Usually "point and shoot" is the basics and anything beyond that already "advanced")

 

[MUYA]

Unfortunately OP, you're making some assumptions that people are not trying to improve or adapt. I really held off passing judgement on the new AI, and for a while, i thought I was getting the hang of it. Yeah, died a few times, but i think those were due to the OP weapons some of the NPCs got.

I can fly FA Off, i do pip management, but i'm afraid, i'm at my max skill level after playing since launch. There is no further git gud available to me. I'm as git gid as i'm going to get. We all have our skill limits, and the AI has surpassed mine.

Will be giving the NPCs a try out tonight after the patch. Hopefully its now on average at a level where I can go 10 minutes without dying.

I feel the same as you, just can't Git any more any GUD. Trying to adapt and with the RNG of mods and even more rng to get them......getting me down....as a player.

 

[joshman72nd]

its all fine and dandy till the npc gains a sixth sense and rolls just right to dodge not just one not two but three plasma rounds from the corvette..... and i was behind him while he was boosting away and he did this 4 times to me before he was killed.

there is merit to some of the cry.

 

[Whiterose]

Calling names like "whinning" "Lazy" and being derisive is making this forum an ugly and unpleasant place to be. I shall not be following this thread.

Lol, why bother posting then. If thin eye offends thee, then pluck thee out.

 

[Boomer Kay]

its all fine and dandy till the npc gains a sixth sense and rolls just right to dodge not just one not two but three plasma rounds from the corvette.....

God bless gimballed huge multicannons with incinerary round mod.
Came just in time with the AI upgrade.

 

[Ziljan]

I steadfastly refuse to accept the concept of "skill cap", although I'd be willing to admit that might be more due to naive idealism than reality.

In the context of Elite though, I think someone would have a VERY hard time proving they are completely incapable of, say, managing their pips slightly better, or managing their throttle a bit more.

I'll fully accept someone's claim that they tried as hard as they could on a given encounter. But people are nowhere near objective enough to determine if they are actually unable to improve.

Skill capping implies some serious dedication.

I agree. I decided to learn the cello at the age of 35 based on this principle alone. Was told by a teacher at age 17 that I was too old to get good as a beginner, and I foolishly listened. Since then I've studied all about neuroscience on learning, and it turns out that skill caps are a myth. We essentially just progress until we reach a level where we don't know how to improve on our own. And then we need a teacher, or at least a hint of what to work on next.

So in reality, the only people that can't improve are the people who are unwilling to learn or unwilling to practice.

This goes for basic intelligence and curiosity as well. Almost everything we do is a skill. And every skill can be improved.

 

[Soliluna]

I agree. I decided to learn the cello at the age of 35 based on this principle alone. Was told by a teacher at age 17 that I was too old to get good as a beginner, and I foolishly listened. Since then I've studied all about neuroscience on learning, and it turns out that skill caps are a myth. We essentially just progress until we reach a level where we don't know how to improve on our own. And then we need a teacher, or at least a hint of what to work on next.

So in reality, the only people that can't improve are the people who are unwilling to learn or unwilling to practice.

This goes for basic intelligence and curiosity as well. Almost everything we do is a skill. And every skill can be improved.

Definitely. Keep telling people this, who think that because you're 30, 40, 50, 60 - you can't learn, improve or get new skills. It's just not true.

 

[Agema]

Whilst not everyone is going to be a leet player I think much of the poor combat skills folks may have, and I see people posting all the time saying they are not that great, is down to lack of practice and engagement. I cut my teeth during early development where there was little else to do other than fight other players, at which time we were all in the same ships and there wasn't really a negative to losing ones ship.

This is an important point.

One thing to bear in mind is that if anyone wants really high difficulty fighting, they can go find other players. That is a built in system for anyone who wants tough opponents, and decreases the need for AI opponents to be extremely tough. I'm not really into PvP and the attendant drama so I've spent my time killing the rubbish AI, and yes my skills are not great for that. I like that the AI sucks less now, but I appear to be stuck with almost no AI opponents less than Dangerous, and outclassed more often than I enjoy.

I'm trying to read up better manouvering. I'm reading my Mouse and Keyboard is considred a substandard control mechanism, but I don't want to have to buy a joystick just to get better at one game. My key layout is probably sub-optimal (it's basically the default), but I don't really fancy relearning everything from scratch. My time is limited and there are a lot of other games I could play, I'm only willing to invest so much time and effort into ED.

What I like the idea of are systems where the player can perhaps control AI ship difficulties more. In the original Elite, each governance system had a security rating (Anarchy to Corporate State as I recall). If you wanted life-endangering experiences, you went to worlds with low security values. If you wanted to trade peacefully and avoid the risk, you stuck to the safe ones. This already exists to some extent (e.g. Conflict zones, Hazardous REZ) in ED. I'd just suggest perhaps shunting a more of the high end AI opponents off to places where players can look for the challenge if they want it, so people like me who aren't good fighters and probably never will be or just aren't really into fighting are more likely to face more mediocre opposition.

 

[Mephane]

I agree. I decided to learn the cello at the age of 35 based on this principle alone. Was told by a teacher at age 17 that I was too old to get good as a beginner, and I foolishly listened. Since then I've studied all about neuroscience on learning, and it turns out that skill caps are a myth. We essentially just progress until we reach a level where we don't know how to improve on our own. And then we need a teacher, or at least a hint of what to work on next.

So in reality, the only people that can't improve are the people who are unwilling to learn or unwilling to practice.

This goes for basic intelligence and curiosity as well. Almost everything we do is a skill. And every skill can be improved.

This may be true, but the question is: how hardcore, how high should the required skill be in a game? Obviously the answer varies from game to game, and some are famous for their fiendish difficulty and vast amounts of practice and trial&error needed. However, the more difficult a game, the more it is usually (but not always) designed to keep the cost of failure low. You make a mistake, you fail, you get back up, you try again.

Except that in ED, getting back up can take hours, even more if you just lost a ship due to lack of rebuy money.

Edit: Something else I want to mention. Sometimes getting more skilled means engaging in tactics one may not find fun (or not want to engage in for any other reason). One example that springs to mind is combat in Elder Scrolls Online. There is a method of "animation cancelling" where when you time specific abilities just right, you can cancel the animation of another so that the first still does its damage while the second interrupts it and takes its place and also does damage. It requires quite some practice (or, sadly, software macros as it turned out) to get the timings right. But the problem is: animation cancelling started as an accident, probably a design flaw in the code, but after a long while the developers stepped forward and claimed it is intended; probably they just gave up chasing the bug, especially since a lot of players love this extra skill element. However, I always detested it. It is gaming the original design flaw, it leads to a meta where lots of abilities are no longer used because they are not subject to animation cancelling effects, the whole action looks bad and immersion-breaking (animation just abruptly ends and a different one starts right in the middle), and last but not least that game was never build around split second timing of abilities, yet turned into that by animation cancelling. (For an example of a game with good combat system that needs skill and timing, look at Black Desert, which has one of the best Action RPG combat systems I have ever experienced.)

We can translate this to ED, somewhat. For example, if you are skilled enough, you can do everything with fixed weapons, which do more damage and make you immune to chaff. But for me that is just not fun. I can do it to an extent, and if I practiced enough I probably could get quite good at it, but it feels awkward with my preferred control scheme (mouse absolute pitch+roll - you need relative pitch+yaw mode for precise mouse aiming with fixed gun), so I have to choose between making the actual flying of the ship less fun, or having to rely on gimbals but more fun with the flying. And so I chose the latter.

 

[Bill Clement]

Your last one is probably not the best example but some month ago someone mentioned a cheap trick to artificially come to a quick stop after a boosted turn by deploying landing gears. I've never tried this and I'm not sure if it's still working that way, but to me such things are as cheesy as gameplay can be. Unfortunately I know in MMOs there definitely are always players who won't hesitate to make use of such mechanics, don't care at all about 'immersion', just to get this small edge over other players. That's only one of the reasons why I usually try to avoid PVP (the rare moments I fly in open).

I'll test that for you later- but why would it be a cheap trick, if it works? I think it's an awesome use of a feature I use every time I come in to dock. It even mirrors real life, to an extent. Warbirds sometimes dropped their gear in dogfights, or to line up slower targets (eg survivors of 825 NAS reported the FW 190s that shot them down had go wheels down to avoid overshooting their Swordfish). In ED your retros fire as soon as you deploy gear- you can see it really clearly in an Asp, the whole cockpit lights up. Which is a fantastically cool feature all by itself! [yesnod]

 

[Bill Clement]

I agree. I decided to learn the cello at the age of 35 based on this principle alone. Was told by a teacher at age 17 that I was too old to get good as a beginner, and I foolishly listened. Since then I've studied all about neuroscience on learning, and it turns out that skill caps are a myth. We essentially just progress until we reach a level where we don't know how to improve on our own. And then we need a teacher, or at least a hint of what to work on next.

So in reality, the only people that can't improve are the people who are unwilling to learn or unwilling to practice.

This goes for basic intelligence and curiosity as well. Almost everything we do is a skill. And every skill can be improved.

I understand what you're saying, Zijan, but take another look at my post on statistical improvement. There comes a point where even coaching doesn't bring any noticeable improvement- most athletes hit it fairly quickly. Likewise there's going to be other factors that affect your ability to carry out a task beyond your knowledge. You won't play the cello as well when you're older if you start to develop arthritis in your hands, for example, even though your knowledge of the instrument will far exceed your current understanding of it.

In ED we have people who are in both positions, as well as people who don't have anyone to teach them. If someone doesn't have any more time to dedicate to the game then they may very well be as good as they'll ever be. Logging in purely to learn combat tactics sounds good in principle, but if they run out of funds and don't have time to earn more then the whole exercise becomes self defeating. Likewise some of our older or injured players are hitting a physical limit. And some players have invested thousands of hours, taken advice from friends, watched every tutorial out there and are at a stage where any further improvement to their personal ability will be so small it'd be difficult to measure.

They've all got as good as they're going to get- they've hit a skill cap. It's not that they're unwilling to learn or practice; it's more that their circumstances don't allow for further improvement.

Meaning that their best course of action might be learning how to avoid combat in the first place.

FD could help out here, of course. I've yet to see anyone argue against high security areas being safer or low security ones being more profitable. How hard can it be to make that happen?

 

[Bill Clement]

Because it's complete nonsense (I've played Warbirds too, btw. ). First of, in non atmospheric environments deploying *anything* would do nothing. That's the main difference to Warbirds. But it's also inconsistent, as I remember some funny (player-) ship exploding in one of the early Betas due to deploying your landing gear too early (or while too fast, don't recall exactly, never happened to me) in prior docking. I think it's meanwhile gone cause it was considered a bug. That it still works in dogfights is utter bullocks in my opinion.

Sorry, didn't read carefully. You said *IF*, so let me know if it still works...

It's not that deploying gear slows you down, your retros fire at the same time- I take advantage of that every time I dock. Flight sim background, like yourself, so I tend to glide path to a landing rather than hover over the pad and drop down. Look left and right while you deploy gear, you'll see them firing.

 

[CMDR Corlas]

They've all got as good as they're going to get- they've hit a skill cap. It's not that they're unwilling to learn or practice; it's more that their circumstances don't allow for further improvement.

That might functionally be true for some, but it is not for the vast majority of complaint posts I see. When people complain about "dying in seconds" to a small ship, being unable to outrun a slow ship, or being unable to turn well enough to get a single shot off on an NPC before dying; I am sure they tried their best, but there is no "circumstances don't allow for specific improvement" in those scenarios.

Those are people making repeated basic mistakes. The kind that they could fix with as much effort as they already put into complaining if only they had just asked for help instead and didn't preemptively shield themselves from all help with false claims of "skill cap".

We all make basic mistakes, it's nothing against them. My issue is with nurturing a forum culture that encourages this weird sort of ego-driven arrogance which admits defeat while demanding that no one look at what went wrong and externalizing all blame. This only results in demands for a game that allows for a player making repeated basic mistakes to still win.

I don't want to punish less-skilled players, that is not the point. I am happy to help them out. I don't even want to punish those who die, then come here to complain about, to me, outlandish encounters where a had no business dying if they follwed some basic flight principles.

I want the game culture to simply be one that accepts self improvement. Lots of posters do, sure. I like that. But we also have lots of posters who come in, tell stories of dying in frankly ridiculous ways, and demand to be treated as if they were at the peak of their skills.

They are not at the peak of their skills. Honestly, to me, it's would feel condesending to treat them as if they were; I don't want to tell someone they are not worth helping.

 

[CMDR John Casey]

I agree. I decided to learn the cello at the age of 35 based on this principle alone. Was told by a teacher at age 17 that I was too old to get good as a beginner, and I foolishly listened. Since then I've studied all about neuroscience on learning, and it turns out that skill caps are a myth. We essentially just progress until we reach a level where we don't know how to improve on our own. And then we need a teacher, or at least a hint of what to work on next.

So in reality, the only people that can't improve are the people who are unwilling to learn or unwilling to practice.

This goes for basic intelligence and curiosity as well. Almost everything we do is a skill. And every skill can be improved.

I learned cello at 12, studied until 16. I wasn't really good at it. I retook it 15 years later, I improved studying it by myself up to the point that I can now play the Bach suites and "the swan" by Saint Saëns decently. I can still improve with a teacher but what made me improve was motivation and a different approach (doing it because I liked it opposed to doing it because my parents wanted me to learn an instrument).

 

[Space Dandy]

That might functionally be true for some, but it is not for the vast majority of complaint posts I see. When people complain about "dying in seconds" to a small ship, being unable to outrun a slow ship, or being unable to turn well enough to get a single shot off on an NPC before dying; I am sure they tried their best, but there is no "circumstances don't allow for specific improvement" in those scenarios.

Those are people making repeated basic mistakes. The kind that they could fix with as much effort as they already put into complaining if only they had just asked for help instead and didn't preemptively shield themselves from all help with false claims of "skill cap".

We all make basic mistakes, it's nothing against them. My issue is with nurturing a forum culture that encourages this weird sort of ego-driven arrogance which admits defeat while demanding that no one look at what went wrong and externalizing all blame. This only results in demands for a game that allows for a player making repeated basic mistakes to still win.

I don't want to punish less-skilled players, that is not the point. I am happy to help them out. I don't even want to punish those who die, then come here to complain about, to me, outlandish encounters where a had no business dying if they follwed some basic flight principles.

I want the game culture to simply be one that accepts self improvement. Lots of posters do, sure. I like that. But we also have lots of posters who come in, tell stories of dying in frankly ridiculous ways, and demand to be treated as if they were at the peak of their skills.

They are not at the peak of their skills. Honestly, to me, it's would feel condesending to treat them as if they were; I don't want to tell someone they are not worth helping.

Bill Clement has the right of it. While like you say some might come complaining because they haven't put in any time to learn I think post like yours far far exaggerate the amount of those. People that have been playing a few weeks a month will or should have had enough time to learn "how to fly".

Thing is this is a game and I think the vast majority of gamers wont be interested in having to invest time to "learn how to have fun in this game" in the same manner that previous old timer poster did in real life to learn the cello.


It's pretty silly and unrealistic to expect people to treat "learning how to play a video game" like it was learning a real useful skill used in real life, absurd even except for maybe them moba professional types that are trying to earn money in Esport events.

 

[CMDR Cillian Raynor]

We can translate this to ED, somewhat. For example, if you are skilled enough, you can do everything with fixed weapons, which do more damage and make you immune to chaff. But for me that is just not fun. I can do it to an extent, and if I practiced enough I probably could get quite good at it, but it feels awkward with my preferred control scheme (mouse absolute pitch+roll - you need relative pitch+yaw mode for precise mouse aiming with fixed gun), so I have to choose between making the actual flying of the ship less fun, or having to rely on gimbals but more fun with the flying. And so I chose the latter.

this is interesting to me because since the beginning i have refused to use gimballed weapons as in my mind the fun of dogfighting is to actually have to aim (could be because i was raised on red baron and other flight sim games). That being said, i'm still pretty rubbish at combat, and now with the AI increase getting the enemy dead center in my sights has gotten a lot harder so now i'm faced with a situation where i feel like i probably need gimballed weapon to get a better chance at hitting the npcs....

 

[CMDR Corlas]

Bill Clement has the right of it. While like you say some might come complaining because they haven't put in any time to learn I think post like yours far far exaggerate the amount of those. People that have been playing a few weeks a month will or should have had enough time to learn "how to fly".

Thing is this is a game and I think the vast majority of gamers wont be interested in having to invest time to "learn how to have fun in this game" in the same manner that previous old timer poster did in real life to learn the cello.

I am not talking cello-style skills, I am talking about basic, basic mistakes. I've seen people complain about not being able to get a bead on a Viper IV, being in an Anaconda and getting killed be an Eagle, etc. Those are basic mistakes.

And we all make basic mistakes sometimes. I know I still do plenty. I can usually identify them myself now, but either way, the response to us making a basic mistake should never be to demand that everyone pretend like we didn't make a basic mistake.

People playing for a few weeks to a month should not at all expect that they know the ins and outs of it all, unless they specifically sought out guides. That is not the player's fault - the game just throws you in and offers extremely minimal help - but it is how the game is. For example, without the forums, I would have never known that pips to sys reduce incoming damage to shields.

Playing for a few weeks should be enough to get you around, yeah. But it doesn't prep you at all for combat. Advice from more experienced CMDRs does, and each and every death does.

Thinking that a few weeks of play makes you an adept combat pilot is completely and entirely wrong.

 

[Sapient6]

this is interesting to me because since the beginning i have refused to use gimballed weapons as in my mind the fun of dogfighting is to actually have to aim (could be because i was raised on red baron and other flight sim games). That being said, i'm still pretty rubbish at combat, and now with the AI increase getting the enemy dead center in my sights has gotten a lot harder so now i'm faced with a situation where i feel like i probably need gimballed weapon to get a better chance at hitting the npcs....

I really like fixed weapons on a combat ship, provided the combat ship is reasonably nimble. It certainly makes fighting more fun.

But on a ship that is not outfitted specifically for combat? Seriously: no thanks. If I'm not fitted for combat then I'm not interested in making combat more fun. I've likely got MONTHS (literally) of game time on the line during a combat engagement, so all that I care about is not dying. If I'm going to fire a shot under those circumstances then I want any and all assistance available in order to improve that shot's chance of hitting.