Ground Conflict Zones in multiplayer feedback

[rootsrat]

The ground conflict zones while rather simple, can be actually a lot of fun in a coop PVE 2 player team. Due to 3 players being well overpowered even in the High Intensity zone, the most fun when we (as in within our community) play this is 2 player coop. Not much of a challenge, but real fun indeed! Now, we recently tried to make it more interesting by trying two 2-player teams joining the opposite side of the conflict for a little friendly PVP.

It was absolute rubbish.

And only for 2 main reasons: instancing and performance issues.

Instancing

There were 2 teams of 2 players. 4 players total. Not once we ended up in the same instance. What we tried:

Scenario 1

• Team A gets into the Conflict Zone and chooses side.
• Team B drops into the ongoing battle.

Outcome: Team A and B ended up in separate instances and separate battles.

Scenario 2:

• Team A gets into the Conflict Zone and waits for Team B to arrive without choosing the side
• Team B gets into the Conflict Zone and both teams select their sides

Outcome: Worked ok for 3 players, but 1 player did not get assigned to any team despite choosing a side. It worked after some time and the UI changed respectively, but when this player was killed in the battle, they ended up on the rebuy screen and back to orbit in their ship - as if they were not enlisted into the Conflict Zone.

Scenario 3:
- Team A and Team B sign up via Frontline Solutions and we all go in FS Vultures.
Outcome: Player 1 from team A ended up in a separate instance and separate battle to the other 3 players.

Scenario 4:
- We all go in Physical Multicrew on one big ship
Outcome: It's another whole can of worms, let's not even go there.

This level of bugginess is a complete showstopper in an FPS PVP arena scenario. Please look into these instancing bugs, because you advertised "a sphere of combat" and this is not even close to having 4 players be able to comfortably connect for a friendly PVP session, let aside adding more people in SRV's, SLF's and ships. It feels like a waste of time currently, but with a real potential to be a really fun tactical gameplay!

Performance:
- As soon as the Conflict Zone enemy AI kicks in for all NPC's with more than 2 players present in the Conflict Zone, the game performance dropped to as low as 35 FPS

This is unacceptable in a competitive PVP environment, full stop. There is no excuse, ain't nobody is shootin' nobody in 35 FPS.

If ground Conflict Zones are to become a real Sphere of Combat battlefields - which conceptually sounds absolutely amazing and I wish I could experience that in it's full glory! - they really need a good look and improvements around these 2 areas.

Currently it's quite literally unplayable in that context.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Unfortunately, that's all for real... and it's not only happening in CZs, the same happens even if you try to arrange some kind of team vs team ground pews in abandoned settlements.

 

[rootsrat]

Unfortunately, that's all for real... and it's not only happening in CZs, the same happens even if you try to arrange some kind of team vs team ground pews in abandoned settlements.

Didn't really notice with the latter tbh, if you bring everyone to the same instance via wings and navlocks, it seems to work OK for us.

 

[Rebel Yell]

Didn't really notice with the latter tbh, if you bring everyone to the same instance via wings and navlocks, it seems to work OK for us.

We even tried to drop teams on 2 different ships in multi-crew, but excluding the terrible lag/ping affecting some players, in a 2vs2 we tried to arrange one of the players in US was not able to see and to be seen... but we (in EZ) saw the missiles he was shooting and flying like they appeared from nowhere

 

[rootsrat]

We even tried to drop teams on 2 different ships in multi-crew, but excluding the terrible lag/ping affecting some players, in a 2vs2 we tried to arrange one of the players in US was not able to see and to be seen... but we (in EZ) saw the missiles he was shooting and flying like they appeared from nowhere

Yeah, sounds like typical instance issues. For some reason they seem to be worse at a planets surface than in space.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Just the amount of bugs you see when you're doing co-op is enough. Immobile NPCs and CZs not registering you're in the CZ so any death is a rebuy and being sent back to the station (as well as having no HUD prompts for what is going on) can be fun killers by themselves. I mean the idea is fine (not that I would complain if med and high CZs threw a bit more at you than just stronger opponents), but they're in a messy state however you play them. I'm not sure I'd even want to try opposite sides with someone given the current state of them.