Patch Notes Update April Update - Patch Notes

[Ziljan]

A cursory glance at your post history in this thread shows otherwise. If you've changed your mind in the face of evidence that's great, (a rare case of internet discourse actually bearing fruit?) but trying to stealthily backpedal from an untenable stance isn't likely to fool anyone.

"A cursory glance" means you didn't catch my drift I guess. I am not back pedaling, and no I haven't changed my mind, though I am very much capable of doing so. I think the current implementation if added as per the patch notes would be without a doubt OP, as I've stated from the beginning, and it would need to be patched in short order to a more reasonable level. But even though I am not remotely married to the new changes, I think something with these knock-on effects needs to be implemented in order to curb the infestation of boost spamming (without making non-combat planetary exploration flying unfun) and to add some necessary variety to utility slots which are currently dominated by shield boosters. Also, people seem to be forgetting that the old drag while not entirely useless was kinda weak and almost completely hard countered by virtually free permaboost which virtually ignores pips, at least in terms of speed. So unlike some others have claimed, I think it was reasonable for Frontier to buff drag munitions. But by this much? No. At least not for more than the hopefully brief bootleg "beta" period required to shake out what needed to change for the long term health of the game.

I don't think anything I say will impact what Frontier decide to do, but tbh I felt a foolish urge to speak up in part because I am a little tired of people freaking out every time Frontier try to change the game even a little and pull their hair out saying the sky is falling. Clearly the game will survive this minor patch cycle. And clearly will return to a reasonable level of balance going forward. And tbh, I hope that means that more people can fly more kinds and sizes of ships viably. That is my eye-on-the-prize wish for game balance.

 

[Boff'in]

The Adder, have you fixed her landing gear sticking up through the cockpit floor since The last "beyond" update?

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

Understood, I'll feed that back as well!

Thanks Paige!

 

[Slange Lands]

I agree with this. So we can keep PvP talk out of an April update that focuses on the new player experience and not on PvP. That way, we can help ensure the posts remain constructive and relevant.
Great suggestion.

Unfortunately, the drag munitions effect will very adversely affect the new player experience in Open.

1. It will be even easier to gank. Even if a newbie knows about high waking they will not be able to escape if indeed the drag munitions has no cool down. The attacker will spam drag and then dps to obliteration because the target can't move as unpredictably or make themselves more difficult to target. It's basically a magic Sitting Duck Spell.

2. It is very easy to unlock the engineer that does drag munitions and it's only necessary to get grade 1 to apply the experimental.

3. Drag munitions go through shields.

4. One of the most important engineers for survivability is Selene Jean and it takes a lot of dedication and a lot of repetitive gameplay to unlock her.

5. Some PvPers will rebel by ganking even more. Perhaps this is unsavory to many, but outrageous behavior attracts media attention, which any company would be a fool not to heed. Some PvPers are so despairing with very unbalanced game mechanic implementations that they feel their only recourse is to garner negative media publicity so that Frontier will actually address those issues.

6.It maybe easy to claim that one is a lone wolf that plays in Solo or "Why should I care?" We all should care because Elite Dangerous is a sum of all its parts and we have no idea how Frontier interprets its player data. It is very likely, however, the more people there are who are happy playing the game, the more likely they are to purchase in game items and the more resources Frontier will allocate to Elite.

o7

 

[znôrt]

I'll explain what I meant. For any ship that can't change momentum/direction quickly and indefinitely with permaboost (eg any ship that is not an FDL) when you boost you invariably leave yourself flat footed (what some people called "stalled") or at least partially stalled and easier to hit.

you do not bleed speed when just boosting with perpendicular thrusters, in fact combining all three thrust axes is the most acceleration you can get (baring gravity). in any ship. if you rotate at the same time indeed you could stall, but why would you? it seems to me you are describing versions of 'boost flip' where you use the momentum to change attitude, and then that drift can indeed be the result, but with horizontal/vertical boost you can displace trajectory barely affecting attitude and without any slow down. actually, likely you will speed up, it all depends on how much rotation you add to the maneuver, but very little is necessary to, e.g., keep facing your target (eg. cricle strafing).

So while this might seem like an "evasion" it is actually setting yourself up for a clean shot in a few seconds. There are exceptions and methods for escape well enough temporarily by use of boost to get out of range, but these depend entirely on match up of ships.

yeah of course 'evasion' is a generic concept. i understand it here as the sudden avoidance of an incoming projectile (or ship) but of course without getting stuck in the process. the best techique for this is plain lateral/vertical boost, and i don't see how you could generate enough displacement without the multiplicative effect of 2 or more thrust axes and boost.

 

[S3B4ST13N]

Unfortunately, the drag munitions effect will very adversely affect the new player experience in Open.

1. It will be even easier to gank. Even if a newbie knows about high waking they will not be able to escape if indeed the drag munitions has no cool down. The attacker will spam drag and then dps to obliteration because the target can't move as unpredictably or make themselves more difficult to target. It's basically a magic Sitting Duck Spell.

2. It is very easy to unlock the engineer that does drag munitions and it's only necessary to get grade 1 to apply the experimental.

3. Drag munitions go through shields.

4. One of the most important engineers for survivability is Selene Jean and it takes a lot of dedication and a lot of repetitive gameplay to unlock her.

5. Some PvPers will rebel by ganking even more. Perhaps this is unsavory to many, but outrageous behavior attracts media attention, which any company would be a fool not to heed. Some PvPers are so despairing with very unbalanced game mechanic implementations that they feel their only recourse is to garner negative media publicity so that Frontier will actually address those issues.

6.It maybe easy to claim that one is a lone wolf that plays in Solo or "Why should I care?" We all should care because Elite Dangerous is a sum of all its parts and we have no idea how Frontier interprets its player data. It is very likely, however, the more people there are who are happy playing the game, the more likely they are to purchase in game items and the more resources Frontier will allocate to Elite.

o7

Thank you for this.
All I saw was a bunch of people arguing about PvP; looked like it was quickly derailing.

 

[maxfaded]

Thank you, a lot of the bug fixes were ones I've been wanting and asking for. I will jump back into the game now. Appreciate all the work you do.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

3. Drag munitions go through shields.

Maybe the only aspect that needs to change is this to make it worthwhile getting but not as bad as its predicted to be by some.

Of course, it won't stop the gamking of unshielded type 9s/Anacondas, but there again, do you really need to use drag munitions against those anyway? If so, you might want a slightly faster ship.

 

[KILLCO37]

Keep up the good work!

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

5. Some PvPers will rebel by ganking even more. Perhaps this is unsavory to many, but outrageous behavior attracts media attention, which any company would be a fool not to heed. Some PvPers are so despairing with very unbalanced game mechanic implementations that they feel their only recourse is to garner negative media publicity so that Frontier will actually address those issues.

And that equals blackmailing coercion and should be bannable for life.

 

[Old Duck]

And that equals blackmailing and should be bannable for life.

By playing the game the way it was designed? DDoS is blackmail, ganking is not.

 

[znôrt]

<ot>

And that equals blackmailing and should be bannable for life.

you can have ideas as crazy and silly as you wish, but try to be true to the commonly accepted meaning of words while selling them.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail )
</ot>

 

[Screemonster]

Maybe the only aspect that needs to change is this to make it worthwhile getting but not as bad as its predicted to be by some.

Of course, it won't stop the gamking of unshielded type 9s/Anacondas, but there again, do you really need to use drag munitions against those anyway? If so, you might want a slightly faster ship.

Eh, that'll just shift things even further in favour of shieldtanks over hulltanks/hybrids, as if they weren't already skewed in that direction with the 100% module protection that shields offer.

I'd probably be okay with drags interrupting boost briefly or making boosting while under their influence less effective if they didn't also come with the 0-pip debuff.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

<ot>


you can have ideas as crazy and silly as you wish, but try to be true to the commonly accepted meaning of words while selling them.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail )
</ot>

You are correct, I am sorry. It is of course coercion, not blackmailing.

 

[Ziljan]

Maybe the only aspect that needs to change is this to make it worthwhile getting but not as bad as its predicted to be by some.

As it is, people already flee when they get down to 1 ring of shields. And it would just be a further nerf of drag munitions, which prior to this patch didn't need any kind of nerf since it was already hard countered by permaboost.

They would be better off keeping drag as it was, and nerfing permaboost. Permaboost needed nerfing for a lot of reasons beyond obviating drag munitions.

 

[znôrt]

6.It maybe easy to claim that one is a lone wolf that plays in Solo or "Why should I care?" We all should care because Elite Dangerous is a sum of all its parts and we have no idea how Frontier interprets its player data. It is very likely, however, the more people there are who are happy playing the game, the more likely they are to purchase in game items and the more resources Frontier will allocate to Elite.

worry not, frontier and the shop are doing already brilliantly with completely broken multiplayer and zillions of magic effects like this one.

storm in a teacup. someone had a genius idea 'for an improvement', turns out it wasn't that good as it seemed. personally, i could think this one-liner was deliberately crafted as to create all this fuss just for the sake of it, if i'd attribute that level of foresight to frontier, that is. it's a screw up, they will fix it, and if they don't ... elite open experience and pvp support won't change dramatically from what they are now anyway. we're talking here like some incredible platform could get spoiled, when it actually never existed. it's all fake

 

[Sylow]

And that equals blackmailing and should be bannable for life.

By playing the game the way it was designed? DDoS is blackmail, ganking is not.

If the intention is to damage the developer and publisher, it is.

Case in point: Neocron 2. Yea, probably unknown to many here and for good reason. It also had plenty of issues. But it ran fine and successfully for many years, despite a plethora of bugs. Till a player group decided to "fix" the game by massive bug abuse to "force" the developer to fix things. (Unfortunately Reakktor was too hesitant to ban. So out of fear of loosing a dozen of players, they lost almost the complete playerbase. )

It indeed resulted in less bug abuse. It drove away many people of the already small player base, resulting in completely stopping all development. Zero income makes it hard to pay developers, who might've thought?

So indeed, if somebody clearly states that he is ganking in an attept to force FDs hand, banishment is the very only reasonable answer. The problem might be how to prove it, though.

And yes, this is very off topic, but considering the rest of this thread, i don't feel guily and more.

 

[Phisto Sobanii]

And that equals blackmailing coercion and should be bannable for life.

What rubbish!

 

[znôrt]

If the intention is to damage the developer and publisher, it is.

damage the developer? this is the "beyond" expansion of "silly" ...

 

[znôrt]

So indeed, if somebody clearly states that he is ganking in an attept to force FDs hand, banishment is the very only reasonable answer. The problem might be how to prove it, though.

first, there have been several "political" gank operations in the history of elite already, many advertised on this same forum (that's why i knew of them).

second, good luck proving it (i mean purely any worngdoing in any ganking event, let alone intention). it might be more of a problem than you make it seem.

of course frontier could smash the ban hammer for stuff like this as much as they pleased. i doubt that would be a wise move. having people tweeting and posting about your game is very good, even if it's bad. a riot isn't.