I'm fairly convinced that the decision to nerf the AX missile AP (or breach?) was NOTHING TO DO with balancing or any response to the many instances of player solo-killing Thargoid Interceptors.It seems pretty clear that it was fully intended and expected that the Thargoids would be found to be particularly vulnerable to a certain choice of tactical approach (if reverse throttle can be called 'approach') and that this would be realised swiftly.That some people seem to think this was a knee jerk reaction to undermine player creativity and efforts is just way off the mark and misses the very wide barn door of a plot hole FDev have actually left.It also seems rather clear that this was anticipated and expected by FDev and that the intention was very clearly there from roll out of 2.4 that the missiles would be developed, used in the field, tactics identified, then --- something to change this effectiveness.This is where the problem really lies. That "something to change the effectiveness" was supposed to be a marked noticeable reqction of the Thargoids in adapting and responding to the threat accordingly - Some have made good analogies with the 'Borg' from Star Trek universe and their ability to adaptively alter shield harmonics to render the federations' phasers ineffective.This would have been fine and an excellent development if only the Thargoids had actually adapted in this method (as the GalNet and FDev statements seem to want to suggest) - but instead, sadly, this was tackled from the completely opposite end and had the missiles weakened instead of the Thargoids improved, leaving the majority of folk who actually have an interest beyond the base numbers mechanics scratching theuir heads in confusion.
AX Ordinance NOT a balance Issue
- Thread starter Archduke
- Start date
100% agree with you bud.
Weaksauce game design if that's the case. Instead of well thought out balanced combat, put out untested unbalanced weapons, watch how people solo thargoids with them, then close down those methods and nerf the weapons the following week. Rinse and repeat each week with multis, rails, cannons etc
In that case welcome to 2.4 beta, as if there was any doubt that we're all still just playing a continuous beta.
To me it seems that these "early" weapons were more powerfull then FD intended, imho killing Thargoids solo so quickly was not anticipated so they nerfed it and made up a story justifying the nerf.
I could or hope to be wrong but I've never seen such questionable gamedesign before.
Now we have class 2 missile racks that have been rendered useless within a week and no one will buy them, logical addition to the game, no?
I'm sorry, I realy like 2.4 so far but I realy can't see any logic or fun gameplay addition in this.
The answer, just follow Galnet and run the CGs, is cheap imho, I realy realy hope this whole narative process isn't tied together with endless CGs.
I could or hope to be wrong but I've never seen such questionable gamedesign before.
Now we have class 2 missile racks that have been rendered useless within a week and no one will buy them, logical addition to the game, no?
I'm sorry, I realy like 2.4 so far but I realy can't see any logic or fun gameplay addition in this.
The answer, just follow Galnet and run the CGs, is cheap imho, I realy realy hope this whole narative process isn't tied together with endless CGs.
The problem is they said it in the change log, if they simply left the in game stat sheet the same and lower the strength of the weapons and release the reports of thargoids becoming immune to the new weapons on galnet before hand, no one would be any wiser what frontier did behind the scenes to achieve what they wanted to achieve and make their lives as easy as possible.
This one of the side effects of game developers being open about what they are doing behind the scenes and its interfering with in universe lore.
I love the idea of them "adapting" but I don't think FD did that in the best possible way. Maybe they could've made them go through a stage of temporary retreat where we would see drastically less NHSS's and then they could come back having adapted. Just having them adapt after a week seems a tiny bit cheap and makes everything seem like its revolving around the CGs.
Except it was hinted months ago that there would be some sort of arms race between the humans an the Thargoids in a stream.
The only mistake they made is to reveal what they change in the change log and being a bit slow with the galnet update. Easily fix for future installments.
This is wise.
I saw FD trying to do two things. One reduce effectiveness of AX against Thargoids obviously .. with a lore reason being Thargoids can adapt, which the Borg can do and is not unreasonable. Normally you'd increase the Thargoids shield strength for that lore, truth. HOWEVER the other dynamic is the pro-Thargoid league. People are feeding them imperial slaves and so on an the Thargs like that .. it puts a new dynamic in the game to reduce AX in PvP - because it makes Tharg hunting a dangerous business for two reasons - the Thargs AND the saboteurs.
In development that's one fix .. the patch notes - which who knows, were late maybe rushed and let's face it Frontier are only human beings - should probably have said; (a) Thargoid's buffed and (b) AX effect on player ships reduced. That's two lore reasons for one code change but in the end people would probably have seen through it anyway. Frontier could easily have decided they were going to have to take a hit for the fact that this couldn't be beta tested without the spoiler element coming into play. It's one thing to know the relative DPS and hit points . it's another maybe, when the whole playerbase is sharing tactics and jumping in on the content, big time.
I fear that the whole narrative process will be revolving around CGs.
I so hope to be proven wrong but I fear the worst.
Prepare yourselfs for weeks of grinding CGs, that's where I'm worried about.
No, the mistake was that Frontier adjusted the wrong thing. Brett stated that the change was included in the patch notes because he feared that people would notice the missile damage values changing in the journal anyway. You want to know how to prevent that? Don't touch the AX missiles that people worked hard for, and instead adjust the thing that the story is trying to convey in the first place. You know, change the Thargoids themselves instead, not the missiles. THAT was the crux of the mistake on Frontier's part.
If you want to impart the feeling that the Thargoids are adapting and getting tougher, make them tougher.
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I don't buy the rebalancing explanation either, because the missiles were balanced just fine on launch. It requires a minimum of 4 missile racks to take down a thargoid by yourself, accounting for a couple of missed shots, and that's exactly the number they were artificially limited to with no explanation. If they weren't meant to be killable by a solo commander to begin with, they would have been limited to a number that wasn't enough to take one down by yourself.
They were balanced, they were tested, their function up until the change was intended. They were changed in the patch to make the missiles obsolete in the most hamfisted and low effort way possible. No change in thargoid behaviour or appearance over time that would indicate any kind of resistance to our attacks, just one day they work the next they don't, with nothing more than a weak galnet post to justify it after the fact.
Awful game design and storytelling, I don't know what they were thinking, but it sure as hell doesn't bode well for their ability to produce a "narrative focused rolling update."
I'd have much rather had landing on lava worlds to round out horizons but I guess they've diverted too many devs to jurassic park whatever to be able to do anything beyond reuse existing assets and tweak spreadsheet numbers.
They were balanced, they were tested, their function up until the change was intended. They were changed in the patch to make the missiles obsolete in the most hamfisted and low effort way possible. No change in thargoid behaviour or appearance over time that would indicate any kind of resistance to our attacks, just one day they work the next they don't, with nothing more than a weak galnet post to justify it after the fact.
Awful game design and storytelling, I don't know what they were thinking, but it sure as hell doesn't bode well for their ability to produce a "narrative focused rolling update."
I'd have much rather had landing on lava worlds to round out horizons but I guess they've diverted too many devs to jurassic park whatever to be able to do anything beyond reuse existing assets and tweak spreadsheet numbers.
Agreed. There is nothing in the lore - original game lore based on what I've read on the web, original lore now showing up in the game (scout ship wreckage, Thargoid war monitoring outposts), or in the official ED books - to indicate that the Thargoid are the organic Borg.
If the missiles were a little too powerful, than tone them down somewhat. Instead, we're back to fighting is hopeless until the next miracle weapon is released via CG.
Honestly, even though they were being destroyed by some commanders, even some doing it solo, I didn't think "Oh gee, the Thargoids are pushovers" because it was always a case of only ONE Thargoid ship. Ok, how well will we do against 2, 3, 4, etc. at a time? Or different models of their ships?
I'm fine with the drone swarms becoming more accurate (e.g. fine tuning the AI to where the Devs actually wanted it), I'm not ok with our countermeasures suddenly not working, and the AX missiles being so massively nerfed... wow.
And let's assume, for a minute, that the way the missiles are NOW are they way they should be and that they will be an effective tool when combined with newer weapons that will be released: how do we know that will last? Or are they just going to "adapt" again and were screwed?
I hadn't yet had a chance to pick up the previously released gear and give it a test. I'd been busy, when playing, doing runs for the current CG (currently in top 10%). Now I've lost all interest. It was bad enough with the doubt hanging around out there that the AX missiles didn't come in size 3 launcher, as seen in the Corvette in the cinematic, because that CG didn't reach a high tier (this would be an EASY thing for Dev to answer YES or NO to), but now the missiles don't do crap?!
Screw it. I'm avoiding the Thargoids and just going to finish my climb to Elite in Combat by bounty hunting and Elite in Exploration by doing Long Range passenger missions - the latter of which, I had been holding off on until we got the new long range nav plotting. No reason to stick around in the bubble to see how this slowly unfolds. I've lost interest already.
You seem to be under the impression (here and elsewhere) that the only problem, is that FDev revealed the details of the missile nerf via patch notes.Thois is not the problem.The problem is that the missile nerf does not plausibly represent Thargoids adapting - which is what it was intended to do.
Yeah, I think what they are trying to get across is, that if they had done an under the hood nerf to the missiles, without leaving any tracks the players could see (including in the API etc) then it would have looked exactly like the thargoids had been buffed. The patch notes were not the only problem though, they would have had to have made the missile do the exact same damage to human ships in all ways, and somehow tricked the logs/API into thinking they were doing the dame damage to the Thargoids.
I have literally no idea why they couldn't just buff the Thargoids, that just seems sensible, but as they didn't, then... well, there must have been some technical reason for it.