CQC So I finally got bored enough to try CQC again.

[SushiCW]

The skill-based matchmaking only kicks in if there are enough people playing to allow it. When there's only a half dozen people playing total, that's what you get.

As far as the level 50 guy kicking your butt... just like main-game PvP, practice and you'll beat him. (The equipment matters only slightly).

It's definitely a very different beast. Frankly it's largely ruined main-game PvP for me because I find CQC so much more fun. ... when I get a match, which is hardly ever these days.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I've flown a sidey quite a lot in the main game. It's pretty OK, particularly when fully engineered. The sidey in CQC feels like a dump truck.

Yeah. It's not completely useless, but in a match with lots of the SLFs and not many other Sideys or Eagles it's not far off if the other pilots are any good and don't try facetanking it. The problem is it's both the slowest ship and has the shortest weapon ranges, and most of its decent weapons are easily dodged projectiles at that. Either a bit of extra speed on the ship, or a bit of extra shot speed and range on the projectile weapons, would make it a lot less of a niche ship.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Oh yeah, and it would be pretty nice to be able to get a deathmatch without that one level 50 guy with 20000 kills.

That dude is in every match.

Heck... just let us play against bots.

The block list has become an apparently all important feature of the main game.

I'd suggest a block list for CQC, but then it would just be completely empty after that one guy got added to the list.

The beauty of cqc is a level 50 guy can lose to a level 1. The unlocks are mostly sidegrades and even at level 30 my most used build is the level one ship with pulse lasers.

The difference is down to skill and knowing the maps. I am not great at cqc but I hold my own but usually find myself in lots of high level "gold" players but it's no problem.
That said I agree NPCs filling in and us getting into games imediately would be cool.

Compare that to the main game where I reckon an apex PvP ship could sit doing nothing and give me a 15 second head start without moving and I would STILL lose. I am so glad cgc is different to main game (I enjoy cqc PvP)

 

[SushiCW]

I have never seen any kind of skill based match making kick in.

You probably won't unless something drastic happens, it's been well over a year (closer to 2) since there was population to support it.

I'm sure he killed me once or twice, but this guy wasn't specifically kicking my butt... not that I was doing great. There were several people playing when I started. I hardly had time to re-familiarize myself with the game before I got frustrated with it and quit.

Still... it's just annoying to have the same high level player in every match. It's the same guy who was still there a year ago when I last came back to CQC, iirc.

He's almost certainly on the discord. Hop on, say Hi, ask him nicely to back off a little while you get your feet. CQC is friendlier in that way than "Open at a CG".

I had to drop out a few times in attempts to customize my loadout, because I couldn't get it done between spawns. A player may not want to spawn immediately, but you get no such consideration.

Yeah you can't edit loadouts between spawns, just between matches. You *can* swap which of your existing loadouts you're using. The matches are over relatively quickly though so it's not too long to wait. I agree that it would be nice if we could edit loadouts as well as swap them between spawns.

I get annoyed particularly because it was my favorite mode when I started playing, despite the horrible match making... and they let it mostly die.

I sometimes wonder if the guy originally responsible for CQC quit in mid development. It certainly seems like a half finished product.

But what really kills it all is the total lack of players. I've rarely seen a game so devoid of player activity.

Since we can't play it against NPC's, there is no way to git gud, because you can never actually play.

I hear ya and definitely share the frustration. I think they just decided to focus their limited resources on the main game, especially since they were running behind... remember when Horizons 2.1-2.4 were all supposed to be in 2016?

I keep hoping they'll take some time and properly invest in developing it further, because Elite's flight model is **really** well suited to a 6DOF arena shooter and it's a ton of fun. But since it's so different, that also basically means investing the Elite team in time working on an entirely different game, so I can understand the reluctance.

 

[daman]

i don't play it at all. but why can't they link it to the main game?

have CQC tournaments which link back to main game/ accounts.
so you have to fly to a certain station to register. fly somewhere else to participate at a particular time.

make it part of the elite universe. am sure this must have been suggested X times before.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

have CQC tournaments which link back to main game/ accounts.
so you have to fly to a certain station to register. fly somewhere else to participate at a particular time.

That sort of thing would have to raise the profile a *lot* to make up for the inconvenience of having to have everyone participating be in the same place at the same time.

It's hard enough to get a full match of eight players together outside peak times when they can be anywhere in the entire galaxy.

(Be able to queue from main game like we can queue for multicrew - yes, absolutely!)

 

[steenpass]

Hated CQC when I started playing it. I remember a talk with a friend about CQC. He has theoretical interest in games and their mechanics and I made a point in arguing that it is <redacted by world filter>. He also asked about my K/D ratio in an (misguided) attempt to judge the validity of my opinions. Said I should get to 1.5 at least. So I decided to play to that point and then never touch this mode again. Almost two years later it is my favorite VR experience.

It's not that I am all sunny with the state of CQC but I still play.

 

[Martian Successor]

I respect CQC PvP for being much more skill based than main game PvP without any RNGineer and meta build nonsense going on. A level 50 player and a level 1 player are both flying pretty much the same kind of ship load outs. There is no OP or super good meta modules that unlock with higher experience levels. For that alone CQC would be the superior PvP mode in my opinion if it were used as something more than just a bog standard Deathmatch arena.

Unfortunately it has no connection to the main game whatsoever and as a result a completely dead matchmaking pool. It needs to be made into a natural extension of the main game in order to flourish.
- Accessible from stations like the galaxy's greatest sport - featuring mentions in Galnet.
- All ship types must be usable in small, medium and large mode playlists as well as a free for all mode
- Increase credit rewards
- Put in bots and customisation bot modes
- Let players watch live matches and bet credits on the outcome of a match
- Use CQC as a platform for tournaments. The Icarus Cup, anyone remember that proposal by FD? Anyone recall that FD once said they wanted CQC to become an E-sport? Not by forgetting it even exists it won't....
- Let players earn Naval rank, PP merits and/or minor faction rep by signing up to be sponsored by your chosen Navy/Power play power/minor faction. That would create some variety in what is otherwise a soulless and monotone grind for ranks, merits and BGS rep.

There is so much that could be done with CQC. It could be so much more than the abandoned gimmick that it currently is. The ideas have all been posted by players over the years, there is no shortage of them. It's up to FD to actually revive and flesh out this place holder feature.

 

[Gun Star]

I want to give it a shot so I dont keep seeing the stupid Harmless peeking at me from the right screen. If they introduced modes of play. Like Shieldless racing in asteroid belts, outposts, planet canyons. and you one credits based on your position I think a lot more people would do it again. Make it part of the main game. Open a station(s) in some system where you dock and have a menu item to enter the races. Then it logs you into CQC and you can fight, race, spectate, bet.

I know I would spend a lot of time there.

 

[Syrelai]

I respect CQC PvP for being much more skill based than main game PvP without any RNGineer and meta build nonsense going on. A level 50 player and a level 1 player are both flying pretty much the same kind of ship load outs. There is no OP or super good meta modules that unlock with higher experience levels. For that alone CQC would be the superior PvP mode in my opinion if it were used as something more than just a bog standard Deathmatch arena.

Unfortunately it has no connection to the main game whatsoever and as a result a completely dead matchmaking pool. It needs to be made into a natural extension of the main game in order to flourish.
- Accessible from stations like the galaxy's greatest sport - featuring mentions in Galnet.
- All ship types must be usable in small, medium and large mode playlists as well as a free for all mode
- Increase credit rewards
- Put in bots and customisation bot modes
- Let players watch live matches and bet credits on the outcome of a match
- Use CQC as a platform for tournaments. The Icarus Cup, anyone remember that proposal by FD? Anyone recall that FD once said they wanted CQC to become an E-sport? Not by forgetting it even exists it won't....
- Let players earn Naval rank, PP merits and/or minor faction rep by signing up to be sponsored by your chosen Navy/Power play power/minor faction. That would create some variety in what is otherwise a soulless and monotone grind for ranks, merits and BGS rep.

There is so much that could be done with CQC. It could be so much more than the abandoned gimmick that it currently is. The ideas have all been posted by players over the years, there is no shortage of them. It's up to FD to actually revive and flesh out this place holder feature.

I believe tying it in with minor/major factions would be a fantastic motivator to get people to play a different side of elite. There's already lore about ship races, but I've never found any sort of inclusion into the game whatsoever of this.
I would like to add, SRV races would be amazing, in a point to point style so they wouldn't necessarily have to flesh out actual tracks with obstacles.

My intention behind some of these added ideas is to keep it simple, to allow a foundation that brings much more life to the styles of the game without making it something that takes 3 years for them to implement.

 

[SushiCW]

I believe tying it in with minor/major factions would be a fantastic motivator to get people to play a different side of elite. There's already lore about ship races, but I've never found any sort of inclusion into the game whatsoever of this.
I would like to add, SRV races would be amazing, in a point to point style so they wouldn't necessarily have to flesh out actual tracks with obstacles.

My intention behind some of these added ideas is to keep it simple, to allow a foundation that brings much more life to the styles of the game without making it something that takes 3 years for them to implement.

If you're interested in racing, of all kinds, there's actually a fair amount of player-driven activity on that front. Buckyball Racing Club is very active, regularly hosting a decent variety of event types: what they have in common is being timed point-to-point rather than head-to-head. The Yggdrasil race just finished up, but you can expect something else to show up hot on its heels. Sometimes it's racing across the bubble, sometimes it's an SRV dash from base to base (or from base to alien wreck and back to base, one of my favorites), sometimes a crazy combo of both.

BRC is also hosting a longer-form Road Rally Racing event, which is pretty cool and lets you drive an SRV around / through bases on high-G worlds. See here for more!

EliteRacers is a tad less active than they used to be, but they've done a bunch of cool events as well. An active one you can do right now is the Okinura Station Sprint Challenge.

So while there's no in-game-engine support, there's a pretty solid racing community and a steady feed of events. In-game support would be awesome, but there's still a lot of fun to be had without it!

 

[Jokergod2000]

I think I saw you in CQC today too. Based on how much I play I may be "that lvl 50 guy". It is hard to balance getting a good xp per hour without clearing a server full of new people and ruining the game for them. If it's all new people I usually do a lot of tagging (shooting new players shields off) this gives me 50 points and someone 100 points when they die. Keeps the game going and new people get xp too. I always make sure to win before the time runs out though to get the win bonus. The hard part is when a few lvl 50s mix with new players. Everyone wants to win and the new players become targets. Keep playing; there is a huge learning curve but it's a great game mode. The best VR experience out there. If it's getting too crazy pop in the discord and ask lvl 50 guy to slow down. Anyone who is lvl 50 is on the discord. Most lvl 50s are grinding to Elite. Takes a long time to get there