Skinlancer - open question about balance

[Agmen of Eladesor]

As someone who has played on here for several years, I've noticed something that I don't think is a good thing, and I'd like to see some honest discussion as well as maybe a couple of explanations that make sense.

When Discovery first started out, the factions had flavor. Their ships performed significantly different, weapons performed differently, and your RP had to match things.

Someone got this wild hair up their butt that all things had to balance out, so no one had any advantage over anyone else, and the flavor is just gone. It's sort of like Disco has the same devs that created the original ending of Mass Effect 3. You pour your heart and soul into the Role Play of your characters and the game, and so you now get your choice, your SNAC can shoot blue, red, or green.

I guess my open question is why did you decide that? Why can certain factions not have different gear? Saying that, gee, your weapon still does different damage - when the damage difference is only 3 or 4 points per shot - is ludicrous from a player perspective.

PvP combat SHOULD reflect the differences in faction abilities. You'll pardon the real world analogy, but you wouldn't expect, say, Venezuela to be able to fight evenly against the U.S., would you? So why should a Junker craft, primarily put together out of spare parts, be able to hold it's own evenly against a Liberty navy ship? Corsairs had incredible shield stripping capabilities - made them scary as hell to go up against. Now everyone can load up shield busters. Why?

---

Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.

[Challenger]

Resounding Yes, for two reasons.

The first is that the dev team nerfed the refire rate on purple goddess chain guns. Those things were easily the most beautiful weapons in the game in 4.84, and halving the fire rate was one of the few things in disco that has truly disappointed me. Citing latency as a motive is absurd while missile trails still exist.

The second is a little less eccentric, and essentially echoes yours. Why should I as a LR Barghest have near-identical firepower to an upholder bomber? How does it make sense that Freelancer ships should have access to class nine weapons? We've allowed a desire for balance to exceed reasonable explanation. As a maquis character, shouldn't I be at a disadvantage against a GRN vessel of a similar tier? Shouldn't he, the one backed by an entire house government, have better weapons than I do? Basically my opinion is this: Pirates and unlawfuls should generally be less well-equipped than THE NAVY. Simply avoiding giving them capital ship options does not address this problem.

This can be fixed, but the focus has to be on in-RP realism. I'm glad you posted this; of late I'd begun to wonder whether I was alone in thinking this.

[Veygaar]

There is still alot of variety in the game, and for the most part the changes are good in my opinion.

Remove zoom, that's all I ask

---

Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[onca]

One word: q_q

Too many players were upset that they were constantly getting beaten on account of their gear being inferior. Especially so with lawful RP'ers; as we know lawful equipment was woeful compared to outlaw gear. This was only exacerbated by the noobs and lolwats who flocked to the outlaw factions, both for the better weapons and for the kewl factor.

This forced many players to "adopt" OORP equipment just to stay in the game, which created yet more q_q on the other side of the fence. Corsairs tizzies and bombers are the best examples I can think of.

So I can kind of see the point of the current system to level the playing field WRT equipment. In fact I might be a bit to blame, I can recall doing an analysis of all class 9 equipment for that purpose some years back. The technerf debacle is a further attempt to level the playing field.

Anyhow none of this is new to any of you, I'm sure... but yeah, I can see your point.

PS. "Skinlancer"... haha now I get it =]

[Ursus]

It's a game, some amount of balance is necessary or else you get team stacking. And its not actually balanced anyway. There is still some variety in things too, Rheinland cap weaps are stronger, etc. I would like to see some of that emphasized more, technology trees should be better developed (cerbs reduced to lighter Rheinland weaps, etc).

---

Discovery 24/7 Negotiating Tactics:

[SMGSterlin]

I skipped that Mass Effect 3 ending part, in order to not ruin the game for me.


But yes, I agree, certain factions SHOULD have advantages. and others disadvantages. RP should control how strong a faction is, not the devs. (To an extent at least, as Ursus said, it's still a game and needs a little bit of balance)

---

[Echo 7-7]

Don't blame it on all the Devs - blame Mjololololnir.

Addendum: ... who was responsible for a large swathe of the balance decisions across 4.85 and 4.86, as far as I know.

But read Blodo's post below. Changes were deemed necessary, so they were made.

---

There was a sig here, once.

[Jack_Henderson]

The game has too many factions to level the field by giving e.g. 1 faction great hull busting, faction 2 great hull ratings, faction 3 great ability X... everything that is classified as "weaker than" will cause complaints, and all the aspects that are visibly weak will be avoided. Pvp folk will flock where the top gear is (old Sabre *coughs*) and leave those faction that have weak gear the only chance to always lose or always gank... result: disappointment, however any confrontation ends.

I think the attempts to balance the pvp aspect makes sense and is essential in a game in which - let's be honest - 80 % is pewpew, 10 % is rp and the rest ist just facepalm.

What Agmen is looking for sounds cool... and it definitely would be cool in a game that wasn't that fixed on pvp and the blue message.

---

+ IMG| DISCORD: https://discord.gg/TWrGWjp
+ IMG| IS RECRUITING: Click to find out more!

[SA_Scavenger]

Simple question deserves a simple answer. If you stack advantages to specific factions, and not to others, you'll just have a lopsided game with no one playing the weaker side. No one wants to constantly lose on account of inferior gear.

Of course there's also abuse of the gear. Then those factions with good gear will have an easier time having a following of active players therefore further exasperating the problem... Guess a better way of saying this is that you have to balance out the pros and cons so that players can find their niche and work within a fair playing field.

---

[Remilia Scarlet]

Go Sairs, 600 ms gentlemen, still.

---

Where the end starts | Submergence | Awaken | Scarlet D(a\o)wn | Remilia wiki page
BECAUSE YOU DON'T SAY SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER