In line with Powerplay 2.0 coming soon, how about a CQC 2.0 next?

[GraphicEqualizer]

Some ideas for a hypothetical revamp of CQC like the revamp of Powerplay;

• Physical lobby space – Have an optional community concourse type waiting area rather than just a menu waiting screen, where people can meet up, show off their drip, chat a while, before going off to join a CQC session. The galaxy is so large that players often complain of it feeling empty of players. A place like this will help.
• NPC opponents – When there are times with no players queued up for a session, have NPCs join the waiting list after a couple of minutes and get to the action faster. I might only have ten minutes to kill so NPCs as a fallback option will fix that. Ironically, if there were NPCs available to fight against when there's slow player matchmaking, it would actually encourage more players to check it out, thereby reducing the need for the NPCs!
• A new on foot mode – the Frontline type gameplay is ideal for a CQC deathmatch/capture the flag type battles in hand-picked awesome atmosphere sunrise/sunset locations. And after this is done it would be good to revamp the Frontline CZs to be less gamified and have more realistic military objectives, e.g. defend the power facility and then push them back.
• A new Scorpion SRV battle mode – the two-seater Scorpions would be a blast in a CQC mode where you could have a teammate in the turret against other player teams. Think the old 80s/90s "Tanks 3D/Battlezone'' games game of old but in Elite with hand-picked awesome atmosphere sunrise/sunset locations -- it would be a nice little homage to the 80's era games that Elite helped define! How many of you remember this?
  Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNt52uDsdyc
• A new racing mode – similar to the in game flight tutorials, ones over a surface, and ones in SRVs
• Arx rewards – players ranking in top 100 for the season or whatever - in line with the Powerplay 2.0 changes coming in update 19.
• Other suggested changes:
  • Balanced matchmaking. So newbs won't be fighting against pros, e.g. matchmaking using k/d stats and rank.
  • Ship launched vehicle mode
  • Run occasional tournaments with custom rule sets such as only small ship, speed/class limits, etc

 

[CMDR Daiyus]

Anything that brings CQC back into the fold a bit is a winner in my book. Accessing it in some manner from the core game would also be beneficial I think. Your idea of a physical concourse type space would connect well to the current station concourses via the elevator.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I'd like more to be done on CQC - I enjoyed it a lot years back - but the first and foremost thing it needs is Frontier to take it seriously enough on an ongoing basis to fix the serious bugs that mean that even the people who want to play currently can't. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/55380 has been broken for years, for example. Without that commitment to treat "CQC doesn't work" with the same seriousness as "mission boards don't work" or "you can't buy cargo at the market" or other "oops, the latest release broke something major" things which do get quick hotfixes, it's going to inevitably remain a niche thing.

(Now, in fairness, the same has been true of the broken Powerplay 1, and there are encouraging signs that Frontier does intend to be more on top of fixes and rebalancing for Powerplay 2, so maybe a CQC 2 would be the reboot it needed)

Balanced matchmaking. So newbs won't be fighting against pros, e.g. matchmaking using k/d stats and rank.

It does this if there's enough players to start multiple games in the first place, but takes the view that a beginner fighting a veteran is better than both of them waiting for other players near their rank to show up and not getting a match at all for hours.

Three (currently) game modes, times at least three (beginner, competent, veteran) difficulty levels, means it needs a player count of 50-100 players concurrently just to keep the matches reasonably populated. That's comparable to the busyness of the current trade CG system - even at the times when CQC didn't have serious bugs and major player groups were running CQC nights, it rarely got that high!
(Adding more CQC modes makes this worse, of course)

Having NPCs would counteract that a bit but probably lead to just about every match being vs NPCs only - especially if adding more match types! - which would make it difficult to change rank at all (since if you're matchmaking based on similar PvP skills, ability to efficiently farm NPCs doesn't really measure that)

Accessing it in some manner from the core game would also be beneficial I think.

There's a "queue for CQC" option in the comms menu. It helped out quite a bit when it was first introduced, but then the instancing split from Odyssey and a bunch of serious-to-critical bugs going unfixed for months at a time drained all the momentum away again.

 

[CMDR Daiyus]

There's a "queue for CQC" option in the comms menu. It helped out quite a bit when it was first introduced, but then the instancing split from Odyssey and a bunch of serious-to-critical bugs going unfixed for months at a time drained all the momentum away again.

This I didn't know. Every day is a school day, although how I've missed it I'll never know. Thanks for the tip CMDR!

That being said, I still stand by my suggestion that having a space in stations to go to and interact with a human kiosk to sign up, perhaps with scoreboards displayed around the place, maybe a "live feed" of an ongoing match with commentary, and some telepresence simulators to give some atmosphere to the thing, would go a long way in enticing people to engage with the content more often as it would feel more like part of the galaxy we share.

 

[Elfener]

The most important thing is that we should be able to queue for every type of gamemode at the same time (either just a 'queue for all' button or selecting multiple modes), that way players don't accidentally avoid each other.

 

[Fixitman]

Make CQC popular again, or allow us to remove it from our right display. It taunts me every time I look to the right.

 

[aRJay]

Make CQC popular again, or allow us to remove it from our right display. It taunts me every time I look to the right.

I thought one of the problems with CQC was that it was never popular enough hence the issues mentioned by Ian Doncaster a few posts back.

 

[Fixitman]

I thought one of the problems with CQC was that it was never popular enough hence the issues mentioned by Ian Doncaster a few posts back.

Good point, edited accordingly.

 

[metatheurgist]

I don't think it'll ever happen because it was their shot at hitting the then emerging E-sport market and it missed (and I think that it happened at the same time as the Xbox release of ED was not coincidence). There's no reason for them to take another shot at it. If they do anything with it, it should be to fold it into the main game which is where it should've been to start with.

 

[BinaryDuck]

I am in favor of a CQC rework, but i would prefer frontier to alternate betwwen PVP content and PVE content, my suggestion is that the next focus on frontier after PP2.0 should be something PVE related.

 

[BackToTheMud]

I would rather see them adding more incentives for small ship combat in the main game.

 

[Cosmo]

Some ideas for a hypothetical revamp of CQC like the revamp of Powerplay;

• Physical lobby space – Have an optional community concourse type waiting area rather than just a menu waiting screen, where people can meet up, show off their drip, chat a while, before going off to join a CQC session. The galaxy is so large that players often complain of it feeling empty of players. A place like this will help.
• NPC opponents – When there are times with no players queued up for a session, have NPCs join the waiting list after a couple of minutes and get to the action faster. I might only have ten minutes to kill so NPCs as a fallback option will fix that. Ironically, if there were NPCs available to fight against when there's slow player matchmaking, it would actually encourage more players to check it out, thereby reducing the need for the NPCs!
• A new on foot mode – the Frontline type gameplay is ideal for a CQC deathmatch/capture the flag type battles in hand-picked awesome atmosphere sunrise/sunset locations. And after this is done it would be good to revamp the Frontline CZs to be less gamified and have more realistic military objectives, e.g. defend the power facility and then push them back.
• A new Scorpion SRV battle mode – the two-seater Scorpions would be a blast in a CQC mode where you could have a teammate in the turret against other player teams. Think the old 80s/90s "Tanks 3D/Battlezone'' games game of old but in Elite with hand-picked awesome atmosphere sunrise/sunset locations -- it would be a nice little homage to the 80's era games that Elite helped define! How many of you remember this?
  Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNt52uDsdyc
• A new racing mode – similar to the in game flight tutorials, ones over a surface, and ones in SRVs
• Arx rewards – players ranking in top 100 for the season or whatever - in line with the Powerplay 2.0 changes coming in update 19.
• Other suggested changes:
  • Balanced matchmaking. So newbs won't be fighting against pros, e.g. matchmaking using k/d stats and rank.
  • Ship launched vehicle mode
  • Run occasional tournaments with custom rule sets such as only small ship, speed/class limits, etc

NPC opponents should be in CQC, because there's insufficient players.

I'd prefer if they put "racing mode" in the normal game. Let players create a circuit by placing check points on a planet surface. The on foot stuff should be improved in the main-game (more weapons, suits and variety). It could also work as a (team) deathmatch with NPCs.

CQC is a mini-game in ED though. it would be better to put most effort into developing the main game.