How has 2.1 affected your PvP experience?

[Ozram]

Not having paid out for the DLC, I'm unable to survive against modified humans.

So PvP, for me, is now futile and out of the question.

The last fun bit of PvP I had was in the ships beta with a Viper outside Jameson's.

And that is a fairly big issue right there. If all the doc meant was no CM4 or landings for you than fair enough, but essentially it knocks you right out of any chance to compete.

 

[sgurr]

Good old PvP times in Premium Beta and 1.0.

No skill removing SCBs, dynamic fights,
the chance of beating an ananconda in an eagle.
Good times long past.

Marty, we have to go back!
:-(

Me too. I couldn't stand SCB quantity being the defining factor in a fight and just got bored with how long fights took. CQC feels a little like beta but meaningless as part of the rest of the game.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon but I can't help feel that the simplicity of combat back then was a real strength. What I enjoyed most I think was PvP when the opportunity arose whilst doing other things, instead of a specific loadout and to go looking for it.

 

[digitalscream]

This seems more like an issue of big ships beating little ones... however I expect you could be right. There may well be absolutely no load out possible for your ship or any PvP ship that can could compete with the raw power of the Heat Weapon meta.

Not at all - I'm not a bad PvP player by any stretch; before 2.1, I was beating a lot of well-known CMDRs in FDLs, Pythons and FASs. Certainly winning more than losing.

Now, I get beaten by modded Vipers and Cobras. All they need to do is hit me with thermal beams then let loose a couple of volleys of thermal cascade packhounds, and my thrusters are gone. Even with Vera mk II, a low-heat build with B-grade clean-tuned thrusters (for extra integrity), that's all it takes for them to malfunction. At that point, it's game over. Bear in mind that this is a ship with which I can empty my WEP capacitor with pulse + beam while boosting and not go over 65% heat.

DB's obsession with making heat the single most important mechanic in the game has broken it, as far as I'm concerned.

As has been pointed out...thermal shock and thermal conduit are better at doing the jobs of all the other special effects. They cause damage regardless of shield status (so they're better than phasing sequence), they cause module malfunctions which are irreversible non-randomly (so they're better than scramble spectrum), they make thermal vent and thermal conduit irrelevant (because they do damage so quickly that your opponent doesn't have a chance to fire back) etc.

While previous rebalances have forced a change in the meta, they were at least manageable. This is just poor design with a total lack of forethought; I say that as a developer for who's made his fair share of screwups in this regard over the last 20 years. The difference is that I owned up to them and fixed them immediately.

As far as I'm concerned, the only fix for this is to remove the special effects entirely. That's where the problem lies; the rest of Engineers is pretty much perfect after the last patch, as far as I can see. Removing the special effects wholesale - while an admission of a mistake - would remove the need for constant rebalancing passes to placate the community, and thus free up development time to be applied to other things.

Can't see them ever doing that, though.

 

[Corvos]

I'm intrigued as to how the PvP community feel about 2.1/the engineers update, and if it's similar to my experience

Heat Weaponry broke the game.

Lets see hmmmmmmm.

Look at my Corvette guys!!! It has 945,698,420MJ Shields and 154% Thermal, Kinetic and Explosive resistance.

Noob in a Dropship looks at Sup3r Ub3r L33t PvP guy P3rson thingy and goes brrrrrrrap THERMAL CASCADE!!! Aww man my ship died in 10 seconds     MAYN!

Thats what i think about PeeVeePee.

 

[soma]

Me too. I couldn't stand SCB quantity being the defining factor in a fight and just got bored with how long fights took. CQC feels a little like beta but meaningless as part of the rest of the game.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon but I can't help feel that the simplicity of combat back then was a real strength. What I enjoyed most I think was PvP when the opportunity arose whilst doing other things, instead of a specific loadout and to go looking for it.

Exactly! Back then, a well rounded multi-purpose ship was a force to be reckoned with. Then SCBs arrived and all non-SCB stacking builds became worthless for "serious" combat. I feel that the arrival of Engineers has only aggravated that problem: The gap between combat optimized ships and "normal" ships currently seems so wide, that piloting skill hardly factors into combat any more.

I realize that many people might enjoy that... with dedication and some knowledge of the current meta you can basically grind until you are a very powerful combatant. So in that way ED has become more MMORPG like. Its just not the direction I had hoped this game would take

 

[Kastor]

Me too. I couldn't stand SCB quantity being the defining factor in a fight and just got bored with how long fights took. CQC feels a little like beta but meaningless as part of the rest of the game.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon but I can't help feel that the simplicity of combat back then was a real strength. What I enjoyed most I think was PvP when the opportunity arose whilst doing other things, instead of a specific loadout and to go looking for it.

I find this funny because not only is cqc fun like beta... it also has a better implementation of SCB than the main game. You don't see anyone complaining about the sidewinders to regain shields because it's instead of chaff and shield boosters and heat sinks instead of in addition to.

 

[Kastor]

Not at all - I'm not a bad PvP player by any stretch; before 2.1, I was beating a lot of well-known CMDRs in FDLs, Pythons and FASs. Certainly winning more than losing.

Now, I get beaten by modded Vipers and Cobras. All they need to do is hit me with thermal beams then let loose a couple of volleys of thermal cascade packhounds, and my thrusters are gone. Even with Vera mk II, a low-heat build with B-grade clean-tuned thrusters (for extra integrity), that's all it takes for them to malfunction. At that point, it's game over. Bear in mind that this is a ship with which I can empty my WEP capacitor with pulse + beam while boosting and not go over 65% heat.

DB's obsession with making heat the single most important mechanic in the game has broken it, as far as I'm concerned.

As has been pointed out...thermal shock and thermal conduit are better at doing the jobs of all the other special effects. They cause damage regardless of shield status (so they're better than phasing sequence), they cause module malfunctions which are irreversible non-randomly (so they're better than scramble spectrum), they make thermal vent and thermal conduit irrelevant (because they do damage so quickly that your opponent doesn't have a chance to fire back) etc.

While previous rebalances have forced a change in the meta, they were at least manageable. This is just poor design with a total lack of forethought; I say that as a developer for who's made his fair share of screwups in this regard over the last 20 years. The difference is that I owned up to them and fixed them immediately.

As far as I'm concerned, the only fix for this is to remove the special effects entirely. That's where the problem lies; the rest of Engineers is pretty much perfect after the last patch, as far as I can see. Removing the special effects wholesale - while an admission of a mistake - would remove the need for constant rebalancing passes to placate the community, and thus free up development time to be applied to other things.

Can't see them ever doing that, though.

Seriously? A cobra can do that?.. that's actually kinda cool. But not in a good way, in burning zepplin kinda way, tragic but makes good albmn covers.

This post has single handedly convinced me that heat weapons are cancer.

However please don't remove special effects entirely. They're the only thing here that might breath new life into the meta. The other half of engineer's just makes the strong stronger increasing the player power gap. However some of the quirkier special effects open the door way to all kinds of strange specialist builds that could if embraced by the community cause a combat diversity better than we've ever seen in this game.

 

[sgurr]

I find this funny because not only is cqc fun like beta... it also has a better implementation of SCB than the main game. You don't see anyone complaining about the sidewinders to regain shields because it's instead of chaff and shield boosters and heat sinks instead of in addition to.

I'd forgotten that the sidewinder had an SCB, good point.

<mumble> not had enough coffee, haven't played it in a while </mumble>

 

[Temple604]

I suspect they are taking forever to fix the heat issue due to the other half the engineers not being released yet...

 

[missmartian]

A lot of groups do regular PVP events either in their main ships or in little ones and that's what I predominantly do. However I'm losing money because my ship isn't engineered but it's on my to do list I swear . But I agree with the issues that surround CQC, after waiting 20 minutes I got bored and quit because there was no one to play with. It's just a shame there weren't more people at the PVP Top Gun event a few weeks ago

 

[Julio Montega]

Exactly! Back then, a well rounded multi-purpose ship was a force to be reckoned with. Then SCBs arrived and all non-SCB stacking builds became worthless for "serious" combat. I feel that the arrival of Engineers has only aggravated that problem: The gap between combat optimized ships and "normal" ships currently seems so wide, that piloting skill hardly factors into combat any more.

I realize that many people might enjoy that... with dedication and some knowledge of the current meta you can basically grind until you are a very powerful combatant. So in that way ED has become more MMORPG like. Its just not the direction I had hoped this game would take

I find this funny because not only is cqc fun like beta... it also has a better implementation of SCB than the main game. You don't see anyone complaining about the sidewinders to regain shields because it's instead of chaff and shield boosters and heat sinks instead of in addition to.

This is the outcome of the dreaded
power creep.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

As a general non PvPer (I defend myself, if I believe I can win).
I've seen a significant drop in PvP random murder.