CQC The Golden Days of CQC

Brimstone · Aug 8, 2016

Before the Imperial Fighter, and before certain meta's, this happened:

The aspect ratio is messed up in the first video because of Nvidia Shadowplay. The rest of my videos are fine, but low FPS, so WARNING. Also, if you live in Germany, you wont be able to watch this. or the next video without a proxy.
[video=youtube;7JFGl33hSVY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JFGl33hSVY&list=PL1xfHXoBc8cBH1--6ilfdKCjNayh99jDs&index=5[/video]

Part 2 of that video:
[video=youtube;BdfOzkWWyQA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdfOzkWWyQA&list=PL1xfHXoBc8cBH1--6ilfdKCjNayh99jDs&index=6[/video]

Then certain meta's happened, and we got things like this:

[video=youtube;X2I-zGCf_JM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2I-zGCf_JM&list=PL1xfHXoBc8cBH1--6ilfdKCjNayh99jDs&index=2[/video]

and

[video=youtube;m3OO75gLWpA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3OO75gLWpA&list=PL1xfHXoBc8cBH1--6ilfdKCjNayh99jDs&index=1[/video]

And that was the silent running meta. I did it, because it challenged seriously awesome players to use their aiming skills against me. I died almost as many times as I won, but it was seriously lethal towards less competent players, as you can see.

I don't have any recent videos of CQC/Arena since these were taken, but maybe that is the point.

How do you feel about the way CQC has changed over time?

Edit- What do I think went wrong? People memorized where the Weapon Powerup would always spawn, and the timing it took to repeatedly have that power up going, which resulted in very short fights in Deathmatch Mode, and even more slanted fights in Team Death Match Mode.

Edit 2 - Obviously, these videos that I've posted are my perspective of CQC. Everyone's experience will vary.

dutchy2000 · Aug 9, 2016

Dude, there were never any metas, silent running used to be marginal at best, now its completely worthless, the heat buildup is insane due to metas in the main game that are simply not applicable in CQC. The only 'meta' there is, is: imp fighter, over charged shields, eng distributor, boost enhanced, and your weapon of choice, usually beams or bursts. Everything else will simply get you killed. Some people that hate the imp fighter use condor and reverse resistance shield instead, but the rest is the same. There is no variety and the last rounds of nerfs to silent running and heat sinks in CQC made the only remaining two marginal builds irrelevant. (eagle + heatsinks), or (imp fighter + silent running).

Bacalao · Aug 9, 2016

Homogeneity is the only way to ensure an a truly competitive environment. While variety is nice, there is a reason sports regulate everything they can about the sport (equipment, field dimensions and quality, steroid use, side rotation, referees, etc) the more the same everything is the more skill is the deciding factor and I'd argue the more satisfying the game.
-
Want to have a truly competitive CQC experience? Make a playlist where everyone uses the default loadout for the F63 or the iFighter or whatever, just so long as they are all exactly the same.

kossack · Aug 9, 2016

Truly competitive environment is only possible when all players have a chance to win. When game deteriorates to a state when only minority of the players have a chance to win it is going to die.
CQC was more popular earlier for this reason. Everybody was less skilled so all players had a chance to win.
As to the "metas", nerfing, upgrades, etc: Unfortunately FD let very junior PM manage CQC. As a result all (can't find even a single exception) changes were unbalancing. In a sense of making experienced players win even more and inexperienced players loose even faster.
It also did not help that FD completely ignored all feedback given to it by the beta testers and players (after release)...
Let it be a lesson to future game developers...

Scoopy Doopy · Aug 9, 2016

kossack said:
Truly competitive environment is only possible when all players have a chance to win. When game deteriorates to a state when only minority of the players have a chance to win it is going to die.
CQC was more popular earlier for this reason. Everybody was less skilled so all players had a chance to win.
As to the "metas", nerfing, upgrades, etc: Unfortunately FD let very junior PM manage CQC. As a result all (can't find even a single exception) changes were unbalancing. In a sense of making experienced players win even more and inexperienced players loose even faster.
It also did not help that FD completely ignored all feedback given to it by the beta testers and players (after release)...
Let it be a lesson to future game developers...

I'm not so sure. I started a few weeks and was blown to bits many many times. With a few hours most nights I am still not that good but I am in a position where I leave some matches because I am the experienced one and in other matches I can at least get one or two kills against the really experienced players.

It may be that playing against vastly superior players is a good way to learn things but I agree that this needs a balance so you sometimes get to do a bit of killing yourself.

SushiCW · Aug 10, 2016

Brimstone said:
How do you feel about the way CQC has changed over time?

I miss rapid cannons being a semi-viable option before the Imp Fighter appeared. I liked the Condor shield tradeoff of "stronger against lasers or kinetics?" and combined with the rapid cannon it made a useful tradeoff, where most experienced players ran reverse resistance shields to be better against lasers but were then vulnerable to the rapid cannon. It fell apart at the very highest levels of play (where the rapid cannon could simply be negated by spiraling) but for everything else I thought it worked great as an interesting tradeoff. The Imp, unfortunately, makes rapid cannons entirely useless. Small hitbox makes them easier to dodge (even unintenionally) and massive shields nullified their firepower.

I'm also annoyed that the Imp has other "strictly better than the Condor" characteristics, like the ENG power distributor not costing any WEP like it does for everything else. That feels like a simple oversight that never got addressed.

All that said... the biggest problems of CQC have nothing to do with weapon / ship balance, or even powerup balance, and everything to do with "I can't find a good match." The matchmaker relies on populations it doesn't have and is completely opaque about why it's unable to find a game for you. And after that, new players end up with vets way out of their league and get frustrated, while the vets end up with nobody but seals to club and also get frustrated.

Tom Melegaris · Aug 11, 2016

SushiCW said:
... the biggest problems of CQC have nothing to do with weapon / ship balance, or even powerup balance, and everything to do with "I can't find a good match." The matchmaker relies on populations it doesn't have and is completely opaque about why it's unable to find a game for you. And after that, new players end up with vets way out of their league and get frustrated, while the vets end up with nobody but seals to club and also get frustrated.

Agree. I have a 0.70 KDR and *cough* a low win/loss so I see a mix of skill levels. I have not seen the number of matches I used to see daily or weekly. The weekends are usually good. Now I am just happy to get to play 4 matches in a row before the matchmaker disconnects or gets hung on generating a game from the loading screen.
Its as if all the ISPs between me and England decided that July and August would be time to repair cable runs, replace equipment, allow intern network assistants to load manage networks, etc. And it is not just CQC, its the main game too, with the intermittent disconnects from the matchmaker.
I was starting to believe that I had a op-amp or power supply failing, or a pushed pin someplace but I was stuck in a moment from another life...

Tom Melegaris · Aug 11, 2016

kossack said:
Truly competitive environment is only possible when all players have a chance to win. When game deteriorates to a state when only minority of the players have a chance to win it is going to die.
CQC was more popular earlier for this reason. Everybody was less skilled so all players had a chance to win.
As to the "metas", nerfing, upgrades, etc: Unfortunately FD let very junior PM manage CQC. As a result all (can't find even a single exception) changes were unbalancing. In a sense of making experienced players win even more and inexperienced players loose even faster.
It also did not help that FD completely ignored all feedback given to it by the beta testers and players (after release)...
Let it be a lesson to future game developers...

Still. I find it enjoyable to play. And looking back at some of my "internship" days, I appreciated the opportunities I received and remembered the lessons my mentors tried to impart.

Brimstone · Aug 13, 2016

SushiCW said:
And after that, new players end up with vets way out of their league and get frustrated, while the vets end up with nobody but seals to club and also get frustrated.

Yeah, I totally feel that.