Hello, gentlemen pilots. Let me, first of all, express my gratitude to all involved in the creation of this mod and the server of your favorite game. Secondly, I would like to express my opinion on some aspects of the balance on fighters. I will not talk about larger ships, as I do not use them, at least now. I have been playing on this server for two years now.
1. Regarding guns. When I started playing, guns were divided into classes: light, medium and heavy (bombers). Now they can be put on all classes of fighters, but why the bomber should receive a weight penalty when you put a heavy gun created for him. I understand when it is put on a light fighter. And vice versa - a penalty when you put a light gun on a bomber not originally designed for it. Better yet, bring back the old system of dividing guns by ship class. And, increasing the flight speed of shells above 750, keeping the current speed of ships is not correct.
2. Missiles: This is generally a threat to the conduct of battles both in PvP and in group battles. A fighter can't carry so many missiles in its hold. 10-20 at most, make them more killable, but reduce the number to an acceptable number. Plus, the marching engine blocker should detonate them like it does with mines.
3. Shields: Remove this additional effect and return it to the way it was before. Also, weapons do energy damage when shields are active. I think this is not correct. Energy damage should go away when the shield is destroyed or not active.
4. Mines. I liked the way it was before.
All the new updates put a cross on the “skill” of the pilot. And, in the end: the game seems old, but loads the computer like modern games with a realistic component. The wish is that you can choose with advanced graphics and more light version of textures, as in the original.
Thank you.
(01-05-2025, 01:13 AM)Goliath Wrote: The current iteration of snub PvP is so convoluted and full of useless features that it makes cap pvp feel like a breeze to understand in comparison (because it is at this point). Every now and then I'm asked if I can explain how snub pvp works, because I'm one of those gremlins that fly fairly well despite the massive pile of slop that snub pvp is now. A newbie that wants to get better or see if he can get into this stuff.
So what do I reply with? "I'm just as confused as you are."; "I don't fucking know" or "Just fly around and get a feel for it.". There's shields, strafe changes, mass, gun efficiency and DPS, missiles, mines, powercore regen etc. If I were a newbie all over again I'd just neck myself with a steel rope and let "Hurt" by Johnny Cash play in the background. Because it really hurts when my guns won't fire 'cause they eat up too much energy for what they're worth, my ship either moves like a brick and the other guy throws a swatter (which I'm forced by to disengage, take it in the face or focus on instead of the actual target), the shields are down so regen is even more fucked and the other guy runs with guns that also drain powercore.
If I wanted to play EVE or Elite: Dangerous I'd go play those games, not this. I like the ideas the balance team came with, but they are either too overtuned or too taxing on what is supposed to be easy to understand, hard to master combat. Now its hard to understand and hard to master. Not a combination I'm a fan of.
I was today years old when I just about understand that on top of all the nonsense of all the changes, to snubPVP you aren’t meant to aim at the crossheir anymore. Instead, fly in circles using the arrows on your extended pointer as a gauge of when to fire.
No wonder people can’t be arsed picking the game back up. What used to be light hearted fun is now more complicated than my PhD & Masters whilst not being as fun as either.
Edit: Comments not directed at you @Goliath - just read what you typed and it fit nicely
PvP in general hasn't been a fun experience to return to. I'm no snub pilot. I actually hate flying fighters, but when I flew them in the past I at least had fun. Now it feels like it's overly complex, and too much of a hassle to delve into for casual enjoyment. Knowing that the state of balance is what it is, its kept me from logging in and just flying around, given that even the risk of having to defend myself sucks all joy out of the experience for me right now.
It never used to. I used to love fighting in this game, even when I wasn't particularly good at it. Something about now just doesn't feel right or fun whatsoever. If I have to shoot someone, I already know I'm not going to have a good time, so why take the risk? And that's 90% of the experience ruined right there.
I don't even know what Bombers are anymore, if not just glorified SHFs with a couple extra gadgets.
I haven't really touched disco in a few months but I was around when a lot of these new changes were being implemented. Discovery's pvp and combat system in general was always about "Easy to learn, hard to master" and that has always been essentially the core of the game.
The new changes to shields, mass, and powercore all lead into, as others have said, just not a fun experience. Personally I can understand some of the changes made, but most simply just make the game needlessly complex and overall less enjoyable. With all these changes to the core aspects of the game, it is now less of an "Easy to learn" and now more of a "Hard to learn, "Harder to master" game. The more we change and add the more complex it will be for new and returning players to enjoy.
Hi hello greetings. With all due respect to the hard work and efforts of the developer team I want to add my 2 cents too, so I've made a list of defects of the current patch:
1. Shield mechanics. That new shield feature that makes a player's shield invulnerable for a few seconds. It's just unenjoyable and unfun.
2. Power shortage. No comments, it's just plain bad and retarded. I'm not supposed to shoot Vengeances or Reavers like a freaking shotgun in order not to waste all my powercore lmao.
3. Mines. I've been seething and coping all these years about Wardogs not being able to get CD'd which is not normal in terms of Vanilla Freelancer mechanics and earlier Discovery patches, but I got used to it so np. Yet a couple of patches ago you added the Swatters which were completely uncounterable for me if a player knew how to use them properly. And now you "nerfed" them by making them even stronger so that even an average Joe can bully me with these mines and win fights just by spamming them lol.
4. The last hotfix included a CD nerf. The CD turn rate nerf completely ruined my playstyle(mine+CD trap) which I've relied on all these years.
5. "Armor Penetration", "Efficiency" etc. Why do we need all of these smartass numbers and stuff? Disco used to be a simple and fun game where I could log and shoot stuff without overthinking too much.
6. Missiles. Allow to run fewer missiles(around 30 or 50 units, for instance) and make them deadlier like in Vanilla or old versions of Disco so we have less TTK and less boring long-ass combat.
tldr: Game's bad and I believe it's time for the current lead dev @Haste to retire, because of his actions Disco is getting worse and worse with every patch. 8l
(01-11-2025, 11:59 AM)Mort Wrote: Hi hello greetings. With all due respect to the hard work and efforts of the developer team I want to add my 2 cents too, so I've made a list of defects of the current patch:
1. Shield mechanics. That new shield feature that makes a player's shield invulnerable for a few seconds. It's just unenjoyable and unfun.
2. Power shortage. No comments, it's just plain bad and retarded. I'm not supposed to shoot Vengeances or Reavers like a freaking shotgun in order not to waste all my powercore lmao.
3. Mines. I've been seething and coping all these years about Wardogs not being able to get CD'd which is not normal in terms of Vanilla Freelancer mechanics and earlier Discovery patches, but I got used to it so np. Yet a couple of patches ago you added the Swatters which were completely uncounterable for me if a player knew how to use them properly. And now you "nerfed" them by making them even stronger so that even an average Joe can bully me with these mines and win fights just by spamming them lol.
4. The last hotfix included a CD nerf. The CD turn rate nerf completely ruined my playstyle(mine+CD trap) which I've relied on all these years.
5. "Armor Penetration", "Efficiency" etc. Why do we need all of these smartass numbers and stuff? Disco used to be a simple and fun game where I could log and shoot stuff without overthinking too much.
6. Missiles. Allow to run fewer missiles(around 30 or 50 units, for instance) and make them deadlier like in Vanilla or old versions of Disco so we have less TTK and less boring long-ass combat.
tldr: Game's bad and I believe it's time for the current lead dev @Haste to retire, because of his actions Disco is getting worse and worse with every patch. 8l
Haste doesn’t need to retire. Just needs to undo all the wrongs done. (Literally everything involving ‘balance’.)
(01-11-2025, 11:59 AM)Mort Wrote: Hi hello greetings. With all due respect to the hard work and efforts of the developer team I want to add my 2 cents too, so I've made a list of defects of the current patch:
1. Shield mechanics. That new shield feature that makes a player's shield invulnerable for a few seconds. It's just unenjoyable and unfun.
2. Power shortage. No comments, it's just plain bad and retarded. I'm not supposed to shoot Vengeances or Reavers like a freaking shotgun in order not to waste all my powercore lmao.
3. Mines. I've been seething and coping all these years about Wardogs not being able to get CD'd which is not normal in terms of Vanilla Freelancer mechanics and earlier Discovery patches, but I got used to it so np. Yet a couple of patches ago you added the Swatters which were completely uncounterable for me if a player knew how to use them properly. And now you "nerfed" them by making them even stronger so that even an average Joe can bully me with these mines and win fights just by spamming them lol.
4. The last hotfix included a CD nerf. The CD turn rate nerf completely ruined my playstyle(mine+CD trap) which I've relied on all these years.
5. "Armor Penetration", "Efficiency" etc. Why do we need all of these smartass numbers and stuff? Disco used to be a simple and fun game where I could log and shoot stuff without overthinking too much.
6. Missiles. Allow to run fewer missiles(around 30 or 50 units, for instance) and make them deadlier like in Vanilla or old versions of Disco so we have less TTK and less boring long-ass combat.
tldr: Game's bad and I believe it's time for the current lead dev @Haste to retire, because of his actions Disco is getting worse and worse with every patch. 8l
I'll agree with everything except Haste's resignation and the shields problem.
Under normal circumstances I find myself disagreeing with the vast majority of people who are heavy into PvP on the server. That's just how it's always been for me because my priority is different things/experiences when I choose to spend time on the server.
But I do have to admit that I cannot recall a time, since I started playing Discovery, when I've been having as little fun as I currently am. To the point where I am actively unable to bring myself to log given the average experience you get by being a fairly average snub pilot on the server these days. I'm already somebody that's fighting an uphill battle given how easy it is for me to get overwhelmed by lots of visual stimulation (I'm probably on the spectrum lmao - just undiagnosed and that's a fair enough thing to consider a skill issue), but matters are made worse by the introduction of entirely foreign mechanical elements to the game.
I was apprehensive about the shield changes when I saw them. Well, not entirely. I was happy to see the different shield types be made distinct from each other. But I was unhappy to see things go even further by adding an entirely new mechanic to the spin of things that's done nothing but give people grief since it's introduction.
Shield overcharging.
I cannot count the number of times a GB or capital ship of some variety has walked into a fight with the bare minimum rp required, and far more batteries than is possible, and just ruined everything for everyone involved. The worst part is? This wouldn't be a problem if we wound the clock back by a year. A clumsy cap pilot getting surrounded was going to die pretty quickly regardless of whether he had 10k shield batteries or none at all.
That's my biggest gripe. Fights take longer because of an invulnerability screen that you can't do anything about. Weapons have also been "reworked" in a way that feels extremely strange and convoluted. There are now twice the number of snub guns that all feel pointless to use in the current PvP landscape. The only class I can sort of will myself to play anymore is ironically enough GBs and even they have it bad given the current balancing of torpedoes which have great tracking, insane lifetimes, and outperform the "stock" GB loadout of pulse+prims by default. It's so bad you can get walked on in an otherwise perfectly balanced match-up.
I feel like balance as a whole has just lost the plot and gotten greedy to change as much as possible.
You need to go back to the feel of things and start actually testing the stuff you're putting on the server instead of lying about it. Maybe when you see how brutally unfun the general experience is and can be bothered to include a wider testing sample of people, without boiling away their patience to cooperate with you because of sheer noise, you might actually be able to fix this and bring back the fleet brawls that used to happen semi-frequently and all over the place.
And yeah, I am kind of annoyed, because this spree of changes has made me feel locked out of my faction's "theme" which is being snub-centric and focused on speed.
Speed no longer means anything when you can be suppressed by a combination of missiles/mines without an effective hard counter.
The current experience is simply abysmal and something needs to be done about it ASAP.
I used to play a lot back in .85, but frankly after my many years long break I admittedly remember little of how PVP used to be back then. I have only recently started playing again in April of 2024, and have seen been dropping into conn frequently to try to improve my skills. Some stuff needs adjustment, and will be adjusted I am sure, like shield hardening. Perhaps it is that I came back in and effectively started from scratch skill wise, but I feel like these changes overall have not been as bad as people make them out to be. I've struggled to improve over the last few months, and balance tweaks are just things I have had to deal with, roll with the punches. As I learn how to fly effectively I need to constantly learn and adjust my tactics, so maybe this is less trouble for me given my situation.
I try to pvp often, even if I know I will lose. I wish I could provide more on the matter, but I feel like the direction snub fights is heading in isn't terrible.
Battleships really need attention from what I understand but that is a matter for another thread.
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