Responce to Yamiks Shield Video.
- Thread starter SoundestCat4341
- Start date
There's nothing "fortunate" about dumbing down a game in an effort to appeal to the masses.
Which is exactly why even FD have attempted multiple times to find a reasonable way to rein them in.
If PvE players want to play God Mode, then ya can do so by going to a LowRES and killing novice opponents. No need to do so by retaining borked shields and ruining the game for everyone that fancies a modicum of challenge, or PvP fights that last less than 20 minutes. They have been basically objectively proven to be overpowered in their current state, particularly compared to hull.
I agree that ships with weaker shields don't need to be hit so hard, which is partially why we haven't found "the solution".
NPCs need to all start using engineered weapons, and TTKs need to be brought way down, to no longer than about 30 seconds for your average fair fight between two ships of equal size/firepower.
I kinda feel like the best way to achieve that would be to get rid of shields altogether. Which would also remove the compulsion most players have to run away once their shields are down.
I kinda feel like the best way to achieve that would be to get rid of shields altogether. Which would also remove the compulsion most players have to run away once their shields are down.
30 secs might be a little stringent but a good way to achieve this would simply be to make shields reduce, not prevent, damage. For example they would stop 50% of weapon damage while up, and modules still cannot be hit - or it severely reduces penetration distance into the ship.
Pipe dream though, my friend...pipe dream.
'Fraid so Jason. Lose players, you lose $$$...it's about the money.
So to look at it another way, dumbing down shields to appease a minority would be unfortunate. [yesnod]
Only a power balance won't solve the issue of over taxing smaller ships to keep them relevant. Hard capping total shield strength % would trim it up nicely for all ships. Current maximum +% to shield Mj is just under 600% from boosters alone. Cap the entirely at 350% or so and they can open a beta to test from there. Solving the shield issue would allow testing on weapons to progress.
HP inflation needs to be resolved first, then weapons. Once you balance the damage reduction vs damage output, you can rein in the power output to promote versatility and customization. Balance isn't about standing on a giant ball... more like balanceing a dozen plates on a stick on your forehead while dancing on a giant ball that is balanced on a fulcrum.
If you did get Fdev to drop power concerns first, you would only have to re-balance them later once the outcry about smaller ships being crippled start pouring in. As it stands now, smaller ships, especially with enhanced thrusters, are so power starved that running G5 engineering for power is near mandatory.
Should they get shielding in a good place, weapons will be next. I know, it doesn't seem like that, but as soon as god-shielding is balanced weapons will show their creep factors as well. Then another balance pass to bring them in line with shielding. Once that is done, power balance should be possible, and far less convoluted.
HP inflation needs to be resolved first, then weapons. Once you balance the damage reduction vs damage output, you can rein in the power output to promote versatility and customization. Balance isn't about standing on a giant ball... more like balanceing a dozen plates on a stick on your forehead while dancing on a giant ball that is balanced on a fulcrum.
If you did get Fdev to drop power concerns first, you would only have to re-balance them later once the outcry about smaller ships being crippled start pouring in. As it stands now, smaller ships, especially with enhanced thrusters, are so power starved that running G5 engineering for power is near mandatory.
Should they get shielding in a good place, weapons will be next. I know, it doesn't seem like that, but as soon as god-shielding is balanced weapons will show their creep factors as well. Then another balance pass to bring them in line with shielding. Once that is done, power balance should be possible, and far less convoluted.
If you want to nerf yourself go right ahead, drop in an underpowered PP, knock yourself out. No need to drag the rest of us with you.
"Tradeoffs... phffft.
It's why I don't have any hull-tank ships in my fleet. I've tried hull-tanking in a Corvette and an FGS since MRPs were introduced, then again when D-rated MRPs were buffed. I can safely say that hull tanking is utterly rubbish compared to shield-tanking even when using a ship with a high hull hardness, spent the (frankly ridiculous amount of) money on military composites and engineerd HRPs with resistances, and used the utliity slots to defend against missiles & torpedos.
Yes. I genuinely feel that even in a ship that has perhaps best armour and worst shield ratio in the game (the Chieftain - clearly meant to be a hull tank for Thargoids) you still have a much, MUCH better experience if you ignore its hull-tanking abilities and fit boosters/SCBs instead of HRPs and PDs/chaff. That's how imbalanced and broken the devs have let it get.
I'm flying around in a highly engineered Cobra III and the shields feel far too weak to me. Only two utility slots means that to have anything remotely competitive (even for PVE) I have to sacrifice the ability to do anything else with those slots. I worry about threads like this because they focus so much on ships that feel completely out of reach to me. I don't board-hop, I haven't been part of a gold-rush. I've just played the game, mostly in Open after I got out of the Sidewinder. The big ships perhaps have over-strong shields, but there are those of us in small and medium ships where the shields just feel too small.
I'm not much interested in hull-tanking, because I don't want to have to hug so closely to the stations, just to make my prejudices clear.
I'm not much interested in hull-tanking, because I don't want to have to hug so closely to the stations, just to make my prejudices clear.
Are you for real?
It's for the entirely valid reasons that you cite, sir, that any rebalance would have to be most careful and well-considered.
At one end of the curve, absolutely no nerf is needed at all for ships with only two utility slots.
At the other end of the curve, all ships with eight utility slots would need some other form of help if there were to be a straight nerf to booster-stacking.
A significant part of the problem, though, is that Frontier did not design, release and develop the game up to 2015 with the core concept being that utilities would be some kind of 'Holy Grail Slot'. And yet, in March 2016, with 2.1, that's what utilities became...
Perhaps for that reason a different sort of re-balance would be actually to look at the number of slots. Perhaps smaller ships need more and larger ships fewer.
I find that with patience I can burn through most PvE shielding (and SCBs, which are just tedious) with engineered lasers. But I don't really have good enough shielding myself to stay in the fight when there is more than one ship involved -- and the new missions seem to have just made that even worse. I'm not asking for a 'God mode' Cobra, but I'd like to be able to stay in the fight with careful management and flying, and being able to bring along a wake scanner or a kill warrant scanner at the same time would be really nice.
You may be actually right. I took the mission with my Clipper tonight and the Anaconda actually did some serious damage. Anyway, it is too easy.
In Patch Notes, Frontier have just announced a difficulty slider (determining % benefits of defensive RNGineering) on Main Menu linked to small yet at all times clearly discernible 'Difficulty Icon' in the HUD.
(Sorry, I know, it isn't April yet...)
Make it so the hardest content is hard for the best pilots, and then add plenty of content of varying difficulty for pilots of all skill levels. The elite ranking system for NPCs is already the perfect tool for this. Still learning the game and / or not so great at combat? Don't expect to take on elite anacondas.
When it comes to assassination missions they don't really need to make them just right for some, they can just add more assassination missions with varying difficulty.
Just because I find wing assassination missions a little easy doesn't mean that FDev needs to make them more difficult, just add some that are easier and some that are harder.
And you are still not considering that doing each ship is a large undertaking, not to mention just jacking up heavy duty boosters just breeds entirely new problems. First thing you will see will likely be mass resist loadouts still running 3500 Mj on large ships just from the use of a couple heavys and the 20% from A rated boosters for resists... this in turn will see more pvp devolve into plasma vomit festivals to feed on absolute damage (not that its a far cry from now lol). Just jacking up booster power draw doesn't solve the issue.
Just because power output is a parallel issue doesn't mean it will solve the HP inflation. They correlate, but you can't hope to solve one by modifying the other. I get that they used to be directly related, but engineering already blew that to crap, there is no going back without reversing engineering completely or removing engineering effects in their entirety. You are better off directly correcting the underlying condition of shielding buffs.
Think back to how fast shielding skyrocketed after engineering. This has been an escalating issue since engineers dropped. Now think about what else might also be an issue, but isn't apparent due to the massive shield values. Adjusting it so there is a cap on +% to shielding fixes the issue now and in perpetuity even if they buff the hell out of engineering yet again... it will simple be easier to hit that cap.