Dear Sandro,
I am grateful for this statement. I understand why you felt the changes to the 'Big 3' needed more work.
However, concerning the principal broken part of PvP at present - the absurd TTK on a fully Engineered FdL, especially 1v1 - I am dismayed that 2.2.03 has simply made matters worse.
In summary:
- Overcharged nerfed
- Rapid fire nerfed
- Phasing nerfed
- Feedback cascade nerfed
- Shield regen BUFFED
- Heavy duty booster stacking left as is
In short, damage down, hp up ... so TTK up.
This seems completely counter-productive and runs directly contrary to your own recent statement that it was undesirable for TTK on "unbreakable" FdL's to be so high 1v1 due to Engineers boosting defences by "an order of magnitude" more than damage.
I repeat that the patch has just made the very evil you identified worse.
It is unfortunate and ironic that after high hopes of advancement we have actually just taken a step back.
I really hope therefore that this deteriorating situation can be remedied as a matter of urgency.
Thanks indeed,
Truesilver
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I come out of the PvE corner (long time Möbius resident here with very limited PvP experience, i only once in a while go and usually loose a duel) and see it the very same way.
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All the changes to the weapon blueprints i appreciate a lot. Thanks to them now overcharged is not the one and only to use, but there's a number of them worth using, depending on setup, piloting style, taste and preference. This is awesome and was exactly what the game needed in terms of weapon blueprints. (Mind you, i still see things to do, but we went a huge step ahead with this patch for this aspect. )
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Unfortunately for shield boosters, we had the same chance of variety at hand, but it was stopped at the very last moment. I mean, face it: whoever in the current system doesn't fill most of his utility slots with engineered shield boosters is simply "doing it wrong". They currently are the undisputed king of the utility slot and nothing but perhaps one or two heat sink launchers can ever hope to take a slot there.
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Things like chaff, point defense or ECM at the current state could just as well be deleted from the game and nobody of the older players would even notice it. In the beta, with diminishing returns for shield boosters in place, people suddenly used the other defensive options. Mind you, we also found some potential flaws and problems on them, but those existed since a longg time, just nobody ever bothered for such vastly inferior garbage, so they were not noticed.
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And also one sidenote for all those, who fight for shield booster stacking to protect newer players: Cut it. It's ridiculous. You want to keep your god-ships and nothing else. A beginner doesn't start in a ship with six or eight utility slots. A beginner doesn't start with access to engineers and materials for them. The beginner still has to work with his non-engineered sidewinder and whatever he buys next, with small shields and few or no shield boosters. Nothing good comes out of the shield booster meta for the beginner, while the meta at the same time puts pressure on FD to implement more challenging content. It's not so hard to see what happens to the beginner in a non-engineered stepping-stone ship (because currently all ships with fewer than six utility slots are stepping-stone ships) in case content arrives which is balanced around the current shield meta.
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So actually not only for the sake of variety in the game, for more options for the players and more diverse setups, but also for the benefit of the new player, the current shieldbooster meta has to be broken. Anybody who can look out of the limits the egocentric "i grinded for that, so i now can be bored in a god-ship" viewpoint should be able to see the problems and understand that fixes are required.
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