Make CQC great Again.

[GraXXoR]

After a far too drinkable bottle of wine, I posted on Inara's thoughts and suggestions thread:

@artie You have 1/4 of a million players registered either past or current.
The top 1000 has become static and tawdry. Dull as dried paint.
Why don't you follow FDEV's lead and mix it up a bit?
Why don't you make CQC part of the main ranking?
Merge them!

make them ONE with the current Inara ranking.

If you did this, I honestly believe that you would Make CQC Great Again.
You could single handedly make CQC actually important and visible within the Elite community.

Think about it CQC is the one unexplored vista that still remains in Elite.

Thousands have reached Elite 5 in multiple ranks, but how many have reached elite in CQC?

Push the boat out, encourage more people to come out of the shadows and push those who've got complacent at the top to come back to Elite (and Inara)
and fight for the real prize:

6 x Elite or even the ultimate 6 x Elite V

Any thoughts? Inara is arguably (with it's 250+ thousand registered elite players) the biggest single influence center outside of FDEV itselt... If @Artie included CQC in his main ranking don't you think it would encourage thousands of competitive players to take up CQC and get their elite rank?

Maybe a skosh too much wine was had?

 

[Doctor Dread]

Rank itself would attract 0 players.

But CQC remains the only Open Only organic gameplay, and it's a crying shame it hasn't evolved:

• make a system and a station for it
• bring your own ships, equipped however you want, any class
• all in there cost 0 - no rebuy, no costs at all - it's just a playground

 

[GraXXoR]

Rank itself would attract 0 players.

But CQC remains the only Open Only organic gameplay, and it's a crying shame it hasn't evolved:

• make a system and a station for it
• bring your own ships, equipped however you want, any class
• all in there cost 0 - no rebuy, no costs at all - it's just a playground

0 players, are you sure? You should at least adjust that to 1.
It would attract me for a start.
Inara ranks are attended and followed by many players.

let's just assume that FDEV is going to put as much effort into a non-monetisable section of the game as they have done the last few years..

Stuff that gets done is going to have to be akin to DW3, Fuel Rats or Canonn Resarch..

 

[Morbad]

I don't personally use Inara, or even like that stats are tracked in CQC, but I'm sure it would attract someone, probably even multiple someones.

But CQC remains the only Open Only organic gameplay

CQC is explicitly a game with in a game, a sporting activity that features different equipment and has negligible impact on the rest of the setting. It's possibly the least organic gameplay there is, outside of relogging.

 

[Aashenfox]

I just wish they allowed us to use engineered normal ships. There should be many leagues and categories all the way up to 'True Open' - where you can run whatever you brung, no ship or outfitting rules except no premium. The fact that an arena would have fixed radius would prevent reverski shenanigans which is the main thing that ruins actual open pvp. For me, this would make cqc great again. I have no interest in learning to fly compromised ships that I would never fly in the main game.

 

[Bigmaec]

I just wish they allowed us to use engineered normal ships. There should be many leagues and categories all the way up to 'True Open' - where you can run whatever you brung, no ship or outfitting rules except no premium. The fact that an arena would have fixed radius would prevent reverski shenanigans which is the main thing that ruins actual open pvp. For me, this would make cqc great again. I have no interest in learning to fly compromised ships that I would never fly in the main game.

So much this!

 

[galahad2069]

For me, this would make cqc great again.

Great, maybe, but I'm not sure about the "again" part. I don't think CQC has ever been great to begin with.

 

[PiLhEaD]

Rank itself would attract 0 players.

But CQC remains the only Open Only organic gameplay, and it's a crying shame it hasn't evolved:

• make a system and a station for it
• bring your own ships, equipped however you want, any class
• all in there cost 0 - no rebuy, no costs at all - it's just a playground

This ^^^ 100%.

[Make it so! Picard meme.jpg]

 

[Aashenfox]

Rank itself would attract 0 players.

But CQC remains the only Open Only organic gameplay, and it's a crying shame it hasn't evolved:

• make a system and a station for it
• bring your own ships, equipped however you want, any class
• all in there cost 0 - no rebuy, no costs at all - it's just a playground

Yeh I'm basically on board with this too as indicated by my previous post, but appropriately sized arenas is the critical thing. It's not 'C'QC if you can reverse in a Krait phantom firing 4 fuel slug railguns. Smaller arenas for small ships, bigger ones for bigger ships and a quite large arena for the 'anything goes' fights, but not more than 100 cubic kilometers, 10km diameter is a big enough space to maneuver in, and the interiors of these spaces could be variously adorned with stations/debris, an asteroid field passing through, etc.

 

[Aashenfox]

How about a minefield map, with huge mines left behind by guardians or something. It would be like a rock fight is now, except you can't hit even one. They also have a fairly short blast radius, but wide enough that if you catch someone flying too close, you can shoot the mine and it detonates damaging them.

 

[GraXXoR]

Smaller arenas for small ships, bigger ones for bigger ships and a quite large arena for the 'anything goes' fights, but not more than 100 cubic kilometers,

100 cubic km is a sphere of just over 2.5km radius... that's pretty tight for a large ship, that's less than the no fire zone around an outpost.

yes, years ago I also asked for BYOS leagues with set limits, like in boxing but somehow more integrated into the game itself.

 

[Aashenfox]

100 cubic km is a sphere of just over 2.5km radius... that's pretty tight for a large ship, that's less than the no fire zone around an outpost.

yes, years ago I also asked for BYOS leagues with set limits, like in boxing but somehow more integrated into the game itself.

Sorry, meant 10km diameter cube. 1000km3. I think we've asked for everything at least twice now

 

[Morbad]

Great, maybe, but I'm not sure about the "again" part. I don't think CQC has ever been great to begin with.

I think it features plenty of good ideas. I especially like the customization system--in that it's a collection of mostly viable side-grades rather than mostly wildly inflationary dead ends. If Engineering looked more like CQC outfitting, I'd probably come off as considerably less bitter on the forums.

They also got the sense of scale and speed right, without the ludicrously fast SLFs that have to keep up with enormous ships in the main game. Also, unlike much of the rest of the game, it doesn't run like crap, relatively speaking.

But yeah, I wouldn't call it great either. No one plays CTF. Seriously, I haven't been in a CQC CTF match since the 1.4 beta in 2015. I bet if I leave my system on while I'm on vacation for the next week, waiting in the CQC CTF lobby, it will still be waiting for that first match when I get back.

Sorry, meant 10km diameter cube.

That reminds me of this:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZSFRWJCUY4

 

[Darth Ender]

Cqc was never great. It was a failure from conception as it was a response to wanting pvp to not be opt in, especially in shared events like cg's and combat zones and other narrative events. Instead they made an inconsequential mini game that has no impact on the real game using slf's.

Any money put into this is a waste.

 

[huehnerfaust]

I remember when cqc launched, it was very much welcomed by the community, fdev even had a tourney planed with real cash to win.

Fdev themself destroyed cqc,..


From the beginning we had long waiting times for a match to start.
A new flight model for existing slf and small ships.
Only three game modes who only startet when the lobby was full.
No racing mode.
Overpowerd pickups on a fixed 30sec. Timer.
No mmr or elo rating, so all noobs got hammered by the pros every time.

I remember when the whole lobby tried to teamup against one certain player but failed. Im pretty sure he cheated but i have no evidence for that.

 

[GTwannabe]

Make CQC free to play.

 

[Inscydeus]

I think if there were bots, more people would try it; if only for the sake of ranking and it could build up a bit of a following again. PVP in the main game has been mostly uninteresting to me since engineers.

 

[Archvillain]

Any thoughts? Inara is arguably (with it's 250+ thousand registered elite players) the biggest single influence center outside of FDEV itselt...

I think this is a great idea. CQC should be part of your overall rank regardless (you can't be the overall best if you only stick to your corner) and I think you're right that it would encourage more life into CQC - because I suspect it wouldn't take all that many players spending some time in CQC to make a big difference

 

[kofeyh]

I remember when cqc launched, it was very much welcomed by the community, fdev even had a tourney planed with real cash to win.

Fdev themself destroyed cqc,..


From the beginning we had long waiting times for a match to start.
A new flight model for existing slf and small ships.
Only three game modes who only startet when the lobby was full.
No racing mode.
Overpowerd pickups on a fixed 30sec. Timer.
No mmr or elo rating, so all noobs got hammered by the pros every time.

I remember when the whole lobby tried to teamup against one certain player but failed. Im pretty sure he cheated but i have no evidence for that.

The lack of MMR/ ranking, with no bot-only mode, made it basically unapproachable, unfortunately; that and the audience for CQC doesn't entirely overlap with the audience for the base game.

Star Citizen tends to have the same problem; they have the functional equivalent (granted it's a bigger community so a bit busier) but most PVP continues in the base game, because that's where the majority of people want to be.

Frontier would need to develop MMR or similar ranking system, a robust method to report obvious smurfing, cheating, etc as well as bot-only lobbies and probably a bunch of stuff to support and manage, that they basically don't have time to do.

 

[Comandante]

One of the reasons I never played it much was that I was never the best of pilots. I got the impression I'd have just gone in a got blasted repeatedly, so why try?

I did give it a go but gave up for that reason - the people there were good at flying.