Having played a lot of ED over the past few year's I've barely touched it this year.
Why? I'm one of those people who play ED for the PvP aspect and the current state of the game makes PvP unenjoyable.
Instancing, de-sync between players and the years of fighter lag are issues that weren't around, or at least weren't as bad a few years ago.
Just yesterday I couldn't get into the same supercruise instance as my wingmates, they were just wing signals
The de-sync issue I think is the worst, having had a LOT of Corvette duels and re-watched fights from both players perspectives it's clear that what both players are seeing doesn't correspond with what's actually happening.
The perfect example is when two players are T-boning each other, both players screens show a ship at 90° stuck on their nose that's shooting back.
I don't know if I'm explaining this well, I'm trying to be brief..
Another example is a recent Corvette duel I had where I had 5x fixed beam lasers, one person was spectating and asked why I was missing so much.
I wasn't missing but on the spectators screen and my opponents it looked like I was never hitting him, except for the constant shield flicker.
Sticking with the Corvette theme and other duels I've had, de-sync makes SCB's, even rapid charge difficult to use.
Example being on my screen I've just boosted past my opponent, kept 200m ish away with no possible way for him to turn and cancel my SCB's and then get railgunned from a ship that's not even looking at me.
Opponents screen however shows me boosting past at 500-600m and never leaving his view.
Did I mention shadow rams? It's an all too common occurrence that it looks like you've passed somebody with hundreds of meters to spare and on your opponents screen it was a head-on collision.
Interestingly many rams only make one person spin out, especially for shadow rams.
Fighter Lag.
Specially NPC controlled fighters, player controlled fighters (via multicrew) cause no issues.
I think it's been over 2 years since I've used a npc fighter in pvp, nobody who takes PvP seriously has either.
Game breaking describes it well, after 30 secs-1 min the owner of the npc fighter will start rubber-banding and virtually teleport randomly here and there with NO negative effect on them.
The longer an npc fighter is alive the worse the de-sync and rubber-banding becomes, should the fighter die there's an instant improvement.
Back when fighter lag was becoming an issue (OVER 2 YEARS AGO) I had a Corvette duel against someone with a fighter out, I was also in a party with him.
His fighter had been out for a few minutes, seemed ok until he started using SCB's in front of me and despite hitting them with feedback cascade instantly nothing happened.
Huh? I asked and he reported that he'd used those SCB's 15 seconds ago on a previous pass..
To wrap this up I do need to disclaim I'm from NZ with mediocre internet, however all these issues above have gone from being an occasional thing to the new normal.
I'm also not the only person who encounters these problems, virtually everyone who PvP's on Xbox will have their own examples.
Please feel free to comment and leave your examples below, hopefully if enough people keep making noise about this Fdev might start taking it seriously.
It wasn't brief but these are the reasons I can't be bothered with ED currently.
Why? I'm one of those people who play ED for the PvP aspect and the current state of the game makes PvP unenjoyable.
Instancing, de-sync between players and the years of fighter lag are issues that weren't around, or at least weren't as bad a few years ago.
Just yesterday I couldn't get into the same supercruise instance as my wingmates, they were just wing signals
The de-sync issue I think is the worst, having had a LOT of Corvette duels and re-watched fights from both players perspectives it's clear that what both players are seeing doesn't correspond with what's actually happening.
The perfect example is when two players are T-boning each other, both players screens show a ship at 90° stuck on their nose that's shooting back.
I don't know if I'm explaining this well, I'm trying to be brief..
Another example is a recent Corvette duel I had where I had 5x fixed beam lasers, one person was spectating and asked why I was missing so much.
I wasn't missing but on the spectators screen and my opponents it looked like I was never hitting him, except for the constant shield flicker.
Sticking with the Corvette theme and other duels I've had, de-sync makes SCB's, even rapid charge difficult to use.
Example being on my screen I've just boosted past my opponent, kept 200m ish away with no possible way for him to turn and cancel my SCB's and then get railgunned from a ship that's not even looking at me.
Opponents screen however shows me boosting past at 500-600m and never leaving his view.
Did I mention shadow rams? It's an all too common occurrence that it looks like you've passed somebody with hundreds of meters to spare and on your opponents screen it was a head-on collision.
Interestingly many rams only make one person spin out, especially for shadow rams.
Fighter Lag.
Specially NPC controlled fighters, player controlled fighters (via multicrew) cause no issues.
I think it's been over 2 years since I've used a npc fighter in pvp, nobody who takes PvP seriously has either.
Game breaking describes it well, after 30 secs-1 min the owner of the npc fighter will start rubber-banding and virtually teleport randomly here and there with NO negative effect on them.
The longer an npc fighter is alive the worse the de-sync and rubber-banding becomes, should the fighter die there's an instant improvement.
Back when fighter lag was becoming an issue (OVER 2 YEARS AGO) I had a Corvette duel against someone with a fighter out, I was also in a party with him.
His fighter had been out for a few minutes, seemed ok until he started using SCB's in front of me and despite hitting them with feedback cascade instantly nothing happened.
Huh? I asked and he reported that he'd used those SCB's 15 seconds ago on a previous pass..
To wrap this up I do need to disclaim I'm from NZ with mediocre internet, however all these issues above have gone from being an occasional thing to the new normal.
I'm also not the only person who encounters these problems, virtually everyone who PvP's on Xbox will have their own examples.
Please feel free to comment and leave your examples below, hopefully if enough people keep making noise about this Fdev might start taking it seriously.
It wasn't brief but these are the reasons I can't be bothered with ED currently.