Watched the new CQC announcement last night and have waited till this morning to post. At first I was a bit miffed that it would be available first on XBox One... what about all the Alpha and Beta backers? Then I re-read the announcement and noted that it would be available first as part of the preview event, there was nothing I could see stating that the full release of CQC would not be synchronous across all systems.
However, dedicated PvP modes have been the death of, or detriment of a lot of multiplayer games, primarily because of repeated cries of "X class beat my Y class and I didn't stand a chance, waaah, waaah, waaah". So Y class gets buffed and X class gets nerfed and the soul of the class system gets annihilated. How long before we get cries of "I cannot beat an Anaconda in my Sidewinder, buff Sidewinder!"? The only way around this I could see would be to match around ship size (3 nice groupings) and/or combat ranking, although this should be selectable (you want to wing up and play this new mode with your friends right?)
Ironically, my biggest concern here is with the lore. I trust FD not to screw over the expensive ships performance for the sake of PvP 'balance' and I trust them to do what's best in regards to matchmaking for CQC (MechWarrior style 'mass' based matchmaking?). What I really want to know is this, we spend hours travelling around at a fairly predictable multiple of the speed of light, I have spent a week flying towards Sagittarius A* and know it's going to take a week or more to get back. We do not have artificial gravity and while there are some arcadey considerations pretty much everything has a set way of working...
Noteably the lack of FTL communications, hence no trade data available over long distances. So, how the hell does our ship magically appearing in a PvP arena work? The ship cannot teleport a undefined distance instantly. Is it a simulated environment where our ship is modelled rather than physically being there (that would answer the insurance costs question)? If that was the case then if we can transmit CNC info with no lag why can we not look up trade info for any system???
Really hope they sort the lore out, or make it a totally separate game mode with a progression system and ship balancing completely divorced from the game. It looks like fun, but ED and CQC do not marry together as a couple without massive gaping holes.
However, dedicated PvP modes have been the death of, or detriment of a lot of multiplayer games, primarily because of repeated cries of "X class beat my Y class and I didn't stand a chance, waaah, waaah, waaah". So Y class gets buffed and X class gets nerfed and the soul of the class system gets annihilated. How long before we get cries of "I cannot beat an Anaconda in my Sidewinder, buff Sidewinder!"? The only way around this I could see would be to match around ship size (3 nice groupings) and/or combat ranking, although this should be selectable (you want to wing up and play this new mode with your friends right?)
Ironically, my biggest concern here is with the lore. I trust FD not to screw over the expensive ships performance for the sake of PvP 'balance' and I trust them to do what's best in regards to matchmaking for CQC (MechWarrior style 'mass' based matchmaking?). What I really want to know is this, we spend hours travelling around at a fairly predictable multiple of the speed of light, I have spent a week flying towards Sagittarius A* and know it's going to take a week or more to get back. We do not have artificial gravity and while there are some arcadey considerations pretty much everything has a set way of working...
Noteably the lack of FTL communications, hence no trade data available over long distances. So, how the hell does our ship magically appearing in a PvP arena work? The ship cannot teleport a undefined distance instantly. Is it a simulated environment where our ship is modelled rather than physically being there (that would answer the insurance costs question)? If that was the case then if we can transmit CNC info with no lag why can we not look up trade info for any system???
Really hope they sort the lore out, or make it a totally separate game mode with a progression system and ship balancing completely divorced from the game. It looks like fun, but ED and CQC do not marry together as a couple without massive gaping holes.