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GSF Changes in 5.9.2


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What are you doing about the current ship imbalance? Before the patch, Strike Fighters were like scouts; slower, but actually had armor. They were also known as the jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none, supposedly. Now they are the jack-of-all-trades and master-of-all. There is literally no reason to fly anything else right now and most wins are due to the winning team flying primarily Strike Fighters.

 

Their speed and engine power are too high

Their evasion is too high.

Their shield and hull are too high.

Their laser damage is too high.

Their missile damage and reload speed is too high.

They can do everything any other ship can do, but better.

 

Whereas bombers are the complete opposite.

They were perhaps a bit too tough before, but now they are like paper.

What is the problem with this, you might ask?

Strike Fighters are better at defending a satellite than an actual bomber designed to defend satellites.

 

It doesn't matter how high your evasion is our how good your shields or armor are. If a SF simply breathes in your general direction, you are erased in an instant.

 

Every ship had a counter to it. Gunships were OP, but that is where the Scout came in.

 

My only saving grace against a SF is if they are at a distance and I am in a Gunship with a red power charge. Or if they suck, which they tend to do; flying a SF to compensate.

Edited by ForfiniteStories
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A few points about premade groups:

  • Premade groups no longer count as the average rating of all the ships. They now count everyone in the group as the same as the highest rated player in the group.

 

I don't see how this change is good for the game. In my mind, it gives incentive for highly rated players to only want to group with other highly rated players. Grouping with lower rated players will only make it harder (theoretically) for the highly rated player to win because the lower rated players in his group are not being balanced out by the matchmaking algorithm and then he will get hit with a double whammy due to his high rating because he will be paired with even more lower rated players.

 

I would go in a different direction and look to give highly rated players an incentive to want to have one or two lower rated players in their group. Perhaps higher XP/CXP received.

Edited by ShallowHal
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Addtionally, it just so happens that this week is Clash in Hyperspace week for conquest and so there are a number of conquest awards for different Starfighter objectives (i.e. fly a particular ship type 5 times, complete the weekly, earn 50 medals, etc.). These are great incentives for people who don't normally play to play this week (although I have heard some grumbling from newer players).

 

I think all conquest/XP/credits awarded for playing Starfighter should follow these same objectives because it then solves the problem of the people who enter matches, but don't play the game and the people who intentionally repeatedly self-destruct. Perhaps even build in a lockout from queuing for the game for people who generate similar lack of participation stats.

 

Anyway, I hope the cross faction queuing makes for better matches, but I think you better rethink rating groups based on the ranking of the highest ranked pilot. It creates the wrong incentives.

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What are you doing about the current ship imbalance? Before the patch, Strike Fighters were like scouts; slower, but actually had armor. They were also known as the jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none, supposedly. Now they are the jack-of-all-trades and master-of-all. There is literally no reason to fly anything else right now and most wins are due to the winning team flying primarily Strike Fighters.

 

I give you a 3/10 for that trolling attempt. I played GSF since beta, and SF were never adequate and now there is actually a role for all four ship classes. I submit to you that a coordinated effort of four strike pilots on voice comms each taking certain roles is more a factor of the coordination than an intrinsic problem of the strike. And for the record, I'm not a member of that four person group on SS who's character names are their strike ship roles, so I'm not attempting to defend that behavior.

 

Gunships are clearly still viable. They remain the king on Lost Shipyards TDM and there is much that ion rail AoE can do from the safety of 15km that a T2 strike or T3 strike with EMPm cannot.

 

Bombers are still viable. T2B with rail drones and repair probes are better are forming nests in TDM than a t3 strike in my opinion, so I still have it on my bar. A hyperspace beacon from a T1B can make or break a match, and mines haven't been nerfed in their ability to provide area denial. A seismic/interdicted strike is certainly more tolerant of being eaten alive by type 2 scouts and bombers on the node than before, but can still be defeated. I will grant you that the days of CP bombers being invincible at a node are gone.

 

Scouts are still viable. T3 scouts are even more effective with the improvements in 5.5, though some of the variations in T2 scout builds faded with the changes.

 

I've flown days with all four strikes on my bar, and when I am in the match, there are still moments when I wish for my tensor scout, or my beacon bomber, or my type 1 gunship. I'm grateful for the choice now. Before 5.5 it wasn't even an option.

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IMO the game is better than it's ever been. Pre 5.5, Team Deathmatch was an absolute mess. The optimal team composition was 6 gunships, a heal bomber, and (debatable) one scout to grab damage overcharges and play a distraction role. There were a few good scout pilots that could do well in the mode, but as soon as they went against a coordinated team they were completely shut down. Post 5.5, Gunships are still very strong (especially in Lost Shipyards) but there are ships that can actually keep them in check. All three Strikes have multiple viable TDM builds. A T2 repair bomber still has its place too. Scouts are maybe a bit harder to use in TDM than they were before, but they weren't viable before anyways. Strikes now properly perform the role that we always wished Scouts could do. They prevent the Gunship chess matches that most people hate. They keep the game dynamic.

 

 

Domination is better now too. Beacon bomber spamming was almost as big of an issue as gunship spamming in TDM. I wish bombers were still viable in the mode, but I much prefer the current meta. IMO T2 scout is the strongest ship, but all three strikes are now viable too. The T1 EMP Scout and T1 Ion Gunship can sometimes serve a role as well.

 

 

 

...but I'm no longer interested in a PVP mode with a greatly lowered skill cap.

 

I've heard a few others say this as well. I don't get it...can you explain?

Edited by RickDagles
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[strikes] can do everything any other ship can do, but better.

 

They can't kill stuff from 15000 m range because they don't have a railgun. They can't quickly kill ships while fighting on a satellite because they don't have burst laser cannons.

 

 

It doesn't matter how high your evasion is our how good your shields or armor are. If a SF simply breathes in your general direction, you are erased in an instant.

 

A gunship should keep its distance from the strike and kill it safely with railguns. A scout should stick very close to the strike and kill it with burst laser cannons. Strikes weapons are mostly ineffective below 3000m. Strikes with LLC or RFL can still be dangerous, but with smart use of cooldowns and LoS, the scout has the advantage.

 

 

 

I think Strikes have really good balance and build variety right now. I agree that bombers could use some help though.

Edited by RickDagles
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I felt I really needed to come in and say just how good Siraka's posts are they are so on point it's like he's saying exactly what I'm thinking.

 

I don't currently play T2 Scout in Domination (because it just isn't a playstyle I enjoy) but I can definitely attest to how powerful they are in Domination right now. I'm not sure they are the absolute best in all scenarios but they are definitely a tip top part of the meta.

 

 

Great posts Siraka!

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Re: Skill cap complaints.

 

Well, it is a lot easier to lock on with torpedoes than it used to be. The skill cap has definitely gone down there. Possibly even a little bit too much. They're better than Concussion Missiles used to be, which is more than even I was asking, and I was leading the charge for the combination of a Distortion missile break nerf + working missiles as much as anyone was.

 

On the whole though, I think the skill cap complaints are more about the effects, mostly in solo queues, of how the balance changes affected the ability of pilots operating near the skill cap to swing games by hopping in a: T2 scout, T1 gunship or a T3 gunship, and maybe to a significantly lesser extent a minelayer.

 

Those meta ships that got nerfed hard aren't really significantly less complex to play in terms of skill, they're just a lot less effective. Which was sort of the whole point.

 

 

Missile locks do feel a bit easy mode compared to the old days, but the people complaining about skill cap reduction aren't complaining that missiles are too easy for them to use (they generally weren't using them much before the balance pass), but that they have to actually put a lot of effort into not getting hit by other people's missiles.

 

Overall, I'd say the skill cap has crept up somewhat, especially as a team game. There are more threats, more components, more combinations, and more types of ships that you have to know how to deal with.

 

Still, I wouldn't be bothered if they tinkered with torpedo lock times, bumping them up say 0.1 to 0.3 seconds (I really don't think torps need to be quicker than 2.5 to 2.7 seconds before bonuses from a magazine), or if the T2 scout got a minor buff and the T3 GS and minelayer got smallish moderate buffs.

 

They're not strike level terrible in the old sense, but they do feel a little underwhelming compared to most ships. I think though that really the core complaint is that they feel underwhelming compared to how they felt before the balance pass. I.e. they're not wildly overpowered anymore.

 

 

In terms of ship popularity I can see that there's some effect in popularity. The reason being that strikes are now good enough that if you choose them as your starter ship class ( which is common because of X-wing coolness factor ), there's really not a lot of reason to move to another ship class unless you want to. Before, having a battlescout, a T1 or T3 gunship, and a minelayer on your bar was pretty much mandatory if you really wanted to be competitive. The balance was off so badly that the game pretty much forced you to have those ships, gear those ships, and learn to fly them reasonably well. They are still useful in ways that strikes can't be, but for any particular individual there's no reason to step out of the Starguard or Rycer as long as some players are willing to take other ship classes as needed.

 

In PUGs this can lead to no one stepping out of their strikes, but against a team that knows what it's doing in terms of ship selection, that all strike team is going to be at a significant disadvantage compared to team with well chosen ship diversity.

 

GSF is fundamentally designed as a team game. For a team, there are compelling reasons to have diversity of ship class, and you have to be collectively a bit nuts to forgo the advantages that scouts, gunships, and bombers bring that strikes simply don't have the components to be able to provide. I speak as someone that primarily solo queues, but if you stay out of GSF as a team game you're missing more than half of what the game has to offer, and that includes more than half of the fun.

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Matches should be much more fairly matched across the board after these changes are put into place. This, admittedly, does not cure every ill caused by premade groups of highly skilled player. But it should help to mitigate the issues and improve the quality of matches across the board.

 

Does this mean that I won't be facing off against U.S. Top Gun pilots match after match?

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Yep premades will still be able to rolfstomp people into not queing except now when it dies it will be dead for both factions not just one. This will also put an end to the "but I switch" defense as well.

 

Exactly this ^. I like the idea of cross-faction. Proposed matchmaking though really side-steps the uber-premades killing the queues though. Imagine if uber premades would be split 2 on each side how much more effective match-making would be though. Sure, I like flying with my friends but wouldn't mind flying with a different single friend every other war if I get a better balanced match out of it. I'm not one of those people who is afraid to play without having 3 super elites covering my butt. Potentially cross-faction WITH the proposed match-making could actually kill the queues quicker than without match-making. If we had a very large number of players queueing, however, then it could work.

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  • 1 month later...
Oh, they'll still be there. Just not all on one team.

 

Actually, they still will be there, and they will still also be on one team (the 4 man premade team). Just that if you are queuing solo you may not be on the team opposite them every match, there would be a chance you'd be on a team with them. But the team with the top-gun premade will still win nearly 100% of the time, your win rate may get closer to 50% in that scenario.

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Actually, they still will be there, and they will still also be on one team (the 4 man premade team). Just that if you are queuing solo you may not be on the team opposite them every match, there would be a chance you'd be on a team with them. But the team with the top-gun premade will still win nearly 100% of the time, your win rate may get closer to 50% in that scenario.

 

Something tells me people will give the new matchmaker a couple of chances before falling back into the old pattern of "see premade, leave."

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  • 1 month later...

Has anyone considered incorporating flagships with gsf, like using them as the spawn points in a match? Now that we're getting guild vs guild challenges, it would be cool to make use of our flagships, and maybe get some perks with them too. Perhaps it would only work in it's own game mode, similar to holding pois for points, except tue sattelite is actually the other team's bridge.

Example of map changes: at each end of the map an extension is added to fit the hull of the flagship. For each expansion unlocked of the flagship would place a point of interest (POI) hat has different perks of abilities and flagship defenses

Ie. An engineering bay places a poi where allies can go to for repair, hangar deck poi could be used be used to reload secondary weapons, and once destryed, would extend the timer for respawning, crew deck expansions would increase a number of defensive pois spread out on the ship, and the command deck poi would trigger an effect that would allow the enemy capital to open fire on the other.

It may be better to run this match similar to void star, where each team has a round of opportunity to assault their opponents capital.

 

Another Option is to use systems similar to the conquest mode of the classic star wars battlefront 2 game and have individual system pois to target and destroy: shields, communications, turret defenses, etc. Shields would have to go down first, turretz optional but not dealing with them means periodic damage to your starfighters, with destruction of engines, bridge, communications would end the round as win for the offensive, the team with the most detroyed pois of the 3 priority targets wins, followed by turrets and player deaths to resolve ties.

 

As the starfighter community is small, this may be wishful thinking, but if the idea were used as a pve scenario it could attract more players (sort of like galaxy of heroes where you don't actually fight pvp, but you do battle other player's squads, the only way of keeping your rank up is to play.

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