(11-07-2024, 06:09 PM)Corile Wrote: I've been informed that this thread exists and there is at least one person who is interested in my opinion on this. It hasn't changed since this post 4 years ago, but reading this thread it seems that the problem has only got worse.

I have said before many, many times that Discovery has completely lost the plot when it comes to PvP balance. Someone has watched an extra credits video on how balance is done in league of legends like 7 years ago, came up with a counter chart straight from rock paper scissors 2, and that strategy has dictated the direction of PvP balance changes since then until at least the time I stopped playing disco.

The problem is, this idea doesn't fit the Discovery environment and it seems to me like no one has seriously tried to come up with a balance framework that actually makes sense for Disco.

There are multiple factors that ruin the "everything has a niche and a counter" model about Disco such as:
- Respawn timers. You don't get to jump in immediately with something else to adapt your strategy, there is very limited ability to adapt your strategy while you are in combat.
- Number of players. There is no "matchmaking" and skill disparity during every encounter is very likely.
- Information assymetry. During groupfights you only get the ship names of your opponents from the player list, if you know what they fly and they don't know what you fly, you have an advantage.
- First mover disadvantage. If you play corsairs and raid alpha in 5 battleships, the outcasts have a choice what to log and if they log 5 bombers, even if the numbers are even, you are dead. Likewise, if you see that there are 10 enemies in your home system and there are only 3 people online from your faction, the winning move is to not log because there is no chance that you can win this.
- Variable team size. In league the game is always 5v5, in disco the team size is variable, people join and leave during combat.

If you continue with the "niche and counter" strategy for PvP balance, disco is just going to become a team game of coordinated faction groupfights, where if you are a lone player that doesn't have or want to play with a faction, you have no reason to actually log because the chance that you find encounters that are going to be pleasant for you is greatly diminished.

I think that in general the Disco PvP balance should actually be, you know, balanced, and every ship class should be able to stand against any other ship class (or, alternatively, any snub class should be able to stand its ground against any other snub class, and the same for caps; there should be absolutely minimal interaction between snubs and caps). Then, each class gets a skill rating. Low-skill ships are easier to play but also low reward. High-skill ships are harder, but come with benefits that let the player stand his ground against multiple opponents.

A ship that had a sidewinder or a firestalker in place of a CD was much easier to play and could stand its ground even against a more competent player, but the reward was low because if the enemy decided to run away, there was nothing you could do. Practically anything that allowed for risky instakills was fun to play because it was high-risk, high-reward (reward here being the regens you got from the dead enemy, /Z/ vs KNF Kusari HF fights years ago were a perfect example of this). Bombers almost always died to VHFs, except if they could land a precise SNAC. LFs could outturn VHFs, but they had to be very careful about their shields because they died to one nuke. Forward nuking was a risky tactic against enemies that ran away, but it landed a lot more damage than just constantly aiming at a boxing target. These are just some of the examples.

There were some disadvantages to this model of course, especially back in the day when Disco actually had some new players and those new players would get knowledge-checked by someone who knew what he was doing (like the fact that if you have no shield you must watch out for nukes) and they would get instakilled, but rather than address the immediate problem the entire balance shifted so as to completely remove instakills.

If PvP balance actually worked in tandem with the way that players actually play Discovery, if someone could think about how individual players and groups actually decide whether to log, what to log, what to play, where and how, and if balance worked in a way that actually incentivised fighting to win even when outnumbered or disadvantaged, rather than running away or ganking, then maybe there would be no need to issue these kinds of warnings.

But I'm not sure if it's not too late for that now.

(01-05-2025, 05:49 AM)Karst Wrote: I'm about ten years past my pvp prime and quite honestly just not in the current meta enough to comment on most of the finer aspects, but there's a general observation here that I share:

(01-04-2025, 04:14 PM)Oggdo Bogdo Wrote: There is too much unnecessary complexity and hurdles being added to a dated game that is supposed to be simple which most people simply enjoy out of nostalgia.

(01-05-2025, 01:13 AM)Goliath Wrote: Now its hard to understand and hard to master. Not a combination I'm a fan of.

I've been concerned for some time now about the general rise in complexity, the number of operations the player must familiarize themselves with in order not to be completely useless in a fight. Like I'm glad that the previously stupidly simple gunboats got useful forward guns and mine droppers, mechanics which fit comfortably into their operation and feel rewarding to use.

However. This approach of adding layers of complexity to every class, every matchup type, is going too far. The best example of this is shield drain/shield toggle, at least on snubs (arguably all classes, but we're talking about snubs here).
This feels as a mechanic like a pure "punishment for failure" setup, rather than "reward for success". What I mean is that, say, landing a Mini Razor hit grants a sense of achievement for using this tricky mechanic right, while effectively using shield toggle just feels "normal", while leaving a sense of frustration if you feel like you didn't use the function optimally.

That....isn't fun. This is an added layer of functionality that when utilized properly, adds nothing, and when not, diminishes enjoyment. I don't WANT to set up yet another keybind that I have to micro in order to perform competitively. The addition of this mechanic is just stressful and confusing to me, a veteran player who at least at one time was pretty decent at pvp. I can only imagine what it's like to a new player.

So yeah. I can only echo those sentiments about rising complexity, and I hope that any future added balance layers undergo scrutiny as to if they actually make fights more enjoyable, and if they are really worth further building up the already massive entry barrier into combat. And that some of the existing ones, like said shield toggling, are reviewed as well (other things come to mind like the inscrutable variety of bomber weapons, but that's going off into side topics.)

(04-30-2025, 02:32 PM)Levenna Wrote: obligatory "just return everything to 4.86" post

(04-30-2025, 02:32 PM)Levenna Wrote: obligatory "just return everything to 4.86" post

(04-30-2025, 06:49 PM)L1ght Wrote:

(04-30-2025, 02:32 PM)Levenna Wrote: obligatory "just return everything to 4.86" post

4.95 * would be the correct version , obligatory reply.