I have been thinking about how the PvP aspect of the game could be improved and I would like to present my personal opinion about things that decrease the fun and my thoughts on how they could be fixed.
Remember, this is my personal opinion. You don't have to agree.
Also I am not aiming at special persons or factions. I am not QQing because something happened but I am summing up my pvp experience of the last 2 years.
My personal PvP Funbreakers:
1. Caps botting snubs in snub fights
Situation: There is a snub fight and all of a sudden a capship of some involved faction appears and starts handing out bats/bots. All of a sudden, many thousand units of B&B are available and more than once the fight abruptly ended because the disadvantaged party simply left because the fight became no fun at that very moment.
Problem: Neither on the winning party, nor on the receiving end this ending felt good.
Attempts to restrict this fun-breaker by player-player agreements proved to be not enough.
My suggestion: Introduce CAP+TRANSPORT-regens and SNUB-regens. Snubs cannot be fed with cap regens and vice versa.
Edit: I added "transport regens" to the Cap-category because e.g. the cloaking Ptrans that hands out masses of regens is a pvp fun breaker in my opinion, too.
2. Snubs can regen too often
In my opinion, snub fights in Disco are too long.
While jousting 1on1 end reasonably fast, fights in which someone goes full-dodge just take too long to be fun. Someone who constantly shield runs is an annoying enemy to fight and he will not die to a normally skilled opponent in a reasonable time frame.
I think a fight should not consist of "killing someone x times until his regens are out". Fighting sometimes feels like a replay of a bad movie that progresses too slowly. It also feels sometimes as if one was trying to chisel carefully at the enemy hull, instead of shooting at a warship with lasers.
My suggestion: Half the bots on all snubs.
Consequences:
> shorter snub fights
> fighters could perhaps down bombers before they kill the caps
> escorts could perhaps down bombers before they kill transports
> pvp death could be reduced to 1h or 2h, instead of 4 because fights would not take hours any more.
3. GBs are a little too strong against snubs at the moment
The Gunboat class works and the Turretzoom and Turretsteer made them useful. We should keep that.
In my opinion, they are just a little too strong at the moment. An average agile gunboat needs at least three average bomber pilots to beat it, and there is a high chance of failing. I won't even talk about the few op gunboats in the hands of able pilots. We all know that they are incredibly hard to take out and that some people log off when they are confronted with them (mainly Bnose and Asco).
My suggestion would be:
Reduce the GB guns that can shoot backwards to a max of 4. Perhaps even 3.
A Gunboat should be made for attacking (max of 6 in the front arc) and not perfect for running away and dodging while gunning down everything that follows (Bnose, Asco = 6 guns in the back arc => hull damage on every pass for snubs).
A GB that has only 3-4 guns to the back needs to maneuver to be effective, turn and thus cannot just do the stuttering-dolphin maneuver while hammering everything in range because its damage output would not be enough to effectively keep more snubs at bay and damage them on every approach. Forcing the GBs to maneuver would also add a portion of skill into GBing again, as arc-management would gain importance while pure "Zoom out and autoaim" would be way less effective.
Another suggestion to make GBs more vulnerable to bombers (a mix of VHF and Gbs is unbeatable at the moment because bombers cannot live against that mix) would be to lengthen the time before GB shields come up again a little. If a heavy bomber had 2 attempts to snac the hull, and a low-core bomber could try once every time the shield is down, the odds would be fairer and bombers could be dangerous enemies of the GBs again.
Tnx for reading.
If you feel like commenting, please keep it in a reasonable tone. Thank you!
I have to agree with pretty much everything here. Your solutions should work good enough to solve the problems, but Im not that sure if nerfing the GBs in that way would be a good idea as its also going to make them rather useless against other Caps.
Well, about gunboats - I met an interesting combo, recently.
A full missile fighter (2 paralyzers, 2 Sidewinders, 2 Cannonbals) and a bomber. Pretty damn efficient, especially at deshielding gunboat to allow the bomber land a SNAC hit on it. I'd like to see that pair taking on Assault. if they can kill him as well - they found a GB killer combo, that will totally rape gunboats if those will get nerfed in 87. (that is, if they can kill him).
Something tells me, we'll see more of these setups in the future.
"My suggestion: Introduce CAP+TRANSPORT-regens and SNUB-regens. Snubs cannot be fed with cap regens and vice versa."
Not possible, techwise. It's possible to create regens with less or more capacity, but it's not possible to prevent certain craft from using them.
"Reduce the GB guns that can shoot backwards to a max of 4. Perhaps even 3. "
Gunboat turrets have been acknowledged as being overpowered with turret steering. They themselves will be significantly reduced in power. Arcs will not be affected by this - players who want to return to the old pulse/razor shotgun can do so. (a consecutive hit by 2 pulse and 3 razors will instakill almost any snub)
Halving bots/bats on snubs is something I'd recommend to check past 4.87's alpha phase. Reason: It's quite possible that the reduced lag will make aiming a LOT easier.
Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.
Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.
(12-11-2012, 04:20 PM)AeternusDoleo Wrote: "My suggestion: Introduce CAP+TRANSPORT-regens and SNUB-regens. Snubs cannot be fed with cap regens and vice versa."
Not possible, techwise. It's possible to create regens with less or more capacity, but it's not possible to prevent certain craft from using them.
Damn.
So I guess there is no technical way to somehow keep an unkillable Cap to be a big regens-dispenser in the middle of a snub fight?
Quote:Halving bots/bats on snubs is something I'd recommend to check past 4.87's alpha phase. Reason: It's quite possible that the reduced lag will make aiming a LOT easier.
Alright. I don't think reduced lag will have much impact on aiming because the game is just too fast, ships just too small. But perhaps that's just me. We can try, of course. If fights still remain so damn boring and long, one can still check this out.
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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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So I guess there is no technical way to somehow keep an unkillable Cap to be a big regens-dispenser in the middle of a snub fight?
FullCerb battleship. Problem solved. Or any other ship class capable of dealing with that cap.
If you'll say that it's a Snub-Only combat... well. That rises quite some questions, since it means that a group of players trying to forcefully keep another group of players from the RP encounter. That's one of the reasons Connecticut and Event Mechanics exists, that allows for all kinds of fights without interference of outside parties.
Well, as for me - I always move out if both parties (all players incl.) ask for that, most BS players out there would do the same, if they speak english. The problem of the selective access to the encounters still stays, though.
P.S. Thing is - you guys (not exactly you, Jack - but Community in general) always blame caps for giving out bots, and never players that take them. I can speak for myself with confidence - I'll always support a friendly ID'ed player in a fight if he will ask for cover or bots - no matter what the opposing force or the rest of friendly ID'ed players will be asking for. It's plain unimaginable for me to go "Screw you, man, you have a "fair" fight here, so go and blow yourself up". Only exception is a Connecticut, since it's a PvP Training/Dueling/Testing ground, no death penalties apply.
(12-11-2012, 04:50 PM)Jack_Henderson Wrote: Alright. I don't think reduced lag will have much impact on aiming because the game is just too fast, ships just too small. But perhaps that's just me. We can try, of course. If fights still remain so damn boring and long, one can still check this out.
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