The Shield discussion thread

[tagos]

Apologies for going off tgopic but there are questions being asked that deserve answering.

To avoid being in breach of the Official ,secrets Act I will refer folks that are curious to this link and look at the paragraph.. Seconded to US Navy

click

Taking the picture of a Nimitz class carrier when this ship has a defensive screen to protect it from those small boats shows how vulnerable they are, but I say again. That submarine.. HMS\m 'Viper' would get blown out of the water if it were visible.

This is a game and credit to those that have wrote it and made it so enjoyable. I love my Viper and like it just the way it is but I accept it would be frustrating if I lost my Anaconda to such a small craft

Yes. It would be frustrating. Your fault for not being a skilled enough and clever enough pilot compared to the Viper pilot to either kill him or disengage, but frustrating nevertheless.

 

[Ari Ben Zayn]

But luckily they won the forum war and the devs changed things for them.

I'm confused, what is it now? The Big-Ship-Owners-Alliance successfully whining on the forums to get shield cells nerfed so they can kill small ships or the Vipers-Owner-Club successfully whining on the forums to get the Python nerfed so they can kill it?

 

[Quineloe]

Welcome to the club.

We never needed those skill cells anyway, the game is much better without them!

Except there still here... just limited to Asp and bigger now... It's like most people don't understand this change to begin with.

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Why was this thread merged with a thread from last year that is full of outdated information now?

 

[tagos]

I'm confused, what is it now? The Big-Ship-Owners-Alliance successfully whining on the forums to get shield cells nerfed so they can kill small ships or the Vipers-Owner-Club successfully whining on the forums to get the Python nerfed so they can kill it?

To the Anaconda Owners the Python is a small ship. But I was talking about the shield cell issue not the Python. I don't particularly care either way about the Python. As a 'veteran' for want of a better word of MMO's and PvP I hate seeing ED descend so early into the endless and futile 'balance everything around PvP moaning' hell. You simply cannot balance everything and the absolute very last thing you do is make your game PvP an automatic win for the 'bigger' player.

I've played PvP in games like ESO where certain classes were inherently at a disadvantage in PvP. That didn't stop players doing great things with that class. unfortunately development quickly descended into an endless round of 'balancing' without any regard to the impact on PvE. So you had changes that made things better fro a class in PvP (a minority concerned if only because the implementation was technically poor) that made things worse for that class in the PvE most people played in.

People drift away when games change from one month to the next. ED has not been out long enough for meddling to make sense.

What ED need is content. The very last thing it needs is inept bungling.

If I were them I wouldn't change anything on the basis of PvP. If I did change things I'd do it slowly and incrementally. i'd test it and then i'd actually listen to what the testers say.

 

[Berty Dastard]

@Tagos - Have to agree. Especially with regard to developers over tweaking. Changing things in a big way, after players have struggled to get where they are on the basis of the existing mechanics, is just downright perverse. I'm not a rage quitter and will adapt but just feel I will be wasting my time on my next progress if I finded it nerfed shortly afterwards. I was playing a lot recently and the effect on me, in combination with the scraping bug, is to just stay away for a while. But something more shiny might take my butterfly interest and suddenly I'm not playing ED any more

 

[tagos]

@Tagos - Have to agree. Especially with regard to developers over tweaking. Changing things in a big way, after players have struggled to get where they are on the basis of the existing mechanics, is just downright perverse. I'm not a rage quitter and will adapt but just feel I will be wasting my time on my next progress if I finded it nerfed shortly afterwards. I was playing a lot recently and the effect on me, in combination with the scraping bug, is to just stay away for a while. But something more shiny might take my butterfly interest and suddenly I'm not playing ED any more

Yea. I'm a bit like that. I stopped playing Dragon Age to play ED and I never went back. It takes a bit of an effort to configure my desk for ED, what with the HOTAS and the headtracking. If I have to set things back up for Dragon Age or the un-opened Far Cry 4 I can see myself just drifting away. I simply stopped playing ESO after one update, just because I didn't want to rebuild my character yet again and just never went back.

This is what ED have to understand is they are competing against other games, not just other space games. They need to start focusing on the customer experience. Like Zenimax, the ESO company, they give the impression of being (at best) supremely indifferent to this. No serious communication, no quality control on patch releases etc.

And look what happened to ESO. It's now going down the Cash shop/Buy To Play route. When I left ESO I tried out Star Trek Online. Yea - I know it's Perfect World and has monetised a lot of things. I actually don't mind that too much if i'm having fun but I found I could have a ton of fun while Free To Play. Lots to explore, great combat, giant range of ship/gear combo's, multi-media and multi-stage missions, no noticeable bugs and a social system so I took out a lifetime sub.

The lesson isn't that STO is a better game than ED and we should all go play that. It's that STO concentrates on delivering a fun game with lots to do and delivering it to 21st century standards. My starship doesn't keep changing its nature and capability because a few PvP types got their knickers in a twist about me using a cloaking device. It doesn't randomly blow up or pop like a soap bubble and missions are not randomly generated lines of text.

Of course it's a mature game but i played it at the beginning and it was pretty fine then. This is what ED should be aiming for in terms of quality and experience and at the moment I just don't believe they are heading in that direction. They do seem hell bent on repeating the mistakes of ESO. Released way too early. Limited instance play. Extremely poor quality control. Poor communication.

ED could be a great game. I'm a Kickstarter, beta tester etc and really want it to be. Yet in many ways ED has less features than it had during testing - such as weapons variety, cold running tactics etc. And now shield cell and chaff nerfing.

When we start getting new features that have been tested and work i'll be over-joyed. I'd be great if in 5 years time ED is going stronger than ever.

But to get to that stage FD need to start upping their game by several notches.

 

[Coccolino]

Did you merge v 1.1 Shield Cell Banks discussions with a december 2014 Shield general thread? Are you serious? Do you want to minimize the impact of unhappy players about the 1.1 changes or what?

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Can we merge with this thread please? https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=112617

and this one https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=112785

Very smart you are, aren't you?

 

[EddyRockSteady]

Why are we even talking about Shield Cell Banks? They are/were a useless crutch, good for nothing other than a miracle 'get out of a whipping free' card that was played once too often by all and sundry.

They contribute absolutely nothing to gameplay whatsoever - Good riddance I say!

 

[Quineloe]

Yes they merged the thread into an ancient thread that has nothing to do with the subject. I have no idea why, but as far as I remember VBB software, this is irreversible.

Why are we even talking about Shield Cell Banks? They are/were a useless crutch, good for nothing other than a miracle 'get out of a whipping free' card that was played once too often by all and sundry.

They contribute absolutely nothing to gameplay whatsoever - Good riddance I say!

Except they're still in the game. Go fight a player Python, Clipper, Anaconda. You'll see you'll still have to overcome a dozen of those cells.

 

[Coccolino]

Yes they merged the thread into an ancient thread that has nothing to do with the subject. I have no idea why, but as far as I remember VBB software, this is irreversible.

Except they're still in the game. Go fight a player Python, Clipper, Anaconda. You'll see you'll still have to overcome a dozen of those cells.

These stupid merges have to stop. Please ask OP's opinion before listening to the first voice asking a merge. I want my thread back.
It was about Anacondas killing missions AND Shield Cell Bank updates in 1.1.
please, set it back.

 

[EddyRockSteady]

Except they're still in the game.

Yes, good point.

Well, Seeking Luxuries went the way of the Dodo........We can all sincerely hope, beg, borrow, steal and pray that shield cell banks are next to shuffle off Elite's mortal coil and join SL in the afterlife. Not a moment too soon it will be.

 

[Coccolino]

These stupid merges have to stop. Please ask OP's opinion before listening to the first voice asking a merge. I want my thread back.
It was about Anacondas killing missions AND Shield Cell Bank updates in 1.1.
please, set it back.

Since post #1094. Thank you.

 

[Jimac]

I would really like to know what shield cells are supposed to be achieving in the game.

My first thought was that they were supposed to be a defensive measure that would allow bigger freighters to escape from pirates, (another safety feature in a game overburdened with safety), but their effects were not thought through. They were so overpowered they became the deciding factor in most combat situations. They destroyed any balance between weapons with a large alpha strike and more energy efficient weapons.

They also meant that most PVP combat is both inconclusive and unsatisfying, it usually ends in the withdrawal of a player if he mistimes or used up his cells.

It has the knock on effect of making pirating both safer for the Pirate but harder to make a living. Again unsatisfying as a game mechanic.

In 1.1 the changes themselves acknowledge there was a problem with shield cells. The solution to increase their power use and limit the number of charges has removed or limited their use on the combat ships, but as they are still the deciding factor in combat this amounts to the removal of combat ships from their only role.

The multi role ships have now become the combat ships, the Cobra, Asp, Python and Conda with spare power and internal storage to carry cargo can reconfigure to be the most effective at combat. Whether intentional or not this is the result of shield cells.

I believe the whole concept of health potions in this game is a bad fit, logic and consistency in the game world is important in a science fictional background. No unicorns or magic please.