CQC: What Is This?

[Good Whiskey]

That thread.

In 2015, Frontier announced a CQC tournament. The $100,000 wasn't a prize. It was the total budget.

The tournament was cancelled in July. Frontier cited "delays".

Its successor, the Icarus Cup, was also cancelled. Frontier cited nothing.

Today, I played CQC for the first time. My best result saw me winning a full DM. It was one of only 3 full matches I had all day.

Over the course of the next 8 hours (on and off) and 20+ TDM and DM matches, I averaged 14 minutes of wait time for matches to start, found myself in a very small pool of players, and at the end of it I have absolutely no idea why anyone would play it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure some people have their reasons for enjoying it and becoming great at it, but I couldn't find one for me. I am 60% into Mostly Helpless and I have no intention of ever going back. Not because I lost. I did. But I also won a bunch. I just don't care.

Does anyone here have any idea why this entirely separate game mode, which is part of the flagship game of a £500 million market cap developer, is so unbelievably unloved?

Why did they keep announcing tournaments and cancelling them? Why is there no rank balancing in the matchmaking? Why are there no decent rewards for spending your time in this mode other than unlocking mode-specific loadouts and watching people explode? Why are there only 3 game types and so few maps that you can count them on one hand? Why does nobody at Frontier care about CQC at all? This is a legitimate, honest, painful question to ask. Is it total incompetence or utter disinterest in their part? Because this is just sad.

 

[Iron Golem]

I would like to see it tied into the galaxy. A place you can go, Arena style world where maybe the Pilots Federation hosts events and you participate via telepresence. Get sponsored. Lets put all the power play modules as cqc rewards instead. The skys the limit...

Anything. Right now it falls rather flat. Have a stock ship class leagues of all ships in game and a modified class. Jeez it makes perfect sense to me and I consider it a huge missed opportunity.

Let it have an underground gambling den where you can bet mats and credits. Let you submit your npc crew and builds against other peoples.

 

[Good Whiskey]

I would like to see it tied into the galaxy.

You mentioned this to me. I really don't understand why it isn't more fleshed out like you've described. Why aren't simple things that would make it interesting like minor faction sponsorships and free ship customization and some kind of well-organized wing competition system in place?

Anything. Right now it falls rather flat. Have a stock ship class leagues of all ships in game and a modified class. Jeez it makes perfect sense to me and I consider it a huge missed opportunity.

It's mind-boggling. There is no effort whatsoever here. Seriously, if they didn't care about this mode, why do we have it?

 

[Sysmon]

CQC is the only way and place to balance PvP in Elite Dangerous. It is rather fun when it is actually up and going. But it is not really implemented, and as Iron Golem wrote, it would benefit from being tied into the main game in some form. A tournament, maybe a set of type races. Lots of opportunities not yet realised.

S

 

[Good Whiskey]

A tournament, maybe a set of type races. Lots of opportunities not yet realised.

That's kinda my point. They announced tournaments. They've been "announcing" them since 2015! Have they just given up?

It's been 5 years and this is all there is?

 

[Sysmon]

It's part of a theme: "We want balanced PvP!" yelled a vocal minority of the player base; we got CQC. "We want RTS elements!" yelled a vocal minority of the player base; we got Powerplay. "We want RPG elements!" yelled a vocal minority of the player base; we got Engineers.

See a pattern?

S

 

[Good Whiskey]

It's part of a theme: "We want balanced PvP!" yelled a vocal minority of the player base; we got CQC. "We want RTS elements!" yelled a vocal minority of the player base; we got Powerplay. "We want RPG elements!" yelled a vocal minority of the player base; we got Engineers.

See a pattern?

I do. I do see a pattern.

Has anyone else noticed that the reason why this half-baked approach to implementing new features (that Frontier obviously doesn't care about) is taken is because Frontier doesn't actually seem to have any sort of vision of their own for these things?

Just like you, people always say this to me. "A small group asked for this". Why aren't versions of these features already something that Frontier has developed or implemented on their own terms? Are they really so devoid of original ideas that they only implement lazy versions of what people moan for?

 

[Taifu]

Ahh... Interesting can of worms you have reopened opened there.

Fingers crossed it will be informative as well as entertaining.

 

[Sysmon]

I do. I do see a pattern.

Has anyone else noticed that the reason why that half-baked approach to implementing new features that Frontier obviously doesn't care about is taken is because Frontier doesn't actually seem to have any sort of vision of their own for these things?

Just like you, people always say this to me. "A small group asked for this". Why aren't versions of these features already something that Frontier has developed or implemented on their own terms? Are they really so devoid of original ideas that they only implement lazy versions of what people moan for?

FDEV focused from the beginning on building a radically different game from pretty much anything else, a full-size Milky Way with a relatively simple arcade-style spaceship UI our interface to a very complex world. Rather than them not caring, I think the problem then is that they tried to listen to the player base, even after the kickstarter ended. I think this complexity is getting in the way of implementing many of these stock-standard game features that people are pining for. Especially implementing these features in any manner that will look similar to or better than what is in other games.

And because the graphics, sound and general feel of the galaxy are so awesome, we expect the same level of awesome on whatever new stuff arrives. Unfortunately (for some?), the main places the game can probably still be awesome are in features that were part of the original vision: So we might see some awesome planetary and atmospheric updates. But all the standard gamey stuff will keep looking jarring.

I think FDEV cares a lot. They just did not make it easy for themselves.

S

 

[Good Whiskey]

Fingers crossed it will be informative as well as entertaining.

"Informative" is an interesting choice of word.

I think FDEV cares a lot. They just did not make it easy for themselves.

Look, I understand this argument, but I don't really see any complexity at all to these systems. Seriously, I don't. And even then, they don't need to be complex to be entertaining. A new story on GalNet each week. A detailed developer interface. CQC badges and achievements and ship customization and mission goals and rewards. Actual rewards. Some new lifeforms and some small science work. These things don't take years for coding geniuses to do.

The size of the galaxy is irreverent. Almost all of it is completely empty and always will be. If you are going to have features like CQC, add a ton of little things to keep us interested and boost the number of people playing it. Give it module rewards like PP. Let it make us real money. Again, these are not big, complex, expensive things. The fact that they were never done doesn't say to me "Wow, Frontier must have been so busy doing something massive!". I just think they don't give a gentle caress.

 

[Red Anders]

From initial inclusion in the game, even Powerplay has had more continuing development than CQC. Just think about that for a minute.

 

[metatheurgist]

It's just not that popular. FD have use stats; they concluded it just wasn't worth the outlay for those events. It's fundamental flaw is being a separate game mode.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Three possibilities:

1) Totally unsubstantiated theory - CQC was forced on FD by MS as part of the Xbox deal. FD didn't want to do it and had no love for the mode, seeing it as a distraction.

2) Just another feature which FD started but then never really followed through on making it really polished due to chasing the next feature.

3) This one ties in with a comment made by someone at FD a few years ago, where they said if sometihng isn't popular they won't put more effort into it in order to make it popular (IIRC it was in relation to multicrew or PP?).

Take your pick.

Overall, I like CQC, its a nice little mode, but there is no incentive to play it. I've suggested in the past using it to allow customization of your SLFs. So as you unlock things in CQC you unlock those same modules for your SLFs.

 

[Layne Vakarian]

I just wish they'd take it off the status. I'll never reach Elite in CQC and it's like a blot on my personal record. One that I never expected nor asked for.

 

[Wyaston Hypatia]

It was a flop. The why's and wherefores can be debated long into the night, but in the end it just never had the take up of players.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Why did they keep announcing tournaments and cancelling them?

The original one, because they needed to do more work on CQC to get it to work, and it got dropped from the roadmap. Whether the drop was because the delays to getting 2.1 out the door at all meant that they had to seriously reconsider the entire roadmap, or because even back then the bare-bones state of the mode meant people just didn't play it much and it didn't look worth trying to recover ... probably a bit of both.

The Icarus Cup (which was main-game PvP, not CQC), probably because at the time main-game PvP balance was so terrible they'd basically had to make it "no engineering" for the rules, and then realised this would be a terrible advert for Horizons.
(Things are better with engineering nowadays, but the player-run PvP tournaments still ban a couple of engineering options, so they probably wouldn't want to run anything official until that can be balanced out)

Why is there no rank balancing in the matchmaking?

There is - but it has a preference for constructing matches at all. When there is a large enough player base the matchmaker does try to keep similar ranks together in Deathmatch, and given suitable material can give reasonable splits in team modes.
(Also, the ranks it uses for balancing are not the visible ones but an ELO-type hidden rating, and new players tend to get overestimated ELO unless they've done a lot of main-game combat already)

Why are there no decent rewards for spending your time in this mode other than unlocking mode-specific loadouts and watching people explode?

Partly there's an implementation bug which means that your earnings don't go up as you Prestige, but reset instead. If that wasn't there you could make pretty decent cash - by the standards of the 1.4 release - by playing CQC a lot.

Partly because the earnings were set fairly low in 1.4, and then almost everything else in the game has got so much more profitable. Nowadays they could multiply the payouts by 100 and they still wouldn't be very much compared with most other activities.

Partly because watching people explode is the reward.

Why are there only 3 game types and so few maps that you can count them on one hand?

More maps, definitely. More game types, at the moment, would sadly just spread out the existing player base even thinner.

From initial inclusion in the game, even Powerplay has had more continuing development than CQC.

I don't know how true that is. Up until the bug fixes in 3.6, CQC had a much better record for those, and a few feature tweaks over the years as well.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I still suspect it will make a reappearance within space legs. I've always thought of there being an indoor seated amphitheatre type room where pilots can go play CQC with a host of bonuses, races, etc. Certainly it could be something to do when you get out of your seat. That said it wouldn't entirely surprise me if they removed it completely. I hope not though, it needs some in game reason to play.

 

[zimms]

It was a fluff thread. CQC is now more focused on in-game matches.

 

[ethelred]

I think Agony has it under "2"

2) Just another feature which FD started but then never really followed through on making it really polished due to chasing the next feature.

You can file Powerplay, multicrew and to a certain extent SRVs to this too. It's classic FDEV - add a feature but not think about how it fits into the whole and most importantly "What gameplay does it add?"

I'm an optimist so the whole new BIG THING that is coming at 2020/2021 will be a rework of all or some of these. My pessimist self says it will be space legs and the opportunity to walk around a copy paste station or my ship with no interaction. Which like CQC and multicrew and Powerplay is what most CMDRs will do once.

 

[Rat Catcher]

CQC is PvP for folk with a generous sense of humour, nothing more or less. it isn't popular as it is:

• Out of the main game
• Small ships only, and just a handful of those
• Impossible to 'mine salt' as there is no 'loss' in CQC
• Impossible to bring in the carefully crafted 'Death machines' created in game...

'Serious' PvP players will shun something that is fun and a kill can happen in seconds because... actually I have no idea!

Sounds to me just like another bleat for the sake of it... may as well had posted "I don't like cabbage..." fortunately, like virtually every activity in the game (apart from flying a spaceship) CQC is optional and no-one will force you to play it.