Can we get the dev attitude towards dumbing down the game?

[Bangfish]

Will it continue or is there any balance patch in making? Currently the biggest issues (partial list) are as following:

1. Everything is made of rubber. Collisions don't matter at all.
2. Landing is not relevant anymore. Remove it from the game since it is a mere annoyace and time sink now. You need to pass out or fall asleep to even cause 1% structural damage to your ship during landing.
3. Interdictions have 100% evade chance.
4. No challenging encounters. AI is very dumb. Multiple enemy ships don't cooperate at all.
5. 100k bounty = harmless vipers as a response. They can't hit you and they know only one gambit aka suicide run.
6. Heat damage is too low.
7. No need to use things like silent running + advanced maneuvering. Even under heavy bounty I can just boost into the fed station with no problems at all.
8. Harmless NPC pilots flying expensive advanced ships with no shields.
9. Shield booster.
10. I am pretty sure most if not all encounters can be escaped just by mashing boost.
11. Intercepting cargo transporters has zero impact on economy.

There are also bugs regarding pirate/traders hunting missions, reputation etc. But I am more interested in whether aforementioned points are going to be addressed in near future or not.
Thanks.

 

[Adept]

Other rubbish, aside from maybe the shield boosters. Those are not needed.

 

[Max Steele]

Will it continue or is there any balance patch in making? Currently the biggest issues (partial list) are as following:

1. Everything is made of rubber. Collisions don't matter at all.
2. Landing is not relevant anymore. Remove it from the game since it is a mere annoyace and time sink now. You need to pass out or fall asleep to even cause 1% structural damage to your ship during landing.
3. Interdictions have 100% evade chance.
4. No challenging encounters. AI is very dumb. Multiple enemy ships don't cooperate at all.
5. 100k bounty = harmless vipers as a response. They can't hit you and they know only one gambit aka suicide run.
6. Heat damage is too low.
7. No need to use things like silent running + advanced maneuvering. Even under heavy bounty I can just boost into the fed station with no problems at all.
8. Harmless NPC pilots flying expensive advanced ships with no shields.
9. Shield booster.
10. I am pretty sure most if not all encounter can be escaped just by mashing boost.
11. Intercepting cargo transporters have zero impact on economy.

There are also bugs regardubg pirate/trade hunting missions, reputation etc. But I am more interested in whether aforementioned points are going to be addressed in near future or not.
Thanks.

I can't comment on your other points, but last night while flying in my hauler with stock shields, I boosted out of the station and mis-judged my exit point. I crashed into the wall above the slot and it put my shields offline and my damage went to 4%.

That doesn't sound like rubber to me....

 

[Tar Stone]

We sort of already had a dev response in the form of a comment DB made in an interview with PC Gamer. I will dig out a post I made on it and paste it in here.

I have praised this game to the high heavens since I started the beta, and this is my first real issue with it.

Ok, here's a copy & paste of a post I made when I was in a better mood...
from here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=81096&page=6&p=1306228&highlight=#post1306228


.........................
Here's a very recent interview that David Braben did with PC Gamer:
http://youtu.be/vN2BWY872M8?t=6m50s

At 06:50 David talks about something that he calls 'developer difficulty', were he describes the problem of having developers judge the difficulty of the game. Having intimate knowledge of the game, a developer will tend to make things more and more difficult, to the point that newcomers will be completely put off.

So it's clear that since launch, there has been a gradual reduction of difficulty based on feedback from newcomers on the forum.

In my opinion, I think Frontier are making a big mistake here that will hurt the longevity of the game for everyone. This is a sound policy in theory but I think the changes are being made much too quickly in response to the forum.

I'm not a developer and I don't have intimate knowledge of the game. I came in at premium beta, and played sparingly up until launch when I really got stuck in. I'm shocked at how quickly and quietly things are being made safer.

 

[ste]

I dont expect it to increase, it will only get lower if anything.

 

[KodiakAlpha]

It's so funny to see alternating threads of "The Game is too Hard!" and "The Game is too Easy!" I don't think it is going to be possible to get the level set to where everyone is happy. I personally am having a lot of fun with it as it is, but that is just me.

 

[bitstorm]

Just on (1).

I may be completely wrong on this but my understanding is that shields are great against kinetic weaponry, multi-cannons etc... while your hull itself isn't.

A ship collision is obviously a kinetic impact, it may be the case that if your shields are up (and 4 pipped) then they work brilliantly with collisions, however if they're down you're toast.

 

[adoredtv]

The game is too hard for noobs and too easy once you can fly your ship, that's the problem with it.

 

[terminatahx]

Will it continue or is there any balance patch in making? Currently the biggest issues (partial list) are as following:

1. Everything is made of rubber. Collisions don't matter at all.
2. Landing is not relevant anymore. Remove it from the game since it is a mere annoyace and time sink now. You need to pass out or fall asleep to even cause 1% structural damage to your ship during landing.
3. Interdictions have 100% evade chance.
4. No challenging encounters. AI is very dumb. Multiple enemy ships don't cooperate at all.
5. 100k bounty = harmless vipers as a response. They can't hit you and they know only one gambit aka suicide run.
6. Heat damage is too low.
7. No need to use things like silent running + advanced maneuvering. Even under heavy bounty I can just boost into the fed station with no problems at all.
8. Harmless NPC pilots flying expensive advanced ships with no shields.
9. Shield booster.
10. I am pretty sure most if not all encounters can be escaped just by mashing boost.
11. Intercepting cargo transporters has zero impact on economy.

There are also bugs regarding pirate/traders hunting missions, reputation etc. But I am more interested in whether aforementioned points are going to be addressed in near future or not.
Thanks.

Collisions don't matter? Really? Tell that to my Cobra that I destroyed colliding with an asteroid, losing the ship and 700k in profit.

 

[Tar Stone]

It's so funny to see alternating threads of "The Game is too Hard!" and "The Game is too Easy!" I don't think it is going to be possible to get the level set to where everyone is happy. I personally am having a lot of fun with it as it is, but that is just me.

Someone coming in brand new to this is going to find it hard. A good amount of this can be addressed with tutorials etc, help on the forum, but honestly once it clicks and you start to feel comfortable, you start to see the cracks.

This can take anything from a weekend to a few weeks.

I think the difficulty should be addressed with better documentation and tutorials, not by reducing the difficulty. That's a balance too of course.

 

[Bangfish]

Just on (1).

I may be completely wrong on this but my understanding is that shields are great against kinetic weaponry, multi-cannons etc... while your hull itself isn't.

A ship collision is obviously a kinetic impact, it may be the case that if your shields are up (and 4 pipped) then they work brilliantly with collisions, however if they're down you're toast.

The problem is shields are always up in non combat scenarios making the collision system irrelevant (except maybe haulers and traders in general who sacrifice shields for cargo space). I understand there is a problem with dumb suiciding AI but in that case there could be an exception until the suiciding AI gets resolved.

 

[draktok]

You guys should reset your game and start from scratch side winder... maybe it's too easy for you guys but trying to bounty hunt in the stock side winder is tedious and difficult depending who shows up... being a new player myself (the 16th) or head to the noob forums and help them out :d i don't think you can blame the devs because you find a game you've been playing for an entire year now "easy"

 

[Stressfest]

I mentioned my thoughts in a thread a while back.. as per most games out there, we need a way to user adjust the difficulty or 'realism' of the simulation side of things. Trading's trading, mining's mining, the missions and goals are what they are BUT we could do with a way to alter the flight model and how it interacts with the environment. Be nice to be able to remove the training wheels.. especially for 30 year veterans of the game like myself.

 

[Renegade Roach]

We sort of already had a dev response in the form of a comment DB made in an interview with PC Gamer. I will dig out a post I made on it and paste it in here.

I have praised this game to the high heavens since I started the beta, and this is my first real issue with it.

Ok, here's a copy & paste of a post I made when I was in a better mood...
from here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=81096&page=6&p=1306228&highlight=#post1306228


.........................
Here's a very recent interview that David Braben did with PC Gamer:
http://youtu.be/vN2BWY872M8?t=6m50s

At 06:50 David talks about something that he calls 'developer difficulty', were he describes the problem of having developers judge the difficulty of the game. Having intimate knowledge of the game, a developer will tend to make things more and more difficult, to the point that newcomers will be completely put off.

So it's clear that since launch, there has been a gradual reduction of difficulty based on feedback from newcomers on the forum.

In my opinion, I think Frontier are making a big mistake here that will hurt the longevity of the game for everyone. This is a sound policy in theory but I think the changes are being made much too quickly in response to the forum.

I'm not a developer and I don't have intimate knowledge of the game. I came in at premium beta, and played sparingly up until launch when I really got stuck in. I'm shocked at how quickly and quietly things are being made safer.

One thing that has been quite clear is that FD are not very good at balancing. The very last thing they should be doing on that front though is listening to new players. It shows, to a degree, their lack of experience in the field of online games because if they knew their stuff they would be very aware of developers who have made just this mistake and ruined their games. Hopefully they'll get with it before that does happen.

 

[Dogoncrook]

You guys should reset your game and start from scratch side winder... maybe it's too easy for you guys but trying to bounty hunt in the stock side winder is tedious and difficult depending who shows up... being a new player myself (the 16th) or head to the noob forums and help them out :d i don't think you can blame the devs because you find a game you've been playing for an entire year now "easy"

That's how I play, and you will get very adept doing it, then absolutely nothing is hard anymore. If I barge into a hostile factions capitol alone in a stock sidey, I should die very quickly. That doesn't happen though.

 

[draktok]

sure, it might not happen, but it's not like you are going to kill the capitol ship in a stock sidey, so why should they waste their ammo ;D

 

[Bangfish]

You guys should reset your game and start from scratch side winder... maybe it's too easy for you guys but trying to bounty hunt in the stock side winder is tedious and difficult depending who shows up... being a new player myself (the 16th) or head to the noob forums and help them out :d i don't think you can blame the devs because you find a game you've been playing for an entire year now "easy"

I too started on the launch day with stock sidewinder... And never played space sims before. I think I am average at best yet I created this thread because at the current state the game is simply not fun. Many excellent mechanics are obscured by low difficulty making them just fluff. Basically I fear the wasted potential here.

 

[Dogoncrook]

sure, it might not happen, but it's not like you are going to kill the capitol ship in a stock sidey, so why should they waste their ammo ;D

I haven't tried bbecause it would be tedious but I'm confident I could. The cap ships have been taken out by single people. In the sidey it would just take longer.

 

[Unfluffydave]

Will it continue or is there any balance patch in making? Currently the biggest issues (partial list) are as following:

1. Everything is made of rubber. Collisions don't matter at all.
2. Landing is not relevant anymore. Remove it from the game since it is a mere annoyace and time sink now. You need to pass out or fall asleep to even cause 1% structural damage to your ship during landing.
3. Interdictions have 100% evade chance.
4. No challenging encounters. AI is very dumb. Multiple enemy ships don't cooperate at all.
5. 100k bounty = harmless vipers as a response. They can't hit you and they know only one gambit aka suicide run.
6. Heat damage is too low.
7. No need to use things like silent running + advanced maneuvering. Even under heavy bounty I can just boost into the fed station with no problems at all.
8. Harmless NPC pilots flying expensive advanced ships with no shields.
9. Shield booster.
10. I am pretty sure most if not all encounters can be escaped just by mashing boost.
11. Intercepting cargo transporters has zero impact on economy.

There are also bugs regarding pirate/traders hunting missions, reputation etc. But I am more interested in whether aforementioned points are going to be addressed in near future or not.
Thanks.

Try hitting the edge of the exit at full speed and tell me it is made of rubber, same with landing. If landing is too easy turn your assist off, rotation correction off and link the youtube video of you landing so we can laugh at you.

Interdictions are not 100% evade chance, if that were the case you could do nothing and still evade them. Stop exaggerating.

NPC pilots using no shields, I agree. What is that all about?

Shield Boosters, I like them the way they are. The tears from gankers who thought that cargo carrier was an easy target taste all the sweeter.

Most if not all encounters escaped by just mashing boost? you are pulling this out of your exhaust ports, if you boost away in a straight line you deserve to get that plasma bolt up your chuff. Besides, if you are right in your claim that interdictions can be avoided 100% of the time then you would not be having these encounters in the first place.

Intercepting cargo transporters having no impact on economy, you are one pilot the economy is not designed so just one pilot can affect it to a great degree and neither should it be.

 

[Dogoncrook]

I too started on the launch day with stock sidewinder... And never played space sims before. I think I am average at best yet I created this thread because at the current state the game is simply not fun. Many excellent mechanics are obscured by low difficulty making them just fluff. Basically I fear the wasted potential here.

Yeah basic dogfighting tactics are way too successful. In il2 you can do everything right and still die if you commit to the furballs. Some fights can only be survived if you hit and run and hold the advantage but a kill is much less likely. If you pick the wrong fight you die, here I can see when I'm overwhelmed and mosey out of there mid fight.