Observed Yamiks and his combat stream

Morbad

Morbad
While I certainly have my complaints regarding flight dynamics, Engineering, half-finished inflationary combat mechanisms, there are still a few counter points I'd like to make:

  • Not all combat can be fit neatly into any one mold or meta and even in the game's current state watching a single stream will give one a very incomplete look at PvP in ED.
  • What Yamiks does to entertain viewers while flying comedy builds is probably not particularly representative.
  • In combat synthesis doesn't need to be made any easier...the only thing more absurd than many loadouts needing to replicate new ammunition in the middle of the fight is that it's actually possible to do so. Likewise, being able to manage your ship in combat is a skill I rather not see supplanted by macros, though it shouldn't be made arbitrarily difficult either...simply fixing some bugs with the module pane would suffice.

Aashenfox said:
PvP already is 100% rock paper scissors, and that's why I will continue to argue against anyone who claims that balance is terrible in this game, it really isn't. Whatever you got killed by, you can build a ship that will give you an advantage in the rematch if you know what you are doing.
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Rock-paper-scissors is not at all my ideal of balance.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Morbad said:
While I certainly have my complaints regarding flight dynamics, Engineering, half-finished inflationary combat mechanisms, there are still a few counter points I'd like to make:

  • Not all combat can be fit neatly into any one mold or meta and even in the game's current state watching a single stream will give one a very incomplete look at PvP in ED.
  • What Yamiks does to entertain viewers while flying comedy builds is probably not particularly representative.
  • In combat synthesis doesn't need to be made any easier...the only thing more absurd than many loadouts needing to replicate new ammunition in the middle of the fight is that it's actually possible to do so. Likewise, being able to manage your ship in combat is a skill I rather not see supplanted by macros, though it shouldn't be made arbitrarily difficult either...simply fixing some bugs with the module pane would suffice.


Rock-paper-scissors is not at all my ideal of balance.
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The other extreme is homogeneity...is that better?
 

Julio Montega

Julio Montega
You know, back in premium Beta combat was quick, fun,
deadly and getting the jump on someone was a good way to
favour the encounter to you winning.
It also made learning the game and being able to react on situations
with power management a key skill, next to knowing when to engage and when to run.

Now..... sleeping sounds
 

Sylow

Sylow
Aashenfox said:
The other extreme is homogeneity...is that better?
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And yet there's so much in between. The classical example is good old StarCraft. Three very different races, with very different playstyles, yet all were viable on all levels of gameplay, without one being seen as overpowered. (Edit: I have to correct, one was seen as rather overpowered by players early in the game, with limited knowledge about it. But while some people stagnated at that level, most grew out of it. ) So while the set of options is different, depending on which race you pick, victory or defeat in the end is determined by the players skill.

Directly transferring this to ED is hard. But it would already be great if FD would just sometimes strive for it, instead of following the path of power creep, leading to a very limited range of optimal choices.
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
Let's start out with pvp with friends is fun. If I show up with something silly like corrosive missiles or thermal vent beam turrets for every hp, it's just fun to goof off and see if you can win with whatever ridiculous build you come up with.

For me, I find pvp in Open with other folks inherently lopsided. 99% of the I am going from point A to B either engineering, mat gathering, completing a mission, or on my way to a CG or to listen to the latest audiofile drop. I rarely fly a modestly pvp capable ship.

I'm inevitably ganked in popular locations, I submit, boost, spiral, wake and go on about my day - it's kind of a silly dance.

I applaud Yamiks for showcasing that pvp can be fun, and I question why people would take his build or skills seriously - as though it was some sort of professional sport.

The game truly needs a pvp structures like actual mmos. 1v1, 4v4, gvg, and Battle Royale modes with rewards and ranking would help this dimension to the game quite a bit imo.

Until then, let Yamiks showcase the fun and encourage more players to give it a shot.
 

Frenotx

Frenotx
Drelthar said:
To be honest, I would personally prefer if shield cell banks, shield boosters, Guardian shield reinforcements, and hull reinforcements had never been implemented - along with all engineering being "sidegrades" which meant you would never be able to "even out" your resistances - you would always have some kind of real weakness - the same for weapons, gaining extra damage should have an actual downside that matters in all instances for one thing.
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I think defensive modules can bring interesting choices and gameplay to the table, but not the way they've been implemented. Totally agree on engineering, though- leaving your ship all factory spec should be a viable, even-approach choice.
 

Drelthar

Drelthar
Frenotx said:
I think defensive modules can bring interesting choices and gameplay to the table, but not the way they've been implemented. Totally agree on engineering, though- leaving your ship all factory spec should be a viable, even-approach choice.
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What annoyed me the most was being able to make multicannons, the weapons for shooting hulls, into lasers, the weapons for shooting shields, without the drawbacks the lasers had (power drain, heat)

There were plenty of things they could have done with multicannons without making them into lasers.
 

jasonbarron

jasonbarron
Frenotx said:
I think defensive modules can bring interesting choices and gameplay to the table, but not the way they've been implemented. Totally agree on engineering, though- leaving your ship all factory spec should be a viable, even-approach choice.
Click to expand...
Hey Frenotx!
 

Frenotx

Frenotx
DNA-Decay said:
I find even watching my own replay is boring.
And kinda shameful, as I watch mistake after mistake.
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I've had some fights that I think are fun to watch, but they're usually, well, unusual. Take this fight, for instance: since I'm set up to mine, my standard internal slots aren't stuffed with defense modules. My opponent has his fair share of SCBs, but it's kept somewhat in check by him having modules for actual pirating. The game would consistently be more interesting and conducive to organic fights if defensive modules could no longer be put into standard internal slots, and every ship (that doesn't already have some) were given at least one or two military slots to compensate.

Source: https://youtu.be/5PQUqt4qBWk
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Aashenfox said:
PvP already is 100% rock paper scissors, and that's why I will continue to argue against anyone who claims that balance is terrible in this game, it really isn't. Whatever you got killed by, you can build a ship that will give you an advantage in the rematch if you know what you are doing.

Example...

All gimballed multicannons is the easiest loadout to be effective with, so the PA meta was born to outdps it and that's how it works, provided you can hit with said PAs, you will always outdps a gimballed multicannon user. Then phasing hitscan builds came along to counter PA meta, now we're seeing the counter to the phasing builds in the form of long range beam builds (this is emerging now, please don't ask, I can't be bothered to explain how it works), and guess what...the counter is back to the beginning, the gimballed multicannons are the best counter to the death star builds. Only a well designed game provides this, and I'm happy to argue with anyone about it. Some of the special effects are silly, premium ammo is completely stupid, but apart from those few things, pvp in this game is in a decent place at the top level.

Reverski doesn't really have a hard counter except force shells, and stands out as a minor and cancerous exceptoin to this.
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Cancerous is the grindy inflation of time you have to put into the game to get to what you describe as "balanced".
 

Kissamies

Kissamies
I think engineering should have been mostly sidegrades and the upgrades very minor at most, but it'd be very hard to close that Pandora's box now that it's open. Perhaps something could still be done with shield boosters that they wouldn't be so stackable. A point of diminishing returns.

My own idea for that would be simply looking through the boosters for best values for boost and each resistance and only count that value. Negative effects would always count. With this system there would be no point of using more than 4 boosters and you might get away with just 2. Problem is that it's bit too formulaic and too restrictive to the unengineered people. Could perhaps soften it by having lesser bonuses count too, but with reduced effect, like 20%.

Some other ideas I have seen is having the boosters' power consumption be determined by the shield generator - that might lead to some creative use of low power mods - and the effect of heat attacks multiplied by the number of boosters.
 

Aashenfox

Aashenfox
Since we're seeing several posts on the same rough bent, I feel a need to point out that the genie can never be returned to the bottle on engineering.

The purpose of it is necessary. Offense and defense were too close to each other before. This meant that it only took a wing of two to attack a single pilot and that pilot did not have a chance. By increasing defense 1000% and dps only 100%, they gave the lone pilot at last a chance to survive an organised 4 man gank. This was necessary to keep (regular mortal, non master) players playing in Open. If just being seen by a wing of 2 or more is instant death, since the interdiction game and the balance of power are in favour of the attacker, who would bother? I say it's better now.

The side effects of that may not be desirable (10 minute pvp fights, 20 if you are absolute dog poo), but the main effect is 100% necessary and ing and moaning about it isn't going to change a thing.
 

zimms

zimms
Aashenfox said:
Since we're seeing several posts on the same rough bent, I feel a need to point out that the genie can never be returned to the bottle on engineering.

The purpose of it is necessary. Offense and defense were too close to each other before. This meant that it only took a wing of two to attack a single pilot and that pilot did not have a chance. By increasing defense 1000% and dps only 100%, they gave the lone pilot at last a chance to survive an organised 4 man gank. This was necessary to keep (regular mortal, non master) players playing in Open. If just being seen by a wing of 2 or more is instant death, since the interdiction game and the balance of power are in favour of the attacker, who would bother? I say it's better now.

The side effects of that may not be desirable (10 minute pvp fights, 20 if you are absolute dog poo), but the main effect is 100% necessary and ing and moaning about it isn't going to change a thing.
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Maybe this could be solved by having negative outcomes other than death.

I know it doesn't look like there will be some time for experimentation anytime soon, but just some food for thought. What if shields don't completely block damage. Let's say if your shield is down to 50%, 50% of the damage will bleed through etc.

We could have module damage, malfunctions, more viable hull tanks and combat wouldn't be completely centered around having your shields up.

I know this wouldn't solve all problems (if any at all) but I think I'd like to try that. Obviously there might be major drawbacks that I overlooked.
 

Sylow

Sylow
Kissamies said:
I think engineering should have been mostly sidegrades and the upgrades very minor at most, but it'd be very hard to close that Pandora's box now that it's open. Perhaps something could still be done with shield boosters that they wouldn't be so stackable. A point of diminishing returns.

My own idea for that would be simply looking through the boosters for best values for boost and each resistance and only count that value. Negative effects would always count. With this system there would be no point of using more than 4 boosters and you might get away with just 2. Problem is that it's bit too formulaic and too restrictive to the unengineered people. Could perhaps soften it by having lesser bonuses count too, but with reduced effect, like 20%.

Some other ideas I have seen is having the boosters' power consumption be determined by the shield generator - that might lead to some creative use of low power mods - and the effect of heat attacks multiplied by the number of boosters.
Click to expand...

I would so very much support this. Unfortunately FD already once tried to nerf shield booster engineering. Not as strongly as you suggest, it was just a case of diminishing returns at the very upper end. A small but very vocal group of people on the forum created a lot of noise against it during the beta. (Most of those who made all the noise were console players who had no access to the beta at all, along with some players who openly stated that they never even were on the beta server but simply hated it. )

So under the massive pressure of a small group of players, FD canceled even such a minor nerf. Now imagine what would happen when FD would try to implement a nerf of significant impact.
 

Voracity_T

Voracity_T
zimms said:
Maybe this could be solved by having negative outcomes other than death.

I know it doesn't look like there will be some time for experimentation anytime soon, but just some food for thought. What if shields don't completely block damage. Let's say if your shield is down to 50%, 50% of the damage will bleed through etc.

We could have module damage, malfunctions, more viable hull tanks and combat wouldn't be completely centered around having your shields up.

I know this wouldn't solve all problems (if any at all) but I think I'd like to try that. Obviously there might be major drawbacks that I overlooked.
Click to expand...


The problem with things like that is it still serves the ship that can keep its shields up for the longest. IE:Generally whomever has the biggest shields will win.

FDL has enough advantages without that being thrown into the mix. Also it would be the nail in the coffin for most biweave builds.

The only way to curb the stupidly over shielded ship problem is to either disallow ships from having more than a set number of boosters or banks.

Again this still aides the larger vessels and FDL as they will still have that much more shielding due to the individual multipliers, but it would no longer be about who can tank the most hits and far more about who is capable of putting out the damage faster and who is better at evasion. Not this bull where flying a biweave FDL is often a death scentence vs a prismo simply because with equal pilots the prismatic can take literally x4 more damage, before banks are even considered.

Thats where the issue lies. Ships having massive defences with zero significant downsides. There needs to be a hard limit regarding ship capability as otherwise the now vast % increases fro engineering just increase the dispaity between the have and have not ships As a result of this there are many ships that are simply not worth bothering with anyore as they pretty much just get roflstomped by the meta ships.

Don't get me wrong I love flying a large majority of ships and am afforded that ability pureley because of time played, but many do not have this freedom and half the ships should not be rendered useless untill you've "got the gud". Thats just illogical.

1 horse races are also boring for most.

Also, the balance is pretty tragic. Two weapons are viable across the sizes they come in, and thats the two weapons that dont suffer HPV penalties. IE: Rails and Plasma, both great and fun weapons, however. Just because of the fact they are the only things wih HPV's at 100, this creates a balance issue. Especially with PA's when the significant portion of damage output is absolute. This alone makes 90% of weapons redundant in most scenarios because you will be fighting those with PA's and Rails.

Two "One size fits all" weapons amongst a sea of trash, and a certain few ships being able to out defend pretty much anything that isnt one of them when equal pilots are involved is not balance, no matter how you dress it up.
 
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