Godslayer Balance Essay

[The_Godslayer]

Whenever SNAC instakills are brought up as some sort of comeback mechanic I can't help but feel like players are actively lying to themselves. They weren't. Their primary use was punching down better than any other weapon ever could. Take off your nostalgia glasses, or simply admit that the power fantasy of taking down a dozen players solo is why you want them back -- don't attribute magic superpowers to a weapon that never had them.

The last times I ever punched above my skill level were during the VR Rheinland event where snac was reverted, and back when wardogs were first released and the KuBomber had just enough hull to minesit on two of them and force a joust to instakill VHFs and survive after. Since then, I've never beaten someone even marginally above my skill level, and these days I tend to lose 2, 3, and 4 v 1s in a matter of minutes. At this point, I can't list a win since 5.0 that was not entirely a continuous streak of dumb luck.

Losing is whatever. Losing without a chance of competition while I'm outnumbering a player is very funny, but not fun. The only options for me to participate in the current PvP environment is punching down horribly, or getting lucky a large number of times in a row. There is no point where my contribution helps anything in a fight, or even where multiple people of either my skill level or higher contributes anything to the fight. That is not fun, at least for me, and not enjoyable.

Now I face the urge to simply not log on in the game and only do forum RP because I know that if I run with an escort of 3, not only am I going to show up in someone's kill compilation, but there is exactly zero hope of a lucky shot saving the day. There's genuinely nothing I can do, even across ship classes, except die.

My nostalgia is already set aside. The two things I want to do in the current environment, PvP and RP, are becoming functionally impossible for me. I'd like them not to be.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Vendetta]

Now I face the urge to simply not log on in the game and only do forum RP because I know that if I run with an escort of 3, not only am I going to show up in someone's kill compilation, but there is exactly zero hope of a lucky shot saving the day. There's genuinely nothing I can do, even across ship classes, except die.

My nostalgia is already set aside. The two things I want to do in the current environment, PvP and RP, are becoming functionally impossible for me. I'd like them not to be.

This is a sentiment I can anecdotally echo as it hits the nail on the head for me. The current state of balance and the majority of the ships I typically fly being absolutely miserable for casual enjoyment has more or less reduced my log time to zero. PvP events don't attract me. PvE isn't rewarding or interesting enough for me personally.

After vanilla the only thing I wished for was the ability to fly and operate larger ships like cruisers and battleships. Discovery gave me that and I loved it. Things weren't over-complicated. I didn't feel the need to invest an unreasonable amount of time and two extra hands to maintain a ludicrous amount of hotkeys for a less rewarding experience. Regardless of if I was fighting an insurmountable force, or if I was in a duel with a dude objectively better than me, I at least had some level of impact. I felt like I was doing more.

Now I feel like every fight is something I flounder in. I can't win against 95% of the people I engage. I can't defend myself against 95% of the people who engage me. There's no security in logging my larger ships as without escorts I'm easy pickings, and it feels like I'm being funneled to fly a snub the majority of the time, given that most people I usually roll with aren't going to log to fly escort duty and draw attention to themselves, knowing they'll experience the same level of despair when facing combat.

Even when fights are balanced, numerically. If the more capable pilots split up and try to even the odds. The fights don't feel organic. They feel stagnant. Boring. Everyone comes out of it agitated. There's no sense of triumph. There's no sense of enjoyment. It's a numbers game of all evens until one side runs out.

That's boring, dog.

I hate the reduced TTK because I'm barely in a fight for a minute now. I'd rather not even show if it means saving myself the headache.

[SeaFalcon]

If the bomber was given its long-range anti cap weapon again, I doubt they'd be anywhere near as effective as in the old days due to all the additional mechanics in place. Fuze, Energy damage guns, shield energy drain.

The only times the old bombers were effective was when no one shot them. In duels their opponent even when good needed to make one mistake and had no way to adjust to it, the new fuze mechanic would fix this for a big part.
Then there is the EMP mechanics with a whole lot of guns having energy damage, you can probably keep a bomber from even firing their snac properly, not to mention the added drain from shields. Bombers are always charging their shields in fights now.

I do think that the shield drain is far too high for certain classes. As soon as you get shot you lose your defensive abilities and can't regain the upper hand if you're both equal, let alone when your enemy is better.
Especially Cruiser and up suffer from this far too much as well as freighters.

I really wish engagements had more range, especially for capital ships. Also, bombers needing to basically ram into their target with the way the current bombs are setup is just plain stupid - especially since the bombs are so inaccurate they are not more energy efficient than your regular guns or those from a fighter.

Edit: also if the dev team is so picky about insta-killing. Remove the gunboat mines and give them proper regular guns again, please. It's annoying to have these insta kill balls of doom randomly pop up in a snub brawl.

[Amba]

As someone who is pretty low skill at PvP I've felt generally discouraged from participating for the same reasons that have already been mentioned in this thread.

I won't bother rehashing what everyone else has already said but I will mention one thing about noobtubes: they don't totally ruin balance on other games cause they're limited use, snub core regen is high enough that even if a noobtube completely drained it you wouldn't have the same effect I don't think.

[Tenshi]

leading to horribly labor intensive fight mechanics like battlecruisers controlling strafe, turn, roll, shield regen, weapon groups, and crosshair snap, let alone managing enemy missiles and actually aiming and firing your own weapons. Your reward for managing all of these simultaneously is 10 or less seconds of firing your weapons at an enemy who is also doing the same in order to minimize how much damage you can do to them, and likely being forced off your angle of attack by another member of the groupfight, or reaching a position where you need to drastically change your orientation to allow your guns to fire again. In short, you put an extreme amount of effort in, and your reward is the feeling of impotence, ineffectiveness, and relative uselessness, regardless of your real contribution.

A note before the below: the opinions shared come from a person who was an Osiris/Overlord gamer before 5.0, and an Akhetaten/Battlecruiser gamer post 5.0. If some (or all) of these points don't apply to you it might be because we come from different backgrounds.


I'm not a particularly fond passenger of the current balance hate-train and I've never really subscribed to the typical "Hate Haste" messages that many members of the community live by, but that's one of the few occasions where I have to say I agree with the point being made.

Was it better 4 years ago? No, not really. As a Battleship in a fleet fight you still had about as much "value" to bring to the table as a Battlecruiser/Battleship has today. I'm not trying to gaslight myself by going "Damn back in the day I could pull off some amazing MLG plays on the Akhetaten and send 'em to my friends". No, lmao, I couldn't.

The difference between then and now is that back then I had to keep three things in mind to properly play the game (probably even less during a 1v1) whereas right now I have to keep thirteen things in mind to properly play the game.

I enjoy how things got complicated and how classes got mechanics, and in a 1v1 scenario I wouldn't even compare today's cap PVP with cap PVP pre 5.0, it's like playing an entirely different game. I also firmly believe that people who despise current cap PVP (in the sense of duels) and want to return to pre 5.0 era are severely coping due to their inability to perform in a class that has actual mechanics involved and the class' gameplay doesn't come down to "press WASD while flying in a straight line at your opponent or away from your opponent". Yes, as much as nostalgia hits me and I've missed killing <literally anything> in a 1v1 as an Osiris because my ship's 'run in a straight line and WASD' was better than anyone else's 'run in a straight line and WASD' even I admit it was disgusting that duel PVP came to that.

Now while I find great enjoyment in how duels have changed, I sincerely think that the very same changes make fleet engagements simply unplayable, and I fully agree with the quote above in the context of fleet engagements.

Thing is, I'm not really adding anything constructive here.

I'm not providing the secret sauce so that issue can be fixed while keeping duels as fun.

Nor am I calling Haste incompetent for being unable to get that done because frankly, I don't know how that is possible myself.

In my experience since 5.0 released (I've probably been in three (?) fleet fights ever since) anything above a 3v3, maybe a 4v4, gets so complicated with how many things you need to keep in mind that at this point it's just better to not bother with it.

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[The_Godslayer]

This is a sentiment I can anecdotally echo as it hits the nail on the head for me. The current state of balance and the majority of the ships I typically fly being absolutely miserable for casual enjoyment has more or less reduced my log time to zero. PvP events don't attract me. PvE isn't rewarding or interesting enough for me personally.

Even when fights are balanced, numerically. If the more capable pilots split up and try to even the odds. The fights don't feel organic. They feel stagnant. Boring. Everyone comes out of it agitated. There's no sense of triumph. There's no sense of enjoyment. It's a numbers game of all evens until one side runs out.

I do think that the shield drain is far too high for certain classes. As soon as you get shot you lose your defensive abilities and can't regain the upper hand if you're both equal, let alone when your enemy is better.
Especially Cruiser and up suffer from this far too much as well as freighters.

I really wish engagements had more range, especially for capital ships. Also, bombers needing to basically ram into their target with the way the current bombs are setup is just plain stupid - especially since the bombs are so inaccurate they are not more energy efficient than your regular guns or those from a fighter.

As someone who is pretty low skill at PvP I've felt generally discouraged from participating for the same reasons that have already been mentioned in this thread.

These are the sentiments I actually wanted to address in this thread, not old SNAC. It's about balance being in a state of not instant guaranteed loss and going to do something else, but an agonizingly slow guaranteed loss that is completely inevitable. There is no functional difference between me and my escort trying to PvP, and us just sitting there being shot and burning through our regens. It's the same amount of damage dealt for both sides, nearly the same amount of time spent there, and the same guaranteed outcome. Not only is the situation hopeless with no chance of comeback, the exact same with the old SNAC sealclubbing horror stories, but instead of it being done instantly, you get to flounder around in space feeling hopeless, with your full impotence and incapability shoved down your throat for as long as your opponent wants.

It's significantly worse for capital ships, especially cruisers, where you have to micromanage an assload of keybinds and specialized actions, for the exact same result. You have to play your keyboard like a piano, only to still get 3 and 4v1d with very little difficulty. You spend upwards of 45 minutes fighting in a cruiser 4v1, and not only are you and your squad guaranteed death, you're guaranteed frustration and exhaustion for managing everything, and you don't have a way to just leave because cruisers have CDs and don't have to expend them on mine management like snubs do.

Thing is, I'm not really adding anything constructive here.

I'm not providing the secret sauce so that issue can be fixed while keeping duels as fun.

The purpose of this thread is simply to brainstorm ideas to lead to the secret sauce.

They were just a statistic in some ace's most recent killstreak.

This has not changed at all, at least for me. What has changed is how long the newbies and unskilled are forced to fight. The outcome is still an incredible 5v1 that will be posted on youtube where the high skill player took zero or nearly zero damage. It's just a 15 minute video instead of a 3 minute video.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[Sombs]

Give snubs the same treatment as capital ships: Remove bots and bats, add them to their hull/shield values. Nothing worse than people avoiding PvP because they are afraid of feeding the enemy, being actually a handicap to your group.

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[The_Godslayer]

Nothing worse than people avoiding PvP because they are afraid of feeding the enemy, being actually a handicap to your group.

Fuses, for the most part, solve this issue. The only time this becomes relevant again is with heavy lag, which is why I haven't participated in the big KNF fights for the ongoing event.

I did just think of another interesting change that makes the situation bad: You cannot just leave. The size of systems were upscaled, some of them dramatically, and while cruise speed increased, impulse and thruster speeds didn't. Even if you simply gave up completely and went to dock, you cannot. It's comically outside of your reach, adding to the sensation of hopelessness and uselessness.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"

[TheSauron]

The outcome is still an incredible 5v1 that will be posted on youtube where the high skill player took zero or nearly zero damage.

Unless you're assuming a fringe case where the newbies are all playing Freelancer for the first time, this outcome is genuinely impossible. Any players putting in a genuine effort will just grind the ace down with missiles alone, not even accounting for what gun damage they'd be able to put in as well. If you're so helpless that you cannot kill a single dude with ten missile launchers supported by twenty guns, then there's nothing balance can do for you.

You're arguing things on the basis of a scenario that is simply not a thing anymore.

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One MD Admiral

[The_Godslayer]

Unless you're assuming a fringe case where the newbies are all playing Freelancer for the first time, this outcome is genuinely impossible. Any players putting in a genuine effort will just grind the ace down with missiles alone, not even accounting for what gun damage they'd be able to put in as well. If you're so helpless that you cannot kill a single dude with ten missile launchers supported by twenty guns, then there's nothing balance can do for you.

You're arguing things on the basis of a scenario that is simply not a thing anymore.

The specific case I'm talking about is a Partisan coalition LF in O-41. I don't recall a single missile landing, neither the light missiles or the guys with firestalkers and sidewinders. Half of the time when I fired mine, he'd quickly wiggle up and down and they'd lose tracking from 2 or 300m and fly off into the distance. I don't think anyone hit guns, his shield was off maybe twice in the whole engagement. I hit his shield a few times myself but that was it. I'm not sure if he took hull damage because I died third.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"