Quote:There are quite a lot of balance issues and, agreed, worse is the missile turret ones.

So now people are saying we have to modify the way our characters do things because of yet another game 'bug' (balance issue). I hate that situation. Playing 'fair' invites the argument that no-one should fly ships or fine tune their weapons loadout at all as that could be, and often is, unfair to an opponent. Hey, the only way to ensure battles in FL are fair is to change everything so everyone has one gun type and one ship type available - then it would be purely a test of flying skill. Are we expected to nerf our own load out and nerf our fleet (such as it is) to placate anyone who comes after us?

How would Quake 3 be if you got pissed off at the guy (or girl) who just fragged you just because they had a BFG and you only had a shotgun, then proceeded to insult them because of it?

Unfair situations happen.

It's childish behaviour from losers that is endemic in the Disco community. Loosing is annoying, especially when it seems that the enemy is 'cheating' by having better ships and weapons. But they're not cheating. And it's inevitable.

We don't have enough active members to start playing nice when battleships turn up on our door step and blow stuff up - our 'fleet' has one battleship with one player who's play time is now strictly limmited. We're not encouraging other players to attack us with bigger ships, the game allows that to happen so people will do it anyway.

The game balance of FL is skewed all over the place. A fighter cannot even dent a battleship's shields so if one of us is on and an enemy battleship turns up (I can count three times that happening when I flew just a fighter), we have to go hide until it goes away.

I will NOT mandate artificial un-RP rules to limit ship types or weapons. It would be good if KNF players all had fighter characters and did patrolls in them but I won't mandate it. We have the entire NPC KNF/KNP running around doing that - not that they're much use but that's another issue to do with FL we work around.

Let the flames commence, but if no-one can find a an ineluctable argument in regard to role-play to stop people doing what the FL Disco universe encourages , things will happen as they will. If the whole community falls apart - good! - perhaps that will show Igiss some of the underlying faults in his Mod and allow him to fix them. Let the machine break if it's built with flaws! It's sometime the only way they can be fixed.

If you feel a moral urge to play fair, reduce the number of missile turrets on your ship. If you feel flying cap ships encourages people attacking you to use cap ships (who would choose to attack a House faction in less than the biggest damn ship they could afford?) by all means, fly a fighter.

Remember that it's other players who choose to attack the KNF: we do not attack them. And again, if you're worried that eventually no one will attack us, or the attacks will get out of hand - sorry, it's the unbalanced nature of the game. Give me an strong RP reason to tell people to behave differently and I will, but I won't patch up game problems for Igiss. You can quote me on that.

If anyone goes "missile spamming!" my response is "yes, of course! You have a point?". It's a Kusari invention and it's inevitable for our RP for us to use them. Report personal insults to the server admins with screen shots, or just point out it's not our fault missiles are too useful. Are we playing fair? Not our problem, we're doing what our characters would do.

So, sorry, I'm not going to be making any rules over this - I think you will find what's good for the game in the short term will make it unplayable in the long - I won't interfere with natural evolution. Things need to evolve by themselves if the whole is to be made stronger.

' Wrote:Nadir, this community exists for nearly 2 years, and you joined 2,5 months ago. And I suppose you should be more careful with words about the community falling apart.

Balance issues are a problem for every multiplayer game, for every Freelancer mod. This is why balance of many aspects of Discovery is changing from one version to another. You might compare it with patching for commercial multiplayer games. And I'm sure (dunno if others will agree or not, but that's my opinion) that during the recent year we made a lot of progress in terms of balance.

Why? One reason is because now people are really flying different ships with different setups. There are setups that work better than others, surely; but none gives an unfair advantage over all other options, like it often happens. Also, it's true that fighters have no chance against battleships, but should they have a chance? Guess not; fighters have their own mission and are useful against other ship types.

Nothing is ideal, of course, but I'm working on improving balance. The missile issue is one of the /numerous/ balance issues that will be addressed in the next beta.

To conclude, I won't amend server rules to suit balance problems that don't completely ruin the game. If something does ruin the game, rules might be introduced before the problem is fixed. Factions are free to introduce any rules for their members.

' Wrote:If a faction behaves in ways against the spirit of the game they get what they deserve... by not attracting new players or being forced out by peer pressure. Fair enough.

In this case I don't see the RP (that is, what would I do if I were that person) arguments for missile limitations. It will only piss people off for a short time anyway, as the next beta will improve the situation.

I may have got a bit to enthusiastic about my argument favouring free evolution over protecting people from game issues but several people have been calling for artificial limitations on missiles not to mention calling people who use them various uncomplimentary names and acting like it's dishonourable to use something even though it's perfectly in character.

My VHF was shot down by missile barrages twice in a row secondsafter contacting the same enemy but I didn't insult the people doing it and certainly don't think it's OOC, bad RP or anything like dishonourable conduct... merely a lesson not to fly fighters at capital ships until the balance problem is sorted out.